HERALDRY, FAMILY COATS OF ARMS
Heraldry explained

Animate Charges.
Quadrupeds, birds, fish, reptiles, insects-in fact every form of animate life -are used in heraldry.

range from the three-towered castle to the humble nail. Many weapons appear as charges: big guns, or chambers; muskets; pistols; bows and arrows. Perhaps the foremost among them is the sword, usually erect with the point in chief. The lance may assume any position and is sometimes blazoned as a broken spear (the handle end) or a half spear (the headed end). Churches, mills, bridges, books, parchment rolls, and tools of all trades are found, the last especially in burgher arms.
In the last century, contemporary, prosaic objects have been introduced, but this expedient is unnecessary because there is no dearth of timehonored material with which a new idea may be expressed. (For example, steamships have been used where the classic heraldic sailing ships, the lymphad would have been preferable.) A proliferation of objects on the shield is a sign of decadence. In good heraldic design, simplicity and austerity rule.
Canting Arms.
Some of the earliest coats of arms were graphic puns on the name of the bearer. Such devices, known as canting arms, were especially common in burgher arms and are still popular. They vary in the quality of their wit from admirably subtle to humbly obvious. In the former category is a shield simply "ermine" for Apulderfeld (':a powdered field" ), or "fretty" for Maltravers ("bad traveling"). In the latter category is a shield with an arrow pointing to a bee, for the municipal corporation of Barrowin-Furness ("B" + arrow).
Akin to canting arms are allusive arms: those in which the objects depicted refer either to a famous incident in the family's history, or to the occupation of the person to whom the arms were granted. For example, the human heart in the Douglas arms refers to the attempt made by Sir James Douglas in the 14th century to carry the heart of Robert the Bruce to the Holy Land for burial. Bees and bezants are likely to appear in the arms of a "self-made" man, in reference to his industriousness and wealth.
Marshaling.
Frequently heraldic bearings involve marshaling, the depiction of more than one coat of arms on a shield. Marshaling which shows intermarriage, inheritance, and office, may be accomplished by several methods of combination. The following are characteristic especially of English and Scottish heraldry.
Dimidiation.
Impalement. and Inescutcheon. An old method of forming a marital achievement was dimidiation, according to which the arms of the husband (baron) and of the father of his wife (femme) were each cut per pale and the dexter half of the husband's conjoined to the sinister half of the wife's. Dimidiation was abandoned because it led to distortion and difficulties of recognition.
The modem method of forming a marital achievement is by impalement, in which the,arms of the husband appear in the dexter half of the shield parted per pale, and the arms of the wife in the sinister half. This arrangement refers only to the married couple and may not be used by sons and daughters. Impalement may also be used to show office. When a man holds a post to which arms of office are attached, such as that of archbishop, bishop.. or king of arms, his personal arms are impaled on the sinister, the arms. of office occupying the dexter. A married man in such a position displays two shields; his arms of office impaling his personal arms, and his personal arms impaling those of his wife.
A further method of combining arms, used on a marital achievement in certain circumstances, is by adding an inescutcheon, or shield of pretence.In Western, patrilineal society, inheritance is through the male; hence~ though the daughters of an armiger are entitled to display their father's arms, they cannot transmit them to their own offspring. When, however, there is no male issue, a daughter becomes, on her father's death, a heraldic heiress (several sisters are equal coheiresses). When she marries, the marital arms will not be by impalement but will show the husband's arms occupying the whole field and hers on an inescutcheon, because the husband has become a pretender to his wife's family honors.
Quartering.
Finally, marshaling may be by quartering, a method of dividing the shield into quarters to show inheritance. The offspring of the marriage of an armiger and a heraldic heiress will inherit two coats of arms, which, on the death of the parents, will be quartered on the shield. Quarters are numbered, preferably with Roman numerals, from dexter to sinister and from chief to base. The two coats of arms will be repeated diagonally; I and IV for the father, II and III for the mother.
There is a prevailing, erroneous, and rather vulgar idea that many quarters crammed into a shield bespeak the bluest of blue blood but quartering does not represent any and every ancestor on either the sword side of a family or the distatt side, who happened to be armigerous. Quarters ought not to be added at the whim of the present armiger; they are legitimate only when brought in by a heraldic heiress. In England there is no limit to the legitimate number; the quarter is pronominal-that is, bears the arms of the owner's father-and will be repeated at the end of the marshaled series when the total would otherwise come to an odd number. In Scotland the collection of legitimate quarters is limited; and if some special family alliances are to be shown, more than one shield must be used.
It is quite impossible to display a very large number of quarters, since each would be too small to be visible. Hence, families thus overburdened generally wear only their pronominal coat of arms and are content to record additions in the family 'pedigree book. Sometimes, however, there is a name and arms clause in a will, and property can be transmitted only if the son in-law of the testator will display his arms and, by royal warrant. assume the testator's name in place of his own or hyphenate it with his own. In the latter event the father-in-law's surname is the second or finar element of the hyphenation, and the quartered arms become the subject of a fresh patent. This marshaling is then inseparable and must appear as a quarter quarterly in any wider marshaling. The grand quarter so formed has the subquarters numbered in Arabic numerals.
In Continental heraldry, marshaling may often be by other methods, such as placing one coat of arms above another or dividing the shield into three or other uneven numbers of parts.
Differencing.
Although the fundamentals of heraldry remain the same, the stress on one aspect of the subject or another varies greatly from period to period. Today, for example, little attention is paid to the helmet of rank, which has been abandoned for the tilting helmet for all armigers. Nor is there much concern for the niceties of brisures, marks of cadency, or marks of difference to distinguish the arms of brothers in the same family. Single women wear their father's arms without such distinctions but on a lozenge, or diamond shape, instead of on a shield. In former times, however, great importance was attached to differencing. In the feudal period it was necessary, because both father and son, with their own followers, might be in the same feudal host. In those days cadets did not necessarily bear arms since they were not going to inherit the feudal holding. Later, when heraldry became less military and more personal, differences were devised for cadets. Two systems developed-one of minor brisures and one of major brisures. At first used together in most countries, they were eventually standardized and employed separately, minor brisures in England and major brisures in Scotland and on the Continent.
The English System.
The English system consists of a standardized series of small marks added to the family arms. For the heir apparent a label of three points is used, that is, a narrow strip near the. chief, having three pendants descending. The brisure for the second son is a crescent; for the third son, a mullet; for the fourth, a martlet (heraldic swallow}; for the fifth, an annulet; for the sixth, a fleur-de-lis; for the seventh, a rose; for the eighth, a cross moline and for the ninth, a double quatrefoil. That these additional marks are not charges is indicated by their being smaller than is proportionate, and of any color not otherwise included in the achievement; hence, metal may be on metal and tincture on tincture. They usually appear in center chief, but they may go elsewhere-on an ordinary, for example. There are no cadency marks for the use of daughters, except in the royal family.
The system begins to show its weakness when the eldest son has two sons himself. His first son, the heir presumptive, bears a label of five points, but the second son bears the crescent, precisely the same as his uncle. To rectify this drawback, the brisures were supposed to become house marks; all sons of the heir apparent bore their father's label and on it their own cadency mark. Thus, a second son of a second son would display a crescent on a crescent for difference; but since the house mark (the first crescent) is smaller than a charge, the personal difference (the second crescent) would be too small to be visible. In the event of there being three living generations, the third mark would be too small to recognize. This system is not rigidly enforced. In practice, sometimes all legal offspring bear the same arms as their father during his lifetime without differencing.
The Scottish System.
In Scotland, heraldic usage for the eldest son is the same as in England. For younger sons, however, the Scottish system of differencing is unlike the English system and is, moreover, enforced by law. Younger sons are born only with the right to apply to the Lord Lyon for rematriculation of their father's arms with such congruent differences as the Lord Lyon. shall decide. These differences standardized by Robert Riddle Stodart in the late 19th century and called the Stodart system, consist chiefly of the addition of bordures, varied by changes of line and color, to the arms. Allowing that bordures may become rather monotonous, it cannot! be denied that the system does indeed work. There are not two identical coats of arms in the : whole of Scotland. Since heraldry is the art and ( science of identification, the rigid control exercised in Scotland is, to say the least, logical.
Continental differencing is similar to that of Scotland, except in Germany) where all the sons inherited equally and therefore were permitted to use the same coat of arms, adding only different collections of crests for differencing.

The Field