Heraldry in England and America. 



tun ." -°To take down the coat-armor of any gentleman, to deface 

 his monument, or offer any violence to any ensign of the deceased 

 noble, is as to lay buffets on the face of him if alive, and punishment 

 is due accordingly." 



"A clown may not challenge a gentleman to combat." 



And now I come to something which I treat with bated breath; but 

 for fear of doing any injustice to those grand heraldic times I quote 

 the very words from Guillim, as before; speaking of what constitutes 

 a gentleman by blood, he says: " To make that perfection in blood, a 

 lineal descent* from ahtrns. pmarns, urns and pttfrr on t lie father's 

 side was required: and as much on his mother's line; then he is not 

 only a gentleman of perfect blood, but of his ancestors too." This 



••■ • 'i- ■;!'>-. - ■ . ' ■ ■ . . . ' ' 



fore the perfect blossom of gentility appeared. But as we are now 

 eight generations removed from the Argonauts of the Mayflower, 

 what fearfully blue blood, according to this law, must be in the veins 

 of the present living descendants of the gentlemen that made part of 

 that, company! Or indeed of any of their contemporaries for the sixty 

 years England was peopling the north with her best blood. 



Seals and Arms. 

 The necessity of a town's possessing a seal to authenticate its legal 

 documents made it easy to follow the example of private individuals 

 and shape its symbol of civic authority in a charge upon a shield. 

 Accordingly most of the old towns and cities on the continent and 

 many in England show on their standards and their seals their indi- 

 vidual coat of arms. The most of these have as armorial bearings, 



towns, we meet some items worthy of mention. Okeham, a town in 

 Rutlandshire, has arms with a history. Here is, or was, in the palmy 

 days of Don Quixote, a privilege or custom which permitted the in- 

 habitants to claim of any nobleman who should happen to enter their 

 precincts the tribute of one of his horse's shoes, unless he redeemed 

 it with an equivalent in money. Guillim, who is authority for this, 

 adds as a proof of the custom, that many horse-shoes may be seen 

 nailed up on the shire-hall door. The charge on the town's armor 



