The Roll of Early American Arms gives those of Colonel Thomas Barclay as Argent a chevron between three crosses paty Gules. referencing Bolton, and his memorial tablet in St Paul’s Broadway.

I don’t have a copy of Bolton (yet) but R. Burnham Moffat in "The Barclays of New York" noted that Rev. Beverley Robinson Betts in an article in New York Genealogical & Biographical Records III had blazoned them as Gules a chevron Or between three crosses pattee Argent which Betts considered wrong as the chevron should have been Argent too. Matthews agrees, giving the arms of Sackett Moore Barclay (a great-nephew) as Gules a chevron Argent betw. three crosses pattee of the second. Vermont, to add to the confusion has them emblazoned as Gules a chevron Argent between three crosses pattee Or.

Does anyone know what tinctures were on his arms, and what is on the memorial? On the one photo of it that I can find online (in the background of a general shot of the chapel on Wikipedia) the memorial looks uncoloured so presumably the arms are carved with hatching.

Any help much appreciated.

James

James,

Thanks for this. I don’t have an answer, but what you describe sounds similar to what I’ve been encountering on a depressingly regular basis in 19th century U.S. heraldic research. A heraldist or genealogist would come across a piece of physical evidence of someone’s arms—a bookplate, a seal, a tombstone, etc—and then instead of simply reporting it as what the person used, would go in hunt for proof of authenticity and correctness. Early on, this would be in sources like Robson and Burke, later in the published volumes of the visitations or the Balfour Paul ordinary. They would then judge the primary source as wrong—poor old immigrant great-great-grandfather just didn’t know what his true arms were, or the engraver/stonecarver was incompetent!—and substitute what was in the secondary source in its place.

What Bolton has is this:

Barclay  Arg a chev bet 3 crosses pattée [gu]

Crest:  a dagger erect

Motto:  Crux Christi nostra corona

Bookplate Andrew Barclay, signer of Colonial bills of credit, 1759.  F. Callaudet, sc.  Also memorial tablet to Col. Thomas Barclay, St. Paul’s chapel, Broadway, N.Y.  (no motto).  He d. 1830.  It is said the field is gu, the chev or, the crosses arg.  "The chev should be arg." N. Y. G. B. Record, vol. 1, p. 21

The tincture in brackets is Bolton’s convention for saying that the original source does not indicate a tincture and that he (or his published source) is speculating.  In this case, this would seem to imply that the arms on the bookplate are done as a line drawing without any hatching at all, which could just as well mean "Gules a chevron between three crosses paty Argent" as "Argent a chevron between three crosses paty Gules." 

I need to adjust our entry in the Early American Roll to reflect all this uncertainty.

A little more digging:  Col Thomas Barclay was the nephew of the Andrew Barclay listed first in our entry (now entries).  His grandfather came to New York from Scotland in 1708; see the biography at http://www.nysm.nysed.gov/albany/bios/b/tbarclay.html

Interesting career that the colonel had—read law under John Jay (later the 1st chief justice of the United States), took the loyalist side when the Revolution borke out and served as major in the Loyal American Regiment.  He was accordingly attainted by the New York legislature and emigrated to Nova Scotia.  Then, after serving as the British commissioner for clarifying the U.S-Canadian boundary under the Treaty of Paris, he was sent back to New York as Britain’s first consul general there.  He was recalled with the outbreak of war in 1812, then returned in 1813 to negotiate POW exchanges, and ended up living in New York until his death in 1830.  His papers are in the Maine Historical Society.  See http://www.lib.unb.ca/collections/loyalist/seeOne.php?id=629&string=

Joseph McMillan;93328 wrote:

A heraldist or genealogist would come across a piece of physical evidence of someone’s arms—a bookplate, a seal, a tombstone, etc—and then instead of simply reporting it as what the person used, would go in hunt for proof of authenticity and correctness.

Thanks Joseph. I noticed this. I recall reading in one 19th century US author that arms could only be inherited as there was no source to grant them. A comment that ignores the multitude of other traditions (Dutch, French, German, Scandinavian and Spanish) that already existed in the USA, some where the norm was a grant from authority and others free assumption.

Then again hunting for
Quote:

proof of authenticity and correctness.

was a 19th century fault over here too. Look at Fox-Davies.

James

James Dempster;93330 wrote:

Thanks Joseph. I noticed this. I recall reading in one 19th century US author that arms could only be inherited as there was no source to grant them. A comment that ignores the multitude of other traditions (Dutch, French, German, Scandinavian and Spanish) that already existed in the USA, some where the norm was a grant from authority and others free assumption.

Absolutely.  Not only this, but these authors seemed to forget that British North America was being settled while the visitations and the establishment of Lyon Register were still in progress.  Obviously if someone using arms in England or Scotland left before those arms could even been considered by the visiting heralds one would find them absent from the official records.  So, for example, you find Vermont insisting that the chevronels in the arms of the distinguished Winthrop family of Massachusetts (Argent three chevronels Gules over all a lion rampant Sable) are correctly "crenellé" because that’s how they’re blazoned in British sources created after John Winthrop’s emigration to Massachusetts in 1630.  So Vermont simply dismissed as wrong the unmistakably uncrenellated chevronels on Governor Winthrop’s seal and tombstone. 

Of course, a serious heraldic scholar, confronted with two coats of arms that were identical except that the ordinary on one was plain and the other embattled, would assume prima facie that the plain one was older and the embattled one a variation of it.  He would consider this hypothesis to be supported if not indeed confirmed by finding that the evidence for the plain ordinary predated that of the embattled one.  If he then considered that both versions were from a time when the visitations were still in progress, when the heralds were still actively confirming hitherto unrecorded arms based on actual use, he might logically wonder whether what he had on his hands was not a mistake but rather a coat of arms that the heralds had missed.  Which would be entirely plausible if the arms in question were, at the time, 3,000 miles away from the nearest herald!

Coming back to the arms of Colonel Barclay, a friend in New York has managed to take a photo of the arms on the monument in St Paul’s. It’s not the greatest but I reckon the hatching is clear enough and that the arms are

Gules a chevron Or between three crosses pattee (?).

http://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c317/Talksinsentences/Misc Heraldry/1396642_10151895598449857_1387510024_n2.jpg

This would imply that Betts and Moffat are likely nearest in their interpretation which follows the form of the Scottish Barclays with only a change of field, i.e.

Gules a chevron Or between three crosses pattee Argent.

Of course this could be wishful thinking…

James