The New Murrey and Blue blog

With thanks to Kim Harding

It is very easy to take the first steps on a ‘Beginner’s Guide to Heraldry’, when you are hugely aided by the heraldry guide provided online by the Mortimer History Society. Easily-accessed guides and quizzes at every stage help the newbie learn all about shields and arms and how to interpret or ‘blazon’ their meaning.

Coats of arms began with literal surcoats worn over armour facilitating the identification of the knight wearing it, and by extension, a herald wearing his master’s surcoat was given authority to act as spokesperson for the knight. With little regulation of heraldry until Henry V created the ‘Garter Principal King of Arms’ in 1417, thereafter, heraldry became more formalised and controlled, with Richard III founding the College of Arms in 1484.
The basic blazoning of a coat of arms on a shield will detail positioning, its colour (tincture) or fur (ermine or vair – squirrel fur).

On the main field of the shield are placed shapes or elements  called ‘charges’ or ‘ordinaries’ – these could be batons, bends, chevrons, crosses, lozenges, borders and wavy/jagged/crenellated lines, with many variations in style, all with their own names, add to the myriad ways a shield can be blazoned. As well as other animals, lions feature prominently in royal heraldry in a variety of positions, usually ‘rampant’ or ‘passant’ but in medieval times, any great heraldic cat *not rampant* was regarded as not behaving like a lion, so animals in positions akin to lying/crouching are termed ‘leopards’. Hence, the three lions of England are more historically termed the three leopards of England.
You may be entitled to arms if your direct ancestor bore them or you might have to apply for new arms; and although there might already be a coat of arms with your surname (or several), it doesn’t mean any random person of that surname is entitled to use them!

Where variations occurred, this might be down to family members becoming independent or moving away, or simply down to a scribe’s error or poor memory. You also might abandon your own arms and adopt your wife’s paternal arms (along with her surname) if you married an heiress. Arms might also change with “augmentations” added and granted by the monarch to recognise feats of service: the arms of Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey, changed after Flodden Field to include a small lion of Scotland with an arrow through its gullet!

Often, surnames are represented with visual puns – ‘canting’ – eg. bulls for the Boleyns, cartwheels for Wheeler.

As coats-of-arms were importantly used to identify barons, knights and the nobility, similar arms were adopted by lesser lords to show their affiliation or affinity – that they were all “on the same team”. Of course, only the head of the family was entitled to use the arms, but if you were a brother, uncle or son, you could alter the arms in a way which indicated your relationship – “differenced arms”. The oldest son would add a ‘label’ (a horizontal bar with three short verticals) at the top of the shield to indicate his status. A second son would add a crescent instead, the third son a star, etc. But what about husbands and wives? Including two or more coats of arms on a shield is called ‘marshalling’: this could be in halves, quarters, eighths or more. A husband and wife might “dimidiate” their arms by the husband literally jamming half of one shield (on the left) against his wife’s half on the right: this could look messy and sometimes ridiculous if there was half a lion on one side and half a boat on the other! A better way to share the shield was “impalement” where the two coats of arms were placed fully side by side with a line down the centre to separate them. This was also used to show the arms of a diocese and an individual’s own family arms in the case of a bishop.

Also increasingly common were four coats of arms on a shield in four quarters. Quarters 1 and 4 (top left and bottom right) were for the male arms, with the “less significant” arms in quarters 2 and 3. Only if the marriage was to a woman with a far superior ancestry would the female arms be positioned in Quarters 1 and 4. In later centuries with members of the aristocracy keen to show off their lineage, quarterings grew to multiple divisions, with some shields showing as many as 63 or even 219 mini-arms. Unless she had been granted arms by the monarch, a woman used her father’s arms – on a shield in the medieval period but increasingly on a lozenge, a tricky shape to manage design-wise. Of course, arms were passed on father to son, or to grandson. If a man had only daughters, they were heraldic heiresses and could pass on the arms to their children instead.

Royal heraldry had its own changes and variation, from the three lions (or leopards!) of Richard I’s arms in 1198 to the arrival of the French fleur-de-lys in 1340 when Edward III laid claim to the French crown. It is possible to view on the Mortimer History heraldry site the royal arms of the various sons of Edward III and then how two of these arms then featured in turn in the arms relating to Richard Duke of York, since he was descended from both Lionel, Duke of Clarence and Edmund, Duke of York.

The College of Arms in London – one of few heraldic institutions in the world today – was founded by Richard III’s royal charter in March 1484. It comprises 13 officers and is overseen by the Earl Marshal. As Constable of England (from 1469), Richard supervised heralds and planned to reform how they were organised. He possessed two heraldic rolls of arms (no longer extant) – St George’s Roll and ‘Thomas Jenyn’s Book’, the latter which he placed in the keeping of his personal Pursuivant herald, ‘Blanc Sanglier’. Richard also created Sir John Howard as Earl Marshal, a role still held by the Howard family. He will have also seen the heraldic detail in the three famous “Rolls” of the time – the Salisbury Roll, Rous Roll and Beauchamp Pageant.

Richard established the College in the house called Coldharbour, previously owned by a famously wealthy Lord Mayor of London. The heralds both lived here and stored their records here. However, after Bosworth, Henry VII granted Coldharbour to his mother, Lady Margaret Beaufort: the heralds were turfed out and many of their books and records were lost. Several decades later they were still petitioning the monarch for a permanent home until Queen Mary finally granted them a new home near St Paul in 1555 but this was destroyed (with much of its contents) during the Great Fire.

The current College stands close to this location and, as part of the Royal household, takes part in the Opening of Parliament and Royal Garter ceremonies. Heralds are appointed by the monarch and are divided into three ranks:
Kings of Arms (tabard of velvet and cloth-of-gold)
• Garter King of Arms – the senior King of Arms
• Clarenceux King of Arms – England south of the Trent
• Norroy King of Arms – England north of the Trent (Ulster was created in 1552 and was added to Norroy in 1943).
Heralds of Arms (tabard of satin) – York, Windsor, Lancaster, Somerset, Chester and Richmond Heralds
Pursuivants of Arms (tabard of damask silk) – Rouge Croix, Bluemantle, Rouge Dragon, Portcullis Pursuivants