Page:The Ancestor Number 1.djvu/270

 2IO THE ANCESTOR The difficulties which the study of early heraldry presents to the student whose knowledge of it is bounded by the covers of one of the aforesaid popular manuals are allowed to occupy two paragraphs and no more, the author being content to record his opinion that the early arms painters were careless fellows, who in their wanton ignorance of the rules of heraldry which were to be laid down after they had passed away have puzzled and worried Mr. Foster. Nor must we omit to mention the cross moline, patonce, patee and flory, which are often confused, or imperfectly drawn, by the herald-painter. So with the cross moline, cercelle and recercelle, which are equally confounded in blason and in trick ; even crosses crosslet are often drawn as crosses botonnee in early tricks, probably because it was easier to do so. In a less degree the bend, bendlet or baston, the quarter and the canton, fret and fretty, flory and florettee, often represent the caprice or indifference of the herald or the herald- painter of each particular roll. The complaint that in ancient rolls the crosses are 'often confused or imperfectly drawn ' translates itself into the fact that Mr. Foster has never grasped the early system of armory, and has therefore been ' often confused ' by artistic conventions to which he has been unable to fit the vocabulary of his hand- book. We deny that original evidences will be found for this confusion and indifference. In setting about this work Mr. Foster must have handled enough material to have learnt, had he been teachable, such elementary facts as that the crosslet which he is pleased to call a cross botonnSe is not a form which carelessness sometimes substituted for the cross crosslet^ but is the all but invariable convention in medieval art for the cross crosslet itself, and this not because it was ' easier to do so,' but because it was the more beautiful form. That a man should have examined a single roll of arms without learning that a quarter is the more ancient name, and the better name to boot, for what was in late heraldry called a canton is nothing short of amazing. What Mr. Foster understands by a fret is a late and debased form of the old fretty shape, which does not occur in early rolls, although it is to be found freely enough in the drawings which in the body of this book represent for Mr. Foster's subscribers the conventions of early heraldry. Flory and florettee have also no separate meaning outside the pages of the heraldry book makers. In the one paragraph which is all that Mr. Foster, for patent reasons, is willing to spare for the discussion of the ' quaint