A Complete Guide to HeraldryFox-Davies, Arthur Charles
History
A Complete Guide to Heraldry
Fox-Davies, Arthur Charles
Heraldry -- Great Britain
Amongst the scores of English arms in which the rose figures, it will be
found in the original heraldic form in the case of the arms of Southampton
(Plate VII.); and either stalked or slipped in the arms of Brodribb and
White-Thomson. A curious instance of the use of the rose will be found in
the crest of Bewley, and the "cultivated" rose was depicted in the
emblazonment of the crest of Inverarity, which is a rose-bush proper.
[Illustration: FIG. 493.--Thistle.]
Heraldry, with its roses, has accomplished what horticulture has not. There
is an old legend that when Henry VII. succeeded to the English throne some
enterprising individual produced a natural parti-coloured rose which
answered to the conjoined heraldic rose of gules and argent. Our roses "or"
may really find their natural counterpart in the primrose, but the arms of
Rochefort ["Quarterly or and azure, four roses counterchanged"] give us the
_blue_ rose, the arms of Berendon ["Argent, three roses sable"] give us the
_black_ rose, and the coat of Smallshaw ["Argent, a rose vert, between
three shakeforks sable"] is the long-desired _green_ rose.
_The Thistle_ (Fig. 493) ranks next to the rose in British heraldic
importance. Like the rose, the reason of its assumption as a national badge
remains largely a matter of mystery, though it is of nothing like so
ancient an origin. Of course one knows the time-honoured and wholly
impossible legend that its adoption as a national symbol dates from the
battle of Largs, when one of the Danish invaders gave away an attempted
surprise by his cry of agony caused by stepping barefooted upon a thistle.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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