What’s not to love about a parrot or in this case a popinjay? This is Robert Tweng’s coat of arms according to a certain well known online encyclopaedia site – argent field; fess of gules and three birdies – no that’s to a technical term. The popinjays or parrots first turn up on a Tweng coat of arms in 1255. Apparently parrots became popular during the reign of Henry III.

This particular manifestation was created in 1690 for Richard Lumley , one of the so-called Immortal Seven who invited William of Orange across the Channel to depose his father-in-law James II. He was created Viscount Lumley as a reward although the title had existed previously in Ireland. The family were of royalist stock during the civil wars of the seventeenth century.

So how do the Lumleys and Robert Tweng fit together? Robert Tweng, or William the Angry, had three sons who all died without legitimate heirs of their own. In 1374 his barony which he had in his own turned acquired through marriage to an heiress, passed through Tweng’s daughter Lucy into the Lumley family. Simples… though I’m still not sure why anyone would opt for a goose-stepping parrot.