The Handbook to English Heraldry

by Charles Boutell

Heraldry is decidedly popular. This popularity also is assuming a more practical, and at the same time a more enduring form, through gradually becoming the result of a correct appreciation of the true character of Heraldry, and of its intrinsic value. At a time in which people are beginning to feel and to admit that they ought to know something about Heraldry, the College of Arms ought to take the lead in making Heraldry still better understood, still more justly appreciated, still more popular. The time, also, is indeed come in which it is the bounden duty of the College of Arms to impress upon the community at large, that the sole source and fountain-head of authority in all matters armorial, under the Sovereign, centres in itself. This is to be accomplished by the same process, and only by the same process, by which the College of Arms may win for itself thorough popularity and universal confidence. If the College requires fresh or increased powers, application to that effect should be made to the Legislature. The Heraldry of Scotland has been dealt with by Parliament: and it would be equally easy to obtain such a statute as would enable English Heraldry to do justice to itself, while fulfilling its own proper duties.

Without abating or compromising in the slightest degree its own dignity or the dignity of Heraldry, the College of Arms requires to be transmuted from an exclusive into a popular Institution. It requires, not indeed to have its object and aim and system of action changed, but to have them expanded, and expanded so widely as to comprehend all the heraldic requirements of the age. This is a subject of too urgent importance not to be noticed here; but still, it is not possible to do more than to notice it in very general terms.

Upon one specific point, however, a few plain words may be spoken without hesitation, and may be left by themselves without comment. The Fees and Charges of all kinds for granting, matriculating, confirming, and recording the rightful possession of armorial Insignia must be arranged upon a perfectly fresh system, with such provisions and modifications as may adapt them to every variety of circumstance and of requirement. This is a question which can be regarded only from one point of view by every true lover of Heraldry, and consequently by every true friend of the College of Arms.

II. The National Heraldic body in Scotland, entitled the Lyon Office, is under the presidency of the Lyon King of Arms. The Chief of the Scottish official Heralds from May 1796 to a recent period had been a Peer of that realm; and the duties of the office, accordingly, had been discharged for seventy years by a Lyon Depute. But, on the death of the Earl of Kinnoul, in February 1866, it was determined to remodel in some respects the arrangements of the Lyon Office; and Mr. George Burnett, who had long been “Lyon Depute,” was appointed by Her Majesty to be “Lyon King.” He has been succeeded by Sir J. Balfour Paul. The Arms of the Lyon Office I have already given, No. 266.

The action of the Scottish Lyon King of Arms, and of the Institution over which he presides, after having degenerated from the worthy standard of earlier days, has revived under far happier conditions, and with prospects that are eminently gratifying. It may be fairly expected, indeed, that the most salutary results will be produced by the very decided “tendency” that for some time has existed, “to cultivate the rules and principles of that earlier age, to which”—writes Mr. Seton—“we are indebted for a system of Scottish Heraldry, whose purity certainly has not been surpassed in any other corner of Christendom.” These words occur in a highly interesting memoir of the Lyon Office, in the fourth chapter of the work entitled “The Law and Practice of Heraldry in Scotland,” an able and admirable volume, published in 1863 in Edinburgh, which shows the growing popularity of a true Heraldry north of the Tweed, and proves that in the author, Mr. Seton, Scottish Heraldry possesses an advocate no less powerful than zealous and judicious.

III. Arms and Armorial Insignia are granted only through the College of Arms in England, and through the Lyon Office in Scotland, in both realms with the direct sanction of the Crown expressed in England by the Earl Marshal. In Ireland all Grants are made by Ulster King of Arms with the same sanction.

It is to be observed and kept in remembrance that the sole right to Arms is a Grant from the College or the Crown, or Inheritance by lineal descent from an ancestor to whom a Grant was made or in whom a right to bear Arms has been officially recognised and registered by the Crown.

All “Grants” and “Confirmations of Arms” (Confirmations, that is, of the Claims of certain individuals to bear certain Arms, by some uncertain right and title duly set forth and approved and thereafter legalised by the Crown) are formally and regularly recorded, with a full blazon of the insignia, at the College or Offices of Arms.

It is very greatly to be desired that, in addition to this time-honoured usage of the Heralds in making these records, some simple plan could be adopted for the periodical registration at the College of Arms of all armorial insignia that are borne by right. Almost equally desirable, also, it would be to make a corresponding registration, as far as might be possible, of whatever insignia are borne without any right. The contents of both registers would form unquestionably useful publications of a periodical character. In connection with any such project as I have just suggested, it appears to me that good service might be rendered to the cause of true Heraldry amongst us, if Badges and Mottoes (without any other insignia whatever) were formally granted by the College, under certain conditions, and at the cost of a small Fee.[9]

In new Grants of Arms, as in so many formal documents, something of the early form of Expression, with some traces of its piquant quaintness, are still retained. Very quaint indeed, and very extravagant also, is the style that was generally adopted by the Heralds of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and yet characteristic of both the men and their times. As an example of one of these old documents, an example of no common interest in itself, I now give the Grant of Arms to John Shakespere, the Poet’s father, in the year 1596. Two draft copies of the original Grant are preserved in the College of Arms; the following transcript is printed from the later of the two copies, the earlier having been used to supply any word or passage that now is wanting in the other. The insertions thus obtained are printed in brackets.