Kitley Heritage - 7/ Argent a chevron ingrailed gules between three leopard’s faces azure Impaling Checky gules and or a chief vair

7/ Argent a chevron ingrailed gules between three leopard’s faces azure Impaling Checky gules and or a chief vair – Coppleston impaling Chichester

The marriage depicted by this impalement is that of Amias Copleston de Copleston of Tamerton Foliot, son and heir of John, to Gertrude, daughter of Sir John Chichester c1600. She was the great granddaughter of Edward Chichester (q.v. shield 4). The family name of Coppleston is derived from the place of that name in Colebrook, near Crediton, where the family held estates in the time of King Edward II. Intriguingly, there are two Pawlet marriages in these converging lines – one a family (latterly spelt Poulett) into which the Bastards later married (q.v. shield 19), but about whom little of any substance is known (q.v. shields 17 & 18).

There is a name of greater interest in the Chichester line – Gertrude’s greatx5 grandfather, yet another Sir John, carried the Chichester arms into battle on the fields of Agincourt in 1415, one of only a handful of English Knights to have fought there. During a period from which contemporary accounts are full of the heroic deeds of knights &c, that day belonged to those in the lower echelons of society, the peasants who marched on foot in unkempt garb, the five thousand or so English archers who stood their ground as fifteen thousand and more cavalrymen, most of the French nobility amongst them, charged down upon them. The rest, as they say, is history!

These momentous events also have particular relevance in connection with heraldry, for this was the era when the regulation of arms was beginning to be enforced for the first time, for some were usurping the coasts of others, or assuming arms which they had no right to bear. When King Henry V mounted another expedition to France two years later, he issued a writ to the effect that stiff penalties would be imposed against anyone travelling with him who bore arms to which they might not be entitled. The only exceptions were the arms borne by the few knights who had fought at Agincourt.

Present generations interested in English history delight in reading the chronicles of this “glorious” age of warfare, when the English longbow ruled the battlefields of Europe. But, although accounts of these battles tend to “glorify” the actions of those who took part in them – and the present writer readily acknowledges that he, too, is “guilty” of doing so – it is the remoteness of the events in time, and the relatively primitive nature of the weapons used, which leads to this “glorification” of war. And it must not be forgotten that warfare at any period of history is a bloody and ugly business.

In connection with the present discussions, the brutal reality of war is brought home to present generations writing or reading about the heroic deeds of members of ancient gentry families by a memorial which hangs in Drewsteignton church. It commemorates the death of Robert Guy Incledon Chichester. He was killed leading the Scots Greys into battle at Ypres in 1914. There was nothing even remotely “glorious” about fighting in the savage and squalid conditions of trench warfare in Flanders in 1914, and no present writer or reader would even countenance suggesting it. Surmounting the memorial at Drewsteignton is the same coat of arms which Robert G I Chichester’s ancestor carried at Agincourt five centuries earlier.