This is borne out by the pleadings and details remaining to us concerning the Grey and Hastings controversy, and if this territorial character of a coat of arms is admitted, together with another characteristic no less important—and certainly equally accepted—that a coat of arms could belong to but one person at the same time, it must be recognised that the appearance of a wife's arms on a husband's shield is not an instance of a sign of mere marriage or anything analogous thereto. But when we turn to the arms of women, the condition of affairs is wholly reversed. A woman, who of course retained her identity, drew her position from her marriage and from her husband's position, and from the very earliest period we find that whilst a man simply bore his own arms, the wife upon her seal displayed both the arms of her own family and the arms of her husband's. Until a much later period it cannot be said to have been ordinarily customary for the husband to bear the arms of his wife unless she were an heiress, but from almost the beginning of armory the wife conjoined the arms of her husband and herself. But the instances which have come down to us from an early period of dimidiated or impaled coats are chiefly instances of the display of arms by a widow.
The methods of conjunction which can be classed as above, however, at first seem to have been rather varied.
Originally separate shields were employed for the different coats of arms, then dimidiated examples occur; at a later period we find the arms impaled upon one shield, and at a subsequent date the escutcheon of pretence comes into use as a means of indicating that the wife was an heiress.
The origin of this escutcheon is easy to understand. Taking arms to have a territorial limitation—a point which still finds a certain amount of acceptance in Scottish heraldry—there was no doubt that a man, in succeeding to a lordship in right of his wife, would wish to bear the arms associated therewith. He placed them, therefore, upon his own, and arms exclusively of a territorial character have certainly very frequently been placed "in pretence." His own arms he would look upon as arms of descent; they consequently occupied the field of his shield. The lordship of his wife he did not enjoy through descent, and consequently he would naturally incline to place it "in pretence," and from the constant occasions in which such a proceeding would seem to be the natural course of events (all of which occasions
would be associated with an heiress-wife), one would be led to the conclusion that such a form of display indicated an heiress-wife; and consequently the rule deduced, as are all heraldic rules, from past precedents became established.
In the next generation, the son and heir would have descent from his mother equally with his father, and the arms of her family would be equally arms of descent to him, and no longer the mere territorial emblem of a lordship. Consequently they became on the same footing as the arms of his father. The son would naturally, therefore, quarter the arms. The escutcheon of pretence being removed, and therefore having enjoyed but a temporary existence, the association thereof with the heiress-wife becomes emphasised in a much greater degree.
This is now accepted as a definite rule of armory, but in reciting it as a rule it should be pointed out, first, that no man may place the arms of his wife upon an escutcheon of pretence during the lifetime of her father, because whilst her father is alive there is always the opportunity of a re-marriage, and of the consequent birth of a son and heir. No man is compelled to bear arms on an escutcheon of pretence, it being quite correct to impale them merely to indicate the marriage—if he so desires. There are many cases of arms which would appear meaningless and undecipherable when surmounted by an escutcheon of pretence.
"Sometimes, also (says Guillim), he who marries an heretrix may carry her arms in an inescutcheon upon his own, because the husband pretends that his heirs shall one day inherit an estate by her; it is therefore called an escutcheon of pretence; but this way of bearing is not known abroad upon that occasion."
A man on marrying an heiress-wife has no great space at his disposal for the display of her arms, and though it is now considered perfectly correct to place any number of quarterings upon an escutcheon of pretence, the opportunity does not in fact exist for more than the display of a limited number. In practice, three or four are as many as will usually be found, but theoretically it is correct to place the whole of the quarterings to which the wife is entitled upon the escutcheon of pretence.
Two early English instances may be pointed out in the fifteenth century, in which a husband placed his wife's arms en surtout. These are taken from the Garter Plates of Sir John Neville, Lord Montagu, afterwards Marquess of Montagu (elected K.G. circa 1463), and of Richard Beauchamp, fifth Earl of Warwick and Albemarle (elected K.G. circa 1400); but it was not until about the beginning of the seventeenth century that the regular practice arose by which the husband of an heiress places his wife's arms in an escutcheon en surtout