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Pearsall Surname Project
Number of Pearsalls By Location
Maps by Family
Surname
History and Genealogy
of the Pearsall Family in England
and America:
Volume I
Front Cover
Inside Front Cover
The Motive
Thanks
Illustrations
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Appendix I
Volume II
Volume III
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This prohibited
any one who had not worn them at Agincourt
from assuming them except by virtue of inheritance or a grant from the
crown. This was not only an acknowledgment that the King was powerless to
prevent the assumption of arms by the newly rich, but it was also a royal
recognition of the science of Heraldry which had been growing in public
estimation in England since about the beginning of the twelfth century.
By which profession the design of one's arms, or insignia, was made to
conform to well defined rules for representing the parts thereof ; by
which also the designs to be displayed in connection therewith were
strictly limited, and through which the emblems that one might use for
this purpose were lawfully determined and valued. This was however a
science of design and display and was independent of the right to wear
the arms which anciently came only by inheritance and was to be proven by
the same rules for the succession as applied to other hereditaments.
If, being of later origin, the arms came by royal grant, then this was proven by the patent for the same. Or if
it was acquired by grant from some other individual, then this was to be
proven by the record of the charter of the same on file in the Herald's
Office.
While the
intention of the King no doubt was to preserve the ancient customs of the
Kingdom and the standing of the nobility, the result was to destroy the old
armorial bearings as used by families of long established rank. The old
family designation was an armes parlantes, or a device which spoke or indicated
phonetically the family name of the individual. Hence it needs no expert
in heraldry to translate the meaning of the device of the Wolf's head
used by Rognvald, or of the Cross of suffering
which Werlac adopted after his banishment from Normandy. It is
true that these old coats of arms were no longer useful for this purpose
after the individual had acquired a surname, but the new science should
have emphasised the fact that one's ancestor
had held lands or titles in such a manner as to make the holding
dependent upon his connection with a certain and immediate ancestry, and
of which ancestry the present user of the device was a lineal descendant.
The moment that it was determined that the right to bear such arms or
insignia could be acquired by prescription, that is to say by proof, that
the individual claiming the right to bear the arms and his ancestors had
worn them beyond a certain period of time, irrespective of further proof
that these arms were appurtenant to certain lands, or to certain offices
of rank in the kingdom, which called for the use of such an insignia; or
when it came to be that they were created by royal patent; or that they
could be acquired by grant from an individual, then the old meaning of
the coat of arms ceased to have a place in the science of Heraldry, and
the arms became merely the outward designation of a man of social and courtly
rank above the common people. In this sense we cordially agree with the
statement made by A. C. Fox, in his work called Heraldry Explained, when
he says that there was no such thing as a coat of arms (as we now use and
understand the term) in existence at the time of the Norman Con-quest and
this date can certainly be extended to the beginning of the twelfth
century; after that coats of arms were in practical and universal use
throughout Europe-During that period we get the crusades and some writers
assign the origin of the science to that time.
The reader
should therefore keep these distinctions in mind in studying the
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