The Stuff Around the Shield

Heraldic achievements: We've all seen them in pictures-the coat of arms, topped by a crest and held by supporters. Coats of arms have been extensively discussed, both here and in other collegia, but I thought that the things around the shield were worth talking about, too.

Crests and supporters were where late mediaeval and Renaissance heralds had a chance to do a little "experimenting". For instance, one of the first New World fauna in heraldry was a turkey, as a crest given during the reign of Elizabeth. Many of the "heraldic monsters", like keythongs, opinicuses, and pantheons, are seen, in historical heraldry, only as crests or supporters, even while the the coats of arms might be unremarkable in style.

The crest has its roots in the tournament. Shields and surcoats face the opponent, not the audience, in the illuminations that we have of mediaeval lists. The other participants in the tournament, and the audience, including the heralds and the diseurs, the judges of the lists (analogous to our marshals), would have appreciated a way to quickly identify who was in the lists at any given time, at more than one angle. Crests, because they stood above the throng, and because they were three dimensional objects, may have served that purpose. The earliest actual crests still in existence date from the 14th century, but depictions of crests date from the late 12th century, making them only slightly younger than coats of arms themselves.

By the 15th century, the use of the crest was so widespread among Germans that they created a special kind of tournament, the Kolbenturnier, in which the goal was to bash the crest of one's opponents with a club, while keeping one's crest intact. The Kolbenturnier seems to have spread into France, where Roi Ren{e'} of Anjou depicts such a tournament and the club used in it in his famous book on tournaments. In England, it was called the baston course, baston being an older spelling of the word baton, which originally meant club.

The oldest crests were fans or combs, upon which the bearer's coat of arms, or its primary charge, was depicted. For instance, Richard I's crest was a comb upon which a single lion passant gardant was placed. In the Luttrell Psalter, Sir Geoffrey Luttrell's crest is a polygonal fan bearing his coat of arms between two feathers. It is possible that crests shaped like the wings of birds or dragons may have evolved from fan crests, especially if the crest appears to be identical to, or directly inspired by, the bearer's coat of arms. They may also have evolved from another early crest form, the plume. The plume crest was usually made of peacock feathers, shaped into a cone. While the plume was occasionally proper, it could also be tinctured like the field of the coat of arms, or in the tinctures of the field and the primary charge of the coat of arms.

When the pointed Norman helm was replaced by the barrel helm, it did not take long for people to realize that that flat top could have something glued or tied on that could stand as an independent statuette. The first instances of this sort of crest appeared in the middle of the 13th century.

Many people using this form of crest took the primary charge from their coats of arms and made them their crests. There also seems to have been a time when using a demi- creature as a crest was popular, especially if the whole beast was the primary charge of one's coat of arms. However, this was not always the case-even as far back as the 14th century, people were using crests that had no relation to their coats of arms, possibly to show cadency, or possibly as expressions of their whims.

As time went on, various regions developed traditional crest styles. The Germans, for instance, started flanking the primary charges of their crests with the horns of European bison. At first, they were depicted as they are in nature- think the helmet people normally associate with Vikings. Then, the horns were elongated, and they were shaped in a sort of S curve. Sometimes, the horns would be charged with something coming out of the ends of the horns, like flowers or feathers, and there are examples in which the horns have fringes of feathers. Occasionally, the horns were ribbed, giving rise to the notion, outside of Germany, that they were really elephant's trunks!

In England, in the early Tudor period, there seems to have been a vogue for multicolored crests. Also, the English occasionally would flank the crest's primary charge with sprigs of greenery. As the Tudor era brought England's Middle Ages to a close, the development of the crest took a very bad turn. The tournament became an amusement of the upper level of the Court, instead of remaining accessible to the general body of the aristocracy, as it did in Germany. This meant that most people who either assumed heraldry, or who got it granted to them by the College of Arms, did not plan on ever participating in a tournament. As a result, crests of these new aristocrats often were very elaborate, like that of Sir Francis Drake, and really could not be put on top of a helm without rendering it too cumbersome even for tournament use.

From the crest, we now turn to the supporters. Supporters have predecessors, of a sort-the so-called pseudo- supporters. Pseudo-supporters filled the space left when a shield-shaped coat of arms was placed on a circular seal, but did not appear to grab hold of the shield like supporters do. Often, these pseudo-supporters were sprigs of greenery, angels, beasts, or monsters.

Proper supporters, that is, things or people holding up the shield, don't begin to appear until the 14th century. It is possible that the use of supporters was a result of the more elaborate tournaments of the 14th and later centuries, in which it was not uncommon for each participant to have one or two people, often in costume, precede them in a pageant or parade, carrying his shield. Sometimes his shield was hung, along with others, on a tree. The challenger would ride to the tree, and pick out his opponent by poking his opponent's shield with his lance.

It should come as no surprise, then, that some of the popular supporters were trees, "wild men" (a fairly easy costume), and creatures or monsters. Ladies were also popular early supporters, perhaps because of the tournament's links to courtly love. Some supporters, like the yokes of the Hay family in Scotland, are adapted badges.

Trees, when they are supporters, are occasionally depicted in a very naturalistic manner. The coat of arms, in the shape of a shield, dangles from a branch by a strap, and a helm with its crest is hung on another. There are also times when a lady, as a supporter, carries the coat of arms along in one arm, and holds up a helm with its crest with the other. I have never heard of a lady supporter depicted as a warrior, although, by the close of the Middle Ages, it was not unusual, in chvalric literature, to find Amazons like Britomart in Spenser's Faery Queen.

However, it is more common for the supporters to be two creatures holding the coat of arms, one on each side. There seems to be a penchant, in German heraldry, for this to not be the case, but I have never seen a reason given for why this is so.

Also, because supporters were a creation of the newer, more elaborate passages of arms of the Late Middle Ages and the Renaissance, fewer people adopted them. Usually, these were only people of wealth and prominence, who could afford to be participants in these very expensive affairs. This meant that, for the most part, only peers of the realm and a few members of the minor aristocracy had supporters.

Crests and supporters, although originally chosen at the whims of their users, began to be inherited in the 15th century, in many parts of Europe. Indeed, crests and supporters, in England, often wear the traditional cadency marks as if they were jewelery.

By the close of the 16th century, crests and supporters were being pressed into use as signs of cadency and marshalling. For the most part, using crests as cadency marks sees to be a Continental custom. On the Continent, it was not unusual for successful merchants, artisans, and farmers to assume coats of arms. However, these people rarely assumed crests (or supporters), and they became hallmarks of noble descent. Crests became identified with fiefs, much like some coats of arms are identified with titles or offices. As coats of arms became more and more complicated by marks of cadency and quarterings, people began to revert to their families' original coats of arms, or only quartered the coats of their most important ancestors, and, to distinguish themselves from their cousins, displayed the crests that represented the fiefs that their particular branch of the family held.

Supporters can also be used for marshalling. First, since supporters often come in pairs, the right supporter can be from one family, and the left supporter can be from the other. Second, supporters can wear tabards, carry banners with the limb not being used to hold up the coat of arms, and wear crested helms, so someone could display as many family connection as he could, while still keeping the clutter on the coat of arms itself to a minimum.

There can be a place for crests and supporters in the SCA. Although the Laurel Sovereign of Arms has consistently refused to register items that look like crests, that is, badges in which the primary charge is resting on a helm- wreath or crown-since the very earliest days of that office, nor has it registered supporters, as such, for the same length of time. That does not prohibit the use of either crests or supporters, merely that one cannot expect protection within the SCA of any crests or supporters. Some kingdoms do regulate the use of crests and supporters in their laws, although the East does not, at this time.

Given the popularity of passages of arms in parts of the East, I don't think it would hurt to talk about how mediaeval crests were made. Some, especially the fan or comb kinds, were made of metal. Others were made of pasteboard, a sort of material made from paper pulp that has been pressed together and dried, or of many sheets of paper formed and glued together. Stuffed leather or cloth crests still survive in some museums and churches. Naturally, the panaches of feathers, were, well, feathers. Crests could be attached using a sort of brooch, lengths of twine, wire, or leather, or affixed by means of a post that was part of the helm.

In such passages of arms, it might also be possible to recreate the original supporters-people hired by the participant to carry his shield in a preliminary pageant. That, of course, is up to the particpant and his tailor.

I used the following sources:

Brooke-Little's Boutell's Heraldry
Clephan's The Medieval Tournament
Fox-Davies' A Complete Guide to Heraldry
Hope's Heraldry for Designers and Craftsmen
Rothery's Concise Encyclopedia of Heraldry
Woodcock and Robinson's The Oxford Guide to Heraldry