A Complete Guide to Heraldry

by Arthur Charles Fox-Davies

After the death of a wife her children immediately and actually become the representatives of their mother, and are as such entitled of right to quarter the arms of their mother's family.

The earliest example which has been discovered at the present time of the use of a quartered coat of arms is afforded by the seal of Joanna of Ponthieu, second wife of Ferdinand III., King of Castile and Leon, in 1272. This seal bears on its reverse in a vesica the triple-towered castles of Castile, and the rampant lion of Leon, repeated as in the modern quarterings of Spain. There is, however, no separation of the quarters by a line of partition. This peculiarity will be also noticed as existing in the quartered coats of Hainault a quarter of a century later. The quartered coat of Castile and Leon remains upon the monument in Westminster Abbey erected in memory of Eleanor of Castile, who died in 1290, the first wife of Edward I.

Providing the wife be an heiress—and for the remainder of this chapter, which deals only with quarterings, this will be assumed—the son of a marriage after the death of his mother quarters her arms with those of his father, that is, he divides his shield into four quarters, and places the arms of his father in the first and fourth quarters, and the arms of his mother in the second and third. That is the root, basis, and original rule of all the rules of quartering, but it may be here remarked, that no man is entitled to quarter the arms of his mother whilst she is alive, inasmuch as she is alive to represent herself and her family, and her issue cannot assume the representation whilst she is alive.

Fig. 755.—Arms of Thomas Stanley, Earl of Derby (d. 1572); Quarterly, 1. quarterly, i. and iiii., argent, on a bend azure, three bucks' heads caboshed or (Stanley); ii. and iii., or, on a chief indented azure, three bezants (Lathom); 2 and 3, gules, three legs in armour conjoined at the thigh and flexed at the knee proper, garnished and spurred or (for the Lordship of Man); 4. quarterly, i. and iiii., gules, two lions passant in pale argent (for Strange); ii. and iii., argent, a fess and a canton gules (for Wydeville). The arms on the escutcheon of pretence are not those of his wife (Anne Hastings), who was not an heiress, and they seem difficult to account for unless they are a coat for Rivers or some other territorial lordship inherited from the Wydeville family. The full identification of the quarterings borne by Anthony, Lord Rivers, would probably help in determining the point.

But it should not be imagined that the definite rules which exist at the moment had any such unalterable character in early times. Husbands are found to have quartered the arms of their wives if they were heiresses, and if important lordships devolved through the marriage. Territorial arms of dominion were quartered with personal arms (Fig. 755), quarterings of augmentation were granted, and the present system is the endeavour to reconcile all the varying circumstances and precedents which exist. One point, however, stands out clearly from all ancient examples, viz. that quartering meant quartering, and a shield was supposed to have but four quarters upon it. Consequently we find that instead of the elaborate schemes now in vogue showing

10, 20, 50, or 100 quarterings, the shield had but four; and this being admitted and recognised, it became essential that the four most important should be shown, and consequently we find that quarterings were selected in a manner which would seem to us haphazard. Paternal quarterings were dropped and the result has been that many coats of arms are now known as the arms of a family with quite a different surname from that of the family with which they originated. The matter was of little consequence in the days when the "upper-class" and arms-bearing families were few in number. Every one knew how Stafford derived his Royal descent, and that it was not male upon male, so no confusion resulted from the Earls of Buckingham giving the Royal coat precedence before their paternal quartering of Stafford (see Fig. 756), or from their using only the Woodstock version of the Royal Arms; but as time went on the upper classes became more numerous, arms-bearing ancestors by the succession of generations increased in number, and while in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries it would be a physical impossibility for any man to have represented one hundred different heiresses of arms-bearing families, in later days such became the case. The result has been the necessity to formulate those strict and rigid rules which for modern purposes must be conformed to, and it is futile and childish to deduce a set of rules from ancient and possibly isolated examples originating in and suitable for the simpler genealogical circumstances of an earlier day, and assert that it is equally permissible to adopt them at the moment, or to marshal a modern shield accordingly.

Fig. 756.—Arms of Edward Stafford, Duke of Buckingham (d. 1521): Quarterly, 1 and 4, quarterly, i. and iiii., France; ii. and iii., England, within the bordure argent of Thomas of Woodstock; 2 and 3, or, a chevron gules (for Stafford). (From MS. Add. 22, 306.)