Edward Peacock.
Bottesford Moors, Kirton-in-Lindsey.
LADIES' ARMS BORNE IN A LOZENGE.
(Vol. vii., p. 571.)
The subject of the Query put by your correspondent is one that has frequently occurred to me, but which is involved in obscurity. Heraldic writers generally have contented themselves with the mere statement of ladies' arms being thus borne; and where we do find an opinion hazarded, it is more in the form of a quotation from a nameless author, or of a timid suggestion, than an attempt to elucidate the question by argument or from history.
By some this form of shield is said to have descended to us from the Amazons, who bore such: others say, from the form of their tombstones! Now we find it to represent the ancient spindle so much used by ladies; and again to be a shield found by the Romans unfit for use, and therefore transferred to the weaker sex, who were "allowed to place their ensigns upon it, with one corner always uppermost."
Here are quotations from a few of our writers on the science of Heraldry:—
Burke, Encyclop. Herald. 1844. Queen Victoria bears her arms on a full and complete shield; "for," says the old rhyme—