Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 9.djvu/177

 >s'OTICES OF ARCHAEOLOGICAL PUBLICATIONS. 123 aiul azure, on a bend gules tlie anus of his father, viz., the three lions of England with a label of three j)oints azure, each charged with as many fleurs- de-lis or. The arms on the bend were not those of John of Ghent, lie bore France and England quarterly with a label ermine both before and after he was Uuke of Lancaster. They were the coat of the previous Earls and Duke of Lancaster, whose heiress John of Ghent had married ; and they niay have been regarded as those of the earldom and duchy. The description of the example, taken from Mr. Montague's book, of a mode of distinguishing the arms of a base son of a noble lady, gives us, we think, the name of an article of ladies attire, to the sideless peculiarity of which Mr. Planchi', in his useful little book on costume, was, perhaps, the first to call attention, and to which, when speaking of flanches in the present work, he adverts, and says the name of it has not yet been ascertained. We refer to the garment so frequently found on effigies and in paintings of ladies of rank in the 14th and 15th centuries, giving their bodies the appearance of a shield with flanches. This, in the extract that Mr. Montague furnishes from a MS. in the Cotton Collection, is called a surcote ; which we may take to have been its name at that time, whatever may have been its designation when first introduced. After treating of blazon the author proceeds to the subject of marshall- ing. We hoped to have his opinion as to the origin of quartering, but on this he is silent. He considers the paternal arms of Eleanor of Castile, which are sculptured on her tomb, the earliest example of two coats regularly quartered on one shield yet discovered in England. He adds that " the arms of England and Ponthieu are also similarly quartered on the same monument, and also on the crosses erected to her memory.'' We apprehend this is a mistake, both as regards the monument and the crosses. Impaling simply and by dimidiation, as well as quartering, he refers to the reign of Edward I. His description of dimidiation is not quite correct. This term, he says, signifies the division of one or both coats by a perpendicular line, so as to give the appearance of one being covered by the other, the right or dexter side being appropriated to the husband, and the left or sinister to the wife. This confounds two difi"erent modes of associating the arms of husband and wife. When one coat appears to cover the other, the whole of one coat is seen, and part of the other ; ' instances of which are occasionally found, though chiefly in foreign heraldry. Dimidiation properly signifies the impalement of one-half of each coat, but there was often a little accommodation in order that the distinctive characters of neither coat might be wholly destroyed. This practice was not confined to the arms of husband and wife. Examples are met with of other coats so treated, and to it are to be attributed the extraordinary arms of some of the sea-ports, where we see monsters half lions and half ships. Mr. Planchc ascribes to it the double-headed eagle of the German empire. The origin of that bearing, and the time of its introduction, have been discussed by German and French writers with great diversity of opinion. It has been supposed however that it may have arisen from some two eagles having been made into one, though the writers are not well agreed as to what two eagles they were, or on what occasion or about what period this took place. According to Heineccius, examples occurred in the eastern empire before any trustworthy instance appears in the western. If Mr. Planche have met with anything to warrant his statement of the double- headed eagle having been produced by dimidiation, as a matter of fact, it would have been an acceptable piece of evidence on what has been a very speculative point.