A Complete Guide to Heraldry Part 53

But outside and beyond these there are many other families who bear them by right. At the official inquiry concerning the Lyon Office, the Lyon-Depute, Mr. George Tait, put in a Note of Persons whom he considered might lawfully bear supporters under Scottish Heraldic Law. The following is the text of the note in question:--

"NOTE OF PERSONS who are considered by GEORGE TAIT, Esq., Lyon-Depute, to be ent.i.tled to supporters, furnished to the Commissioners of Inquiry by their desire, intimated to him at his examination this day, June 27, 1821.

"1. _Peers._--By immemorial usage, Peers have right to supporters, and supporters are commonly inserted in modern patents of Peerage. This includes Peeresses in their own right.

"2. _Ancient Usage._--Those private gentlemen, and the lawful heirs-male of their bodies, who can prove immemorial usage of carrying supporters, or a usage very ancient, and long prior to the Act 1672, are ent.i.tled to have their supporters recognised, it being presumed that they received them from lawful authority, on account of feats of valour in battle or in tournament, or as marks of the Royal favour (see _Murray of Touchadam's Case_, June 24, 1778).

"3. _Barons._--Lawful heirs-male of the bodies of the smaller Barons, who had the full right of free barony (not mere freeholders) prior to 1587, when representation of the minor Barons was fully established, upon the ground that those persons were Barons, and sat in Parliament as such, and were of the same as the t.i.tled Barons. Their right is recognised by the writers on heraldry and antiquities. Persons having right on this ground, will almost always have established it by ancient usage, and the want of usage is a strong presumption against the right.

"4. _Chiefs._--Lawful heirs-male of Chiefs of tribes or clans which had attained power, and extensive territories and numerous members at a distant period, or at least of tribes consisting of numerous families of some degree of rank and consideration. Such persons will in general have right to supporters, either as Barons (great or small) or by ancient usage. When any new claim is set up on such a ground, it may be viewed with suspicion, and it will be extremely difficult to establish it, chiefly from the present state of society, by which the traces of clanship, or the patriarchal state, are in most parts of the country almost obliterated; and indeed it is very difficult to conceive a case {423} in which a new claim of that kind could be admitted. Mr. Tait has had some such claims, and has rejected them.

"5. _Royal Commissions._--Knights of the Garter and Bath, and any others to whom the King may think proper to concede the honour of supporters.

"These are the only descriptions of persons who appear to Mr. Tait to be ent.i.tled to supporters.

"An idea has gone abroad, that Scots Baronets are ent.i.tled to supporters; but there is no authority for this in their patents, or any good authority for it elsewhere. And for many years subsequent to 1672, a very small portion indeed of their arms which are matriculated in the Lyon Register, are matriculated with supporters; so small as necessarily to lead to this inference, that those whose arms are entered with supporters had right to them on other grounds, _e.g._ ancient usage, chieftainship, or being heirs of Barons. The arms of few Scots Baronets are matriculated during the last fifty or sixty years; but the practice of a.s.signing supporters gradually gained ground during that time, or rather the practice of a.s.signing supporters to them, merely as such, seems to have arisen during that period; and it appears to Mr. Tait to be an erroneous practice, which he would not be warranted in following.

"British Baronets have also, by recent practice, had supporters a.s.signed to them, but Mr. Tait considers the practice to be unwarranted; and accordingly, in a recent case, a gentleman, upon being created a Baronet, applied for supporters to the King--having applied to Mr. Tait, and been informed by him that he did not conceive the Lord Lyon ent.i.tled to give supporters to British Baronets.

"No females (except Peeresses in their own right) are ent.i.tled to supporters, as the representation of families is only in the male line.

But the widows of Peers, by courtesy, carry their arms and supporters; and the sons of Peers, using the lower t.i.tles of the peerage by courtesy, also carry the supporters by courtesy.

"Mr. Tait does not know of any authority for the Lord Lyon having a discretionary power of granting supporters, and understands that only the King has such a power.

"Humbly submitted by

(Signed) "G. TAIT."

Though this statement would give a good general idea of the Scottish practice, its publication entails the addition of certain qualifying remarks. Supporters are most certainly not "commonly inserted in modern patents of peerage." Supporters appertaining to peerages are granted by special and separate patents. These to English subjects {424} are now under the hand and seal of Garter alone. In the event of a grant following upon the creation of an Irish peerage, the patent of supporters would be issued by Ulster King of Arms. But it is competent to Lyon King of Arms to matriculate the arms of Scottish peers with supporters, or to grant these to such as may still be without them. Both Lyon and Ulster would appear to have the right to grant supporters to Peers of the United Kingdom who are heraldically their domiciled subjects. With regard to the second paragraph of Mr. Tait's memorandum, there will be few families within its range who will not be included within the range of the paragraph which follows, and the presumption would rather be that the use of supporters by an unt.i.tled family originated in the right of barony than in any mythical grant following upon mythical feats of valour.

Mr. Tait, however, is clearly wrong in his statement that "no females (except peeresses in their own right) are ent.i.tled to supporters." They have constantly been allowed to the heir of line, and their devolution through female heirs must of necessity presuppose the right thereto of the female heir through whom the inheritance is claimed. A recent case in point occurs with regard to the arms of Hunter-Weston, matriculated in 1880, Mrs.

Hunter-Weston being the heir of line of Hunter of Hunterston. Widows of peers, providing they have arms of their own to impale with those of their husbands, cannot be said to only bear the supporters of their deceased husbands by courtesy. With them it is a matter of right. The eldest sons of peers bearing courtesy t.i.tles most certainly do not bear the supporters of the peerage to which they are heirs. Even the far more generally accepted "courtesy" practice of bearing coronets is expressly forbidden by an Earl-Marshal's Warrant.

Consequently it may be a.s.serted that the laws concerning the use of supporters in Scotland are as follows: In the first place, no supporters can be borne of right unless they have been the subject of formal grant or matriculation. The following cla.s.ses are ent.i.tled to obtain, upon payment of the necessary fees, the grant or matriculation of supporters to themselves, or to themselves and their descendants according as the case may be: (1) Peers of Scotland, and other peers who are domiciled Scotsmen.

(2) Knights of the Garter, Knights of the Thistle, and Knights of St.

Patrick, being Scotsmen, are ent.i.tled as such to obtain grants of supporters to themselves for use during life, but as these three orders are now confined to members of the peerage, the supporters used would be probably those appertaining to their peerages, and it is unlikely that any further grants for life will be made under these circ.u.mstances. (3) Knights of the Bath until the revision of the order were ent.i.tled to obtain grants of supporters to themselves for {425} use during their lifetimes, and there are many instances in the Lyon Register where such grants have been made.

(4) Knights Grand Cross of the Bath, of St. Michael and St. George, and of the Royal Victorian Order, and Knights Grand Commanders of the Orders of the Star of India, and of the Indian Empire, are ent.i.tled to obtain grants of supporters for use during their lifetimes. (5) The lawful heirs of the minor barons who had the full right of free barony prior to 1587 may matriculate supporters if they can show their ancestors used them, or may now obtain grants. Though practically the whole of these have been at some time or other matriculated in Lyon Register, there still remain a few whose claims have never been officially adjudicated upon. For example, it is only quite recently that the ancient Swinton supporters have been formally enrolled on the official records (Plate IV.). (6) There are certain others, being chiefs of clans and the heirs of those to whom grants have been made in times past, who also have the right, but as no new claim is likely to be so recognised in the future, it may be taken that these are confined to those cases which have been already entered in the Lyon Register.

During the latter part of the eighteenth century, the executive of Lyon Office had fallen into great disrepute. The office of Lyon King of Arms had been granted to the Earls of Kinnoul, who had contented themselves with appointing deputies and drawing fees. The whole subject of armorial jurisdiction in Scotland had become lax to the last degree, and very many irregularities had crept in. One, and probably the worst result, had been the granting of supporters in many cases where no valid reason other than the payment of fees could be put forward to warrant the obtaining of such a privilege. And the result was the growth and acceptance of the fixed idea that it was within the power of Lyon King of Arms to grant supporters to any one whom he might choose to so favour. Consequently many grants of supporters were placed upon the records, and many unt.i.tled families of Scotland apparently have the right under these patents of grant to add supporters to their arms. Though it is an arguable matter whether the Lord Lyon was justified in making these grants, there can be no doubt that, so long as they remain upon the official register, and no official steps are taken to cancel the patents, they must be accepted as existing by legal right. Probably the most egregious instance of such a grant is to be found in the case of the grant to the first baronet of the family of Antrobus, who on purchasing the estate of Rutherford, the seat of the extinct Lords Rutherford, obtained from the then Lyon King of Arms a grant of the peerage supporters carried by the previous owners of the property.

With regard to the devolution of Scottish supporters, the large {426} proportion of those registered in Lyon Office are recorded in the terms of some patent which specifies the limitations of their descent, so that there are a comparatively small number only concerning which there can be any uncertainty as to whom the supporters will descend to. The difficulty can only arise in those cases in which the arms are matriculated with supporters as borne by ancient usage in the early years of the Lyon Register, or in the cases of supporters still to be matriculated on the same grounds by those families who have so far failed to comply with the Act of 1672. Whilst Mr. Tait, in his memorandum which has been previously quoted, would deny the right of inheritance to female heirs, there is no doubt whatever that in many cases such heirs have been allowed to succeed to the supporters of their families. Taking supporters as an appanage of right of barony (either greater or lesser), there can be no doubt that the greater baronies, and consequently the supporters attached to them, devolved upon heirs female, and upon the heir of line inheriting through a female ancestor; and, presumably, the same considerations must of necessity hold good with regard to those supporters which are borne by right of lesser barony, for the greater and the lesser were the same thing, differing only in degree, until in the year 1587 the lesser barons were relieved of compulsory attendance in Parliament. At the same time there can be no doubt that the headship of a family must rest with the heir male, and consequently it would seem that in those cases in which the supporters are borne by right of being head of a clan or chief of a name, the right of inheritance would devolve upon the heir male. There must of necessity be some cases in which it is impossible to determine whether the supporters were originally called into being by right of barony or because of chieftainship, and the consequence has been that concerning the descent of the supporters of the older unt.i.tled families there has been no uniformity in the practice of Lyon Office, and it is impossible from the precedents which exist to deduce any certain and unalterable rule upon the point.

Precedents exist in each case, and the well-known case of Smith-Cunningham and d.i.c.k-Cunningham, which is often referred to as settling the point, did nothing of the kind, inasmuch as that judgment depended upon the interpretation of a specific Act of Parliament, and was not the determination of a point of heraldic law. The case, however, afforded the opportunity to Lord Jeffrey to make the following remarks upon the point (see p. 355, Seton):--

"If I may be permitted to take a common-sense view, I should say that there is neither an inflexible rule nor a uniform practice in the matter. There may be cases where the heir of line will exclude the heir male, and there may be cases where the converse will be held. In {427} my opinion the common-sense rule is that the chief armorial dignities should follow the more substantial rights and dignities of the family. _If the heir male succeed to the t.i.tle and estates, I think it reasonable that he should also succeed to the armorial bearings of the head of the house._ I would think it a very difficult proposition to establish that the heir of line, when denuded of everything else, was still ent.i.tled to retain the barren honours of heraldry. But I give no opinion upon that point."

Mr. Seton, in his "Law and Practice of Heraldry in Scotland," sums up the matter of inheritance in these words (see p. 357): "As already indicated, however, by one of the learned Lords in his opinion on the case of Cuninghame, the practice in the matter in question has been far from uniform; and accordingly we are very much disposed to go along with his relative suggestion, that 'the chief armorial dignities should follow the more substantial rights and dignities of the family'; and that when the latter are enjoyed by the female heir of line, such heir should also be regarded as fairly ent.i.tled to claim the princ.i.p.al heraldic honours."

The result has been in practice that the supporters of a family have usually been matriculated to whoever has carried on the name and line of the house, unless the supporters in question have been governed by a specific grant, the limitations of which exist to be referred to, but in cases where both the heir of line and the heir male have been left in a prominent position, the difficulty of decision has in many cases been got over by allowing supporters to both of them. The most curious instance of this within our knowledge occurs with regard to the family of Chisholm.

Chisholm of Erchless Castle appears undoubtedly to have succeeded as head and chief of his name--"The Chisholm"--about the end of the seventeenth century. As such supporters were carried, namely: "On either side a savage wreathed about the head and middle with laurel, and holding a club over his exterior shoulder."

At the death of Alexander Chisholm--"The Chisholm"--7th February 1793, the chieftainship and the estates pa.s.sed to his half-brother William, but his heir of line was his only child Mary, who married James Gooden of London.

Mrs. Mary Chisholm or Gooden in 1827 matriculated the _undifferenced_ arms of Chisholm ["Gules, a boar's head couped or"], without supporters, but in 1831 the heir male _also_ matriculated the same _undifferenced_ arms, in this case with supporters.

The chieftainship of the Chisholm family then continued with the male line until the death of Duncan Macdonell Chisholm--"The Chisholm"--in 1859, when his only sister and heir became heir of line of the later chiefs. She was then Jemima Batten, and by Royal {428} Licence in that year she and her husband a.s.sumed the additional surname of Chisholm, becoming Chisholm-Batten, and, contrary to the English practice in such cases, the arms of Chisholm _alone_ were matriculated in 1860 to Mrs. Chisholm-Batten and her descendants. These once again were the _undifferenced_ coat of Chisholm, viz.: "Gules, a boar's head couped or." Arms for Batten have since been granted in England, the domicile of the family being English, and the arms of the present Mr. Chisholm-Batten, though including the quartering for Chisholm, is usually marshalled as allowed in the College of Arms by English rules.

Though there does not appear to have been any subsequent rematriculation in favour of the heir male who succeeded as "The Chisholm," the undifferenced arms were also considered to have devolved upon him together with the supporters. On the death of the last known male heir of the family, Roderick Donald Matheson Chisholm, The Chisholm, in 1887, Mr. James Chisholm Gooden-Chisholm claimed the chieftainship as heir of line, and in that year the Gooden-Chisholm arms were again rematriculated. In this case supporters were added to the again undifferenced arms of Chisholm, but a slight alteration in the supporters was made, the clubs being reversed and placed to rest on the ground.

Amongst the many other unt.i.tled Scottish families who rightly bear supporters, may be mentioned Gibsone of Pentland, Barclay of Urie, Barclay of Towie, Drummond of Megginch, Maclachlan of that Ilk, "Cluny" Macpherson, Cunninghame, and Brisbane of that Ilk.

Armorial matters in the Channel Islands present a very unsatisfactory state of affairs. There never appears to have been any Visitation, and the arms of Channel Island families which officially pa.s.s muster must be confined to those of the very few families (for example, De Carteret, Dobree, and Tupper) who have found it necessary or advisable on their own initiative to register their arms in the official English sources. In none of these instances have supporters been allowed, nor I believe did any of these families claim to use them, but some (Lempriere, De Saumerez, and other families) a.s.sert the possession of such a distinction by prescriptive right. If the right to supporters be a privilege of peerage, or if, as in Scotland, it anciently depended upon the right of free barony, the position of these Channel Island families in former days as seignorial lords was much akin. But it is highly improbable that the right to bear supporters in such cases will ever be officially recognised, and the case of De Saumerez, in which the supporters were bedevilled and regranted to descend with the peerage, will probably operate as a decisive precedent upon the point and against such a right. There are some number of families {429} of foreign origin who bear supporters or claim them by the a.s.sertion of foreign right.

Where this right can be established their use has been confirmed by Royal Licence in this country in some number of cases; for example, the cases of Rothschild and De Salis. In other cases (for example, the case of Chamier) no official record of the supporters exists with the record of the arms, and presumably the foreign right to the supporters could not have been established at the time of registration.

With regard to impersonal arms, the right to supporters in England is not easy to define. In the case of counties, crests and supporters are granted if the county likes to pay for them.

In the case of towns, the rule in England is that an ordinary town may not have supporters but that a city may, and instances are numerous where supporters have been granted upon the elevation of a town to the dignity of a city. Birmingham, Sheffield, and Nottingham are all recent instances in point. This rule, however, is not absolutely rigid, and an exception may be pointed to in the case of Liverpool, the supporters being granted in 1797, and the town not being created a city until a subsequent date. In Scotland, where, of course, until quite recently supporters were granted practically to anybody who chose to pay for them, a grant will be found for the county of Perth dated in 1800, in which supporters were included. But as to towns and cities it is no more than a matter of fees, any town in Scotland eligible for arms being at liberty to obtain supporters also if they are desired. In grants of arms to corporate bodies it is difficult to draw the line or to deduce any actual rule. In 23rd of Henry VIII. the Grocers'

Livery Company were granted "two griffins per fess gules and or," and many other of the Livery Companies have supporters to their arms. Others, for no apparent reason, are without them. The "Merchant Adventurers' Company or Hamburg Merchants" have supporters, as had both the old and the new East India Companies. The arms of Jamaica and Cape Colony and of the British North Borneo Company have supporters, but on the other hand no supporters were a.s.signed to Canada or to any of its provinces. In Ireland the matter appears to be much upon the same footing as in England, and as far as impersonal arms are concerned it is very difficult to say what the exact rule is, if this is to be deduced from known cases and past precedents.

Probably the freedom--amounting in many cases to great laxity--with which in English heraldic art the positions and att.i.tudes of supporters are changed, is the one point in which English heraldic art has entirely ignored the trammels of conventionalised officialism. There must be in this country scores of entrance gates where each {430} pillar of the gateway is surmounted by a shield held in the paws of a single supporter, and the Governmental use of the Royal supporters in an amazing variety of att.i.tudes, some of which are grossly unheraldic, has not helped towards a true understanding. The reposeful att.i.tude of watchful slumber in which the Royal lion and unicorn are so often depicted, may perhaps be in the nature of submission to the Biblical teaching of Isaiah that the lion shall lie down with the lamb (and possibly therefore also with the unicorn), in these times of peace which have succeeded those earlier days when "the lion beat the unicorn round and round the town."

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 668.--The Arms used by Kilmarnock, Ayrshire: Azure, a fess chequy gules and argent. Crest: a dexter hand raised in benediction.

Supporters: on either side a squirrel sejant proper.]

In official minds, however, the sole att.i.tude for the supporters is the rampant, or as near an approach to it as the nature of the animal will allow. A human being, a bird, or a fish naturally can hardly adopt the att.i.tude. In Scotland, the land of heraldic freedom, various exceptions to this can be found. Of these one can call to mind the arms used by the town of Kilmarnock (Fig. 668), in which the supporters, "squirrels proper," are depicted always as sejant. These particular creatures, however, would look strange to us in any other form. These arms unfortunately have never been matriculated as the arms of the town (being really the arms of the Boyd family, the attainted Earls of Kilmarnock), and consequently can hardly as yet be referred to as a definite precedent, because official matriculation might result in a similar "happening" to the change which was made in the case of the arms of Inverness. In all representations of the arms of earlier date than the matriculation, the supporters, (dexter) {431} a camel and (sinister) an elephant, are depicted _statant_ on either side of the shield, no actual contact being made between the escutcheon and the supporters. But in 1900, when in a belated compliance with the Act of 1672 the armorial bearings of the Royal Burgh of Inverness were matriculated, the position was altered to that more usually employed for supporters.

The supporters always used by Sir John Maxwell Stirling-Maxwell of Pollok are two lions sejant guardant. These, as appears from an old seal, were in use as far back as the commencement of the fifteenth century, but the supporters officially recorded for the family are two apes. In English armory one or two exceptional cases may be noticed; for example, the supporters of the city of Bristol, which are: "On either side, on a mount vert, a unicorn sejant or, armed, maned, and unguled sable." Another instance will be found in the supporters of Lord Rosmead, which are: "On the dexter side an ostrich and on the sinister side a kangaroo, both regardant proper." From the nature of the animal, the kangaroo is depicted sejant.

Supporters in Germany date from the same period as with ourselves, being to be met with on seals as far back as 1276. At first they were similarly purely artistic adjuncts, but they have retained much of this character and much of the purely permissive nature in Germany to the present day. It was not until about the middle of the seventeenth century that supporters were granted or became hereditary in that country. Grants of supporters can be found in England at an earlier date, but such grants were isolated in number. Nevertheless supporters had become hereditary very soon after they obtained a regularly heraldic (as opposed to a decorative) footing. Their use, however, was governed at that period by a greater freedom as to alteration and change than was customary with armory in general. Supporters were an adjunct of the peerage, and peers were not subject to the Visitations. With his freedom from arrest, his high social position, and his many other privileges of peerage, a peer was "too big" a person formerly to accept the dictatorial armorial control which the Crown enforced upon lesser people. Short of treason, a peer in any part of Great Britain for most practical purposes of social life was above the ordinary law. In actual fact it was only the rights of one peer as opposed to the rights of another peer that kept a Lord of Parliament under any semblance of control. When the great lords of past centuries could and did raise armies to fight the King a peer was hardly likely to, nor did he, brook much interference.

Of the development of supporters in Germany Strohl writes:--

"Only very late, about the middle of the seventeenth century, were supporters granted as hereditary, but they appear in the arms of {432} burghers in the first half of the fifteenth century, and the arms of many towns also possess them as decorative adjuncts.

"The first supporters were human figures, generally portraits of the arms-bearers themselves; then women, young men, and boys, so-called _Schildbuben_. In the second half of the fourteenth century animals appear: lions, bears, stags, dogs, griffins, &c. In the fifteenth century one frequently encounters angels with richly curling hair, saints (patrons of the bearer or of the town), then later, nude wild men and women (_Waldmenschen_) thickly covered with hair, with garlands round their loins and on their heads. The thick, hairy covering of the body in the case of women is only to be met with in the very beginning. Later the endeavour was to approach the feminine ideal as nearly as possible, and only the garlands were retained to point out the origin and the home of these figures.

"At the end of the fifteenth and in the sixteenth century, there came into fashion lansquenets, huntsmen, pretty women and girls, both clothed and unclothed." Speaking of the present day, and from the executive standpoint, he adds:--

"Supporters, with the exception of flying angels, should have a footing on which they can stand in a natural manner, whether it be gra.s.s, a pedestal, a tree, or line of ornament, and to place them upon a ribbon of a motto is less suitable because a thin ribbon can hardly give the impression of a sufficiently strong support for the invariably heavy-looking figures of the men or animals. The supporters of the shield may at the same time be employed as bearers of the helmets. They bear the helmets either over the head or hold them in their hands. Figures standing near the shield, but not holding or supporting it in any way, cannot in the strict sense of the word be designated supporters; such figures are called _Schildwachter_ (shield-watchers or guardians)."

HUMAN FIGURES AS SUPPORTERS

Of all figures employed as supporters probably human beings are of most frequent occurrence, even when those single and double figures referred to on an earlier page, which are not a real part of the heraldic achievement, are excluded from consideration. The endless variety of different figures perhaps gives some clue to the reason of their frequent occurrence.

Though the nude human figure appears (male) upon the shield of Dalziel and (female) in the crest of Ellis (Agar-Ellis, formerly Viscount Clifden), one cannot call to mind any instance of such an occurrence in the form of supporters, though possibly the supporters of the {433} Glaziers' Livery Company ["Two naked boys proper, each holding a long torch inflamed of the last"] and of the Joiners' Livery Company ["Two naked boys proper, the dexter holding in his hand an emblematical female figure, crowned with a mural coronet sable, the sinister holding in his hand a square"] might be cla.s.sed in such a character. Nude figures in armory are practically always termed "savages," or occasionally "woodmen" or "wildmen," and garlanded about the loins with foliage.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 669.--Arms of Arbroath: Gules, a portcullis with chains pendent or. Motto: "Propter Libertatem." Supporters: dexter, St. Thomas a Becket in his archiepiscopal robes all proper; sinister, a Baron of Scotland armed cap-a-pie, holding in his exterior hand the letter from the Convention of the Scottish Estates, held at Arbroath in the year of 1320, addressed to Pope John XXII., all proper.]

With various adjuncts--clubs, banners, trees, branches, &c.--_Savages_ will be found as the supporters of the arms of the German Emperor, and in the sovereign arms of Brunswick, Denmark, Schwarzburg-Sondershausen, and Rudolstadt, as well as in the arms of the kingdom of Prussia. They also appear in the arms of the kingdom of Greece, though in this case they should perhaps be more properly described as figures of Hercules.