The adoption of additional quarterings for the purpose of display, and
the introduction of more complicated compositions in the time of
HENRY VIII., were speedily followed by the substitution of pictorial
representations, often of a most frivolous and inconsistent character,
and many of them altogether unintelligible without written explanations,
instead of the simple, dignified, and expressive insignia of true
Heraldry. For example, in the year 1760, a grant of arms was made to a
Lincolnshire family named Tetlow, which, with thirteen other figures,
includes the representation of a book duly clasped and ornamented,
having on it a silver penny; while above the book rests a dove, holding
in its beak a crow-quill! This was to commemorate one of the family
having, with a crow-quill, actually achieved the exploit of writing the
Lord’s Prayer within the compass of a silver penny. Amongst the most
objectionable of the arms of this class are those which were granted to
distinguished naval and military officers--arms, that certainly ought to
have conferred fresh honour on illustrious names, instead of inflicting
dishonour upon Heraldry itself. Battles by sea and land, landscapes and
sea views and fortified cities, flags of all kinds, with medals and
ribbons, all of them intermixed with devices not quite so unheraldic,
abound in these extravagant compositions. The arms of Lord Nelson, and
still more recently those of General Lord Gough, may be specified as
flagrant examples of this degenerate pictorial Heraldry. The Duke of
Wellington happily escaped a similar infliction. It would be but too
easy to enumerate other equally inconsistent and unheraldic
compositions: but, I must be content to refer only to the armorial
shield granted to the great astronomer, Sir John Herschel, on which is
displayed his forty-foot reflecting telescope, with all its apparatus!
These, and all such violations of heraldic truth and consistency, though
in some instances they are of very recent date, are now to be assigned
to a closed chapter in the history of English Heraldry. But in
considering them it must not be forgotten that this kind of grant was
not confined to this country, but flourished to a still greater extent
abroad.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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