Checky

William St John Hope counts it among the patterned fields that grew from the first partings of a shield: “A field divided into squares or checkers formed checky.” Of the number of squares to a row he writes: “Six or eight form the usual basis for the division of a field”, though the seven on the seal of the earl of Warenne and Surrey on the Barons’ Letter “is not without its artistic advantages”. Here the field is argent and vert, six squares to a row. Hope gives no rule for drawing it, so the construction here is our own, and it is exact. A chain of circles of one opening steps along a line half a square above the top edge. Each pair of neighbouring circles crosses twice, once above the line and once below it, and the line through the two crossings falls straight down: seven such lines give the columns, the outer two the sides of the shield. A second chain steps down the middle line from where it cuts the first, and the twin crossings of its circles give the rows the same way, the first of them the top edge. So every whole square has the opening as its side. The feet of the sides are where the third row line cuts them, and the flanks are swung at the width, each from the foot of the other side.