The scope of heraldry

General considerations

In western Europe heraldic designs are found in general application from the second quarter of the 12th century. Elsewhere a similar system is found only in Japan, in the mon (emblems), also dating from the 12th century. Heraldic systems are often said to have been produced at other times and places—for example, the symbols of the 12 tribes in ancient Israel or the designs used by the Rajput princes in India. Those and similar instances, however, are more properly considered incipient heraldry, since they did not develop into the complex heraldic practice known in western Europe and Japan.

From 1150 to 1500 the use of heraldry in the West was utilitarian: on armor in warfare and on seals in peace and war. In the latter part of that period, it was used in peaceful ways and had much artistic value. Also, because from the beginning the use of arms had been associated with the higher feudal castes, heraldry acquired in later medieval times an identification with the concept of gentility that has persisted. To bear arms was the mark of a gentleman; therefore, to possess the desirable quality of gentility, a man needed to have armorial bearings. The great majority of those who seek to use coats of arms today are actuated by that motive. In the use of corporate arms, the motive of prestige operates. As long as the possession of arms confers any social distinction, arms will be sought and used. At no time before the present has there been so widespread an employment of heraldic devices.

The use of symbols has been universal among civilized communities, but symbols have not always assumed the character associated with heraldry. Seals, too, which have a prominent place in heraldic practice, are of an antiquity approaching that of the most ancient civilizations. They were in use in the states that from Sumer onward flourished in Mesopotamia. Their use in the Babylonian empire, for example, was the same as in medieval western Europe: to authenticate the documents (possibly of baked brick, later papyrus, later still parchment or vellum) on which they appeared or to which they were appended. All persons, literate and illiterate alike, were able to recognize the representation or symbol of a ruler or other potentate. In 12th-century Europe heraldry first appeared on seals in the representations of persons. There is a clear line of descent from the seals of Assyria and Babylonia to the modern company seal, which is often heraldic.

From its origins in the small half-continent of western Europe, heraldry has become universal, usually—but not only—by way of western European colonization. Heraldry has spread to a considerable degree in North and South America, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. In the former British India, the hereditary princes adopted the use of heraldry. In the numerous independent states formed in Africa from British colonies, official armorial bearings are generally used, and the same is true of the states that were French colonies. In Russia in the 18th century the use of armorial bearings was adopted from the West, and state emblems were not unknown in communist eastern Europe. In the 13th century the Celtic princes of Wales and Ireland and the chiefs of the Scottish Highland clans took up the use of heraldic symbols from the example of the feudal lords and knights of other parts of Europe.

Other kinds of emblematic identification have some similarities with heraldry. An example is the totem system, found among the indigenous peoples of America and Australia, in which an animal, plant, or other object serves as an emblem of family or clan and is often regarded as a reminder of ancestry. Totemism varies greatly in different countries, as do the theories that have been advanced to explain it. The totem poles used by the Native Americans of the northwest coast of North America contain an heraldic element in their employment of a hereditary symbol for a family or tribe. They therefore come under the heading of approaches to heraldic designs and may be termed semi-heraldic in character.

The Japanese mon, or monshō, is very definitely an heraldic symbol, having many parallels in its use with the armorial bearings of Europe. It was used on helmets, shields, and breastplates but was never, as in Europe, large enough to identify the wearer of the armor at any considerable distance. When identification was desired, the mon was displayed on a flag. The mon has been wrongly equated in English with “crest” and in some European languages has been translated erroneously as “coat of arms,” but “emblem” is a more accurate equivalent. It most closely resembles the heraldic badge (distinctive mark used by retainers), however, which in Europe often antedated armorial bearings. Further resemblances to European heraldry in the use of the mon include the decorative use of the symbol on clothes, furniture, and houses, the use on the clothes of retainers of great lords, the legal requirement of registration of the mon (dating from the 17th century), and the reservation of the chrysanthemum mon to the emperor, with junior members of the imperial family using a different variety of the flower. That last distinction corresponds exactly to the rules of heraldic precedence that apply to the European royal families. That areas so far removed from each other as western Europe and Japan should have developed a system of hereditary symbolism independently of one another is not surprising, for in both areas feudalism was the prevailing medieval political and social system. As in Europe, Japanese heraldry survived the obsolescence of armor and remains in widespread use today.

Despite some uninformed opinion to the contrary, tartan has no connection with heraldry. It is simply a pattern of weaving cloth that is by no means restricted to the Scottish Highlands. Armorial bearings were adopted by Highland chiefs in imitation of the Lowland chivalry from the 13th and 14th centuries. The badge of the chief was adopted and used extensively by the members of his clan.

Flags can be heraldic. That of the United Kingdom is certainly so, for it is formed by the amalgamation of the flags of England, Scotland, and Ireland, those showing respectively the Crosses of St. George, St. Andrew, and St. Patrick, all of which are displayed heraldically. The U.S. flag has a quasi-heraldic character and appears to owe its principal ingredients to the armorial bearings of the first president, George Washington. The flag representing the republic of France, by contrast, is not heraldic, being merely an arrangement of the national colors.

In addition to national flags, there are banners, rectangular pieces of cloth showing the armorial bearings of the owner, and standards, strips of cloth that taper gradually to the end and usually bear heraldic badges. In the hoist (the part of the flag nearest to the staff) a standard will bear either the national cross (e.g., that of St. George, St. Andrew, St. Patrick, or St. Denis) or the owner’s arms.

An early development was the extension of heraldic design from its use by persons or families to its employment by institutions and associations of various kinds, an outgrowth of the concept that an assembly or body of people can be personified as an individual, much as a limited company or corporation is viewed as a legal “person.” Medieval times provided numerous examples of arms borne by municipalities, churches, and colleges. The arms assumed by or granted to an individual are regarded as being a peculiarly personal possession; therefore, caution must be used in speaking of family arms. That question can be best dealt with in connection with the royal arms of the sovereign of the United Kingdom.

Those arms are borne in their entirety only by the reigning king or queen. No other member of the royal family is permitted to bear the arms without introducing a “difference,” a mark that will show without doubt that the bearer is not the reigning sovereign. By analogy, the same condition holds for all so-called family arms, which belong to the head of the family; all other members should strictly bear them differenced—that is, with some mark of cadency (a sign indicating the position of the bearer with respect to the head of the family). In Scottish heraldry that rule is very rigidly enforced, but in England and elsewhere it has been allowed to fall into decay, except in the case of the royal family.

Probably the next development in the scope of heraldry was its use by ecclesiastics. The bishops and the abbots of the monasteries used arms on their seals from the 12th century onward. In that variety of heraldic usage, the arms were not those of individuals but of the body they temporarily represented—as also with arms borne by political units such as nations and cities or by educational establishments, many of which date from the Middle Ages.

A great extension of medieval heraldry was connected with what came to be called the livery companies. Those were guilds or associations of men in trades whose object was to uphold high standards of craftsmanship. Most of them obtained charters from the crown and were granted arms. Among numerous examples in Britain are the Grocers, the Mercers, and the Glaziers companies. Membership in those still-existing companies no longer entails practice of their particular trades, but they possess property and have great charitable interests as well as considerable social esteem. Their armorial bearings are of great antiquity and are much displayed on their halls, letterheads, glass, silver, and so forth. Obviously, armorial bearings were assumed in the Middle Ages by such military bodies as the Knights Templar, the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, the Teutonic Knights, and the great Spanish orders. Military heraldry has continued to the present: the British military, for example, have badges and in some cases coats of arms, which are in the care of officers of the College of Arms. The newest of the British armed forces, the Royal Air Force, alone makes use of more than a thousand armorial designs, both coats of arms and badges.

In the 20th century the development of corporate heraldry went far beyond anything known before. Throughout the world, banks, insurance companies, and many other great commercial concerns were using arms, as were an ever-increasing number of professional, educational, and trade associations. Two events that clearly illustrate the scope of contemporary heraldry are the grants made by the governments of the Republic of Ireland and the Kingdom of Denmark of armorial bearings to two presidents of the United States of America, John F. Kennedy and Dwight D. Eisenhower, respectively. Because arms are hereditary and their owners are regarded heraldically as of noble status, the grants amounted to a recognition of the nobility of the head of one state by the head of another state.

The chief components of armorial bearings

The shield

The shield is the essential part of an armorial achievement; without it there can be no full heraldic display, except for those of ladies and some senior churchmen, distinctions that call for special treatment. The word shield can be used to describe the coat of arms but in modern times is seldom employed in that way, except in a poetic context. Armorial bearings are generally referred to more briefly as arms or as a coat of arms, a term derived from the surcoat of silk or linen worn over the armor to keep off the rays of the sun and to delay the formation of rust on the armor. The surcoat was a waistcoatlike garment on which were shown the same heraldic insignia as on the shield.

Every other object in a full heraldic achievement is dependent upon the shield or coat of arms. There can be, and quite often is, a coat of arms consisting solely of a shield without any other object, such as a crest surmounted. The heraldry of the Churchills of Muston, a branch of the family to which Sir Winston Churchill belonged, has no crest. The reason is that such families possessed arms before the crest became fashionable and its absence proclaims their ancient status.

In heraldic illustrations shields may be found in many shapes, some quite absurdly unfit for use in battle. The shape used in the illustrations accompanying this article is that of the classic “heater,” the most elegant and, for a mounted knight, the most realistic.