1. ("Tum redire paulatim--in sedes referunt."--Cap. 28.)

"They relinquished the guard of the gates; and the Eagles and other Ensigns, which in the beginning of the Tumult they had thrown together, were now restored each to its distinct station." Potter in his "Antiquities of Greece" (Dunbar's edition, Edinburgh, 1824, vol. ii. page 79), thus speaks of the ensigns or flags ([Greek: sêmeia]) used by the Grecians in their military affairs: "Of these there were different sorts, several of which were adorned with images of animals, or other things bearing peculiar relations to the cities they belong to. The Athenians, for instance, bore an owl in their ensigns (Plutarchus Lysandro), as being sacred to Minerva, the protectress of their city; the Thebans a _Sphynx_ (_idem_ Pelopidas, Cornelius Nepos, Epaminondas), in memory of the famous monster overcome by Oedipus. The Persians paid divine honours to the sun, and therefore represented him in their ensigns" (Curtius, lib. 3). Again (in page 150), speaking of the ornaments and devices on their ships, he says: "Some other things there are in the prow and stern that deserve our notice, as those ornaments wherewith the extremities of the ship were beautified, commonly called [Greek: akronea] (or [Greek: neôn korônides]), in Latin, _Corymbi_. The form of them sometimes represented helmets, sometimes living creatures, but most frequently was winded into a round compass, whence they are so commonly named _Corymbi_ and _Coronæ_. To the [Greek: akrostolia] in the prow, answered the [Greek: aphgasta] in the stern, which were often of an orbicular figure, or fashioned like wings, to which a little shield called [Greek: aspideion], or [Greek: aspidiskê], was frequently affixed; sometimes a piece of wood was erected, whereon ribbons of divers colours were hung, and served instead of a flag to distinguish the ship. [Greek: Chêniskos] was so called from [Greek: Chên], _a Goose_, whose {10} figure it resembled, because geese were looked on as fortunate omens to mariners, for that they swim on the top of the waters and sink not. [Greek: Parasêmon] was the flag whereby ships were distinguished from one another; it was placed in the prow, just below the [Greek: stolos], being sometimes carved, and frequently painted, whence it is in Latin termed _pictura_, representing the form of a _mountain_, a _tree_, a _flower_, or any other thing, wherein it was distinguished from what was called _tutela_, or the safeguard of the ship, which always represented _some one of the gods_, to whose care and protection the ship was recommended; for which reason it was held sacred. Now and then we find the _tutela_ taken for the [Greek: Parasêmon], and perhaps sometimes the images of gods might be represented on the flags; by some it is placed also in the prow, but by most authors of credit assigned to the stern. Thus Ovid in his Epistle to Paris:-- 'Accipit et pictos puppis adunca Deos.' 'The stern with painted deities richly shines.' "The ship wherein Europa was conveyed from Phoenicia into Crete had a _bull_ for its flag, and _Jupiter_ for its tutelary deity. The Boeotian ships had for their tutelar god _Cadmus_, represented with a _dragon_ in his hand, because he was the founder of Thebes, the principal city of Boeotia. The name of the ship was usually taken from the flag, as appears in the following passage of Ovid, where he tells us his ship received its name from the helmet painted upon it:-- 'Est mihi, sitque, precor, flavæ tutela Minervæ, Navis et à pictâ casside nomen habit.' 'Minerva is the goddess I adore, And may she grant the blessings I implore; The ship its name a painted helmet gives.' "Hence comes the frequent mention of ships called _Pegasi_, _Scyllæ_, _Bulls_, _Rams_, _Tigers_, &c., which the poets took liberty to represent as living creatures that transported their riders from one country to another; nor was there (according to some) any other ground for those known fictions of Pegasus, the winged Bellerophon, or the Ram which is reported to have carried Phryxus to Colchos." To quote another very learned author: "The system of hieroglyphics, or symbols, was adopted into every mysterious institution, for the purpose of concealing the most sublime secrets of religion from the prying curiosity of the vulgar; to whom nothing was exposed but the beauties of their morality." (See Ramsay's "Travels of Cyrus," lib. 3.) "The old Asiatic style, so highly figurative, seems, by what we find of {11} its remains in the prophetic language of the sacred writers, to have been evidently fashioned to the mode of the ancient hieroglyphics; for as in hieroglyphic writing the sun, moon, and stars were used to represent states and empires, kings, queens, and nobility--their eclipse and extinction, temporary disasters, or entire overthrow--fire and flood, desolation by war and famine; plants or animals, the qualities of particular persons, &c.; so, in like manner, the Holy Prophets call kings and empires by the names of the heavenly luminaries; their misfortunes and overthrow are represented by eclipses and extinction; stars falling from the firmament are employed to denote the destruction of the nobility; thunder and tempestuous winds, hostile invasions; lions, bears, leopards, goats, or high trees, leaders of armies, conquerors, and founders of empires; royal dignity is described by purple, or a crown; iniquity by spotted garments; a warrior by a sword or bow; a powerful man, by a gigantic stature; a judge by balance, weights, and measures--in a word, the prophetic style seems to be a speaking hieroglyphic." It seems to me, however, that the whole of these are no more than symbolism, though they are undoubtedly symbolism of a high and methodical order, little removed from our own armory. Personally I do not consider them to be armory, but if the word is to be stretched to the utmost latitude to permit of their inclusion, one certain conclusion follows. That if the heraldry of that day had an orderly existence, it most certainly came absolutely to an end and disappeared. Armory as we know it, the armory of to-day, which as a system is traced back to the period of the Crusades, is no mere continuation by adoption. It is a distinct development and a re-development _ab initio_. Undoubtedly there is a period in the early development of European civilisation which is destitute alike of armory, or of anything of that nature. The civilisation of Europe is not the civilisation of Egypt, of Greece, or of Rome, nor a continuation thereof, but a new development, and though each of these in its turn attained a high degree of civilisation and may have separately developed a heraldic symbolism much akin to armory, as a natural consequence of its own development, as the armory we know is a development of its own consequent upon the rise of our own civilisation, nevertheless it is unjustifiable to attempt to establish continuity between the ordered symbolism of earlier but distinct civilisations, and our own present system of armory. The one and only civilisation which has preserved its continuity is that of the Jewish race. In spite of persecution the Jews have preserved unchanged the minutest details of ritual law and ceremony, the causes of their suffering. Had heraldry, which is and has always been a matter of pride, formed a part of their distinctive life we should find it still existing. Yet the fact remains {12} that no trace of Jewish heraldry can be found until modern times. Consequently I accept unquestioningly the conclusions of the late J. R. Planché, Somerset Herald, who unhesitatingly asserted that armory did not exist at the time of the Conquest, basing his conclusions principally upon the entire absence of armory from the seals of that period, and the Bayeux tapestry. [Illustration: FIG. 1.--Kiku-non-hana-mon. State _Mon_ of Japan.] [Illustration: FIG. 2.--Kiri-mon. _Mon_ of the Mikado.] [Illustration: FIG. 3.--Awoï-mon. _Mon_ of the House of Minamoto Tokugawa.] [Illustration: FIG. 4.--_Mon_ of the House of Minamoto Ashikaya.] [Illustration: FIG. 5.--Tomoye. _Mon_ of the House of Arina.] The family tokens (_mon_) of the Japanese, however, fulfil very nearly all of the essentials of armory, although considered heraldically they may appear somewhat peculiar to European eyes. Though perhaps never forming the entire decoration of a shield, they do appear upon weapons and armour, and are used most lavishly in the decoration of clothing, rooms, furniture, and in fact almost every conceivable object, being employed for _decorative_ purposes in precisely the same manners and methods that armorial devices are decoratively made use of in this country. A Japanese of the upper classes always has his _mon_ in three places upon his _kimono_, usually at the back just below the collar and on either sleeve. The Japanese servants also wear their service badge in much the same manner that in olden days the badge was worn by the servants of a nobleman. The design of the service badge occupies the whole available surface of the back, and is reproduced in a miniature form on each lappel of the _kimono_. Unfortunately, like armorial bearings in Europe, but to a far greater extent, the Japanese _mon_ has been greatly pirated and abused. {13} Fig. 1, "Kiku-non-hana-mon," formed from the conventionalised bloom (_hana_) of the chrysanthemum, is the _mon_ of the State. It is formed of sixteen petals arranged in a circle, and connected on the outer edge by small curves. Fig. 2, "Kiri-mon," is the personal _mon_ of the Mikado, formed of the leaves and flower of the _Paulowna imperialis_, conventionally treated. Fig. 3, "Awoï-mon," is the _mon_ of the House of Minamoto Tokugawa, and is composed of three sea leaves (_Asarum_). The Tokugawa reigned over the country as _Shogune_ from 1603 until the last revolution in 1867, before which time the Emperor (the Mikado) was only nominally the ruler. Fig. 4 shows the _mon_ of the House of Minamoto Ashikaya, which from 1336 until 1573 enjoyed the Shogunat. Fig. 5 shows the second _mon_ of the House of Arina, Toymote, which is used, however, throughout Japan as a sign of luck. [Illustration: FIG. 6.--Double eagle on a coin (_drachma_) under the Orthogide of Kaifa Naçr Edin Mahmud, 1217.] [Illustration: FIG. 7.--Device of the Mameluke Emir Toka Timur, Governor of Rahaba, 1350.] [Illustration: FIG. 8.--Lily on the Bab-al-Hadid gate at Damascus.] [Illustration: FIG. 9.--Device of the Emir Arkatây (a band between two keys).] [Illustration: FIG. 10.--Device of the Mameluke Emir Schaikhu.] [Illustration: FIG. 11.--Device of Abu Abdallah, Mohammed ibn Naçr, King of Granada, said to be the builder of the Alhambra (1231-1272).] The Saracens and the Moors, to whom we owe the origin of so many of our recognised heraldic charges and the derivation of some of our terms (_e.g._ "gules," from the Persian _gul_, and "azure" from the Persian _lazurd_) had evidently on their part something more than the rudiments of armory, as Figs. 6 to 11 will indicate. {14} One of the best definitions of a coat of arms that I know, though this is not perfect, requires the twofold qualification that the design must be hereditary and must be connected with armour. And there can be no doubt that the theory of armory as we now know it is governed by those two ideas. The shields and the crests, if any decoration of a helmet is to be called a crest, of the Greeks and the Romans undoubtedly come within the one requirement. Also were they indicative of and perhaps intended to be symbolical of the owner. They lacked, however, heredity, and we have no proof that the badges we read of, or the decorations of shield and helmet, were continuous even during a single lifetime. Certainly as we now understand the term there must be both continuity of use, if the arms be impersonal, or heredity if the arms be personal. Likewise must there be their use as decorations of the implements of warfare. If we exact these qualifications as essential, armory as a fact and as a science is a product of later days, and is the evolution from the idea of tribal badges and tribal means and methods of honour applied to the decoration of implements of warfare. It is the conjunction and association of these two distinct ideas to which is added the no less important idea of heredity. The civilisation of England before the Conquest has left us no trace of any sort or kind that the Saxons, the Danes, or the Celts either knew or practised armory. So that if armory as we know it is to be traced to the period of the Norman Conquest, we must look for it as an adjunct of the altered civilisation and the altered law which Duke William brought into this country. Such evidence as exists is to the contrary, and there is nothing that can be truly termed armorial in that marvellous piece of cotemporaneous workmanship known as the Bayeux tapestry. Concerning the Bayeux tapestry and the evidence it affords, Woodward and Burnett's "Treatise on Heraldry," apparently following Planché's conclusions, remarks: "The evidence afforded by the famous tapestry preserved in the public library of Bayeux, a series of views in sewed work representing the invasion and conquest of England by WILLIAM the Norman, has been appealed to on both sides of this controversy, and has certainly an important bearing on the question of the antiquity of coat-armour. This panorama of seventy-two scenes is on probable grounds believed to have been the work of the Conqueror's Queen MATILDA and her maidens; though the French historian THIERRY and others ascribe it to the Empress MAUD, daughter of HENRY III. The latest authorities suggest the likelihood of its having been wrought as a decoration for the Cathedral of Bayeux, when rebuilt by WILLIAM'S uterine brother ODO, Bishop of that See, in 1077. The exact correspondence which has been discovered between the length of the tapestry {15} and the inner circumference of the nave of the cathedral greatly favours this supposition. This remarkable work of art, as carefully drawn in colour in 1818 by Mr. C. STOTHARD, is reproduced in the sixth volume of the _Vetusta Monumenta_; and more recently an excellent copy of it from autotype plates has been published by the Arundel Society. Each of its scenes is accompanied by a Latin description, the whole uniting into a graphic history of the event commemorated. We see HAROLD taking leave of EDWARD THE CONFESSOR; riding to Bosham with his hawk and hounds; embarking for France; landing there and being captured by the Count of Ponthieu; redeemed by WILLIAM of Normandy, and in the midst of his Court aiding him against CONAN, Count of BRETAGNE; swearing on the sacred relics to recognise WILLIAM'S claim of succession to the English throne, and then re-embarking for England. On his return, we have him recounting the incidents of his journey to EDWARD THE CONFESSOR, to whose funeral obsequies we are next introduced. Then we have HAROLD receiving the crown from the English people, and ascending the throne; and WILLIAM, apprised of what had taken place, consulting with his half-brother ODO about invading England. The war preparations of the Normans, their embarkation, their landing, their march to Hastings, and formation of a camp there, form the subjects of successive scenes; and finally we have the battle of Hastings, with the death of Harold and the flight of the English. In this remarkable piece of work we have figures of more than six hundred persons, and seven hundred animals, besides thirty-seven buildings, and forty-one ships or boats. There are of course also numerous shields of warriors, of which some are round, others kite-shaped, and on some of the latter are rude figures, of dragons or other imaginary animals, as well as crosses of different forms, and spots. On one hand it requires little imagination to find the cross _patée_ and the cross _botonnée_ of heraldry prefigured on two of these shields. But there are several fatal objections to regarding these figures as incipient _armory_, namely that while the most prominent persons of the time are depicted, most of them repeatedly, none of these is ever represented twice as bearing the same device, nor is there one instance of any resemblance in the rude designs described to the bearings actually used by the descendants of the persons in question. If a personage so important and so often depicted as the Conqueror had borne arms, they could not fail to have had a place in a nearly contemporary work, and more especially if it proceeded from the needle of his wife." Lower, in his "Curiosities of Heraldry," clinches the argument when he writes: "Nothing but disappointment awaits the curious armorist who seeks in this venerable memorial the pale, the bend, and {16} other early elements of arms. As these would have been much more easily imitated with the needle than the grotesque figures before alluded to, we may safely conclude that personal arms had not yet been introduced." The "Treatise on Heraldry" proceeds: "The Second Crusade took place in 1147; and in MONTFAUCON'S plates of the no longer extant windows of the Abbey of St. Denis, representing that historical episode, there is not a trace of an armorial ensign on any of the shields. That window was probably executed at a date when the memory of that event was fresh; but in MONTFAUCON'S time, the beginning of the eighteenth century, the _Science héroïque_ was matter of such moment in France that it is not to be believed that the armorial figures on the shields, had there been any, would have been left out." Surely, if anywhere, we might have expected to have found evidence of armory, if it had then existed, in the Bayeux Tapestry. Neither do the seals nor the coins of the period produce a shield of arms. Nor amongst the host of records and documents which have been preserved to us do we find any reference to armorial bearings. The intense value and estimation attached to arms in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, which has steadily though slowly declined since that period, would lead one to suppose that had arms existed as we know them at an earlier period, we should have found some definite record of them in the older chronicles. There are no such references, and no coat of arms in use at a later date can be relegated to the Conquest or any anterior period. Of arms, as we know them, there are _isolated examples_ in the early part of the twelfth century, _perhaps_ also at the end of the eleventh. At the period of the Third Crusade (1189) they were in actual existence as hereditary decorations of weapons of warfare. Luckily, for the purposes of deductive reasoning, human nature remains much the same throughout the ages, and, dislike it as we may, vanity now and vanity in olden days was a great lever in the determination of human actions. A noticeable result of civilisation is the effort to suppress any sign of natural emotion; and if the human race at the present day is not unmoved by a desire to render its appearance attractive, we may rest very certainly assured that in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries this motive was even more pronounced, and still yet more pronounced at a more remote distance of time. Given an opportunity of ornament, there you will find ornament and decoration. The ancient Britons, like the Maories of to-day, found their opportunities restricted to their skins. The Maories tattoo themselves in intricate patterns, the ancient Britons used woad, though history is silent as to whether they were content with flat colour or gave their preference to patterns. It is unnecessary to trace the art of {17} decoration through embroidery upon clothes, but there is no doubt that as soon as shields came into use they were painted and decorated, though I hesitate to follow practically the whole of heraldic writers in the statement that it was _the necessity for distinction in battle_ which accounted for the decoration of shields. Shields were painted and decorated, and helmets were adorned with all sorts of ornament, long _before_ the closed helmet made it impossible to recognise a man by his facial peculiarities and distinctions. We have then this underlying principle of vanity, with its concomitant result of personal decoration and adornment. We have the relics of savagery which caused a man to be nicknamed from some animal. The conjunction of the two produces the effort to apply the opportunity for decoration and the vanity of the animal nickname to each other. We are fast approaching armory. In those days every man fought, and his weapons were the most cherished of his personal possessions. The sword his father fought with, the shield his father carried, the banner his father followed would naturally be amongst the articles a son would be most eager to possess. Herein are the rudiments of the idea of heredity in armory; and the science of armory as we know it begins to slowly evolve itself from that point, for the son would naturally take a pride in upholding the fame which had clustered round the pictured signs and emblems under which his father had warred. Another element then appeared which exercised a vast influence upon armory. Europe rang from end to end with the call to the Crusades. We may or we may not understand the fanaticism which gripped the whole of the Christian world and sent it forth to fight the Saracens. That has little to do with it. The result was the collection together in a comparatively restricted space of all that was best and noblest amongst the human race at that time. And the spirit of emulation caused nation to vie with nation, and individual with individual in the performance of illustrious feats of honour. War was elevated to the dignity of a sacred duty, and the implements of warfare rose in estimation. It is easy to understand the glory therefore that attached to arms, and the slow evolution which I have been endeavouring to indicate became a concrete fact, and it is due to the Crusades that the origin of armory as we now know it was practically coeval throughout Europe, and also that a large proportion of the charges and terms and rules of heraldry are identical in all European countries. The next dominating influence was the introduction, in the early part of the thirteenth century, of the closed helmet. This hid the face of the wearer from his followers and necessitated some means by which the latter could identify the man under whom they served. What more natural than that they should identify him by the {18} decoration of his shield and the ornaments of his helmet, and by the coat or surcoat which he wore over his coat of mail? This surcoat had afforded another opportunity of decoration, and it had been decorated with the same signs that the wearer had painted on his shield, hence the term "coat of arms." This textile coat was in itself a product of the Crusades. The Crusaders went in their metal armour from the cooler atmospheres of Europe to the intolerable heat of the East. The surcoat and the lambrequin alike protected the metal armour and the metal helmet from the rays of the sun and the resulting discomfort to the wearer, and were also found very effective as a preventative of the rust resulting from rain and damp upon the metal. By the time that the closed helmet had developed the necessity of distinction and the identification of a man with the pictured signs he wore or carried, the evolution of armory into the science we know was practically complete. {19}