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The Laws & Language of Heraldry

Over the centuries, elaborate rules have evolved, which govern both the composition of the individual coat of arms, the ways in which coats of arms should be displayed & how they should be combined together (or marshaled). A basic grounding of the rules, particularly concerning marshalling, is obviously useful to the genealogist in interpreting the evidence. (It is worth bearing in mind, however, that some of the rules seem to have remained fairly fluid or at least, often to have been broken until quite late in the medieval period.)

As must already be obvious, as well as rules governing the appearance of arms, heraldry have a specialized language to describe the colors (or rather, tinctures), patterns, geometrical designs & objects depicted on the shield & a precise grammar to allow a coat of arms to be unambiguously described in words. The description of arms in this way is called blazonry in heraldic jargon. Again, some knowledge of blazonry is necessary to use the reference books & to interpret the evidence. Although the terminology can appear off-putting at first, the system is (fairly) logical & not too hard to pick up.
Sources for Medieval Heraldry

The main contemporary source for medieval heraldry is the rolls of arms. These were practical documents, which often recorded the knights present at a particular battle or tournament. Medieval English coats of arms have been catalogue by Wagner; many have been printed & Foster’s some Feudal Coats of Arms is a useful armorial compiled from several rolls.

Heraldic seals provide another contemporary source of information. It was common for arms to be displayed on seals from about the beginning of the 13th century. Generally, each member of the family would have his or her own sea, & the coat of arms would be encircled by an inscription giving the owner’s name. So the impression of a seal attached to a charter has the advantage that, in principle, it is associated with an identifiable person at a particular time. Original seals attached to documents have suffered badly, as a result of both accidental damage & deliberate theft. Fortunately, antiquaries enjoyed drawing seals as well stealing them, so that there is often a record of what has been lost.

As might be expected, the families entitled to bear arms were fond of displaying them in their own houses, whether carved, painted or in stained glass. Arms in private dwelling have occasionally survived, & have more often been recorded by antiquaries & heralds. They were also displayed in churched & religious houses, presumably to mark a benefaction by the family concerned. Here they might be in stained on the ceiling, carved in wood, displayed on floor tiles or depicted in stained glass windows, perhaps with a portrait of the benefactor. Again, though they are frequently recorded in antiquaries “church notes” & are still occasionally to be found, most of these arms have not survived the destruction of the protestant reformation, & the continuous process of rearrangement & redecoration of churches since then.

Arms were also used liberally to decorate funeral monuments, & have generally survived better there than elsewhere. Potentially these can be very informative, as they can be very informative, as they can include not only impaled & quartered arms, but also maternal arms (even if the mother was not an heir). Sadly, funeral monuments were not always treated with the respect that might be expected. Medieval brasses are as often as not incomplete in some respect, whether they have stolen, worn smooth, damaged or sold by the church for scrap metal. Shields, as small, easily removed, decorative items, have often scrap metal. Shields, as small, easily removed, decorative items, have often vanished leaving only their impression behind &, frustratingly, accounts of lost monuments may faithfully recorded the inscription but omit the heraldic evidence.

Finally, as might be expected, heraldry was recorded very fully at the heralds’ visitations. These would typically include drawings of the family arms, with tinctures indicated (known as a trick of the arms).  Quartered arms would be shown, often identified by surname, & the accompanying pedigree would in part be designed to show how the family acquired the evidence they worked with, in the form of drawings of seals, or heraldry from churches. In parallel with the visitation pedigrees themselves, there was a vogue in the late 16th & the 17th century for elaborate pedigrees in which each marriage would be illustrated by an impaled shield of arms.

The focus of modern heraldry is the armorial achievement or the coat of arms, the central element of which is the escutcheon. In general, the shape of the shield employment in a coat of arms is irrelevant, because the fashion for the shield-shapes employed in heraldic art has evolved through the centuries; of course there are occasions when a blazon specifies a particular shape of shield. These specifications mostly occur in non-European contexts, such as the coat of arms of Nunavut & the former Republic of Bophuthatswana, with North Dakota providing an even more unusual example, while the State of Connecticut specifies a “rococo” shield. Mostly in non-European context, but not completely, as the Scottish Public Register records an escutcheon of oval from for the Lancashire Master Plumbers’ & Domestic Engineers’ (Employers’) Association & a shield of square from for the Angle Leasing organization.

 Tinctures are the colors used in heraldry, through a number of patterns called “furs” & the depiction of charges in their natural colors or “proper” are also regarded as tinctures, the latter distinct from any color such a depiction might approximate. Since heraldry is essentially system identification, the most important convention of heraldry is the rule of tincture. To provide for contrast & visibility, metals (generally lighter tinctures) must be placed on metals & colors (generally darker tinctures) must never be placed on colors. Where a charge overlays a partition of the field, the rule does not apply. There are other exceptions the most famous being the gold crosses on white chosen as the arms of Godfrey of Bouillon when he was made king of Jerusalem.

 The names used in English blazon for the colors & metals come mainly from French & include Or (gold), Argent (white), Azure (blue), Gules (red), Sable (black), Vert (green) & Purpure (purple). A number of other colors are occasionally found, typically for special purposes.

Certain patterns called “furs” can appear in a coat of arms, though they are (rather arbitrarily) defined as tinctures, not patterns. The two common furs are Ermine & Vair.

Ermine represents the winter coat of the stoat, which is white with a black tail. Vair represents a kind of squirrel with a blue-gray back & white belly. Sewn together, it forms a pattern of alternating blue & white shapes.

 Heraldic charges can be displayed in their natural colors. Many natural items such as plants & animals are described as proper in this case. Proper charges are very decent sot bad practice.

 The field of a shield in heraldry can be divided into more than one tincture, as can the various heraldic charges. Many coats of arms consist simply of a division of the field into two contracting tinctures. Since these are considered as divisions of shield, the rule of tincture can be ignored. For example, a shield divided azure & gules would be perfectly acceptable. A line of partition may be straight or it may be varied. The variations of partition lines can be wavy, indented, embattled, engrailed, nebuly or made into myrial other forms.

 In the early days of heraldry, very simple bold rectilinear shapes were painted on shields. These could be easily recognized at a long distance & could be easily remembered. They therefore served the main purpose of heraldry identification. As more complicated shields came into use, these bold shapes were set apart in a separate class as the “honorable ordinaries”. They act as charges & are always written first in blazon. Unless otherwise specified they extend to the edges of the field. Though ordinaries are not easily defined, they are generally described as including the cross, the fess, the pale, the bend, the chevron, the saltire & the pall.

 There is a separate class of charges called sub-ordinaries which are of a geometrical shape subordinate to the ordinary. According to Friar, they are distinguished by their order in blazon. The sub-ordinaries include the inescutcheon, the orle, the tressure, the double tressure, the bordure, the chief, the canton, the label & flaunches.

 Ordinaries may appear in parallel series, in which case blazon in English give them different names such as pallets, bars, bendlets & chevronels. French blazon makes no such distinction between these diminutives & the ordinaries when borne singly. Unless otherwise specified an ordinary is drawn with straight lines, but each may be indented, embattled, wavy, engrailed or otherwise have their lines varied.

 Also we have to consider about charges. A charge is any object or figure placed on a heraldic shield or on any other object of as armorial composition. Any object found in nature or technology may appear as a heraldic charge in armory. Charges can be animals, objects or geometric shapes. Apart from the ordinaries, the most frequent charges are the cross with its hundreds of variations & the lion & eagle. Other common animals are stages, boars, martlets & fish. Dragons, unicorns, griffins & more exotic monsters appear as charges & as supporters.

 Animals are found in various stereotyped positions or attitudes. Quadrupeds can often be found rampant standing on the left hind foot. Another frequent position is passant or walking, like the lions of the coat of arms of England. Eagles are almost always shown with their wings spread or displayed.

 In English heraldry the crescent, mullet, martlet, annulet, fleur-de-lis & rose may be added to a shield to distinguish cadet branches of a family from the senior line. These cadency marks are usually shown smaller than normal charges, but it still does not follow that a shield containing such a charge belongs to a cadet branch. All of these charges occur frequently in basic indifference coats of arms.