In the first place, when a knight was encased in armour and wore (as the hand-to-hand warfare of the times necessitated) a visor to protect the face, it became equally essential that some external sign should identify him as a friend or foe and distinguish him as a leader and the lord of his special retainers and squires. Thus the rewards granted in the form of heraldic escutcheons emblazoned on his shield, and the crest that surmounted his helmet identified him, and even in the thick of a close encounter, when the shield might be hidden from view, the crest could be seen and his identity recognised.
Thus, likewise, the standards used by the conflicting hosts served to distinguish at a distant point of view the friendly or hostile forces one from the other, whence the shields and crests would have been indistinguishable. To those individually engaged in mortal combat, and to the countries whose woe or weal hung on the issue of a battle, the usefulness of employing emblazoned standards and shields and the wearing of crests was sufficiently self-evident.
Again, amongst the uses of heraldry, as at present existing and developed into a science, I may name the service rendered to private families by the records preserved, the investigation of claims to property, the identification of relationships, and finding of next of kin; the distinguishing between one branch of a family from another, proved by some trifling differences in the arms they respectively bear, or in the crests or mottoes; usurpation of arms and titles, and unjust pretensions to the privileges due only to legitimacy, to the injury of real heirs—all these are rights or evils which the College of Heralds alone is in a position to investigate, prove and maintain, or expose and frustrate, respectively. Such public services as these, not confined to the titled or untitled aristocracy, nor even to the upper commoners of the country, but available to all classes when seeking relationships, and through relationships property, or when searching for registries of births, deaths, or marriages—such public services as these, I say, ought surely to be duly recognised by all.
Lastly, so long as public pageants and processions continue to exist—no less interesting and attractive to the poorer spectator than to the great personages that are fêted—so long as there are royal presentations, investitures with orders of knighthood, coronations, and grand State ceremonies to be conducted, and processions marshalled in suitable order—just so long the offices of the College of Heralds will be essential to the requirements of the State and country.
And now I have reached the last part of my subject with which this, my first chapter, has to deal, i.e., that in its broad features heraldry is supported by the highest possible authority. The formation of pedigrees, the use of emblematic signs and figures, and of emblazoned standards, as distinctive badges, was not merely permitted, but was Divinely ordained. To many customs of the world around them the “elect people of God” were forbidden to conform. In the case in question it was otherwise.
In proof of this assertion, let me refer the reader to the Book of Numbers, chap. i., 2, 18, 52. There we read as follows: “Take ye the sum of all the congregations of the children of Israel, after their families, by the house of their father, with the number of their names.” “And they declared their pedigrees, after their families, by the house of their fathers, according to the number of the names.” “And the children of Israel shall pitch their tents, every man by his own camp, and every man by his own standard, throughout their hosts.” Again, in the same book, chap. ii., 2, 34, we read thus: “Every man of the children of Israel shall pitch by his own standard, with the ensign of their father’s house.” “And the children of Israel did according to all that the Lord commanded Moses; so they pitched by their standards, and so they set forward; everyone after their families, according to the house of their fathers.”
What some of these several standards represented, so as to distinguish one tribe from another, we have not far to seek, although we have no data whereby to determine the devices of the several families they each comprised. Jacob, the patriarch and father of these elect tribes, allocates to each its fitting symbol. To ascertain what these were I refer the reader to the blessing he gave them when his pilgrimage was rapidly drawing to its close. (See Gen. xlix. 10, 13, 14, 17, 19, 20, 21, 22, 27.) Some of the tribes had two emblems, as in the case of Judah—a lion and a sceptre (or kingly crown)—and Joseph—a bunch of grapes and a bow—these two sons of the patriarch inheriting respectively the birthright and the blessing. Other emblems of a representative character were attributed to these Hebrew tribes by Moses also, for which I refer the reader to Deut. xxxiii.
In my next chapter I propose to enter on what is designated the “grammar of heraldry,” and without further taxing the reader’s patience, I now take my leave.
(To be continued.)
