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In Memory of a Marquess

February 26, 2018, 12:00 am
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Continuing our heraldic tour of the Bute Museum in the Royal Burgh of Rothesay, we found this nice heraldic display of the full achievement of arms of John Crichton-Stuart, the 5th Marquess of Bute.


John Crichton-Stuart (1907-1956), 5th Marquess of Bute, was the son of John Crichton-Stuart, the 4th Marquess, and Augusta Bellingham. On his father's side, the 5th Marquess was a direct male-line descendant of Robert II of Scotland through John Stewart, his illegitimate son by Moira Leitch. On his mother's side, the 5th Marquess was a descendant of William IV of the United Kingdom through Elizabeth Hay, Countess of Erroll, one of his illegitimate daughters by his mistress, Dorothea Jordan.

The Marquess was an expert ornithologist; in 1931 he bought the islands of St. Kilda to preserve them as a bird sanctuary, leaving them to the National Trust for Scotland in 1956.

The family is an old and noble one, taking up five full pages in my 1938 copy of Burke's Peerage, Baronetage, & Knightage, with the Crichton line going back to 1484 and the Stuart line back 100 years before that in the records.

The arms are: Quarterly: 1 and 4, Or a fess checky azure and argent within a double-tressure flory counterflory gules (Stewart); 2 and 3, Argent a lion rampant azure (Crichton); in dexter chief the badge of a baronet of Nova Scotia. The shield is surmounted by the coronet of a marquess. The supporters are Dexter: A horse rampant argent bridled gules; Sinister: A stag rampant proper gorged with the coronet of a marquess and chained or. The crest atop the barred helm of a peer is A demi-lion erect gules. The secondary crests are: A wyvern sejant vert breathing flames proper (Crichton) and A wyvern sejant vert holding in its mouth a sinister hand gules (Herbert). (You may have seen this last at times in the television series Downton Abbey, filmed at Highclere Castle, home of the Herbert Earls of Carnarvon.) The motto above the shield is Nobilis est ira leonis (The lion's anger is noble); the motto below the shield is Avito viret honore (He flourishes by ancestral honors). Also below the shield is appended the badge of a baronet of Nova Scotia.

I assume that the key (whose checky azure and argent portion is taken from the Stuart checky fess) is indicative of the Marquess' office of Hereditary Sheriff of County Bute, and that the rod with the tower (also with a checky fess about its base) indicates his office as Hereditary Keeper of Rothesay Castle.

I don't know what else I can say about this beautifully worked achievement of arms. It was wonderful, though, to see it prominently displayed there in Rothesay.

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In Memory of a Duke

March 1, 2018, 12:00 am
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Going up the social ladder in our heraldic tour of the Bute Museum in Rothesay, we ran across this little heraldic gem:


It appears very much to me like a carved decoration from the stern of a large boat or small ship. It is beautifully carved -- just look at the way those thistles run from one end to the other, framing the achievement of arms in the center.

That is not to say it is without its issues. It appears to have been overpainted, more than once, and some of the colors used are incorrect (as you will notice when comparing the picture below to the blazon). Plus, the escallops in the husband's arms look more like garbs. And the ermine tails on the husband's fess and the small charges on the label on the wife's arms are lacking. The torse appears to be carved as a solid, straight bar perched precariously atop the helm.


It is the achievement of arms of Alexander William George Duff, 1st Duke of Fife, and his wife, H.R.H. Louise Victoria Alexandra Dagmar, the Princess Royal, eldest daughter of King Edward VII.

His arms are: Quarterly: 1 and 4, Or a lion rampant gules (Fife); 2 and 3, Vert a fess dancetty ermine between a stag's head cabossed in chief and two escallops in base or (Duff).

Her arms are the Royal Arms of Great Britain with an inescutcheon of Saxony and with a white label of five points charged alternately with three St. George's crosses and two thistles slipped and leaved proper.

The crest is A knight on horseback armed cap-à-pie. The supporters are Two savages wreathed about the head and waist with laurel and holding in their exterior hands a branch of a tree over the shoulder all proper. I am unable to make out the motto above the crest. (If I have to guess, I think it begins with "Deo", but my picture (and the overpainting) is not clear enough to make out much more than that.) The motto under the the shield is Virtute et operâ (By virtue and deeds).

Even with all of it's errors, though, it's an amazing display of heraldry, and a wonderful piece to run across in a little museum in Scotland.

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A Home That Is Chock Full o' Heraldry

March 5, 2018, 12:00 am
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The next stop on our heraldic tour of the Isle of Bute was Mount Stuart, the home of the Marquesses of Bute, a lovely place in which it is pretty much impossible to even turn around without seeing heraldry. Of course, when you are designing a home for yourself and you have an important lineage, you'll probably go ahead and include the family coats of arms and crests all over the place, if only to try to overawe your visitors.

Mount Stuart was originally built in 1719 by the 2nd Earl of Bute, and rebuilt by the 3rd Marquess of Bute following a fire on December 3, 1877, which destroyed much of the house. Two Georgian wings survived, but the main house was completely redone in flamboyant Gothic Revival.

But, of course, it is the heraldry which is the main attraction to me, and there was heraldry to be seen before even entering the doors, in the form of a deeply carved achievement of arms.


Nice, not overstated, this display is something that any armiger might consider placing over a doorway. (Of course, in my case, there would be no supporters or coronet of rank, and but a single crest instead of the three here, but still, what a great way to display a full achievement of arms!)


The arms are, obviously, those of the Crichton-Stuart, Marquess of Bute: Quarterly: 1 and 4, Or a fess checky azure and argent within a double tressure flory counter-flory gules (Stuart); 2 and 3, Argent a lion rampant azure (Crichton). In this example, we also have in canton the badge of a Baronet of Nova Scotia. The three crests are: (center) A demi-lion rampant gules (Stuart); (dexter) A wyvern issuing fire from its mount all proper (Crichton); and (sinister) A wyvern proper holding in its mouth a sinister hand couped gules (Herbert). The supporters are: A stag proper attired or and A horse argent bridled gules. (The stag here is gorged with the coronet of a marquess proper chained gules, but those elements do not appear in the blazon in my copy of Burke's Peerage, which book also reverses the supporters so that the horse is the dexter supporter, and the stag the sinister one.)

We have seen all of these elements recently, in the display of the arms of John Crichton-Stuart, the 5th Marquess of Bute, that we saw in the Bute Museum and shared in our post dated February 26, 2018. (Note that the arrangement of the supporters in that display is reversed from the supporters here.)

If you look closely (you can also click on the image above to see a larger copy), you can also see the crossed key and tower on a staff behind the shield which we also saw on the display in the Bute Museum.

Watch for more examples of the Stuart, Crichton, and Herbert arms and crests as we make our way through Mount Stuart in the next several posts here.

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Well, It's Not _All_ Heraldry

March 8, 2018, 12:00 am
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Okay, I have to admit, that despite all of the heraldry that can be seen at Mount Stuart (a lot of which I'll be sharing in upcoming posts), not every appropriate surface was covered with coats of arms or other heraldic designs.

Exhibit A:


As you can see (click on the picture above to see a bigger version), on this faux balcony on the exterior there are eight perfectly good shields.

With nothing on them.

Blank shields.

There may be a perfectly good reason for these empty shields on the exterior of the building. That is not for me to say. I will say that I was certainly tempted to get a long ladder, a paintbrush, and several cans of paint in heraldic colors.

Just sayin'.

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A Little Heraldic Something for the Parlor

March 12, 2018, 12:00 am
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Going inside Mount Stuart is a heraldry enthusiast's dream; you can hardly turn around without seeing a coat of arms done in one fashion or another.

Say, for example, on a tapestry or two.



These two tapestries (you can click on the pictures above to see them in greater detail) are labeled "The Time of the Meeting" and "The Lord of the Hunt" in English and in Gaelic.

Each has, center top, the Stuart coat of arms (Or a fess checky azure and argent within a double tressure flory counter-flory gules) on an oval surmounted by the coronet of a marquess, supported by two winged cherubs who also carry, between them, the motto of the Crichton-Stuarts, Nobilis est ira leonis (The lion's anger is noble).


Nicely framed between the pillars supporting the ceiling in the room, these two tapestries are a warming, softening, and impressive, display.

Something to keep in mind the next time you're in the market for a little heraldic something to hang on the wall.

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Speaking of Heraldic Accompaniments for the Home

March 15, 2018, 12:00 am
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And you thought your kegerator was a great addition to your house.

To borrow a line from the movie Crocodile Dundee: "That isn't a keg. This is a keg."


This is the Mount Stuart answer for when you have company over and someone mentions that they are feeling a bit parched.


Naturally, is has the arms of the Crichton-Stuarts on it, in etched brass in the same general style as many of the stall plates you might see in, say, St. Giles in Edinburgh or St. George's Chapel at Windsor.

The display of heraldry includes the arms (Quarterly Stuart and Crichton), with the coronet of a marquess replacing the torse, the demi-lion crest of the Stuarts issuant from the coronet, and a different version of the motto, Nobilis ira (Noble ardor), which my hardbound copy of Fairbairn's Crests cites as that of Creighton-Stuart (not that I think that the different spelling Crichton is any real difference), replacing the longer one we saw on the tapestries last time, Nobilis est ira leonis.

Once again, then, we have a little something to consider the next time you are looking for something cool for your house that you can also mark with your coat of arms.

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Now _This_ Is an Armorial Family Tree

March 19, 2018, 12:00 am
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I'm sure that many of you have seen one or more of the many variations of a family tree that include the coats of arms of the people in it. (If you haven't, there's an example of one at http://powys.org/Heraldry/Trotter_Heraldry/Trotter_Armorial_Tree/Trotter_tree.html, or an older one at https://www.pinterest.com/pin/519743613221335021/.)

But let me tell you, at Mount Stuart there is an armorial family tree that so pales all the others by comparison, that I want to steal (and modify) a line from the movie Crocodile Dundee: "That's not an armorial family tree; this is an armorial family tree!"

Covering the entire ceiling of one of the ground floor rooms at Mount Stuart is an armorial family tree that puts all the others to shame.

I'm just going to leave these here for you. I'm sure that I could probably pull out my Burke's Peerage and follow most of the lines of this family as they are displayed here, but looking at this ceiling, I frankly don't think that anything more needs to be said, except: "This is an armorial family tree!"


























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Speaking of Genealogical Displays of Heraldry

March 22, 2018, 12:00 am
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Though not quite as involved as the heraldic family tree ceiling in our last post, one of the staircases in Mount Stuart has some very impressive stained glass windows which describe some of the marriages within the family over the years.

Most noticeable are the arms of the Stuarts (Or a fess checky azure and argent within a double tressure flory counter-flory gules) and the Herberts (Per pale azure and gules three lions rampant argent), but you'll see a number of other families represented here as well.

(You may recognize the Herbert arms from the BBC television series Downton Abbey, which was filmed at Highclere Castle, the home of Herbert, Lord Carnarvon. The main gallery in the castle, which appeared throughout the series, has a number of shields around the first floor [second floor, to my American readers] balcony with the arms of Herbert, often impaling the arms of one or another of the women who married into the family. But I digress.)



Notice how they have continued the literal family "tree" motif here.

It's a remarkably impressive display of heraldry and family alliances.

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Family History in a Couple of Armorial Paintings

March 26, 2018, 12:00 am
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In my last post, you may have noticed a distinctive coat of arms at the top of one of the stained glass windows: Gules crusilly or a saltire argent. (That coat can also be found adorning the chapel at Mount Stuart, below.)


This coat of arms came into the Stuart (and later, Crichton-Stuart) family from the marriage of John Stuart, Viscount Montstuart, and Charlotte Jane Hickman-Windsor, daughter of Herbert Windsor, 2nd Viscount Windsor, and Alice Clavering. As heir to her father's estates, Charlotte brought some very large estates, especially in south Wales, with her into the marriage.



John Stuart, Viscount Mount Stuart, in 1776 was elevated to the peerage in his own right as Baron Cardiff of Cardiff Castle owing to his wife's lands in Wales. In 1792, he succeeded his late father as the 4th Earl of Bute, and in 1794 was created Viscount Mountjoy, Earl of Windsor (both titles held by his late father-in-law), and (1st) Marquess of Bute.

As you can see from the detail of the portrait above, he bears the Windsor arms in pretense (in right of his wife), and has surmounted the shield with a the coronet of a baron (as the title of Viscount was a courtesy title from his father).



And here, I believe, is a portrait of Charlotte Jane Hickman-Windsor, though the clothes she is wearing here are from a good 150 years (or more) before this time. Could it actually be a painting of one of her female ancestors? That is certainly possible, but I have found no likely candidates in the history of the Windsors. Were they painting portraits of 18th Century women wearing late 16th-early 17th Century clothing? I have no idea.

In any event, these are but two of several armorial portraits hung in some of the rooms at Mount Stuart. We'll be looking at more in upcoming posts, so as they say on TV, "stay tuned!"

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Another Armorial Painting

March 29, 2018, 12:00 am
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Continuing our review of some of the heraldry in Mount Stuart, we came across this armorial gem.


The identification of the subject is made pretty easy, as in addition to the coat of arms above his right shoulder, there is an inscription above his left:

Lorde Gvylyam,
Erell of Penbroke

This is most likely, based on a review of the lives and times of the few Williams, Earls of Pembroke/Penbroke, "William Herbert, 1st Earl of Pembroke, K.G. Master of the Horse 1548-52, President of the Royal Council in Wales 1550-3 and 1555-8, and Captain General of the English Army in France 1557, who was installed a knight of the Garter in 1549, and elevated to the peerage as Baron Herbert of Cardiff, co. Glamorgan, 10 Oct. 1551, and on the morrow, created Earl of Pembroke. ... He d. 17 March, 1569-70, and was buried in the cathedral of St. Paul's on the 18th April following."

(It is also possible, though I think less likely based on his suit, that this is a portrait of "William Herbert, 3rd Earl of Pembroke, K.G., chancellor of the University of Oxford, and lord-chamberlain of the household, b. 8 April 1580, m. 4 Nov. 1604, Mary, eldest dau. of Gilbert, 7th Earl of Shrewsbury, and co-heir to the Baronies of Talbot, Strange, Blackmere, and Furnival; but d. without surviving issue, 10 April, 1630, when the honours devolved upon his brother, Philip.")


The arms, placed within the Garter (note the painting also shows him wearing the collar of the Order of the Garter), have Herbert (Per pale azure and gules three lions rampant argent, seen in other locations in Mount Stuart; for example, in the stained glass window below) in the first quarter differenced by a bordure compony. And in fess point there is a crescent or for difference, the cadency mark of a second son.


These differences - the bordure and the crescent - stem from the time the Earldom came back into the Herbert family, following it's being held by Edward Plantagenet, son and heir of King Edward IV, and then by Anne Bullen (or Boleyn), created Marchioness of Penbroke by King Henry VIII in 1532.

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An Heraldic Chapel Ceiling

April 2, 2018, 12:00 am
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Many of the larger houses in Great Britain (and other countries, too) have private chapels attached to them. The chapel at Mount Stuart has one of the prettiest ceilings that I have ever seen.



Of course, the fact that there's some heraldry in there doesn't hurt. There are shields of the Stuart,


Crichton,


and Windsor


coats of arms on some of the ceiling bosses.

In the picture of this last coat you can see better details of the stars which cover the ceiling of the chapel.

In the picture of the Crichton arms, you can see some the intricate detailing along the edges of the
arch supports.

What an amazing amount of work went into the creation of this chapel ceiling!

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More Heraldic Display in the Chapel

April 5, 2018, 12:00 am
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But the ceiling of the chapel at Mount Stuart (reviewed in my last post) isn't the only heraldic display there. Around the edge of the the gallery at the base of the "dome" of the chapel were a number of shields and supporters.


The red color tinting the white marble interior was from the sun shortly before sunset shining in through the stained glass windows on the western side of the chapel.

The coats of arms were left in their semi-finished state after the death of the 3rd Marquess on October 9, 1900, owing mostly the expense of continuing the work. (You've been able to see over the last several posts the quantity and quality of some of the work that was put into the house, but that quantity and quality came with a heavy price tag, and it couldn't be kept up forever.)





The arms are the quartered arms of Crichton-Stuart, Quarterly: 1 and 2, Or a fess checky argent and azure within a double-tressure flory counterflory gules (Stuart); 2 and 3, Argent a lion rampant azure (Crichton), with the horse and stag supporters.

Just imagine what they all would have looked like together with all of the tinctures of the arms painted in!

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Now _This_ Is an Heraldic Ceiling!

April 9, 2018, 12:00 am
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In another of the rooms at Mount Stuart on the Isle of Bute, there was this very nice (and heraldic!) ceiling, the central portion of which was this:


I am assuming that this is actually someone's birth star chart, showing the locations of many of the stars, the sun, the moon (and its phase), and the planets on his natal day.

And as you can see in this close-up of the central arms, the whole thing is done in exquisite detail.


These are, of course, the arms of Stuart (Or a fess checky azure and argent within a double tressure flory counter-flory gules) surmounted by the coronet of a marquess, the whole surrounded by an extremely well-done oak wreath.

Just the sort of thing you need to say to everyone who sees it, "Yes, this is me on my natal day." and also to add, whether you say it in Mel Brooks's voice from his movie History of the World, Part I or not, "It's good to be the Marquess."

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An Update on an Unidentified Coat of Arms in St. Cuthbert's Church, Dalmeny

April 9, 2018, 7:06 am
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In my post of October 5, 2017 (https://blog.appletonstudios.com/2017/10/stained-glass-heraldry.html), there was a coat of arms in one of the three windows that was not identified, but was possibly related to the anonymous donor of the windows, who had them made for the church in memory of his mother.


Reader Ralf Hartemink (who runs the website Heraldry of the World at http://www.ngw.nl/; if you have any interest in civic heraldry and have never seen his site before, I cannot recommend it to you highly enough. I use it all the time when researching civic coats of arms) has come forward with a possible identification for the arms: the Polish family Prawdzic of the herb Szlachecki, here (image from pl.wikipedia.org):

Prawdzic herb szlachecki

Historically, the arms had the golden lion on an argent (silver) background, as exemplified in this redrawing from the Gelre armorial:


I'd like to thank Ralf for letting me know about this Polish coat of arms, and think that we may have made the anonymous donor of this window a little less anonymous.

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Now _This_ Is an Heraldic Ceiling, Part 2

April 12, 2018, 12:00 am
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The ceiling in the room which had as its central feature the astrological chart and Stuart coat of arms shown in my last post continued the heraldic family tree theme over the rest of the room. In a series of scalloped insets into the ceiling we find a number of marital alliances heraldically denoted, sometimes by marshalling the arms, sometimes by dimidiation, over a number of generations.











You will, no doubt, recognize some of the wives's coats of arms from earlier posts here (e.g., Windsor, Crichton). Others are from families whose heraldry is among the most recognizable and well-known in the heraldic world (e.g., four different coats bearing the Campbell gyronny field; or the Howard arms with the famous augmentation granted following the Battle of Flodden).

Note also the carved "ropes" running from the top and bottom of each shield to connect the generations, and the initials of the husband and wife in the four corners of each panel.

Just another way of impressing visitors of the importance of the family. And a great way of showing off a lot of heraldry!

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A Child's Room Done Heraldically

April 16, 2018, 12:00 am
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Another room at Mount Stuart was decorated for a child, but it, too, had plenty of heraldry.


On one wall was this massive edifice, the ultimate "toy castle" to play with.

At the peak of the each of the towers are shields bearing the coats of arms of, left and right, respectively, Stuart and Crichton.


In the center, on a stall plate, are the arms of Crichton-Stuart, with the coronet of a marquess, and helm, mantling, Stuart crest and motto.

The stall plate may be that of John Crichton-Stuart, 4th Marquess of Bute, b. 1881, who succeeded his father, John, in 1900. My 1938 copy of Burke's Peerage doesn't give me a date when he was created a Knight of the Thistle, but 1922 (the date on the stall plate) is cited in Stall Plates of the Most Ancient and Most Noble Order of the Thistle as the year of his induction, and shows his stall plate in Stall 16 in the Thistle Chapel in Edinburgh. That book also notes that: "There is a contemporary copy of this stall plate now displayed in the Horoscope Bedroom in Mount Stuart, Isle of Bute."

The bedroom also has an astrological theme, with paintings around the upper walls containing naturalistic depictions of the 12 astrological signs. (You can see Cancer and Leo in the next two photographs.)



Above the bed in the room is a beautifully carved lion sejant wearing a nightcap on his head!

The room is also decorated with some other fanciful carvings (not heraldic, alas! But quaintly amusing nonetheless) of a bear and a fox or wolf playing musical instruments.



Just the thing to help a young lad get to sleep at night.

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Two Pieces of Understated Heraldry at Mount Stuart

April 19, 2018, 12:00 am
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Just to prove to you that not every display of heraldry at Mount Stuart has to be over the top and "in your face," on the exterior of the house on one of the upper floors, we ran across a couple of lightly heraldic, utilitarian articles.

Both were based on the checky fess of the Stuart coat of arms.

The first was a support bracket for a rain downspout, about as utilitarian a thing as I can think of. And yet, what a nice way to incorporate a major element from the family's coat of arms.


The other workaday item bearing the checky fess was a couple of sill plates outside of a window.



Ordinary, everyday items all, but demonstrating other ways that heraldry can be used to "spruce up" even the most mundane of objects.

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Heraldry In The Courtroom

April 23, 2018, 12:00 am
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And no, I don't mean anything like, for example, the Royal Arms which appear in the courtrooms of Great Britain, or Canada.

No, this was a court case in Poland, where the frontman for the rock band Behemoth, Adam "Nergal" Darski, and Maciej G., the band's webmaster, along with Rafal Wechterowicz, the graphic artist, had been charged by the District Prosecutor's Office in Gdansk for "insulting" the national coat of arms of Poland on the band's "Republic of the Unfaithful" tour artwork and merchandise.

Here is an image of Poland's national coat of arms:


And here's an image of the "Republic of the Unfaithful" artwork on a tee shirt:


As you can see, it's pretty clearly evocative of the national arms, enough so that an heraldic expert consulted by the prosecutor's office said that the tour's artwork featured "a distorted image of Poland's national emblem," and that it "included elements and symbols considered Satanist and anti-Christian, with the aim of conveying content far removed from the historical and state ideology."

Polish law protects Polish symbols against public profanation and insult, and any public use may be considered a criminal offense, the conviction of which could result in up to a year in jail. Someone clearly thought that this artwork was both profane and insulting.

But an April 16, 2018 story notes that the charges against all three defendants have now been dismissed before the case went to trial, and Nergal has said on Instagram that the design "will soon be back in stock" in the band's webstore.

You can find the original story about the filing of these charges on-line at http://www.blabbermouth.net/news/behemoth-frontman-formally-charged-with-disrespecting-polands-national-coat-of-arms/, and the more recent news story about the charges being dismissed at http://www.blabbermouth.net/news/charges-dismissed-in-case-involving-behemoth-frontman-and-polands-national-coat-of-arms/

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April 26, 2018, 12:00 am
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A verdict has finally been reached in a court case in Belgium where master woodcarver Patrick Damiaens had sued store chain Zara Home for breach of copyright, when the chain began selling candles with a design which he said had been stolen from him.

Zara Home claimed that the similarity was a coincidence (though they did pull the candles from sale).

Take a look and see if you think that the similarity was "a coincidence" or not. The Zara Home candle is on the left; Mr. Damiaens' carving is on the right.


Yeah, the court didn't buy that argument, either, and ordered Zara Home to pay damages and legal costs, and to publish the decision in Heraldisch Tijdshrift, a Dutch magazine focused on heraldic art.

More details about the court case, as well as a link to an earlier story about this design theft, can be found on the website of FlandersToday at http://www.flanderstoday.eu/living/limburg-artisan-wins-zara-plagiarism-court-case

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An Armorial Achievement to Sleep By

April 30, 2018, 12:00 am
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Or, at least, under.

Another one of the bedrooms at Mount Stuart had a large bed surmounted by this amazing display of marital heraldry.


The most notable part of this display is, of course, the marital achievement of arms hanging at the head of the bed.


They are the marshalled arms of John Patrick Crichton-Stuart, 3rd Marquess of Bute (bearing Quarterly: 1 and 4, Or a fess checky azure and argent within a double tressure flory counter-flory gules (Stuart); 2 and 3, Argent a lion rampant azure (Crichton), impaled by the arms of his wife, Gwendolen Mary Anne FitzAlan-Howard, eldest daughter of Edward George Fitzalan-Howard, 1st Lord Howard of Glossop (the second son of the 13th Duke of Norfolk), Quarterly: 1 and 4, Gules a bend between six crosses crosslet fitchy argent, as an augmentation on the bend an escutcheon or charged with a demi-lion rampant pierced through the mouth by an arrow all within a double tressure flory counter-flory gules (Howard); 2 and 3, Gules a lion rampant or (Fitzalan).

The external ornaments of the shield (crests, supporters, coronet, collar of the Order of the Thistle) are all those from the husband's family. Three of the crests we have noted a number of times elsewhere in Mount Stuart as those of Stuart (the red demi-lion), Crichton (the wyvern breathing flames), and Herbert (the green wyvern holding a red hand in its mouth).

An additional heraldic decoration around the canopy over the bed was this:



The arms are, from left to right, those of: Crichton; Stuart; the marshaled arms of Stuart and Howard; Howard; and FitzAlan.

The narrow band above the shields is a repeating heraldic motif, Or a bar gemel flory counter-flory gules (modified from the double tressure of the shield), and A fess checky azure and argent (the checky fess of Stuart).

That's a lot of heraldic display for a bed! I'm not sure how comfortable I'd be sleeping in a bed like that. Although, I supposed that it's something that I could get used to. I'll have to talk to my wife to see how willing she would be to embroider an achievement of my arms to go up over the head of our bed. I'm sure she'd be fine with it, right?

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