The earlier monumental effigies afford many valuable examples of shields, and after they cease to be represented by the side of the figure, such often appear among the architectural details, giving the shape of shield, with an exact date attached.
Monumental brasses give evidence to a later date, and the canopy work introduced often carries ornamental shields.
Architectural stone carvings frequently give data of great value. I need only refer to those put up in Westminster Abbey about 1260, which show the exact shape and proportions of some of the shields then used, and are represented as hanging by their "guiges" from stone projections carved into various devices. But representations in stone and in stained glass, especially those of later date, seem to be greatly influenced by their surroundings, and cannot therefore be implicitly relied on as proofs of style and date. They are often found not to correspond exactly with other examples; indeed it is a curious fact, which all my fellow students will vouch for, that these two—stone and glass—seem of all materials most liable to err. The good name of many a respectable family has been ruined by the bend sinister introduced through the ignorant determination of some stone-carver; while in glass, colours are altered, and impaled shields have been turned round and so reversed; while, in the particular subject under discussion, viz., the exact shapes of shields which obtained at various dates, we find in both stone and glass that their shapes follow the necessities of the rest of the design, and are made to fit into them.
Printed books supply many shields from the end of the fifteenth century, showing the artistic taste in such matters which prevailed from that date to the present. Printers' marks begin still earlier, and are often contained in shields; but these usually show a spirit of exaggeration, and convey the impression that such would not be found elsewhere, and hence they are not of much use to us in our present purpose of laying down exact dates.
Grants of arms and book-plates come in to continue our information, giving shapes and the decorations surrounding them. Book-plates are usually efforts of art and taste at the dates when they were executed, and these two occur just at the time when other evidences fall short, and so they are peculiarly valuable.
In the following remarks I shall gladly avail myself of the new system of nomenclature devised and introduced by my friend, Mr. J. Paul Rylands, F.S.A. I welcome it as a most valuable desideratum, by means of which I hope to make my subject intelligible. Without such a system a still greater number of illustrations would have been required, and I should like to bear my small testimony to its very great and, I expect, increasing usefulness. It is not everyone who has the ready hand to dash off the correct outline when seeking to communicate the style of a shield, or a book-plate, and here we have a simple alphabet of shapes which can be read and understanded of all men, and which will certainly be found so convenient that it will come into general use.