ABATEMENTS.
An Abatement of Honour is defined as a mark introduced into the paternal coat to indicate some base or ungentlemanlike behaviour on the part of the bearer. The number of these figures is, as usual, nine, and they are all tinctured of the stainant or disgraceful colours, tenné and sanguine. The first is the delf tenné, assigned to him who revokes his challenge. 2. The escocheon reversed sanguine, occupying the middle point of the arms, is the sign of disgrace proper to him who offends the chastity of virgin, wife, or widow, or flies from his sovereign’s banner. 3. The point-dexter parted tenné is for him who boasts of valiant actions he never performed. 4. The point-in-point sanguine is the badge of a coward. 5. The point champaine tenné attaches to him who breaks the laws of chivalry by slaying a prisoner after he has demanded quarter. 6. The liar should bear the plain-point sanguine. 7. The gore sinister tenné is the punishment of the soldier who acts in a cowardly manner towards his enemy. 8. The gusset sanguine, if on the right side, denotes adultery, and if on the left, drunkenness. 9. The last and greatest ‘abatement of honour’ is the reversing or turning upside down of the whole shield: this belongs to the traitor. From these abatements originates the expression—“He has a blot in his scutcheon.”
It is scarcely necessary to state that ‘abatements of honour’ exist only in theory. Who ever did or would voluntarily bear a badge of disgrace? Every one deserving either of them would sooner relinquish all claim to the bearing of arms than continue it with such a stigma.
Leigh, Guillim, and other old writers are sufficiently prolix on this subject, which would seem to belong exclusively to English heraldry; for Menestrier calls them English fooleries (‘Sottises Anglaises,’) and Montagu thinks “we shall seek in vain for a more appropriate designation.”
A singular mistake prevails among the vulgar respecting the “bloody hand,” borne in the arms of Baronets. I have been very seriously and confidentially told, that murders had been committed by the ancestors of such and such families, and that the descendants were compelled to bear this dreadful emblem in consequence. According to the same sapient authorities, it can only be got rid of by the bearer’s submitting, either in his own person or by proxy, to pass seven years in a cave, without either speaking or cutting his nails and beard for that length of time! The intelligent reader needs not be informed that this supposed badge of infamy is really a mark of honour, derived from the arms of the province of Ulster in Ireland, the defence and colonization of which was the specious plea upon which the order of Baronets was created by James I.
