The most commonly found is the line engrailed, which for the student of medieval armory must be associated with the line indented. In its earliest form the line which a roll of arms will describe indifferently as indented or engrailed takes almost invariably the form to which the name indented is restricted by modern armorists.

Mohun.

The cross may serve as our first example. A cross, engrailed or indented, the words being used indifferently, is a cross so deeply notched at the edges that it seems made up of so many lozenge-shaped wedges or fusils. About the middle of the 14th century begins a tendency, resisted in practice by many conservative families, to draw the engrailing lines in the fashion to which modern armorists restrict the word “engrailed,” making shallower indentures in the form of lines of half circles. Thus the engrailed cross of the Mohuns takes either of the two forms which we illustrate. Bends follow the same fashion, early bends engrailed or indented being some four or more fusils joined bendwise by their blunt sides, bends of less than four fusils being very rare. Thus also the engrailed or indented saltires, pales or cheverons, the exact number of the fusils which go to the making of these being unconsidered. For the fesse there is another law. The fesse indented or engrailed is made up of fusils as is the engrailed bend. But although early rolls of arms sometimes neglect this detail in their blazon, the fusils making a fesse must always be of an ascertained number. Montagu, earl of Salisbury, bore a fesse engrailed or indented of three fusils only, very few shields imitating this. Medieval armorists will describe his arms as a fesse indented of three indentures, as a fesse fusilly of three pieces, or as a fesse engrailed of three points or pieces, all of these blazons having the same value. The indented fesse on the red shield of the Dynhams has four such fusils of ermine. Four, however, is almost as rare a number as three, the normal form of a fesse indented being that of five fusils as borne by Percys, Pinkenys, Newmarches and many other ancient houses. Indeed, accuracy of blazon is served if the number of fusils in a fesse be named in the cases of threes and fours. Fesses of six fusils are not to be found. Note that bars indented or engrailed are, for a reason which will be evident, never subject to this counting of fusils. Fauconberg, for example, bore “Silver with two bars engrailed, or indented, sable.” Displayed on a shield of the flat-iron outline, the lower bar would show fewer fusils than the upper, while on a square banner each bar would have an equal number—usually five or six.

Montagu.Dynham.Percy.Fauconberg.

While bends, cheverons, crosses, saltires and pales often follow, especially in the 15th century, the tendency towards the rounded “engrailing,” fesses keep, as a rule, their bold indentures—neither Percy nor Montagu being ever found with his bearings in aught but their ancient form. Borders take the newer fashion as leaving more room for the charges of the field. But indented chiefs do not change their fashion, although many saw-teeth sometimes take the place of the three or four strong points of early arms, and parti-coloured shields whose party line is indented never lose the bold zig-zag.

West.

While bearing in mind that the two words have no distinctive force in ancient armory, the student and the herald of modern times may conveniently allow himself to blazon the sharp and saw-toothed line as “indented” and the scolloped line as “engrailed,” especially when dealing with the debased armory in which the distinction is held to be a true one and one of the first importance. One error at least he must avoid, and that is the following of the heraldry-book compilers in their use of the word “dancetty.” A “dancetty” line, we are told, is a line having fewer and deeper indentures than the line indented. But no dancetty line could make a bolder dash across the shield than do the lines which the old armorists recognized as “indented.” In old armory we have fesses dancy—commonly called “dances”—bends dancy, or cheverons dancy; there are no chiefs dancy nor borders dancy, nor are there shields blazoned as parted with a dancy line. Waved lines, battled lines and ragged lines need little explanation that a picture cannot give. The word invecked or invected is sometimes applied by old-fashioned heraldic pedants to engrailed lines; later pedants have given it to a line found in modern grants of arms, an engrailed line reversed. Dove-tailed and urdy lines are mere modernisms. Of the very rare nebuly or clouded line we can only say that the ancient form, which imitated the conventional cloud-bank of the old painters, is now almost forgotten, while the bold “wavy” lines of early armory have the word “nebuly” misapplied to them.

The Ordinary Charges.—The writers upon armory have given the name of Ordinaries to certain conventional figures commonly charged upon shields. Also they affect to divide these into Honourable Ordinaries and Sub-Ordinaries without explaining the reason for the superior honour of the Saltire or for the subordination of the Quarter. Disregarding such distinctions, we may begin with the description of the “Ordinaries” most commonly to be found.

From the first the Cross was a common bearing on English shields, “Silver a cross gules” being given early to St George, patron of knights and of England, for his arms; and under St George’s red cross the English were wont to fight. Our armorial crosses took many shapes, but the “crosses innumerabill” of the Book of St Albans and its successors may be left to the heraldic dictionary makers who have devised them. It is more important to define those forms in use during the middle ages, and to name them accurately after the custom of those who bore them in war, a task which the heraldry books have never as yet attempted with success.

The cross in its simple form needs no definition, but it will be noted that it is sometimes borne “voided” and that in a very few cases it appears as a lesser charge with its ends cut off square, in which case it must be clearly blazoned as “a plain Cross.”