The study of armory became essential when at mediaeval tournaments aged knights were ap pointed, whose duties were to act as arbiters and to pass judgment on coats of arms and the right of knighthood. Whenever a new knight appeared at a tournament, the herald had to blasen — that is to blow — the trumpet and proclaim and explain the bearing of his shield or coat of arms. Hence to blason (blasen) came to mean, to describe and explain a display of bearings. The heralds were also the chroni clers of the times and were present on all occa sions of public ceremony. In France the first herald roi-d'armes — was crowned and con secrated with religious ceremonies, and was called Montjoie, from the war-cry of the French royal armies. heralds were united in asso ciations and their duties formed a branch of science which was communicated only to the members. If any person pretended to the char acter of a herald, who on examination was found not to belong to the corporation, he was driven away with insults and frequently with violence. The heralds in modern courts are masters of ceremonies. In England there are now three kings at arms; the highest is the Garter king at arms; the second, known as Clarencieux, is for the southern counties; the third, styled Norroy, for the northern provinces. These three kings at arms with six subordinate heralds and four pursuivants form, under the of the Earl Marshal, always the Duke of Norfolk, the herald's college or her ald's office, established in 1483. The use of arms by private persons in the British Isles was forbidden by proclamation in the reign of Henry V. All persons who had not borne arms at Agincourt were prohibited from assuming unless by hereditary descent or with the sanction of the constituted authorities. Peri odical circuits called visitations were held after wards by the provincial heralds to take cog nizance of the arms, pedigrees and marriage of such as were entitled to the use of armorial bearings. These visitations continued till about the end of the 17th century; their records, many of which are preserved in the British Museum and elsewhere, contain much genea logical information and are still consulted for evidence of the hereditary right to bear arms.
The practice of blazoning the arms is fre quently referred to in the poetry of the Trouba dours of the 12th and 13th centuries. Those knights who asserted a right to appear at tour naments did so by the blazoning of their arms, and from the Germans this custom was trans mitted to the French, for tournaments were held in Germany before they became general in France. The French, however, carried to far greater perfection the tournament, and the blazon of heraldry connected with it, as they d:d the whole system of chivalry; the French language prevailing at the court of England after the Norman Conquest, pure French ex pressions came to be preserved in British her aldry. German heraldry, on the contrary, con tains almost pure German expressions.
The whole display of any person's arms is called an achievement, also spelled atchieve ment. Only the escutcheon, however, is of vital importance. This is the broad surface on which the bearings are charged. It is always assumed to be a shield in the case of a man not an ecclesiastic; but churchmen's arms are charged upon an oval or other architectural form, a sort of cartouche, and women's bear ings are charged upon a lozenge set vertically.
The arms of husband and wife, however, may be charged on a shield divided vertically in the middle, and are then said to be dimidiated or impaled; thus we might say that such an escutcheon bears the arms of Smith impaling the arms of Jones — Smith and Jones standing for the two spouses. It is rare to charge the wife's arms unless she was an heiress, that is to say a lady without brothers, and therefore having the parental arms by right. These rules, however, are those of Great Britain; they dif fer widely in other countries.
A single escutcheon may be complete with one simple partition. Thus, a horizontal line divides the chief or top of the field at one third of its height from the remainder of the field. If that chief is, say, of gold, while the rest of the field is blue, that by itself makes a very perfect and honorable heraldic blazon. The chief is one of the honorable ordinaries, and others are almost as simple. They are the pale, a vertical stripe in the middle of the shield and one third of its width; the fess, a horizontal stripe; the bend, which goes diagonally from the left hand upper corner to the right hand lower part, ending against the rounded border of the shield; the bend sinister, which is a bend turned the other way (but see below, dexter and sinister) ; the chevron, which is a pair of stripes meeting in the middle, forming a figure like the letter A without the cross-bar; the cross, the two arms of which are usually of one quarter the width of the es cutcheon; and the saltire, which is a diagonal cross. A shield upon which there is any one of these honorable ordinaries and nothing else, is one of dignity. In general the simpler shields are the older; thus the old family Er skine, with a black pale on a silver field, or the family of Beauchamp with a gold fess on a field, occupy the most enviable position in hay ing such a plain escutcheon. There are ordi naries of the second rank, such as the quarter or canton, the ork, and besides these there are very many bearings in common use, especially those which are diminutives of the honorable ordinaries. Thus, the pallett is a smaller pale, and the shield of Aragon has four red •pallette side by side on a gold grbund.. These 'again may be used as charges upon the greater.ordi, naries. Thus, the escutcheon of Loreyn bears a blue bend sinister on a gold and the bend itself is charged with three golden six pointed stars. That also is a simple and pre sumably ancient armory.
In describing the escutcheon the side on the left of the spectator is called the dexter and that on his right is called the sinister side; that is because the shield, when carried on the arm with the man-at-arms behind it would be to him so disposed. The escutcheon is supposed to be divided into a certain number of imag inary points or divisions for the fixing and placing of the bearings when they are described in words. When there are nine points, the three at the top following each other from the dexter to the sinister side are dexter chief, middle chief and sinister chief, and a similar nomenclature is used throughout. A modern and fuller arrangement is to give eleven points, the honor point interposed between the top horizontal row and the middle one; and the nombril point spaced between the middle row and the lowermost one. A small bearing as a mullet (a five-pointed star) may be located as being in the dexter chief or the like.