There were two methods of marshalling in early heraldry. One was known as "dimidation," which means cutting a coat of arms in half, pale-wise, and matching it with another half of another coat of arms, so as to make one achievement of the two joined halves. Thus, when a wife's arms were to be represented on the same shield as her husband's, both coats were halved, and then placed upon the shield, the husband's arms occupying the right side, and those of the wife the left.
As you can imagine, however, the result of this chopping and joining was seldom satisfactory and sometimes very comical, as, for example, in the arms of Yarmouth, where half a lion is running to join half a herring!
The second method of marshalling was by impalement. This term means the joining together of different coats of arms by a pale.
Fig. 55.
In this arrangement the shield was divided pale-wise as before (Fig. 55 shows the shield divided ready to receive the two coats), but the whole of each coat was crowded respectively into each side of the shield, the right side being charged with the husband's arms, the left with his wife's. Naturally, however, in order to suit this arrangement, the arms suffered a certain amount of alteration.
Nowadays, according to Mr. Fox-Davies, the following rules are observed with regard to the arms of man and wife—viz.: "If the wife is not an heraldic heiress the two coats are impaled. If the wife be an heraldic heiress or co-heir, in lieu of impalement, the arms of her family are placed on an escutcheon, being termed an 'escutcheon of pretence,' because ... the husband pretends to the representation of her family."
A widow may have the coat of arms borne by her husband and herself marshalled, not on a shield, but on a lozenge, whilst an unmarried daughter may bear her father's arms on a lozenge also, but without a crest.
Finally, under the head of marshalling comes the arrangement of all the accessories, of the shield of which we spoke in our last chapter.