The colors of the family crest
were important distinguishing marks. The tinctures or hues of the shield and its charges are
seven in number: gold or yellow, silver or white, red, blue black, green
and purple. Medieval custom gave, according to a rule often broken,
gules, azure and sable as more high-sounding names for the red,
blue and black. Green was often named as vert, and sometimes as
synobill, a word which as sinople is used to this day by French
armorists. The song of the siege of Carlaverock has red, gules or vermeil, sable or black, azure or blue, but gules,
azure, sable and vert came to be recognized as armorists adjectives, and an early 15th-century romance discards the simple
words deliberately, telling us of its hero that:
"His shield was black and blue, sanz fable,
Barred of azure and of sable."
But gold and silver served as the armorists’ words for yellows and
whites until late in the 16th century, when, gold and silver made way
for or and argent, words which those for whom the interest of
armory lies in its liveliest days will not be eager to accept. Likewise
the colors of sanguine and tenné brought in by the pedants to
bring the tinctures to the mystical number of nine may be disregarded.
Besides the two
metals and five colors, fields and charges
are varied by the use of the furs ermine and vair. Ermine is shown by a
white field flecked with black ermine tails, and vair by a conventional
representation of a fur of small skins sewn in rows, white and blue
skins alternately. In the 15th century there was a popular variant of
ermine, white tails upon a black field. To this fur the books now give
the name of “ermines “- a most unfortunate choice, since ermines is a
name used in old documents for the original ermine.
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