perhaps primarily, for the purpose of regulating the use of coat-armour, and some of the heralds are said to have paid more attention to the armorial than to the genealogical part of their duties. This The origin of arms-bearing, of the property in arms, and of their descendible nature, is succinctly explained by an able writer as follows: There can be little doubt that heraldic devices, which in course of time have come to be regarded rather as the property of a family than of an individual, were originally a purely personal distinction. Their primary use was to distinguish the warrior in the field, when his form and features were hidden by his armour. purpose would have been frustrated, if the same emblems had been adopted by several persons. Hence, the assertion of an exclusive property in arms. It was natural that the device which had been borne with honour by the father should be adopted by the son, and that its assumption by a stranger should be resented as the invasion of a prior right. Hence, the hereditary character of the right to coat armour. * From The form, colour, and symbolism of these devices adapted them admirably to schemes of decoration. They spread from the shield of the soldier to the silken surcoat of his armour (whence came the term coat-armour), to the trappings of his horse, and to the engraving on his seal. the depositions in the Scrope and Grosvenor case,† taken between 1385 and 1390, it is clear that, long before that time, they had been used profusely, on the stonework of tombs, in the stained glass windows of abbeys and manor houses, and even on clerical vestments given to churches by patrons of livings. Many of the deponents in that case who bore arms had received them, when very young men, at battles or sieges, from their king or prince or commandant, from which it may be gathered that, notwithstanding their ornamental uses, arms still remained in their essence a badge of military service. In Grey against Hastings, another case of disputed arms, tried shortly after the case of Scrope against Grosvenor, one of the witnesses, of noble origin. deposed that he had no arms, because neither he nor any of his ancestors had ever taken part in any war.‡ So long as there was no usurpation of another's arms, there seems to have been no law to prevent the assumption * The Law of Inheritance as applied to Arms, by F. M. N., Herald and Genealogist, vol. ii. p. 1. + Nicolas. The Scrope and Grosvenor Roll, vol. 1. See particularly the depositions on pp. 91, 99, 130, 168, 170, 171, and 173. Dallaway, p. 94, citing Warburton, p. 726. of new conventional devices at pleasure, until the proclamation of Henry V. in 1418, which ordained, in effect, that no man should assume arms unless he held them by inheritance, or by gift of some person empowered to grant them. It is clear, from the evidence in the trials above cited, that, before that ordinance of Henry V. was issued, arms had become highly esteemed possessions, and its result was to enhance their value. Applications were made to the king, who is the fountain of honour, for new grants, and those applications, writes Edmondson, became so frequent and troublesome, that our sovereigns, for their own ease, impowered the two provincial kings of arms to grant arms, crests, and ensigns-armorial, within their respective provinces, with the privity and consent of the Earl Marshal.'* At the same time, that is early in the fifteenth century, gifts of arms were extended to others than militants, and, by the middle of that century, we find the records of many grants to civilians of repute, to clerics, to corporate bodies, both lay and clerical, and to trading companies. For example, arms were granted to King's College, Cambridge, and to Eton College in 1449, to the Tallow Chandlers' Company of London in 1456,† and to Peter Hellard, prior of the canons of Bridlington, in 1470.‡ The regulations made in the reign of Henry VIII., already cited at page xiv. of this introduction, specified the qualifications then required to be possessed by applicants for grants of arms, and, in the order made by Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, who was Earl Marshal from 1524 to 1533, 'As to what all degrees should pay for the grants of new arms,' it is recommended that men of the church and all temporal men of good repute, able to maintain the state of a gentleman, and all crafts and companies corporate in London and elsewhere within the realm, should have tokens of arms devised and given to them; and this is followed by a differential list of the fees to be taken for such grants from various orders of men, including bishops, abbots, priors, deans. archdeacons, clergymen, corporate crafts, and temporal men having one hundred marks and upwards by the year, in land or fees.§ This was the position at the beginning of the visitation period. The king of arms was not only to enter the pedigree of the person visited, but, if so required, was to record *Edmondson, vol. 1. p. 158. + Herald and Genealogist, vol. 1, pp. 119, 120. Surtees Society publ., vol. 41, app. p. xxxviii.; Yorks. Arch. Jour., xviii., 109. § Dallaway, p. 170. Citing Anstis, College of Heralds, vol. 2, p. 552. his arms, or grant him new arms, on payment of the fees prescribed. During that time, extending over, roughly, one hundred and fifty years, many hundreds of coats of arms were allowed, confirmed, or granted. Although before, during, and after that period, arms were granted independently of visitations, by far the largest proportion of the arms borne at the present day, derive their title from visitation records. Early rolls of arms and ancient armorial seals blazon the heraldic bearings of many knights and gentlemen who lived long before the Heralds' College was instituted, and persons who can prove descent in the male line from them have a clear, though it may be an unregistered, title to the arms of their forefathers. But, according to the present practice of the College, male descent, either from a grantee of arms, or from a family whose right to bear arms has been recognised at some visitation, is the only accepted title to an hereditary shield.* By the time that the visitation period commenced, coatarmour had ceased to be useful for the identification of the soldier. It had become merely an hereditary possession, denoting either honoured ancestry, or the attainment of honourable rank, and the style of its devices, or charges, naturally changed. They became elaborate, and in some cases involved. Part of this alteration was due to the attempts of the heralds to distinguish between the increasing number of holders, and in the case of crests, which were originally merely the ornamental apexes of helmets, these attempts to differentiate led to complicated and incongruous results, of which the reproductions on pages 160 and 192 of this volume are unhappy examples. The simple clearness of shields was also impaired by the practice of impaling the arms of wives to show alliances, and of quartering the arms of heiress-ancestresses to show descents; although, against this impaired simplicity, must be set the added value of such shields as a record of the kindred of their holders. It will be seen by a reference to the illustrations of this volume, that the shields of the sixteenth century still show freedom of treatment, and in many cases simplicity of effect, but deterioration in these respects had already set in. This was pointed out at an early date by Wyrley, an heraldic author, who, writing in 1592, protested that men's ancestors had contented themselves with certain fair, ancient, and well-known marks,' and that their successors were using something like a curtain' instead, and he expresses a wish * The_Resurrection of Heraldry, by Mr. Everard Green, Somerset Herald, Nineteenth Century Magazine for June, 1896, p. 1033. 6 that every man would content himself with his own peculiar coat of name.'* In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, both design and workmanship suffered so much from incompetent treatment, that they are said by a modern artist writer to have stumbled from feebleness to feebleness,' and, notwithstanding that this became acknowledged in the nineteenth century, and that individual efforts were made for its amendment, it was only at the close of that century that heraldic art in England began to re-attain somewhat of its old high level. It is stated by Mr. Everard Green, Somerset Herald, that instances are not wanting in which families have recovered estates by virtue of preserving the armorial escutcheons of their ancestors,‡ but, as a general rule, such armorial bearings are, at the present day, of no practical utility in this country. They are, however, still necessary for many orders of chivalry, and in some foreign countries for court appointments. The heralds still grant arms and record pedigrees for those who require them, and those pedigrees, according to modern practice, now contain references to the evidences on which they are founded. It appears by Dr. Marshall's note to Leake's return (supra cit.) that in the fifteen years ending in 1777, about 220 grants of arms were issued, § whilst according to the return made to the House of Commons in 1863 some 869 grants in all were made in the thirteen years ending in 1862, thus showing a fourfold ratio of increase in the intervening one hundred years. A return made at the present day would no doubt show a continuance of that increase; for decent people who desire the distinction, such as it is, have learnt that it is wrong to adopt, without title, the heraldic coat of another, simply because his surname is the same as theirs. The new man still obtains his grant, or confirmation of arms, as an ornamental possession which will not only serve to mark the position in life he has attained by his own exertions, but will descend to his family; while the modern democratic council of the twentieth century is as interested in its new heraldic coat as was the close incorporated company of the sixteenth century. * Wyrley, The True Use of Armorie, cited in Dugdale, The Ancient Usage in Bearing Arms, pp. 11, 13. + Mr. G. W. Eve, Decorative Heraldry, p. 2. The Nineteenth Century for June, 1896, p. 1026. § Genealogist, vol. 13, p. 137. The entire return is set out in the Herald and Genealogist, vol. 1, pp. 464-9, and the above figures will be found on p. 468. EARLIER VISITATIONS OF THE NORTH. The area of the province of Norroy, king of arms, is usually described as extending from the river of Trent northwards. The counties, and part of a county, which the area contained in 1534, are enumerated in an indenture of that date, made between Wriothsley, Garter, and Hawley, Norroy. They were Yorkshire, Richmondshire, the bishopric of Durham, Northumberland, Cumberland, Westmorland, Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, Lancashire, Shropshire, and half Staffordshire beyond_Trent.* Cheshire was excluded, because it was then in the western province assigned to March king of arms, but the title of March expired on the death of William Ballard, the last herald who held the office; his province was divided between the two remaining kings of arms, and Cheshire was then added to the province of Norroy.t Prior to the commencement of the recognised visitation period which, as already stated, began about 1530, pedigrees privately drawn up for noble families in the north were not uncommon. The Ashmole MS. 846, contains (fol. 132-139) pedigrees drawn up by Thomas Pickering, abbot of Whitby, of the families of Percy, Tyson, and Vescy, by the request of Ralph Eure in 1485, and the Harl. MS. 1171 contains (fol. 9b) a pedigree of the ancestors of Sir William Griffith, drawn up by his command in 1511. Prior to that period also the kings of arms appear to have made something very like visitations; for it is recorded that the above-named William Ballard, March king of arms, drew up in the reign of Edward IV. (that is before the 9th April, 1483), a book of pedigrees of the nobility and gentry of his province. That book was still in the College of Arms when Wanley edited the Harleian manuscripts in 1759. Although the Reverend Mark Noble, author of A History of the College of Arms was wrong in countenancing the since disproved statement that there was a visitation by the Marshal of Norroy' as early as 1412,8 yet he was probably right in his suggestion that visitations originated from some skilful and industrious herald, taking minutes of what he could obtain respecting arms and genealogies, whilst attending royal progresses, (68). *Ashmole MS. 857, p. 500. + Noble, History of the College of Arms, p. 87. Noble, sup. cit. Catalogue of Harleian Manuscripts, number 1196, § Disproved in a communication in Herald and Genealogist, vol. 6, p. 436. |