No. 36—French shields, so constantly represented in French heraldry, appear also in English grants of arms, 1557, 1561, 1582, 1612.
This is just an ordinary square shield, No. 7, with a pointed French base.
This shield, however, may be found at much earlier dates—see remarks on Simon de Montacute's seal to the Baron's letter, 1301, on p. 22; also the very curious brass formerly in St. Nicholas' Church, Lynn, to Thomas Waterdeyn, Mayor of Lynn in 1397 and 1404. This shows two shields, No. 36, which bear his merchant's mark, and stand on either side of a tree. He was alive in 1410 (see engraving, Archæologia, vol. xxxix, p. 505).
No. 39.—This curious Italian shield occurs in Gerard Leigh's Accedens of Armoury, 1562.
Also with curious scroll-work, dated 1589, in a timber house at Norwich, engraved, Archæologia, vol. xvi, p. 194.
In the Great Seal of Charles I., 1640, Sandford's Genealogical History, p. 516.
In the halfpenny of Charles II., 1660.
In the halfpenny of James II., 1685.
Randle Holme, book i, p. 6, would have us believe this was "the veritable shape of the Christal shield given by the goddess Minerva to Perseus, to enable him to slay the Gorgon Medusa, and which was after dedicated to Pallas," and this conceit may account for a monster's head introduced in the Great Seal of Charles I., 1640.