The Meaning of Heraldry - Badges - Crests and Mottoes - The Arms of an Heiress - A Married

Woman's Arms

Heraldry - or its sister study, genealogy - has been called " the science of fools with long memories." Being myself one of these "fools with long memories," it appears to me that it must have been a singularly superficial person who invented this definition, one who was not aware how closely heraldry is entwined with history, or perhaps even one who did not care for history itself, failing to realise its value as a guide to future events. It takes a wise man to find out that there is nothing new under the sun, and that what has been will be.

Meanwhile, "the proper study of mankind is man," and that being the case, nothing which has any bearing on the subject can be wholly beneath notice. A knowledge of heraldry is imperative in one who would study family history, and family history ends in being the history of the world. When once one realises the family relationships between the actors in the world's drama, acts otherwise unintelligible are furnished with obvious motives.

The key to the Middle Ages is lost without family history, as the key to the Egyptian dynasties was lost without the Rosetta stone.