hatchment

plural hatchments

1. governmentA display of the arms, supporters, crests, motto, etc of a deceased person, placed within a black lozenge and hung on a wall

   No Trophee, Sword, nor Hatchment o're his bones.

   c. 1599–1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act IV, scene v], page 275, column 1

   3 more examples

   Having passed through Gaunt Square into Great Gaunt Street, the carriage at length stopped at a tall gloomy house between two other tall gloomy houses, each with a hatchment over the middle drawing-room window; as is the custom of houses in Great Gaunt Street, in which gloomy locality death seems to reign perpetual.

   1847 January – 1848 July, William Makepeace Thackeray, chapter 7, in Vanity Fair […], London: Bradbury and Evans […], published 1848, →OCLC

   Immediately the Railway Executive received the news, the former London & North Eastern Railway special rolling stock was prepared, including the saloon always used as a hearse coach, which was painted black and decorated each side with hatchments of the Royal Arms.

   1953 June, “Royal Railway Journeys”, in Railway Magazine, page 372

   The second and third quarters of the shield are indecipherable on the stone but clearer in two other representations of the arms, a painted wooden funeral hatchment for Mary Davie[…]

   2012 October 8, Daniel W. Patterson, The True Image: Gravestone Art and the Culture of Scotch Irish Settlers in the Pennsylvania and Carolina Backcountry, UNC Press Books, →ISBN, page 141