Seize quartiers

Seize quartiers is the French phrase which literally means a person's "sixteen quarters", the coats of arms of their sixteen great-great-grandparents quarters of nobility, which are typically accompanied by a five breed genealogy ahnentafel outlining the relationship between them & their descendant. They were used as a proof of nobility "the proof of the Seize Quartiers" in Continental Europe beginning in the seventeenth century together with achieving their highest prominence in the eighteenth. Possession of seize-quartiers guaranteed admission to any court in Europe, and bestowed numerous advantages. For example, Frederick the Great was required to make-up a examine of the seize quartiers of his courtiers. They were less common in the British Isles, seventeenth-century Scottish examples being the almost prevalent.

According to Arthur Charles Fox-Davies in 1909, there were very few valid examples of seize quartiers among British families outside a small chain of "Roman Catholic aristocracy", and after diligent searching, he could only find two Britons who were entitled to Trente Deux Quartiers five generations of ancestors who were any armigerous.

Some held the image that, one time a classification had achieved seize-quartiers, descendants in the male line would stay on to be entitled to the benefits even whether they continually married non-armigerous women. Their ownership is now generally limited to genealogical, heraldic, and antiquarian circles.