A Complete Guide to Heraldry

by Arthur Charles Fox-Davies

Heralds and pursuivants formed an important part from very early times not only of the Royal Household, but also of those of the higher nobility, many of whom had private heralds. Of these officers there is a very full list given by Dr. Dickson in the preface to the Lord Treasurer's Accounts. Of heralds who were or ultimately became part of the King's Household we meet with Rothesay, Marchmont, Snowdon, Albany, Ross, and Islay; Ireland, Orkney, and Carrick are also mentioned as heralds, but it is doubtful whether the first and last were ever more than pursuivants. Of the latter class of officers the following were in the Royal establishment: Carrick, Bute, Dingwall, Kintyre, Ormonde, Unicorn; but we also find Aliszai or Alishay, Dragance, Diligens, Montrose, Falkland, Ireland, Darnaway, Garioch, Ettrick, Hales, Lindsay, Endure, Douglas, and Angus. Of the latter Garioch was created by James IV. for his brother John, Earl of Mar; Hailes in 1488, when Lord Hailes was made Earl of Bothwell; while Lindsay and Endure were both evidently attached to the Lindsay family, as were Douglas and Angus to the noblemen whose titles they bore. In 1403 Henry IV. of England granted a pursuivant under the title of Shrewsbury to George, Earl of March, for services rendered at the battle of that name, but we do not find that the office was continued.

In Scotland heralds appear at an early date, though none are mentioned as attending the coronation of Alexander III. in 1249; nor is there any account of any such officers accompanying that sovereign when he did homage to Edward I. at Westminster in 1278. In the next

century, however, armorial bearings were quite well known in Scotland, and there is an entry in the Exchequer Rolls on 10th October 1337 of a payment of £32, 6s. Scots for the making of seventeen armorial banners, and in 1364 there is another to the heralds for services at the tournaments; while William Petilloch, herald, has a grant from David II. of three husbandlands in Bonjedward, and Allan Fawside gets a gift of the forfeited estate of one Coupland, a herald (temp. Edward Baliol).[^[2]] The first mention of a herald, under his official designation, which I have met with in our records occurs in 1365, when there is a confirmation under the Great Seal by David II. of a charter by Dugal M‘Dowille to John Trupour or Trumpour "nunc dicto Carric heraldo." Sir James Balfour tells us that the Lyon and his heralds attended the coronation of Robert II. at Holyrood on 23rd May 1371, but whether or not this is true—and I have not been able to verify it—it is certain that a Lyon Herald existed very shortly after that date, as in the Exchequer Rolls mention is made of the payment of a certain sum to such an officer in 1377; in 1379 Froissart says that a herald was sent by Robert II. to London to explain that the truce had been infringed without his will and against his knowledge, and on 8th April 1381 a warrant was issued in London for a licence to "Lion Heraud" of the King of Scots, authorising him to take away a complete suit of armour which he had bought in that city. It is not, however, till 1388 that we find Lyon accorded the Royal style. In that year a payment is made "Leoni regi heraldorum," but at the audit following the battle of Otterburn he is called defunctus, which suggests that he had been slain on that well-fought field. The Lyon appears in several embassies about this period both to England and France, and one Henry Greve, designed in the English Issue Rolls as "King of Scottish Heralds," was at the Tower of London in 1399, either at or immediately after the coronation of Henry IV. From 1391 onwards there is frequent mention of one Douglas, "Herald of the King," and in 1421 he is styled "Lyon Herald."

Of the German officers of arms they, like the English, are divided into three classes, known as Wappenkönige, Herolde, and Persevanten. These, like our own officers, had peculiar titles; for example Suchenwirt (an Austrian ducal herald), Lub-den Frumen (a Lichtenstein pursuivant), Jerusalem (a herald of the Limmer Palatinate), Romreich (an Imperial herald). About the middle of the sixteenth century, the official names of the heralds fell into disuse; they began to make use of their ancestral names with the title of Edel and Ehrenvest (noble and honourable), but this did not last long, and the heralds found themselves thrown back

into the old ways, into which the knightly accoutrements had already wandered.

Fig. 14.—The velvet tabard of Sir William Dugdale, Garter King of Arms from 26th April 1677 to 10th February 1686.

Fig. 15.—William Bruges, the first Garter King of Arms, appointed 5th January 1420. (From an illuminated MS. in the Museum at Oxford.)

The official dress of an officer of arms as such in Great Britain is merely his tabard (Figs. 13, 14, 15). This garment in style and shape has remained unchanged in this country from the earliest known period of which representations of officers of arms exist; but whilst the tabard itself has remained unaltered in its style, the arms thereupon have constantly changed, these always being the arms of the Sovereign for the time being. The costume worn with the tabard has naturally been subject to many changes, but it is doubtful if any attempt to regulate such costume was ever officially made prior to the reign of Queen Victoria. The tabard of a pursuivant is of damask silk; that of a herald, of satin; and that of a king of arms, of velvet.