A Complete Guide to Heraldry

by Arthur Charles Fox-Davies

With rare exceptions, the official arms which exist are those of Archiepiscopal and Episcopal Sees, of the Kings of Arms, and of the

Regius Professors at Cambridge. Here certainly, in the ecclesiastical cases, the theory of marriage remains, the official arms being placed on the dexter side and the personal arms on the sinister, inasmuch as the laws of armory for ecclesiastics were made at a time when the clergy were celibate. The personal helmet and crest are placed above the impaled coat, except in the cases of bishops and archbishops, who, of course, use a mitre in place thereof. It is not correct to impale the arms of a wife upon the same shield which carries the impalement of an official coat of arms, because the wife does not share the office. In such a case it is necessary to make use of two shields placed side by side, as is done in conjoining the arms of a Knight of any Order with those of his wife.

In impaling the arms of a wife, it is not correct to impale more than her pronominal coat. This is a definite rule in England, somewhat modified in Scotland, as will be presently explained. Though it has never been considered good form to impale a quartered shield, it is only recently that the real fact that such a proceeding is definitely incorrect has come to light. It appears from the State Papers, Domestic Series, Eliz. xxvi. 31, 1561:—

"At a Chapitre holden by the office of Armes at the Embroyderers' Hall in London, anno 4^o Reginæ Elizabethæ it was agreed that no inhiritrix eyther mayde wife or widow should bear or cause to be borne any Creast or cognizance of her Ancestors otherwise than as followeth. If she be unmarried to bear in her ringe, cognizaunce or otherwise, the first coate of her ancestors in a Lozenge. And during her widowhood to set the first coate of her husbande in pale with the first coate of her Auncestors. And if she mary on who is noe gentleman, then she to be clearly exempted from the former conclusion."

Whilst this rule holds in England, it must, to a certain extent, be modified in relation to the arms of a Scottish wife. Whilst the inalienable right to quarter arms derived from an heiress cannot be said to be non-existent in Scotland, it should be noted that the custom of indiscriminately quartering is much less frequent than in England, and comparatively seldom adopted, unless estates, or chief representation in an important or appreciable degree, follow the technical heraldic representation. In England the claim is always preferred to quarter the arms of an ancestress who had no brothers whether she transmitted estates or not. Of course, technically and theoretically the claim is perfectly correct, and cannot, and should not, be denied. But in practice in England it has in some cases reached a rather absurd extent, when a man on marrying an only daughter of the youngest son of the youngest branch of a family consequently acquires the right to display with his own ensigns the full arms and quarterings of

the head of a house from which he has inherited no lands, and which is still thriving in the senior male line. In Scottish practice such an event would be ignored, and in that country it is not usual to add quarterings to a shield, nor are these officially recognised without a rematriculation of the arms. In England it is merely a question of recording the pedigree and proving heirship, and many quarterings are proved and recorded that there is not the slightest intention to use regularly. Rematriculation has a more permanent character than mere registration, inasmuch as the coat with its quarterings upon matriculation as far as usage is concerned becomes indivisible, and, consequently, for a Scottish wife the impalement should be of the indivisible arms and quarterings matriculated to her father in Lyon Register, with his bordure and other "difference" marks.

All the old armorists provide ways of impaling the arms of several wives, and consequently the idea has grown up that it is permissible and correct to bear and use the arms of two wives at the same time. This is a mistake, because, strictly and technically speaking, the right to impale the arms of a wife ceases at her death. Impalement means marriage, and when the marriage is dissolved the impalement becomes meaningless, and should be discontinued. A man cannot be married to two people at one time, nor can he as a consequence impale two coats of arms at the same time.

The matter is more clearly apparent if the question of an escutcheon of pretence be considered in place of an impalement. The escutcheon of pretence means that the husband pretends to represent the family of his wife. This jure uxoris he undoubtedly does whilst she is alive, but the moment she dies the actual representation of her family passes to her son and heir, and it is ridiculous for her husband to pretend to represent when there is an undoubted representative in existence, and when the representation, such as it was when vested in himself, has come to an end, and passed elsewhere. If his heiress-wife had been a peeress, he would have borne her escutcheon of pretence surmounted by her coronet; but it is ridiculous for him to continue to do so when the right to the coronet and to the peerage has passed to his wife's heir. The same argument holds good with regard to impalement. That, of course, raises the point that in every authority (particularly in those of an earlier period) will be found details of the methods to be adopted for impaling the arms of several wives. People have quite failed to appreciate the object of these rules. Armory from its earliest introduction has had great memorial use, and when a monument or hatchment is put up to a man it has been usual, prior to these utilitarian days of funeral reform, to memorialise all the wives he has been possessed of. In the same way, in a pedigree it is necessary to

enumerate the names and arms of all the wives of a man. Consequently for tombs and pedigrees—when all being dead, there is no reason to indicate any particular woman as the present wife—plans have been devised for the combination of several coats into one memorial achievement, plans necessitated by the circumstances of the cases, and plans to which no objection can be taken. Tombs, pedigrees, and other memorials are the usual form in which the records of arms have chiefly come down to us, and from the frequency in which cases of achievements with double impalements have been preserved, a mistaken idea has arisen that it is correct to bear, and actually use and carry, two impalements at one and the same time. Outside memorial instances, I have utterly failed to find any instance in former days of a man himself using in his own lifetime two impalements, and I believe and state it to be absolutely incorrect for a man to use, say on a carriage, a bookplate, or a seal, the arms of a deceased wife. You may have been married to a presently deceased woman, therefore impale her arms in a record or memorial; but no one is married to a deceased woman, therefore it is wrong to advertise that you are married to her by impaling her arms; and as you cannot be married to two people at the same time, it is illogical and wrong to use or carry two impalements. I know of no instance of a grant to a man of arms to bear in right of a deceased wife. It is for these occasions of memorial and record that methods have been devised to show a man's marriage with several wives. They certainly were not devised for the purpose of enabling him to bear and use for contemporary purposes the arms of a series of dead women, the representation of whom is no longer vested in himself.

Whilst admitting that for the purposes of record or memorial rules do exist, it should at the same time be pointed out that even for such occasions it is much more usual to see two shields displayed, each carrying its separate impalement, than to find two impalements on one shield. The use of a separate shield for each marriage is the method that I would strongly advocate, but as a knowledge of past observances must be had fully, if one is to read aright the records of the tombs, I recite what the rules are:—