Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 11.djvu/718

684 HERALDRY [HISTORICAL plain shield on his seal. His monumental effigy (1128) bears a large pavesse shield, and upon it an escarbuncle, apparently a highly ornamented clamp. The seal of Henry II. also shows the hollow of the shield. The first great seal of Richard I. bears a lion rampant, who from his position may be inferred to be fighting with a similar lion upon the sinister and concealed half of the shield, blazoned in a MS. cited by Mr Way as " two lions confronted." Up to this time the kings, though represented on horse back and in full armour, have the face uncovered, and therefore their persons would be known. The seal of Richard I. in 1189 shows a close helmet, and upon the shield two lions passant gardant in pale, " leones loparde s," as they were then or soon after called. On a later seal, after his return from captivity in 1194, Richard added a third lion. John, while earl of Mortaine, sealed with two lions, but his seal as king bears three, and the coat has so remained. That the two lions were more than a mere ornament is evident from their having been adopted by John s natural son, Richard de Warren, who seals with two lions passant regardant. The seals of the great barons show the growth of the practice. Richard, constable of Chester, contemporary with Stephen, bears a shield covered over with small plates, tegulated, like his armour; but Stephen, earl of Richmond, as early as 1137, seals with seven fleurs-de-lys, a very early heraldic seal. Waleran, earl of Meulan (died 1 1 66), also used an heraldic seal. Duchesne gives a seal of Bouchard de Montmorenci (1182), a con temporary of Louis le Jeune, with a cross between four alerions on his shield, and another in whch the cross is charged with roundels. Mathieu, his son, seals also with the cross and alerions, which had evidently become, as they remained, hereditary. In England, William, earl of Essex (died 1190), seals with the escarbuncle of his family. In 1187 Gervase Paganel, a great Anglo-Norman baron, seals with two lions passant, which his family continued to bear. With the 13th century arms came rapidly into use. The second seal of Mathieu de Montmorenci in 1209 has them introduced upon his horse furniture, but this practice does not appear upon the seals of the kings of England until the second saal of Edward I. Baldwin de Bethune, earl of Albernarle (died 1214), sealed with three martlets in chief, and many other early examples of regular heraldic seals occur at this period attached to extant charters. The earliest roll of arms is of the reign of Henry III.; of a second of the same reign a copy is preserved in the Harleian collection ; and a third, in the next reign, is the roll of Caerlavrock, 1 300 A.D. So that for the reign of Henry and his son the evidence for armorial bearings is copious and ex cellent. Other rolls exist carrying the practice through the 14th and 15th centuries, before the middle of which there is no known work on heraldry, nor any trace of heraldic regu lations save what may be deduced from recorded practice. Coats of arms were not at first strictly hereditary, nor even always permanent in the same person. Thus William de Ferrars, 6th earl of Derby (died 1246), seems to have borne "ardent, 6 fers de cheval, or horse shoes, 3, 2, 1, sable." William, his son, in consequence of a match with Peveril, who bore " vair," changed his bearing to " vair, or and gules, on a border azure 8 horse shoes argent." Robert his son, 8th earl (died 1278), dropped the horse shoes, and bore " vair, or and gules." " Ferrars his tabard with rich vair yspreaJ." After the match with Quincy, the Ferrarses laid aside their own coat and bore that of Quincy, " gules, 7 mascles conjoined 3, 3, 1, or." Their male heir through a younger branch, Ferrers of Baddesley-Clinton, commemorates these various changes by bearing "quarterly, (1st) vair, or and gules j (2d) sable, 6 horse shoes, 3, 2, 1, argent; (3d) gules, 7 mascles, 3, 3, 1, or, a canton ermine." Hugh Lupus, earl of Chester (died 1101), is fabled to have borne a wolf s head, and not improbably his surname arose from some such emblem. Richard, his son, is said to have borne "azure, seme"e of crosslets or, a wolf s head erased argent," Ranulph Meschines, 3d earl (died 1128), was sister s son to the first earl, and to him is assigned " or, a lion rampant gules." Hugh Cyfelioc, 5th earl (died 1180), certainly bore "azure 6 garbs of wheat, 3, 2, 1, or;" and Ranulph Blondevile ; his son, bore "azure, 3 garbs or." With him the line failed, but as the wheat-sheaf is a common Cheshire bearing, it is probable that arms came into general use in the palatinate, in the time of the last two earls. Sir Nicholas Carru (died 1283) seals with a incorporate lion, but at Caerlavrock in 1300 is found with a " Banieve et jaune Lien passable, trois passans lyons de sable," the arms of the Carews of our day. The fess and label of Saher de Quincy, earl of Winchester, in 1170, were changed by Roger his son for the mascles by which they were best known, and which he repeats upon his housings. The fact is that, at the close of the 13th century, arms, though on the whole hereditary, had not quite acquired that fixed character that belonged to them half a century later. That the changes were the exception rather than the rule is, however, clear from the roll of Henry III., and from the arms of the forty great barons which he caused to be painted on the walls of Westminster Abbey, almost all of which, so far as they are on record, are the same with those borne or quartered by their representatives. There exist also in England a few families of Norman origin, the period of whose arrival in England is known, and whose arms are the same with those of the present stock in the parent country. Such are Harcourt of Ankerwyke and D Aubigny, who therefore bore their arms before the separation from Normandy under Henry III. Early bearings were usually very simple, the colours in strong contrast, and their form and outline such as could readily be distinguished even in the dust and confusion of a battle. They are mostly composed of right lined figures known in heraldry as ordinaries. The favourite beast is the lion. The earliest and most valuable records relating to English armorial bearings are undoubtedly the rolls of arms of the reigns of Henry III. and the first three Edwards, which have been well edited by Sir II. Nicolas. That of Henry III. known as Glover s roll, drawn up between 1243 and 1246, describes or blazons 218 coats of arms, and therefore shows very sufficiently the heraldry of the period. Of these coats nearly one-half are composed solely of the ordinaries and subordinates, and other simple lines and figures. About two score of them exhibit lions, chiefly rampant, and leo-parde s, a form of the sime animal. The only other beast is the "teste de sanglier " borne by Swinburne. Of birds there are but the eagle and the papagny, several martlets, and single examples of the raven, the cock, the heron, and the horiole. The luce or pike is the only fish. The cinquefoil and sexfoil, the fleur-de-lys, the rose, and the wheat-sheaf, used very sparingly, represent the vegetable world. For the rest there are annulets, barnacles, crescents, estoiles, escallops, fers de cheval, mullets, and water budgets. There is one ray of the sun, and one whirlpool. The coat of Mortimer " barre, a chef palee,a corner geren- ne e d or et d azur, a ung escucheon d argent, "or, in modern terms, "barry, a chief paly, its corners gyronny or and azure, an escutcheon argent" (fig. 63), is the only one at all of a complex character, and this is composed of ordin aries and subordinaries ; and though many of the ordinaries bear the smaller charges, or are placed between them,

there are very few examples of an ordinary so charged also