blot on the escutcheon

• blotch on one's escutcheon

blot on the escutcheon (plural blots on the escutcheon or blots on escutcheons)

1. Something damaging to one's reputation.
   • 1751, Henry Fielding, Amelia, London: C. Cooke, 1793, Volume III, Chapter 5, p. 25,

     In the sin of adultery, for instance, hath the government provided any law to punish it; or doth the priest take any care to correct it? On the contrary, is the most notorious practice of it any detriment to a man’s fortune, or to his reputation in the world? doth it exclude from him any preferment in the state, I had almost said, in the church? Is it any blotch in his escutcheon, any bar to his honour?

   • 1819, Mathew Carey, Vindiciæ Hibernicæ: or, Ireland Vindicated, Philadelphia: self-published, Chapter 6, p. 164,

     The most zealous advocates of the unfortunate monarch cannot deny that this is an indelible blot on his escutcheon.

   • 1971, G. U. Ellis, Thackeray, New York: Haskell House, Chapter 6, p. 95,

     He had been commissioned by Chapman & Hall to write another Christmas book—The Kickleburys on the Rhine—had received and advance payment, and with it had removed the last blot from his stepfather’s escutcheon by paying off the last instalment of his debt.

   • 1984, Kathleen Hall Jamieson, Packaging the Presidency, Oxford University Press, 3rd edition, 1996, Chapter Eight,

     Consequently, where the pardon became a convenient punching bag among contending Democrats, it was no blot on Ford’s escutcheon in the primary contest between Ford and Reagan.