(3) Four wives.—Husband's in centre, first and second wives' in chief and base respectively on the dexter side, and third and fourth similarly on the sinister.
If one of two wives be an heiress her arms might be found in pretence and the other coat or coats impaled, but it is impossible in such a case to place a number to the wife, and it is impossible to display an escutcheon of pretence for more than one wife, as if the escutcheon of pretence is removed from the exact centre it at once ceases to be an escutcheon of pretence. Consequently, if more than one wife be an heiress, separate escutcheons should be used for each marriage. Plans have been drawn up and apparently accepted providing for wives up to nearly twenty in number, but no useful purpose will be served by repeating them. A man with more than four wives is unusual in this country.
Divorce nullifies marriage, and both husband and wife must at once revert to bachelor and maiden achievements respectively.
It is difficult to deduce any certain conclusions as to the ancient rules connected with impalement, for a simple reason which becomes very noticeable on an examination of ancient seals and other armorial records. In early times there can be no doubt whatever that men did not impale, or bother about the arms of wives who were not great heiresses. A man bore his own arms, and he left his father-in-law, or his brother-in-law, to bear those of the family with which he had matched. Of course, we find many cases in which the arms of a wife figure upon the husband's shield, but a careful examination of them shows that in practically every case the reason is to be found in the fact that the wife was an heiress. Husbands were called to Parliament in virtue of the peerages vested in their wives, and we cannot but come to the conclusion that whenever one finds use in early times of the arms of a wife, it is due to the fact that the husband was bearing them not because of his mere marriage, but because he was enjoying the estates, or peerage, of his wife.
For that reason we find in many cases the arms of the wife borne in preference to the paternal arms of descent, or meet with them quartered with the arms of the husband, and frequently being given precedence over his own; and on the analogy of the coats of arms of wives at present borne with the wife's surname by the husband under Royal Licence, there can be little doubt that at a period when Royal Licences had not come into regular vogue the same idea was dominant, and the appearance of a wife's coat of arms meant the assumption of those arms by the husband as his own, with or without the surname of the wife.
The connection between name and arms was not then so stereotyped as it is at present; rather was it a connection between arms and
