Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: HERALDS' COLLEGE COATS-OF-ARMS. REGARDED FROM A LEGAL ASPECT. IF we may judge from the voluminous correspondence, often very acrimonious, concerning coats-of-arms and the right to bear them, which from time to time appears in the newspapers, it is evident that the science of heraldry, effete and obsolete though some may think it, still, in certain ranks of life, excites no little interest. Such correspondence may be mostly classed under two heads; letters from genuinely armigerous persons who feel aggrieved at the number of bogus coats-of-arms which are in existence, and letters from the users of such bogus coats, which generally resolve themselves into attacks upon the officers of arms and Heralds' College, too often it is to be feared originating merely in some petty personal grievance. It may be worth while, therefore, to consider the origin of coat-armour, and the right to bear it in relation to the officers and College of Arms. Armorial bearings, or coats-of-arms, in their origin / are clearly of a military character, but for many cen- . - turies past they have been distinctly a civilian honour. Great uncertainty attaches to the early beginnings of heraldry; it cannot be regarded even as a settled point whether arms could be assumed by soldiers in the King's army without any specific authorization, or whether the King's own approval, exercised directly, or through his officers of arms, was requisite. Certain it is, however, that the regulation of such matters was very early taken to be a matter of honour, and therefore to be dealt with by the royal prerogative, as the well-known case of Scrope v. Grosvenor, settled by King Richard II in person, over 500 years ago, amply proves. The absence of any definite code or set of rules in early times respecting arm...