(John Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, temp. Hen. VI,
in his surcoat or coat of arms.)[32]
“Vetera quæ nunc sunt fuerunt olim nova.”
“L’histoire du blazon! mais c’est l’histoire tout entière de notre pays!”
Jouffroy d’Eschavannes.
Having given some illustrations of the desire of referring the heraldric system to times of the most remote antiquity, and shown something of the misapplication of learning to prove what was incapable of proof, let us now leave the obscure byways of those mystifiers of truth and fabricators of error, and emerge into the more beaten path presented to us in what may be called the historical period, which is confined within the last eight centuries. The history of the sciences, like that of nations, generally has its fabulous as well as its historical periods, and this is eminently the case with heraldry; yet in neither instance is there any exact line of demarcation by which the former are separable from the latter. This renders it the duty of a discriminating historian to act with the utmost caution, lest, on the one hand, truths of a remote date should be sacrificed because surrounded by the circumstances of fiction, and lest, on the other, error should be too readily admitted as fact, because it comes to us in a less questionable shape; and I trust I shall not be deemed guilty of misappropriation if I apply to investigations like the present, that counsel which primarily refers to things of much greater import, namely, “Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.”
The germ of that flourishing tree which eventually ramified into all the kingdoms of Christendom, and became one of the most striking and picturesque features of the feudal ages, and the most gorgeous ornament of chivalry, and which interweaves its branches into the entire framework of mediæval history, is doubtless to be found in the banners and ornamented shields of the warriors of antiquity. Standards, as the necessary distinctions of contending parties on the battle-field, must be nearly or quite as antient as war itself; and every such mark of distinction would readily become a national cognizance both in war and peace.[33] But it was reserved for later ages to apply similar marks and symbols to the purpose of distinguishing different commanders on the same side, and even after this became general it was some time ere the hereditary transmission of such ensigns was resorted to as a means of distinguishing families, which in the lapse of ages—the warlike idea in which they had their origin having vanished—has become almost the only purpose to which they are now applied.
The standards used by the German princes in the centuries immediately preceding the Norman Conquest, are conjectured to have given rise to Heraldry, properly so called. Henry l’Oiseleur (the Fowler), who was raised to the throne of the West in 920, advanced it to its next stage when, in regulating the tournaments—which from mismanagement had too often become scenes of blood—he ordered that all combatants should be distinguished by a kind of mantles or livery composed of lists or narrow pieces of stuff of opposite colours, whence originated the pale, bend, &c.—the marks now denominated ‘honourable ordinaries.’[34]
If the honour of inventing heraldry be ascribed to the Germans, that of reducing it to a system must be assigned to France. To the French belong “the arrangement and combination of tinctures and metals, the variety of figures effected by the geometrical positions of lines, the attitudes of animals, and the grotesque delineation of monsters.”[35] The art of describing an heraldric bearing in proper terms is called blasonry, from the French verb blasonner, whence also we derive our word blaze in the sense of to proclaim or make known.
“The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes.” Shak.