A Complete Guide to Heraldry Part 51

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 665.--Carriage Panel of Georgiana, Marchioness of Cholmondeley.]

Unofficial heraldry had sunk to an even lower style of art, and {399} the regulation heraldic stationer's types of shield, mantling, and helmet are awe-inspiring in their ugliness.

The term "mantle" is sometimes employed, but it would seem hardly quite correctly, to the parliamentary robe of estate upon which the arms of a peer of the realm were so frequently depicted at the end of the eighteenth and in the early part of the nineteenth centuries. Its popularity is an indication of the ever-constant predilection for something which is denied to others and the possession of which is a matter of privilege. Woodward, in his "Treatise on Heraldry," treats of and dismisses the matter in one short sentence: "In England the suggestion that the arms of peers should be mantled with their Parliament robes was never generally adopted." In this statement he is quite incorrect, for as the accepted type in one particular opportunity of armorial display its use was absolutely universal. The opportunity in question was the emblazonment of arms upon carriage panels.

In the early part of the nineteenth and at the end of the eighteenth centuries armorial bearings were painted of some size upon carriages, and there were few such paintings executed for the carriages, chariots, and state coaches of peers that did not appear upon a background of the robe of estate. With the modern craze for ostentatious unostentation (the result, there can be little doubt, in this respect of the wholesale appropriation of arms by those without a right to bear these ornaments), the decoration of a peer's carriage nowadays seldom shows more than a simple coronet, or a coroneted crest, initial, or monogram; but the State chariots of those who still possess them almost all, without exception, show the arms emblazoned upon the robe of estate. The Royal and many other State chariots made or refurbished for the recent coronation ceremonies show that, when an opportunity of the fullest display properly arises, the robe of estate is not yet a thing of the past. Fig. 665 is from a photograph of a carriage panel, and shows the arms of a former Marchioness of Cholmondeley displayed in this manner. Incidentally it also shows a practice frequently resorted to, but quite unauthorised, of taking one supporter from the husband's shield and the other (when the wife was an heiress) from the arms of her family. The arms are those of Georgiana Charlotte, widow of George James, first Marquess of Cholmondeley, and younger daughter and coheir of Peregrine, third Duke of Ancaster. She became a widow in 1827 and died in 1838, so the panel must have been painted between those dates. The arms shown are: "Quarterly, 1 and 4, gules, in chief two esquires' helmets proper, and in base a garb or (for Cholmondeley); 2. gules, a chevron between three eagles' heads erased argent; 3. or, on a fesse between two chevrons sable, three cross crosslets or (for Walpole), and on an {400} escutcheon of pretence the arms of Bertie, namely: argent, three battering-rams fesswise in pale proper, headed and garnished azure." The supporters shown are: "Dexter, a griffin sable, armed, winged, and membered or (from the Cholmondeley achievement); sinister, a friar vested in russet with staff and rosary or" (one of the supporters belonging to the Barony of Willoughby D'Eresby, to which the Marchioness of Cholmondeley in her own right was a coheir until the abeyance in the Barony was determined in favour of her elder sister).

"In later times the arms of sovereigns--the German Electors, &c.--were mantled, usually with crimson velvet fringed with gold, lined with ermine, and crowned; but the mantling armoye was one of the marks of dignity used by the Pairs de France, and by Cardinals resident in France; it was also employed by some great n.o.bles in other countries. The mantling of the Princes and Dukes of Mirandola was chequy argent and azure, lined with ermine. In France the mantling of the Chancelier was of cloth of gold; that of Presidents, of scarlet, lined with alternate strips of ermine and _pet.i.t gris_. In France, Napoleon I., who used a mantling of purple seme of golden bees, decreed that the princes and grand dignitaries should use an azure mantling thus seme; those of Dukes were to be plain, and lined with vair instead of ermine. In 1817 a mantling of azure, fringed with gold and lined with ermine, was appropriated to the dignity of Pair de France."

The pavilion is a feature of heraldic art which is quite unknown to British heraldry, and one can call to mind no single instance of its use in this country; but as its use is very prominent in Germany and other countries, it cannot be overlooked. It is confined to the arms of sovereigns, and the pavilion is the tent-like erection within which the heraldic achievement is displayed. The pavilion seems to have originated in France, where it can be traced back upon the Great Seals of the kings to its earliest form and appearance upon the seal of Louis XI. In the case of the Kings of France, it was of azure seme-de-lis or. The pavilion used with the arms of the German Emperor is of gold seme alternately of Imperial crowns and eagles displayed sable, and is lined with ermine. The motto is carried on a crimson band, and it is surmounted by the Imperial crown, and a banner of the German colours gules, argent, and sable. The pavilion used by the German Emperor as King of Prussia is of crimson, seme of black eagles and gold crowns, and the band which carries the motto is blue. The pavilions of the King of Bavaria and the Duke of Baden, the King of Saxony, the Duke of Hesse, the Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, the Duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, the Duke of {401} SaxeMeiningen-Hildburghausen, the Duke of Saxe-Altenburg, and the Duke of Anhalt are all of crimson.

In German heraldry a rather more noticeable distinction is drawn than with ourselves between the lambrequin (_Helmdecke_) and the mantle (_Helmmantel_). This more closely approximates to the robe of estate, though the _helmmantel_ has not in Germany the rigid significance of peerage degree that the robe of estate has in this country. The German _helmmantel_ with few exceptions is always of purple lined with ermine, and whilst the mantel always falls directly from the coronet or cap, the pavilion is arranged in a dome-like form which bears the crown upon its summit. The pavilion is supposed to be the invention of the Frenchman Philip Moreau (1680), and found its way from France to Germany, where both in the Greater and Lesser Courts it was enthusiastically adopted. Great Britain, Austria-Hungary, Spain, Portugal, and Wurtemberg are the only Royal Arms in which the pavilion does not figure. {402}

CHAPTER XXV

THE TORSE, OR WREATH

The actual helmet, from the very _earliest_ heraldic representations which have come down to us, would sometimes appear not to have had any mantling, the crest being affixed direct to the (then) flat top of the helmet in use.

But occasional crests appear very early in the existence of "ordered"

armory, and at much about the same time we find the "textile" covering of the helmet coming into heraldic use. In the earliest times we find that frequently the crest itself was continued into the mantling. But where this was not possible, the attaching of the crest to the helmet when the mantling intervened left an unsightly joining. The unsightliness very soon called forth a remedy. At first this remedy took the form of a coronet or a plain fillet or ribbon round the point of juncture, sometimes with and sometimes without the ends being visible. If the ends were shown they were represented as floating behind, sometimes with and sometimes without a representation of the bow or knot in which they were tied. The plain fillet still continued to be used long after the torse had come into recognised use. The consideration of crest coronets has been already included, but with regard to the wreath an a.n.a.lysis of the Plantagenet Garter plates will afford some definite basis from which to start deduction.

Of the eighty-six achievements reproduced in Mr. St. John Hope's book, five have no crest. Consequently we have eighty-one examples to a.n.a.lyse. Of these there are ten in which the crest is not attached to the lambrequin and helmet by anything perceptible, eight are attached with fillets of varying widths, twenty-one crests are upon chapeaux, and twenty-nine issue from coronets. But at no period governed by the series is it possible that either fillet, torse, chapeau, or coronet was in use to the exclusion of another form. This remark applies more particularly to the fillet and torse (the latter of which undoubtedly at a later date superseded the former), for both at the beginning and at the end of the series referred to we find the fillet and the wreath or torse, and at both periods we find crests without either coronet, torse, chapeau, or fillet. The fillet must soon afterwards (in the fifteenth century) have completely fallen into desuetude. {403} The torse was so small and unimportant a matter that upon seals it would probably equally escape the attention of the engraver and the observer, and probably there would be little to be gained by a systematic hunt through early seals to discover the date of its introduction, but it will be noticed that no wreaths appear in some of the early Rolls. General Leigh says, "In the time of Henry the Fifth, and long after, no man had his badge set on a wreath under the degree of a knight.

But that order is worn away." It probably belongs to the end of the fourteenth century. There can be little doubt that its twisted shape was an evolution from the plain fillet suggested by the turban of the East. We read in the old romances, in Mallory's "Morte d'Arthur" and elsewhere, of valiant knights who in battle or tournament wore the favour of some lady, or even the lady's sleeve, upon their helmets. It always used to be a puzzle to me how the sleeve could have been worn upon the helmet, and I wonder how many of the present-day novelists, who so glibly make their knightly heroes of olden time wear the "favours" of their lady-lovers, know how it was done? The favour did not take the place of the crest. A knight did not lightly discard an honoured, inherited, and known crest for the sake of wearing a favour only too frequently the mere result of a temporary flirtation; nor to wear her colours could he at short notice discard or renew his lambrequin, surcoat, or the housings and trappings of his horse.

He simply took the favour--the colours, a ribbon, or a handkerchief of the lady, as the case might be--and twisted it in and out or over and over the fillet which surrounded the joining-place of crest and helmet. To put her favour on his helmet was the work of a moment. The wearing of a lady's sleeve, which must have been an honour greatly prized, is of course the origin of the well-known "maunch," the solitary charge in the arms of Conyers, Hastings, and Wharton. Doubtless the sleeve twined with the fillet would be made to encircle the base of the crest, and it is not unlikely that the wide hanging mouth of the sleeve might have been used for the lambrequin. The dresses of ladies at that period were decorated with the arms of their families, so in each case would be of the "colours" of the lady, so that the sleeve and its colours would be quickly identified, as it was no doubt usually intended they should be. The accidental result of twining a favour in the fillet, in conjunction with the pattern obviously suggested by the turban of the East, produced the conventional torse or wreath. As the conventional slashings of the lambrequin hinted at past hard fighting in battle, so did the conventional torse hint at past service to and favour of ladies, love and war being the occupations of the perfect knight of romance. How far short of the ideal knight of {404} romance the knight of fact fell, perhaps the frequent bordures and batons of heraldry are the best indication. At first, as is evident from the Garter plates, the colours of the torse seem to have had little or no compulsory relation to the "livery colours" of the arms. The instances to be gleaned from the Plantagenet Garter plates which have been reproduced are as follows:--

Sir John Bourchier, Lord Bourchier. Torse: sable and vert. Arms: argent and gules.

Sir John Grey, Earl of Tankerville. Torse: vert, gules, and argent. Arms: gules and argent.

Sir Lewis Robsart, Lord Bourchier. Torse: azure, or, and sable. Arms: vert and or. [The crest, derived from his wife (who was a daughter of Lord Bourchier) is practically the same as the one first quoted. It will be noticed that the torse differs.]

Sir Edward Cherleton, Lord Cherleton of Powis. Torse: gules and sable.

Arms: or and gules.

Sir Gaston de Foix, Count de Longueville. Torse: or and gules. Arms: or and gules.

Sir William Nevill, Lord Fauconberg. Torse: argent and gules. Arms: gules and argent.

Sir Richard Wydville, Lord Rivers. Torse: vert. Arms: argent and gules.

Sir Henry Bourchier, Earl of Ess.e.x. Torse: sable and vert. Arms: argent and gules. [This is the same crest above alluded to.]

Sir Thomas Stanley, Lord Stanley. Torse: or and azure. Arms: or and azure.

Sir John Bourchier, Lord Berners. Torse: gules and argent. Arms: argent and gules. [This is the same crest above alluded to.]

Sir Walter Devereux, Lord Ferrers. Torse: argent and sable. Arms: argent and gules. [The crest really issues from a coronet upon a torse in a previous case, this crest issues from a torse only.]

Sir Francis Lovel, Viscount Lovel. Torse: azure and or. Arms: or and gules.

Sir Thomas Burgh, Lord Burgh. Torse: azure and sable. Arms: azure and ermine.

Sir Richard Tunstall, K.G. Torse: argent and sable. Arms: sable and argent.

I can suggest no explanation of these differences unless it be, which is not unlikely, that they perpetuate "favours" worn; or perhaps a more likely supposition is that the wreath or torse was of the "family colours," as these were actually worn by the servants or retainers of each person. If this be not the case, why are the colours of the wreath termed the livery colours? At the present time in an English or Irish {405} grant of arms the colours are not specified, but the crest is stated to be "on a wreath of the colours." In Scotland, however, the crest is granted in the following words: "and upon a wreath of his liveries is set for crest." Consequently, I have very little doubt, the true state of the case is that originally the wreath was depicted of the colours of the livery which was worn. Then new families came into prominence and eminence, and had no liveries to inherit.

They were granted arms and chose the tinctures of their arms as their "colours," and used these colours for their personal liveries. The natural consequence would be in such a case that the torse, being in unison with the livery, was also in unison with the arms. The consequence is that it has become a fixed, unalterable rule in British heraldry that the torse shall be of the princ.i.p.al metal and of the princ.i.p.al colour of the arms. I know of no recent exception to this rule, the latest, as far as I am aware, being a grant in the early years of the eighteenth century. This, it is stated in the patent, was the regranting of a coat of foreign origin.

Doubtless the formality of a grant was subst.i.tuted for the usual registration in this case, owing to a lack of formal proof of a right to the arms, but there is no doubt that the peculiarities of the foreign arms, as they had been previously borne, were preserved in the grant. The peculiarity in this case consisted of a torse of three tinctures. The late Lyon Clerk once pointed out to me, in Lyon Register, an instance of a coat there matriculated with a torse of three colours, but I unfortunately made no note of it at the time. Woodward alludes to the curious chequy wreath on the seals of Robert Stewart, Duke of Albany, in 1389. This appears to have been repeated in the seals of his son Murdoch.

The wreath of Patrick Hepburn appears to be of roses in the Gelre "Armorial," and a careful examination of the plates in this volume will show many curious Continental instances of subst.i.tutes for the conventional torse. Though by no means peculiar to British heraldry, there can be no manner of doubt that the wreath in the United Kingdom has obtained a position of legalised necessity and constant usage and importance which exists in no other country.

As has been already explained, the torse should fit closely to the crest, its object and purpose being merely to hide the joining of crest and helmet. Unfortunately in British heraldry this purpose has been ignored.

Doubtless resulting first from the common practice of depicting a crest upon a wreath and without a helmet, and secondly from the fact that many English crests are quite unsuitable to place on a helmet, in fact impossible to affix by the aid of a wreath to a helmet, and thirdly from our ridiculous rules of position for a helmet, which result in the crest being depicted (in conjunction with the {406} representation of the helmet) in a position many such crests never could have occupied on any helmet, the effect has been to cause the wreath to lose its real form, which encircled the _helmet_, and to become considered as no more than a straight support for and relating only to the crest. When, therefore, the crest and its supporting basis is transferred from indefinite s.p.a.ce to the helmet, the support, which is the torse, is still represented as a flat resting-place for the crest, and it is consequently depicted as a straight and rigid bar, balanced upon the apex of the helmet. This is now and for long has been the only accepted official way of depicting a wreath in England. Certainly this is an ungraceful and inartistic rendering, and a rendering far removed from any actual helmet wreath that can ever have been actually borne. Whilst one has no wish to defend the "rigid bar," which has nothing to recommend it, it is at the same time worth while to point out that the heraldic day of actual helmets and actual usage is long since over, never to be revived, and that our heraldry of to-day is merely decorative and pictorial. The rigid bar is none other than a conventionalised form of the actual torse, and is perhaps little more at variance with the reality than is our conventionalised method of depicting a lambrequin. Whilst this conventional torse remains the official pattern, it is hopeless to attempt to banish such a method of representation: but Lyon King of Arms, happily, will have none of it in his official register or on his patents, and few heraldic artists of any repute now care to so design or represent it. As always officially painted it must consist of six links alternately of metal and colour (the "livery colours" of the arms), of which the metal must be the first to be shown to the dexter side. The torse is now supposed to be and represented as a skein of coloured silk intertwined with a gold or silver cord. {407}

CHAPTER XXVI

SUPPORTERS

In this country a somewhat fict.i.tious importance has become attached to supporters, owing to their almost exclusive reservation to the highest rank. The rules which hold at the moment will be recited presently, but there can be no doubt that originally they were in this country little more than mere decorative and artistic appendages, being devised and altered from time to time by different artists according as the artistic necessities of the moment demanded. The subject of the origin of supporters has been very ably dealt with in "A Treatise on Heraldry" by Woodward and Burnett, and with all due acknowledgment I take from that work the subjoined extract:--

"Supporters are figures of living creatures placed at the side or sides of an armorial shield, and appearing to support it. French writers make a distinction, giving the name of _Supports_ to animals, real or imaginary, thus employed; while human figures or angels similarly used are called _Tenants_. Trees, and other inanimate objects which are sometimes used, are called _Soutiens_.

"Menetrier and other old writers trace the origin of supporters to the usages of the tournaments, where the shields of the combatants were exposed for inspection, and guarded by their servants or pages disguised in fanciful attire: 'C'est des Tournois qu'est venu cet usage parce que les chevaliers y faisoient porter leurs lances, et leurs ecus, par des pages, et des valets de pied, deguisez en ours, en lions, en mores, et en sauvages' (_Usage des Armoiries_, p. 119).

"The old romances give us evidence that this custom prevailed; but I think only after the use of supporters had already arisen from another source.

"There is really little doubt now that Anstis was quite correct when, in his _Aspilogia_, he attributed the origin of supporters to the invention of the engraver, who filled up the s.p.a.ces at the top and sides of the triangular shield upon a circular seal with foliage, or with fanciful animals. Any good collection of mediaeval seals will strengthen this conviction. For instance, the two volumes of Laing's 'Scottish Seals'

afford numerous examples in which the shields used in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries were placed between two creatures {408} resembling lizards or dragons. (See the seal of ALEXANDER DE BALLIOL, 1295.--LAING, ii. 74.)

"The seal of John, Duke of Normandy, eldest son of the King of FRANCE, before 1316 bears his arms (FRANCE-ANCIENT, _a bordure gules_) between two lions rampant away from the shield, and an eagle with expanded wings standing above it. The _secretum_ of Isabelle de FLANDRES (_c._ 1308) has her shield placed between three lions, each charged with a bend (Vree, _Gen. Com. Flanr._, Plates XLIII., XLIV., XCII.). In 1332 AYMON OF SAVOY places his arms (SAVOY, _with a label_) between a winged lion in chief and a lion without wings at either side. Later, on the seal of AMADEUS VI., a lion's head between wings became the crest of SAVOY. In 1332 AMADEUS bears SAVOY on a lozenge between in chief two eagles, in base two lions.

(CIBRARIO, Nos. 61, 64; and GUICHENON, tome i. No. 130.) In Scotland the shield of REGINALD CRAWFORD in 1292 is placed between two dogs, and surmounted by a fox; in the same year the paly shield of REGINALD, Earl of ATHOLE, appears between two lions in chief and as many griffins in flanks.--LAING, i. 210, 761.

"The seal of HUMBERT II., Dauphin de Viennois in 1349, is an excellent example of the fashion. The shield of DAUPHINY is in the centre of a quatrefoil. Two savages mounted on griffins support its flanks; on the upper edge an armed knight sits on a couchant lion, and the s.p.a.ce in base is filled by a human face between two wingless dragons. The s.p.a.ces are sometimes filled with the Evangelistic symbols, as on the seal of YOLANTE DE FLANDRES, Countess of Bar (_c._ 1340). The seal of JEANNE, Dame de PLASNES, in 1376 bears her arms _en banniere_ a quatrefoil supported by two kneeling angels, a demi-angel in chief, and a lion couchant guardant in base."

Corporate and other seals afford countless examples of the interstices in the design being filled with the figures similar to those from which in later days the supporters of a family have been deduced. But I am myself convinced that the argument can be carried further. Fanciful ornamentation or meaningless devices may have first been made use of by seal engravers, but it is very soon found that the badge is in regular use for this purpose, and we find both animate and inanimate badges employed. Then where this is possible the badge, if animate, is made to support the helmet and crest, and, later on, the shield, and there can be no doubt the badge was in fact acting as a supporter long before the science of armory recognised that existence of supporters.

Before pa.s.sing to supporters proper, it may be well to briefly allude to various figures which are to be found in a position a.n.a.logous to that of supporters. The single human figure entire, or in the form {409} of a demi-figure appearing above the shield, is very frequently to be met with, but the addition of such figures _was and remains purely artistic_, and I know of no single instance in British armory where one figure, animate or inanimate, has ever existed alone in the character of a single supporter, and as an integral part of the heritable armorial achievement. Of course I except those figures upon which the arms of certain families are properly displayed. These will be presently alluded to, but though they are certainly exterior ornaments, I do not think they can be properly cla.s.sed as supporters unless to this term is given some elasticity, or unless the term has some qualifying remarks of reservation added to it. There are, however, many instances of armorial ensigns depicted, and presumably correctly, in the form of banners supported by a single animal, but it will always be found that the single animal is but one of the pair of duly allocated supporters. Many instances of arms depicted in this manner will be found in "Prince Arthur's Book." The same method of display was adopted in some number of cases, and with some measure of success, in Foster's "Peerage." Single figures are very frequently to be met with in German and Continental heraldry, but on these occasions, as with ourselves, the position they occupy is merely that of an artistic accessory, and bears no inseparable relation to the heraldic achievement. The single exception to the foregoing statement of which I am aware is to be found in the arms of the Swiss Cantons. These thirteen coats are sometimes quartered upon one shield, but when displayed separately each is accompanied by a single supporter. Zurich, Lucerne, Uri, Unter-Walden, Glarus, and Basle all bear the supporter on the dexter side; Bern, Schweig, Zug, Freiburg, and Soluthurn on the sinister. Schafhausen (a ram) and Appenzell (a bear) place their supporters in full aspect behind the shield.

On the corbels of Gothic architecture, shields of arms are frequently supported by _Angels_, which, however, cannot generally be regarded as heraldic appendages--being merely supposed to indicate that the owners have contributed to the erection of the fabric. Examples of this practice will be found on various ecclesiastical edifices in Scotland, and among others at Melrose Abbey, St. Giles', Edinburgh, and the church of Seton in East Lothian. An interesting instance of an angel supporting a shield occurs on the beautiful seal of Mary of Gueldres, Queen of James II. (1459); and the Privy Seal of David II., a hundred years earlier, exhibits a pretty design of an escutcheon charged with the ensigns of Scotland, and borne by two arms issuing from clouds above, indicative of Divine support.[24] {410}

Of instances of single objects from which shields are found depending or supported the "Treatise on Heraldry" states:--

"Allusion has been made to the usage by which on vesica-shaped shields ladies of high rank are represented as supporting with either hand shields of arms. From this probably arose the use of a single supporter. MARGUERITE DE COURCELLES in 1284, and ALIX DE VERDUN in 1311, bear in one hand a shield of the husband's arms, in the other one of their own. The curious seal of MURIEL, Countess of STRATHERNE, in 1284, may be considered akin to these. In it the shield is supported partly by a falcon, and partly by a human arm issuing from the sinister side of the _vesica_, and holding the falcon by the jesses (LAING, i. 764). The early seal of BOLESLAS III., King of POLAND, in 1255, bears a knight holding a shield charged with the Polish eagle (VOSSBERG, _Die Siegel des Mittelalters_). In 1283 the seal of FLORENT of HAINAULT bears a warrior in chain mail supporting a shield charged with a lion impaling an eagle dimidiated.