The herald would introduce knights in tournaments, describing the bearings on their shields.

As their amour improved, the knights became harder to recognise. This increased the importance of recognition by the symbols on their shields (battles could be won or lost depending on the speed of such recognition). The herald's job was to regulate and record those patterns.

As more soldiers were knighted the shields began to include such bearnings as lions, stags, boars, birds, trees, flowers etc.

The use of heraldry also became hereditary as sons took up shields of their fallen fathers. There is evidence of the use of animals and objects as personal symbols long before the arrival of heraldry. However with the arrival of gunpowder the purely functional use of shields was soon stopped. This brought the symbolic aspect of Heraldry to the fore.