Martlet
Encyclopedia
Heraldry
Heraldry is the profession, study, or art of creating, granting, and blazoning arms and ruling on questions of rank or protocol, as exercised by an officer of arms. Heraldry comes from Anglo-Norman herald, from the Germanic compound harja-waldaz, "army commander"...
charge
Charge (heraldry)
In heraldry, a charge is any emblem or device occupying the field of an escutcheon . This may be a geometric design or a symbolic representation of a person, animal, plant, object or other device...
depicting a stylized bird
Bird
Birds are feathered, winged, bipedal, endothermic , egg-laying, vertebrate animals. Around 10,000 living species and 188 families makes them the most speciose class of tetrapod vertebrates. They inhabit ecosystems across the globe, from the Arctic to the Antarctic. Extant birds range in size from...
(martlet being the diminutive of martin
Swallow
The swallows and martins are a group of passerine birds in the family Hirundinidae which are characterised by their adaptation to aerial feeding...
) with short tufts of feathers in the place of legs. Swift
Swift
The swifts are a family, Apodidae, of highly aerial birds. They are superficially similar to swallows, but are actually not closely related to passerine species at all; swifts are in the separate order Apodiformes, which they share with hummingbirds...
s, formerly also called martlets, have such small legs that they were believed to have none at all.
The inability of the martlet to land is often seen to symbolize the constant quest for knowledge, learning, and adventure as in the arms of University College, Oxford
University College, Oxford
.University College , is a constituent college of the University of Oxford in England. As of 2009 the college had an estimated financial endowment of £110m...
; Worcester College, Oxford
Worcester College, Oxford
Worcester College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. The college was founded in the eighteenth century, but its predecessor on the same site had been an institution of learning since the late thirteenth century...
; Pembroke College, Cambridge
Pembroke College, Cambridge
Pembroke College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge, England.The college has over seven hundred students and fellows, and is the third oldest college of the university. Physically, it is one of the university's larger colleges, with buildings from almost every century since its...
; McGill University
McGill University
Mohammed Fathy is a public research university located in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The university bears the name of James McGill, a prominent Montreal merchant from Glasgow, Scotland, whose bequest formed the beginning of the university...
(where the women's athletic teams are named the Martlets
McGill Martlets
The McGill Martlets are the women's athletic teams that represent McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The men's teams are known as the McGill Redmen. The name Martlets is used in reference to the McGill University shield, which includes three martlets which were part of the coat of arms...
); the University of Houston
University of Houston
The University of Houston is a state research university, and is the flagship institution of the University of Houston System. Founded in 1927, it is Texas's third-largest university with nearly 40,000 students. Its campus spans 667 acres in southeast Houston, and was known as University of...
and its Law Center
University of Houston Law Center
The University of Houston Law Center is a law school located in Houston, Texas. It is accredited by the American Bar Association and is a member of the Association of American Law Schools. Founded in 1947, the Law Center is one of 12 academic colleges of the University of Houston...
; Westminster School, Simsbury, Connecticut (where the store is called the Martlet's Nest); the University of Victoria
University of Victoria
The University of Victoria, often referred to as UVic, is the second oldest public research university in British Columbia, Canada. It is a research intensive university located in Saanich and Oak Bay, about northeast of downtown Victoria. The University's annual enrollment is about 20,000 students...
(where the student newspaper is also called The Martlet
The Martlet
The Martlet is a weekly student newspaper at the University of Victoria in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. There are over a dozen employees on the payroll, but significant work is done by student volunteers . The Martlet is funded partially by student fees, and partially by advertisements...
); and the Delta Chi
Delta Chi
Delta Chi or D-Chi is an international Greek letter college social fraternity formed on October 13, 1890,at Cornell University, initially as a professional fraternity for law students. On April 29, 1922, Delta Chi became a general membership social fraternity, eliminating the requirement for men...
Fraternity.
It has been suggested that this same restlessness is the reason for the use of the martlet in English heraldry as the cadency
Cadency
In heraldry, cadency is any systematic way of distinguishing similar coats of arms belonging to members of the same family. Cadency is necessary in heraldic systems in which a given design may be owned by only one person at once...
mark of the fourth son: the first son inherited the estate, the second and third traditionally went into the Church and the Army, and the fourth had no well-defined place. As the fourth son received no part of the family wealth and had to earn his own, the martlet was also a symbol of hard work, perseverance, and a nomadic household.
Centuries after his death, Edward the Confessor
Edward the Confessor
Edward the Confessor also known as St. Edward the Confessor , son of Æthelred the Unready and Emma of Normandy, was one of the last Anglo-Saxon kings of England and is usually regarded as the last king of the House of Wessex, ruling from 1042 to 1066....
was assigned a coat of arms containing five golden martlets; Richard II of England
Richard II of England
Richard II was King of England, a member of the House of Plantagenet and the last of its main-line kings. He ruled from 1377 until he was deposed in 1399. Richard was a son of Edward, the Black Prince, and was born during the reign of his grandfather, Edward III...
combined this coat with the Plantagenet
Armorial of Plantagenet
This is a list of the coats of arms known or believed to be borne by Geoffrey Plantagenet, Count of Anjou, and his descendants in the male line.- Family chief :- Heirs :- cadets :- House of Lancaster :- House of York :...
arms, and it later became the basis of the arms of Westminster Abbey
Westminster Abbey
The Collegiate Church of St Peter at Westminster, popularly known as Westminster Abbey, is a large, mainly Gothic church, in the City of Westminster, London, United Kingdom, located just to the west of the Palace of Westminster. It is the traditional place of coronation and burial site for English,...
and Westminster School
Westminster School
The Royal College of St. Peter in Westminster, almost always known as Westminster School, is one of Britain's leading independent schools, with the highest Oxford and Cambridge acceptance rate of any secondary school or college in Britain...
.
The arms of the Valence earls of Pembroke
Earl of Pembroke
Earl of Pembroke is a title created ten times, all in the Peerage of England. It was first created in the 12th century by King Stephen of England. The title is associated with Pembroke, Pembrokeshire in West Wales, which is the site of Earldom's original seat Pembroke Castle...
were orled (bordered) with martlets, and subsequently these are also found in the arms of Pembroke College, Cambridge
Pembroke College, Cambridge
Pembroke College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge, England.The college has over seven hundred students and fellows, and is the third oldest college of the university. Physically, it is one of the university's larger colleges, with buildings from almost every century since its...
.
The French word for swallow
Swallow
The swallows and martins are a group of passerine birds in the family Hirundinidae which are characterised by their adaptation to aerial feeding...
is hirondelle, and therefore martlets have appeared in arms canting
Canting arms
Canting arms are heraldic bearings that represent the bearer's name in a visual pun or rebus. The term cant came into the English language from Anglo-Norman cant, meaning song or singing, from Latin cantāre, and English cognates include canticle, chant, accent, incantation and recant.Canting arms –...
on the name Arundel.
The shield of the county of Sussex
Sussex
Sussex , from the Old English Sūþsēaxe , is an historic county in South East England corresponding roughly in area to the ancient Kingdom of Sussex. It is bounded on the north by Surrey, east by Kent, south by the English Channel, and west by Hampshire, and is divided for local government into West...
, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
contains six martlets, said to represent the six traditional rapes (administrative sub-divisions) of the county.
Bend (heraldry)
In heraldry, a bend is a coloured band running from the upper right corner of the shield to the lower left . Writers differ in how much of the field they say it covers, ranging from one-fifth up to one-third...
, also appear on the coat of arms of Dundalk
Dundalk
Dundalk is the county town of County Louth in Ireland. It is situated where the Castletown River flows into Dundalk Bay. The town is close to the border with Northern Ireland and equi-distant from Dublin and Belfast. The town's name, which was historically written as Dundalgan, has associations...
, Ireland
Ireland
Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...
. The bend and martlets are derived from the family of Thomas De Furnivall who obtained a large part of the land and property of Dundalk and district around the year 1319 by right of marriage with Joan De Verdon daughter of Theobald DeVerdon. Three of these martlets, in reversed colours, form the arms of the local association football team Dundalk FC.