It would be a matter of little difficulty to fill fifty pages with arms of this description, but a few more, and those of the most remarkable, may be given. The family of Still bear guttée d’eau, drops of water; STILLA, Lat. a drop; Drope, Lord Mayor of London, also bore guttée; and Harbottle bore three drops or. Vere, Earl of Oxford, gave a boar, in Latin VERRES.
Clear, Bright, Day, and St. Clere bear a ‘sun in splendour;’ the same luminary is also given by Dyson and Pearson; while Delaluna bears a crescent, and Sterling stars.
The crest of Holden-Rose, as given in Baker’s Northamptonshire, may be briefly described as a hand HOLDING A ROSE!
Harrison bears a hedgehog, in French herisson; Pascall, a paschal-lamb; and Keats three cats!
And bears gules a Roman & argent!
Brand, Lord Dacre, bears two brands, or antient swords, in saltire; Hose, three legs couped at the thigh; and Pickering, a pike between three annulets.
“Le même usage (says Salverte) a été alternativement cause et effet.” We have already seen that multitudes of armorial ensigns have been borrowed from the bearers’ names—it is asserted by several authors that, in many cases, surnames were borrowed from arms. Salverte[162] thinks that many of the chiefs who were engaged in the Crusades assumed and handed down to their posterity names allusive to the charges of their banners. He also notices, from the history of Poland, the fact that there were in that country, in the twelfth century, two families called respectively Rose and Griffon, and he thinks “we may with probability suppose, that both took from their arms those names, which no longer subsist, because hereditary surnames were not yet established in Poland.” In Sweden, again, according to this learned writer, there is proof that the nobles followed such a practice. “One who bore in his arms the head of an ox assumed the name of Oxenstiern (front de bœuf;) and another took the name of Sparr, on account of the cheveron which formed the principal feature of his coat.”
“A particular instance of the armorial ensign being metonymically put for the bearer of it, occurs in the history of the Troubadours, the first of whom was called the Dauphin, or knight of the Dolphin, because he bore this figure on his shield. In the person of one of his successors, the name Dauphin became a title of sovereign dignity. Many other surnames were in this manner taken from arms, as may be inferred from the ordinary phraseology of romance, where many of the warriors are styled knights of the lion, of the eagle, of the rose, &c., according to the armorial figures they bore on their shields.”[163] At tournaments the combatants usually bore the title of Knights of the Swan, Dragon, Star, or whatever charge was most conspicuous in their arms.[164]
The arms of Trusbut are three water-bowgets, ‘Très boutz.’ Mr. Montagu thinks the name was taken from the bearings.[165]