An heraldic primer - part 2

The origins of heraldry are lost in time but the usual explanation goes along the lines that coats of arms arose from the need to identify which side you were on in the heat of battle. Everyone of substance was wearing full armour and was thus difficult to identify and so a patterned surcoat or overcoat was worn over the armour. The surcoat (over coat) was nothing more than a large rectangular piece of material with a head hole cut in the centre worn tied around the waist with a belt or strip of cloth. Hence the name—coat of arms. However, identifying symbols designating your team are much more ancient than the times of medieval knights but usually they had a similar purpose.

Eventually the practice became more formalised and all the team leaders, the great men of the realms, introduced into their households heralds whose main role was to maintain the integrity of the particular symbol of the great man.
At some stage the monarchs saw the potential to manage this exercise for themselves. Perhaps a number of disputes of ownership of these symbols or trademarks caused such intervention. In England the monarch gave this task to the Lord High Constable and later when this office was abolished, to the premier duke of the country, the Duke of Norfolk in his role as Earl Marshal. In Scotland the High Sennachie was given the task and he was eventually known as the Lord Lyon King of Arms—a play on the word lion that is the symbol on the Scottish royal arms.

Pictured: James III of SCT wearing a surcoat bearing the Arms of Scotland. (Rodney Dennys; The Heraldic Imagination, London 1975 p81)

The task of determining the right to bear a specific coat of arms meant that these officers had to undertake the study of genealogy and the recording of family trees.

In the next issue we will cover the administrators of heraldry.

Graham Jaunay BA DipT MACE AAGRA

Originally published as a series in, Relative Thoughts, Fleurieu Peninsula Family History Group