Page:A Complete Guide to Heraldry.djvu/635

Rh canton for the husband and a cross crosslet for the wife. In this case the arms were impaled. One is puzzled to know why the grant to the wife was necessary as well as the grant to the husband.

In 1865 Mrs. Massy, widow of Hugh Massy, assumed the name and arms of Richardson in lieu of Massy. Mrs. Massy was the only child of Major Richardson Brady, who had previously assumed by Royal Licence the arms of Brady only. The painting upon the patent is a lozenge, bearing the arms of Massy, and upon an escutcheon of pretence the arms of Richardson. Of course, the arms of Mrs. Massy, as a widow, previously to the issue of the Royal Licence were a lozenge of the arms of Massy, and on an escutcheon of pretence the arms of Brady.

A few years ago a Grant of Arms was issued to a Mrs. Sharpe, widow of Major Sharpe. The arms were to be borne by herself and the descendants of her late husband, and by the other descendants of her husband's father, so that there is no doubt whatever that these were the arms of Sharpe. I have no idea who Mrs. Sharpe was, and I do not know that she possessed any arms of her own. Let us presume she did not. Now, unless a widow may bear the arms of her late husband on a lozenge, whether she has arms to impale with them or not, how on earth is she to bear arms at all? And yet the grant most distinctly was primarily to Mrs. Sharpe.

After the death of General Ross, the victor of Bladensburg, a grant of an augmentation was made to be placed upon the monument to the memory of the General (Plate II.). The grant also was for the augmentation to be borne by his widow during her widowhood. But no mention appears of the arms of Mrs. Ross, nor, as far as I can ascertain, was proof officially made that Mrs. Ross was in her own right entitled to arms; consequently, whether she really was or was not, we may assume that as far as the official authorities officially knew she was not, and the same query formulated with regard to the Sharpe patent holds good in this case. The painting on the patent shows the arms upon a shield, and placed above is a helmet surmounted by the crest of augmentation and the family crest of Ross.

So that from the cases we have mentioned instances can be found of the arms of a wife upon a shield alone, and of a widow having arms depicted upon a lozenge, such arms being on different occasions the impaled arms of her husband and herself, or the arms of herself alone or of her husband alone; and we have arms granted to a wife, and depicted as an impalement or upon a lozenge. So that from grants it seems almost impossible to deduce any decided and unquestionable rule as to how wife or widow should bear a coat of arms. There is,