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84 THE ANCESTOR multitude of such assumptions, treat them as iridiculous, but do not dare to condemn them as unlawful.^ Up to this point, I have been merely playing with the argu- ments of 'X,' but I will now bring down the fanciful edifice he has erected in ruins about his ears. I have shown that unbroken custom justified the assumption of arms without authority, but I have not dealt with law. How did the great lawyers of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries regard such assumptions, and more important still for our purpose, how did the earliest writers upon heraldry regard them ? These ques- tions, which go to the root of the whole matter, have never yet been put or answered. It is another instance of our English want of thoroughness that, though books by the dozen have been written about the history, the antiquities and the curiosi- ties of heraldry, no one has yet read the earliest authors who deal with that subject, or has even taken the trouble to find out who they are. I have therefore the greater pleasure in fur- nishing * X ' with some fresh information which has an important bearing upon the subject of his book. The lawyers and heralds of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries with one accord. Englishmen and foreigners alike, declare that every man is justified in devising a coat of arms for himself. The first writer upon heraldry, Bartolo di Sasso Ferrato, whose treatise 'On Ensigns and Arms' was composed in 1356,^ states that any one may assume arms, and may lawfully bear 1 Feschius ; Sicily Herald (B. M. Grenville, 746). 2 It was issued in the January following upon his death, which took place in 1356 or 1359. edition of Feschius. Bartholus de Sasso Ferrato acknowledges no obligation to any earlier author, and is himself the great authority of later writers, such as John of Guildford and Upton. His De Insigniis et Armh had a wide popularity in the fourteenth and fifteenth cen- turies, and in style and elegance was supposed to be not unworthy of Cicero. This may be gathered from the amusing but vituperative pamphlet issued in about 1 43 1 by the purist Laurence Valla, who, by the way, admits that both the matter and the title of the work he is criticising were new. Valla had been moved to wrath by the utterance of some indiscreet friend, who happened to observe that none of the works of M. Tullius could be compared with this little treatise of Bartholus, and he spent the whole night in composing a violent diatribe, in which he compares Bartholus and his contemporaries to asses and geese. None of his remarks however are quite so cruel as that of John of Guildford, who falls foul of the coat which Bartholus had received from the Emperor, on the ground that it broke the rules of art which the author himself had laid down, quia contra naturam est, ut unum animal haberet duas caudas.