Academy of Saint Gabriel Report 164

This report is available at http://www.s-gabriel.org/164

Greetings,

Here's the information we have on your arms.

Before we talk about the main issue--the way the background (or "field") of your arms is divided--we should provide some context about the charges you're planning on using. Your design uses three different charges. This is extremely rare in medieval heraldry. In a very large majority of cases, when three charges are placed on a coat of arms in the way you describe, they are the same item--"three lions" or "three trees." There are a few examples in which two charges (such as "two lions and a tree") are used; these examples are generally quite rare, although they're merely uncommon in Scotland.

The most appropriate way to use that item depends on the way in which you divide your field. The division you've given us could be blazoned in a number of ways, depending on the exact details of its appearance.

+-----------------+
|        ^        |
|       / \       |
|      /   \      |
|     /     \     |
|    /       \    |
|   /         \   |
|  /           \  |
| /             \ |
\/               \/
 \               /
  \             /
   \           /
    -----------

When the gold part is wide at the base (which is exactly what we've drawn above), this field division is usually called "per chevron (in your case, "per chevron vert and Or.") The usual way to put charges on this field would be to use two gold on the green area and one green on the gold area. This would be blazoned "Per chevron vert and Or, three things counterchanged." If you are late-period Scottish or English, it might be appropriate to use two gold items of one type on the green area and a different item on the gold area, for "Per chevron vert and Or, two things and one other thing counterchanged."

If the gold part is narrow at its base (about half as wide as the field), then this is "Vert, a pile inverted Or." This would be blazoned in this way whether or not the pile touches the tip of the shield, and we have examples of piles touching, and not touching, the tip of the shield. Because a pile inverted is so rare, it would probably be the only feature of a shield that used it, so it would not be appropriate to add other charges to it.

Arval D'Espas Nord, Rouland Carre, Zenobia Naphtali, Walraven van Nijmege, and Lindorm Eriksson all contributed to this letter.

We hope this has been helpful. If you have further questions, please don't hesitate to contact us.

In service,
Alan Fairfax
Academy of S. Gabriel