Notices of the Ellises of England, Scotland, and Ireland, from the conquest to the present time

MANOR OF HURST-PIERPOINT. 11
and gules, a chief azure. The roll whence these arms are
taken is of rather doubtful authority — at least the blazonry of
arms, which may have been subsequently added. That the
Pierpoints of Hurst, however, did bear the former coat, we
have the best testimony, viz., a brass memorial of Edmund
Ufford, who married Sibilla Pierpoint, whereon are the arms
of Ufford impaling Azure a chief chequy or and gules, for
Pierpoint. 1 This chequy character of the coat of arms, of
course, denotes a connection with the De Warrens. According
to the prevalent but certainly erroneous notion, of families in
feudal times adopting, wholly or in part, the bearings of their
superior lords, as vassalls, the Pierpoint coat would indicate a
feudal dependence on the De Warrens. But if so, how is
it that, at a period not a generation after the time when it is
contended armorial bearings became general, viz., during the
reign of Richard I., out of the nineteen tenants of the Earl of
Warren in the rape of Lewes anno 26 Henry III., not a
single coat can be found in the heraldic dictionaries contain-
ing chequy assigned to any one of the families of these nine-
teen under-tenants, except that of Pierrepoint ? The source
in fact, as a general rule, of a new coat of arms, which any
material modification is, even of tincture, was family, not
feudal relationship, the two being often, it is true, identical.
The son adopted with some change the arms of his father
or mother or wife. It will be concluded, therefore, that the
Pierpoint coat, resembling the Warren, is a confirmation of the
former being a branch of the latter family. But in this case,
the confirmation is only apparent. The well-known chequy
coat of the Warrens was not adopted by them till the marriage
of William, the second Earl of Warren, who died 1138, with
Isabel de Vermandois, whose coat that was, Waleran Earl of
Mellent, her first husband, having also borne it, as appears on
his seal engraved in Watson's Memoirs of the Earls of Warren.
This, was, therefore, three generations subsequent to the time
when the Pierpoints branched off from the Warrens. The
early Pierpoints, consequently, bore (unless they had relin-
quished it for another) the ancient arms of the Warrens. The
old genealogies of this family affirm their original patronymic
to have been St. Martin ; their first known ancestor the
1 Bloom field and Parkins's Norfolk, ix. 392.