The New Murrey and Blue blog

The shield depicted, which belongs to the Heraldic Roll of Ludlow Castle (and which can be seen at the castle) is that of Roger Mortimer, first Earl of March and his wife Joan de Geneville.

This is what is called a heraldic impalement. The husband’s arms are to the left as you look at it (heraldic right or dexter) and the wife’s are to the right (heraldic left or sinister).

If the wife was an heiress, the arms would be quartered and passed on to the couple’s heirs. That is (usually) the shield was divided into four quarters, with the husband at NW and SE and the wife at NE and SW. In rare cases, where the wife’s inheritance was the more important of the two, the wife’s arms would be put in what was more usually the husband’s position. (Examples, France and England; de Clare and Despenser.)

A marital impalement did not pass to heirs but you sometimes see them installed on tombs, included in stained glass windows or pictured in heraldic or family rolls as a reminder of ancestry.

From the later middle ages (roughly the 15th century) you sometimes see shields with multiple quarterings, where a family had absorbed several inheritances. After that, heraldry becomes increasingly complex and harder to understand. This may be because its original purpose – identification in battle – was growing less important, and heraldry was becoming more about displaying status and making an impressive seal matrix or a display of stained glass in your manor or chantry chapel. In such cases, the more quarterings the better.

A ‘crest’ was not the shield, but the thing on top – in this case, a crown, or perhaps more correctly a coronet. (Earls were not strictly entitled to wear a coronet in the 14th century, but by the time this Roll was produced in the 16th century, they were.)