Impalement, Impaling

(Empalement)

The marshalling or arranging of two coats of arms on one shield, divided  by a vertical line or palewise, from which the term is derived.  In heraldry it is used to express the manner of marshalling the arms of man and wife, (sometimes called baron and femme,) by placing the two coats together, that of the man occupying the dexter side to the wife's sinister.  In this manner archbishops and bishops impale their paternal coats with the arms of their episcopal sees, but placing their own coat upon the sinister half and the arms of the see upon the dexter. Deans, heads of colleges and officers bearing arms by virtue of their offices, as the Kings of Arms, etc. also bear their arms in a similar way, contrary to man and wife, placing their paternal coats on the sinister side. It was anciently the custom in impalements to dimidiate or divide each coat perpendicularly into halves, and to place one-half of each together, which destroyed part of the bearings, and made the whole very confused. Although this mode of impaling has been long discontinued, yet when bordure occur in both or either of the arms, it is not continued all round the coat it belongs to, but is invariably omitted at the line of impalement where the two coats unite. See Bordures

See Quartering