The Curiosities of Heraldry

by Mark Antony Lower

I have been favoured with the following curious extract from a MS. at the College of Arms,[25] which also refers the origin of arms to the siege of Troy. I believe it has never been printed.

“What Armes be, and where they were firste invented. As kinges of Armes record, the begynynge of armes was fyrste founded at the great sege of Troye w^thin the Cytie and w^thout, for the doughtines of deades don on bothe partyes and for so mouche as thier were soo many valliaunt knights on bothe sydes w^ch did soo great acts of Armes, and none of them myght be knowen from other, the great Lords on both p’ties by thier dyscreate advice assembled together and accorded that every man that did a great acte of armes shoulde bere upon him a marke in token of his doutye deades, that the pepoell myght have the bet^r knowledge of him, and if it were soo that suche a man had any chylderen, it was ordeyned that they should also bere the same marke that their father did w^th dyvers differences, that ys to saye, Theldeste as his father did w^th a labell, the secounde w^th a cressente, the third w^th a molett, the fourth a marlet, the v^th an annellet, the vj^th a flewer delisse. And if there be anye more than sixe the rest to bere suche differences as lyketh the herauld to geve them. And when the said seige was ended y^e lordes went fourth into dyvers landes to seke there adventures, and into England came Brute and [his] knights w^th there markes and inhabited the land; and after, because the name of MERKES was rewde, they terned the same into ARMES, for as mouche as that name was far fayerer, and becausse that markes were gotten through myght of armes of men.”

The humour of Alexander the Great must have been somewhat of the quaintest when he assumed the arms ascribed to him by Master Gerard Leigh, to wit, Gules a GOLDEN LYON SITTING IN A CHAYER and holding a battayle-axe of silver.[26] The ‘atchievement’ of Cæsar was, if we may trust the same learned armorist, Or, an eagle displayed with two heads sable.[27]

Arms are also assigned to King Arthur, Charlemagne, Sir Guy of Warwick, and other heroes, who, though belonging to much more recent periods, still flourished long before the existence of the heraldric system, and never dreamed of such honours.

That these pretended armorials were the mere figments of the writers who record them, no one doubts. In these ingenious falsehoods we recognize a principle similar to that which produced the ‘pious frauds’ of enthusiastic churchmen, and to that which led self-duped alchemists to deceive others. In their zeal for the antiquity of arms—a zeal of so glowing a character that no one who has not read their works can estimate it—they imagined that they must have existed from the beginning of the world. Then, throwing the reins upon the neck of their fancy, they ascribed to almost every celebrated personage of the earliest ages, the ensigns they deemed the most appropriate to his character and pursuits. The feeling inducing such a procedure originated in a mistake as to the antiquity of chivalry, of which heraldry was part and parcel. Feelings unknown before the existence of this institution are attributed to the heroes of antiquity. ‘Duke Joshua’ is presumed to have been only another Duke William of Normandy, influenced in war by similar motives and surrounded by the same social circumstances in time of peace. Chaucer talks of classical heroes as if they were knights of some modern order; and Lydgate, in his Troy Boke invests the heroes of the Iliad with the costume of his own times, carrying emblazoned shields and fighting under feudal banners:

“And to behold in the knights shields
The fell beastes.
“Where that he saw,
In the shields hanging on the hookes,
The beasts rage.
“The which beastes as the storie leres
Were wrought and bete upon their banners
Displaied brode, when they schould fight.”[28]

The fabulous history of the science might be fairly deduced to the eleventh century, as the Saxon monarchs up to that date are all represented to have borne arms. Yet as there are not wanting, even in our day, those who admit the authenticity of those bearings, their claims will be briefly referred to in the next chapter.

In justice to the credulous and inventive armorists of the ‘olden tyme,’ the reader should be reminded that warriors did, in very antient times, bear various figures upon their shields. These seem in general to have been engraved in, rather than painted upon, the metal of which the shield was composed. The French word escu and escussion, the Italian scudo, and the English escocheon, are evident derivations from the Latin scutum, and the equivalent word clypeus is derived from the Greek verb γλυφειν, TO ENGRAVE. But those sculptured devices were regarded as the peculiar ensigns of one individual, who could change them at pleasure, and did not descend hereditarily like the modern coat of arms.

A few references to the shields here alluded to may not be unacceptable. Homer describes the shield of Agamemnon as being ornamented with the Gorgon, his peculiar badge; and Virgil says of Aventinus,[29] the son of Hercules—

“Post hos insignem palmâ per gramina currum,
Victoresque ostentat equos, satus Hercule pulchro
Pulcher Aventinus: clypeoque, insigne paternum,
Centum angues, cinctamq: gerit serpentibus hydram.”
Æneid. vii, 655.
“Next Aventinus drives his chariot round
The Latian plains, with palms and laurels crowned;
Proud of his steeds he smokes along the field,
His father’s hydra fills his ample shield.”
Dryden, vii, 908.