The Curiosities of Heraldry

by Mark Antony Lower

“But he went out and began to publish it much, and to blaze abroad the matter.” St. Mark.

“’Tis still our greatest pride,
To blaze those virtues which the good would hide.” Pope.

The verb seems to have come originally from the German blasen, to blow a horn. At the antient tournaments the attendant heralds proclaimed with sound of trumpet the dignity of the combatants, and the armorial distinctions assumed by them; and hence the application of the word to the scientific description of coat armour.[36] The arrangement of the tinctures and charges of heraldry into a system may be regarded as the third stage in the history of the science. This, as we have just seen, was achieved by the French: and hence the large admixture of old French terms with words of native growth in our heraldric nomenclature.

Speed and other historians give the arms of a long line of the Anglo-Saxon and Danish monarchs of England up to the period of the Norman Conquest; but we search in vain for contemporary evidence that armorial distinctions were then known. The MSS. of those early times which have descended to us are rich in illustrations of costume, but no representation of these ‘ensigns of honour’ occurs in any one of them. It seems probable that Speed was misled by the early chroniclers, who in their illuminated tomes often represented events of a much earlier date in the costume of their own times. Thus, in a work by Matthew Paris, who flourished in the thirteenth century, Offa, a Danish king of the tenth, is represented in the habits worn at the first-mentioned date, and bearing an armorial shield according to the then existing fashion.

At what period the colours and charges of the banner began to be copied upon the shield is uncertain. A proof that regular heraldry was unknown at the era of the Conquest, is furnished by that valuable monument, the Bayeux Tapestry, a pictorial representation of the event, ascribed to the wife of the Conqueror. In these embroidered scenes neither the banner nor the shield is furnished with proper arms. Some of the shields bear the rude effigies of a dragon, griffin, serpent or lion, others crosses, rings, and various fantastic devices;[37] but these, in the opinion of the most learned antiquaries, are mere ornaments, or, at best, symbols, more akin to those of classical antiquity than to modern heraldry. Nothing but disappointment awaits the curious armorist, who seeks in this venerable memorial the pale, the bend, and other early elements of arms. As these would have been much more easily imitated with the needle than the grotesque figures before alluded to, we may safely conclude that personal arms had not yet been introduced.[38]

Dallaway asserts that, after the Conquest, William “encouraged, but under great restrictions, the individual bearing of arms;” but, strangely, does not cite the most slender authority for the assertion. Camden and Spelman agree that arms were not introduced until towards the close of the eleventh century, which must have been within a very short time of the Conqueror’s death. Others again, with more probability, speak of the second Crusade (A.D. 1147) as the date of their introduction into this country. But even at this period the proofs of family bearings are very scanty. Traditions, indeed, are preserved in many families, of arms having been acquired during this campaign, and in a future chapter several examples will be quoted, rather as a matter of curiosity than as historical proof; for all tradition, and especially that which tends to flatter a family by ascribing to it an exaggerated antiquity, will generally be found to be vox et preterea nihil. The arms said to occur on seals in the seventh and eighth centuries may be dismissed as merely fanciful devices, having no connexion whatever with the heraldry of the twelfth and thirteenth.

Towards the close of the twelfth century, and at the beginning of the thirteenth, A.D. 1189-1230, it was usual for warriors to carry a miniature escocheon suspended from a belt, and decorated with the arms of the wearer.[39]

(Rich. I. from his second Great Seal.)

It was in the time of Richard I that heraldry assumed more of the fixed character it now bears. That monarch appears on his great seal of the date of 1189, with a shield containing two lions combatant; but in his second great seal (1195) three lions passant occur, as they have ever since been used by his successors. Before coming to the throne, as Earl of Poitou, he had borne lions in some attitude; for, in an antient poem, cited by Dallaway, William de Barr, a French knight, utters an exclamation to this effect: “Behold the Count of Poitou challenges us to the field; see he calls us to the combat; I know the grinning lions in his shield;” and in the romance of ‘Cuer de Lyon,’ we read the following couplet: