June 2019
2 years ago
The Lord Lyon can sort out any problems you may have with your heraldry. I know. Hardly a day goes past when I think, jings, look at the state of my coat of arms. My supporters are dodgy and my Latin motto’s gone mouldy. Must take myself along to a Pursuivant for a quick once over on the old quartering of the shield.
Of course, I don’t. Peasants like thee and me have no right to the fancy bling of a silken banner above our heads on the field of battle, which basically is what a coat of arms was, or as I like to look at it, brand recognition for aristocratic homicidal maniacs in the Middle Ages.
I hold no brief nor regard for the fanciful fol-de-rols of the nobility, but every time the snarling tangerine appears, and he’s doing it with distressing regularity, it’s good to remember that rainy morning in Aberdeen when the ghosts of Robert the Bruce’s heralds stood behind their lawyer as he slam-dunked possibly the most repellent man who has ever run for President, and I’m including Nixon. Go Herald Pursuivant.
A gold brooch in Gothic style mounted with an enamelled armorial shield surmounted by a pearl set coronet within a circlet of cushion-shaped rubies and diamonds.
Each youthful lady wore as a memento of the auspicious event a valuable gold locket, the centre being in the shape of a shield or escutcheon, on which were enamelled in colours proper the heraldic arms of the Bute and Norfolk families impaled. Round the lower part of the shield, from the top of the dexter chief to that of the sinister, was a band of beautiful rubies and small diamonds, the loop set with the same precious stones. The ornament was surmounted with a Marquis’s coronet, the leaves being formed in diamonds alternating with pearls.