Page:A Complete Guide to Heraldry.djvu/488

 Sir Jonathan Wathen Waller is, according to the tradition of his family, descended." This pedigree is set out in Burke's Peerage, which assigns as arms to this family the old coat of Waller of Groombridge, with the augmented crest, viz.: "On a mount vert, a walnut-tree proper, and pendent therefrom an escutcheon of the arms of France with a label of three points argent." Considerable doubt, however, is thrown upon the descent by the fact that in 1814, when Sir Jonathan (then Mr. Phipps) obtained a Royal Licence to assume the name and arms of Waller, a very different and much bedevilled edition of the arms and not the real coat of Waller of Groombridge was exemplified to him. These supporters (the grant was quite ultra vires, Sir Jonathan being a domiciled Englishman) do not appear in any of the Peerage books, and it is not clear to what extent they were ever made use of, but in a painting which came under my notice the Duke of Orleans, in his surcoat of France, could be observed handing his sword across the front of the escutcheon to Mr. (or Sir) Richard Waller. The supporters of the Needlemakers' Company are commonly known as Adam and Eve, and the motto of the Company ["They sewed fig-leaves together and made themselves aprons"] bears this supposition out. The blazon, however, is: "Dexter, a man; sinister, a woman, both proper, each wreathed round the waist with leaves of the last, in the woman's dexter hand a needle or." The supporters of the Earl of Aberdeen are, "dexter an Earl and sinister a Doctor of Laws, both in their robes all proper."

Highlanders in modern costume figure as supporters to the arms of Maconochie-Wellwood, and in more ancient garb in the case of Cluny Macpherson, and soldiers in the uniforms of every regiment, and savages from every clime, have at some time or other been pressed into heraldic service as supporters; but a work on Armory is not a handbook on costume, military and civil, nor is it an ethnographical directory, which it would certainly become if any attempt were to be made to enumerate the different varieties of men and women, clothed and unclothed, which have been used for the purposes of supporters.

When we turn to animals as supporters, we at once get to a much wider range, and but little can be said concerning them beyond stating that though usually rampant, they are sometimes sejant, and may be guardant or regardant. One may, however, append examples of the work of different artists, which will doubtless serve as models, or possibly may develop ideas in other artists. The Lion naturally first claims