AN ANCIENT ART.

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 266, 10 November 1939, Page 3

AN ANCIENT ART.

SCIENCE OF HERALDRY. 1 S "THE SHORTHAND OF HISTORY." 1 ! "The shorthand of history." This was • the description given the ancient art of • heraldry by Canon R. G. Coats when he r addressed the Auckland Society of Arts yesterday. For centuries the study of heraldry and armory lay in abeyance, he 1 said, but in the nineteenth century students applied themselves to an investil gation of the science and as a result many of the old fables and falsehoods were swept away. Heraldry and armory were not dead sciences, he added. There were many F alert students in England and clear state- a ments of the laws governing the science * were available. The science of heraldry *- was still strong, for the sovereign still c had the right to create new orders of * knighthood and to attach heraldic insignia. 6 So long as the Crown had the right to create a new coronet, or to order a new x ceremonial, so long as coats of arms were * called into being, heraldry could not die. c A modern instance of this, said Canon r Coats, was the'creation during the last * war of the Order of the British Empire. c To-day one might speculate what orders 1 would be created during the present con- 1 flict, not only by King George VI., but « also by the Chancellor of Germany. Mesn £ had always traced their descent through armorial bearings, or by the semblance of such. The sovereign, as the fount of honour, could over-ride any rule or coat of arms. The English Inland Revenue benefited by £70,000 a year from the fe<* paid by people wishing to bear arms. Tracing the history of heraldrv, the speaker said the art went back to the 1 times of the Israelites, Greeks and 1 Romans, even to past civilisations. New , Zealand had their own form of • heraldry in facial tattoo. The modern tendency was to copy old styles of heraldry, but there was no reason in this mechanical age why crudities of design and imperfections in execui tion should not be eradicated from : heraldic design. >