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"Mr. Punch's" Book of Arms cover

"Mr. Punch's" Book of Arms

Chapter 2: First Baron Russell of Killowen.
By Edward Tennyson Reed
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About This Book

A sequence of humorous mock coats of arms presents parody blazons, crests, supporters, and mottos that lampoon prominent public figures, institutions, and current events of the author's day. Each entry mimics heraldic language while twisting symbols into absurd, ironic descriptions that expose political foibles, journalistic excesses, and imperial pretensions. The work alternates detailed visual description with sharp, often bawdy wordplay, arranging entries like an illustrated armorial interspersed with brief epigrams. Through exaggerated symbolism and mock-formality, it satirizes power, public personalities, and civic ceremonial, inviting readers to view familiar characters and controversies through a comic, barbed heraldic lens.

First Baron Russell of Killowen.

Arms / quarterly / i emergent paly from a legal orle of reception, a civic beak newly chained or, robed and garnished proper with bullion, slightly debruised with thunderbolts issuant from a chief justifiably rampant in invective robed and wigged proper with sleeves turned up ermine gorged with a choler of justice / ij at a bend of the field on a turf vert under the heraldic rose a sporting veteran wary to the last putting a bit proper on a likely mount turning up trumpy on the post / iij several salted guinea-pigs debrettees richly gilt and voided of scruple charged with marketable coronets bartered in lure / iiij on a ground of promotion a partisan of renown semee with shamrocks and shillelaghs and wreathed with laurels elevated and erased all proper. Crest / rising from a bar barry a tower of strength armed at all points and charged with a snuff-box of resort furtively employed for solace. Supporters / dexter, a female figure of justice scaly on the pounce reguardant sundry bubbles of finance issuant in fraud / sinister, an Irish disunicorn, brogued proper, chronically rampant in quest of autonomy.