European Heraldry

A coat of arms is a sentence written in colour and shape. Learn its grammar and a shield that once looked like decoration begins to speak: of a family, an alliance, a battle won, a faith kept.

The field and its tinctures

The surface of the shield is the field. Its colours are the tinctures, and they fall into two metals, gold (Or) and silver (argent, shown as white), and five main colours: red (gules), blue (azure), black (sable), green (vert), and purple (purpure). One ancient rule governs nearly all of it: never set a colour on a colour, nor a metal on a metal. The eye must always read clearly at a distance.

Ordinaries: the bones of the shield

The bold geometric bands laid across the field are the ordinaries. A horizontal band is a fess; a diagonal a bend; an X a saltire; an upright cross a cross. Divide the shield into eight triangles from the centre and you have gyronny. These shapes form the oldest and proudest arms in Europe.

Charges: the figures upon the field

Upon the field sit the charges: lions and eagles, stags and escallops, crosslets and fleurs-de-lis. A lion rearing on one foot is rampant; walking, it is passant. Each charge carries meaning, and its repetition, colour and posture are all part of the blazon, the formal description that lets any herald redraw the arms from words alone.

Reading the blazon

A blazon is read in a fixed order: the field first, then the principal ordinary or charge, then lesser charges, then anything laid over all. "Gyronny of eight or and sable" is the whole of the Campbell shield. "Argent, a saltire gules" is the red diagonal cross of the FitzGeralds on a white field. Once the order is familiar, the words and the picture become one.

Marshalling, the combining of several coats in one shield by quartering or impalement, records marriages and inheritances across generations. A crowded shield is often a family tree in miniature. The full achievement adds helm, crest, mantling, supporters and motto around the shield, but the shield itself remains the heart of the matter.

See it in practice

Every house chronicled here carries its arms beside its story. Browse them together in the Armorial, where each shield is drawn from its historic blazon.