Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 09.djvu/856

* HERALDRY. 792 HERALDRY. quarters the arms of the lordship of Lome. (7) Arms of alliance, taken up by the issue -of heir- esses, to show their maternal descent. (8) Arms of adoption, borne by a stranger in blood, to ful- fill the will of a testator. The last of a family may adopt a stranger to bear his name and arms ami possess his estate. Arms of adoption can only be borne with permission of a sovereign or king-at-arms. ( 9 ) Arms of concession ; aug- mentations granted by a sovereign of part of his royal arms, as a mark of distinction, a usage which, we have already observed, obtained in the earliest days of heraldry; and hence the prev- alence among armorial bearings of the lion, the fleur-de-lis, and the eagle, the bearings of the sovereigns of England and Scotland, of France, and of Germanj'. (10) Paternal or hereditary arms, transmitted by the first possessor to his descendants. The EscuTCIIEO^'. A coat of arms is composed of charges depicted on an escutcheon representing the old knightly shield. The shields in use in England and France in the eleventh and twelfth centuries were in shape not unlike a kite, a form ■hieh seems to have been borrowed from the Sicilians; but when they became the recipients of armorial bearings, they were gradually flat- tened and shortened. From the time of Henry III. the escutcheon has been most frequently represented on seals as approaching a triangular form, with the point do«Tiward, tlie chief ex- ceptions being that the shield of a lady is lozenge- shaped, and of a knight banneret square. To facilitate description, the surface or field of the escutcheon has been divided into nine points, technically distinguished by the following names : A, the dexter chief point; B, the middle chief; C. the sinister chief; D, the honor or collar point; E, the fess point; F, the nombril or navel point; G. the dexter base point; H, the middle ba.se; and I, the sinister base point. It will be ob- served that the dexter and sinister sides of the sliicld are so called from their position in rela- tion, not to the eye of the spectator, but of the supposed bearer of the shield. Tinctures. Coats of arms are distin- guished from one another, not only by the charges or objects borne on them, but by the color of these charges, and of the field on which they are placed. The field may be of one color or of more than one. divided by a partition line or lines varying in form. The first thing, then, to be mentioned in blazoning a shield — that is, describ- ing it in technical language — is the color, or, as it is heraldically called, tincture of the field. (See Illustration, Tinctures.) Tinctures are either of metal, color strictly so called, or fur. The metals used in heraldry are two — gold, termed or, and silver,' arf/ent — represented in painting by yellow and white. The colors are five — red, blue, black, green, and pur])le, known as gtiJes, azure, sahle, vert, and piirpure. Two other colors have been used occasionally: tatimy or tennf and mitr- reii or sanr/tiinS. But these are now discarded in most countries. Metals and colors are indicated in uncolnred heraldic engravings by points and hatched lines, an invention ascribed to Silvestro di Petrasancta, an Italian herald of the seven- teenth centiirv. Or is represented by small dots: for arrient. the field is left plain. Gules is denoted by perpendicular and azure by hori- zontal lines; sahle, by lines perpendicular and horizontal crossing each other; vert, by diago- nal lines from dexter chief to sinister base; purpure hy diagonal lines from sinister chief to dexter base; murrey, by a combination of vert and purpure; tawny, by a combination of vert and gules. The furs were originally but two. ermine, and vaW. The former is represented by black spots or tails on a white ground. Yair, said to have been taken from the fur of a squir- rel, bluish-gray on the back, and white on the belly, is expressed by blue and white shields, or bells in horizontal rows, the bases of the white resting on the bases of the blue. If the vair is of any other colors than white and blue, they must be specified. Various modifications of these furs were afterwards introduced, among them: ermines, or ermine with the field sable and the spots argent; erminitis, with a red hair on each side of the black spot; erminois, with the field gold and the spots black; pean, with the licld sable and the spots or; countcr-vair, or vair with the bells of one tincture placed base to base; potent, with figures like the heads of crutches: and counter-potent, with the heads of crutches alternatcl.y erect and reversed. It is an established rule of heraldry that metal should not be placed on metal, nor color on color; a rule more rigidly adhered to in English than in foreign heraldry. Among early arms there is one remarkable transgression of it in the arms of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, foimded by the Cru-