A System of Heraldry - Clan Strachan Society

to OF THE CROSS, Vc.
their assistance against the Turks, in defence of Rhodes, in the year 1315. And,,
for his great success and valour, they added these four letters by way of devica,
F, E, R, T. which import, Fortitude ejus Rhodem tcnuit, i..e. his courage preserved
Rhodes. But, to forbear to give instances of crosses as signs of sovereignties and
fraternities, I shall speak of them as merely armorial, in the bearings of families,
where we will rind them of many different forms, occassioned by the frequent ex-
peditions to war, against the infidels in the Holy Land, for the recovery of
Jerusalem.
They who engaged in that war received from the hands of bishops and prelates,
consecrated crosses, made of cloth or taffeta, which were sewed on the left
side of their upper couts, and thereupon they were said to undertake the cross:
and those expeditions were called crusades. So that of necessity there behoved,
to be various forms of crosses, to distinguish the numerous companies of men, out
of many different nations, who engaged in these expeditions. Besides, afterwards,
the civil wars in Europe between the Emperors and Popes, likewise contributed to
the frequent use of crosses, and their various forms in armories, so that they cannot
be but numerous.
Francis Fosses, who wrote a Treatise of Arms in the reign of Richard II. of
England, and undertook in person a crusade to Jerusalem, gives us an account only
of twelve sorts of crosses. But Nichol Upton, who wrote sometime afterwards,
says, that there were so many sorts of crosses, that he durst not undertake to give
a description of them all. Neither can I promise to perform that task, which
would be both tedious and useless. 1 shall therefore here mention so many various
forms of crosses as are frequently to be met with in the armorial bearings of
Britain and France ; and if my reader be not satisfied with these, I recommend
him to Handle Holmes, his Academy of Armory, where he will find 132 various forms
of crosses.
For the better understanding of these forms, I divide them into accidental and
proper forms. By the first, I understand these which are communicable to the
other honourable ordinaries; as ing railie , nebule, indent e, &-c, of which before :
by proper ones, those which are peculiar only to the cross..
When the cross is under neither of these forms, it is by some said, in blazon, to
be plain ; Crux simplex fc? plana, by the Latins ; as that of England, argent, a plain
cross gules, fig. 26.
CROSBIE of that Ilk, an ancient family sometime with us, gave arms equivocally
relative to the name, or, a plain cross gules, as in Mackenzie's Heraldry. And
there also,
GUTHRIE of that Ilk, another ancient family, argent, a cross sable. : some books
make it azure, quartered with the arms of Cumin, azure, three garbs or. Esplin's
Book of Arms.
DAVID GUTHRIE of that Ilk was Comptroller to King James III. and Captain of
his Guards, and so designed as a witness in that King's charters, granted by him
to Thomas Boyd Earl oi Arran, and to his wife Mary Stewart the King's sister,
Davide Guthrey
de eodem, nostrorum computorum rotulatore, and as a witness in
another charter of that King's to James Lord Hamilton, giving him licence and
power to recover lands out of the sea at Kinneil, and to build a castle there,
amongst the witnesses Davide de Guthrey de eodem Capitano nojlra Guarditf, which
are to be seen in the Earl of Haddington's Collections in the Lawyers' Library.
GUTHRIE of Liman, in place of the cross, carries a lion, as in Workman's Manu-
script, viz. quarterly, first and fourth or, a lion rampant gules, second and third
azure, three garbs or.
Sir HENRY GUTHRIE of Kingedwards, baronet, quarterly first and fourth or, a
lion rampant regardant gules, holding in the dexter paw a cross croslet fitched
azure, for Guthrie ; second and third azure, three garbs or, for Cumin ; crest, a.
lion's paw issuing out of the torce, grasping a twig of a palm tree, all proper ; supporters,
two naked men wreathed about the loins with bay leaves, proper : motto,.
Sto pro veritate. L. R.
THOMAS GUTHRIE, sometime provost of Forfar, descended of Guthrie of Halker-
second and
ton, quarterly, first and fourth or, a lion rampant regardant gules,