the arms of his wife with his own, thus forming a single composition. The usual mode adopted of combining the arms of two families is by impalement; the husband's being placed on the dexter side of the shield, and the wife's on the sinister, as in the annexed example (Fig. 181), which would be blazoned, Arg.; a pale gu., for (the name of the husband); impaling, Gu.; a chevron arg.,[1] within a bordure or, for (the family name of the wife).
Fig. 181.
To this achievement the wife is equally entitled, even after she has become a widow; in which case, however, she would bear it on a lozenge, and without a crest.
These impaled arms are not hereditary; that is, the arms of the wife would not appear in the subsequent shields of her children.
Should the wife, or, in heraldic language, the femme, be an heiress or co-heiress, the husband, or baron, does not impale her arms with his own, but may, after her father's death, charge them on an inescutcheon, or shield of pretence, as exemplified by Fig. 175; intimating that he has a pretension to her estates. The issue of such marriage would be
- ↑ As these are the arms of two separate families, the blazon must he kept totally distinct. It would be impossible to blazon the wife's arms as 'of the last, a chevron of the first;' for each is complete without the other. Observe that the bordure does not surround the entire shield when impaled with another coat. Had the shield been quaterly quatered, as at Fig. 175, the bordure would have been entire. Thus, the tressure surrounding the arms of Scotland is represented complete when quartered with the royal arms of England.
