Taigh Moran Chat
RR 2, Northside Road
Wading River, NY 11792
23 December, 1988
Unto the members of the College of Arms and any others who may read this missive, greetings from Alisoun MacCoul of Elphane, Laurel Queen of Arms!
The November meeting was held on November 27 and considered the letters from An Tir (6/29), Trimaris (7/30), Calontir (7/31), Atenveldt (8/1), Middle (8/3), East (8/6), Caid (8/7), West (8/8), Atlantia (8/12) Ansteorra (8/18), Ansteorra (8/22) and Meridies (8/27). Of 356 actions, 268 were positive, 84 were negative and 4 items were pended for an overall success rate of 75%.
Due to unexpected administrative obligations in the Laurel Office (see ROSTER CHANGES below), the December meeting has been postponed to Saturday, December 24. The letters to be considered at that meeting include Atenveldt (9/1), Middle (9/5), East (9/10), Trimaris (9/10), Caid (9/11), Ansteorra (9/22), West (9/22) Calontir (9/25), Meridies (9/26) and Outlands (9/26).
At this point the January meeting is still scheduled for January 8, although there is an increasing possibility that a mundane business trip may cause this meeting to be postponed until later in the month. (Those commenting for this meeting should not count on this fact, however.) Letters to be considered at the January meeting include Atenveldt (10/1), Caid (10/2), Ansteorra (10/14), Middle (10/18), West (10/18), Calontir (10/29), Atlantia (10/30) and Meridies (10/31).
The February meeting is tentatively scheduled for February 12. Letters scheduled for consideration at that meeting include East (10/31), Atenveldt (11/1), Calontir (11/5), Caid (11/6), Ansteorra (11/15), Outlands (11/19), Trimaris (11/20), West (11/20) and Meridies (11/27).
As many of you already know, Marta as tu Mika-Mysliwy is no longer Aten Principal Herald and Robin of Rhovanion is no longer Corona Herald. At this point the Laurel Office has no news of any successor.
After lengthy consideration of the four excellent bids for the Symposium and input from heralds in most of the Twelve Kingdoms, it has been determined that the Known Worlde Heraldic Symposium for 1989 should be held in Caid.
The dates for the Symposium are July 7-9 and the overall autocrat is Eowyn Amberdrake, formerly Clarion Queen of Arms. Detailed information on the plans for the event, costs, etc. should be available shortly.
Everyone on the Laurel staff would like to congratulate the bidders on the excellent quality of all the bids. In all the years that Symposia have been held for Society heralds, we have never had such a superb collection of bids. It was very difficult to make a decision and in the end it was necessary to consider not only the features of each bid in and of itself (for all had much to recommend them), but also the geographic distribution of those favouring each bid. It was in fact the broad geographic range of those selecting Caid as their first choice that was the deciding factor in this case.
It has been a standing procedure for commentary in the College of Arms for some eight years that commentors should arrange the letters on which they comment in chronological order to guarantee that all letters are appropriately considered at the Laurel meeting.
This is such a given that we perhaps have not underlined this enough for new commentors with the result that a few comments of great value have been inadvertently overlooked when the Laurel staff pulled letters for a given meeting. Noting that all the letters on the first pages of a given letter of comment were for a later meeting, Laurel staff have occasionally missed the comments on the last page for a letter dated much earlier which is scheduled for an earlier meeting.
To simplify our task and make sure that your commentary has the fullest effect, we would ask commentors to follow these rules:
If you all follow these simple guidelines, your comments will serve much more usefully and the Laurel staff will be able to save a lot of preparation and/or meeting time. Done consistently by everyone, it might even make a serious contribution to the goal of swift and accurate generation of letters of acceptance and return.
In recent months, some members of the College have hotly disputed the manner in which cotises should be considered for difference in the Society, suggesting that they should be considered as lines of division. On occasion it has even been implied that Laurel’s view of cotises as diminutives of ordinaries used as secondary charges is not only. a departure from Society tradition, but one not supported by the weight of mundane evidence from period and modern sources.
We cannot agree.
So far as Society tradition is concerned, the weight of evidence indicates that cotises were not considered lines of division, but rather diminutives of an ordinary, sometimes considered as an ordinary themselves, sometimes as a subordinary, but always as an identifiable charge, not as a line of division. In the West Kingdom Herald’s Handbook, issued by Wilhelm von Schlussel as Vesper in 1979 and for many years a standard heraldic resource in a number of kingdoms, the chapter on “The Rules of Blazon” considers lines of division (p. 62) and gives an (admittedly derivative) illustration of the lines of division used in the Society (Plate 11). While the lines of division include a number of less common forms (flory-counter-flory, angled, escartelé, embattled aronde, double arched, etc.), nowhere is it indicated that cotising should be considered in lines of division. It was in fact the plate from the West Kingdom Herald’s Handbook that Master Wilhelm, by then Laurel, used as a graphic in July, 1980, when initiating a supposedly “once and for all” discussion of the lines of division to be permitted in the Society. Cotising was neither included in the list nor was it discussed as a line of division, as far as Laurel, then serving the College as Elmet Herald of the East [official kvetch position], can recall.
On the other hand, in the same edition of the West Kingdom Herald’s Handbook (p. 63), the cotise is specifically described as a diminutive of the bend:
The diminutive of the bend obtained by shrinking its width by a factor of three is the bendlet, and a further reduction by a factor of three produces the cotise. Switching to the other diagonal we have the bend sinister, and its diminutives the scarpe and the cotise sinister. A cotise couped, that is, cut short at both ends, is a baton... If the bend is placed between two cotises then it is said to be a bend cotised. You can also have two on either side, making it doubly cotissed, and so on.
It is notable that the continuation of the discussion of the bend and its diminutives specifically discusses what happens when certain lines. of division, notably “embattled”, are applied to the ordinaries and their diminutives. (Logic decrees that, if a line of division can be applied to a cotise, then the cotise cannot itself be considered a line of division.) Further, the illustrations of the ordinaries in the same work (Plate 13) specifically illustrate the cotise as a separate charge.
As far as we can determine, no ruling exists in the published precedents to reverse this situation. Indeed, the contrary is true. Apparently there had been some feeling that cotises should be used only in the context of the ordinary of which they were a diminutive and in July, 1980, in the case of the device of Johannes Peregrinus (“Argent, five lozenges in chevron sable between four bar cotices gules.”), Laurel specifically affirmed that cotises could be used as independent charges, specifying only that confusion be avoided by indicating which diminutive form was being used (i.e., of a bend, a bar or a chevron).
It is certainly possible that some confusion may have been created by the informal standards used by some heralds in some kingdoms to judge visual force of secondaries. However, an informal poll of members of the College from a statistically significant number of kingdoms indicates that the first time most had encountered the idea that cotises were to be counted as a line of division rather than as secondary charges was when they purchased their copy of the most recent Armorial and Ordinary where the ordinary listed bends cotised with “Bend by Complex Line”. (It should be noted that Laurel verbally noted the fact that this heading included cotises as a problem at the time the draft was presented to her.)
More recently, Crescent and Dolphin in their Pictorial Dictionary of Heraldry (p. 23) note:
In some ways, cotising an ordinary is considered the addition of secondary charges; “a bend between two cotises” is another ways [sic] of saying “a bend cotised”. In other ways, cotising is comparable to a complex line of division: certainly, the cotises cannot exist without the central ordinary, and they have nothing to do with any other secondary charges.
The text here is interesting. On the one hand, it agrees with Laurel’s view of the cotise as a secondary charge. On the other hand, it seems to feel the cotise partakes of the quality of a line of division because it is derivative, i.e., draws its shape from the ordinary it modifies. Certainly, that is the implication of the statement that “the cotises cannot exist without the central ordinary”. As we have noted above, however, precedent in the Society does not support this view since it specifically states that the cotise can exist as a secondary charge in the absence of the ordinary.
The question now arises as to the manner in which the cotise is treated in mundane sources. Most modern ordinaries follow Papworth in treating it as a secondary charge, rather than a complex bend, so that armoury with a bend cotised is listed under the heading “A bend between two cotises” rather than with the bend indented, embattled, etc. as it would be if it were being considered to fall into the same category as a line of division.
Woodward (Treatise on Heraldry British and Foreign, pp. 132) clearly indicates that the cotise is a diminutive of the bend: “Like other Ordinaries the Bend has its diminutives: the Bendlet, the Cotice and the Riband... The French call the charge by the name of bande up to the number of four.” This is further supported by the discussion of the cotise itself (ibid., pp. 132-133):
The Cotice (cotice) is the name applied by the French to bendlets when more than four are placed on the shield; it is also the name given to the bendlets which often accompany a bend, as the endorses do apale... Thus... the coat of Harley, Earl of OXFORD: --- Or, a bend cotised sable (d’Or, a la bande de sable accompangné de deux cotices du méme). d’Argent a la bande de sable, accostée de deux cotices du méme is the coat of the French Marquises de CUSTINE.
VILLEPROUVEE in France bears: de Gueules, a la bande d’argent accostée de deux cotices d’or, a coat borne in the early Rolls of Arms for COUE or COWE; and for DAWTREY. The cotices are often borne engrailed, indented, wavy, etc., while the bend is plain; or vice versa. Azure, a bend engrailed argent plain coticed or, is the coat of the Earls FORTESCUE. Sable, a bend ermine between two cotises flory counterflory or is the coat of KECK, or KELK.
Woodward continues to cite two instances of Continental use of the cotise as a sole charge: des Baillets (“Argent, a cotice purpure.”) and Diaz (“Argent, two cotises, the upper one sable, the lower one vert.”). While it is highly probably that in the Society we would blazon these latter charges as bends or bendlets, this supports the view that the mundane world considers the cotises as charges in and of themselves.
From this discussion several things are clear: cotises have an identifiable existence as the diminutive of a common ordinary, they exist most frequently in conjunction with that ordinary but can also exist independently, and they can have tinctures and lines of division entirely different from the ordinary even when they exist in conjunction with an ordinary. It is also notable that the French blazons, which generally tend to retain the older forms, use the same usage for cotises as are used for other charges lying on either side of a bend which follow the line of a bend (or other ordinary for that matter), accosté and accompagné, always using this with the prepositional form and retaining the cotise named as a charge. From the point of blazon as structured language, reflecting the view which people have of a particular device and its component parts, this is significant.
But what of cotises in period practise? Were they considered merely equivalent to a line of division or as secondary charges in and of themselves? Much of the material on this point lies in untranslated sources not readily accessible to most members of the College so it seems advisable to turn for an answer to Brault‘s Early Blazon: Heraldic Terminology in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries with Special Reference to Arthurian Literature. Gerard Brault, who has himself been involved in the editing of a number of medieval heraldic manuscripts set out in this volume to examine the development of heraldic terminology and practise up to about 1300 through examination of a large number of heraldic rolls and romances in which heraldry is mentioned (some of the earliest mentions of heralds and heraldry occur not in historical or legal documents but in prose and verse romances).
Brault is a particularly good source on this issue not only because of the range of his sources but. because of his interest in the subject: he himself at an earlier time devoted an entire article on the early use of the cotise which Laurel read some years ago, when her access to obscure journals was somewhat more complete. If attempts to locate a copy of this article are successful, it will be duplicated for interested members of the College (“The Old French Heraldic Term Cotice ‘Narrow Bend’”, Romania [1966]).
Among other things, Brault considers the development of “classic blazon”, i.e., of the structured method of describing devices in a standard manner which reflected the manner in which they were distinguished. For instance, he notes that “when... an early-thirteenth-century writer describes a shield as having a cross upon it, the particular shape of this charge evidently mattered little to him and this lack of concern is matched by the variations we find in the crosses depicted upon the armorial seals and monuments of the day.” (ibid., p. 7). Distinctions that made their way into the stylized blazon of the thirteenth century were clearly perceived distinctions. Thus it is significant that Brault holds that the “rule that blazon must begin with the field, then the principal charge, followed by secondary charges” was already in force in the thirteenth-century rolls of arms is critical to our examination of the manner in which period heralds considered subordinate charges. (For a complete discussion of the heraldic phrasing and its significance, see pp. 9 - 15.).
For the purpose of the issue at hand, it is perhaps only necessary to consider the distinction that Brault makes (p. 10) between a “free form”, which can exist independently, often separated from the field or other charges by a separator (e.g., the Old French a), and the “bound form” which can only exist in conjunction with another element (e.g., a descriptive adjective or participle such as “faulx” or “patoncé”).
It is clear from the examples in his discussions and the lexical items included in his glossary that lines of division are generally “bound forms”. All of the limited number of lines of division noted in his glossary appear as passive participles (p. 60). Secondary charges are usually “free forms” linked by a particle such as “a” or not linked at all save by position in the blazon. However, some primary and secondary elements, notably charges semy and ordinaries could be referred to by an adjectival or participial form, although such forms were less common (“chastelé” for a semy of castles, “ferreté” for a semy of nails, “bendé” when charged with a bend, “fessié” when charged with a fess, etc.).
Brault (p. 151) gives the derivation of “cotice” as the Old French word for a leather thong (rather than the Latin “costa” meaning “side” or “rib” which suggests that the cotise could only exist on either side of something else and gives at least two blazons where the cotise exists as the primary charge: “Mesire Gui de la Roche porte les armes d’or a cinq cotices d’asur et a une bordure de gueulles” and “Mesire de Denisi porte les arme d’or a trois cotices noires”.
Elsewhere, when Brault considers the cotise in conjunction with a bend, it is clear that the cotise is virtually always a “free form” linked to the bend in a manner precisely parallel to that in which other secondaries (e.g., lions) are linked to the bend. Blazons equivalent to the modern bend cotised are variously blazoned as “bende a cotices”, “bende a deux listeaux”, “bende a lionceaus a deux cotices” (here a bend cotised between two lioncels rampant, the lions obviously being considered more significant secondary charges), “bende a listes”, “bende a listes fleuretees”, “bende entrealee de deus cotices lionceaus en rampant asis au dehors”, “bende et a deus cotices”, “bende od deus cotices”, “bende ou lionceaus ou deus cotices”, etc. (pp. 123-127). It is noticeable that in all these cases the syntax is precisely the same as it is for the bend between other common secondaries, e.g., “bende a lionceaus rampanz” (bend between two lions rampant), “bende a merletes” (bend between two martlets), “bende ou croissanz” (bend between crescents), etc. (pp. 123-126).
By contrast, only two instances appear in which the “bound form” occurs: “bende coticiee” and “bende coticiee entre lionceaus”. In the former case, the context is early and poetic (LI Tournoimenz Antecrit von Huon de Mery, as edited by Wimmer, dated to the first half of the thirteenth century) and, as Brault himself says in speaking of the standard order of blazon, “the exigencies of versification are such... that the rule is often violated in literature...” (p. 9). In the second case, the form appears in a late (1585) copy of Glover’s Roll and the same collocation appears more frequently in other copies of the same roll as “lionceaus a une bende a deus cotices”, “lionceaus a une bende et deus cotices”, “lionceaus a une bende od deus cotises”, “lionceaus od une bende et deus cotices”, “lionceaus ove unde bende a deus cotices”, etc. (p. 229), thus casting some doubt on the integrity of the first reading.
Since a majority of period heralds in both England and France used the Old French heraldic forms rather. than English, these examples may be held to be significant for English practise as well as French. Confirmation of this is given by the entries in the OED for “cotise’ in both its substantive and verbal forms. As a noun with a purely heraldic usage, “cotise’ is first cited from 1300 in the Caerlaverock Roll with a phrase more French than English: “O une blanche bende lee De deus costices entre alee’. By 1572, there is a definition, rather similar to the modern one given above, from Bossewell’s Armourie: “A Coste is the fourth part of the bende... and is called at somtime a Cotys, at sometyme a Batune’. The first example of the verbal form, however, is also from Bossewell and appears to still require the specification of the noun: “a bende, cotised with two cotises’.
At this point we fear that anyone reading this is probably beginning to feel that they now know more than they ever really wanted to about cotises. Therefore, it is probably appropriate to summarize what has been learned from Society and mundane sources before considering the situation in the light of the current rules.
Standard Society handbooks going back at least a decade, such as the West Kingdom Herald’s Handbook, refer to the cotise as a diminutive of an ordinary and do not include it in lines of division. Laurel precedent specifically states that the cotise may exist when an accompanying ordinary is not present. Modern mundane sources also refer to the cotise as a diminutive of an ordinary, do not include it as a field division, and specifically cite examples (albeit Continental examples) of the cotise as an independent charge. Moreover, it is indicated that cotises frequently are modified by a complex line of division, even when an accompanying ordinary is not, or are plain when the accompanying ordinary is complex and are often of a different tincture from the accompanying primary charge.
Period sources, as summarized in Brault, support the same conclusions: in virtually every example where the cotise appears in the early sources considered, it is treated syntactically like any other secondary charge, be it martlet, crescent or lion. Only two exceptions to this are cited, both being suspect, the one because it occurs in a particularly poetic context and the other because the text of the manuscript from which it has been copied is not supported by other copies of the same manuscript.
It is undeniable that some of the attraction of the “cotise as line of division’ position to certain members of the College is to avoid some problems where devices which “gut instinct’ indicate are not in conflict technically conflict because cotises are of the same tincture as the secondary charges on a potential conflict, but sufficient difference cannot be derived from modification of tertiary charges on the primary charge because of the presence of the secondaries (see the device of James the Tavernkeeper on the letter of intent for an example).
However, to determine whether a modification of the categorization of the cotise, whatever the modern or period support for such a change, would result in an significant “loosening’ of conflicts, we must consider the possible options for difference.
Considered as secondaries, the addition of cotises adds a major point of difference, whether or not other secondaries are present. The same major point of difference would be derived from considering the addition as a change from a plain to complex ordinary. If the comparison is between a bend between two X and a bend between two cotises, a major point of difference for type of charge can be derived without any other changes.
It would appear that the only instance in which it really becomes of advantage to consider the cotise as a complex line of division is if two devices differ only in the type of charge on either side of the bend and changes to the tertiaries which cannot, under the current rules, derive a major point of difference in the presence of secondary charges. In this instance, considering the cotise as a complex line of division allows us to derive a major point from modification of the bend and another major point from addition of the secondary charges which would normally be considered to be parallel to the cotises. In this instance, it is clear that the limit on the difference to be derived from tertiary charges and the cap on cumulative changes to secondaries are the real problems.
On the other hand, if one is consistent in the way one considers lines of division, it would be necessary to hold that only a major point of difference could be derived from changing a bend to a bend cotised. At the present time a major point in addition to that for type can be derived if the tincture of the cotises differs from that of the secondary charges on the other device, although that is restricted by the “point and a half limit’ on secondary charges in the current rules. That should not be true if the cotises were considered as “lines of division’. Similarly, if the cotises are themselves considered as “lines of division’ difference should not be derived from changes in the line of division used on the cotises such as one can derive now nor probably from the difference in number involved in a bend cotised and a bend doubly cotised (although that is more arguable). Well, you see what kinds of subsidiary problems ensue...
Our ultimate conclusion must be that not only is the consideration of the cotise as a sort of complex line of division for purposes of difference not supported by Society or mundane tradition, but it also causes more problems than it solves, the more so since the problems that the change has been proposed to resolve are more simply and elegantly resolved by the modifications in the requirements for difference in the proposed rules.
Several recent devices have raised the issue of precisely when fimbriation was used in period heraldry. Obviously it was not common in early heraldry (Brault’s Early Blazon does not even mention it). The (largely undated) mundane exemplars with which Laurel is most familiar essentially limit the use of apparent fimbriation to ordinaries (crosses, bends, fesses, etc.) where they are most commonly blazoned as “on an X, an X.“
When does the practise of fimbriation come into being? When does the term “fimbriation’ itself enter the heraldic vocabulary? The earliest clear reference that Laurel has discovered in an admittedly cursory search is to a cross fimbriated in The Boke of Saint Albans which is relatively late (1486).
From The Boke of Saint Albans and a number of Tudor references, it is clear that crosses could be fimbriated, at least at the end of our period. What other ordinaries (if any) were so treated in period? Is there any evidence that charges other than the simplest geometric charges (i.e., ordinaries) were fimbriated in period heraldry? Were charges of the same tincture as the field ever used with fimbriation? If so, what charges and when?
“Thin line heraldry’ and “excessive fimbriation’ as phrases have been floating around the College of Arms for some years now. In all fairness to our submittors, we should pin down the allowable parameters for fimbriation a bit more firmly. Many members of the College have been working in period treatises, rolls of arms, and other sources for some years now. We call upon those members of the College to answer the questions raised above so that we can try and base our policies on fimbriation more firmly on actual period practise.
Your servant,
— Alisoun