“Golden at the clef gules”, Guy III, Til-Châtel sgr (†1299), LBR 445 (© year)

N.B. The family of Til-Châtel is why I had the greatest difficulty in finding contemporary illustrations because the first known seal dates from 1248 and the last bearer of the name disappeared in 1299.
• History of the lordship of Til-Châtel (Burgundy)
The village, located on the way Agrippa between Langres (Andemantuno) and Chalon (Cabillione) is mentioned in 230 known Filena on River Tille.
He took the name of Tilae Castrum (castrum ad tillam) later before it is destroyed during an invasion from the North, after the year 400.
After the reconstruction, the village of Til-Châtel is found under the authority of the Bishop of Langres. From the year 801, the latter concedes the Church of Tilicastro and revenues at the Augustins de Saint-Etienne de Dijon.
The Lords of the place have their origins ofAudón I of Til-Châtel, son of Garnier, count of Troyes which found the signature in an act of Richard, Duke of Burgundy, dated 918. They pay tribute to the Dukes of Burgundy.
Til-Châtel family members will follow one another until 1299, date to which the name blends into the family of Rougemont through Til-Châtel Jeanne, daughter of Guy III of Til-Châtel. At the end of the 15th century, the last of the Rougemont, absence descendants, ceded the seigniory to Antoine de Baissey, which immediately paid tribute to the Bishop of Langres. In 1618, the last of the Baissey passes the Earth of Til-Châtel to half-brother Erard of the Châtelet, which makes it a marquisate. Implementation Decree [sold to repay the debt], it is acquired in 1663 by the baron of the Housset. It is again put in order and was then bought by the widow of the latter. Marie d’Aguesseau in fact gift in 1703 to his niece Catherine d’Aguesseau, married to Charles-Marie de Saulx Tavannes County. The lordship remained the possession of this family until the French Revolution.
A hypothesis on the origin of the Til-Châtel key might be that they have inherited from the Clefmont in the 12th century, but inverting the colors. (cf. P. Palasi, Armorial of the Haute-Marne, record 267 on the family of Clefmont, off in the family of Choiseul in 1370). This raises the problem of the colors of the shield of the Clefmont, but this is another issue.

• coat of arms in relation to the holders of the name, sometimes identified
-1248- [Golden at the clef gules]: seal of Hugues de Til-Châtel, sgr of Conflans (~ 1220-1250), died on the seventh crusade (1248-1254)
An illustration for the seal is proposed on the site Early Blazon.
Excerpt from A page. Baudin on Jean de Joinville (1225-1317):

“Louis IX who vowed to cross if he healed from a serious illness (1244), the Seneschal of Champagne [Jean de Joinville] announced at Easter 1248 willingness to follow the King of France, with nine of his vassals to Hugues de Landricourt and Hugues de Trichatel, Lord of Conflans, all two Knights-standard-bearers, Gautier of Écurey, Gautier de Curel, Erard de Sivry-sur-Ante”Raoul de Vanault-le-Châtel, Frédéric de Louppy-le-Château, Renaud de Menoncourt and Hugh of Ecot-la-Combe.’

– 1265 – Johanz, Lords of Tile Chastial [no representation of seal]: Jean de Til-Châtel.
Cf. Act under seal seigneurial (Burgundy) dated September 1265 (to bring the seal cited by Mr. Prinet and dated 1266?;) cf. further, in the comments under the date of 1297).

-1265-1270 -[d’Or in Chief gules], Armorial Wijnbergen 860: unnamed
-1265-1270 -[key in pale golden], Armorial Wijnbergen 1087: unnamed
-1265-1270 -[golden sand in the pal key], Armorial Wijnbergen 1088: unnamed
The illustrations were drawn by Brian Timms, but meanwhile its site has been vandalized.

-1274- [ecu to the key], gravestone of John, Lord of Tilchatel

Jean, Lord of Tilchatel (Tilchatel Church) (small, 1898)

Cf. dan Board 21 s E book. Small, history of the Dukes of Burgundy…, t. 6.

–-1292-1295- s. of tchatel [Golden at the clef gules], Armorial Le Breton 445

Guy III, Til-Châtel sgr (†1299), LBR 445 (© YEAR)

Instructions for E. Boos:

“445 sire ofriT chatel
gules key gold.
Guy III († 1299), Lord of Til-Châtel, gonfaloniere of the County of Burgundy. Son of John, Lord of Til-Châtel († 1275), guardian of Champagne and Brie, Marshal and gonfaloniere of the count of Burgundy, and of his second wife, Marie de Joinville, Lady of Marnay († 1263), married firstly in 1263, Mahaut of Courtenany (†1284), and then, in 1285, Isabelle de Rochefort(-sur-Brevon) [† ad 1309], daughter of Gaucher de Rochefort, Lord of le Puiset in Beauce, Viscount of Chartres, and of Marguerite de Plancy. In 1306, the married Humbert de Rougemont.
Wijnbergen 1087; Chifflet-Prinet 83
Europäische Stammtafeln, XV, 184-185 “

–– 1297 – distance of Triechastel bears the Golden weapons [Chief / a key] of gheules, Armorial Chifflet-Prinet 93 or 94
This Blazon is problematic because, according to the editions of the manuscript, it meets the variations “in the head” or “a key”.
Found in the edition of the armorial by Mr. Prinet (p. 35 [= 31], online )) :

93 distance of Triechastel bears the Golden weapons at the head of gheules (1).
(1) gui, Lord of Thil-Châtel (Côte-d’Or, Dijon arr.. cant of Is-sur-Tille) in 1275, 1276, 1280, 1291, 1293, gonfaloniere of the County of Burgundy (Arch. of the Doubs, B 53, 69; Arch. of the Côte-d’Or, B 1336; Bibl. NAT., ms. french 31969, fol. 65 v, 66; Gollut, historical memories, ed. Duvernoy, col. (1744) his widow, Isabeau de Rochefort, was remarried, in 1311, Humbert, Lord of Rougemont; the eldest of his daughters, Isabeau of Thil – Châtel, married Rougemont Thibaud, son of Humbert (Arch. of the Côte-d’Or, B 10492, 10493; Peincede, t. XVII, p. 168). Through this marriage, the land of Thil-Châtel and the hereditary office of gonfaloniere of the County of Burgundy passed to Rougemont House.
Seal Gui of Thil-Châtel (1276) is armorié with an ECU to a key and not a leader (seals of Burgundy, no. 448), as the seals of Jean de Thil-Châtel, in 1266 (Archives du Doubs, B 53) and of Isabeau de Thil-Châtel, Lady of Grancey, in 1282 (seals of Burgundy, no. 489). The headstone of Jean, sire of Thil-Châtel, died in 1275, was also armoriée ECU to the key (Ernest Petit, history of the Dukes of Burgundy, t. VI, fig. 21).

In the edition proposed by G.J. Brault, latter reflects some of the P. Adam-Even notes about the armorial:

94 distance of Triechastel bears the Golden weapons a gheules key (21).
(21) to the Chief.
Notes [on the edition of Prinet:]
[CP 94 – for the emendation Chief] a key, see Prinet, p. 31, n. 1.

S. Clemmensen assumed an error of mirroring the part of Max Prinet (record 114: “Prinet misread the legend as ‘head’ rather than ‘key’ gold key.”;) cf. scholarly publishing in pdf).
Jules Chifflet having the first copied the presumed original written in picard and dating back to 13th century, “taking quite a lot of freedoms”, it may be rather that should have been suspect bad fill.

– 1454-1457 – Trichatel sr [empty ecu], Armorial Le Bouvier 700.
Instructions for E. Boos:

“700 sr d Trichatel
vacuum
Thil-Châtel: gold at the clef gules ; House off at the end of the 13th century in Rougemont (J.B.. of Vraivre, “Seven mounds slabs of Til-Châtel House”, in Heraldry Books No. IV, pp. 137-146;) (Prinet XXIV). “

– 1560 – tricastel, gate of gold at wrench gules, in Palliot p. 175.

Tricastel (Palliot, p. 176)

– 1770 – tricastel door gold key in Pale gules, rather than gules to the silver key, in Ménestrier p. 216.

Tricastel (Ménestrier, windsurfing XXXI, fig. 1)

N.B. The illustration is incorrect, what the text says but few explicitly.

– 1884 – Trichatel – Ile-de-France, Picardie – gold at wrench gules in pal, in Rietstap.

Til-Châtel (Rolland from Rietstap)

• To go further – variants in the family name and in representation of the ecu
If the graphic change ‘ castel/chastel/Châtel/Castle’ is relatively well known in french, metathesis is less (inversion of vowels and consonants within a Word). It is recognisable in the Til-Chastel pair / Tri-Chastel. If you know that the consonants “l” and “r” are two close achievements at the phonetic level, and that metathesis is a specificity of the picard talk, one might wonder if the variants “Tri-…” would be not specific time where the Lords of Til-Châtel settled in Picardy (cf. Rietstap reference)
At the level of the representation of the coat of arms, the confusion between “head” and “key” has been very punctual and inconsequential subsequently.

• Specific bibliography
-BAUDIN (Arnaud), Jean de Joinville (1225-1317), Web page of the site the count of Champagne and Brie in the middle ages.
-BOOS (Emmanuel de, ed.), 1995, Armorial de Gilles le Bouvier, Herald Berry [from the manuscript preserved at the BNF (ms fr 4985)], Paris: Le Léopard d’Or, 277 p.
-BOOS (Emmanuel de) et al. (eds), The armorial Le Breton, Paris: Somogy, 247 pp. (available online on the website of the National Archives)
-BRAULT (Gerard J.), 1973, Eight Thirteenth – Century Rolls of Arms in French and Anglo-Norman Blazon, University Park & London: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 148 p. [includes the armorial Prinet Chifflet]
-MICHEL (foster) (ed.), 1859, Jean, sire of Joinville or history and Chronicle of the most Christian King Saint Louis, Paris: Firmint-Didot. (p. IX-X available online)
-PETIT (Ernest), 1898, history of the Dukes of Burgundy of the Capetian, race with unpublished documents and vouchers, Dijon: print Darantiere, t. VI (available on Gallica).
-PRINET (Max) (ed.), 1920, Armorial de France composed at the end of the 13th century or at the beginning of the 14th, Middle ages, 2nd series, vol. XXII (January-April 1920), pp. 5-58. (online)
— Presentation of Til-Châtel, on the site of the Town Hall of Til-Châtel (online)
-SCHWENNICKE (Detlev) (ed. of the new series), Europäische Stammtafeln, BD. 15 “Burgundy in the middle ages”, Tafeln 184-185 [Sire de Tilchatel] (list of genealogical tables here, notes critical here ))
-SARIC (Jules), 1875, essay on the history of the genealogy of the Lords of Joinville (1008-1386) accompanied by charters…, Langres: F. Dangien. Statement of John of Thil-Chastel, pp. 135-136.