Page:The book of public arms, 1915.pdf/16

In Scotland arms were matriculated in 1800 for "the County of Perth" and in 1890 " the Council of the County of Berwick." The only other county arms in that kingdom are those matriculated in t889 by the Commissioners of Supply for the County of Renfrew.

There are no county arms in Ireland; but arms for the four provinces of Ulster, Munster, Leinster, and Connaught officially exist, although one is puzzled to know to what or to whom they are assigned or by whom they are borne. There has never been any objection raised to the granting of arms to Cities and Towns of a corporate nature, and at the present time grants are even being made to Urban District Councils, Erith and Twickenham being cases in point.

The next category of impersonal arms is to be found in those of the Episcopal and Archiepiscopal Sees. These call for little comment. It seems to be well established that the pallium stands for the status or rank of Archbishop rather than for any area of jurisdiction. Though the different archiepiscopal coats now have certain variations and are stercotyped into coats of arms, it is unlikely that these variations are in reality any more than former artistic differences of a universal type. The arms of the Anglican Episcopal Church Sees in Scotland and Ireland lapsed with the disestablishment of those churches, and the Welsh coats will follow suit. There would really seem no objection to a continuance of their use if a Royal Licence from His Majesty werc to be obtained. By the conjunction of various sees the marshalling of the various coats would become necessary. With one or two exceptions the whole of the British Episcopal arms outside the United Kingdom are utterly bogus. A coat of arms is not a necessity, and if the Church desires that her Bishops should use impersonal arms upon their seals, it should take steps to have these properly called into being.

It should be noted that the mitre of a Bishop and an Archbishop are the same. The Bishop of Durham, and he alone, has the right to encircle the rim of his mitre with a coronet.

The rest of the impersonal arms call for little comment. Any corporate body having perpetual succession and a common seal have the right to obtain a grant of arms, and certainly arms exist in cases where this qualification is at any rate doubtful. Nowadays Schools, Colleges, Universities, Banks, Insurance Offices, and Railway Companies, Hospitals, and Charitable Societies are amongst those bodies which have obtained grants of arms.

The arms of the Livery Companies of London and other cities, a large proportion of which are quite genuine, present in different places a uniformity of motive which is puzzling, and at first sight apparently indicative of copying or usurpation. The real explanation, however, is to be found in the antecedent devices in general use as trade signs. Few have survived to the present day, though the barber's pole and the three balls of the pawnbroker are familiar to us all. In the same way the three escutcheons of the shield worker and painter were universal throughout Europe, and survive in the arms of the Painters and Paynter-Stayners Companies. These old trade devices, with more or less modification, have given the basis of design