III-.RALDIC SCIENCE. 323 



usurpation, which was generally a prelude to the usurpation of titles of 

 nobility, did not involve any other punishment than a fine a fact which is 

 mentioned in an ordinance of Charles IX. addressed to the States of Orleans 

 in 1560, and framed as follows: "Those who shall falsely usurp the name 

 and title of nobility, take or use crested arms, will be fined by our judges, 

 and the most rigorous measures will be used to make them pay these fines." 

 But, in spite of the numerous and severe decrees of the Crown against the 

 assumption of titles, the evil increased, and by the end of the fifteenth century 

 the merchants and the working mechanics, as well as the bourgeoisie, took 

 for themselves arms and devices without any opposition upon the part of the 



Fig. 276. The Arms of France in the Fifteenth Century. After a Miniature in the Missal of 

 Charles VI. In the Library of M. Ambroise Finnin-Didot, Paris. 



judges of arms, who exercised an official supervision over all the matters 

 relating to the nobility and their privileges. It may be supposed, therefore, 

 that this assumption of armorial bearings by the middle classes was only 

 tolerated in return for the payment of a tribute to the King as the supreme 

 dispenser of all nobiliary privileges. The Crown had, moreover, recognised 

 a sort of nobility of trade, by the grant of statutes to the workmen's corpora- 

 tions, which showed themselves as jealous as the nobility of their honorary 

 distinctions, and of the arms which they had painted, engraved, or 

 embroidered upon their insignia (see Figs. 264 to 275), at a time when 

 Montaigne declared in his " Essays " that if " nobility is a good and reasonable 



