Quartering (heraldry)

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Quartering (heraldry)

Quartering in heraldry

Heraldry

Heraldry is the profession, study, or art of devising, granting, and blazoning Coat of arms and ruling on questions of rank or protocol, as exercised by an officer of arms....
is a method of joining several different coats of arms

Coat of arms

A coat of arms, more properly called an armorial achievement, armorial bearings or often just arms for short, in European tradition, is a design belonging to a particular person and used by them in a wide variety of ways....
together in one shield by dividing the shield into equal parts and placing different coats of arms in each division.

Typically, a quartering consists of a division into four equal parts, two above and two below (party per cross).

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Quartering in heraldry

Heraldry

Coat of arms

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom , the UK or Britain,is a sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe....
, as used outside Scotland

Scotland

conventional_long_name = ScotlandAlba|common_name= Scotland|image_flag = Flag of Scotland.svg|flag_width = 130px...
, which consists of four quarterings, displaying the Arms of England

England

Ireland

Ireland is the List of islands by area in Europe, and the twentieth-largest island in the world. It lies to the north-west of continental Europe and is surrounded by hundreds of islands and islet....
, with the coat for England repeated at the end. (In the royal arms as used in Scotland, the Scottish quartering appears in the first and fourth quarters and the English one second.)

However, in most traditions there is no limit on the number of divisions allowed, and the records of the College of Arms

College of Arms

The College of Arms, or Heralds' College, is an office regulating heraldry and granting new armorial bearings for England, Wales and Northern Ireland....
include a shield of 323 quarterings for the family of Lloyd of Stockton. These 323 quarterings include numerous repeated attributed arms

Attributed arms

Attributed arms are coats of arms given to legendary figures, or to notable persons from times before the rise of heraldry. Beginning in the 12th century, imaginary arms were assigned to the knights of the Round Table, and soon arms were given to biblical figures, to Roman and Greek heroes, and to kings and popes who had not historically bor...
assigned to Welsh chieftains from the 9th century or earlier.

Another example of a shield of many quarterings is the coat of arms of the Powys-Lybbe family, which contains 64 quarterings. Different rules apply in Scottish heraldry

Scottish heraldry

Sorry, no overview for this topic
, and may well apply in other jurisdictions like Canada

Canada

Canada is a country occupying most of northern North America, extending from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west and northward into the Arctic Ocean....
and South Africa

South Africa

The Republic of South Africa, also known by Official names of South Africa, is a country located at the southern tip of the continent of Africa....
.

The arms of the Queen of the United Kingdom are arms of dominion, which join together the arms of the ex-kingdoms now part of her kingdom. However, the vast majority of quarterly coats of arms display arms which are claimed by descent: in other words, they join together coats of arms of the ancestors of the bearer of the arms.

Strict rules apply, both as to what arms may be displayed by way of quarterings, and the order in which they may be displayed. Men and women are always entitled to display the arms of their paternal line but are not usually entitled to display by way of quartering the arms of families from whom there is descent only through a female line (for example, the arms of a mother or grandmother or great-grandmother). An exception is made, however, if the female who breaks the male line of descent is a heraldic heiress. A heraldic heiress

Heraldic heiress

In English heraldry an heraldic heiress is a daughter of deceased man who was entitled to a coat of arms and who carries forward the right to those arms for the benefit of her future male descendents....
is a woman who has no brothers, or whose brothers have died without issue. Such a woman is entitled to transmit her father's arms to her own children, who add them as a quartering. If her father was himself entitled to one or more quarterings, these will pass to his daughters' children as quarterings as well. Quarterings are displayed in the order in which they are acquired by a family by marriage, starting with those acquired by the earliest marriage to bring in quarterings. It is permissible to omit quarterings, but if a quartering was brought in by a later quartering, it is essential to show the whole chain of quarterings leading to the quartering displayed, or else to omit the chain altogether. The larger the number of quarterings, the smaller the space available for each coat of arms, so that most families entitled to many quarterings make a selection of those they ordinarily use. The Duke of Norfolk

Duke of Norfolk

The Duke of Norfolk is the Premier Duke in the peerage of England, and also, as Earl of Arundel, the Premier Earl. The Duke of Norfolk is, moreover, the Earl Marshal and Hereditary Marshal of England....
, for example, uses only four quarterings, although he is entitled to many more. In Scotland in some cases the plain unquartered coat is the more prized as entitlement to its use is a criterion as to who is chief of the name and arms and holds the headship of a clan. For example, Flora Fraser, Lady Saltoun of Abernethy

Flora Fraser, 21st Lady Saltoun

Flora Marjory Fraser, 21st Lady Saltoun#Notes, Chief of the Name and the Arms of Fraser is currently the only female holder of a Lord of Parliament who has a seat in the House of Lords as an elected hereditary peer....
has arms as chief of Fraser

Frasers of Philorth

The Frasers of Philorth are a Scottish people Scottish lowlands family, originally from the Anjou region of France. Their family seat is in Sauchen, Aberdeenshire, Scotland....
— the plain coat of 'azure, three fraises argent' — and a 'private' quartered coat. The Powys-Lybbe family appear, likewise, to usually use only the quarterings of Powys

Kingdom of Powys

The Kingdom of Powys was a Wales successor state that emerged during the Dark Ages following the Roman withdrawal from Britain....
and Lybbe. However these are not true quarterings as the arms were changed in 1907 to be an impartible design of the two arms; the personal arms are precisely this design, with no quarterings despite its appearance. (If this were a quartering the following would apply: when only two different coats of arms are shown, each one is repeated twice in order to fill up the minimum number of four quarterings on such a display.) Prior to the 1907 change, the family did quarter their arms with Lybbe but with the Powys arms in the top left quarter as these were the family arms; the new design has Lybbe in the top left as Lybbe is the last part of the name.

Quartering (heraldry)

See also