VARIED FIELDS.--It is not necessary that the Field of a Shield, or of any Bearing, should be of any one uniform tincture: but varied surfaces are usually tinctured of some one metal and some one colour alternating; and the patterns or devices thus produced are generally derived (the Furs, Nos. 61-65, which are good examples of varied surfaces, being the exceptions) from the forms of the original simple charges that are distinguished as _Ordinaries_ and _Subordinaries._ And these varied surfaces or fields are always _flat_; the whole of their devices or patterns are _level_, their metal and colour lying in the same plane. It is evident that, in representing any examples of this class, no shading is to be introduced to denote relief.
Should the field of any charge be divided into a single row of small squares, alternately, _e.g._ of a metal and a colour, as No. 66, it is _Componée_ or _Compony_ (sometimes written _gobony_): if into two such rows, as in No. 67, it is _Counter Compony_: but, if the field of a Shield, or the surface of any charge be divided into three, or more than three, such rows, it is _Chequée_ or _Checky_; thus, the Arms of the Earl de WARENNE are _Chequée or and az._, No. 68 (H. 3 and E. 2).
THE LAW OF TINCTURES.--Every charge is supposed to rest upon the field of a Shield, or on the surface of some charge. It is a strict rule, that a charge of a metal must rest upon a field that is of a colour or fur; or, contrariwise, that a charge of a colour must rest on a field that is of a metal or fur,--that is, that _metal be not on metal, nor colour on colour_. This rule is modified in the case of _varied fields_, upon which may be charged a bearing of either a metal or a colour: also, a partial relaxation of the rule is conceded when one bearing is charged upon another, should the conditions of any particular case require such a concession. This rule does not apply to bordures, nor very stringently to augmentations or crests, and it is not so rigidly enforced in Foreign as in British Heraldry. There are, of course, a few exceptions, but they are not numerous, the one usually instanced as an intentional violation being the _silver_ armorial Shield of the CRUSADER KINGS of JERUSALEM, No. 69, upon which _five golden crosses_ are charged; the motive in this remarkable exception to an established rule being said to be to cause this Shield to be unlike that of any other potentate. What may be termed the accessories of a charge are not included in this law of tinctures: thus, a silver lion having a red tongue may be charged on a blue shield, and the red tongue may rest on the blue field of the Shield.