HERALDIC SYMBOLS.
Some knowledge of heraldry is very necessary in monumental researches, a coat of arms, device, or rebus, very often remains where not the least word of an inscription appears, and where indeed very probably there never was any.
Armorial bearings seem to have taken their rise in this kingdom in the reign of king Richard the first, and by little and little to have become hereditary; it was accounted most honourable to carry those arms which the bearers had displayed in the Holy Land, against the professed enemies of Christianity, but they were not fully established until the latter end of the reign of king Henry the third.
King Richard the first after his return from his captivity in Austria, had a new great seal made, on which seal he first bore three lions passant guardant for his arms, which from this time became the hereditary arms of the kings of England.
The arms assigned or attributed to the kings of the Norman dynasty, namely gules, two lions passant guardant, or, Mr. Sandford, in his Genealogical History of England, says he could not find had ever been used by those Princes, either on monuments, coins, or seals, but that historians had assigned or fixed them upon the Norman line to distinguish it from that of their successors the Plantagenets, who bore gules, three lions passant guardant, or.[[67]] According to the opinion of modern genealogists, king Henry the second, who bore two lions for his arms, in the manner before mentioned, added, on his marriage with Eleanor of Aquitaine, the arms of that dutchy, namely gules, a lion, or, to his own, and so was the first king of England who bore three lions; but for this there is no better proof than for those assigned to the Norman dynasty, for the arms of king Henry the second upon his monument at Fontevraud in Normandy, are on a shield of a modern form, and on the same monument are escutcheons with both impalements and quarterings which were not used till a hundred years after his death.
King Edward the first was the first son of a king of England that differenced his arms with a file, and the first king of England that bore his arms on the caparisons of his horse.
Margaret of France, second wife of king Edward the first, was the first queen of England that bore her arms dimidiated with her husband’s in one escutcheon, that is, both escutcheons being parted by a perpendicular line, or per pale, the dexter side of the husband’s shield, is joined to the sinister side of the wife’s, which kind of bearing is more ancient than the impaling of the entire coats of arms.
King Edward the third, in the year 1339, having taken upon him the title of king of France, was the first of our kings who quartered arms, bearing those of France and England, quarterly, and so careful were the kings, his successors, in marshalling the arms of both kingdoms in the same shield, that when Charles the sixth, king of France, changed the semée of fleurs de lys into three, our king Henry the fifth did the like,[[68]] and so it continued till the union of Great Britain with Ireland in 1801, when the arms of France were relinquished.
The first example of the quartering of arms, is found in Spain, when the kingdoms of Castile and Leon were united under Ferdinand the third, and was afterwards imitated, as above described, by king Edward the third. Eleanor of Castile, his queen, introduced this mode of bearing arms into England, in which she was followed by the king, her husband.
Until the time of king Edward the third, we find no coronets round the heads of peers. The figure upon the monument of John of Eltham, second son of king Edward the third, who died in 1334, and is buried in Westminster abbey, is adorned with a diadem, composed of a circle of greater and less leaves or flowers, and is the most ancient portraiture of an earl, says Sandford, that has a coronet. For the effigies of Henry Lacy, earl of Lincoln, on his tomb in Old St. Paul’s, had the head encompassed with a circle only, and that of William de Valence, earl of Pembroke, half brother of king John, who died in 1304, and is buried in St. Edmund’s chapel, in Westminster abbey, has only a circle, enriched and embellished with stones of several colours, but without either points, rays, or leaves.
John Hastings, earl of Pembroke, who died in 1375, was the first subject who bore two coats quarterly.
Richard the second was the first of the English kings, who used supporters to his arms.
Henry the sixth was the first of our kings who wore an arched crown, which has been ever since continued by his successors.[[69]]
Henry the eighth was the first king of England that added to his shield, the garter and the crown, in imitation of which, the knights of the garter, in the latter end of his reign, caused their escutcheons on their stalls at Windsor, to be encompassed with the garter, and those who were dukes, marquesses, or earls, had their coronets placed on their shields, which has been so practised ever since.
Queen Elizabeth was the first sovereign who used in her arms, a harp crowned, as an ensign for the kingdom of Ireland.
King James the first was the first of our monarchs, who quartered the arms of England, Scotland, and Ireland in one shield.
The number of princes of the blood royal of the houses of York and Lancaster, may easily be distinguished, by the labels on their coats of arms, which are different for each, and very often their devices are added.
Where the figure of a woman is found with arms both on her kirtle and mantle, those on the kirtle are always her own family’s, and those on the mantle, her husband’s.
The first instance of arms on sepulchral monuments, in England, are those on the tomb of Geoffrey de Magnaville, first Earl of Essex, (so created in 1148,) in the Temple church, in London. Armorial bearings were used in France, on monuments, forty years before we find them in England.
Very intimately connected with the ornaments and devices upon sepulchral monuments are the figures and dresses of our early monarchs found on their great seals, and of the principal nobility of those times on their seals. King Henry the third was the first English sovereign who wore upon his helmet a crown, and he is also the first king who is depicted upon his great seal as wearing rowels in his spurs in the manner in which they are now used, all the former kings using spurs with a single point or spike from the heel.
Sandford, in his Genealogical History of England, says, that the arms upon the seal of John, Earl of Morton, (afterwards king John,) namely, two lions passant, are the first which he had seen upon any seal of the royal family. This was in the reign of king Henry the second.