Osprey - General Military - Knight - The Warrior and ... - Brego-weard

Heraldry, then, served as an index of a knight's personal prowess and status and
that of his family and those with whom he had a social affinity. It is no wonder that
these symbols were so jealously guarded, and there were bitter disputes between
knights who found themselves bearing the same coat of arms. The most famous of
such disputes was that between the Scrope and Grosvenor families, both of whom
bore the arms azure, a bend or- blue with a diagonal stripe of gold. In 1386 the dispute
was brought before the Court of Chivalry, which was set up to deal with these sorts
of matters. Interestingly, the outcome rested on not only who had borne the arms first,
and a extensive series of witnesses were called for their recollections ol this, but also
on what occasion, and it is clear from the transcripts that certain forms of military
endeavour rated more highly than others: a pitched battle over a skirmish and crusades
over secular campaigns. In the end the Court found in favour ol Scrope, and the
Grosvenor family were instructed to change their arms, henceforward bearing argent,
a garb or, the diagonal stripe being replaced by a wheat-sheaf.
Amongst the anecdotes that come down to us from the proceedings of this case one
of the witnesses, John Charnels, told how Sir William Scrope had to be restrained from
killing a captured French knight because he bore the same arms. It is clear that whilst
chivalric writers such as Raymon Lull and jurists such as the 14th-century Italian Bartolus
might argue that there was no bar to men bearing the same coat of arms provided that it
did no damage to either s interests, and if they served under different lords so that there
was no danger of confusion, the knights themselves had a much more stringent view of
the rights and wrongs of the matter. Froissart records how during the truce before the
battle of Poitiers, as the churchmen tried to bring the French and Anglo-Gascon armies
to terms, the English banneret Sir John Chandos and the French marshal Jean de
Clermont rode out to view their opponent s lines and realized that they were both wearing
the same devise", an image of the Virgin Mary surrounded by sunrays. The two men clashed
at this socially awkward moment, Clermont stating that the English 'can invent nothing
new, but must take for your own whatever you see handsome belonging to others' and
adding that were there no truce then he would prove by deed of arms that he had the
greater right to the use of the image. Froissart completes the anecdote by recording
the fact that Clermont was killed in the battle the following day and that 'some say this
treatment was owing to his altercation on the preceding day with Sir John Chandos'.
The anecdote of a socially awkward chivalric moment is interesting because the image
they fought over was not either men's arms - Chandos bore a white shield with a red
vertical stripe, whilst Clermont's arms were a red shield covered in gold trefoils with two
fish depicted vertically in gold, all surmounted by a blue label — suggesting that knights
and lord might also be proprietorial about their devises, the informal system ol badges
that was used alongside the hereditary and systematic heraldic arms.