I remember when the Law Society was still at Colombo Court, I paid a visit to Jeremiah Choy when he was still employed by the Society. In the midst of our conversation, he mentioned that he had been tasked to redesign the Law Society’s ‘emblem’ (my word for want of a better description as this article would reveal).

I told him that I would lend to him my short An Outline of Heraldry¹ which I had purchased from London while honeymooning there. We never met again before he left the Society and I never got to lend him the booklet. So this is my chance to share what I have learnt so far.

You see, designing a representative mark like that you see at the top right hand corner of this journal is not an endeavour based on a whim and fancy, well-meaning and intentioned as they may be. Indeed, there are various rules and conditions for a pleasing and ‘correct’ design. That in essence, is heraldry, at least in Europe.²

History

Hark back to just after the Norman conquest of England and you will find that by the 12th to 13th centuries, knights were not just in shining armour; they were near impossible to identify from a distance. So there you go at full gallop on your charger with your lance levelled at your opponent’s heart when just at impact, he lifts his visor to reveal his face.

‘I prithee good knight, tis I, thy friend and ally!’

You yell at him, ‘Gadzooks! Thou fool! Why didst thou not show thyself properly ere I charged at thee?’

(All in Norman French, of course.)

And so over the centuries, knights started to emblazon their shield, armour and clothes with designs that could be identified from afar as friend or foe and gradually, rules arose to regulate this art form less we see private schools attempting to draw up one in a deluded belief that their ‘coat of arms’ is proper.

Parts of the Coat of Arms

This is a typical coat of arms taken off a free public domain site:³

Metals and Colours (the Rule of Tincture)

I suppose one of my main grouses with ‘do it yourself’ heraldry is the riot of colours with no restraint and aforethought. Though heraldry is meant to be colourful – and of course, one’s arms were meant to be visible from afar – there are rules on types of colours and manner of placement. Not that I am authority of any sort, oh perish the thought, it’s just that such richness of history is lost merely because it suits one’s fancy to do such things oneself without any sensitivity to any possible faux pas.

Only two metallic colours are recognised for the shield: gold and silver (or in Norman French, ‘or’ and ‘argent’). Colours are bright red, royal blue, emerald green, royal purple, black (‘gules’, ‘azure’, ‘vert’, ‘purpure’ and ‘sable’). Other materials, like ermine, are used but for current purposes, I would not be touching on those.

Now the rule: You can place a colour on a metal or metal on a colour but not a metal on a metal or colour on a colour.

So, if your lion is gold, it must be against a colour background. If your lion is red, then it must be set against a metal – gold or silver, for example.

It makes sense since a shiny lion set against a shiny background basically dazzles the opponent with nothing to see, like the sun being reflected off 
a windscreen.

‘Did’st thou not see my arms, that thou wouldst wound me so blatantly?’ Said the knight after being knocked off his mount.

‘Tis Thee! Were that I could identify thy arms as the bright shining sun doth blinded me off thy metal and shimmer, ere I could see thy arms!’ Squinted the mounted knight, peering at the shield.

Crest

Any blue-blooded premier school would refer to a woven representation of its badge as a crest. Sigh. A crest is actually a knight’s equivalent of a hood ornament. It is a separate object set atop the helmet. It can be an eagle, lion or some other object. I suppose its effect was to make the knight seem even taller and awe inspiring to the mud-eating serfs then. Of course, it adds another mark of identification.

In the illustration above, the crest is in the shape of a sheep.

So strictly speaking, that woven ‘badge’ is properly called a shield.

But is it a badge?

Badge

Well strictly speaking, a badge was another ‘thing’ used to represent the knight or his family or persons allied to him. You see, one’s coat of arms was personal and only oneself and one’s family may bear it. Yet if you served in your liege’s army, you would take, say a bird or eagle from the arms as your badge to identify yourself with him. For instance for the House of York, the badge was a white rose and that of the House of Lancaster was the red rose. So if you were whacking someone else silly with a frying pan in the War of Roses, you made sure you were whacking someone wearing somewhere on his apparel, a badge of the opposite coloured rose.

Well since the coat of arms is now used more frequently as badges, I suppose it is not that incorrect then – though given another two to three generations, the distinction would be lost.

By the way, the red roses won and Henry VII Tudor was the first king of that house.

Helmet and Its Elements

Depending on one’s rank, ie royalty, nobility or landed gentry, the helmet has distinct arrangements in facing, and even colours to the visors and grilles. For example, sovereigns have their helmets full facing the reader with grilles of gold, so for the coat of arms of Queen Elizabeth II, atop the shield is a full face helmet facing the reader with gold grilles (search ‘coat of arms Queen Elizabeth’ and you will see). Higher nobility have their helmets face the left, looking at the shield.

On the helmet is a very ornate flowing material called the mantling. It was a cloth or velvet material which covered the metal of the helmet from the heat of the sun. The only tincture rule was that it should match the tinctures on 
the shield.

Surprisingly, there are no rules as to how the mantling need be displayed; it can be extremely ornate, curling hither thither and it apparently changes with the artist as with the generation the coat of arms passes to.

The Shield

This is the most important part of the coat of arms as upon it is placed, or charged, all that is needed to represent the person and his family.

Apart from the standard ‘heater’ shield, an example of which is the shape of the logo of a British petroleum company, there are a few variations, from diamond to asymmetrical shapes.

Emblazoned on the shield, subject to the tincture rules, almost anything and everything can be used – of course each element with its own meaning. Common animals include the lion, bear, boar, eagle, horse, dragon, or griffin. The coat of arms of Sir Francis Bacon has a boar, though not on the shield, apparently punning his family name.

Here ‘rampant’ does not mean his personal private prowess but is a Norman French description of how an animal is to be displayed. Animals can be drawn: rampant, ie standing on its hind legs; rampant guardant, standing on hind legs, face looking at the viewer; passant, walking; couchant, lying down; or sejant, seated.

Here is an example of a horse, perhaps for a Chinese gentleman named Mah (?), rampant only 
  (not guardant).

So the lion and tiger supporters of the Singapore coat of arms are properly described as rampant guardant with langued gules, ie red tongues visible.

Persons Entitled to a Coat of Arms

Well, nations have them, people have them, town councils have them – even private schools have them in some mutilated form or another.

Punch in ‘heraldry’ in the net and you even get websites purporting (legalese here) to give you your own set for a small sum of money. Well at least they look authentic.

Just who cannot have them? Well since getting one is not cheap, at least the official one from the College of Arms in London, usually it is for the rich and, at times, famous. If one is rich enough or if one is descended from someone legally entitled to one, he would need to apply directly to that place. In the College, after due investigation, it would be the Kings of Arms who would consent to the grant. Then letters patent, complete with calligraphy, seals and the usual ‘gobbledygook’ on his personal coat of arms would be granted to the applicant with strict description of its design.

So, a shield would be described as (blazoned):

Purpure, a chevron or charged with three mullets gules, meaning a royal purple coloured shield with a gold chevron (upside down corporal stripe) which has on it three bright red stars.

So it is red, on gold, on purple (colour on metal on colour).

A complete description of the coat of arms from the crest, to the badge, to the blazoning, to the supporters, to the motto on the banner would be referred to as the full Achievement. And the Achievement, as one can imagine, would be full of descriptions which would indeed fill an A3-sized letters patent written on a velum sheet.

Nobility

Now this is the section I enjoy the most, the levels and hierarchy of the nobility which are always closely related to heraldry. Show me a duke, earl, marquess and as sure as telling a judge off in open court would get you hauled up to a disciplinary hearing, they would each have a coat of arms – a most precious family asset.

They are in order of precedence: dukes, earls, marquess, viscounts, barons (more recently, baronets).

You can tell a coat of arms belongs to a duke if there is a coronet atop the shield and on top of the coronet is a ring of strawberry leaves. You would think next to the monarch, the prince is next in rank but actually dukes outrank princes. They need to be raised to the rank of duke.

Earls have five silver balls alternating with leaves. It is interesting that the modern English title of earl is derived from the Norse ‘jarl’, itself a noble and powerful title. An example of English roots from the Scandinavian regions.

Marquesses have two silver balls alternate with leaves, and were nobles who guarded the marsh borders between England and Wales. Their wives, known as marchionesses, bear a better hint of this ancestry.

Viscounts have nine silver balls and barons, four silver balls only.

English baronets were created by King James the First in 1611 and always have emblazoned on their shields, a smaller silver shield bearing a red hand referred to as a ‘bloody hand of Ulster’, an example of a real badge. This encouraged the landed untitled gentry to settle in Northern Ireland at that time.

Meaning of a Coat of Arms

As with all representations, a coat of arms says a lot of its bearer, from order of birth, to memorable victories in battle, to peculiar locations, to the type of trade, to even the bearer’s legitimacy (some shields have a short bar set from right to left pointing downwards indicating a bastard birth). Some coats of arms tell the story of the marriage of two illustrious families. The really full study of heraldry would take tomes and years and what I have is an interest which is at best deeper than most.

A Fine Example of a Good Coat of Arms in Singapore

If you turn left at Selegie Road up Mount Sophia, you would after a short drive, or a long walk, encounter Mount Emily Park. Just at the entrance, considering that it is not fenced, there is a shaded area and cast in some sort of China and mounted on a wall, is a coat of arms with the motto ‘Majulah Singapura’. Initial searches with official governmental information sources all say that the current Singapore crest, ie the one with the lion and tiger, was presented and adopted in 1959, the year of self government. So I assume that this design pre-dates 1959. [Editor’s note: The writer was right. See the reply from the College of Arms to him below.]

The crest is a gold lion in front of a coconut tree. It rests on a wreath, itself on a flowing mantling covering a helmet facing left. The shield follows the tincture rule with colour on metal, in this case yellow representing gold.

Indeed when I first laid eyes on it, it was well balanced and pleasing to behold.

Coat of Arms of Singapore

Of course Singapore has its own coat of arms which is described this way:

The National Coat of Arms (State Crest) was first launched on 3 Dec 1959 together with the National Flag and National Anthem at the installation of the Yang di-Pertuan Negara at the City Hall steps.⁴

Well, the crescent and five stars are stated as white against a red background. This goes against the ‘colour not on colour’ rule. Also, there is no such thing as a crest being also a coat of arms. It is one or the other.

Anyway, it should not be referred to as a ‘crest’ as indeed there is none. Though it can be referred to as a coat of arms, the explanation of its components needs more precision.

Similarly, the presidential crest should more properly be referred to as the presidential coat of arms. If there is a crest, it would be the crescent and five stars which sit atop the shield.

Misdescriptions

There is much more which irks me, eg the reference to a standard, when it is more likely a banner and things like that. But why this extreme adherence to an ancient art form that is not even native?
Well, offensive though it may sound to modern Singaporeans, part of that English culture will stay with us. Indeed, we look to that place for so much inspiration. The least we could do is to be as precise as we can when it comes to something which originated therefrom. Furthermore, if we are lackadaisical about the precision of our descriptions, particularly regarding something as ‘unimportant’ as heraldry, then what more can we expect of ourselves when it comes to descriptions of things that really, really matter?

But that’s just me.

Michael Loh Yik Ming

Clifford Law Corporation LLC
E-mail: michaelloh@cliffordlaw.com.sg

Notes

1    By Robert Innes-Smith, Pilgrim Press Ltd.

2    Heraldry is dominated with Norman French nomenclature and it is easy to assume that it is essentially English, but actually it was a phenomenon common all over medieval Europe. Japan also has its own art of heraldry which I have yet to study.

3    Taken from http://www.heraldicclipart.com, a source of free heraldic clip art.

4    http://vs.moe.edu.sg/national_symbol.htm.

Arising from writing this article, I ventured to communicate via e-mail with the College of Arms about the origins of this coat of arms I found at Mount Emily Park. Here is the reply:

 23 March 2005

 Dear Mr Loh

 Thank you for your email of 21st.

 The Arms that you sent me are those of the City of Singapore and the full blazons and details are as follows:

 Arms:     Gules a Tower issuant from the base proper on the battlements thereof a Lion passant guardant Or on a Chief embattled of the last a pair of Wings conjoined in base between two Anchors Azure.

 Crest:     On a Wreath Argent and Azure In front of a Palm Tree fructed proper issuant from a Mount Vert a Lion passant Or.  [Note: In the margin is written ‘The Palm tree is intended to be a coconut palm. JDH-A C&R 
        
(John Dunamace Heaton-Armstrong, Chester & Registrar) 8/2/50’]

 No Motto.

 Granted:                9th April 1948 by Sir Algar Howard, Garter, Sir Arthur Cochrane, Clarenceux, and Sir Gerald Wollaston, Norroy & Ulster Kings of Arms (Grants 110/195)

Yours sincerely

Henry Bedingfeld

York Herald

The College of Arms

Queen Victoria Street