General Armory

The General Armory

These are the entries in the standard 19th reference book on British arms.

They confirm the common designs seen in the examples.

The only query is the Alne arms say “or” (ie Gold) rather than “ar” (ie Silver). Is this simply a mistake?

See below for some clues to all the weird abbreviations used in such descriptions.

StrangArmory

The terms used to describe the colours in a coat of arms can vary according to source. The basic heraldic colour chart is not quite up to Pantone standards and does leave plenty of scope for interpretation -

Colour	Tincture	Planets	Precious Stones	Old French
Yellow	Or	Sol / Sun	Topaz	Toupace
White	Argent	Luna / Moon	Pearl	Perle
Black	Sable	Saturn	Diamond	Dyamond
Red	Gules	Mars	Ruby	Ruby
Blue	Azure	Jupiter	Sapphire	Saphir
Green	Vert	Venus	Emerald	-
Purple	Purpure	Mercury	Amethyst	Amatiste
Maroon	Sanguine	-	Sardonyx	-
Orange	Tawny / Tenné	-	Jacinth	-
Gold	Or	-	-	-
Silver	Argent	-	-	-

The first rule of heraldry is the rule of tincture: metal must never be placed upon metal, nor colour upon colour, for the sake of contrast. So, for example, Gold / yellow should not appear on Silver / white. However as coats of arms became purely symbolic (rather than a matter of life or death in battle) this rule was not fully enforced - e.g the arms of the Vatican.

These are some commonly used terms that describe the format of a shield -

Name	Description
Bend	a band running diagonally
Bordure	a border around the edge
Canton	a small square located in an upper corner (normally left)
Chevron	an inverted V central band
Chief	a band across the top of a shield
Cross	a band running centrally top to bottom, another left to right
Fess	a central horizontal band
Pale	a central vertical band
Pile	a V central band
Saltire	a diagonal cross from corner to corner

For more detail (and accuracy) see Wikipedia...

As with all these family trees there are likely to be errors and gaps - since few (no?) family trees are ever complete or provide the fully detailed story of something as complex as a family’s history . And it is impossible to wait until all the details are confirmed before publishing what fragments are known about a family tree - since family trees will always have gaps. All the information listed here has been obtained from publicly available sources. Sources put online by both official outlets and through the efforts of amateur researchers. Also note that many of the BMD entries only refer to the Quarter and the Registration District where the event was registered - since these are a main source of the public records.

Please get in touch with any corrections so that we can be as complete and accurate as possible.

BrianTownsley Brotherton Sheeky Family Townsley.info

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WivesDaughters1

The above book - Wives and Daughters by Joanna Martin - provides much background information about the Fox-Strangways family, their lives and social connections.