Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Helmont, Jean" to "Hernosand" / Volume 13, Slice 3

by Various

Shield of Richard Beauchamp, earl of Warwick, from his garter stall-plate (after 1423). The arms are Beauchamp quartering Newburgh, with a scocheon of Clare quartering Despenser.

The last detail to be noted in medieval marshalling is the introduction into the shield of another surmounting shield called by old armorists the “innerscocheon” and by modern blazoners the “inescutcheon.” John the Fearless, count of Flanders, marshalled his arms in 1409 as a quartered shield of the new and old coats of Burgundy. Above these coats a little scocheon, borne over the crossing of the quartering lines, had the black lion of Flanders, the arms of his mother. Richard Beauchamp, the adventurous earl of Warwick, who had seen most European courts during his wanderings, may have had this shield in mind when, over his arms of Beauchamp quartering Newburgh, he set a scocheon of Clare quartering Despenser, the arms of his wife Isabel Despenser, co-heir of the earls of Gloucester. The seal of his son-in-law, the King-Maker, shows four quarters—Beauchamp quartering Clare, Montagu quartering Monthermer, Nevill alone, and Newburgh quartering Despenser. An interesting use of the scocheon en surtout is that made by Richard Wydvile, Lord Rivers, whose garter stall-plate has a grand quarter of Wydvile and Prouz quartering Beauchamp of Hache, the whole surmounted by a scocheon with the arms of Reviers or Rivers, the house from which he took the title of his barony. On the continent the common use of the scocheon is to bear the paternal arms of a sovereign or noble, surmounting the quarterings of his kingdoms, principalities, fiefs or seigniories. Our own prince of Wales bears the arms of Saxony above those of the United Kingdom differenced with his silver label. Marshalling takes its most elaborate form, the most removed from the graceful simplicity of the middle ages, in such shields as the “Great Arms” of the Austrian empire, wherein are nine grand quarters each marshalling in various fashions from three to eleven coats, six of the grand-quarters bearing scocheons en surtout, each scocheon ensigned with a different crown.

Crests.—The most important accessory of the arms is the crested helm. Like the arms it has its pre-heraldic history in the crests of the Greek helmets, the wings, the wild boar’s and bull’s heads of Viking headpieces. A little roundel of the arms of a Japanese house was often borne as a crest in the Japanese helmet, stepped in a socket above the middle of the brim. The 12th-century seal of Philip of Alsace, count of Flanders, shows a demi-lion painted or beaten on the side of the upper part of his helm, and on his seal of 1198 our own Richard Cœur de Lion’s barrel-helm has a leopard upon the semicircular comb-ridge, the edge of which is set off with feathers arranged as two wings. Crests, however, came slowly into use in England, although before 1250 Roger de Quincy, earl of Winchester, is seen on his seal with a wyver upon his helm. Of the long roll of earls and barons sealing the famous letter to the pope in 1301 only five show true crests on their seals. Two of them are the earl of Lancaster and his brother, each with a wyver crest like that of Quincy. One, and the most remarkable, is John St John of Halnaker, whose crest is a leopard standing between two upright palm branches. Ralph de Monthermer has an eagle crest, while Walter de Moncy’s helm is surmounted by a fox-like beast. In three of these instances the crest is borne, as was often the case, by the horse as well as the rider. Others of these seals to the barons’ letter have the fan-shaped crest without any decoration upon it. But as the furniture of tournaments grew more magnificent the crest gave a new field for display, and many strange shapes appear in painted and gilded wood, metal, leather or parchment above the helms of the jousters. The Berkeleys, great patrons of abbeys, bore a mitre as their crest painted with their arms, like crests being sometimes seen on the continent where the wearer was advocatus of a bishopric or abbey. The whole or half figures or the heads and necks of beasts and birds were employed by other families. Saracens’ heads topped many helms, that of the great Chandos among them. Astley bore for his crest a silver harpy standing in marsh-sedge, a golden chain fastened to a crown about her neck. Dymoke played pleasantly on his name with a long-eared moke’s scalp. Stanley took the eagle’s nest in which the eagle is lighting down with a swaddled babe in his claws. Burnell had a burdock bush, la Vache a cow’s leg, and Lisle’s strange fancy was to perch a huge millstone on edge above his head. Many early helms, as that of Sir John Loterel, painted in the Loterel psalter, repeat the arms on the sides of a fan-crest. Howard bore for a crest his arms painted on a pair of wings, while simple “bushes” or feathers are seen in great plenty. The crest of a cadet is often differenced like the arms, and thus a wyver or a leopard will have a label about its neck. The Montagu griffon on the helm of John, marquess of Montagu, holds in its beak the gimel ring with which he differenced his father’s shield. His brother, the King-Maker, following a custom commoner abroad than at home, shows two crested helms on his seal, one for Montagu and one for Beauchamp—none for his father’s house of Nevill. It is often stated that a man, unless by some special grace or allowance, can have but one crest. This, however, is contrary to the spirit of medieval armory in which a man, inheriting the coat of arms of another house than his own, took with it all its belongings, crest, badge and the like. The heraldry books, with more reason, deny crests to women and to the clergy, but examples are not wanting of medieval seals in which even this rule is broken. It is perhaps unfair to cite the case of the bishops of Durham who ride in full harness on their palatinate seals; but Henry Despenser, bishop of Norwich, has a helm on which the winged griffon’s head of his house springs from a mitre, while Alexander Nevill, archbishop of York, seals with shield, supporters and crowned and crested helm like those of any lay magnate. Richard Holt, a Northamptonshire clerk in holy orders, bears on his seal in the reign of Henry V. a shield of arms and a mantled helm with the crest of a collared greyhound’s head. About the middle of the same century a seal cut for the wife of Thomas Chetwode, a Cheshire squire, has a shield of her husband’s arms parted with her own and surmounted by a crowned helm with the crest of a demi-lion; and this is not the only example of such bearings by a woman.

Ralph de Monthermer (1301), showing shield of arms, helm with crest and mantle, horse-crest and armorial trappers.

Shield and crested helm with hat and mantle of Thomas of Hengrave (1401).

Before passing from the crest let us note that in England the juncture of crest and helm was commonly covered, especially after the beginning of the 15th century, by a torse or “wreath” of silk, twisted with one, two or three colours. Coronets or crowns and “hats of estate” often take the place of the wreath as a base for the crest, and there are other curious variants. With the wreath may be considered the mantle, a hanging cloth which, in its earliest form, is seen as two strips of silk or sendal attached to the top of the helm below the crest and streaming like pennants as the rider bent his head and charged. Such strips are often displayed from the conical top of an uncrested helm, and some ancient examples have the air of the two ends of a stole or of the infulae of a bishop’s mitre. The general opinion of antiquaries has been that the mantle originated among the crusaders as a protection for the steel helm from the rays of an Eastern sun; but the fact that mantles take in England their fuller form after our crusading days were over seems against this theory. When the fashion for slittering the edges of clothing came in, the edges of the mantle were slittered like the edge of the sleeve or skirt, and, flourished out on either side of the helm, it became the delight of the painter of armories and the seal engraver. A worthless tale, repeated by popular manuals, makes the slittered edge represent the shearing work of the enemy’s sword, a fancy which takes no account of the like developments in civil dress. Modern heraldry in England paints the mantle with the principal colour of the shield, lining it with the principal metal. This in cases where no old grant of arms is cited as evidence of another usage. The mantles of the king and of the prince of Wales are, however, of gold lined with ermine and those of other members of the royal house of gold lined with silver. In ancient examples there is great variety and freedom. Where the crest is the head of a griffon or bird the feathering of the neck will be carried on to cover the mantle. Other mantles will be powdered with badges or with charges from the shield, others checkered, barred or paled. More than thirty of the mantles enamelled on the stall-plates of the medieval Garter-knights are of red with an ermine lining, tinctures which in most cases have no reference to the shields below them.

Supporters.—Shields of arms, especially upon seals, are sometimes figured as hung round the necks of eagles, lions, swans and griffons, as strapped between the horns of a hart or to the boughs of a tree. Badges may fill in the blank spaces at the sides between the shield and the inscription on the rim, but in the later 13th and early 14th centuries the commonest objects so serving are sprigs of plants, lions, leopards, or, still more frequently, lithe-necked wyvers. John of Segrave in 1301 flanks his shields with two of the sheaves of the older coat of Segrave: William Marshal of Hingham does the like with his two marshal’s staves. Henry of Lancaster at the same time shows on his seal a shield and a helm crested with a wyver, with two like wyvers ranged on either side of the shield as “supporters.” It is uncertain at what time in the 14th century these various fashions crystallize into the recognized use of beasts, birds, reptiles, men or inanimate objects, definitely chosen as “supporters” of the shield, and not to be taken as the ornaments suggested by the fancy of the seal engraver. That supporters originate in the decoration of the seal there can be little doubt. Some writers, the learned Menêtrier among them, will have it that they were first the fantastically clad fellows who supported and displayed the knight’s shield at the opening of the tournament. If the earliest supporters were wild men, angels or Saracens, this theory might be defended; but lions, boars and talbots, dogs and trees are guises into which a man would put himself with difficulty. By the middle of the 14th century we find what are clearly recognizable as supporters. These, as in a lesser degree the crest, are often personal rather than hereditary, being changed generation by generation. The same person is found using more than one pair of them. The kings of France have had angels as supporters of the shield of the fleurs de lys since the 15th century, but the angels have only taken their place as the sole royal supporters since the time of Louis XIV. Sovereigns of England from Henry IV. to Elizabeth changed about between supporters of harts, leopards, antelopes, bulls, greyhounds, boars and dragons. James I. at his accession to the English throne brought the Scottish unicorn to face the English leopard rampant across his shield, and, ever since, the “lion and unicorn” have been the royal supporters.

Arms of William, Lord Hastings, from his seal (1477), showing shield, crowned and crested helm with mantle and supporters.

Badge of John of Whethamstede, abbot of St Albans (d. 1465), from his tomb in the abbey church.	Rudder badge ofWilloughby.

An old herald wrote as his opinion that “there is little or nothing in precedent to direct the use of supporters.” Modern custom gives them, as a rule, only to peers, to knights of the Garter, the Thistle and St Patrick, and to knights who are “Grand Crosses” or Grand Commanders of other orders. Royal warrants are sometimes issued for the granting of supporters to baronets, and, in rare cases, they have been assigned to untitled persons. But in spite of the jealousy with which official heraldry hedges about the display of these supporters once assumed so freely, a few old English families still assert their right by hereditary prescription to use these ornaments as their forefathers were wont to use them.