As a further memorial of this victory the Earl gave, as the badge of his retainers, a white lion, one of the supporters of his house, trampling upon the red lion of Scotland, and tearing it with his claws.
Several English families bear their arms upon the breast of an eagle with two heads. This is the standard of the German empire, and it has been granted to such families for military and other services. The Lord Arundel of Wardour, in the reign of Elizabeth, received this distinguished mark of honour by patent from the Emperor Rodolph II, for valorous conduct against the Turks, whom, as the avowed enemies of Christianity, he opposed with all the enthusiasm of a crusader of more antient times. He was at the same time created a Count of the Empire, and, on returning to England, was desirous of taking precedence according to his German title. But this step was violently opposed by the peers, and the Queen, being asked her opinion of his claim, answered, “that faithful subjects should keep their eyes at home, and not gaze upon foreign crowns, and that she, for her part, did not care her sheep should wear a stranger’s mark, nor dance after the whistle of every foreigner!”[213]
The Bowleses of Wiltshire, and the Smiths of Lincolnshire, received appropriate arms about the same time for their services against the Turks, under the same Emperor.[214]
The assumption of the arms of an enemy slain or captured in war, though permitted by the heraldric canon of early times, seems not to have been very usual in this country; yet instances are not wanting of arms so acquired. In 1628, Sir David Kirke, knight, reduced Canada, then in the power of the French, and took the admiral De la Roche prisoner. For this service he received as an augmentation, ‘A canton azure charged with a talbot sejant, collared and leash reflexed argent, sustaining a faulchion proper,’ this being the coat of his captive.
Charles I rewarded many of his adherents with augmentations of arms—the only recompense some of them ever received. The favourite marks of honour were the crown, rose, and lion of England.
Sir Palmes Fairborne, knighted by Charles II for his defence of Tangier against the Moors, had permission to bear as his crest, ‘An arm in armour couped at the elbow, lying on a wreath sustaining a sword; on the point thereof a Turk’s head, turbaned all proper.’ The epitaph on this commander, on his tomb in Westminster Abbey, was written by Dryden; and had nothing more sublime proceeded from his pen, his name would be as little known to posterity as that of the hero he celebrates.
“Alive and dead these walls he will defend,
Great actions great examples must attend;
The Candian siege his early valour knew,
Where Turkish blood did his young hands imbrew;
From thence returning with deserved applause,
Against the Moors his well-fleshed sword he draws,” &c. &c.
Sir Cloudesley Shovel, the celebrated admiral, received, by the express command of William III, a grant of arms blazoned thus: ‘Gules a cheveron ermine between two crescents in chief argent, and a fleur-de-lis in base or,’ to commemorate two great victories over the Turks and one over the French. This is one of the most appropriate coats I remember to have seen.
It would be impossible (even were it desirable) within the limits I have assigned myself, to notice all the arms and augmentations which have been granted to heroes, naval and military, for services performed during the last, and at the commencement of the present, century. A superabundance of them will be found in the plates attached to the ordinary peerages, &c. Suffice it to say, that in general they exhibit a most wretched taste in the heralds who designed them, or rather, perhaps I should say, in the personages who dictated to the heralds what ensigns would be most agreeable to themselves. Figures never dreamed of in classical armory have found their way into these bearings: landscapes and words in great staring letters across the shield, bombshells and bayonets, East Indians and American Indians, sailors and soldiers, medals and outlandish banners, figures of Peace, and grenadiers of the 79th regiment![215] Could absurdity go farther?
