The beginning is visible in the extraordinary compositions devised and granted to all sorts and conditions of men during the reign of Henry VIII. Such arms as had been granted by Henry VI or Edward IV, or even by the kings-of-arms in the fifteenth century, still followed ancient precedent, but the Tudor members of the newly incorporated Heralds' College seem to have struck out a line for themselves.
Fig. 190. Paving tile with arms and initials of John Lyte (c. 1535), from Marten church, Wilts.
A notable example is furnished by the arms devised for cardinal Thomas Wulcy. These, in token of his Suffolk origin, have for basis the engrailed cross upon a sable field of the Uffords (to whom he was not related), charged with the leopards' heads of the de la Poles and a lion passant (perhaps for England); to which is added a gold chief, with a red Lancastrian rose, and two of the Cornish choughs from the posthumous arms of St. Thomas of Canterbury in allusion to his Christian name!
The arms granted by Christopher Barker, Garter, in 1536 to the city of Gloucester afford another example. They consist of the sword of state of the city, with the sword-bearer's cap on the point, set upright on a gold pale, and flanked on either side by a silver horseshoe and a triad of horsenails on a green field; there is also (as in Wulcy's arms) a chief party gold and purple, with the silver boar's head of Richard III (who granted a charter to the city) between the halves of a Lancastrian red rose and of a Yorkist white rose, each dimidiated with a golden sun!
A reference to Bedford's Blazon of Episcopacy will show that the arms of a considerable number of the bishops appointed during the reigns of Henry VIII and Edward VI were characterized by overcharged chiefs like those just described, and these may be taken as typical of the arms then being granted by the kings-of-arms. The same passion for crowding the shield is seen even in many of the less elaborate arms that were occasionally granted.
Things did not improve under Mary and Elizabeth. Simple arms continued to be issued from the College, but mixed with such extravagant bursts as that of Laurence Dalton, Norroy, who granted in January 1560-1 to the famous physician doctor John Caius these arms:
Golde semyd w^{th} flowre gentle in the myddle of the cheyfe, sengrene resting uppon the heades of ij serpentes in pale, their tayles knytte to gether, all in proper color, resting uppon a square marble stone vert, betwene theire brestes a boke sable, garnyshed gewles, buckles gold, and to his crest upon thelme a Dove argent, bekyd & membred gewles, holding in his beke by the stalke, flowre gentle in propre color, stalked verte, set on a wreth golde & gewles.
This precious composition is further described in the grant as