HERALDRY is the whole group of cere monial duties discharged by the heralds of a court, an army, a great noble or the like, with the assistance of their pursuivants and under the direction of the Earl Marshal, King-at ATMs, the College of Arms or other chief of the institution. These duties are generally divis ible into heraldry proper or the business of regulating ceremonial occasions, such as coro nations, marriages among princes, proclama tions of important events and the like; and armory, or the art of quasi-science of armorial bearings. In the first of these divisions but little remains of any interest at the present day, for only in Great Britain is the herald of any consequence. There, however, he still has some direction, as at the eventful proclamation of 1 May 1876, when the Queen of Great Britain assumed the title of Empress of India. In the second branch of the subject, the order and marshaling of arms, the Germans are per haps at the head of modern Writers, though the English and Scottish treatises on the subject are more numerous and more widely used. The Germans' thoroughness of investigation has marked their treatment of this subject, which is eminently a branch of medizval and sub seque.nt history serving to elucidate genealogical research.
Modern heraldry is no older than the tourna ments of the Middle Ages. No linking evi dences of the science occur during the Dark Ages, although badges and emblems are found on shields and helmets discovered in the ruins of antiquity, while in Biblical times the men of Israel were directed to pitch their tents,. every man by his own camp• and standard with the ensigns of his father's house. Greek and Roman writers describe devices on shields and helmets; the golden eagle on the shields of the kings of Media; the standards and bril liantly-colored shields borne by the ancient Germans in battle. The office of herald is as ancient as that of priesthood. Spartans, and Romans had heralds, the Roman officers being divided into three classes: caduceatores, heralds of peace; fetiales, heralds of war and peace; and precones, judicial criers or nes-• sengers. The caduceator on a mission earned a wand of laurel or olive (caduceus, q.v.), as a
symbol of his office and for his security. The feliates are thought to have had a college of 20 members founded by Numa, who formulated the procedure and ceremonies connected with the declaration of war and the making of treaties, The pr&cones were employed to pro claim matters of public interest to the people at religious ceremonies, in the comitia, at publ:c sales, judicial trials, in the senate, on the publi cation of laws which they read, at funerals, at games, in the army when a general wished to address his men, at executions and at all public meetings. The heralds of the Middle Ages had duties which in part resembled those of the heralds of antiquity. Thus, they carried mes sages of peace and of defiance, and yet even in the earlier years of feudality their office was an inferior one, they being replaced by ambas sadors, diplomats almost in the modern sense, statesmen in whose suite the heralds and pur suivants went to the foreign court. So it was that the chief duty of the herald came to be the care of armories.
The first known tomb or monument with escutcheons in the period of modern history is stated to be the 11th century tomb in the church of Saint Emmeran at Ratisbon, where are the bearings of Varmond, a count of Vasserburg; but this may be a later addition. Another very old specimen and certainly genu ine is the shield at Le Mans of Geoffrey Plan tagenet, who died in 1150. The use of coats of arms seems to have first become general in the 12th century. Rolls of arms in England are extant in the reigns of Henry III, Edward I and Edward II. Surcoats displayed armorial bearings in the reign of Henry III. The Roll of Caerlaverock, a poem in Norman-French, contains the names and armorial bearings of the knights and barons who attended Edward I at the siege of the Castle of Caerlaverock, Dum friesshire in 1300 and exhibits heraldry already in a developed form. On coins also, no armorial ensigns are found till the 13th century; but then both coins and the seals of nobles and monasteries display them; the use of arms on the Great Seal of England was introduced by Richard I.