Page:A Complete Guide to Heraldry.djvu/606

 few text-books carry one beyond this point. Another single quartering inherited gives five quarterings to be displayed on one shield. The usual plan is to repeat the first quartering, and gives you six, which are then arranged in two rows of three. If the shield be an impaled shield one sometimes sees them arranged in three rows of two, but this is unusual though not incorrect. But five quarterings are sometimes arranged in two rows, three in the upper and two in the lower, and with a shield of the long pointed variety this plan may be adopted with advantage. Subsequent quarterings, as they are introduced by subsequent marriages, take their places, Nos. 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, and so on ad infinitum.

In arranging them on one shield, the order in which they devolve (according to the pedigree and not necessarily according to the date order in which they are inherited) must be rigidly adhered to; but a person is perfectly at liberty (1) to repeat the first quartering at the end to make an even number or not at his pleasure, but no more than the first quartering must be repeated in such cases; (2) to arrange the quarters in any number of rows he may find most convenient according to the shape of the space the quarterings will occupy.

Upon the Continent it is usual to specify the number and position of the lines by which the shield is divided. Thus, while an English herald would say simply, Quarterly of six, and leave it to the painter's or engraver's taste to arrange the quarterings in three rows of two, or in two rows of three, a French or German herald would ordinarily specify the arrangement to be used in distinct terms.

If a man possessing only a simple coat of arms without quarterings marry an heiress with a number of quarterings (e.g. say twenty), he himself places the arms and quarterings of his wife in pretence. Their children eventually, as a consequence, inherit twenty-one quarterings. The first is the coat of their father, the second is the first coat of the mother, and the remaining nineteen follow in a regular sequence, according to their position upon their mother's achievement.

To sum the rule up, it is necessary first to take all the quarterings inherited from the father and arrange them in a proper sequence, and then follow on in the same sequence with the arms and quarterings inherited from the mother.

The foregoing explanations should show how generation by generation quarterings are added to a paternal shield, but I have found that many of those who possess a knowledge of the laws to this extent are yet at a loss, given a pedigree, to marshal the resulting quarterings in their right order.

Given your pedigree—the first quartering must be the pronominal coat (I am here presuming no change of name or arms has occurred), which is the coat of the strict male line of descent. Then follow this male line back as far as it is known. The second quartering is the