Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 10, 2025
The houses were often ancient, and most picturesquely time-stained, the plaster dropping in spots from the old brickwork; others were tinted of pleasant and cheerful lines; some were frescoed with designs in arabesques, or with imaginary windows; some had escutcheons of arms painted on the front.
Such was the laxity of the times on the subject of injustice to the people of this hemisphere, that the predatory expeditions of Drake and others against the wealthy occupants of the more southern countries, seem to have left no spots on their escutcheons; and the honors and favors of Queen Elizabeth had been liberally extended to men who would now be deemed freebooters.
Their conversation was restricted to the bull-ring and the cockpit, to cards and women. Their chief aim seemed to be to stagger us with the number of quarterings they bore upon their escutcheons; and they appraised others by a like estimate.
At Ripley Castle, in Yorkshire, the seat of Sir William Ingilby, there is in the great staircase an elegant Venetian window, in the divisions of which, on stain-glass, are a series of escutcheons, displaying the principal quarterings and intermarriages of the Ingilby family since their settling at Ripley, during a course of 430 years.
As I crossed the bridge over the Avon on my return, I paused to contemplate the distant church in which the poet lies buried, and could not but exult in the malediction which has kept his ashes undisturbed in its quiet and hallowed vaults. What honor could his name have derived from being mingled in dusty companionship with the epitaphs and escutcheons and venal eulogiums of a titled multitude?
All around you underfoot are tumbled-in coffins, with here and there a rusty sword atop, and faded escutcheons, and crumbling armorial devices. You are moving in the very best society. This, however, is not the earliest cemetery in Portsmouth.
Have not I resolved within myself that the whole earth contains no fitter ornament for the great hall of my ancestral castle? There shall it flame for ages, making a noonday of midnight, glittering on the suits of armor, the banners, and escutcheons, that hang around the wall, and keeping bright the memory of heroes.
There were, indeed, ranged along the walls about fifteen of those wooden cases painted and carved, of those 'cassoni' in which it was the fashion, in grand Italian families, to keep the trousseaux destined for the brides. Those of the Castagnas proved, by their escutcheons, what alliances the last of the grand-nephews of Urban VII, the actual Prince d'Ardea, entered into.
The hall was lighted by four great windows, I think, on each of the two sides, descending half-way from the ceiling to the floor, leaving all beneath enclosed by oaken panelling, which, on three sides, was carved with escutcheons of such members of the society as have held the office of reader.
The older soldiers among the English shook their heads as they looked upon the escutcheons of these famous warriors, for they were all men who had spent their lives upon the saddle, and bravery and strength can avail little against experience and wisdom of war. "By my faith!
Word Of The Day
Others Looking