69 LADY OF QUALITY MOW TO READ A COAT-OF-ARMS By The LADY HELEN FORBES The Meaning of Hcraldry- -Badges — Crests and Mottoes- Woman's Arms -The Arms of an Heiress— A Married LJeraldry — or its sister study, genealogy —
- ^ has been called " the science of fools
with long memories." Being myself one of these "fools with long memories," it appears to me that it must have been a singularly superficial person who invented this definition, one who was not aware how closely heraldry is entwined with history, or perhaps even one who did not care for history itself, failing to realise its value as a guide to future events. It takes a wise man to find out that there is nothing new under the sun, and that what has been will be. Meanwhile, "the proper study of mankind is man," and that being the case, nothing which has any bearing on the subject can be wholly beneath notice. A knowledge of heraldry is imperative in one who would study family history, and family history ends in being the history of the world. When once one realises the family relationships between the actors in the world's drama, acts otherwise unintelli- are furnished with obvious motives. The key to the Middle Ages is lost without family history, as the key to the Egyptian dynasties was lost without the Rosetta stone. WHAT A COAT-OF-ARMS TELLS gible H Husband of an heiress -r-, , , . ,• ^^ Heraldry is essentially not a science which can interest the many. So few recognise its significance. To an ordinary person a coat-of-arms means nothing. To a herald it tells the whole story of the life of a man. In days when few knew how to read, all could under- stand a coat-of-arms, and read off glibly the information it afforded. Time has passed, and now everyone reads, and looks down, no doubt, on those ancestors of theirs who could merely blazon. If they could come to life again, those poor fore- bears, whom their descendants consider so benighted, it is not im- possible that they might in their turn be amazed at present-day ignorance. Who knows ? The science of heraldry, as we know it, is not very ancient. A badge is one of the earliest things in history. It meant individu- ality, and in the first emergence from barbarism individuality was the first thing nian claimed. Badges generally ended by being appropriated by a whole tribe or nation, but they began as the ensign of one man, usually a leader. As the old Roman systems were wiped out by the barbarians, and as the nations grew farther and farther away from primeval savagery, it became necessary for them to have means of identification of their own. So grew up by slow degrees the science of heraldry. EARLY HERALDRY But men only began to adopt the full coat-of-arms, as it stands to this day, about the twelfth century. Of course the science did not spring into being full-grown in a night, and it was older and farther advanced in France and Italy than in England. But even abroad very early heraldry was extremely elementary. William the Conqueror and his train had no real coat-of- arms ; they were only supposed Full coat.of-arms to bear them by mediaeval heralds, those strange persons who even made knights in armour out of King Arthur and his primitive chieftains. Doubtless, Norman William and his followers had some cognisances, but not the full insignia. The simpler a coat-of- arms, the older it is. This is tolerably obvious, for the first people to assume arms naturally took all the plainest charges first — a single beast, a simple "ordinary," as the lines and squares on a shield are called. Later, as more coats-of-anns were granted, they were forced to become more complicated, till at a late date they appear perfect marvels of ingenuity. It may be as well to explain clearly what a coat-of-arms is, for the benefit of those who are in the habit of calling all heraldic objects indiscriminately " crests." A coat-of-arms consists of a shield, the crest, the motto, the supporters (if any), and sometimes the mantling, or decorations in- tended to represent a mantle, with. which the whole is surrounded in the more elaborate heraldic drawings. The shield, as is obvious, was that weapon of defence which the knight carried on his arm. The crest was worn upon his helmet. Women are not entitled to the use of a shield or a crest, because they are not supposed to have worn armour. They frequently did so in mediaeval emergencies, as witness Joan of Arc and Black Agnes of Dunbar, but armour was no more a womanly appurtenance in Son of an heiress Married woman's arms
