LIFE STORIES IN COATS OF ARMS

Press, Volume LVIII, Issue 17633, 9 December 1922, Page 7

LIFE STORIES IN COATS OF ARMS

People who are desirous of becoming of "armigerous" families—that is, families entitled to bear arms, and for whom new coats of arms ha<ve to be devised by the Heralds' College —will find many examples of "manufactured" arms in the peerage and baronetage. One of the most interesting of these is the coat of arms of the late Lord iStrathcona, which shows four men in a canoe rowing towards the great jSorth West of Canada, and a hammer and a nail, an allusion to Lord iStrathcona having driven home the last nail on the completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway. His crest was a beaver eating into a maple tree, and the supporters a trooper of Strathcona's Horse on one side and on the other a navvy standing on a railway sleeper with hammer raised, illustrating the driving of the last spike of the C.P.R. in 1885. Lord Atholstan shows his connexion with Scotland and Canada by thistles and maple leaves, with a moose and a beaver for supporters; and Lord Morris's great interest in Newfoundland is shown in his arms by codfish swimming below a 6ehooner and a caribou on either side as supporters. In many coats of arms the supporters tell their own tale. Lord Wimborne, descended from a great ironmaster, shows us Vulcan, with anvil and hammer; and Lord Ashcombe, the son of j Mr Cubitt, the builder, chose a stone- | mason and a carpenter to uphold his ! arms. | Lord Cunliffe, a former governor of the Bank of England, selected figures of the gate porters at the Bank. j Lord Ashfield, head of the Underground Electric Railways, shows electrical mechanics, one with wire and. the other with pliers; Lord Stamfordham, the King's private secretary, chose a scribe with a quill pen and a man-at-arms in full armour; and Lord Askwith, the great industrial conciliator, has on each side a dove with the olive branch of peace in its beak. A touching instance of the devotion of a father to hie sons is shown by Lord Forster, the Governor-General of Australia. Of his two sons the elder was killed early in the war and the younger died from the effects of wounds after it was over. When he was made a- peer Lord Forster selected to uphold his arms the figures of officers in his sons' regiments —the King's Royal Rifle Corps and the Royal Scots Grey*.