The International Association of Amateur Heralds

Did Arms belonging to merchant families (individuals, not guilds) have certain types of helm/crest conditions or restrictions at any time? What were they? I'm assuming that in the early period of granting Arms to commoners they weren't allowed to use a Peer's helm, and other such oddments.

You will need to specify the countries/free cities in which you are interested. The rules that applied in one might be markedly different to those in another (quite nearby in the case of the Holy Roman Empire).

As far as England was concerned there was never any specific regulation for merchants. If the merchant comported himself as a gentleman, then he was equally entitled to bear arms as a minor landowner, and there would be nothing in those arms to distinguish the one from the other. The English never had the concept of "untitled nobility" as opposed to "burghers" so prevalent on the continent.

PS: You used the word "oddments". There is a technical term: "additaments".

Thank you. I will group merchants with gentry.

Cameron Campbell wrote:Thank you. I will group merchants with gentry.

That is fine for England and Scotland. It would not be strictly accurate (at least in the Middle Ages and somewhat later) if one was talking about large swathes of continental Europe, where the minor, untitled, nobility had tax and other privileges not available to burghers. A burgher might be far richer and more influential (and own and live on land outside the city), but until the Holy Roman Emperor, the King of France, or Sweden (for example) stated otherwise he was still "merely" a burgher, while his poverty-stricken neighbour might be noble because the family had been noble from time immemorial. Just to rub it in, most parts of Europe provided for the use by untitled nobility of a coronet in their heraldic achievement.

This link provides a (reasonably) readable guide to the nobility of Sweden which includes an explanation of "untitled nobility". Note that these largely consisted of people previously considered esquires - mostly officers and officials.

http://www.almanachdegotha.org/id224.html

I believe that the term burgher arms comes from German, because it doesn't mean much in England and Scotland. Although, I don't think that it is exactly true that England never had the concept of untitled nobility, it wasn't legally recognized and therefore poorly regulated and basically combined with the idea of a gentleman. This is illustrated quite well in the book Pride and Prejudice. In modern German, Burger means citizen, and originally meant citizen of a city (a Burg). However, it is also the same word as Bourgeois, so the connotation is merchant. It is telling that non-noble arms are called Burgher arms, although peasants also had arms (this seems to have been a later development). In Germany, non-nobles use a tilting helmet, although in real life they would have never used one. The Uradel, or nobility since time immemorial, use great helms and the granted nobility use barred helmets. Although that isn't always so. (the rule was adopted late in the game, poorly enforced, and usually the view is that the high class are allowed to use also the other helms.) There are more differences between ranks of nobility, but I won't get into that now.

Some merchants were also patrician, which in some German cities and Italy was a recognized class. Italy had a rank coronet for patrician, whereas in Germany, a lot were recognized as nobility.