It is usual to hang the hatchment of a deceased head of a house at the universities of Oxford and Cambridge over the entrance to his lodge or residence.
Illustration] If for a bachelor the hatchment bears upon a shield his arms, crest, and other appendages, the whole on a black ground.
It is thus easy to discern from the hatchment the sex, condition and quality, and possibly the name of the deceased.
If the hatchment be for a married man (as in the illustration), his arms upon a shield impale those of his surviving wife; or if she be an heiress they are placed upon a scutcheon of pretence, and crest and other appendages are added.
Is it too much then to presume that in the midst of all this pomp and affectation of grief, the hatchment of the deceased nobleman would be displayed as much, and continued as long, as possible by the widow?
May we not reasonably believe that these ladies would vie with each other in these displays of the insignia of mourning, until, by usage, the lozenge-shaped hatchment became the shield appropriated to the sex?
You know your pew in the middle of the gallery, with that painted hatchment thing, you know.
Its period of service over, the hatchment had come down from the front of the house, and lived in retirement somewhere in the back premises of Sir Pitt's mansion.
A grand painted hatchment was already over the great entrance, and two very solemn and tall personages in black flung open each a leaf of the door as the carriage pulled up at the familiar steps.
In the first case, the hatchment of an unmarried lady showed the whole of the background black, the paternal arms on a lozenge, and this suspended by a knot of blue ribbon.
This was the setting up of a hatchment after a death.
Immediately upon the death of a person of any social position a hatchment of his or her arms was set up over the entrance to his house, which remained there for twelve months, during the period of mourning.
Now a hatchment is strictly and purely personal, and in the days when the use of such an article was an everyday matter, the greatest attention was paid to the proper marshalling of the arms thereupon.
I refer to the methods of depicting arms upon hatchments, and more particularly to the hatchment of a married woman.
The hatchment painter and I had long before agreed that we would be present on that memorable occasion.
In his reminiscences of “the nobs,” as the Upper Ten were then called, the hatchment painter himself betrayed no snobbishness whatever.
My landlord was the last of the hatchment painters.
Him I had met at the hatchment studio in Great Ormond Street.
I suppose the hatchment habit—which had persisted for so many generations—had fallen into a rapid decline just about this period, for my cheery little landlord had but lately taken to letting apartments.
She drew Albert back into the shop, and George, peeping through the window of the hatchment saw them standing together in a corner, talking in whispers.
The shield on the dexter (sic) side is the arms of the bishop impaling those of his wife as baron and femme; the ground of the hatchment is black round the sinister side of this shield, showing that it is the wife that is dead.
The shield on the dexter side of the hatchment is parted per pale; first, the arms of the bishopric; second, the paternal arms of the bishop.
This was the hatchment of Francis, Lord Castlewood, who now lay in the chapel hard by, his son reigning in his stead.
An old man sate at the wicket on a stone bench in front of the great arched entrance to the house, over which the earl's hatchment was hanging.
An earl's coronet now figured on the hatchment which hung over Castlewood gate--and there was an end of the jolly gentleman.
He would pass the late Earl of Dreddlington's house, in Grosvenor Square, staring at it, and at the hatchment suspended in front of it.
Quartered in this dingyhatchment commemorative of Symond, are the legal bearings of Mr. Vholes.
If he were courting, surely the black border would diminish, and the hatchment would be taken down.
The above list will hopefully give you a few useful examples demonstrating the appropriate usage of "hatchment" in a variety of sentences. We hope that you will now be able to make sentences using this word.
