The inscriptions in this century continue to be in Latin and in Roman letters, but sometimes Gothic lettering is used.
FIFTEENTH CENTURY.
Our materials for proof during this century are peculiarly numerous and rich. There is great store of beautiful seals, many of them highly decorated, and preparing us for their decay and disappearance after about 1490. Then again, MS. illustrations of tournaments show the shaped shields of the knights hung up on tents or elsewhere, and adorned with their heraldry; and occasionally, and in one case as late as 1480, two knights appear on horseback, jousting and bearing shields; also, in some cases, combats on foot, where the knights carry shields. We have also stained glass with shields, which, at this early time, seem more closely to follow the shapes of those actually in use.
Grants of arms now begin to supply shapes of shields, and towards the end of the century printers' marks appear, although these last seem to be affected by a fanciful exaggeration.
Add. MS. 15,477—date 1360.
As a case of recrudescence of old ideas we must refer to the instance of a bouche, in which to rest the spear, so early as 1360, in Add. MS. 15,477, in the British Museum (Hewitt, vol. ii, p. 231); indeed one is represented vastly earlier, in 1159, in the seal of Theodoric Count of Flanders, engraved in Oliver Vredius, p. 17 (see No. 46). Such shields are now very frequent, except upon seals, where they seldom occur; and the reason is, no doubt, that they would have interfered with the heraldic charges, which now begin to be multiplied.
Heater shields, and sometimes pointed, just as they appear at earlier dates, are still continued; but in most cases, and especially towards the middle and end of the century, they become much more square and blunter at the base.
Seals of the more important families are filled up with elaborate decorations—diapering on the fields, leaves and mantlings filling up the whole space, and supporting animals, finely and boldly designed, are introduced; and several concentric lines, differently ornamented, with quatrefoils, crosses, mullets, and stars upon these circular bands sometimes occur within the inscription.
