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Prince William's Arms |
A New Coat The official picture released with the announcement that Prince
William, for his 18th birthday, had received from his grandmother
a new coat of arms, was reproduced in the newspapers at too small
a scale to show the item most emphasised as their lead. The Prince
had chosen, they said, to commemorate his mother by including
a red scallop shell from her arms four times on his. But only
sharp eyes could see it. The arms of William's father on this banner consist of the Royal
Arms debruised by a label of three points and bearing in the centre
the arms of the Principality of Wales ensigned by the coronet
of the Heir Apparent. Before receiving his new arms, William bore his father's arms
without the Wales escutcheon and coronet, and with a label of
five points, as shown below.
This, on the left, is the escallop gules featured once on William's new arms and three times more on the
labels borne by his lion and unicorn supporters and by the lion
of his crest. On the rectangular banner (commonly described as
a "royal standard") used by his parents during their marriage
(shown below), Diana's arms have three escallops argent on a bend. These are the only feature of the Spencer arms that
are truly theirs, the remainder being the arms of the mediaeval
Despencers to whom they were unrelated (as described in Mists of Antiquity).
As illustrated here (below right), William's new arms feature
a label of three points instead of five (usual for a grandson),
and this label being charged with an escallop makes it uniquely
his. The arms are thus uniquely his as an individual, not merely
as his father's eldest son.
One of the British newspapers reported that the escallop was especially
suitable for William, not only because it was featured on the
Spencer arms, but because it signified a second son and, moreover,
that William was second in line to the Throne. This was an extraordinary
error. The cadency symbol for a second son is, as it has been
since the beginning of heraldry, a crescent. The escallop is not
a cadency symbol.
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