Bendy

Of the bend William St John Hope writes that in early examples it “was often bended or curved”, and of the striped field made from it: “A number of narrow bends produced bendy, but the lines were then straight.” Of barry and paly he says that the number of pieces “must always be even”; the bendy here has eight, argent and gules. Hope gives no rule for drawing it, so the construction here is our own, and it is exact. The shield is laid out as for gyronny, from a line down the middle as long as the shield is wide, so that the top edge, the sides and the level line through the middle make two squares. Their diagonals cross at the centres of the squares, and the line through the two centres halves the middle line and the sides: half the side of a square is the opening. Stepped along the top edge, down the middle line and down the side on the left, it gives points that pair off, one on the middle line with one on the top edge or the side, and each pair lies on a line at forty five degrees, run on to the flank. Two of the bends are the diagonals of the squares themselves.