The Pyne family bear three pineapples, the Herrings bear three herrings, one, Camel of Devon, bears a camel passant; the Oxendens bear three oxen; Sir Thomas Elmes bears five elm-leaves; three soles figure on the coat of arms of the Sole family, and to the description of the last armorial charge, old Guillim quaintly adds:
"By the delicateness of his taste, the sole hath gained the name of the partridge of the sea."
The arms of the Abbot of Ramsey furnish, perhaps, one of the most glaring examples of canting heraldry, for on his shield a ram is represented struggling in the sea!
On the shield of the Swallow family we find the mast of a ship with all its rigging disappearing between the capacious jaws of a whale, whilst the Bacons bear a boar.
But whoever designed the coat of arms of a certain Squire Malherbe must have surely been in rather a spiteful mood, and certainly had a turn for punning. For on that gentleman's shield we find three leaves of the stinging-nettle boldly charged!
In the armorial bearings of the Butler family we see allusion made to their calling in the charge of three covered cups, which commemorates the historical fact that the ancestor of the present Marquis of Ormonde, Theobald Walter by name, was made Chief Butler of Ireland by Henry II. in 1171, an office which was held by seven successive generations of the Ormonde family. The family of Call charge their shield very appropriately with three silver trumpets.
The Foresters bear bugle horns; the Trumpingtons, three trumpets.
Three eel-spears were borne by the family of Strathele, this being the old name given to a curious fork, set in a long wooden handle, and used by fishermen to spear the eels in mud.
The Graham Briggs charge a bridge upon their coat of arms.
A tilting spear was granted as his armorial bearings to William Shakespeare, which he bore as a single charge; a single spear was also borne appropriately by one Knight of Hybern.