Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 7.djvu/237

 BORNE BY THE PLANTAGENETS. 161 it will be observed that I have omitted two, viz., the second, who was William of Hatfield, and is said to have died at the age of eight years ; and the sixth, who ^vas William of Windsor, and died in his infancy, I am not aware of any arms having been appropriated to either of these Princes. It is by no means clear at what age or on what occasions arms were usually assigned to a young prince, unless he was advanced to some title or honour to which armorial bearings were incident. We read of Richard of Bourdeaux, after- wards Richard II., having borne, in the lifetime of his father, the arms of the Black Prince with the cross of St. George on the middle point of the label, though he was only ten years of age at his father's death, and had not had any title con- ferred on him. After the death of his father, he removed the cross of St. George, and bore the same arms as liis father till the death of Edward III. Nothing has been said of the daughters of the before- mentioned Kings ; for, in general, unless in the case of an heiress, females till they married had no armorial bearings. After marriage the arms of the lady's father were at first used to show the alliance, but they were not Jier arms. In course of time the paternal coat came to be associated with that of the husband, first by dimidiation, and afterwards by the impale- ment of the entire coats ; and this union of the tw^o was considered as the armorial bearing of the wife. A few instances occur of arms being specially assigned to females, and perhaps one of the earliest was in the case of Antigone, an illegitimate daughter of Humphry, Duke of Gloucester, son of Henry IV. The reason probably was, that she would not otherwise have had any arms to impale on her marriage. The coat assigned her was that of her fiither with a baton azure over all ; which was impaled with the arms of her husband, Henry Grey, Earl of Tanquerville, wdiom she mar- ried in 11th Henry VI. Sec Sandford, p. 319. Seeing how definitely the arms of the junior members of the family of Plantagenet mark out certain periods, it will be easily imagined that great must be the pleasure with which an archaeologist, curious to ascertain the date of a tomb, window, or building, recognises one of these differenced coats. Any extension, therefore, of our information on this branch of heraldry must, I think, be acceptable to the mem- bers of the Institute ; and it is to be hoped that in the course