Heralds and Tournaments

The first mentions of heralds, occurring in French poems, from around 1170 connect them with tournaments. Their most basic duties including keeping score and announcing the combatants as they entered the field. In fact, it was probably in this earliest capacity that made heralds perfect for assuming the role of keeping track of arms, as they already had to be able to recognize devices to be able to do their job. However, more than that, Paul Meyer has suggested that heralds were a sort of journalist for the age . Commonly, heralds would answer questions about the contestants for the watching ladies, knowing both the identity of the knights and even their famous deeds and victories. One contemporary document, The History of William the Marshal, opines that heralds in this function could make or break a man's reputation. Another contemporary work, The Livre des Tournais de Roi Rene D'Anjou, is a perfect example of a herald's duties before and during a tournament.

(Pognon, Edmond M, trans. Le Livre des Tournois du Roi Rene. Paris: Editions Hercher, 1986. P20, 22.)
On the left, a King of Arms is given a sword to take and present to the Duke of Bourbon as an invitation by the Duke of Brittany to fight against him in a tournament. On the right, the Duke of Brittany's King of Arms presents the sword with his master's message to the Duke of Bourbon.

(Pognon, Edmond M, trans. Le Livre des Tournois du Roi Rene. Paris: Editions Hercher, 1986. P24.)
The King of Arms of the Duke of Brittany presents a roll painted with the arms of those proposed to judges of a tournament to the Duke of Bourbon.

(Pognon, Edmond M, trans. Le Livre des Tournois du Roi Rene. Paris: Editions Hercher, 1986. P27.)
Here, the herald announces or "cries" the tournament. He is wearing a parchment painted with the two combating lords on horseback wearing coats of arms and the arms of the four chosen judges in the corners. He is also passing out little shields painted with the arms of the judges.

(Pognon, Edmond M, trans. Le Livre des Tournois du Roi Rene. Paris: Editions Hercher, 1986. p51. )
It was a custom for participants to hang their arms outside of their lodgings during the three days of a tournament.

(Pognon, Edmond M, trans. Le Livre des Tournois du Roi Rene. Paris: Editions Hercher, 1986. p73.)
The chaotic melee of a tournament. The judges are seated high above in the blue box with their arms below and the arms of the two combating lords above. Next to them, the ladies are seated. Heralds are in both boxes. All the fighting knights are wearing clothing decorated with their arms to be easily recognized. Notice the ornate decorations many fighters have on their helmets? Wheels, flowers, animals and even an arm holding a head.

(Wagner, Anthony. Heralds and Ancestors. Great Britain: British Museum Publications Ltd, 1978. P14.)
A herald's scoring sheet from a joust in 1584 celebrating the anniversary of Queen Elizabeth I's succession.


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