Mark Antony Lower

“ Some families, as has already been observed, have no crests; a still greater number have no mottoes; and supporters belong to an exclusive few. Badges are still more unusual, and in modern times it would perhaps be a matter of difficulty to enumerate twenty families who use them.
Badge, in its ordinary acceptation, signifies the mark or token of any thing; thus we are accustomed to call fetters the badge of slavery, and a plain gold ring the badge of matrimony; and thus in a figurative, or moral sense, Shakspeare says,
“Sweet mercy is nobility’s true badge.” ”

“ The College of Arms, or, as it is often called, the “Heralds’ College,” owes its origin as a corporation to a monarch who has the misfortune to occupy a very unenviable place in the scroll of fame; to a man whose abilities and judgment would have received all due honour from posterity had they been coupled with the attributes of justice and benevolence, and attended with a better claim to the sceptre of these realms. ”

“ Men are known by titles of honour, by titles of disgrace, or by titles given to them on account of some individual quality. A brave man will be called the lion, a ferocious one the tiger. Others are named after a signal act of their lives, or from some peculiarity of personal appearance; such as the slayer-of-three-bears, the taker-of-so-many-scalps, or straight-limbs, long-nose, and so on. Some of these, especially such as express approbation or esteem, are worn as proudly by their savage owners as that of duke or marquis is by European nobles. ”

“ As Saracen-killing has long ceased to be a favourite amusement,—as the winning of standards is an undertaking as rare as it is perilous,—as few in protestant England have the good fortune to serve abbots and bishops,—and, as a grant of arms by the heralds is a somewhat expensive affair,—how very few have now the chance of becoming gentlemen in the heraldrical sense of the term. Widely at variance with the courtesies of every-day life are these antiquated laws of chivalry!
We have seen that nearly every man, from the throne to the stable, each in his own sphere, is recognized as a gentleman ”

“ In these embroidered scenes neither the banner nor the shield is furnished with proper arms. Some of the shields bear the rude effigies of a dragon, griffin, serpent or lion, others crosses, rings, and various fantastic devices; [37] but these, in the opinion of the most learned antiquaries, are mere ornaments, or, at best, symbols, more akin to those of classical antiquity than to modern heraldry. Nothing but disappointment awaits the curious armorist, who seeks in this venerable memorial the pale, the bend, and other early elements of arms. ”

“ The age of chivalry may be past—the knight may no more be seen issuing from the embattled portal-arch on his barbed charger, his lance glittering in the sun, his banner streaming to the breeze,—but the spirit of chivalry can never die ”

“ Now these two feelings, though they often combine in one individual, have no necessary connexion with each other. Man is said to be a hunting animal. Some hunt for foxes; others for fame or fortune. Others hunt in the intellectual field; some for the arcana of nature and of mind; some for the roots of words or the origin of things. I am fond of hunting out a pedigree. Parva decent parvum.
Family pride, abstractedly considered, is one of the coarsest feelings of which our nature is susceptible.
“Those who on glorious ancestors enlarge,
Produce their debt instead of their discharge.” ”

“ To no word, perhaps, are attached ideas more extraordinary, and of greater antiquity, than to that of dragon. We find it consecrated by the religion of the earliest people, and become the object of their mythology. It got mixed up with fable, and poetry, and history, till it was universally believed, and was to be found everywhere but in nature. [122] In our days nothing of [Pg 93] the kind is to be seen, excepting a harmless animal hunting its insects. The light of these days has driven the fiery dragon to take refuge among nations not yet visited by the light of civilization. ”

“ It is a sour, malignant, and envious disposition, without taste for the reality, or for any image or representation of virtue, that sees with joy the unmerited fall of what had long flourished in splendour and in honour. I do not like to see anything destroyed, any void produced in society, any ruin on the face of the land.” [239]
It is a fact not perhaps generally known that poverty formerly disqualified a peer from holding his dignity. In the reign of Edward IV, George Neville, duke of Bedford, was degraded on this account by Act of Parliament. ”

“ Many persons regard arms as nothing more than a set of uncouth and unintelligible emblems by which families are distinguished from one another; the language by which they are described as an antiquated “jargon;” and both as little worthy of an hour’s examination as astrology, alchemy or palmistry. This is a mistake; and such individuals are guilty, however unintentionally, of a great injustice to a lordly, poetical, and useful science.
That Heraldry is a lordly science none will deny ”

“ Taking into consideration the great antiquity of these “name-devices,” and their early introduction into the armorial shield, I cannot see any good reason for the strong prejudices which have existed against them in modern times. To me, indeed, they appear not only ‘allowable’ but ‘commendable’ armory; for arms, like names, are signs of personality, and therefore those which ‘speak to the eye’ most intelligibly are preferable to those charges which have in themselves no meaning. ”

“ A person who by birth, education, and wealth, is entitled to the distinction of gentleman, and who chooses to devote his capital to agriculture may be properly designated a farming-gentleman, though the occupation of a large estate without those qualifications can never constitute a gentleman-farmer. Tenant-farmer, a phrase which has lately been in the mouth of every politician, is as fine a piece of tautology as ‘coat-making tailor’ or ‘shoe-mending cobbler’ would be.
“It maketh me laugh to see,” says Sir John Ferne’s Columel, “a jolly peece of worke it were, to see plow-men made Gentle-men!” ”

“ Sir William Segar is, I believe, the first of our heralds who published on the subject. His ‘Book of Honor and Armes,’ enlarged and republished in 1602, under the title of ‘Honor Military and Ciuill,’ relates as its designation implies, not to the art of blazon, but to dignities. His zeal for antiquity, like that of his contemporaries, outruns historical truth, as a proof of which it may be mentioned that he deduces the origin of knighthood from the fabulous Round Table of King Arthur. His work possesses, however, great merit, and exhibits much learning and profound research. ”

“ Esquireship, like knighthood, is a military dignity; and its origin is perfectly clear. In the earliest times, possibly in the days of Olybion himself, every warrior of distinction was attended by his armour-bearer. Hence in the romances of the middle ages we find the knight almost invariably attended by a subordinate personage, half-friend, half-servant, who carried his shield and other armour, and who thence acquired the designation of ecuyer, esquire, or (Anglicè) shield-bearer. ”

“ A warrior returning victorious from battle, with his buckler sprinkled with blood, would, in the early days of heraldry, readily have adopted the bearing afterwards called ‘guttée de sang.’ In those times the besiegers of a fortress were often assailed with boiling pitch, poured by the besieged through the machicolations of the wall constructed for such purposes. Splashes of this pitch falling upon some besieger’s shield, in all probability gave the first idea of ‘guttée de poix.’ The fusil is like the lozenge, but narrower. ”

“ The passion for emblazoning the arms of the nobility and gentry upon glass, in the windows of churches and halls, imposed considerable employment, and brought no small emolument, to the officers of arms, who undertook to marshal and arrange them, as well as often to draw up short pedigrees of such families, which were set forth in the gloomy chancel or the sombre hall of the long-descended patron or lord of the mansion, exemplified with the shield rich in quarterings. ”

“ In some cases individuals, particularly the more eminent warriors, formerly assumed similar devices, commemorative of their prowess. “And this,” says Mr. R. C. Taylor, an American antiquary, “is Indian Heraldry, as useful, as commemorative, as inspiriting to the red warrior and his race, as that when, in the days of the Crusades, the banner and the pennon, the device and the motto, the crest and the war-cry exercised their potent influence on European chivalry.” ”

“ CHAPTER X. Distinctions of Rank and Honour.
Any treatise on Heraldry, whatever its scope or its design, would certainly be deemed defective if it did not embrace this subject. Heraldry consists of two distinct parts, namely, first, the knowledge of titles and dignities, the proper sphere of each, and the ceremonials connected with them; and, secondly, the science of blazon, or the rules by which armorial insignia are composed and borne. One treats of honours; the other of the symbols of those honours. The first, though some will refuse to concede it that distinction, is a science ”

“ Among those Welsh chieftains who gallantly defended their country from the aggressions of the English, in the reign of Henry II, was Kadivor ap Dynawal, who recaptured the castle of Cardigan, by scalade, from the Earl of Clare. For this action he was enriched by Rhys, prince of South Wales, with several estates, and permitted to bear, as coat armour, a castle, three scaling-ladders, and a bloody spear. These arms were borne by Kadivor’s descendants, the Lloyds of Milfield, co. Cardigan, baronets, till the extinction of the family in the last century. ”

“ In sovereigns, whom our old writers quaintly term ‘fountains of honour,’ is vested the right of conferring dignities, and it is by a judicious use of this prerogative that the balance of a limited monarchy is properly preserved. Were there no difference of grade amongst the subjects of a state, the monarch would be too far removed from his people, and mutual disgust or indifference would be the consequence. ”

“ The term gentleman is, perhaps, one of the most indefinite in the English language. George IV prided himself in being the finest gentleman in Europe; every peer of the realm is a gentleman; every judge, member of parliament, and magistrate is a gentleman; every clergyman, lawyer, and doctor is a gentleman; every merchant and tradesman is a gentleman; every farmer and mechanic is a gentleman; every draper’s errand-boy and tailor’s apprentice is a gentleman ”

“ A motto is a word, or short sentence, inserted in a scroll placed generally under a coat of arms, and occasionally over the crest. The word is Italian, and equivalent to verbum. As usual with things of long standing, a variety of opinions exists as to the origin of these pithy and interesting appendages to family ensigns. It would be [Pg 152] erroneous to suppose that mottoes belong exclusively to Heraldry, for they are of much more antient date than the first outline of that system. Both sacred and profane history furnish us with proofs of their very early use. ”

“ I purpose to give a short dissertation on the utility of Heraldry, but first let me say a few words on the poetry of the subject. Do not the ‘Lion of England,’ the ‘Red-Cross Banner,’ the ‘White and Red Roses,’ the ‘Shamrock of Ireland,’ and ‘Scotia’s barbed Thistle’ occupy a place in the breast of every patriot? ”

“ The heraldric tiger furnishes another proof of the ignorance of our ancestors in the natural history of foreign animals. It is represented thus:
Among the domestic animals borne in arms are the horse, the ass, the camel, the bull, the ox, the greyhound, the talbot or mastiff, the ram, the lamb, the hog, &c.
The horse, from his associations with chivalry and war, has ever been a favourite charge. The lamb, as commonly represented, with the nimbus round its head and the banner of the cross, is termed a holy lamb. The alant or wolf-dog, an extinct species, is of rare occurrence in arms. ”

“ The origin of the expression ‘a coat of arms’ we have already seen, as also the cause why heraldric ensigns are borne upon a shield. Shields have been made of every imaginable shape according to the taste of the age or the fancy of the bearer, with these two restrictions, that the shields of knights-bannerets must be square, and those of ladies in the form of a lozenge. The most usual, because the most convenient, shape is that which is technically called the heater-shield—from its resemblance to the heater of an iron—with some slight variations. ”

“ If we derive heraldry from the standards of antient nations, then, undoubtedly, ANIMALS are the very oldest of armorial charges, since those standards almost invariably exhibited some animal as their device. Familiar examples present themselves in the Roman eagle and the Saxon horse. Of QUADRUPEDS the lion occupies the first place, and is far more usual than any other animal whatever. The king of beasts is found in the heraldric field in almost every variety of posture, and tinctured with every hue recognized by the laws of blazon. ”

“ To descend to the lesser nobility, Knight is synonymous with servant, a servant in a threefold sense, first to religion, next to his sovereign, and thirdly to his ‘ladye;’ while an Esquire was in antient times ecuyer or scutifer, the knight’s shield-bearer. Among the Orientals official duties are still attached [Pg 200] to every title of honour; and it is worthy of remark that the highest of all titles, that of king, has never, in any country, been merely honorary; the responsible duties of government having always been connected with it. ”

“ It is scarcely necessary to state that ‘abatements of honour’ exist only in theory. Who ever did or would [Pg 314] voluntarily bear a badge of disgrace? Every one deserving either of them would sooner relinquish all claim to the bearing of arms than continue it with such a stigma.
Leigh, Guillim, and other old writers are sufficiently prolix on this subject, which would seem to belong exclusively to English heraldry; for Menestrier calls them English fooleries (‘Sottises Anglaises,’) and Montagu thinks “we shall seek in vain for a more appropriate designation.” ”