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Rh indivisible to be perpetuated in this form. So definite was this rule, that in only one of the series of Garter plates anterior to the Tudor period is any shield found containing more than four quarters, though many of these are grand quarters containing other coats borne sub-quarterly. The one instance which I refer to as an exception is the shield of the Duke D'Urbino, and it is quite possible that this should not be quoted as an instance in point. He appears to have borne in the ordinary way four quarters, but he subsequently added thereto two quarterings which may or may not have been one and the same coat of arms by way of augmentation. These he placed in pale in the centre of the others, thus making the shield apparently one of six quarters.




 * —Arms of George Nevill, Baron Abergavenny (d. 1535): Quarterly, 1. gules, on a saltire argent, a rose of the field (Nevill); 2. chequy or and azure (Warenne); 3. or, three chevrons gules (Clare); 4. quarterly argent and gules, in the second and third quarters a fret or, over all a bend sable (Le Despencer); 4. gules, on a fess between six cross crosslets or, a crescent sable (for Beauchamp). (Add. MS. 22, 306.)

But one is safe in the assertion that during the Plantagenet period no more than four quarters were ordinarily placed upon a shield. Then we come to the brief period of "squeezed in" quarterings (Figs. 757 and 758). In the early Visitations we get instances of six, eight, and even a larger number, and the start once being made, and the number of four relinquished, there was of course no reason why it should not be extended indefinitely. This appears to have rapidly become the case, and we find that schemes of quarterings are now proved and recorded officially in England and Ireland some of which exceed 200 in number. The record number of officially proved and recorded quarterings is at present held by the family of Lloyd, of Stockton in Chirbury, co. Salop, but many of the quarterings of this family are mere repetition owing to constant intermarriages, and to the fact that a single Welsh line of male descent often results in a number of different shields. Welsh arms did not originally have the hereditary unchangeability we are accustomed to in English heraldry, and moreover a large proportion are later inventions borne to denote descent and are not arms actually used by those they stand for, so that the recorded scheme