To quote another very learned author: "The system of hieroglyphics, or symbols, was adopted into every mysterious inst.i.tution, for the purpose of concealing the most sublime secrets of religion from the prying curiosity of the vulgar; to whom nothing was exposed but the beauties of their morality." (See Ramsay"s "Travels of Cyrus," lib. 3.) "The old Asiatic style, so highly figurative, seems, by what we find of {11} its remains in the prophetic language of the sacred writers, to have been evidently fashioned to the mode of the ancient hieroglyphics; for as in hieroglyphic writing the sun, moon, and stars were used to represent states and empires, kings, queens, and n.o.bility--their eclipse and extinction, temporary disasters, or entire overthrow--fire and flood, desolation by war and famine; plants or animals, the qualities of particular persons, &c.; so, in like manner, the Holy Prophets call kings and empires by the names of the heavenly luminaries; their misfortunes and overthrow are represented by eclipses and extinction; stars falling from the firmament are employed to denote the destruction of the n.o.bility; thunder and tempestuous winds, hostile invasions; lions, bears, leopards, goats, or high trees, leaders of armies, conquerors, and founders of empires; royal dignity is described by purple, or a crown; iniquity by spotted garments; a warrior by a sword or bow; a powerful man, by a gigantic stature; a judge by balance, weights, and measures--in a word, the prophetic style seems to be a speaking hieroglyphic."
It seems to me, however, that the whole of these are no more than symbolism, though they are undoubtedly symbolism of a high and methodical order, little removed from our own armory. Personally I do not consider them to be armory, but if the word is to be stretched to the utmost lat.i.tude to permit of their inclusion, one certain conclusion follows. That if the heraldry of that day had an orderly existence, it most certainly came absolutely to an end and disappeared. Armory as we know it, the armory of to-day, which as a system is traced back to the period of the Crusades, is no mere continuation by adoption. It is a distinct development and a re-development _ab initio_. Undoubtedly there is a period in the early development of European civilisation which is dest.i.tute alike of armory, or of anything of that nature. The civilisation of Europe is not the civilisation of Egypt, of Greece, or of Rome, nor a continuation thereof, but a new development, and though each of these in its turn attained a high degree of civilisation and may have separately developed a heraldic symbolism much akin to armory, as a natural consequence of its own development, as the armory we know is a development of its own consequent upon the rise of our own civilisation, nevertheless it is unjustifiable to attempt to establish continuity between the ordered symbolism of earlier but distinct civilisations, and our own present system of armory. The one and only civilisation which has preserved its continuity is that of the Jewish race. In spite of persecution the Jews have preserved unchanged the minutest details of ritual law and ceremony, the causes of their suffering.
Had heraldry, which is and has always been a matter of pride, formed a part of their distinctive life we should find it still existing. Yet the fact remains {12} that no trace of Jewish heraldry can be found until modern times. Consequently I accept unquestioningly the conclusions of the late J.
R. Planche, Somerset Herald, who unhesitatingly a.s.serted that armory did not exist at the time of the Conquest, basing his conclusions princ.i.p.ally upon the entire absence of armory from the seals of that period, and the Bayeux tapestry.
[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 1.--Kiku-non-hana-mon. State _Mon_ of j.a.pan.]
[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 2.--Kiri-mon. _Mon_ of the Mikado.]
[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 3.--Awo-mon. _Mon_ of the House of Minamoto Tokugawa.]
[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 4.--_Mon_ of the House of Minamoto Ashikaya.]
[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 5.--Tomoye. _Mon_ of the House of Arina.]
The family tokens (_mon_) of the j.a.panese, however, fulfil very nearly all of the essentials of armory, although considered heraldically they may appear somewhat peculiar to European eyes. Though perhaps never forming the entire decoration of a shield, they do appear upon weapons and armour, and are used most lavishly in the decoration of clothing, rooms, furniture, and in fact almost every conceivable object, being employed for _decorative_ purposes in precisely the same manners and methods that armorial devices are decoratively made use of in this country. A j.a.panese of the upper cla.s.ses always has his _mon_ in three places upon his _kimono_, usually at the back just below the collar and on either sleeve. The j.a.panese servants also wear their service badge in much the same manner that in olden days the badge was worn by the servants of a n.o.bleman. The design of the service badge occupies the whole available surface of the back, and is reproduced in a miniature form on each lappel of the _kimono_. Unfortunately, like armorial bearings in Europe, but to a far greater extent, the j.a.panese _mon_ has been greatly pirated and abused. {13}
Fig. 1, "Kiku-non-hana-mon," formed from the conventionalised bloom (_hana_) of the chrysanthemum, is the _mon_ of the State. It is formed of sixteen petals arranged in a circle, and connected on the outer edge by small curves.
Fig. 2, "Kiri-mon," is the personal _mon_ of the Mikado, formed of the leaves and flower of the _Paulowna imperialis_, conventionally treated.
Fig. 3, "Awo-mon," is the _mon_ of the House of Minamoto Tokugawa, and is composed of three sea leaves (_Asarum_). The Tokugawa reigned over the country as _Shogune_ from 1603 until the last revolution in 1867, before which time the Emperor (the Mikado) was only nominally the ruler.
Fig. 4 shows the _mon_ of the House of Minamoto Ashikaya, which from 1336 until 1573 enjoyed the Shogunat.
Fig. 5 shows the second _mon_ of the House of Arina, Toymote, which is used, however, throughout j.a.pan as a sign of luck.
[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 6.--Double eagle on a coin (_drachma_) under the Orthogide of Kaifa Nacr Edin Mahmud, 1217.]
[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 7.--Device of the Mameluke Emir Toka Timur, Governor of Rahaba, 1350.]
[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 8.--Lily on the Bab-al-Hadid gate at Damascus.]
[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 9.--Device of the Emir Arkatay (a band between two keys).]
[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 10.--Device of the Mameluke Emir Schaikhu.]
[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 11.--Device of Abu Abdallah, Mohammed ibn Nacr, King of Granada, said to be the builder of the Alhambra (1231-1272).]
The Saracens and the Moors, to whom we owe the origin of so many of our recognised heraldic charges and the derivation of some of our terms (_e.g._ "gules," from the Persian _gul_, and "azure" from the Persian _lazurd_) had evidently on their part something more than the rudiments of armory, as Figs. 6 to 11 will indicate. {14}
One of the best definitions of a coat of arms that I know, though this is not perfect, requires the twofold qualification that the design must be hereditary and must be connected with armour. And there can be no doubt that the theory of armory as we now know it is governed by those two ideas.
The shields and the crests, if any decoration of a helmet is to be called a crest, of the Greeks and the Romans undoubtedly come within the one requirement. Also were they indicative of and perhaps intended to be symbolical of the owner. They lacked, however, heredity, and we have no proof that the badges we read of, or the decorations of shield and helmet, were continuous even during a single lifetime. Certainly as we now understand the term there must be both continuity of use, if the arms be impersonal, or heredity if the arms be personal. Likewise must there be their use as decorations of the implements of warfare.
If we exact these qualifications as essential, armory as a fact and as a science is a product of later days, and is the evolution from the idea of tribal badges and tribal means and methods of honour applied to the decoration of implements of warfare. It is the conjunction and a.s.sociation of these two distinct ideas to which is added the no less important idea of heredity. The civilisation of England before the Conquest has left us no trace of any sort or kind that the Saxons, the Danes, or the Celts either knew or practised armory. So that if armory as we know it is to be traced to the period of the Norman Conquest, we must look for it as an adjunct of the altered civilisation and the altered law which Duke William brought into this country. Such evidence as exists is to the contrary, and there is nothing that can be truly termed armorial in that marvellous piece of cotemporaneous workmanship known as the Bayeux tapestry.
Concerning the Bayeux tapestry and the evidence it affords, Woodward and Burnett"s "Treatise on Heraldry," apparently following Planche"s conclusions, remarks: "The evidence afforded by the famous tapestry preserved in the public library of Bayeux, a series of views in sewed work representing the invasion and conquest of England by WILLIAM the Norman, has been appealed to on both sides of this controversy, and has certainly an important bearing on the question of the antiquity of coat-armour. This panorama of seventy-two scenes is on probable grounds believed to have been the work of the Conqueror"s Queen MATILDA and her maidens; though the French historian THIERRY and others ascribe it to the Empress MAUD, daughter of HENRY III. The latest authorities suggest the likelihood of its having been wrought as a decoration for the Cathedral of Bayeux, when rebuilt by WILLIAM"S uterine brother ODO, Bishop of that See, in 1077. The exact correspondence which has been discovered between the length of the tapestry {15} and the inner circ.u.mference of the nave of the cathedral greatly favours this supposition. This remarkable work of art, as carefully drawn in colour in 1818 by Mr. C. STOTHARD, is reproduced in the sixth volume of the _Vetusta Monumenta_; and more recently an excellent copy of it from autotype plates has been published by the Arundel Society. Each of its scenes is accompanied by a Latin description, the whole uniting into a graphic history of the event commemorated. We see HAROLD taking leave of EDWARD THE CONFESSOR; riding to Bosham with his hawk and hounds; embarking for France; landing there and being captured by the Count of Ponthieu; redeemed by WILLIAM of Normandy, and in the midst of his Court aiding him against CONAN, Count of BRETAGNE; swearing on the sacred relics to recognise WILLIAM"S claim of succession to the English throne, and then re-embarking for England. On his return, we have him recounting the incidents of his journey to EDWARD THE CONFESSOR, to whose funeral obsequies we are next introduced. Then we have HAROLD receiving the crown from the English people, and ascending the throne; and WILLIAM, apprised of what had taken place, consulting with his half-brother ODO about invading England. The war preparations of the Normans, their embarkation, their landing, their march to Hastings, and formation of a camp there, form the subjects of successive scenes; and finally we have the battle of Hastings, with the death of Harold and the flight of the English. In this remarkable piece of work we have figures of more than six hundred persons, and seven hundred animals, besides thirty-seven buildings, and forty-one ships or boats. There are of course also numerous shields of warriors, of which some are round, others kite-shaped, and on some of the latter are rude figures, of dragons or other imaginary animals, as well as crosses of different forms, and spots. On one hand it requires little imagination to find the cross _patee_ and the cross _botonnee_ of heraldry prefigured on two of these shields. But there are several fatal objections to regarding these figures as incipient _armory_, namely that while the most prominent persons of the time are depicted, most of them repeatedly, none of these is ever represented twice as bearing the same device, nor is there one instance of any resemblance in the rude designs described to the bearings actually used by the descendants of the persons in question. If a personage so important and so often depicted as the Conqueror had borne arms, they could not fail to have had a place in a nearly contemporary work, and more especially if it proceeded from the needle of his wife."
Lower, in his "Curiosities of Heraldry," clinches the argument when he writes: "Nothing but disappointment awaits the curious armorist who seeks in this venerable memorial the pale, the bend, and {16} other early elements of arms. As these would have been much more easily imitated with the needle than the grotesque figures before alluded to, we may safely conclude that personal arms had not yet been introduced." The "Treatise on Heraldry" proceeds: "The Second Crusade took place in 1147; and in MONTFAUCON"S plates of the no longer extant windows of the Abbey of St.
Denis, representing that historical episode, there is not a trace of an armorial ensign on any of the shields. That window was probably executed at a date when the memory of that event was fresh; but in MONTFAUCON"S time, the beginning of the eighteenth century, the _Science heroque_ was matter of such moment in France that it is not to be believed that the armorial figures on the shields, had there been any, would have been left out."
Surely, if anywhere, we might have expected to have found evidence of armory, if it had then existed, in the Bayeux Tapestry. Neither do the seals nor the coins of the period produce a shield of arms. Nor amongst the host of records and doc.u.ments which have been preserved to us do we find any reference to armorial bearings. The intense value and estimation attached to arms in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, which has steadily though slowly declined since that period, would lead one to suppose that had arms existed as we know them at an earlier period, we should have found some definite record of them in the older chronicles.
There are no such references, and no coat of arms in use at a later date can be relegated to the Conquest or any anterior period. Of arms, as we know them, there are _isolated examples_ in the early part of the twelfth century, _perhaps_ also at the end of the eleventh. At the period of the Third Crusade (1189) they were in actual existence as hereditary decorations of weapons of warfare.
Luckily, for the purposes of deductive reasoning, human nature remains much the same throughout the ages, and, dislike it as we may, vanity now and vanity in olden days was a great lever in the determination of human actions. A noticeable result of civilisation is the effort to suppress any sign of natural emotion; and if the human race at the present day is not unmoved by a desire to render its appearance attractive, we may rest very certainly a.s.sured that in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries this motive was even more p.r.o.nounced, and still yet more p.r.o.nounced at a more remote distance of time. Given an opportunity of ornament, there you will find ornament and decoration. The ancient Britons, like the Maories of to-day, found their opportunities restricted to their skins. The Maories tattoo themselves in intricate patterns, the ancient Britons used woad, though history is silent as to whether they were content with flat colour or gave their preference to patterns. It is unnecessary to trace the art of {17} decoration through embroidery upon clothes, but there is no doubt that as soon as shields came into use they were painted and decorated, though I hesitate to follow practically the whole of heraldic writers in the statement that it was _the necessity for distinction in battle_ which accounted for the decoration of shields. Shields were painted and decorated, and helmets were adorned with all sorts of ornament, long _before_ the closed helmet made it impossible to recognise a man by his facial peculiarities and distinctions. We have then this underlying principle of vanity, with its concomitant result of personal decoration and adornment. We have the relics of savagery which caused a man to be nicknamed from some animal. The conjunction of the two produces the effort to apply the opportunity for decoration and the vanity of the animal nickname to each other.
We are fast approaching armory. In those days every man fought, and his weapons were the most cherished of his personal possessions. The sword his father fought with, the shield his father carried, the banner his father followed would naturally be amongst the articles a son would be most eager to possess. Herein are the rudiments of the idea of heredity in armory; and the science of armory as we know it begins to slowly evolve itself from that point, for the son would naturally take a pride in upholding the fame which had cl.u.s.tered round the pictured signs and emblems under which his father had warred.
Another element then appeared which exercised a vast influence upon armory.
Europe rang from end to end with the call to the Crusades. We may or we may not understand the fanaticism which gripped the whole of the Christian world and sent it forth to fight the Saracens. That has little to do with it. The result was the collection together in a comparatively restricted s.p.a.ce of all that was best and n.o.blest amongst the human race at that time.
And the spirit of emulation caused nation to vie with nation, and individual with individual in the performance of ill.u.s.trious feats of honour. War was elevated to the dignity of a sacred duty, and the implements of warfare rose in estimation. It is easy to understand the glory therefore that attached to arms, and the slow evolution which I have been endeavouring to indicate became a concrete fact, and it is due to the Crusades that the origin of armory as we now know it was practically coeval throughout Europe, and also that a large proportion of the charges and terms and rules of heraldry are identical in all European countries.
The next dominating influence was the introduction, in the early part of the thirteenth century, of the closed helmet. This hid the face of the wearer from his followers and necessitated some means by which the latter could identify the man under whom they served. What more natural than that they should identify him by the {18} decoration of his shield and the ornaments of his helmet, and by the coat or surcoat which he wore over his coat of mail?
This surcoat had afforded another opportunity of decoration, and it had been decorated with the same signs that the wearer had painted on his shield, hence the term "coat of arms." This textile coat was in itself a product of the Crusades. The Crusaders went in their metal armour from the cooler atmospheres of Europe to the intolerable heat of the East. The surcoat and the lambrequin alike protected the metal armour and the metal helmet from the rays of the sun and the resulting discomfort to the wearer, and were also found very effective as a preventative of the rust resulting from rain and damp upon the metal. By the time that the closed helmet had developed the necessity of distinction and the identification of a man with the pictured signs he wore or carried, the evolution of armory into the science we know was practically complete. {19}
CHAPTER II
THE STATUS AND THE MEANING OF A COAT OF ARMS IN GREAT BRITAIN
It would be foolish and misleading to a.s.sert that the possession of a coat of arms at the present date has anything approaching the dignity which attached to it in the days of long ago; but one must trace this through the centuries which have pa.s.sed in order to form a true estimate of it, and also to properly appreciate a coat of arms at the present time. It is necessary to go back to the Norman Conquest and the broad dividing lines of social life in order to obtain a correct knowledge. The Saxons had no armory, though they had a very perfect civilisation. This civilisation William the Conqueror upset, introducing in its place the system of feudal tenure with which he had been familiar on the Continent. Briefly, this feudal system may be described as the part.i.tion of the land amongst the barons, earls, and others, in return for which, according to the land they held, they accepted a liability of military service for themselves and so many followers. These barons and earls in their turn sublet the land on terms advantageous to themselves, but nevertheless requiring from those to whom they sublet the same military service which the King had exacted from themselves proportionate with the extent of the sublet lands. Other subdivisions took place, but always with the same liability of military service, until we come to those actually holding and using the lands, enjoying them subject to the liability of military service attached to those particular lands. Every man who held land under these conditions--and it was impossible to hold land without them--was of the upper cla.s.s. He was _n.o.bilis_ or _known_, and of a rank distinct, apart, and absolutely separate from the remainder of the population, who were at one time actually serfs, and for long enough afterwards, of no higher social position than they had enjoyed in their period of servitude. This wide distinction between the upper and lower cla.s.ses, which existed from one end of Europe to the other, was the very root and foundation of armory. It cannot be too greatly insisted upon. There were two qualitative terms, "gentle" and "simple," which were applied to the upper and lower cla.s.ses respectively. Though now becoming archaic and obsolete, the terms "gentle"
and "simple" {20} are still occasionally to be met with used in that original sense; and the two adjectives "gentle" and "simple," in the everyday meanings of the words, are derived from, and are a _later_ growth from the original usage with the meaning of the upper and lower cla.s.ses; because the quality of being gentle was supposed to exist in that cla.s.s of life referred to as gentle, whilst the quality of simplicity was supposed to be an attribute of the lower cla.s.s. The word gentle is derived from the Latin word _gens (gentilis)_, meaning a man, because those were _men_ who were not serfs. Serfs and slaves were nothing accounted of. The word "gentleman" is a _derivative_ of the word gentle, and a gentleman was a member of the gentle or upper cla.s.s, and gentle qualities were so termed because they were the qualities supposed to belong to the gentle cla.s.s. A man was not a gentleman, even in those days, because he happened to possess personal qualities usually a.s.sociated with the gentle cla.s.s; a man was a gentleman if he belonged to the gentle or upper cla.s.s and not otherwise, so that "gentleman" was an identical term for one to whom the word _n.o.bilis_ was applied, both being names for members of the upper cla.s.s. To all intents and purposes at that date there was no middle cla.s.s at all. The kingdom was the land; and the trading community who dwelt in the towns were of little account save as milch kine for the purposes of taxation. The social position conceded to them by the upper cla.s.s was little, if any, more than was conceded to the lower cla.s.ses, whose life and liberties were held very cheaply. Briefly to sum up, therefore, there were but the two cla.s.ses in existence, of which the upper cla.s.s were those who held the land, who had military obligations, and who were n.o.ble, or in other words gentle. Therefore all who held land were gentlemen; because they held land they had to lead their servants and followers into battle, and they themselves were personally responsible for the appearance of so many followers, when the King summoned them to war. Now we have seen in the previous chapter that arms became necessary to the leader that his followers might distinguish him in battle. Consequently all who held land having, because of that land, to be responsible for followers in battle, found it necessary to use arms. The corollary is therefore evident, that all who held lands of the King were gentlemen or n.o.ble, and used arms; and as a consequence all who possessed arms were gentlemen, for they would not need or use arms, nor was their armour of a character upon which they could display arms, unless they were leaders. The leaders, we have seen, were the land-owning or upper cla.s.s; therefore every one who had arms was a gentleman, and every gentleman had arms. But the status of gentlemen existed before there were coats of arms, and the later inseparable connection between the two was an evolution.
The preposterous prost.i.tution of the word gentleman in these latter {21} days is due to the almost universal attribute of human nature which declines to admit itself as of other than gentle rank; and in the eager desire to write itself gentleman, it has deliberately accepted and ordained a meaning to the word which it did not formerly possess, and has attributed to it and allowed it only such a definition as would enable almost anybody to be included within its ranks.
The word gentleman nowadays has become meaningless as a word in an ordinary vocabulary; and to use the word with its original and true meaning, it is necessary to now consider it as purely a technical term. We are so accustomed to employ the word nowadays in its unrestricted usage that we are apt to overlook the fact that such a usage is comparatively modern. The following extract from "The Right to Bear Arms" will prove that its real meaning was understood and was decided by law so late as the seventeenth century to be "a man ent.i.tled to bear arms":--
"The following case in the Earl Marshal"s Court, which hung upon the definition of the word, conclusively proves my contention:--
""_21st November 1637._--W. Baker, gent., humbly sheweth that having some occasion of conference with Adam Spencer of Broughton under the Bleane, co. Cant., on or about 28th July last, the said Adam did in most base and opprobrious tearmes abuse your pet.i.tioner, calling him a base, lying fellow, &c. &c. The defendant pleaded that Baker is noe Gentleman, and soe not capable of redresse in this court. Le Neve, Clarenceux, is directed to examine the point raised, and having done so, declared as touching the gentry of William Baker, that Robert Cooke, Clarenceux King of Arms, did make a declaration 10th May 1573, under his hand and seale of office, that George Baker of London, sonne of J. Baker of the same place, sonne of Simon Baker of Feversham, co.
Cant., was a bearer of tokens of honour, and did allow and confirm to the said George Baker and to his posterity, and to the posterity of Christopher Baker, these Arms, &c. &c. And further, Le Neve has received proof that the pet.i.tioner, William Baker, is the son of William Baker of Kingsdowne, co. Cant., who was the brother of George Baker, and son of Christopher aforesaid." The judgment is not stated.
(The original Confirmation of Arms by Cooke, 10th May 1573, may now be seen in the British Museum.--_Genealogist_ for 1889, p. 242.)"
It has been shown that originally practically all who held land bore arms.
It has also been shown that armory was an evolution, and as a consequence it did not start, in this country at any rate, as a ready-made science with all its rules and laws completely known or promulgated. There is not the slightest doubt that, in the earliest infancy of the science, arms were a.s.sumed and chosen without the control of the Crown; and one would not be far wrong in a.s.suming that, so long as the rights accruing from prior appropriation of other people were respected, a landowner finding the necessity of arms in battle, was originally at liberty to a.s.sume what arms he liked.
That period, however, was of but brief duration, for we find as early {22} as 1390, from the celebrated Scrope and Grosvenor case, (1) that a man could have obtained at that time a definite right to his arms, (2) that this right could be enforced against another, and we find, what is more important, (3) that the Crown and the Sovereign had supreme control and jurisdiction over arms, and (4) that the Sovereign could and did grant arms. From that date down to the present time the Crown, both by its own direct action and by the action of the Kings of Arms to whom it delegates powers for the purpose, in Letters Patent under the Great Seal, specifically issued to each separate King of Arms upon his appointment, has continued to grant armorial bearings. Some number of early grants of arms direct from the Crown have been printed in the _Genealogical Magazine_, and some of the earliest distinctly recite that the recipients are made n.o.ble and created gentlemen, and that the arms are given them as _the sign of their n.o.bility_. The cla.s.s of persons to whom grants of arms were made in the earliest days of such instruments is much the same as the cla.s.s which obtain grants of arms at the present day, and the successful trader or merchant is now at liberty, as he was in the reign of Henry VIII. and earlier, to raise himself to the rank of a gentleman by obtaining a grant of arms. A family must make its start at some time or other; let this start be made honestly, and not by the appropriation of the arms of some other man.
The illegal a.s.sumption of arms began at an early date; and in spite of the efforts of the Crown, which have been more or less continuous and repeated, it has been found that the use of "other people"s" arms has continued. In the reign of Henry V. a very stringent proclamation was issued on the subject; and in the reigns of Queen Elizabeth and her successors, the Kings of Arms were commanded to make perambulations throughout the country for the purpose of pulling down and defacing improper arms, of recording arms properly borne by authority, and of compelling those who used arms without authority to obtain authority for them or discontinue their use. These perambulations were termed Visitations. The subject of Visitations, and in fact the whole subject of the right to bear arms, is dealt with at length in the book to which reference has been already made, namely, "The Right to Bear Arms."
The glory of a descent from a long line of armigerous ancestors, the glory and the pride of race inseparably interwoven with the inheritance of a name which has been famous in history, the fact that some arms have been designed to commemorate heroic achievements, the fact that the display of a particular coat of arms has been the method, which society has countenanced, of advertising to the world that one is of the upper cla.s.s or a descendant of some ancestor who performed some glorious deed to which the arms have reference, the fact that arms themselves are the very sign of a particular descent or of a particular {23} rank, have all tended to cause a false and fict.i.tious value to be placed upon all these pictured emblems which as a whole they have never possessed, and which I believe they were never intended to possess. It is _because_ they were the prerogative and the sign of aristocracy that they have been coveted so greatly, and consequently so often a.s.sumed improperly. Now aristocracy and social position are largely a matter of personal a.s.sertion. A man a.s.sumes and a.s.serts for himself a certain position, which position is gradually and imperceptibly but continuously increased and elevated as its a.s.sertion is reiterated. There is no particular moment in a man"s life at the present time, the era of the great middle cla.s.s, at which he visibly steps from a plebeian to a patrician standing. And when he has fought and talked the world into conceding him a recognised position in the upper cla.s.ses, he naturally tries to obliterate the fact that he or "his people" were ever of any other social position, and he hesitates to perpetually date his elevation to the rank of gentility by obtaining a grant of arms and thereby admitting that before that date he and his people were plebeian.
Consequently he waits until some circ.u.mstance compels an application for a grant, and the consequence is that he thereby post-dates his actual technical gentility to a period long subsequent to the recognition by Society of his position in the upper cla.s.ses.
Arms are the sign of the technical rank of gentility. The possession of arms is a matter of hereditary privilege, which privilege the Crown is willing should be obtained upon certain terms by any who care to possess it, who live according to the style and custom which is usual amongst gentle people. And so long as the possession of arms is a matter of privilege, even though this privilege is no greater than is consequent upon payment of certain fees to the Crown and its officers; for so long will that privilege possess a certain prestige and value, though this may not be very great. Arms have never possessed any greater value than attaches to a matter of privilege; and (with singularly few exceptions) in every case, be it of a peer or baronet, of knight or of simple gentleman, this privilege has been obtained or has been regularised by the payment at some time or other of fees to the Crown and its officers. And the _only_ difference between arms granted and paid for yesterday and arms granted and paid for five hundred years ago is the simple moral difference which attaches to the dates at which the payments were made.
Gentility is merely hereditary rank, emanating, with all other rank, from the Crown, the sole fountain of honour. It is idle to make the word carry a host of meanings it was never intended to. Arms being the sign of the technical rank of gentility, the use of arms is the advertis.e.m.e.nt of one"s claim to that gentility. Arms mean nothing more. By {24} coronet, supporters, and helmet can be indicated one"s place in the scale of precedence; by adding arms for your wife you a.s.sert that she also is of gentle rank; your quarterings show the other gentle families you represent; difference marks will show your position in your own family (not a very important matter); augmentations indicate the deeds of your ancestors which the Sovereign thought worthy of being held in especial remembrance. _By the use of a certain coat of arms, you a.s.sert your descent from the person to whom those arms were granted, confirmed, or allowed._ That is the beginning and end of armory. Why seek to make it mean more?