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Escutcheon   Listen
noun
Escutcheon  n.  
1.
(Her.) The surface, usually a shield, upon which bearings are marshaled and displayed. The surface of the escutcheon is called the field, the upper part is called the chief, and the lower part the base (see Chiff, and Field.). That side of the escutcheon which is on the right hand of the knight who bears the shield on his arm is called dexter, and the other side sinister. Note: The two sides of an escutcheon are respectively designated as dexter and sinister, as in the cut, and the different parts or points by the following names: A, Dexter chief point; B, Middle chief point; C, Sinister chief point; D, Honor or color point; E, Fesse or heart point; F, Nombrill or navel point; G, Dexter base point; H, Middle base point; I, base point.
2.
A marking upon the back of a cow's udder and the space above it (the perineum), formed by the hair growing upward or outward instead of downward. It is esteemed an index of milking qualities.
3.
(Naut.) That part of a vessel's stern on which her name is written.
4.
(Carp.) A thin metal plate or shield to protect wood, or for ornament, as the shield around a keyhole.
5.
(Zoöl.) The depression behind the beak of certain bivalves; the ligamental area.
Escutcheon of pretense, an escutcheon used in English heraldry to display the arms of the bearer's wife; not commonly used unless she an heiress. Cf. Impalement.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Escutcheon" Quotes from Famous Books



... company-promoters, foreign adventurers, German barons, banks and financial companies. And, above all, no murders! A burglar we can put up with; but a murderer, no! If he is not directly guilty, he is at least responsible for this death. There is blood upon his hands; the arms on his escutcheon ...
— The Confessions of Arsene Lupin • Maurice Leblanc

... which she evidently did. "It will be better so, my father," she said. "The Stanhopes have ever been true and loyal, I have heard you say, and this marriage may help to wipe the traitor stain from our escutcheon." ...
— Hayslope Grange - A Tale of the Civil War • Emma Leslie

... joy of the Solid South! At last, its numberless crimes against personal Freedom, and political Liberty, would reap a generous harvest. At last, participation in Rebellion would no more be regarded as a blot upon the political escutcheon. At last, commensurate rewards for all the long years of disconsolate waiting, and of hard work in night ridings, and house-burnings, and "nigger"-whippings, and "nigger"-shootings, and "nigger"-hangings, and ballot-box ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan

... the same way as before. They entered a spacious hall paved with white and black flagstones, furnished with old sideboards and choir-stalls and adorned with a carved escutcheon which displayed the remains of armorial bearings, representing an eagle standing on a block of stone, all half-hidden behind a veil of cobwebs which hung down over a ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc

... get a glimpse of that he would have no further need to pry into my parentage," he mused. And dragging the escutcheon from amongst that heap of armour, he softly opened his window and flung it far out, so that it dropped with a splash into the moat. That done, he went to bed, and he, too, fell asleep with a smile upon his lips, and in his mind a floating vision of Valentina. She needed a strong and ready hand ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini

... been left unaltered for a century at least, and everything, from the blackened mansard roofs with their rococo weather-cocks, to the bay windows with their tiny squares of glass and the fantastic escutcheon over the door, was in keeping. Over the thick tiles of the somewhat sunken roof, the rough-barked old chestnuts lazily stretched their branches. Creepers and climbing roses wantoned over the front, framing the windows, peeping into the garrets, and clinging to the waterspouts, ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz

... shall not pardon the poltroon who, believing that his mother has disgraced his escutcheon, weeps like a woman over wrongs which he should avenge like a man. But I forgot. The little abbe of Savoy is not accustomed to wear a sword; HIS weapon is the missal. Go, then, to your prayers, and when you pray for your father's soul, ask forgiveness of ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach

... sword and pen; but I,—I have to contend with unmerited shame and mockery, without a hope of ultimate triumph or glory; my weary soul sinks under its burden, and the world has nothing in store for me but scorn and contempt! And, yet, have I ever stained your noble escutcheon? All that I have done is generous and honest in the sight of God;—nay, the very fountain-head of my wo is love and compassion! Yes, yes!—fix your glittering eyes on me; contemplate me in the abyss of poverty where I am fallen! From the bottom of that pit I lift ...
— The Poor Gentleman • Hendrik Conscience

... history, I do so only by way of admonition and not to question the well-attested gallantly of the true Kentuckian, and to the gentleman that it would be well that he should not flaunt his heraldry so proudly while he bears this bar-sinister on the military escutcheon of his State—a State which answered the call of the Republic in 1861, when treason thundered at the very gates of the Capital, by coldly declaring her neutrality in the impending struggle. The Negro, true to that patriotism and love of country that have ever marked ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various

... stain with which thou hast this day sullied the fair escutcheon of chivalry, in riding down a helpless Christian knight, and ravishing a defenceless maiden from the hands that alone have a right to protect her! I will give thee thy life on one condition, craven! Surrender up to me the maiden, and thou art free to depart! But enter not a foot again into ...
— The Duke's Prize - A Story of Art and Heart in Florence • Maturin Murray

... relatives, of the young man who drowned himself at Pontassieve for her love, and of that other young man who, on the contrary, did not, but made himself a priest and became her spiritual director. Here are the palace in which she was born, the escutcheon of the De' Ricci which she despised, her governess's house, the convent where she made her vows, and the cell where, if she did not die, she might very easily have died. Here you have the great doctors and captains ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett

... Landsfeld of this Our kingdom. Whilst we impart to her the dignity of a Countess, with all the rights, honours and prerogatives connected therewith, it is Our desire that she have and enjoy the following escutcheon on a German four-quartered shield: In the first field, red, an upright white sword with golden handle; in the second, blue, a golden-crowned lion rampant; the third, blue, a silver dolphin; and in the fourth, ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham

... as all the divine intimations on the subject, teach us that people ought to be esteemed according to their individual and moral attainments. The man who has the most nobility of soul should be first, and he who has the least of such qualities should stand last. No crest, or shield, or escutcheon, can indicate one's moral peerage. Titles of duke, lord, esquire, earl, viscount, or patrician, ought not to raise one into the first rank. Some of the meanest men I have ever known had at the end of their name D.D., LL.D., ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage

... have read, week after week, of tens of thousands of braver and more innocent men lying in their blood, of all the desolation and sorrow that have been brought on whole kingdoms of Europe, one will be almost tempted to despair of the race. War is the last and worst stain of barbarism on the escutcheon of civilisation. ...
— The War and the Churches • Joseph McCabe

... cast indented shadows on the weed-grown wall. The process has gone too far, and yet I doubt not but that this building is seen to greater advantage now than when first built, always with exception of one circumstance, that the French shattered the lower wheel window, and set up in front of it an escutcheon with "Libertas" upon it, which abomination of desolation, the Lucchese have not yet had human-heartedness enough ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin

... influence on the war, for the place was then of no importance in itself, and was a mere nominal capital. It, however, greatly influenced our reputation abroad, and required many brilliant successes to wash the blot from our national escutcheon. ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck

... men live. Fine or imprisonment will accomplish all that you desire, save the satisfaction of revenge. Capital punishment in this age of the world is an ugly smear upon the escutcheon of constitutional liberty. Let these men live, and your children's children will write you down in their books as worthy of remembrance. They are guilty, but blood will not atone for wrong-doing. Let them live, I say, in the name of justice and ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.

... inhabitants built fine houses with crow-stepped gables and sculptured faades and collected in them exotic treasures, furniture, plate and china. Cannon stood on the ramparts and the citizens were filled with a sense of their importance and power as people of some authority in the world. They bore an escutcheon and were proud of it, they had their portraits painted in gorgeous attire, they gave the things their terse and pretty names, and they spoke picturesquely and gallantly as befits people ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden

... served for both. All around, there were monuments carved with armorial bearings; and on this simple slab of slate—as the curious investigator may still discern, and perplex himself with the purport—there appeared the semblance of an engraved escutcheon. It bore a device, a herald's wording of which might serve for a motto and brief description of our now concluded legend; so sombre is it, and relieved only by one ever-glowing point of light gloomier ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... be strong enough to reprehend your conduct, Victor. You have acted disgracefully; you are listening, sir,—disgracefully, I say, to your cousin Inez. And you are the first of your line who has blurred the family escutcheon. Dukes' daughters have entered Catheron Royals as brides. It was left for you to ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming

... and were addressed by him at the jail, and he was conveyed home in a barouche. During his persecution in prison, liberal sums of money have been sent to him. How much has Christianity gained by this foul blot on the escutcheon of Massachusetts?" ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)

... or the other is exhausted. Rather than suffer all that we have poured out of our blood, all that we have lavished of our substance, to have been expended in vain, and to bequeath an unsettled question, an unfinished conflict, an unavenged insult, an unrighted wrong, a stained escutcheon, a tarnished shield, a dishonored flag, an unheroic memory to the descendants of those who have always claimed that their fathers were heroes; rather than do all this, it were hardly an American exaggeration to say, better that the last man and the last dollar should be followed by the ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... trophy, on the design of which Captain Larne of the B Battery has spent some pious hours. Here, above stacks of muskets piled over drums and trumpets, is draped the red and black "rebel" pennant so that its folds fall over the escutcheon of the United States; and against this hangs a sword, heavily craped, with the ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... vassus, from the Keltic word gws, a man. (The form vassaletus is also found, which gives us our varlet and valet.) Scutcheon comes from the Lat. scutum, a shield. Then scutcheon or escutcheon came to mean coat-of-arms— or the marks and signs on his shield by which the name and family of a man were known, when he himself was covered from head ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn

... figured in any lobby, or formed a member of any ring. Whether he was a Norman or not, he was too much a gentleman, in the best sense of the term, to crawl to opulence by low and petty ways. He left no stain on the escutcheon of a ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith

... oppose this simple regulation. In such cases, Antigonus, by way of teaching them to practice better manners next time, cut off and threw into the river the rights hands of the merchants. Thus handwerpen (or hand-throwing), changed to Antwerp, came to be the name of the place. The escutcheon or arms of the city has two hands upon it; what better proof than this could one have of the truth of the story, especially when one wishes ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge

... bright red velvet with gilded bars; in the middle of it were embroidered the royal arms. At the door of the said church stood a large gelding, well housed with a cloth of embroidered red velvet. On either side was an escutcheon with the royal arms, and upon the saddle rested a cushion; the said governor placed the said coffer thereon, and immediately covered it with a cloth of brocade, and the said horse was covered. The reins were held by Captain Gomez de Machuca, who was appointed chief alguacil ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume X, 1597-1599 • E. H. Blair

... 1837,' instead of 'Our Lord.'" And the Royal Arms had to be altered from those borne by Her Majesty's five predecessors. Being a female, they had to be borne on a lozenge, instead of a shield; the crest of a lion surmounting a crown was discontinued, as was also the escutcheon of pretence bearing the arms of Hanover, surmounted by ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton

... have been written on the origin of Heraldry and even on the antiquity of separate charges contained in an escutcheon: it would be filling the pages of an elementary work on Heraldry to little purpose to enter upon an inquiry as to the exact period of the introduction of an art that has existed in some degree in all countries whose ...
— The Manual of Heraldry; Fifth Edition • Anonymous

... to the sporting branch of the law, the pitfalls, and the ambuscades; and of all the traps to be laid therein, pedigrees are the rarest. There is scarce a man worth a cross of butter, but what you may find a hole in his shield within four generations. And so I struck our own escutcheon, and it sounded hollow. There is a point—but heed not that; enough that being curious now, I followed up the quarry, and I am come to this at last—we, even we, the lords of Loch Awe, have an outlaw ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore

... was brought up to believe, as an inheritance of the American Revolution, that one American could whip two Englishmen and five or six of any other nationality, which made the feathers of the eagle perched on the national escutcheon look glossy. It was a satisfying sort of faith. Americans had never tried five or six of any first-class fighting race; but that was not a thought which occurred to me. As we had won victories over the English and the English had ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer

... in order to live. Napoleon was condemned, by the form of his government, not merely to succeed, but to dazzle, to astonish, to subjugate. His Empire required extraordinary magnificence, prodigious effects, Babylonian festivities, gigantic adventures, colossal victories. His Imperial escutcheon, to escape contempt, needed rich coats of gilding, and demanded glory to make up for the lack of antiquity. In order to make himself acceptable to the European, monarchs, his new brothers, and to remove the memory of the venerable titles ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand

... Blot from the Escutcheon and laid out the Labels for all Generations yet unborn, the incipient Benedick thought there would be nothing more to it except Holding Hands and ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade

... the greatness of both man and woman concerned, and adorn the pages of dull history with the brilliancy of deathless romance. Was he, Guy Beausire de Fontenelle no better, no nobler, no higher, in his desires and ambitions than Miraudin? What was he doing with the three lilies emblazoned on his escutcheon? He thought with a certain fretful impatience of Sylvie, of her captivating grace, her tender eyes, her sweet laughter, and sweeter smile. She had seemed to him a mere slight creation of the air and the moonbeams,—something ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli

... a city one of the oldest and richest in the land. However unpleasant it may be to look at the black side of such a city's history, yet the study must be profitable if by it we Americans, proud of our tolerance and our humanity, jealous of aught past or present that may blot our escutcheon, wondering at and scornfully pitying nations that could have had Lord George Gordon riots and blood-thirsty land-leagues, a reign of terror and a commune,—if we may learn not to be quite so arrogant in our righteousness, quite so boastful in our Pharisaism; ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 5, May, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various

... I was soliciting for twelve years, Mademoiselle de Fontanges had only to desire for a week. She was created duchess at her debut; and the lozenge of her escutcheon was of a sudden adorned with a ducal coronet, and a ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan

... release a victim, so we may hope that godlike patriotism may not only forgive the penitent, but absolve him from the consequences of his own rash folly. To have been instrumental in dimming for one moment the glorious escutcheon of Illinois, requires pardon. To such words as have been spoken by some of her sons we may apply ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... and estates for himself, nor in racial antagonism, for had he not been allied with England in this war against the Government? He hated Philip the man, but he hated still more Philip the usurper who had brought shame to the escutcheon of Bercy. There was also at work another and deeper design to be shown in good time. Philip had retired from the English navy, and gone back to his duchy of Bercy. Here he threw himself into the struggle with the Austrians against the French. Received with enthusiasm by the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... and Elizabeth is said to have encouraged Sunday sports, she had been (we read) so much hunted on account of religion! These sports are too brutal to think of; but there are amusing accounts of lion-baiting both by bears and dogs, in which the beast who figures so nobly on the escutcheon nearly always proved himself an arrant coward, and escaped away as soon as he could into his den, with his tail between his legs. The spectators were once much disgusted when a lion and lioness, with the dog that pursued them, all ran into the den, and, like good friends, stood very ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... inclined to sympathize with the South. There have been unmistakable symptoms of a reaction in England, since 1848 especially, against liberalism in politics and in favor of things as they are. We are not to wonder that Englishmen did not stop to examine too closely the escutcheon and pedigree of this self-patented nobility. With one or two not very striking exceptions, like Lord Fairfax and Washington, (who was of kin to one of the few British peers that have enjoyed the distinction ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various

... his shield three butterflies, or, rampant on a field, azure; in the lower corner a net, argent. Motto, 'In Hoc Signo Vinces.' There'll be no sign of the cyanide jar. I'll have nothing sinister shadowing; the Butterfly Man's escutcheon!" ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler

... five; in these reposed tall skeletons, blanched by time, each having a helmet on his head, and a Roman sword by his side. The stones of three only of these five tombs bore any inscription, name, mark, or sign. On one was a double cross, very coarsely engraved; on the second, a very large escutcheon, which the antiquaries, in spite of their magnifying glasses, their science, and their patience, could never decipher; and on the other, the most curious of the three, a Latin inscription, in a legible, but ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle

... he could not in that darkness fit it into the padlock; and he asked me if I had any matches. I had a little silver box of wax vestas in my pocket, and struck one to help him in his search for the keyhole which he found to have been covered by the escutcheon. Before I threw the match away I held it up and glanced back across the garden. The shadows leaped and stiffened to attention, and I flung the match away, but it did not go out. It lay there on the path throwing out its tiny challenge to the darkness. It was still burning when I looked ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford

... but anyway I'll be mighty thankful not to disappoint you, and to go away feeling my bits of property aren't lying around at the mercy of a country, and a race of folk that'll always remain a blot on any Creator's escutcheon!' Having said all this we'd likely go on talking for awhile about the folks and things we know, such as the men of our acquaintance who reckon they're white, and the rotten acts they do because rye whisky and ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum

... to be a native of Calais, printed a few books during the third decade of the sixteenth century, and resided near the eastern end of Fleet Street at the sign of the Golden Cross. His Mark consisted of a shield which is contained within a very rudely cut parallelogram; the escutcheon is supported by a wreath beneath an ornamental arch, and between two curved pillars designed in the early Italian style, with a background formed of coarse horizontal lines. Three of his books are in the British Museum. The Museum possesses ...
— Printers' Marks - A Chapter in the History of Typography • William Roberts

... post, in wood painted with a black and white spiral and surmounted by an escutcheon with the words, ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc

... never have grown up, have been invented, or have gained acceptance, unless the practice of kidnapping, on which they are based, had been known to be one in which the Phoenicians of the time indulged, at any rate occasionally. We must allow this blot on the Sidonian escutcheon, and can only plead, in extenuation of their offence, first, the imperfect morality of the age, and secondly, the fact that such deviations from the line of fair-dealing and honesty on the part of the Sidonian traders must have been of rare ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson

... and left the reconstruction of her reputation to her kith and kin who roused instantly to action and lied, like ladies and gentlemen, when truth was impossible. Eventually they so toned down and polished the deed of the little social highwaywoman as to pass her on in the family history with an escutcheon ...
— The Man Thou Gavest • Harriet T. Comstock

... too exalted to enjoy it. In her unostentatious way Miss FRANCIS knows how to provide ample entertainment, and she has nothing to learn in point of form. When we are introduced to the Becks they are proud and poor, having impoverished themselves in the process of removing a blot from their escutcheon. Sir John is a working farmer, and Lady Beck does menial duties with an energy that most servants of to-day would not care to imitate. The apple of their old eyes is their grandson, Roger, and the story turns on his struggle between pride and love. No true Franciscan need be told that he ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 7th, 1920 • Various

... was nothing for it but to wait, and a few days passed pleasantly enough in the curious old town. One incident that occurred is, perhaps, worthy of notice. Almost opposite our inn was a forbidding-looking house, without arms or escutcheon of any kind upon the gate. To all appearance it was uninhabited, but from the balcony of the inn mademoiselle and I observed a lady dressed in black who daily paced for an hour or so on the terrace overlooking the garden of the house. We could not distinguish her features, ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats

... the realization of Duty, which the poet should picture in its most sublime form. He may and should sing of the passions, but Duty is the eternal pole star of the soul! The susceptible heart of the artist must respect the majesty of virtue. Unless his escutcheon glitter with the brilliancy of purity, he is not worthy to be one of the Illustrious Band whose high mission upon earth (with lowly reverence be it said) is the manifestation of the Divine Attributes. O Holy ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various

... that moment, against the wall at the head of the bed, Pierre perceived the escutcheon of the Boccaneras, embroidered in gold and coloured silks on a groundwork of violet velvet. There was the winged dragon belching flames, there was the fierce and glowing motto "Bocca nera, Alma rossa" (black mouth, red soul), the mouth darkened by a roar, the soul flaming like a brazier ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... Huysman," replied Nitocris very demurely, "before you found a better type of the real English gentleman than Lord Leighton. His family is one of the oldest in the country, and, unlike too many of our noble families, the Kynestons have no bar-sinister on their escutcheon." ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith

... the privileged classes, he, with a loftier pride than theirs, revealed the power of a yet higher order of nobility, not of a registered ancestry of fifteen generations, but one absolutely spotless in its escutcheon, preordained in the council chamber of eternity." I think you'll find I have got that sentence right, word for word, and there 's a great deal more in it than many good folks who call themselves after the reformer seem to be aware of. The Pope put his foot on the neck of kings, but Calvin and ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... [St. Paul's] in the midst of the feverish city. I wandered quite round it, and saw, in a remote corner, a monument to the officers of the Coldstream Guards, slain in the Crimea. It was a mural tablet, with the names of the officers on an escutcheon; and two privates of the Guards, in marble bas-relief, were mourning over them. Over the tablet hung two silken banners, new and glossy, with the battles in which the regiment has been engaged inscribed on them,—not ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... charges against the system were that these unfortunate beings, without regard to sex, were huddled together in prison quarters like so many cattle. It has been a foul blot upon the escutcheon of the South, second only to the murderous stains made thereon by the lynchers. It is a disgrace even to the civilization of medieval times. For cruelty and outrage it is unparalleled in the annals of civilized society. Siberia itself is preferable ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various

... what little they did give him he hesitated to take. So in the end he grew worse, and at length died, a lesson to all riotous livers. I bedewed his grave with my tears, worked a bar sinister on his family escutcheon, and, for the general expenses of his funeral, sent in my very moderate bill to the transcendentalists. The scoundrels refused to pay it, so I had Mr. Dammit dug up at once, and sold him ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... catafalque, were seen four kings-at-arms, of beautiful appearance with their headpieces pulled down and gold maces on their shoulders, with which one hand was occupied, while with the other they held up the escutcheon of the royal arms embroidered with gold. The royal arms were also stamped upon their breasts on their black corselets, girdled with a beautiful variety of bands and edgings of gold. In the niches of the first columns, which formed the front and faced the urn, upon their fretted pedestals ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXXVI, 1649-1666 • Various

... directed, in his will, that six poor men should have twenty shillings each for carrying his body to the grave,—"For," said he, "I particularly desire that there may be no hearse, no coach, no escutcheon, no pomp, except the tears of those that loved me, and are following me to Abraham's bosom. I solemnly adjure my executors, in the name of ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles

... and State influence shall so pronounce, this hideous blot upon the national escutcheon will disappear. It is manly and necessary to protest when wronged. But a subject class or race does but little for their amelioration when content with its denouncement. Injustice can be more effectually arraigned by others than the victim; his mere proclamation, ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs

... varying methods which the same Power has adopted in different regions. It was, he thought, not easy to decide whether the anti-slavery cause had lost or gained ground in his lifetime; new insidious and widespread forms of the evil had taken a hold. Great Britain's escutcheon was marred by the inclusion of a colour-bar in the most recent Constitution of her oversea dominions; and the Government of India had recently failed to obtain from some British States that measure of rights for emigrating British ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn

... hour of thy glory, When thy name was far renowned, When Sumter's glowing story Thy bright escutcheon crowned; Oh, noble Carolina! how proud a claim was mine, That through homage and through duty, and birthright, ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various

... his family. Some add that they had seen in Brzesc a gold chain belonging to him, his coat of arms emblazoned with the lion of Judah, and a stone tablet on which an account of his meritorious deeds was graven. Chain, escutcheon, and stone have disappeared, and been forgotten, the ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles

... light, a slender, abnormally tall girl came into Stueckrath's field of vision. She led by the arm an aged lady, who hobbled with difficulty along the pebbly path. A closed carriage with escutcheon and ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann

... gradually closed. The market-place soon presented an ominous appearance. Anton was now swept off by the crowd to its opposite side, where the custom-house stood, made conspicuous from afar by the national escutcheon suspended near the windows. That was now the point of attraction, and Anton saw from a distance a man plant a ladder against the wall, and hack away at the escutcheon till, amid profound silence, it fell to the ground. Soon, however a drunken rabble fell upon it ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag

... surrounded them. Their emigration even, their exodus chiefly, was in fact the sublime outpouring of a crucified nation, carrying the cross as their last religious emblem, and planting it in the wilds of far-distant continents as their only escutcheon, and the sure sign which should apprise travellers of the existence of Irishmen in the deserts of North ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud

... with animation. "There is no trace of my coarse features in that aristocratic face; and yet, like the owl that hatched the eagle's egg, I am proud of calling him my son. And now, monseigneur, let me implore of you not to cross the escutcheon of our eaglet with the bar-sinister that disgraces the arms ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach

... by no means an isolated instance. In various places, as emblems of various guilds or confraternities, one meets similarly carved, on lintel or escutcheon, sheaves of lilies, or what is pleasanter still, that favourite device of the Renaissance (become well known as the monogram of the painter Benvenuto Garofalo), a jar with five clove-pinks. And on each occasion of meeting them, that carved lily and those graven ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)

... rebellion to perform this act of justice to the negro race; to assimilate the labor system of the South to that of the North; to remove a great moral and political wrong; and to wipe out the foul stain of slavery, which has hitherto sullied the otherwise bright escutcheon of our Republic. We are no fanatics on the subject of slavery, as is well known to our readers, and we make no extraordinary pretensions to modern philanthropy; but we cannot help fearing that, if the government lets slip the present opportunity of doing justice to the negro ...
— The Abolition Of Slavery The Right Of The Government Under The War Power • Various

... Kings, and Princes—he who had restored them to their thrones after having bravely conquered them, was now treated like a common convict transport! Disgraceful, damnable, imperishable blot in the escutcheon of England's character!!! ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt

... finish. The white of the flag of France, not quite so white as in time of peace since thousands of her sons had taken it in their hands and pressed it to their lips before they went forward to die for it, yet without stain, since in all the record of the war there is no blot on the escutcheon of France. And the blue of the flag of France, true blue, torn and tattered with the marks of the bullets and the shrapnel, yet unfurling proudly in the breeze whilst the very holes were patched by the blue of the sky, since surely Heaven stands ...
— The White Road to Verdun • Kathleen Burke

... barony to a yet younger branch, where, falling a few years later into female hands, it was merged in a brand-new viscounty, and was now waiting till chance again should restore it to an independent existence. From the Mercerons of the Court it was gone for ever, and the blot on their escutcheon which lost it them was a sore point, from which it behooved visitors and friends to refrain their tongues. The Regent had, indeed, with his well-known good nature, offered a baronetcy to hide the stain; but pride forbade, and the Mercerons now held ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope

... the "home of the free," the asylum of the oppressed—while holding in our midst millions of fellow-beings manacled in hopeless bondage! No man was more anxious to correct this disgraceful misnomer, and wipe away its dark stain from our national escutcheon at the earliest practicable moment. But he was a statesman of profound knowledge and far-reaching sagacity. He possessed the rare quality of being able to "bide his time" in all enterprizes. Great as he felt the enormity of American slavery to be, he would ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward

... Hausfrau fills the dowry chest of her daughter in anticipation of the time when she, in turn, shall become a housewife. Small wonder that we love it, and guard jealously against a stain on its unblemished escutcheon. ...
— The Complete Home • Various

... granddaughter and sole heiress of the Duc de Lenoncourt-Givry, will, it is said, inherit altogether more than one hundred thousand livres a year. The only stipulation my father has made is that the de Chaulieu arms should appear in the centre of the de Lenoncourt escutcheon. Thus my brother will be Duc de Lenoncourt. The young de Mortsauf, to whom everything would otherwise go, is in the last stage of consumption; his death is looked for every day. The marriage will take place next ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac

... over the chimney, I find Abington arms cut in stone—namely, a patonee between four martletts; and also another escutcheon—namely, a lion rampant, and several mitres cut in stone about the house. There is also in the said house a chamber called Dudley's chamber, where the Earl of Leicester's wife was murdered, of which this is the ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott

... pillory, after being confined in a loathsome dungeon, fined 1000l. in money to the king, disgracefully removed from that service in which he had attained such high honours and rendered to his country such essential service, his escutcheon kicked out of Westminster Abbey, his order of knighthood taken from him; in short, after having every possible indignity which the most malignant imagination could invent heaped upon him in every way, his single vote, on the very first day of his returning ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald

... too with the healing water, and the two sisters were sent to fetch it; but the reed-bed by the lake gave way under their feet, and they both perished miserably; for neither they nor the kitten were ever seen again. But the descendants of the youngest sister still bear a cat on their escutcheon. ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby

... gentlemen. We know that even now there are many who cry out against this as dangerous, and injurious to the service; as if education spoilt an officer, and the scion of an illustrious house would not be more careful to uphold an escutcheon without blemish for centuries than one who has little more than brute courage; but those who argue thus are the very people who are injurious to the service, for they can have no other reason, except that they wish that the juniors may be ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat

... carriage had passed under the great battlemented gates, with their Etruscan bas-reliefs, and the motto of the house of Valsecca—Humilitas—surmounted by the ducal escutcheon. ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton

... expelled in 1874. The better to show their animus on the occasion, the new Rulers tore down a magnificent piece of sculpture, in marble, which adorned the gate, and on which was engraved the blessed name of the Saviour, replacing it by the escutcheon ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell

... they depend so much on (Fortune, I mean) in this precarious game, Oh let there be no blob on their escutcheon, Or, if a few occur, accept the blame; Do not, of course, abuse thy powers; We'd have the best side win, but let that side ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 22, 1920 • Various

... the grassy swell, Nor stone escutcheon'd fair; I need no monument to tell That thou art lying there: I feel within, a world like this, A fearful blank in all my bliss— An agonized despair, Which paints the earth in cheerful bloom, But tells me, thou art in ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... endless number of them for the apartments of the Pope, which met with the same fate as the other two. And even now there is one to be seen in the room containing Raffaello's Burning of the Borgo, in the Borgia Tower; in which are angels who are holding the escutcheon of Leo X. They also made two windows for the chapel behind the Madonna in S. Maria del Popolo, with the stories of her life, which were highly praiseworthy ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 04 (of 10), Filippino Lippi to Domenico Puligo • Giorgio Vasari

... distant spires trembling on the horizon; the lakes which once marked the Western Venice, a city of perfume and song. Striking a body of water, the sun converted it into a glowing shield, a silver escutcheon of the land of silver, and, in contrast with this polished splendor, the shadows, trailing on the far-away mountains, were soft, deep and velvety. But the freedom of the outlook afforded the wounded man ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham

... henceforth surnamed Du Lis, in grateful acknowledgment of the good blow which you have struck for the lilies of France; and they, and the royal crown, and your own victorious sword, fit and fair company for each other, shall be grouped in you escutcheon and be and remain the symbol of your high ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain

... Boanerges, whose was the black colours, and whose escutcheon was the three burning thunder-bolts, taking no notice of the giant or of his speech, thus addressed himself to the town of Mansoul: 'Be it known unto you, O unhappy and rebellious Mansoul, that the most gracious King, the great King Shaddai, my Master, hath sent me unto you with commission,' ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... same character of romance, the same fantastical display. Nor were the secret passages, peculiar to the one, wanting to the history of the other. Both had their mysteries. One blot there was in the otherwise proud escutcheon of the Rookwoods, that dimmed its splendor, and made pale its pretensions: their sun was eclipsed in blood from its rising to its meridian; and so it seemed would be its setting. This foul reproach attached to all the race; none escaped it. Traditional ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth

... arms, which might help us. Ah! there is one yonder in the centre of the mullion of the window. But I can scarce read it at the distance. I warrant that your eyes are better than mine, Amos, and that you can read what is on yonder escutcheon." ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle

... churches, without regard to the necessary population for their support, perhaps hoping thereby to propitiate heaven for their rapaciousness and outrageous oppression of the native race. The criminal extortion exercised by the priesthood and their followers forms a dark blot upon the escutcheon of both the church and the state. O Christianity, as Madame Roland said of Liberty, "what atrocities have been committed in ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou

... move in the matter; there must be no scandal, no retentissement, nothing which her boy, necessarily brought up in the French tradition of scrupulously preserved appearances, could afterward regard as the faintest blur on his much-quartered escutcheon. But even this partial concession again raised fresh obstacles; for there seemed to be no one to whom she could entrust so delicate an investigation, and to apply directly to the Marquis de Malrive or his relatives appeared, in the light of her past experience, the last ...
— Madame de Treymes • Edith Wharton

... Lynn, and Robert Rainey, John T. Brooks, the ninth in number. Fifty-seven private soldiers, Filled the columns. (See Appendix.) General Lovell H. Rousseau[7] was Yet another gallant warrior, Of whose glittering escutcheon, All the city's pride is boastful; Lawyer, politician, soldier, He in Congress represented Louisville and all the district, And won military prowess, In the ...
— The Song of Lancaster, Kentucky - to the statesmen, soldiers, and citizens of Garrard County. • Eugenia Dunlap Potts

... they like, talk as they like." At Worsted Skeynes (and Worsted Skeynes was every country house) there was but one set of people, one church, one pack of hounds, one everything. The importance of a clear escutcheon was too great. And they who had lived together for thirty-four years looked at each other with a new expression in their eyes; their feelings were for once the same. But since it is always the man who has the nicer ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... martyrs near the present site of the town, whence it derives its name, meaning the "Field of the Dead." This massacre took place in the fourth century, and in memory of it the city bears as its arms "an escutcheon of landscape, with many martyrs in it in several ways massacred." In the seventh century a church was built there, and the hermit St. Chad became its bishop. His cell was near the present site of Stowe, where there was a spring ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook

... that he belongs to no special school of thought; that he advocates no theory; that he is not the adherent of any party or sect. To him—so he asserts—an unprejudiced examination of all knowledge is sufficient. His endeavour was, to prove the devise of his escutcheon: 'Que scais-je?' ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis

... boast an escutcheon which is embellished with a band, a number of wolves, and a legend whose import I ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja

... of the United States of America. Arms: Paleways of thirteen pieces, argent and gules, a chief, azure. The escutcheon on the breast of the American eagle, displayed proper, holding in his dexter talon an olive branch, and in his sinister a bundle of thirteen arrows,[62] all proper, and in his beak a scroll inscribed with this ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat

... was exercised in the cause of the Duke of York: the Republican faction he most cordially detested; and as each animal is conscious of its proper arms, the heralds' revenge was emblazoned on a most diabolical escutcheon. But the triumph of the Whig government checked the preferment of Blue-mantle; and he was even suspended from his office, till his tongue could learn to pronounce the oath of abjuration. His life was prolonged to the age ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon

... ["New Kingdom of Castilla"]. By his royal concession, he made the city of Manila capital of it, and gave to it as a special favor, among other things, a crowned coat-of-arms which was chosen and assigned by his royal person. This is an escutcheon divided across. In the upper part is a castle on a red field, and in the lower a lion of gold, crowned and rampant, holding a naked sword in its right paw. One-half of the body is in the form of a dolphin upon the waters of ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVI, 1609 • H.E. Blair

... gables. This roof, no doubt much neglected during the Revolution, is stained by a sort of mildew produced by lichens and the reddish moss which grows on houses exposed to the sun. The glass door of the portico is surmounted by a little tower which holds the bell, and on which is carved the escutcheon of the Blamont-Chauvry family, to which Madame de Mortsauf belonged, as follows: Gules, a pale vair, flanked quarterly by two hands clasped or, and two lances in chevron sable. The motto, "Voyez tous, nul ne touche!" struck me greatly. The supporters, a griffin ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac

... debate questions of right," so he answered within his own thoughts. "She is the wife of another, and I would die rather than stain her pure escutcheon with a thought of dishonor. I cease to love her when I imagine her capable of being false, in even the smallest act, to her marriage vows. But the right to love, Heaven gave me when my soul was created to make one ...
— The Hand But Not the Heart - or, The Life-Trials of Jessie Loring • T. S. Arthur

... them of freedom altogether. I say that our grief and our disapprobation of this in the case of our brethren in America arises very much from this, that in other respects we admire them so much, we are sorry that so noble a nation should allow a blot like this to remain upon its escutcheon. I am not ignorant—nobody can be ignorant—of the great difficulties which encompass the solution of this question in America. It is vain for us to shut our eyes to it. There can be no doubt whatever that great sacrifices will require to be made in order ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe

... aid in prosecuting her iniquitous claims. My son is now a reformed and comparatively happy man, but should this degrading and bitterly repented episode of his collage life be thrust before the public, and allowed to blacken the fair escutcheon we are so jealously anxious to protect, I dread the consequences. Only horror of a notorious scandal prevented me long ago from applying for a divorce, which could very easily have been obtained, but we shrink from the publicity, and moreover the case does not seem to demand compliance with even ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson

... myself against Harvard University. Opinions must be judged by their own weight, not by the weight of the persons who utter them. The fair fame of Harvard is the possession of every son and daughter of Massachusetts, and the least stain that mars her escutcheon is the sorrow of all. But Harvard is not the Ark of the Covenant, to be touched only by consecrated hands, upon penalty of instant death. She is honorable, but not sacred; wise, but not infallible. To Christo et Ecclesiae, she has a right; to Noli me tangere, she has none. A ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton

... Sheffield, Duke of Buckinghamshire. He built Buckingham House, where is now the palace, and there his wife, who was a left-handed descendant of the Stuart king, used to sit dressed in weeds on the anniversary of Charles the First's execution, and thus call attention to the royal blot upon her escutcheon. In the choir aisle another ugly memorial perpetuates her want of taste and the {98} forgotten fame of her pet doctor, one Chamberlain. Near his is a tablet to her other medical friend, the really notable royal physician, Dr. Mead, one of the first ...
— Westminster Abbey • Mrs. A. Murray Smith

... deux barres et deux etoilles, avec les lettres B. P. qui signifient Buona Parte, le fond des armes rougeatres, les barres et les etoilles bleu, les ombrements et la couronne jaune!" Translated as literally as such doubtful language and construction can be, this signifies: "A count's coronet, the escutcheon with two bends sinister and two stars, bearing the letters B. P., which signify Buonaparte, the field of the arms red, the bends and stars blue, the letters and coronet yellow!" In heraldic parlance this would be: Gules, two bends sinister between two estoiles ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane

... a blot on the escutcheon of Mr. Craggie which he was very anxious not to have uncovered by any chance in these latter days,—his ancient affiliation with the deceased ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... boy in the famous march of Coxey's army on Washington, or, rather, the title had been conferred upon him in later years as a merited reward of service. The General, profiting by the precepts of his erstwhile companions in arms, had never soiled his military escutcheon by labor, nor had he ever risen to the higher planes of criminality. Rather as a mediocre pickpocket and a timorous confidence man had he eked out a meager existence, amply punctuated by seasons of straight ...
— The Oakdale Affair • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... stroll into the building. He looked about him at the maze of dusty green-cushioned pews with little alleys winding hither and thither among them; at the great three-decker with its huge sounding-board; at the royal escutcheon, and the faded tables of the law, and was about to leave as aimlessly as he had entered, when he espied the open vestry door. Popping in his head, his eye fell on a folio bound in sheepskin, that lay open on a chest, a pen and ink ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman

... of a fourteenth-century version of "Li Quatres Filz d'Aymon," with an illuminated letter of miraculous workmanship; or a Renaissance gonfalon of silk once white but now brown with age, yet in the centre blazing with the escutcheon and quarterings of a dead queen. Between the windows stood an ivory statuette of the "Venus of the Heel," done in the days of the magnificent Lorenzo. An original Cazin, and a chalk drawing by Baudry hung against the wall close by together with a bronze tablet ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris

... displaying his humour, are violations of propriety and customs: such is her child, but a few removes from infancy, being habited as chief mourner, to attend his parent to the grave; rings presented, and an escutcheon hung up, in a garret, at the funeral of a needy prostitute. The whole may be intended as a burlesque upon ostentatious and expensive funerals, which were then more customary than they are now. Mr. Pope has well ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler

... Islands, to remove a dangerous antagonist. Count O'Hanlon, a gentleman of ancient lineage, as accomplished as Orrery, or Ossory, was indeed an outlaw to the code then in force; but the stain of his cowardly assassination must for ever blot and rot the princely escutcheon of ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee

... for the origin for the stripes upon our flag, it is possible that the stripes on his own escutcheon suggested them. They were also on the flag of the Philadelphia Light-horse that escorted him on the road to Cambridge from Philadelphia as far as New York in 1775" (see Fig. 8). This latter flag is in Philadelphia, and is the property of the Philadelphia First ...
— The True Story of the American Flag • John H. Fow

... gonfalon, union jack; banderole, " old glory " [U.S.], quarantine flag; vexillum[obs3]; yellow-flag, yellow jack; tricolor, stars and stripes; bunting. heraldry, crest; coat of arms, arms; armorial bearings, hatchment[obs3]; escutcheon, scutcheon; shield, supporters; livery, uniform; cockade, epaulet, chevron; garland, love knot, favor. [Of locality] beacon, cairn, post, staff, flagstaff, hand, pointer, vane, cock, weathercock; guidepost, handpost[obs3], ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... ensign; pennon, pennant, pendant; burgee^, blue Peter, jack, ancient, gonfalon, union jack; banderole, old glory [U.S.], quarantine flag; vexillum^; yellow-flag, yellow jack; tricolor, stars and stripes; bunting. heraldry, crest; coat of arms, arms; armorial bearings, hatchment^; escutcheon, scutcheon; shield, supporters; livery, uniform; cockade, epaulet, chevron; garland, love knot, favor. [Of locality] beacon, cairn, post, staff, flagstaff, hand, pointer, vane, cock, weathercock; guidepost, handpost^, fingerpost^, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... business interests again and again, for purposes of immediate advantage,—to secure a franchise, to escape a tax, or to procure some improper favor or advantage at the hands of those in political authority,—have employed corrupt methods and thus stained the fair escutcheon of American business honor, while breaking down the one most indispensable condition of general business progress,—namely, honest ...
— The business career in its public relations • Albert Shaw

... the gorgeous knot that unites the curls and descends on the left breast, is aptly named the meurtriere. If he would but turn his head, we should see his creves-coeur, the two delicate curled locks at the nape of his neck. The escutcheon below his portrait bears, very suitably, three loaded muskets rampant. Such was Sylvius, conquering ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse

... through the western shires, some years before the rebellion, Monmouth first ventured to exhibit upon his escutcheon the lions of England and the lilies of France, without the baton sinister. A still more ominous sign was that he ventured to touch for the king's evil. The appended letter, extracted from the collection of tracts in the British Museum, ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle

... loathe life. I have liked to hear that, for it flattered me; but it is none the less false. I love life ... You smile, Lisaveta, and I know why. But I conjure you, do not regard what I am just saying as literature. Do not think of Cesar Borgia or of any drunken philosophy that elevates him to its escutcheon. He is nothing to me, this Cesar Borgia. I have the poorest possible opinion of him, and I shall never in my life understand how men can revere the extraordinary and the demoniacal as an ideal. ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various

... body, having been conveyed, in compliance with Sir Robert's last directions, to Dublin, was there laid within the ancient walls of St. Audoen's Church—where I have read the epitaph, telling the age and titles of the departed dust. Neither painted escutcheon, nor marble slab, have served to rescue from oblivion the story of the dead, whose very name will ere long ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume I. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... bearing semi-heraldic devices such as a Crescent, a Column, a Griffin, a Stag, a Wheel and the like. Italian heraldry has always been eccentric, and has shown a tendency to display all sorts of strange things, such as comets, trees, landscapes and buildings in the escutcheon, and it would naturally occur to the stranger that the small marble shields, still visible here and there at the corners of old streets, must be the coats of arms of Roman families that held property in that particular neighbourhood. But this is not the case. They are the distinctive devices of the ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford

... Salazar de Mendoza, Monarquia, tom. i. p. 108.— Livy mentions the great number of these towers in Spain in his day. "Multas et locis altis positas turres Hispania habet." (Lib. 22, cap. 19.)—A castle was emblazoned on the escutcheon of Castile, as far back as the reign of Urraca, in the beginning of the twelfth century, according to Salazar de Mendoza, (Monarquia, tom. i. p. 142,) although Garibay discerns no vestige of these arms on any instrument of a much older date than the beginning of the thirteenth century. ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott

... Friedrich (who is 180 degrees off, and knows nothing of it) stands a circular Trophy, or Imbroglio of drums, pikes, muskets, cannons, field-flags and the like; very slightly tied together,—the knot, if there is one, being hidden by some fantastic bit of scroll or escutcheon, with a Fame and ONE trumpet scratched on it;—and high out of the Imbroglio rise three standards inscribed with Names, which we perceive are intended to be names of Friedrich's Victories; standards ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle

... gradually darkened as its waves beat in monotonous cadence against the walls of the fort. A slight breeze, at intervals, lifted the silken folds of the banner, which drooped from the tall flag-staff, displaying the escutcheon of La Tour, surmounted by the arms of France. Far up, the noble stream, on either side, was skirted by extensive intervals, covered with the rich, bright verdure, peculiar to early summer, and occasionally rising into gentle acclivities, ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney

... it was long ago remarked by Lord Camden, alterations of sirnames were in former ages so very common, as to have obscured the truth of our pedigrees, so that it is no little labor to deduce many of them. But, although no crest marks the career of his ancestors, or shield emblazons their escutcheon with mementoes of achievements in arts or in arms; and although I claim not in his behalf, as of the heroes in olden times, "a pedigree that reached to heaven," yet no doubt exists of the antiquity of his family. The name was duly ...
— Ups and Downs in the Life of a Distressed Gentleman • William L. Stone

... la Madeleine. It was a fine day with brilliant sunshine; and the breeze, which shook the canvas tents, a little swelled at the edges the enormous black cloth which was hung over the church-gate. The escutcheon of M. Dambreuse, which covered a square piece of velvet, was repeated there three times. It was: Sable, with an arm sinister or and a clenched hand with a glove argent; with the coronet of a count, and this device: By ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert

... him; the title of Don was conferred on himself and his brothers; he rode at the King's bridle; he was served and saluted as a grandee of Spain. And, greatest honor of all, a new and magnificent escutcheon was blazoned for him (May 4, 1493), whereon the royal castle and lion of Castille and Leon were combined with the four anchors of his own old coat of arms. Nor were their Catholic Highnesses less busy on their own account than on that of their servant. On May 3d and 4th, ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various

... all, Signor," said Monte-Leone. "Now you can yourself have liveries with the Pignana arms, 'Two winged shears on a field argent,' a regular tailor's escutcheon." ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various

... began to tell them sad stories of the death of kings. But they cut off Sentry-go's head and nailed it over the gate. So he died, and she very imprudently married the master knacker, who had heard she was an heiress in her own right, and wanted to decorate his coat-of-arms with an escutcheon of pretence; and besides, his doctor had recommended a ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... Settrington in the peerage of England; Duke of Lennox, Earl of Darnley and Baron Methuen in the peerage of Scotland; Duc d'Aubigny in France, Governor-General of Canada, lord of Halnaker, Goodwood and West Hampnett. There was, as has been above hinted, a bar sinister in his escutcheon, for he was descended from King Charles the Second and the fair and frail Frenchwoman Louise Renee de Querouaille, who was commonly known among Englishmen of her day as Madam Carwell. This lady, who was ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent

... the Fornarina for a Raffaello; she had fancied her name sweetening the songs of Giraud Riquier, the last of the Troubadours; and she did not believe Beatrice Portinari to be so excellent among women, so different from other girls, that her name should have soared so far aloft with that escutcheon of the golden wing on a field azure. "But they say that there cannot be two epic periods in a nation's literature," thought Marguerite hurriedly; "so that a man who might have been Homer once will be nothing but a gentleman now." And at this point, having decided that Mr. Raleigh ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various

... my present mood?" she asked. "Yea, verily, that I do! but it is so novel I am bewildered. . . My brain is whirling. . . You are like a German escutcheon: hard ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott

... house the appearance of having been cut in two. But there is no reason to suppose it was ever any larger than it is now. Probably, indeed, this facade was erected long after the martyrdom of Jeanne. Over the ogival doorway is an escutcheon showing three shields, and the date, 1480, with an inscription, 'Vive Labeur, Vive le Roy Louys!' This goes to confirm a local tradition that the facade was built at the cost of Louis XI., who understood much better than his father the political value ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert

... might have been supposed that a Circle—proud of his ancestry and regardful for a posterity which might possibly issue hereafter in a Chief Circle—would be more careful than any other to choose a wife who had no blot on her escutcheon. But it is not so. The care in choosing a Regular wife appears to diminish as one rises in the social scale. Nothing would induce an aspiring Isosceles, who had hopes of generating an Equilateral Son, to take a wife who reckoned a single Irregularity ...
— Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (Illustrated) • Edwin A. Abbott



Words linked to "Escutcheon" :   buckler, after part, poop, seafaring, navigation, scutcheon, plate, quarter, finger plate, protective cover, protection, sailing, stern, protective covering, tail



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