the head of a house from which he has inherited no lands, and which is still thriving in the senior male line. In Scottish practice such an event would be ignored, and in that country it is not usual to add quarterings to a shield, nor are these officially recognised without a rematriculation of the arms. In England it is merely a question of recording the pedigree and proving heirship, and many quarterings are proved and recorded that there is not the slightest intention to use regularly. Rematriculation has a more permanent character than mere registration, inasmuch as the coat with its quarterings upon matriculation as far as usage is concerned becomes indivisible, and, consequently, for a Scottish wife the impalement should be of the indivisible arms and quarterings matriculated to her father in Lyon Register, with his bordure and other "difference" marks.
All the old armorists provide ways of impaling the arms of several wives, and consequently the idea has grown up that it is permissible and correct to bear and use the arms of two wives at the same time. This is a mistake, because, strictly and technically speaking, the right to impale the arms of a wife ceases at her death. Impalement means marriage, and when the marriage is dissolved the impalement becomes meaningless, and should be discontinued. A man cannot be married to two people at one time, nor can he as a consequence impale two coats of arms at the same time.
The matter is more clearly apparent if the question of an escutcheon of pretence be considered in place of an impalement. The escutcheon of pretence means that the husband pretends to represent the family of his wife. This jure uxoris he undoubtedly does whilst she is alive, but the moment she dies the actual representation of her family passes to her son and heir, and it is ridiculous for her husband to pretend to represent when there is an undoubted representative in existence, and when the representation, such as it was when vested in himself, has come to an end, and passed elsewhere. If his heiress-wife had been a peeress, he would have borne her escutcheon of pretence surmounted by her coronet; but it is ridiculous for him to continue to do so when the right to the coronet and to the peerage has passed to his wife's heir. The same argument holds good with regard to impalement. That, of course, raises the point that in every authority (particularly in those of an earlier period) will be found details of the methods to be adopted for impaling the arms of several wives. People have quite failed to appreciate the object of these rules. Armory from its earliest introduction has had great memorial use, and when a monument or hatchment is put up to a man it has been usual, prior to these utilitarian days of funeral reform, to memorialise all the wives he has been possessed of. In the same way, in a pedigree it is necessary to
