Home › Augmentations › Augmentations: England

Augmentations: England

An augmentation is some little ornament, a rose, perhaps, or a dagger, a star, a lily, or, at the very most, a lion from the shield of England, or the Tressure from the Scottish shield. These were royal arms, and the permission to display them on their own shield, with some little change from their original form, was an honor of the highest degree. Sometimes these augmentations were given to foreigners by sovereigns of various countries, in recognition of some act of marked merit. Even Cosmo de Medici, the most illustrious of the great Florentine family of that name, was proud to add a sixth bezant, or shall we call it polka dot, to the five already on his shield, when this bezant was decorated with the Q De Medici. royal arms of France. The right to bear this was given to Cosmo by the French king, as a tribute to the wisdom and genius displayed by Cosmo in the conduct of Florentine affairs. Another case was that of the warlike Arundel of Wardour.

Rudolph of Germany bestowed upon him, as a mark of high favor, the right to display the Royal Eagle of Germany. He also made him a count of the Roman Empire, as a recognition of his courageous conduct against the Turks. When he returned to England, he was desirous of taking precedence according to his German title; but the peers of England refused to acknowledge his right to do so. He insisted; and so exasperated did the nobles become that at last, in high dudgeon, they had recourse to the queen. Elizabeth, who, as the old Dutch ambassadors cautiously expressed it, "had a tongue well hung in her head," made answer that "Faithful subjects should keep their eyes at home, and not gaze upon foreign crowns; that she, for her part, did not care that they should wear a stranger's mark, or dance after the whistle of every foreigner!" I am afraid, therefore, that poor Arundel of Wardour profited little by the well meant gift of the grateful German sovereign. DEO DATA Arundel of Wardour.