Fig. 37. Shield with a charged bend, from a brass at Kidderminster, 1415.
From the brass of William Grevel (1401) at Chipping Campden in Gloucestershire.
From the brass of Thomas Walysel (c. 1420) at Whitchurch, Oxon.
Figs. 38 and 39. Shields with engrailed borders, plain and charged.
Another feature of early heraldry which it is well to bear in mind is the sparing use of what is known as quartering, or the method of combining in one shield the arms of two or more persons or families. One of our oldest instances of this occurs on the tomb of Queen Eleanor, the first wife of King Edward I, at Westminster, and shows her paternal arms of Castile and Leon so arranged (fig. [40]). Another early example occurs in the Great Roll, temp. Edward II, where the arms of Sir Simon Montagu (ob. c. 1316), silver a fesse indented gules of three indentures, are quartered with azure a gold griffin. So long as the shield contained only four quarters, with the first and fourth, and the second and third, respectively alike, the effect was often good, as in the cases just noted, or in the beautiful arms of France and England combined used after 1340 by King Edward III (fig. [41]). There are also many examples, as in the well-known bearings of the Veres and of the Despensers, where a quarterly disposition of the shield forms the basis of the arms. But when, as became common in the fifteenth century, quarters were multiplied or subdivided, the artistic effect of the old simple shield was lost or destroyed. As the principle was further extended, especially in Tudor and Stewart times, the result became more and more confused in appearance, until the field resembled rather a piece of coloured patchwork than a combination of various arms all more or less beautiful in themselves.