A Complete Guide to HeraldryFox-Davies, Arthur Charles
History
A Complete Guide to Heraldry
Fox-Davies, Arthur Charles
Heraldry -- Great Britain
"_Amaranth_ or _columbine_ is the field of a coat (of which the blazon is
too lengthy for insertion in this place) which was granted to a Bohemian
knight in 1701."
Carnation is the French term for the colour of naked flesh, and is often
employed in the blazonry of that country. {75}
Perhaps mention should here be made of the English term "proper." Anything,
alive or otherwise, which is depicted in its natural colours is termed
"proper," and it should be depicted in its really correct tones or tints,
without any attempt to assimilate these with any heraldic tincture. It will
not be found in the very ancient coats of arms, and its use is not to be
encouraged. When a natural animal is found existing in various colours it
is usual to so describe it, for the term "proper" alone would leave
uncertainty. For instance, the crest of the Lane family, which was granted
to commemorate the ride of King Charles II. behind Mistress Jane Lane as
her servant, in his perilous escape to the coast after the disastrous
Battle of Worcester, is blazoned "a strawberry roan horse, couped at the
flanks proper, bridled sable, and holding between the feet an Imperial
crown also proper." Lord Cowper's supporters were, on either side of the
escutcheon, "a light dun horse proper, with a large blaze down the face,
the mane close shorn except a tuft on the withers, a black list down the
back, a bob tail, and the near fore-foot and both hind feet white." Another
instance that might be quoted are the supporters of Lord Newlands, which
are: "On either side a dapple-grey horse proper, gorged with a riband and
suspended therefrom an escutcheon gules, charged with three bezants in
chevron." The crest of the family of Bewes, of St. Neots, Cornwall, is: "On
a chapeau gules, turned up ermine, a pegasus rearing on his hind legs of a
bay colour, the mane and tail sable, winged or, and holding in the mouth a
sprig of laurel proper."
There are and were always many occasions in which it was desired to
represent armorial bearings in black and white, or where from the nature of
the handicraft it was impossible to make use of actual colour. But it
should always be pointedly remembered that unless the right colours of the
arms could be used the tinctures were entirely ignored in all matters of
handicraft until the seventeenth century. Various schemes of hatchings,
however, were adopted for the purpose of indicating the real heraldic
colours when arms were represented and the real colours could not be
employed, the earliest being that of Francquart in Belgium, _circa_ 1623.
Woodward says this was succeeded by the systems of Butkens, 1626; Petra
Sancta, 1638; Lobkowitz, 1639; Gelenius; and De Rouck, 1645; but all these
systems differed from each other, and were for a time the cause of
confusion and not of order. Eventually, however, the system of Petra Sancta
(the author of _Tesseræ Gentilitia_) superseded all the others, and has
remained in use up to the present time.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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