education, was abandoned to coach-painters and undertakersa degradation owing in part to the tissue of follies which had for two hundred years been growing up around it. In the general decline of the arts the heraldic art participated: its symbols lost their beauty, and the philosophers, who, in their wisdom, could see nothing but folly and insanity in the life of the ages that had gone before them, naturally held Genealogy and Heraldry in little respect. But it is now some time since a reaction set in Heraldry has vindicated its title to honourable recognition, and to the thinking part of the public it is no longer the 'science of fools with long memories.' Apart from its claim to acceptance as perpetuating the noble deeds of the past, it is a valuable and graceful adjunct to art and architecture, and an indispensable aid to the study of local history. Even the pure utilitarian is in the wrong in neglecting it. Many instances have been recorded where coats-of-arms have afforded the key to points of doubtful and disputed succession: seals appended to charters, old baronial carvings, and church windows have all been received by courts of law as evidence in obscure questions of marriage and descent.

6

The increased interest taken of late years in Heraldry is evinced by the number of works which have appeared to elucidate it a few of the more important of which stand at the head of our article. Among these the first place must be assigned to Planché's Pursuivant of Arms'-a rigorously scientific examination into the origin and early history of coat-armour, in which everything is submitted to the test of a stern criticism. The author is a distinguished member of the English College of Arms, and has performed the difficult task of producing an essay on Heraldry full of learning and research, yet written in a sufficiently lively and attractive style to be read with delight by many who are not heraldic enthusiasts.

6

Mr. Planché discovers the earliest approach to arms in the tapestry at Bayeux, ascribed to the needle of Matilda, queen of the Conqueror, and representing the Norman invasion of England. The Anglo-Norman poet Wace, who flourished nearly a century later, mentions devices or cognizances being in use among the Normans, that no Norman might perish by the hand of another, nor one Frenchman kill another;' and in this he is curiously corroborated by the Bayeux tapestry, where there are figures of animals on the shields of the invaders, while the Saxon shields have only borders or crosses. These rude devices, destitute of armorial form or disposition, disposition, were doubtless the origin of systematic Heraldry: but it is difficult to fix on the exact date when they assumed that hereditary character which

inquiry, to whom the lands or the houses belonged wherever they found them, so oft as they set their eyes upon the 'escutcheons.' (Le Roy d'Armes, Paris, 1540.) The allusion is in many cases lost to us, from the old name of the object being forgotten. As we come down to later times, commemorative augmentations were freely granted, and symbolism, often of a ludicrous kind, used in granting and differencing coats. An amusing example is mentioned in Gibbon's autobiography:

'My family arms,' says the historian, ' are the same which are borne by the Gibbons of Kent . . . a lion rampant gardant between three scallop shells argent, on a field azure. About the reign of James I. the three harmless scallop shells were changed by Edmund Gibbon, Esq., into three ogresses or female cannibals, with a design of stigmatising three ladies, his kinswomen, who had provoked him by an unjust lawsuit. But this singular mode of revenge, for which he obtained the sanction of Sir William Seagar, King at Arms, soon expired with its author; and on his own monument, in the Temple Church, the monsters vanish, and the three scallop shells resume their proper and hereditary place.'

6

The popularity of Mr. Boutell's Heraldry, Historical and Practical,' is sufficiently demonstrated by the fact that a third edition has been called for, although it has not been two years in print. It contains within the compass of a moderate-sized octavo volume a tolerably complete grammar of arms, hardly perhaps so clear in its arrangement or so easy of reference as might have been wished. The subject is viewed to some extent in its relation to history; the author's prepossessions, however, lead him to enlarge more fully on its aesthetic side, which is really the strong point of this book. Much of the current heraldic drawing and sculpture, including the ornamentation of funeral hatchments, is severely censured for not keeping pace with the advance of art in other departments: and Mr. Boutell's illustrations are undoubtedly such as will tend to raise the artistic character of our heraldry.

Since September, 1862, a periodical has appeared devoted to the antiquities of heraldry, and to those branches of local and family history to which heraldry is subsidiary. Though, as in other periodicals, the articles are not all equal in merit, there is not a number of the Herald and Genealogist' that does not contain something of sterling value and interest. The editor, Mr. J. Gough Nicholls, is well known as an accomplished archæologist and herald.

The subject embraced by the next work on our list, Mr. Seton's Law and Practice of Heraldry in Scotland,' deserves a somewhat extended notice. Though law and heraldry are both

apt to be considered repellent studies to the uninitiated, Mr. Seton has succeeded in producing, out of the two combined, an extremely readable book, and invested the history and characteristics of the heraldry of North Britain with an interest which will surprise those to whom the subject is new.

The peculiarities of Scottish heraldry are connected with the peculiar growth of Scottish feudalism. In the age immediately prior to the war of independence, the relations with England were intimate and friendly, and a process of amalgamation between the two countries was steadily going on. The Norman and Saxon barons were nearly fused into one, the few chiefs of Celtic lineage alone holding aloof in proud isolation. But the calamities which followed the death of Alexander III., and the long wars with England, effectually alienated the two parts of the island; and from the beginning of the fourteenth century, Scottish history and institutions ran a course of their own, whose impress may yet be traced on the habits and feelings of Scotchmen. One feature of Scottish feudalism was the absence of the strong line of demarcation which existed in England between the greater and the lesser barons. As late as the middle of the fifteenth century, all the tenants of the King per baroniam were entitled to be present in the council of the King, and the dignity of a lord of parliament as distinct from the baronage was unknown. A permissive statute of James I., which seems to have been practically inoperative, allowed the less considerable barons, in lieu of personally attending, to choose representatives or commissioners for each county, but it was not till 1587 that they were actually excluded from attendance, and the principle of representation thoroughly established. Even then there was no separation into two houses, as in England. Down to the Union of 1707 the whole Scottish ment sated the votes of the representative House werecorded as those of the small rounis.' The baronial juris tion continued till the middle of century, an imperium in merio, including the power of pit a gallows, the right to drow witches and hang thieves; and theme of baron as applied the untitled landholders of the count as not even nowen into complete disuse.

6

But there another equa notable diversity between the history of Sco and sh feudalism; we allude to the permanency of the ones of Scotland, compared with those of England. At an early period the leading families of England began to wane, not merely out of power but out of existence. Great baronial houses continually ended in heiresses, who carried their estates to smaller men. The struggle between

Ꮓ

is essential to the idea of arms. Insignia of a more decidedly armorial character were depicted on the shields used in the third Crusade, which took place in 1189; and in the same century originated the fleurs-de-lis of France, and the lions or leopards of England. The transmission of arms from father to son seems to have been fully recognised in the thirteenth century *, and in the practice then introduced of embroidering the family ensign on the surcoat worn over the hauberk or coat-of-mail originated the expression coat-of-arms. Most valuable light has been thrown on the early history of Heraldry by certain rolls or catalogues of arms borne in England in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, which are extant, some in original and some in copies. The oldest belongs to the time of Henry III., and contains a multitude of coats correctly blazoned (the term used by heralds for a verbal description), and comprising nearly all the principal heraldic terms in use at the present day.

In the infancy of Heraldry every knight assumed what arms he pleased, without consulting sovereign or king-at-arms, the charge being chosen in many cases from the sound of its name being suggestive of the name or title of the bearer of it. The object selected was used with great latitude, single or repeated, and disposed in any way which the fancy of the bearer or the shape of his shield suggested. It was only when coats-of-arms multiplied and came to resemble each other that, for distinction's sake, rules had to be laid down regarding the position and number of the charges. In the thirteenth century, heraldry had been reduced to a system: in the two succeeding centuries it became still more systematic, and its true origin was lost sight of. The heralds of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries overlaid the historical part of the subject with a network of the most ridiculous conceits. The virtues and dispositions of the knight was imagined to be typified by the tinctures (i. e. colours) of his arms, though no two heralds could agree as to what each tineture meant. The figures called the Honourable Ordinaries,' shown by Mr. Planché to be but representations of the braces and clasps of the old knightly shield, were invested with attributes as contradictory as those of the tinctures. Coatarmour was assigned to Adam, Noah, Joshua, Brutus, Charlemagne, and all the heroes of Jewish and Pagan, as well as Christian times. According to Sir John Ferne, the apostles

It is a proof that hereditary heraldry is posterior to the tide of Norman immigration, that hardly a family of Norman origin can be named in England or Scotland which bore arms at all similar to those of the parent family of the same surname in Normandy.

were gentlemen of blood, and many of them descended from that worthy conqueror Judas Maccabeus, though, through the 'tract of time and persecution of wars, poverty oppressed the kindred, and they were constrayned to servile works.' Their Divine Master Himself was a gentleman as to his flesh by the 'part of His mother, and might, if he had esteemed of the vain 'glorye of this world, have worne coat-armour.' The German heralds went so far as to assign an escutcheon of sixteen quarterings to our Saviour, a painting of which hung till lately in the cathedral of Mayence. Among the speculations of the old heralds which Mr. Planché attacks and demolishes are a large class of legends invented to account for the assumption of particular bearings by particular families. To distinguish their persons and properties, to display their pretensions to certain honours or estates, to attest their alliances or acknowledge their feudal tenures, and not to symbolise a virtue or commemorate an achievement, was, according to him, the usual ground for the assumption of particular arms. cannot however admit that early heraldry was destitute of symbolism, although its symbolism was very unlike that of the heraldic pedants of a later age. Our author's account of the introduction of the lion and eagle of blazonry is in itself a refutation of his statement in its full generality:

We

'As the lion, by common consent, is styled king of the beasts, so has the eagle been honoured by the sovereignty of the birds, and, as the symbol of Imperial Jove, was obviously chosen by the earthly potentates who worshipped him. About the same period in which we first perceive the lion, almost with one accord, adopted as the cognizance of the Norman Kings of England, the Kings of Scotland, Norway and Denmark, the native Princes of Wales, the Dukes of Normandy, the Counts of Flanders, Holland, &c., the expanded wings of the eagle are found overshadowing as many escutcheons in the southern and eastern portions of Europe. The German Emperors, succeeding immediately to the Cæsars of Rome, assumed Or, an EAGLE sable, sometimes without, but more generally, as at present, with two heads, typifying the Eastern and Western Empires.'

Commemorative heraldry is found, if not in the thirteenth, at least in the fourteenth century, a familiar instance being the heart introduced into the Douglas coat, in memory of the pilgrimage of the good Sir James with the heart of King Robert, and found on seals of the family as early as 1356. We do not however doubt that Mr. Planché is right in stating that the majority of early coats were armes parlantes, adopted, as Father Marc Gilbert de Varennes expresses it, to this end, that all sorts of persons, intelligent or ignorant, citizens or countrymen, should recognise easily and without further