Mrs. Alice Birkenhead, 1632.

The arms of Mrs. Alice Birkenhead, 1632. as recorded in the site dedicated to the blazons recorded in the Cheshire and Lancashire Funeral Certificates book.

Arms:(in a lozenge*) Quarterly of 15: 1 and 15, Argent, three chevronels Gules between as many martlets Sable, a crescent for difference; 2, Argent, a chevron Sable between three pellets; 3, Azure, a chevron between three garbs Or; 4, Gules, a crescent Or between three cinquefoils Argent; 5, Argent, a chevron Purpure between three leopards' faces Sable; 6, Argent, a bend engrailed Sable, in sinister chief an escallop Gules; 7, Azure, a cross couped the ends flory Argent between four martlets; 8, Argent, a lion rampant Purpure; 9, Argent, a cross raguly Gules; 10, Argent, two bars Gules in chief three mullets of the second; 11, Azure, a chevron between three covered cups Or; 12, Sable, three shacklebolts Argent; 13, Vert, three buglehorns Argent stringed Or; 14, Azure, a lion rampant Argent.

N.B. These are the arms of Singleton. Mrs. Birkenhead was the daughter of John Singleton of Stenninge, Lancashire.
No tincture is stated for the martlets in quarter 7. M.G.

* Note dated 3rd August 2017: The more I play with sketches of these arms, the more I find that the concept of them on a lozenge is silly and utterly impractical. I have no idea whether they were ever actually painted in such a way or whether this is simply a paper record of the blazon that someone, without giving the matter a great deal of thought, decided should be on a lozenge to represent a lady. A simple sketch of the 1,2,3,3,3,2,1 layout with the fields tinctured appropriately looks like a brick wall covered in graffiti. Begin to add charges and ordinaries and I quickly found that the oblong nature of most of the quarters which also have sloping sides makes the addition of ordinaries such as chevrons look horribly distorted and leaves little room for the charges (especially if they happen to be adjacent to one of the sloping sides). Lozenges are awkward enough for single shields, one of 15 quarters is, I have decided, utterly ridiculous. I shall note that the original (which has no image) states "on a lozenge" but I shall depict the image upon a shield.