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Scoville Coat of Arms

Brainard on page 41 writes:

There is no known crest and no motto belonging to the coat-of-arms of the Scoville family anciently of Brockley, Somersetshire. The only permissible representation of this bearing, in black and white, or in colors, is that of a simple shield of gold, bearing the fesse of red, and the three mascles of blue open in the center and showing the gold field beneath. A ribbon bearing the name Scoville may be added beneath the shield. Before our investigations in England began, it was believed in some quarters that the Scobell (Scobbahill) family of England was a branch of the Scovilles; and the Scobell crest of a fleur-de-lis has been published in America as a part of the Scoville coat-of-arms. That was incorrect. Equally impossible was the application to the Scovilles of the motto of the Colville family, "Ad Finem Fidelis."

A fullsized image can be found in our Download area. Many thanks to John C. Scovill for this image.

"FESSE" (French fasce, Latin fascia) is one of the ordinaries, formed by two horizontal lines drawn across the field, and, according to most writers, should contain one third part of the escocheon. The fesse is supposed to represent the middle belt, or girdle of honor. The fesse, like other ordinaries, should be wider when charged (i. e., having heraldic figures upon it), than when it is borne plain, and perhaps one third of the field would then appear proportionable.
"MASCLE" (in French macle; in Latin macula retium, cassium, or rhombules evacuatos) is a figure of lozenge form, but always perforated or voided, so that the field appears through the opening. It differs from the shape of the fusil, in being shorter, with the angles less obtuse. Some writers have imagined that mascles represented the meshes of a net. Coats, in his Dictionary of Heraldry, is of opinion that the Lords of Rohan were the first who bore mascles in their arms, and although descended from the ancient kings and princes of Brittany, adopted this bearing, because in the vicinity of Rohan, afterwards erected into a duchy, there was abundance of small flints, which being cut in two, present the figure of a mascle on the inside of them; and that the carp in the fish ponds of that duchy have the same kind of a mark upon their scales, the which, being very extraordinary and peculiar to that country, the ancient lords of it, observing this wonderful natural appearance upon the stone and fish, took them as bearings in their arms to transmit them to posterity, giving them the name of mascles, from the Latin word macula, signifying a spot or blemish, and from which some of their descendants took for device or motto, these words, Sine macula macla, a mascle without a spot.
Footnotes from Encyclopedia Heraldica, as quoted by Brainard on page 42. Please see Brainard from pages 37 through 42 for more information about the Scoville coat-of-arms.