Family Crest - the History of the
Family Crest
The most important accessory of the arms is the crested helm
representing the family crest. Like
the arms it has its pre-heraldic history in the crests of the Greek
helmets, the wings, the wild boar’s and bull’s heads of Viking
headpieces. A little roundel of the arms of a Japanese house was often
borne as a crest in the Japanese helmet, stepped in a socket above the
middle of the brim. The 12th-century seal of Philip of Alsace, count of
Flanders, shows a demi-lion painted or beaten on the side of the upper
part of his helm. Crests, however, came slowly into use in England,. Of
the long roll of earls and barons sealing the famous letter to the pope
in 1301 only five show true crests on their seals. Two of them are the
earl of Lancaster and his brother, each with a wyver crest like that of
Quincy. One, and the most remarkable, is John St John of Halnaker, whose
crest is a leopard standing between two upright palm branches. Ralph de
Monthermer has an eagle crest, while Walter de Moncy’s helm is
surmounted by a fox-like beast. In three of these instances the crest is
borne, as was often the case, by the horse as well as the rider. Others
of these seals to the barons’ letter have the fan-shaped crest without
any decoration upon it. But as the furniture of tournaments grew more
magnificent the crest gave a new field for display, and many strange
shapes appear in painted and gilded wood, metal, leather or parchment
above the helms of the jousters.
The Berkeleys, great patrons of
abbeys, bore a mitre as their crest painted with their arms,
like crests being sometimes seen on the continent where the
wearer was an advocate of a bishopric or abbey. The whole or
half figures or the heads and necks of beasts and birds were
employed by other families. Saracens’ heads topped many
helms, that of the great Chandos among them. Astley bore for
his crest a silver harpy standing in marsh-sedge, a golden
chain fastened to a crown about her neck. Stanley took the
eagle’s nest in which the eagle is lighting down with a
swaddled babe in his claws. Burnell had a burdock bush, La
Vache a cow’s leg, and Lisle’s strange fancy was to perch
a huge millstone on edge above his head. Many early helmets
repeat the arms on the sides of a fan-crest. Howard bore for a
crest his arms painted on a pair of wings, while simple bushes
or feathers are seen in great plenty. The crest of a
cadet is often differenced like the arms, and thus a wyver or
a leopard will have a label about its neck. The Montague
griffon on the helm of John, marques of Montague, holds in its
beak the gimlet ring with which he differenced his father’s
shield.
It is often stated that a man, unless by some
special grace or allowance, can have but one crest. This,
however, is contrary to the spirit of medieval armory in which
a man, inheriting the coat of arms of another house than his
own, took with it all its belongings, crest, badge and the
like. The heraldry books, with more reason, deny crests to
women and to the clergy, but examples are not wanting of
medieval seals in which even this rule is broken. It is
perhaps unfair to cite the case of the bishops of Durham who
ride in full harness on their palatinate seals;
but Henry
Despenser, bishop of Norwich, has a helm on which the winged
griffon’s head of his house springs from a mitre, while
Alexander Nevill, archbishop of York, seals with shield,
supporters and crowned and crested helm like those of any lay
magnate. Richard Holt, a Northamptonshire clerk in holy
orders, bears on his seal in the reign of Henry V a shield of
arms and a mantled helm with the crest of a collared greyhound’s
head. About the middle of the same century a seal cut for the
wife of Thomas Chetwode, a Cheshire squire, has a shield of
her husband’s arms parted with her own and surmounted by a
crowned helm with the crest of a demi-lion; and this is not
the only example of such bearings by a woman.
Before passing from the crest let us note that in England the
juncture of crest and helm was commonly covered, especially after the
beginning of the 15th century, by a wreath of silk, twisted with one,
two or three colors. Coronets or crowns and hats of estate often take
the place of the wreath as a base for the crest, and there are other
curious variants. With the wreath may be considered the mantle, a
hanging cloth which, in its earliest form, is seen as two strips of silk
attached to the top of the helm below the crest and streaming like
pennants as the rider bent his head and charged. Such strips are often
displayed from the conical top of an uncrested helm, and some ancient
examples have the air of the two ends of a stole of a bishop’s mitre.
The general opinion of antiquaries has been that the mantle originated
among the crusaders as a protection for the steel helm from the rays of
an Eastern sun; but the fact that mantles take in England their fuller
form after the crusading days were over seems against this theory.
When the shield and crested fashion for shattering the edges of helm
with hat and clothing came in, the edges of the mantle of Thomas of
mantle were slitted like the edge Hengrave (1401). of the sleeve or
skirt, and, flourished out on either side of the helm, it became the
delight of the painter of armories and the seal engraver. A worthless
tale, repeated by popular manuals, makes the slitted edge represent the
shearing work of the enemy’s sword, a fancy which takes no account of
the like developments in civil dress. Modern heraldry in England paints
the mantle with the principal color of the shield, lining it with the
principal metal. This in cases where no old grant of arms is cited as
evidence of another usage. The mantles of the king and of the prince of
Wales are, however, of gold lined with ermine and those of other members
of the royal house of gold lined with silver. In ancient examples there
is great variety and freedom. Where the crest is the head of a griffon
or bird the feathering of the neck will be carried on to cover the
mantle. Other mantles will be powdered with badges or with charges from
the shield, others checkered, barred or paled. More than thirty of the
mantles enameled on the stall-plates of the medieval Garter-knights are
of red with an ermine lining, tinctures which in most cases have no
reference to the shields below them.
