Davillers bore at the battle of Boroughbridge “Silver three scocheons gules.”

The scocheon was often borne voided or pierced, its field cut away to a narrow border. Especially was this the case in the far North, where the Balliols, who bore such a voided scocheon, were powerful. The voided scocheon is wrongly named in all the heraldry books as an orle, a term which belongs to a number of small charges set round a central charge. Thus the martlets in the shield of Erpingham, already described, may be called an orle of martlets or a border of martlets. This misnaming of the voided scocheon has caused a curious misapprehension of its form, even Dr Woodward, in his Heraldry, British and Foreign, describing the “orle” as “a narrow border detached from the edge of the shield.” Following this definition modern armorial artists will, in the case of quartered arms, draw the “orle” in a first or second quarter of a quartered shield as a rectangular figure and in a third or fourth quarter as a scalene triangle with one arched side. Thereby the original voided scocheon changes into forms without meaning.

Balliol bore “Gules a voided scocheon silver.”

Surtees bore “Ermine with a quarter of the arms of Balliol.”

Clifford.Arderne.Cromwell.Erpingham.

The Tressure or flowered tressure is a figure which is correctly described by Woodward’s incorrect description of the orle as cited above, being a narrow inner border of the shield. It is distinguished, however, by the fleurs-de-lys which decorate it, setting off its edges. The double tressure which surrounds the lion in the royal shield of Scotland, and which is borne by many Scottish houses who have served their kings well or mated with their daughters, is carefully described by Scottish heralds as “flowered and counter-flowered,” a blazon which is held to mean that the fleurs-de-lys show head and tail in turn from the outer rim of the outer tressure and from the inner rim of the innermost. But this seems to have been no essential matter with medieval armorists and a curious 15th-century enamelled roundel of the arms of Vampage shows that in this English case the flowering takes the more convenient form of allowing all the lily heads to sprout from the outer rim.

Vampage bore “Azure an eagle silver within a flowered tressure silver.”

The king of Scots bore “Gold a lion within a double tressure flowered and counterflowered gules.”

Felton bore “Gules two lions passant within a double tressure flory silver.”

Davillers.Balliol.Surtees.Vampage.