use, and practically its status is no more than a piece of supposedly artistic ornament.
Concerning the law for unmarried ladies, therefore, there is neither doubt nor dispute. A widow bears arms upon a lozenge, this showing the arms of her late husband impaled with those of her own family (Fig. 750), or with these latter displayed on an escutcheon of pretence if she be an heir or coheir (Fig. 751).
The other state in the progress of life in which a lady may hope or expect to find herself is that of married life. Now, how should a married lady display arms? Echo and the text-books alike answer, "How?" Does anybody know? This "fault," for such it undoubtedly is, is due to the fact that the laws of arms evolved themselves in that period when a married woman was little accounted of. As an unmarried heiress she undoubtedly was a somebody; as a widowed and richly-jointured dowager she was likewise of account, but as a wedded wife her identity was lost, for the Married Women's Property Act was not in existence, nor was it thought of. So completely was it recognised that all rights and inheritance of the wife devolved of right upon the husband, that formerly the husband enjoyed any peerage honours which had descended to the wife, and was summoned to Parliament as a peer in his wife's peerage. Small wonder, then, that the same ideas dominated the rules of armory. These only provide ways and methods for the husband to bear the wife's arms. This is curious, because there can be no doubt that at a still earlier period the practice of impalement was entirely confined to women, and that, unless the wife happened to be an heiress, the husband did not trouble to impale her arms. But a little thought will show that the two are not at variance, for if monuments and other matters of record are ignored, the earliest examples of impalement which have come down to us are all, almost without exception, examples of arms borne by widows. One cannot get over the fact that a wife during coverture had practically no legal status at all. The rules governing impalement, and the conjunction of the arms of man and wife, as they are to be borne by the husband, are recited in the chapter upon Marshalling, which also details the ways in which a widow bears arms in the different ranks of life. Nothing would be gained by repeating them here.
It may be noted, however, that it is not considered correct for a widow to make use of the true lover's knot of blue ribbon, which is sometimes used in the case of an unmarried lady. A divorce puts matters in statu quo ante.
There still remains, however, the question of the bearing of arms in her own right by a married woman under coverture at the present day.
