Palm Branches.
Menestrier [Origine des Ornemens, published 1680] writes:—"Now [aujourd'hui] persons of quality, particularly married ladies [femmes], place two palms together on the escutcheon of their arms, which makes an agreeable ornament, and is, at the same time, the symbol of conjugal love, which the ancients have represented by the palms, male and female." The earliest instance I have noted in England is on the cups of Sir E. B. Godfrey, who died in 1678 [engraved in Gentleman's Magazine, 1848, and in Topographer and Genealogist, vol. ii, p. 467]. They occur beneath a shield of Bridgeman, Bart. (the plain arms not impaled), in Sandford's Genealogical History, 1677, p. 228; also on a monumental slab, 1671, engraved in Miscell. Genealogica et Heraldica, 1884, vol. i, p. 151. About 1765 we see two palms extensively used as decorations below Georgian shields (see the plates in Dugdale's Warwickshire, 1765; Hasted's Kent, 1778; Rudder's Gloucestershire, 1779; and Hutchin's Dorsetshire, 1774). Such are extensively seen throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and were frequently painted, as a pleasing decoration, below the arms on carriage panels, almost to our own times. But they must have lost the original symbolism, for they occur constantly on ledger tombs [see Miscell. Genealogica et Heraldica, Mar., 1885, p. 233; dated 1696], and must then refer to the resurrection life. They are found in book-plates in the middle of the eighteenth century, and continue down to 1800 or later. The ledger tomb to Ashley Palmer and his wife at Hawstead, dated 1792, shows a pleasing example. This engraving is from Miscell. Genealogica et Heraldica, 1885, p. 307.