The Handbook to English Heraldry

Heraldic Records, &c.- Earliest Heraldic Shields and Ba

the beginning." -

se equally interesting and valuable relics, in great variety and in very considerable numbers. The heraldic evidence of Seals is necessarily of the highest order. They are original works, posses

shield; and, accordingly, here is seen the origin of the three golden fleurs-de-lys, borne afterwards upon a blue shield by the descendants of this John, the Montgomeries, Earls of Eglintoun. Again: the Seal of Walter Innes, A.D. 1431, displays the shield of arms of his house-three blue mullets (stars generally of five rays) on a field of silver, No. 11; and these mullets may be traced to the single star, that appears on the Seal of William Innes, or De Ynays, No. 12, appended to his de

lter Innes. No. 12.

great eras of medi?val Art, and they have preserved to us most useful and suggestive representations of various devices in their proper heraldic aspect. In many instances the Heraldry of early Monuments and Architecture possesses a peculiar value, arising from the circumstance of the shields of arms and other insignia

armorial insignia. The circumstances under which these Rolls were prepared are obviously not identical and for the most part unknown: but, the exact accuracy of their statements has been established beyond all question by careful and repeated comparison with Seals and other Monuments, and also with Documents which give only an indirect and yet not the less conclusive corroboration to the records of the Rolls of Arms themselves. The earliest of these Rolls at present known date about A.D. 1240 to 1245; and since in these

ons of the muster of the Royal troops at Carlisle, their march northwards, and the incidents of the siege (which last have a strange resemblance to what Homer has recorded of incidents that took place during the siege of Troy), this Roll gives some

nd private, and in the County Histories, and other works of a cognate character, there are man

ll be necessary in each case: but, in referring to Rolls of Arms, it will be sufficient to denote the period of the authority in general terms. Accordingly, I shall refer, not to each particular Roll, but col

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to later periods. The renowned Banner of the Knights Templars, by them called Beauseant, No. 13, is black above and white below, which is said to have denoted that, while fierce to their foes, they were gracious to their friends. An ancient Banner of the Earl of Leicester (H. 3) is white and red, the division being made by a vertical indented

o. 16.- Waldegrave.

Shield at

nal strength to a shield, with distinct colouring, would produce a series of heraldic compositions. A good example occurs in the shield of an early Effigy at Whitworth, Durham, No. 18, in which the heads of the rivets or screws employed to fix the border on the shield, appear to hav

The Esc

ic figures, and amongst others several beautiful modifications of a simple cruciform device which it might be made to assume. The figure called an escarbuncle, No. 19, is simply a shield-boss developed into decorative

e sentiments and requirements of the age in which it grew up into a science, devices of this kind addressed themselves in very plain and expressive language to the men of their own era. In them they saw the kind of symbolical writing that they could remember, as well as understand. They also evidently liked the quaint style of suggestiveness that was a characteristic of these allusive devices: and, it is more than

n writers, who have supposed it to be a fantastic conceit of the Heralds of a degenerate age. By writers such as these, accordingly, all "canting arm

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on to a mountain with its sharply peaked crests, and so discerns the probable allusive origin of the sharp triple points of the devices on the old Montacute shield, No. 20? It is easy to see how much must have been unconsciously done, by such changes in names and their associations, to obliterate what once was clear, significant, and expressive. I must be content here to give, simply by way of explanatory illustration, a very few examples of allusive arms; and, in so doing, it may be well for me to observe that the early Heralds of our country always employed the French language as it was spoken in their own times in England as well as in France. In the time of Henry III., G. de Lucy has for his arms three lucies-fish now known as pike: Robert Quency has a quintefueil-a flower of five leaves: Thos. Corbett has two corbeaux-ravens: A. de

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r memory with becoming honour. Such arms were also in a sense necessary to their descendants for the purposes of quartering. No proof can be shown that the arms said to have been borne by William the Conqueror are not of this order-made for him, that is, and attributed to him in after times, but of which he himself had no knowledge. These arms, No. 22, differ from the true Royal Insignia of England only in there being two, instead of three, lions displayed upon the shield. The arms of Edward the Confessor, No. 2, were certainly devised long after his death, and they appear to have been suggested to the heralds of Henry III. by one of the Confessor's coins: the shield is blue, an

am I. No. 23.-