The Shield of an Achievement

During my 20-plus-year journey in discovering my family's genealogy, I have discovered that there was another facet joined along with it. Achievements were in some of my family, and out of them came a slew of different shields.

The shield of an achievement is the main design. Without it, you may not know from what family you came from. These either bland or colorful decorations were a sign of nobility at first. In time, they came to distinguish which kingdom your ancestors lived in.

A shield can be diced and sliced into so many variances it would take hours upon hours to completely understand all the ways one could design them.

Shields have so many historical shapes that it could take days to classify all of them. The most common are the French and Early British shields. They are the ones we can identify with the most.

The Norse shields were some of the first ever designed. The oldest of these was almost the height of a man and narrow enough to not be too heavy. As time went on, their round shields were the predecessors to the round Roman shield that we see in movies and in museums.

Of course, the Roman army made their first shields of wood and leather, as did the earlier shield makers. But as time went on metal became the leading component in shields. Eventually all shields were made of iron, and later became lighter as new metals were forged.

Germans had to be different and came up with a particular shield that folded back up on itself in the corners. These corners were snags so they could pull riders off their horses, and easily break spears coming at them from the side.

With so many shape designs sprouting up in Ireland, Scotland, Spain, Greece and other countries, the powers that be were not able to set in stone any one design for all countries to use. Thus, in order for royalty to distinguish their same exact round or oval shield design from another, a color code and line pattern system evolved.

The metals were gold and silver, while the common colors were red, blue, green, yellow, white, black, purple, and orange. Brown and dark red were optional, but were also included.

As if this wasn't enough the different furs were incorporated as well. Symbols were designed for those shields, which bore no color. Squirrel and ermine were the two main furs.

Symbols were then laid down as representation of which number son of the household one was. Say for instance you were the first son. Your symbol was called the Label. This looks like a crown turned upside down and was typically colored black.

The other symbols for lineage are:

2^nd son = crescent moon with open side up

3^rd son = star

4^th son = bird

5^th son = ring

6^th son = fleur-de-lis

7^th son = cinquefoil

8^th son = symmetrical Catholic cross

These symbols were placed wherever on a shield to show others which son that person was to their father. The typical and most used placement is at the top center, known as dexter middle. A household bearing that shield would then have a second label on that first son's shield. This led the way to highly decorative shields.

On top of all this there were also the divisions and line patterns to distinguish the shields even more. The most common division is to divide the shield in half vertically.

The left side is called the sinister side, which would take on the wife's design for her son, if he so chose to accept it. In some cases it was the law to divide it. The right would take the father's original design. This particular type of division is called the impalement.

Therefore if you were reading the blazon (description) of what the shield looked like, you might read something like this: "...shield or avec cinquefoil azure, impaled au shield argent avec fleur-de-lis sable..."

The complicated part of reading a blazon is that one needs to have some grasp of the Latin, French, Spanish and possibly even German language. I have seen as many as four languages mixed in one blazon.

Quartering of a shield usually meant that someone became married, and had to re-instate their new "coat-of-arms." Thus the son's parent's shields would be in the upper two halves, while his wife's parent's shields were struck in the lower half.

There were occasions where the wife would have her own shield. The wife's shield was and is still today called a lozenge. These so called shields were usually, and most frequently a diamond shape.

To divide a shield in half horizontally, one would call this Dancetty. This later became another design sort of like Charlie Brown's shirt. The "Per Fess" came into being, and impalement became "Per Pale."

Quarterly did not lose its place, but yet shared it with "Per Cross." The eight major divisions were finally set, and are as follows:

Per Fess = Halved horizontally

Per Pale = Halved vertically

Per Bend = Halved diagonally from top right corner

Per Bend Sinister = Halved diagonally from top left corner

Per Chevron = 1

Per Cross = Quartered

Per Pall or Tierced in Pairle = Divided in thirds from the corners to the center

Per Saltire = Quartered diagonally

1. This means to divide upwards toward the middle from the bottom corners of the squarest part of the shield. This division would meet on center halfway up.

The minor divisions, or diminutive, are:

Barry = wide horizontal stripes of equal width

Paly = wide vertical stripes of equal width

Bendy = wide diagonal stripes of equal width coming down from the dexter side

Bendy Sinister = wide diagonal stripes of equal width coming down from the sinister side

Chevronny = wide upside down v stripes of equal width

Chequy = an evenly spaced chequerd pattern

At this point there are two metals, up to ten colors, two furs, eight symbols, eight major divisions, and six diminutive divisions that can be used to design a shield. Remember, there are many shapes of shields, too.

There are many other divisions, which would probably be best left alone unless you want to buy a book to learn more about achievements.

The next step in the design of shields was the actual line divisions and their different styles and names. Some of these you may have seen while others you just wonder what they could be.

When reading a blazon and you come across the word "engrailed," this would be how the line pattern would be described. This wording can be confused with the other definition of engrailed meaning a line that looks like semi-circles stuck side by side.

"Engrailed engrailed" would not be proper blazoning. Using the term engrailed with a color following it would mean that semi-circle line pattern would divide the shield in half, and make the other half the color that was mentioned. Therefore, "...engrailed vert..." would mean the other color is green on the other side of the patterned line division. Are you lost, yet?

Okay, "engrailed invecked" could mean two things. The first could be that this patterned line has a mirrored sister line with the color mentioned in between the two.

The other meaning could be that this line division is turned upside down. Here is how they solved this problem. In Blazonry, "invecked engrailed" solved this issue. Placing invecked before engrailed meant the single line division was to be designed upside down.

When a line division is followed with the word invecked or invected, this meant that there is to be a second line of the same design only mirroring the other. This took me a long time to grasp, and still you will find blazonry that doesn't make sense.

Here are a few of the many line divisions in heraldry:

Engrailed

Invected or invecked

Embattled = looks like the offset stone pattern of a castle drawn by a kid

Indented

Dancetty

Wavy = a symmetrical squiggly line

Nebuly = looks like the connector on a puzzle piece symmetrically tied into another

Raguly = looks similar to embattled only leaning at a sharp angle to the right

Potenty = resembles the paper pattern when you pull a sheet of paper out of a spiral binder

Dovetailed = dovetails at sharp angles

Flory Counterflory = fleur-de-lis along a line with every other one upside down

Rayonny = symmetrical flames

Bevilled = sawtooth looking pattern

Escartelly = three fourths of a single square tied into a line

Nowed = semi-circle tied into a line

Arched = this is a faint curved line

Double Arched = two curved lines along one side

Urdy = looks kind of like embattled, yet taller and sharp edged like a steeple

Battled Embattled = this looks like a pixilated pyramid pattern

As mentioned, these are not all of the line divisions. The Fox-Davies books on Heraldry have up to nearly ten pages of the various line patterns you could find. My research shows that these books are not complete with the new findings still going on.

The last few line divisions, starting with bevilled, are almost all of Scottish origin. These designs were engrailed along the edges of the shields, and yes they would sometimes be flipped-flopped. To make matters worse, the Scotts developed their own lineage symbols.

The total of these lineage labels are sixteen to be exact. My thought on this was, "Who in their right mind is going to force their wife to have 16 children?" Of course, back then wives sometimes did not make it through childbirth.

The last important part of a shield design is to know that there are nine sections within a shield when it came down to being exact in the blazon. These sections from top to bottom are chief, honor, and base. From right to left they are dexter, middle, and sinister. With these exacting locations one could precisely write where a symbol is located on the shield.

With this plethora of information, one can now see what a daunting task it was for an educated person in the art of heraldry had to learn. The sources of information one would have to go through could take days if not weeks.

This should be enough information to wet one's appetite on the art and design of the shield in an achievement of arms. The actual coat of arms is the outer garment on the backside of one's armor showing that same design on the shield. This is where the term "coat-of-arms" came from.

To learn more on achievement of arms, visit your local library and you will find many books in the reference area. There are newer books being printed on this subject matter, but the older ones are more in depth on this subject matter.

The sources I found online for you are mediocre at best, and are not completely accurate with my findings on achievements.

Sources

http://www.fleurdelis.com/meanings.htm

http://www.motherbedford.com/Heraldry03.htm

http://genealogy.about.com/od/heraldry/Heraldry_Coats_of_Arms_and_Family_Crests.htm