In France burgher arms are not supposed to have a helmet.

Burgher arms had a complicated and suppressed history in Portugal.

Approximately 3000 burgher arms are known today in Sweden.

This restriction against burgher arms in Portugal lasted until 1910.

Such family heraldry is still alive in Germany and burgher arms are protected by law.

After the renaissance of municipal heraldry, burgher arms also became popular.

On the European continent, there is a clear difference between noble arms and burgher arms.

Unlike noble arms, few burgher arms were handed down through the generations.

The first Scandinavian burgher arms is from 1320.

Burgher arms follow the same rules as noble arms.

Heraldic arms of common citizens (burgher arms), however, are less strictly controlled.

In the 17th and 18th century, the nobility fought to ban burgher arms (borgerliga vapen).

Elsewhere burgher arms were assumed.

Open helmets, for example, were reserved for the nobility, while burgher arms were allowed a closed helmet.

Traditionally, purple was rarely used as a tincture on the shield, though it does appear on the shields of some (especially modern) burgher arms.

In burgher arms are met sometimes also house marks which are not met in arms of nobility.

Burgher arms used to be common in France, but they disappeared in the French Revolution, which was hostile to heraldry.

During the reign of King Afonso V, burgher arms were restricted to the use of colours only.

These are sometimes referred to as burgher arms, and it is thought that most arms of this type were adopted while the Netherlands was a republic (1581-1806).

In contrast to noble arms, burgher arms are allowed only a shield with one tilting or closed helmet without a necklace or coronet.

Burgher arms in the Swedish heraldry database (in Swedish)

Crest-coronets in burgher arms are correct only if the arms were granted by a sovereign and the coronet is explicitly mentioned in the grant.

The Heraldic Society of Finland began to keep an unofficial register of burgher arms, which was published in 2006 as an armorial, containing 1356 arms.

Swedish law protects "arms of the nobility as well as civic bodies, while burgher arms are not [protected], unless registered as a logotype."

The open helmet was previously associated with nobility but it is also found on burgher arms as well as there are examples of noble arms with closed helmets.