Page:The Ancestor Number 1.djvu/127

 THE ANCESTOR 87 arms at their pleasure ' ^ ; but he calls such escutcheons 'false/ only in the sense that they exhibited metal charged upon metal and colour upon colour, and not because it was unlawful to bear them. In Harleian MS. 6064, there are some rules of armory compiled by an anonymous writer of the fifteenth century. He again lays down that arms may be assumed on a man's mere motion, and quotes an earlier author whom I am unable to identify — ut prohat Fretolphus in tractatu 5U0 de armis. Our first printed treatise upon heraldry, con- tained in the Book of St. Albans and published in 1486, takes up precisely the same ground. The author speaks of arms granted by a prince or lord, but declares that ' armys bi a mannys propur auctorite take, if an other man have not borne theym afore, be of strength enogh.' ' It is the opynyon,' he goes on to say, ' of moni men that an herrod of armis may gyve armys. Bot I say if any sych armys be borne by any herrod gyven, that thoos armys be of no more auctorite then thoos armys the wich be take by a mannys awne auctorite.* Such were the rules of heraldry at the time the College of Arms was founded, and such is the law of England at the present hour. Any subject may lawfully assume arms of his own mere motion, and any one who has done service worthy to be remembered — any officer who has fought for his country, or any citizen who has served as mayor of his native town — is justified in making use of his legal right. In saying this, it will not I hope be supposed that I am actuated by any feeling of hostility to the College of Arms, an institution for which I personally have much respect. The College has a great his- toric position, has done good work in the past, and if Parlia- ment would treat it with less negligence and meanness, may do good work again. With the efforts of the heralds to check the illegal usurpation of coats belonging to other families, I am in entire sympathy, and I have seen so much of the evils and inconvenience which result from the practice, that I must join with ' X ' in advising those guilty of it to go to the College, and find out what their position is. I know an old hall in Yorkshire, of which the owner in Charles II. 's time ' annexed * somebody else's coat of arms. These arms were placed upon the tapestry in the parlour, upon the plate, the china, the monuments and hatchments in the parish church. Within the last ten years the present representative of that 1 B. M. Grenville, 746.