The first complaint is an interesting one, especially in light of the typical “older is better” attitude that was (and is) pervasive in heraldry (which I fall victim to myself sometimes). Wyrley scoffs at people who consider pre-Conquest ancestry and arms to be more prestigious than those post-Conquest. He points out that evidence from before the Conquest is scarce and unreliable, which is both fair and true, and that it is “more glorious and honorable to be descended from a most famous nation conquering” than the people they subjugated, which… sure is a viewpoint, I guess? (26)

Next, Wyrley takes aim at heraldic pedants, especially those who treat the law of tincture as a law instead of a guideline for legibility. He does say that color-on-color and metal-on-metal are harder to see properly, but he also gives some examples of perfectly respectable arms that violate the law of tincture, including those of the Mac Murchada dynasty in Ireland. (He gives the blazon as sable a lion rampant gules, though gules a lion rampant or passant argent seems to be more accurate). He’s also contemptuous of the idea that certain charges, i.e. the eagle or falcon, are more or less noble than others. Wyrley proposes that instead of particular arms bringing honor to the bearers, the armigers “do honor their bearings by their renowne, vertue, and valure.” (27) If you’re a good person, your arms don’t deserve criticism, even if they violate heraldic rules and tradition, or if they’re kind of goofy. One example he gives here is the Hopewells - argent three hares playing bagpipes gules. On the one hand, that is inherently silly; on the other hand, Wyrley has a really good point, and I have to believe those arms have a much better story behind them than the generic ordinaries or lions.

Lastly, he throws in a very brief defense of his refusal to use the French terms of art for tinctures - the argent, azure, vert, etc. that are common practice in blazon - by saying it is “more proper to speake and use English termes and phrases in an English booke dedicated to Englishmen, than French or Latine.” (27) This is literally the only mention of this authorial choice in the entire essay, so perhaps I’m reading too much into it, but it’s hard for me not to see this decision as stemming from English nationalism and anti-French sentiment. He doesn’t seem to have an issue with a lot of the French-derived terminology that makes up the rest of the language of blazon, so this feels like a highly specific and unnecessary nit to pick. Unless, of course, you’re just being a dick to the French. 

Personally, I have no issue with using the traditional terminology (as you’ve probably noticed). I like the #aesthetic, but more importantly, I think the traditional language helps deal with one of the traditional problems of tincture. “Or” and “argent” in particular have multiple translations in English - “or” could map to “yellow” or “gold,” and “argent” to “white” or “silver.” However, both of those translations are interchangeable in heraldry. The blazon “argent a cross gules” can be depicted with a white field or a silver field, depending on the preferences and technical and material capabilities of the artist, and the original blazon is accurate either way. However, translating “argent” to “white” automatically makes any depiction using a silver field incorrect, and vice versa. Essentially, the traditional language correctly reflects the ambivalence of tinctures, and I’d rather stick to that than make a translation choice that could be wrong.

Wyrley is really not shy about objecting when he dislikes something, so I think it’s a safe assumption that his impassioned, citation-heavy defense of memorials, heraldic ensigns, and genealogy has its roots in actual practices of the time. He complains that he personally found “many moniments both of burials and in glasse were so broken and defaced” as to be unidentifiable, and useless for research. (25) (I’d be lying if I said I didn’t deeply sympathize with this problem.)

This passage, and the larger dispute it hints at, is a fascinating glimpse into Wyrley’s political and religious context. As a reminder, the original publication of this work was in 1592, right in the middle of a heated, centuries-long debate over idolatry and iconoclasm. This really got started with the English Reformation and Henry VIII’s break with the Catholic Church in 1534. The Reformers (which is also explicitly the name that Wyrley calls them, asking that they “might be reformed themselves”) undertook a number of efforts to distance themselves from the Catholic Church, including the removal of images from churches. The level of governmental support for these policies varied - Edward VI continued his father’s anti-Catholic legacy, after which Mary I restored Catholicism. Elizabeth I went back to Protestantism, but with a much more moderate/pragmatic bent. Wyrley addresses her and her Privy Council in this passage, asking them to protect the English traditions and punish the Puritans. 

The tomb of Katharine of Aragon in Peterborough Cathedral was apparently a popular target for vandalism; it was thoroughly vandalized by the Roundheads in 1643, but Wyrley also praises William Fleetwood, Serjeant-at-law, for restoring her monument after it was defaced, and punishing those responsible. (I suspect the queen’s Spanish, i.e. Catholic, heritage had a lot to do with the repeated desecrations.)

Around the sixteenth or seventeenth century, England had developed a fairly consistent system of differencing. At least, it had to have been pretty consistent by that time, to get Wyrley complaining about it. (I’m only speaking to English heraldry here; other countries had other systems that were applied with various degrees of consistency. Scotland did some fascinating things with bordures.)

The father of a family would bear the arms “plain” or “undifferenced,” with no special marks. His first son, while the father was still alive, would bear the family arms with a label across the top of the shield. This would usually be of a contrasting color, and usually (but not always) have three points, which are the bits that hang down onto the shield. Especially in royal families, labels were and are often decorated with additional charges. When the father died and the family title, lands, and arms passed to the first son, he would remove the label from his arms. The second son would bear the father’s arms, but with a crescent added, usually in the center of the shield. The third son would have a molet of five points, the fourth a martlet, the fifth an annulet, and the sixth a fleur-de-lis. Supposedly, the seventh son got a rose and the eighth a cross moline, but I’ve personally never seen anything more advanced than a martlet.

The real confusion came in around the second or third generation, especially in large families. If you have a second son bearing his father’s arms with a crescent for difference, that’s all well and good, but if he then has a son, those previously differenced arms become, for the new generation, the “plain” version. So the second son’s first son would bear the original arms with a crescent (for his father’s difference) and a label (for his own). This would only be exacerbated by the tendency to place marks of cadency on top of each other, so you could see a martlet charged with a crescent charged with a molet - and good luck deciphering that.

Wyrley is (fairly, I think) fed up with this system, and complains that very small marks of cadency make it extremely difficult to tell arms apart from a distance. As we’ve discussed, that is, for Wyrley, the entire point of arms. As a counterexample, he offers to “laie before you the differings that antiquitie used, that by comparing them together you may discerne the great wisedome of our ancestors and our owne imperfections in this point, for want of due consideration”. (8) He walks us through several generations of the Basset family. He starts with Ralph Basset, a royal justice of England in the early 12th century, who bore undy (I would say nebuly) or and gules. Wyrley says that Ralph’s oldest son Thomas bore his father’s coat “without distinction,” eg. undifferenced.

Richard’s line is where things start getting fun. As the second son, he didn’t inherit from Ralph, but his children inherited a title from Richard’s wife Maud, the heir of Sir Geoffrey Rydell. Richard’s oldest son Geoffrey bore his grandfather’s arms (or three palets gules, according to the blazon, though the drawing does look like piles) with a bend azure overall. Another Ralph, who was the son of Geoffrey’s younger brother Richard, bore or three palets gules within a bordure “of steele” charged with eight bezants. (I don’t know what tincture “of steel” is supposed to be. Argent, maybe?) (9) Yet another Ralph, the son of Richard and Maude’s third son, added a quarter ermine, and a Roger Basset (relation not specified) bore or three palets sable, a quarter ermine.

I’m not going to enumerate all of the different variations of the Basset coat of arms that Wyrley describes; suffice to say we see the nebuly arms again in several different tinctures combinations, with and without labels, and charged with bezants. (I lied; I’m going to post one more picture, of the arms of a Sir John Basset, whose relation to the original family is unclear, who bore or three palets gules, on a quarter argent a griffin segreant sable. I am doing this purely because of how dorky the griffin is. Look at its weird little beak! I love it.)

Just from this small selection, though, it should be pretty obvious that this method of differencing does result in clearly visually distinct arms that are very unlikely to be confused for each other. However, I said “method” for a reason; I don’t think this can be honestly called a system. Just looking at the coats themselves, it’s almost impossible to trace how one armiger is related to another. What are the original colors? Who added the quarter, and why? For someone (me) trying to recreate a family tree from a set of armorials, this is impossibly challenging.

Wyrley does anticipate this objection, writing “neither can it be known which of the Cressant bearers was the uncle or nephew,” that multiple differences “one on horseback upon an other” are nearly impossible to distinguish, and that social climbers who find an armiger with their same surname are apt “presently to usurpe the same with a Cressant or some such difference, so that (for my owne part) I do seldome credit such kinde of differinges nor their bearers.” (14-15) These are both fair counterpoints, and I’ll cop to my own biases; I have access to genealogical databases that can usually help differentiate an uncle from a nephew; as someone working in the digital age, I have the technology to help me distinguish multiple marks of cadency in the same coat; I’m more concerned with trying to trace familial records than policing the use of arms.

We can find the short answer to this question on the very first page, where Wyrley addresses his text to “the professors of martiall discipline.” (1) His argument, here and in the rest of the text, is going to be couched in explicitly militaristic terms. He begins by laying out a tiered argument for the necessity of heraldry: war is (sometimes) necessary and just, therefore it needs to be conducted as effectively as possible; wars are fought by people, often in large groups, who need to be able to identify each other and their leaders in order to be effective combatants, therefore they need a simple, easy-to-read system of identification, preferably in multiple forms (eg. the tabard, shield, and crest). (4-5) I appreciate that Wyrley doesn’t assume any of these precepts. He takes the time to go through each point, even briefly, to make sure his argument for the purpose of arms as markers of identity is on solid ground.  

This is, so far, not a particularly controversial or unique stance. Virtually all heraldic texts from pretty much every era emphasize the military origins of arms and their use in identifying virtually identically clad combatants. What I find fascinating about Wyrley is how he draws out the implicit assumption in that historical fact: arms are for everyday people, in the person of “the meanest & simplest common Soldier.” (4) Armory does not have a point, and in fact, is borderline illegitimate if it is not easily legible to someone who doesn’t know a fess from a pale. Arms that do not fulfill this cardinal purpose are hardly deserving of the name.

Take Wyrley’s screed against quartering as an example. It's fairly common for heraldic writers of this period to condemn overly-quartered shields. Wyrley's "thirty or forty" quarters isn't an exaggeration; I've seen coats with dozens of quarters. (7) Again, though, Wyrley couches his objections to quartering in terms of legibility to common people. The problem with quartered arms isn't (just) that they are foolish or vain; it's that they're hard to read. Nobles who prioritize their assertion of multiple titles over the ability of their followers to identify them end up with confusing arms, of which Wyrley says, “I see not to any use in the world they serve.” (8)

His objections to the English system of differencing follow much the same pattern. He's not against the idea of differencing per se, but he advocates large, easily visible changes to arms instead of the tiny markers commonly used in English heraldry. He engages in a few scare tactics on this topic, citing an unnamed author's account of a company of soldiers confusing one brother's banner for another's and subsequently being slaughtered. It's unclear whether this actually happened, but again, we see the emphasis on the common soldier as the intended audience of arms. (13)

It was probably during his tenure with Erdeswicke that he did most of the research that eventually became True Use of Arms (or, to give it its proper and very long title, The true Use of Armorie, shewed by Historie, and plainly proved by Example). The book – more of an essay, really – was originally published in London in 1592. Two years later, Wyrley graduated from Balliol College in Oxford, where he had continued his studies in antiquity. In 1604, James I of England appointed him Rouge Croix pursuivant, and he would continue to serve in that office until his death in 1618. I’m fairly confident that he wouldn’t have been appointed as one of the thirteen official heraldic officers of the kingdom if he didn’t know what he was talking about, and that opinion seems to have been shared by others during his life; he was “a knowing and useful person in his profession.”

The four pursuivants of the College of Arms were, and are, the most junior of the officers; above them are the six Heralds of Arms, and above them, the three Kings of Arms. While the Kings and Heralds of Arms take their titles from various regions, orders, and dukedoms, the pursuivants are more colorfully named after heraldic badges used by English monarchs: the portcullis of the Tudors, the red dragon of Wales, the blue mantle of the French arms (when England was still claiming their right to rule France), and the red cross of St. George.

Despite Wyrley’s bona fides during his lifetime, True Use of Arms was orphaned for a little while after his death. William Dugdale, the early medieval historian (as in, one of the first people to formally study medieval history) reprinted part of True Use of Arms in his 1682 Ancient Usage of Bearing Arms – but he attributed the work to Wyrley’s old master Erdeswicke. I’m not sure when the mistake was rectified, but Dugdale’s contemporary Anthony Wood did question the attribution at the time.

Unfortunately, I do not have access to many sixteenth-century manuscripts, so I will be working from a reprint of True Use of Arms, published in 1853 by John Gray Bell. For better or worse, the reprint omits two long and apparently very dull poems of questionable literary merit that were included in the original printing. Wyrley might’ve been a good herald, but every source I’ve found, including fellow heraldic author James Dalloway, insists he was a pretty terrible poet. If you’re looking for “The Glorious Life and Honorable Death of Sir John Chandos, Lord of St. Saluiour” or “The Honorable Life and Languishing Death of Sir John de Gralhy, Capitall of Buz,” I’m afraid you’ll have to look elsewhere. However, if you’re curious about what, exactly, the true use of arms is, we’ll dive into that next week.