[Illustration: No. 407.--Seal of Earl Edmund de Mortimer; A.D. 1400.]
It is scarcely necessary for me to point out to students that Supporters always have a decided heraldic significance. In supporting a Shield of Arms, they discharge an heraldic duty: but, in themselves, Supporters are armorial symbols of a high rank; and, with peculiar emphasis, they record descent, inheritance, and alliance, and they blazon illustrious deeds.
[Illustration: No. 408.--Seal of Robert Graham, of Kinpont, A.D. 1433.]
[Illustration: No. 409.--Seal of Sir Wm. Lindsay, of the Byres, A.D. 1390.]
Supporters should always be represented in an erect position. In whatever direction also they actually may be looking, they always ought to appear to fulfil their own proper office of giving vigilant and deferential _support to the Shield_. It would be well, in our blazoning of supported Achievements, not only for us to regard a becoming position and attitude for Supporters to be matters determined by positive heraldic law, but also that some satisfactory arrangement should be made and recognised for general adoption, by which an equally becoming _support_ would be provided for "Supporters." An unsatisfactory custom has been either to place the Supporters, whatever they may be, upon some very slight renaissance scroll work that is neither graceful nor consistent, or, to constrain the Motto scroll to provide a foundation or standing-place for them. In the latter case, an energetic lion, or a massive elephant, and, in a certain class of achievements of comparatively recent date, a mounted trooper, or a stalwart man-of-war's man, probably with a twenty-four pounder at his feet, are made to stand on _the edge of the ribbon_ that is inscribed with the Motto. Mr. Laing has enabled me to give an excellent example of Supporters--two lions standing upon a motto-scroll or ribbon--in No. 410, the Seal of JOHN DRUMMOND, created Earl of MELFORT and Viscount FORTH in the year 1686: the Shield is _Scotland, within a bordure componée_; the Supporters are gorged with collars charged with thistles; and the Crest is the Crest of Scotland issuing from a celestial Crown. As says the Motto of Sir WILLIAM MAHON, "_Moniti, meliora sequamur_"--now that we have been told of it, let us produce something better than this support for our Supporters. Happily the best heraldic artists of the moment seem very generally to have reverted to the older and more preferable form.