A Complete Guide to Heraldry Part 7

whilst MS. Cott. Calig. A. xviii. quotes the arms: "_De or, a un lion rampaund de pourpre_." The Burton coat of the well-known Shrops.h.i.+re family of Lingen-Burton is: Quarterly purpure and azure, a cross engrailed or between four roses argent. The Irish baronets of the name of Burton, who claimed descent from this family, bore a very similar coat, namely: Per pale azure and purpure, a cross engrailed or between four roses argent.

Two other colours will be found in nearly all text-books of English armory.

These are murrey or sanguine, and orange or tenne. The exact tint of murrey is between gules and purpure; and tenne is an orange-tawny colour. They are both "stains," and were perhaps invented by the old heralds for the perpetration of their preposterous system of abatements, which will be found set out in full in the old heraldry books, but which have yet to be found occurring in fact. The subject of abatements is one of those pleasant little insanities which have done so much to the detriment of heraldry.

One, and one only, can be said {73} to have had the slightest foundation in fact; that was the entire reversal of the escutcheon in the ceremony of degradation following upon attainder for high treason. Even this, however, was but temporary, for a man forfeited his arms entirely by attainder. They were torn down from his banner of knighthood; they were erased in the records of the College of Arms; but on that one single occasion when he was drawn upon a hurdle to the place of his execution, they are said to have been painted reversed upon paper, which paper was fastened to his breast.

But the arms then came to an end, and his descendants possessed none at all. They certainly had not the right to depict their s.h.i.+eld upside down (even if they had cared to display such a monstrosity). Unless and until the attainder was reversed, arms (like a t.i.tle) were void; and the proof of this is to be found in the many regrants of arms made in cases where the attainder has remained, as in the instances of the Earl of Stafford and the ancestor of the present Lord Barnard. But that any person should have been supposed to have been willing to make use of arms carrying an abatement is preposterous, and no instance of such usage is known. Rather would a man decline to bear arms at all; and that any one should have imagined the existence of a person willing to advertise himself as a drunkard or an adulterer, with variations in the latter case according to the personality of his partner in guilt, is idiotic in the extreme. Consequently, as no example of an abatement has ever been found, one might almost discard the "stains" of murrey and tenne were it not that they were largely made use of for the purposes of liveries, in which usage they had no such objectionable meaning. At the present day scarlet or gules being appropriated to the Royal Family for livery purposes, other people possessing a s.h.i.+eld of gules are required to make use of a different red, and though it is now termed chocolate or claret colour by the utilitarian language of the day, it is in reality nothing more than the old sanguine or murrey. Of orange-tawny I can learn of but one livery at the present day. I refer to the orange-tawny coats used by the hunt servants of Lord Fitzhardinge, and now worn by the hunt servants of the Old Berkeley country, near London. _A propos_ of this it is interesting to note the curious legend that the "pink" of the hunting field is not due to any reasons of optical advantage, but to an entirely different reason. Formerly no man might hunt even on his own estate until he had had licence of free warren from the Crown. Consequently he merely hunted by the pleasure of the Crown, taking part in what was exclusively a Royal sport by Royal permission, and for this Royal sport he wore the King's livery of scarlet. This being the case, it is a curious anomaly that although the livery of the only Royal pack recently in existence, the Royal Buck Hounds, was scarlet and gold, the Master {74} wore a green coat. The legend may be a fallacy, inasmuch as scarlet did not become the Royal livery until the accession of the Stuarts; but it is by no means clear to what date the scarlet hunting coat can be traced.

There is, however, one undoubted instance of the use of sanguine for the field of a coat of arms, namely, the arms of Clayhills of Invergowrie,[6]

which are properly matriculated in Lyon Register.

To these colours German heraldry has added brown, blood-red (this apparently is different from the English sanguine, as a different hatching has been invented for it), earth-colour, iron-grey, water-colour, flesh-colour, ashen-grey, orange (here also a separate hatching from the one to represent tenne has been invented), and the colour of nature, _i.e._ "proper." These doubtless are not intended to be added to the list of heraldic tinctures, but are noted because various hatchings have been invented in modern times to represent them.

Mr. Woodward, in Woodward and Burnett's "Treatise on Heraldry," alludes to various tinctures amongst Continental arms which he has come across.

"Besides the metals, tinctures, and furs which have been already described, other tinctures are occasionally found in the Heraldry of Continental nations; but are comparatively of such rarity as that they may be counted among the curiosities of blazon, which would require a separate volume.

That of which I have collected instances is Cendree, or ash colour, which is borne by (among others) the Bavarian family of Ashua, as its _armes parlantes: Cendree, a mount of three coupeaux in base or_.

"_Brunatre_, a brown colour, is even more rare as a tincture of the field; the MIEROSZEWSKY in Silesia bear, '_de Brunatre, A cross patee argent supporting a raven rising sable, and holding in its beak a horseshoe proper, its points towards the chief_."

"_Bleu-celeste_, or _bleu du ciel_, appears occasionally, apart from what we may term 'landscape coats.' That it differs from, and is a much lighter colour than, azure is shown by the following example. The Florentine CINTI (now CINI) bear a coat which would be numbered among the _armes fausses, or a enquerir: Per pale azure and bleu-celeste, an estoile counterchanged_."

"_Amaranth_ or _columbine_ is the field of a coat (of which the blazon is too lengthy for insertion in this place) which was granted to a Bohemian knight in 1701."

Carnation is the French term for the colour of naked flesh, and is often employed in the blazonry of that country. {75}

Perhaps mention should here be made of the English term "proper." Anything, alive or otherwise, which is depicted in its natural colours is termed "proper," and it should be depicted in its really correct tones or tints, without any attempt to a.s.similate these with any heraldic tincture. It will not be found in the very ancient coats of arms, and its use is not to be encouraged. When a natural animal is found existing in various colours it is usual to so describe it, for the term "proper" alone would leave uncertainty. For instance, the crest of the Lane family, which was granted to commemorate the ride of King Charles II. behind Mistress Jane Lane as her servant, in his perilous escape to the coast after the disastrous Battle of Worcester, is blazoned "a strawberry roan horse, couped at the flanks proper, bridled sable, and holding between the feet an Imperial crown also proper." Lord Cowper's supporters were, on either side of the escutcheon, "a light dun horse proper, with a large blaze down the face, the mane close shorn except a tuft on the withers, a black list down the back, a bob tail, and the near fore-foot and both hind feet white." Another instance that might be quoted are the supporters of Lord Newlands, which are: "On either side a dapple-grey horse proper, gorged with a riband and suspended therefrom an escutcheon gules, charged with three bezants in chevron." The crest of the family of Bewes, of St. Neots, Cornwall, is: "On a chapeau gules, turned up ermine, a pegasus rearing on his hind legs of a bay colour, the mane and tail sable, winged or, and holding in the mouth a sprig of laurel proper."

There are and were always many occasions in which it was desired to represent armorial bearings in black and white, or where from the nature of the handicraft it was impossible to make use of actual colour. But it should always be pointedly remembered that unless the right colours of the arms could be used the tinctures were entirely ignored in all matters of handicraft until the seventeenth century. Various schemes of hatchings, however, were adopted for the purpose of indicating the real heraldic colours when arms were represented and the real colours could not be employed, the earliest being that of Francquart in Belgium, _circa_ 1623.

Woodward says this was succeeded by the systems of Butkens, 1626; Petra Sancta, 1638; Lobkowitz, 1639; Gelenius; and De Rouck, 1645; but all these systems differed from each other, and were for a time the cause of confusion and not of order. Eventually, however, the system of Petra Sancta (the author of _Tesserae Gentilitia_) superseded all the others, and has remained in use up to the present time.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 35.]

Upon this point Herr Strohl in his _Heraldischer Atlas_ remarks: "The system of hatching used by Marcus Vulson de la Colombiere, 1639, in the course of time found acceptance everywhere, and has {76} maintained itself in use unaltered until the present day, and these are shown in Fig. 35, only that later, hatchings have been invented for brown, grey, &c.; which, however, seems rather a superfluous enriching." None of these later creations, by the way, have ever been used in this country. For the sake of completeness, however, let them be mentioned (see Fig. 36): _a_, brown; _b_, blood-red; _c_, earth-colour; _d_, iron-grey; _e_, water-colour; _f_, flesh-colour; _g_, ashen-grey; _h_, orange; and _i_, colour of nature. In English armory "tenne" is represented by a combination of horizontal (as azure) lines with diagonal lines from sinister to dexter (as purpure), and sanguine or murrey by a combination of diagonal lines from dexter to sinister (as vert), and from sinister to dexter (as purpure).

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 36.]

The hatchings of the s.h.i.+eld and its charges always accommodate themselves to the angle at which the s.h.i.+eld is placed, those of the crest to the angle of the helmet. A curious difficulty, however, occurs when a s.h.i.+eld, as is so often the case in this country, forms a part of the crest. Such a s.h.i.+eld is seldom depicted quite upright upon the wreath. Are the tincture lines to follow the angle of the smaller s.h.i.+eld in the crest or the angle of the helmet? Opinion is by no means agreed upon the point.

But though this system of representing colours by "hatching" has been adopted and extensively made use of, it is questionable whether {77} it has ever received official sanction, at any rate in Great Britain. It certainly has never been made use of in any _official_ record or doc.u.ment in the College of Arms. Most of the records are in colour. The remainder are all without exception "tricked," that is, drawn in outline, the colours being added in writing in the following contracted forms: "O," or "or," for or; "A," "ar," or "arg," for argent; "G," or "gu," for gules; "Az," or "B" (for blue, owing to the likelihood of confusion between "ar" and "az," "B" being almost universally used in old trickings), for azure; "S," or "sa," for sable; "Vt" for vert, and "Purp" for purpure. It is unlikely that any change will be made in the future, for the use of tincture lines is now very rapidly being discarded by all good heraldic artists in this country.

With the reversion to older and better forms and methods these hatchings become an anachronism, and save that sable is represented by solid black they will probably be unused and forgotten before very long.

The plain, simple names of colours, such as red and green, seemed so unpoetical and unostentatious to the heralds and poets of the Middle Ages, that they subst.i.tuted for gold, topaz; for silver, pearl or "meergries"; for red, ruby; for blue, sapphire; for green, emerald; and for black, diamond or "zobel" (sable, the animal, whence the word "sable"). Let the following blazonment from the grant of arms to Modling bei Wien in 1458 serve as example of the same: "Mit namen ain Schilt gleich getailt in fa.s.se, des ober und maister tail von Rubin auch mit ainer fa.s.se von Berlein, der under thail von grunt des Schilts von Schmaragaden, darinneain Pantel von Silber in Rampannt"--(_lit._ "Namely, a s.h.i.+eld equally divided in fess, the upper and greater part of ruby, also with a fess of pearl, the under part of the field of the s.h.i.+eld of emerald, therein a panther of silver, rampant"); that is, "Per fess gules and vert, in chief a fess argent, in base a panther rampant of the last."

Even the planets, and, as abbreviations, their astronomical signs, are occasionally employed: thus, the _sun_ for gold, the _moon_ for silver, _Mars_ for red, _Jupiter_ for blue, _Venus_ for green, _Saturn_ for black, and _Mercury_ for purple. This aberration of intellect on the part of mediaeval heraldic writers, for it really amounted to little more, had very little, if indeed it had any, English official recognition. No one dreams of using such blazon at the present time, and it might have been entirely disregarded were it not that Guillim sanctions its use; and he being the high priest of English armory to so many, his example has given the system a certain currency. I am not myself aware of any instance of the use of these terms in an English patent of arms.

The furs known to heraldry are now many, but originally they were only two, "ermine" and "vair." Ermine, as every one knows, is of {78} white covered with black spots, intended to represent the tails of the animal. From ermine has been evolved the following variations, viz. ermines, erminois, pean, and erminites. "Ermines" is a black field with white ermine spots (the French term for this is _contre-hermin_, the German, _gegen-hermelin_). A gold background with black ermine spots is styled erminois, and pean is a black ground with gold ermine spots. Planche mentions still another, as does Parker in his "Glossary of Heraldry,"

namely, "erminites," which is supposed to be white, with black ermine spots and a red hair on each side of the spot. I believe there is no instance known of any such fur in British armory. It is not mentioned in Strohl's "Heraldic Atlas," nor can I find any foreign instance, so that who invented it, or for what purpose it was invented, I cannot say; and I think it should be relegated, with abatements and the _seize quartiers_ of Jesus Christ, to the category of the silly inventions of former heraldic writers, not of former heralds, for I know of no official act which has recognised the existence of erminites. The German term for erminois is _gold-hermelin_, but there are no distinctive terms either in French or German heraldry for the other varieties. Thus, erminois would be in French blazon: d'or, seme d'hermines de sable; pean would be de sable, seme d'hermines d'or. Though ermine is always nowadays represented upon a white background, it was sometimes depicted with black ermine spots upon a field of silver, as in the case of some of the stall plates of the Knights of the Garter in St. George's Chapel at Windsor. Ermine spots are frequently to be found as charges. For instance, in the well-known coat of Kay, which is: "Argent, three ermine spots in bend between two bendlets sable, the whole between as many crescents azure." As charges two ermine spots figure upon the arms recently granted to Sir Francis Laking, Bart., G.C.V.O. The ermine spot has also sometimes been used in British armory as the difference mark granted under a Royal Licence to a.s.sume name and arms when it is necessary to indicate the absence of blood relations.h.i.+p. Other instances of the use of an ermine spot as a charge are:--

Or, on two bars azure, as many barrulets dancette argent, a chief indented of the second charged with an ermine spot or (Sawbridge).

Argent, a chevron between three crows sable, in each beak an ermine spot (Lloyd, Bishop of St. Asaph, 1680; Lichfield, 1692; and Worcester, 1700-17).

Argent, a fess gules between three ermine spots sable (Kilvington).

Argent, two bars sable, spotted ermine, in chief a lion pa.s.sant gules (Hill, co. Wexford).

The earliest form in which ermine was depicted shows a nearer approach to the reality of the black tail, inasmuch as the spots above the tail to which we are now accustomed are a modern variant. {79}

When a bend is ermine, the spots (like all other charges placed upon a bend) must be bendwise; but on a chevron, saltire, &c., they are drawn upright.

The other variety of fur is "vair." This originated from the fur of a kind of squirrel (the ver or vair, differently spelt; Latin _varus_), which was much used for the lining of cloaks. The animal was bluey-grey upon the back and white underneath, and the whole skin was used. It will be readily seen that by sewing a number of these skins together a result is obtained of a series of cup-shaped figures, alternating bluey-grey and white, and this is well shown in Fig. 28, which shows the effigy upon the tomb of Geoffrey Plantagenet, Count of Anjou, where the lining of vair to his cloak is plainly to be seen.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 37.--Arms of William de Ferrers, Earl of Derby (d.

1247): "Scutum variatum auro & gul." (From MS. Cott. Nero, D. 1.)]

The word seems to have been used independently of heraldry for fur, and the following curious error, which is pointed out in Parker's "Glossary of the Terms used in Heraldry," may be noted in pa.s.sing. The familiar fairy tale of Cinderella was brought to us from the French, and the slippers made of this costly fur, written, probably, _verre_ for _vaire_, were erroneously translated "gla.s.s" slippers. This was, of course, an impossible material, but the error has always been repeated in the nursery tale-books.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 38.--Arms of Robert de Ferrers, Earl of Derby (1254-1265). (From stained gla.s.s in Dorchester Church.)]

In the oldest records vair is represented by means of straight horizontal lines alternating with horizontal wavy or nebuly lines (see Fig. 37), but the cup-shaped divisions therefrom resulting having pa.s.sed through various intermediate forms (see Fig. 38), have now been stereotyped into a fixed geometrical pattern, formed of rows of ear-shaped s.h.i.+elds of alternate colours and alternately reversed, so depicted that each reversed s.h.i.+eld fits into the s.p.a.ce left by those on either side which are not reversed (see Fig. 39, _k_). The accompanying ill.u.s.tration will show plainly what is intended. In some of the older designs it was similar to that shown in the arms of the Earl Ferrers, Earl of Derby, 1254-65, the sketch (Fig. 38) being taken from almost contemporary stained gla.s.s in Dorchester Church, Oxon.; whilst sometimes the {80} division lines are drawn, after the same manner, as _nebuly_. There does not seem to have been any fixed proportion for the number of rows of vair, as Fig. 40 shows the arms of the same Earl as represented upon his seal. The palpable pun upon the name which a s.h.i.+eld vaire supplied no doubt affords the origin of the arms of Ferrers. Some families of the name at a later date adopted the horseshoes, which are to be found upon many Farrer and Ferrers s.h.i.+elds, the popular a.s.sumption being that they are a reference to the "farrier" from whom some would derive the surname. Woodward, however, states that a horseshoe being the badge of the Marshalls, horseshoes were a.s.sumed as _armes parlantes_ by their descendants the Ferrers, who appear to have borne: Sable, six horseshoes argent. As a matter of fact the only one of that family who bore the horseshoes seems to have been William de Ferrers, Earl of Derby (d. 1254), as will be seen from the arms as on his seal (Fig. 41). {81} His wife was Sybilla, daughter of William Marshall, Earl of Pembroke. His son reverted to the plain s.h.i.+eld of vaire, or, and gules. The arms of the Ferrers family at a later date are found to be: Gules, seven mascles conjoined or, in which form they are still borne by Ferrers of Baddesley Clinton; but whether the mascles are corruptions of the horseshoes, or whether (as seems infinitely more probable) they are merely a corrupted form of the vaire, or, and gules, it is difficult to say. Personally I rather doubt whether any Ferrers ever used the arms: Argent, six horseshoes sable.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 39.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 40.--Arms of Robert de Ferrers, Earl of Derby (1254-1265). (From his seal.)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 41.--Arms of William de Ferrers, Earl of Derby: Vaire, or, and gules, a bordure argent, charged with eight horseshoes sable. (From a drawing of his seal, MS. Cott. Julius, C vii.)]

PLATE II.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

The early manner of depicting vair is still occasionally met with in foreign heraldry, where it is blazoned as Vair onde or Vair ancien. The family of MARGENS in Spain bears: Vair onde, on a bend gules three griffins or; and TARRAGONE of Spain: Vair onde, or and gules. German heraldry seems to distinguish between _wolkenfeh_ (cloud vair) and _wogenfeh_ (wave vair; see Fig. 39, _n_). The former is equivalent to vair ancient, the latter to vair en point.

The verbal blazon of vair nearly always commences with the metal, but in the arrangement of the panes there is a difference between French and English usage. In the former the white panes are generally (and one thinks more correctly) represented as forming the first, or upper, line; in British heraldry the reverse is more usually the case. It is usual to depict the white panes of ordinary vair with white rather than silver, though the use of the latter cannot be said to be incorrect, there being precedents in favour of that form. When an ordinary is of vair or vairy, the rows of vair may be depicted either horizontally or following the direction of the ordinary. There are accepted precedents for both methods.

Vair is always blue and white, but the same subdivision of the field is frequently found in other colours; and when this is the case, it is termed vairy of such and such colours. When it is vairy, it is usually of a colour and metal, as in the case of Ferrers, Earls of Derby, above referred to; though a fur is sometimes found to take the place of one or other, as in the arms of Gresley, which are: "Vaire gules and ermine." I know of no instance where vaire is found of either two metals or of two colours, nor at the same time do I know of any rule against such a combination. Probably it will be time enough to discuss the contingency when an instance comes to light. Gerard Leigh mentions vair of three or more tinctures, but instances are very rare. Parker, in his "Glossary," refers to the coat of Roger Holthouse, which he blazons: "Vairy argent, azure, gules, and or, en point."

The _Vair_ of commerce was formerly of three sizes, and the distinction is continued in foreign armory. The middle or ordinary {82} size is known as _Vair_; a smaller size as _Menu-vair_ (whence our word "miniver"); the largest as _Beffroi_ or _Gros vair_, a term which is used in armory when there are less than four rows. The word _Beffroi_ is evidently derived from the bell-like shape of the _vair_, the word _Beffroi_ being anciently used in the sense of the alarm-bell of a town. In French armory, _Beffroi_ should consist of three horizontal rows; _Vair_, of four; _Menu-vair_, of six. This rule is not strictly observed, but in French blazon if the rows are more than four it is usual to specify the number; thus Varroux bears: _de Vair de cinq traits_. _Menu-vair_ is still the blazon of some families; BANVILLE DE TRUTEMNE bears: _de Menu-vair de six tires_; the Barons van HOUTHEM bore: _de Menu-vair, au franc quartier de gueules charge de trois maillets d'or_. In British armory the foregoing distinctions are unknown, and _Vair_ is only of one size, that being at the discretion of the artist.

When the Vair is so arranged that in two horizontal rows taken together, either the points or the bases of two panes of the same tincture are in apposition, the fur is known as COUNTER VAIR (CONTRE VAIR) (see Fig. 39, _l_). Another variation, but an infrequent one, is termed VAIR IN PALE, known in German heraldry as _Pfahlfeh_ (_Vair appointe_ or _Vair en pal_; but if of other colours than the usual ones, _Vaire en pal_). In this all panes of the same colour are arranged in vertical, or palar, rows (Fig. 39, _m_). German heraldry apparently distinguishes between this and _Sturzpfahlfeh_, or _reversed_ vair in pale. VAIR IN BEND (or in bend-sinister) is occasionally met with in foreign coats; thus MIGNIANELLI in Italy bears: _Vaire d'or et d'azur en bande_; while _Vaire en barre_ (that is, in bend-sinister) _d'or et de sable_ is the coat of PICHON of Geneva.

"Vair en pointe" is a term applied by Nisbet to an arrangement by which the azure s.h.i.+eld pointing downwards has beneath it an argent s.h.i.+eld pointing downwards, and _vice versa_, by which method the resulting effect is as shown in Fig. 39, _n_. The German term for this is _Wogenfeh_, or wave vair. Fig. 39, _o_, shows a purely German variety--_Wechselfeh_, or alternate vair; and Fig. 39, _p_, which is equivalent to the English vaire of four colours, is known in German armory as _Buntfeh, i.e._ gay-coloured or checked vair.

Ordinary vair in German heraldry is known as _Eisenhut-feh_, or iron hat vair. On account of its similarity, when drawn, to the old iron hat of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries (see Fig. 42), this skin has received the name of _Eisenhutlein_ (little iron hat) from German heraldic students, a name which later gave rise to many incorrect interpretations. An old charter in the archives of the chapter-house of Lilienfield, in Lower Austria, under the seal (Fig. 43) of one Chimrad Pellifex, 1329, proves that at that time vair was so styled. The name of Pellifex (in {83} German _Wildwerker_, a worker in skins, or furrier) is expressed in a punning or canting form on the dexter side of the s.h.i.+eld. This Conrad the Furrier was Burgomaster of Vienna 1340-43.

A considerable number of British and foreign families bear _Vair_ only; such are FERRERS and GRESLEY, above mentioned; VARANO, Dukes de CAMERINO; VAIRE and VAIRIeRE, in France; VERET, in Switzerland; GOUVIS, FRESNAY (Brittany); DE VERA in Spain; LOHEAC (Brittany); VARENCHON (Savoy); SOLDANIERI (Florence). _Counter vair_ is borne by LOFFREDO of Naples; by BOUCHAGE, DU PLESSIS ANGERS, and BROTIN, of France. h.e.l.lEMMES of Tournay uses: _de Contre vair, a lac otice de gueules brochante sur le tout_.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 42.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 43.--Seal of Chimrad Pellifex, 1329.]