ABSTRACT
We have been discussing so far the banner as a social indicator; a marker of magnate status. There is another side to the banner, however. It is on the banner that we first detect the practice of heraldry. What we call heraldry began at some time in the eleventh century as a means of expressing pride in high lineage through particular family devices. Initially, this ‘proto-heraldry’, as it has been called, was the preserve of the magnate group. Where it filtered down to knights was (to begin with) in the practice of their employer marking them by issuing them with distinctive garments and equipment of a particular colour, or with a particular badge. By the middle of the thirteenth century, knights and squires were both employing heraldry in the same way as magnates had employed it over a century before, as symbols of family pride and alliance. Heraldry therefore diffused more widely through society than the insignia discussed in the previous chapter. By 1300 the heraldic device was a mark of nobility, a claim to be part of the aristocracy.
