Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 10.djvu/241

 10 s. x. SEPT. 5, loos.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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HERALDIC QUERIES : ARMS OF MARRIED WOMAN (10 S. ix. 290). A good deal of matter akin to the subject of F.'s questions has, I fancy, been discussed in earlier numbers of ' N. & Q.' both by myself and other writers.

1. F.'s first question is not quite so simple as it would appear. There is no difficulty in the mere marshalling of the arms of a married woman who is a peeress not in her own right, and also an heraldic heiress ; the difficulty would seem to be whether she is entitled to bear those arms in the same manner as her husband does of course during their married life.

In the most common case, perhaps, when the wife is not an heraldic heiress, no diffi- culty arises, as the husband and wife would equally be entitled to bear their joint arms in the same way, namely, impaled.

In the case given by F., where the wife is an heraldic heiress (and here it seems to me to make no difference whether the husband is a peer or a commoner), the hus- band is entitled, according to the modern system of marshalling, to bear his wife's arms on an escutcheon of pretence upon his own. The question propounded by your correspondent is, Is the wife entitled to bear them in the same way ?

Ordinarily, I am inclined to think, this is done. But as this point has been touched upon by an heraldic writer whose opinion is entitled to great weight, I should like to give his view upon the matter. The late Dr. Woodward at p. 142 of vol. ii. of his ' Heraldry, English and Foreign ' < 1896), says:

" Ignorance or forgetfulness of the old English custom that, unless a man had married an heiress, he was content to use his own arms only, and that an impaled coat (as shown by numberless ancient seals) was anciently borne only by the wife, has led to some anomalies in modern practice. Nowadays we find ladies using their husbands' coat augmented with their own paternal arms on an escutcheon of pretence. For this I find no ancient precedent. This arrangement properly belongs to the husband only. The escutcheon of pretence (if rightly assumed) has indeed become a portion of his arms, but the wife, according to ancient precedent, should only impale his arms with her own, whether the coats be simple or quartered."

From this it will be seen that Dr. Woodward considers that in the case put by F. the wife must bear her own arms impaled only by those of her husband, and not, as he would bear them, on an escutcheon of pretence. But of course the wife's achieve- ment would be crestless, and would be borne upon a shield so long, at least, as she con- tinued his wife.

2. If she became a widow, the arms would be borne by her on a lozenge ; and this brings us to F.'s second question. A lozenge is the peculiar province of a widow or of a spinster, neither of whom, of course , is entitled to a crest. The only circum- stances in which a married woman would still bear arms on a lozenge would be, for example, if F.'s peeress (not in her own right) were to marry again, and with a commoner ; then, as I understand the rules of marshalling, she would continue to bear the arms of her late husband and her own on a lozenge (she being his widow), and on a separate shield her second husband would charge in pretence (she being an heraldic heiress) her paternal arms upon his own the lozenge and the shield being grouped in a single composition, the shield taking precedence.

If she remarried a peer, she would not retain the arms of her former husband unless his rank had been higher than that of her second husband.

Should an ordinary widow marry a second time, she would cease to bear the arms of her first husband.

In addition to Dr. Woodward's excellent work I would refer F. to Boutell's even better- known ' Heraldry, Historical and Popular ' (1864), where he will find some useful in- formation on the subject.

J. S. UDAL, F.S.A. Antigua, W.I.

HENRY ELLISON (10 S. x. 8, 95, 137). I do not grudge Ellison any laurels to which he is entitled, but to give him thirty-eight pages of a work in which Arthur O'Shaugh- nessy has but twenty-one, Philip Bourke Marston twenty-three, Lord de Tabley thirty-two, and Christina Rossetti herself only forty-six, is, I think, to exaggerate his importance. And in this I am confirmed when I find the critic who introduces him claiming for a certain piece that it is " of such quality as ranges it with the type of poems represented by some of the ' higher strains ' of Dr. Henry More and Henry and Thomas Vaughan, Milton's ' L' Allegro ' and ' II Penseroso,' and Words- worth's 'Intimations of Immortality' all of the imperishable stuff and touched with the light of the Neo-Platonists. "

C. C. B.

Z : NAME or THE LETTER (10 S. x. 107). As a surname Izzard and its variants Izard, Izod, &c., have been in use, it will be found, more than two centuries. Bardsley's ' Dic- tionary of Surnames ' quotes 1661 ; and I think several earlier references may be found in the Probate Registry Indices at Somerset House. WM. JAGGARD.