A Complete Guide to Heraldry

by Arthur Charles Fox-Davies

But the difficulty in deciding the point very greatly depends upon the definition of the badge; and if we are to take the definition according to the manner of acceptance and usage at the period when the use of badges was greatest, then many of the earliest cannot be taken as coming within the limits.

In later Plantagenet days, badges were of considerable importance, and certain characteristics are plainly marked. They were never worn by the owner—in the sense in which he carried his shield, or bore his crest; they were his sign-mark indicative of ownership; they were stamped upon his belongings in the same way in which Government property is marked with the broad arrow, and they were worn by his servants. They were worn not only by his retainers, but very probably were also worn more or less temporarily by adherents of his party if he were big enough to lead a party in the State. At all times badges had very extensive decorative use.

There was never any fixed form for the badge; there was never any fixed manner of usage. I can find no fixed laws of inheritance, no common method of assumption. In fact the use of a badge, in the days when everybody who was anybody possessed arms, was quite subsidiary to the arms, and very much akin to the manner in which nowadays monograms are made use of. At the same time care must be taken to distinguish the "badge" from the "rebus," and also from the temporary devices which we read about as having been so often adopted for the purpose of the tournament when the combatant desired his identity to be concealed. Modern novelists and poets give us plenty of illustrations of the latter kind, but proof of the fact even that they were ever adopted in that form is by no means easy to find, though their professedly temporary nature of course militates against

the likelihood of contemporary record. The rebus had never an heraldic status, and it had seldom more than a temporary existence. A fanciful device adopted (we hear of many such instances) for the temporary purpose of a tournament could generally be so classed, but the rebus proper has some device, usually a pictorial rendering of the name of the person for whom it stood. In such a category would be included printers' and masons' marks, but probably the definition of Dr. Johnson of the word rebus, as a word represented by a picture, is as good a definition and description as can be given. The rebus in its nature is a different thing from a badge, and may best be described as a pictorial signature, the most frequent occasion for its use being in architectural surroundings, where it was constantly introduced as a pun upon some name which it was desired to perpetuate. The best-known and perhaps the most typical and characteristic rebus is that of Islip, the builder of part of Westminster Abbey. Here the pictured punning representation of his name had nothing to do with his armorial bearings or personal badge; but the great difficulty, in dealing with both badges and rebuses, is the difficulty of knowing which is which, for very frequently the same or a similar device was used for both purposes. Parker, in his glossary of heraldic terms, gives several typical examples of rebuses which very aptly illustrate their status and meaning. At Lincoln College at Oxford, and on other buildings connected with Thomas Beckynton, Bishop of Bath and Wells, will be found carved the rebus of a beacon issuing from a tun. This is found in conjunction with the letter T for his Christian name, Thomas. Now this design was not his coat of arms, and was not his crest, nor was it his badge. Another rebus which is found at Canterbury shows an ox and the letters N, E, as the rebus of John Oxney. A rebus which indicates Thomas Conyston, Abbot of Cirencester, which can be found in Gloucester Cathedral, is a comb and a tun, and the printer's mark of Richard Grifton, which is a good example of a rebus and its use, was a tree, or graft, growing on a tun. In none of these cases are the designs mentioned on any part of the arms, crest, or badge of the persons mentioned. Rebuses of this character abound on all our ancient buildings, and their use has lately come very prominently into favour in connection with the many allusive bookplates, the design of which originates in some play upon the name. The words "device," "ensign," and "cognisance" have no definite heraldic meaning, and are used impartially to apply to the crest, the badge, and sometimes to the arms upon the shield, so that they may be eliminated from consideration. There remains therefore the crest and the badge between which to draw a definite line of distinction. The real difference lay in the method of use, though there is usually a difference of form,

recognisable by an expert, but difficult to put into words. The crest was the ornament upon the helmet, seldom if ever actually worn, and never used except by the person to whom it belonged. The badge, on the other hand, was never placed upon the helmet, but was worn by the servants and retainers, and was used right and left on the belongings of the owner as a sign of his ownership. So great and extensive at one period was the use of these badges, that they were far more generally employed than either arms or crest, and whilst the knowledge of a man's badge or badges would be everyday knowledge and common repute throughout the kingdom, few people would know that man's crest, fewer still would ever have seen it worn.

It is merely an exaggeration of the difficulty that we are always in uncertainty whether any given device was merely a piece of decoration borrowed from the arms or crest, or whether it had continued usage as a badge. In the same way many families who had never used crests, but who had used badges, took the opportunity of the Visitations to record their badges as crests. A notable example of the subsequent record of a badge as a crest is met with in the Stourton family. Their crest, originally a buck's head, but after the marriage with the heiress of Le Moigne, a demi-monk, can be readily substantiated, as can their badge of the drag or sledge. At one of the Visitations, however, a cadet of the Stourton family recorded the sledge as a crest. Uncertainty also arises from the lack of precision in the diction employed at all periods, the words badge, device, and crest having so often been used interchangeably.

Another difficulty which is met with in regard to badges is that, with the exception of the extensive records of the Royal badges and some other more or less informal lists of badges of the principal personages at different periods, badges were never a subject of official record, and whilst it is difficult to determine the initial point as to whether any particular device is a badge or not, the difficulty of deducing rules concerning badges becomes practically impossible, and after most careful consideration I have come to the conclusion that there were never any hard and fast rules relating to badges, that they were originally and were allowed to remain matters of personal fancy, and that although well-known cases can be found where the same badge has been used generation after generation, those cases may perhaps be the exception rather than the rule. Badges should be considered and accepted in the general run as not being matters of permanence, and as of little importance except during the time from about the reign of Edward III. to about the reign of Henry VIII. Their principal use upon the clothes of the retainers came to an end by the creation of the standing army, the beginning of which can be traced to the reign of Henry VIII., and as badges never had any ceremonial use to perpetuate

their status, their importance almost ceased altogether at that period except as regards the Royal family.

Speaking broadly, regularised and recorded heraldic control as a matter of operative fact dates little if any further back than the end of the reign of Henry VIII., consequently badges originally do not appear to have been taken much cognisance of by the Heralds. Their actual use from that period onwards rapidly declined, and hence the absence of record.

Though the use of badges has become very restricted, there are still one or two occasions on which badges are used as badges, in the style formerly in vogue. Perhaps the case which is most familiar is the broad arrow which is used to mark Government stores. It is a curious commentary upon heraldic officialdom and its ways that though this is the only badge which has really any extensive use, it is not a Crown badge in any degree. Although this origin has been disputed it is said to have originated in the fact that one of the Sydney family, when Master of the Ordnance, to prevent disputes as to the stores for which he was responsible, marked everything with his private badge of the broad arrow, and this private badge has since remained in constant use. One wonders at what date the officers of His Majesty will observe that this has become one of His Majesty's recognised badges, and will include it with the other Royal badges in the warrants in which they are recited. Already more than two centuries have passed since it first came into use, and either they should represent to the Government that the pheon is not a Crown mark, and that some recognised Royal badge should be used in its place, or else they should place its status upon a definite footing.