Splendidly arrayed in gules and azure and gold, the Officers of Arms have woven many-coloured threads into the web of English history, playing in seven centuries many parts. First as criers at jousts, then as organizers of these and other festive mediaeval occasions, the heralds became expert in recognizing the armed knight by the devices on his shieldthe 'skill of`armory', hence called heraldry; and since the right to arms became hereditary they must study genealogy too. Travelling from tournament to tournament the heralds came to be employed by kings as messengers of peace and war, and later as diplomatists. With the waning of the chivalric order, heraldry as an inter-national brotherhood declined but in Tudor England it gained new royal patronage. Henry VIII, in pursuance of a social policy, extended the English heralds' function of recording and controlling arms and pedigrees, while his daughter Mary set them up in their College of Arms, as members of which they entered into thei