MAHSHALING OF ARMS is the combining of different coats-of-arms in one escutch eon, for the purpose of indicating family alliance or offiee. In the earlier herald7. it was not the practice to exhibit tnore than one.coat in a shield, but the arms of husband and wife were sometimes placed ctecolMe, or side by side, in separate escutcheons; or the principal shield was surrounded by smaller ones, containing the arms of maternal ances tors; and we not unfrequently End maternal descent or marriag,e indicated by the addi tion of some bearing from the wife's or mother's shield. Then followed dimidiation, where the shield was parted per pale, and the two coats placed side by side, half of each being shown.- By the more modern custom of impaling, the whole of each coat is exhib ited, a reminiscence of the older practice being retained in the omission of bordures„ orles, and tressures on the side bounded by the line of impaleme_it. The most common -case of impalement is where the coats of husband and wife are conjoined, the husband's arms occupying the dexter side of the shield, or place of honor, and the wife's, the sin ister side. Bishops, deans, beads of colleges, and kinns-of-arms, impale their arms of office with their family coat, giving the dexter side to tlie former.
A mut who marries an heiress (in heraldic sense) is entitled to place her arms on a .small shield called an escutcheon of pretense, in the center of his achievement, instead of impaling.
Quartering, or the exhibiting different coats on a shield divided at once perpendicu larly and horizontally, is the most common mode of marshaling arms, a practice which, however, was unknown till the middle of the 14th century. The divisions of the shield i arc called quarters, and are numbered horizontally, beginnino- at the dexter chief. The most common object of quartering is to indicate descent. °The coats quartered in an escutcheon must all have been brought in by successive heiresses, who have intermarried into the family. In the case of a single quartering, the paternal arms are placed in the first
.and fourth quarters, and the maternal in the second and third. The third and fourth -quarters may, in after-generations, be occupied by the arms of a second and third heir ess. Sometimes an already quartered coat is placed in one of the four quarters of the escutcheon, then termed a grand quarter. We occasionally find a shield divided by per pendicular and horizontal lines into six, nine, or even more parts, each occupied by a coat brought in by an heiress; and in case of an odd number of coats, the last division is filled by a repetition of the first. In the course of generations, a shield tnay thus be inconveniently crowded by the accumulation of coats, including the several coats to -which each heiress may, in a similar way, have become entitled, and in Germany, some times twenty or thirty coats are found marshaled in one escutcheon; but in British her aldry, families entitled to a number of quarterings, generally select some of the most important. Quarterings, at least in Scotland, are not allowed to be added to the paternal coat without the sanction of the heraldic authorities.
Sovereigns quarter the ensigns of their several states, giving precedence to the most ancient, unless it be inferior to the others in importance. In the royal escutcheon of the United Kingdom, England is placed in the first and fourth quarters, Scotland in the second, and Ireland in the third; the relative positions of Scotland and England, being, however, reversed on the official seals of Scotland. Spain bears the arms of Leon in the first and fourth quarters, and Castile in the second and third. An elected king generally places his arms surtout on an escutcheon of pretense.