Social Criteria for Assumed Arms:  Pro and Con

 
Joseph McMillan
 
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Joseph McMillan
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10 April 2015 19:28
 

Michael F. McCartney;103883 wrote:

Joe’s account of European / English armorial evolution is both interesting and AFAIK accurate; but translated to this country IMO misses the mark.


Well, I hadn’t gotten there yet.  As mentioned at the end of my post, there’s more to come.  So many debates, so little time.

 
Michael F. McCartney
 
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10 April 2015 21:02
 

smile. - but I just couldn’t resist the cheap shot!

David - as I see it (maybe not a good argument from someone who can no longer read street signs at dusk) there’s a fundamental difference between the shared essential tokens of kinship (shield & crest) which usually signify and identify a whole family, and other personal externals (dangling gongs) which are not shared property.  The gongs may well set one apart, based on personal achievement / merit, from the common herd; but the heritable elements, in the US anyways, do not.

 

Whatever your personal achievements, they are personal.  Your siblings, offspring and extended family may well take pride in what you’ve done, but heraldically they each individually have to earn their own honors. Merely sharing your name and DNÀ or other family connection - the identity signified by the arms - doesn’t automatically make them better than other folks, any more than weird Uncle Grover (or the cousin on death row, if you allow him to use the family arms) makes the rest of you worse.

 
David Pope
 
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11 April 2015 10:22
 

Joseph McMillan;103906 wrote:

Actually, Barton himself eventually realized that he had been wrong in 1788.  He thought about it for a while and wrote the second essay in 1815, showing how heraldry could thrive without any government role.

(I hold out hope for you, too, David, but hope it won’t take you 27 years to see the light!  The NEHGS Committee on Heraldry managed a similar reversal in only 15 years—1899 to 1914—although I think it took a pretty much complete turnover of the membership to accomplish it.)


Joe,  thanks for not giving up on me yet.  Since it would take about 27 years to save up for a grant, I think we’ve got plenty of time to debate the issue. wink

 

I’m not entirely convinced, though, that Barton c.1815 thought that Barton c.1788 was wrong.  An alternate explanation is that Barton’s essay in 1788 depicts his ideal and Barton’s essay c. 1815 depicts the practical reality that he was willing to "settle for", when he realized that a government heraldic authority was never going to happen due to the public fear of "uppityness".  The fact that the 1815 proposal was in the form of a private business that he would personally profit from colors my understanding a bit.

 

I say this because I’ve talked with several Americans who have the same view.  We all agree that a government heraldic authority would be best, but since that will never happen we’d settle for a really excellent private heraldic registry.  Perhaps I’m projecting here, but it seems plausible that the same thing was going on in Barton’s mind.

 
David Pope
 
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11 April 2015 10:53
 

From another current thread:


Kathy McClurg;103928 wrote:

And there was a time when supporters were an invention of engravers to fill the spaces on seals.  So there’s no reason not to use supporters for artistic display.

Who decided a knight’s helm was open-faced in heraldry?  I think they are better for heraldic display - no reason not to use one on my arms.

 

In heraldry, as with most customs and traditions, one is informed by past practices, not caged by them.

Joseph McMillan;103932 wrote:

But this (both supporters and helm positions) are like words. In paleo times they were just meaningless grunts, and if you liked the way it sounded, you said it. But over the centuries they acquired meaning—different meanings in different languages, but still meaning.

If you expect to be understood today, you use the words with the meanings they actually have. (Certainly the meanings change with use, but generally by evolution, not because someone wakes up one day and decides "I think ‘red’ should mean ‘blue’.") And sometimes the meanings they have don’t match up with what they may have meant in the past. "Condescending" for example. To be condescending used to be a compliment, circa 1800. It meant a person of high rank had the common touch, didn’t put on airs. Moreover, that’s the etymology—"to come down among." The same is true of "officious." In the early 18th century, it had the connotation of "helpful, courteous." But if we call someone officious and condescending today, it isn’t a compliment, and it won’t help to offer an etymological excuse when they take offense.

 

Same with supporters. There’s no logical reason that they should be anything other than decorative, but by centuries of practice they are. That’s why, in most places, when knowledgeable heraldists see newly assumed arms adorned with supporters they know that the armiger is either an ignoramus or a poseur.

 

Same with barred and open helms. In most heraldic languages (English, for sure) an open helm is a statement of social rank. There’s no reason for it, it may be silly, and all the explanations are undoubtedly contrived and post hoc. Nevertheless, when I, in the year 2015, put an open helm atop my shield, it asserts that I am a knight. If I am, in fact, not a knight, then either I’m either heraldically illiterate or lying about myself. "I don’t think it should mean that" or "it didn’t always mean that" does no more good than "oh, I think of officiousness as a good thing" or "in Jane Austen’s time, condescending meant…."


So, here’s the part that I can’t get my head around, Joe.

 

We’ve got a shield, and a helmet, and a crest and some mantling.  And all that is just pretty decoration around what is simply a visual identifier.  There’s no social significance attached to it, at all.  Anyone (even the guy who dropped out of high school to sell drugs and was later convicted for murder and confined to the penitentiary*) in America can have a shield, helmet, crest, and mantling.

 

We’ve got a shield, and a helmet WITH AN OPEN VISOR, and a crest and some mantling.  And this signifies that the person these arms belongs to is in a specific place in society.  He’s a knight, and in social precedence ranks above esquires, gentlemen, and everyone else, down to the guy who dropped out of high school to sell drugs and was later convicted for murder and confined to the penitentiary.

 

Likewise, the addition of supporters to an achievement of arms communicates a message of social standing.  Same thing with barred helms, chapeau, coronets of peers, or/ermine mantling, etc.

 

It just doesn’t add up to me.  If we were talking about logos, or house marks, or cattle brands, or something else I’d completely agree that the thing is really just a visual identifier.

 

But even a gang sign carries an additional message beyond the particular gang the sign refers to.  The identification via gang sign communicates that the person throwing it is in a gang (or is a wannabe gang member).  In that case the FORM of the visual identifier also carries an inherent message.

 

In this case, though, since we agree that the FORM of the helm carries meaning, I can’t help but believe that the mere presence of the helm (and the shield and the crest and the mantling) also communicates a specific message.

 

I think the message that is communicated is that armigers are those who have achieved a certain level of "urbanity" (as you put it), based on their achievement of certain milestones and fulfillment of certain roles and duties within society.  This recognition of social standing is not a statement referencing their personal qualities, and that social standing carries no benefit before the eyes of God or the Law, but that’s still what it seems to mean, at least to me at this point.

 

One nice thing about this view is that you don’t need to introduce new elements to signify things like having a PhD, and you can leave out military awards, as well.  The arms inherently signify that you’ve earned/obtained these sorts of accomplishments and keeps you from "over-egging the pudding" as John has suggested.

 

 

*This individual shall henceforth supplant my former example ("the armigerous ditch-digger") in any hypotheticals on this topic.

 
Joseph McMillan
 
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11 April 2015 12:07
 

David,

I keep working my way through all of this and, if I can find the books I’m looking for for illustrations, will try to share my musings more completely to make my reasoning clearer.

 

To cut to the chase, though: I’m sympathetic to the view that not everyone ought to have a coat of arms, that there is still some validity to the concept that adopting armorial bearings implies some degree of respectable standing in the community.

 

But there’s a problem that I can’t get past. How, other than self-regulation, can one possibly enforce this in 21st century society? The facile answer, to establish an official heraldic authority like the Brits have, just won’t do, because our political system and political culture don’t vest government with the job of making and enforcing the kind of social distinctions we’re talking about.

 

If I have the genealogy right, you and I share Pope and McKinney ancestors who were colonels and majors of their colonial militias, justices of county and provincial courts, and members of colonial legislatures. In the traditional view, that record would ensure our particular Pope family a solid spot among the gentry, and my subsequent family’s intermarriage with such a distinguished line would sneak us in as well.

 

But we are also both descended from men whose prevalent attitude to all that would have been, "I’m just as good as he is." I can’t imagine telling one of my blacksmith or miller or sharecropper forebears that he couldn’t have a coat of arms because he wasn’t sufficiently eminent, yet his bankrupt, drunken neighbor (also one of my ancestors) could, merely because of who his ancestors and in-laws were.

 

So I agree with you on what ought to be the case, but I don’t see how it could possibly be enforced. And I can’t conceive how I could possibly, in real life and not in theory, counsel a flesh-and-blood living human being against the assumption of a coat of arms on the grounds of insufficient eminence. Not unless I was wearing a helm with closed visor.

 
David Pope
 
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11 April 2015 14:28
 

Joe,

Thanks for your reply.  It’s helpful to see how different folks approach this issue.

 

I’ll freely admit that I don’t have a good, practical solution for most of the concerns that I raise.  One practical solution for those who desire qualifications for armigers that free assumption cannot provide, might be to voluntarily submit to an foreign system that has such qualifications built in.

 

I believe that we do share common ancestors, although there’s a complete lack of written documentation connecting Owen Pope (1795-1850), my g-g-g-grandfather, to his ancestors.  If my theories are correct, then he is a descendant of the same William Pope that you are descended from.  In any case, I think that particular family line is instructive.

 

Even if Owen was descended from a solid gentry family, his failure to maintain his family’s social standing, over the generations of his descendants, puts my dad’s folks squarely in the lower class.  They were farmers and lint-head millworkers with little education and no positions of social prominence.  Good people, whose stories inspire me to this day, but with no pretensions of grandeur.

 

In fact, if one were to use the COA qualifications as a guide, then only one uncle (Army officer, college graduate) and this generation (myself, my brother, and my paternal first cousin, based on university and professional degrees and military commissions) would even qualify for arms.

 

I understand that it would be practically impossible for one to tell another American citizen that they didn’t qualify to be an armiger, but I think that my humble ancestors would have understood that implicitly.  Here’s why-

 

Another maternal ancestor, James Alexander Walkup, was a Scotch-Irish immigrant to the Waxhaws in the 1750s.  He served as a militia captain in the Revolution under William Davie and is buried under a Bigham gravestone bearing a [bogus, bucket shop] coat of arms.  James A.‘s sons and grandsons continued to be well-respected members of the community and were militia officers, JPs, and lawyers.  During the Civil War, James A.‘s grandson, Samuel Hoey Walkup, served as Colonel of the 48th NC.

 

It just so happened that Owen Pope, Jr., was a private in the 48th NC.  I suspect that this Owen did think that "I’m just as good a man as he is" in regards to Samuel H.

 

I’m also confident, though, that there was no doubt in Owen’s mind why he was a Private and why Samuel H., a college graduate and lawyer from a "distinguished family" who had been a militia officer before the War, was the Colonel.

 

I doubt it would have surprised anyone had Samuel H. put to use the bogus arms on his grandfather’s gravestone.  On the other hand, I can’t fathom someone in Owen’s position ever thinking that he was due a coat of arms.

 

Here’s another example: Only officers* in the US military rate swords.  It doesn’t mean that every boot lieutenant is a better man than every Lance Corporal.  It definitely doesn’t mean that every boot lieutenant is a better man than the average Gunnery Sergeant.  What the sword does, though, is to mark out one group of folks from another.  Although the proxy for this difference is now a college degree, this previously was a difference of social rank (Officers and their Ladies, Sergeants and their Wives, Soldiers and their Women…).

 

As I said, I don’t have practical solutions, yet.  I’m just working through what I think.

 

*Non-Commissioned Officers of Marines are the exception to this rule.  Even in this case those below the rank of Corporal do not rate swords.

 
Joseph McMillan
 
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11 April 2015 14:46
 

David Pope;103939 wrote:

Joe,

One practical solution for those who desire qualifications for armigers that free assumption cannot provide, might be to voluntarily submit to an foreign system that has such qualifications built in.

 


But there are no such foreign systems, not any more.  The College of Arms and Lord Lyon ostensibly make judgments on suitability of applicants, but I’ve yet to see any evidence that anyone has been rejected in the last 100 years who had a sufficient bank balance and a clean rap sheet.

 

And in any case, there are huge numbers of Americans who can’t qualify for grants from the English or Scottish kings of arms because they don’t have ancestors who were subjects of a British monarch.

 

I also have trouble understanding why we would do such a thing when French, Dutch, German, and Scandinavian people who wish to assume arms don’t.  Do we or do we not believe that we "are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States ... and that all political connection between [us] and the State of Great Britain is and ought to be totally dissolved"?

 
Joseph McMillan
 
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11 April 2015 14:59
 

David Pope;103939 wrote:

Even if Owen was descended from a solid gentry family, his failure to maintain his family’s social standing, over the generations of his descendants, puts my dad’s folks squarely in the lower class.


Not so, if we follow the English rules. There was never any concept of dérogeance from the English gentry. As Lord Coke said, gentry and arms descend to all the sons alike.

 

And this raises another problem with what you have proposed.  My 4xgreat-grandfather, Job Taylor, was one of the largest landowners in the vicinity of Macon, Ga, with more than 10,000 acres in Monroe County, another 10,000+ acres of undeveloped wilderness in eastern Alabama, and 80 slaves.  His father-in-law William Warthen was a justice of the peace in Washington County; the oldest settlement in that county is named Warthen.  Job Taylor’s son, William Warthen Taylor, is the one who married into the Pope family.  And was such an irresponsible, profligate wastrel that Job Taylor’s will provides for what we would now call a spendthrift trust, protecting W. W.‘s wife and kids’ share of Job’s enormous estate from being ruined by W. W.

 

If Job Taylor had been English, he surely would have qualified for a coat of arms.  And William W. Taylor would have duly inherited it, despite the fact that he apparently never achieved anything on his own.  Job Taylor’s neighbors might well have acknowledged that he was, in some sense, better than they were.  I doubt that William W. Taylor’s neighbors would have felt the same way.  And yet, by the logic you’re putting forward, William W. would be entitled to a coat of arms, and the neighbor probably would not.

 

I don’t see how this can work.  Not even then, certainly not now.


Quote:

Another maternal ancestor, James Alexander Walkup, was a Scotch-Irish immigrant to the Waxhaws in the 1750s. He served as a militia captain in the Revolution under William Davie and is buried under a Bigham gravestone bearing a [bogus, bucket shop] coat of arms.


Most of the Bigham stones don’t bear what I would call bucket shop arms. Made up, yes, but most of them not pirated from someone of the same name, which is what bucket shop arms involve. James Walkup is buried under arms with a garb and (perhaps) a bordure. There’s no indication that he ever used those arms in his lifetime, but I can’t see why his descendants shouldn’t use the coat on the tombstone as the basis for their own arms, with tinctures assigned and a little checking to avoid duplication. (I’d leave out the supporters, of course.)

 

http://image1.findagrave.com/photos/2010/273/10224686_128593544661.jpg

 
David Pope
 
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11 April 2015 15:11
 

Joseph McMillan;103941 wrote:

Most of the Bigham stones don’t bear what I would call bucket shop arms.  Made up, yes, but most of them not pirated from someone of the same name, which is what bucket shop arms involve.  James Walkup is buried under arms with a garb and (perhaps) a bordure.  There’s no indication that he ever used those arms in his lifetime, but I can’t see why his descendants shouldn’t use the coat on the tombstone as the basis for their own arms, with tinctures assigned and a little checking to avoid duplication.  (I’d leave out the supporters, of course.)


I always had figured that the Bighams had simply left out the two mullets from the base Wauchope arms because it was easier/cheaper not to carve them.  I agree with you, though.  If I was a direct male descendant I’d be using those arms today, and we wouldn’t be having this discussion. :D

 

IRT the "bucket shop approach", the one that sticks in my mind is the use of the Duke of Argyll’s arms for John Campbell, d. 1790, who is buried in Sugaw Creek cemetery.

 
David Pope
 
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11 April 2015 15:13
 

Joseph McMillan;103940 wrote:

But there are no such foreign systems, not any more.  The College of Arms and Lord Lyon ostensibly make judgments on suitability of applicants, but I’ve yet to see any evidence that anyone has been rejected in the last 100 years who had a sufficient bank balance and a clean rap sheet.

And in any case, there are huge numbers of Americans who can’t qualify for grants from the English or Scottish kings of arms because they don’t have ancestors who were subjects of a British monarch.

 


Good points.

 
Joseph McMillan
 
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11 April 2015 15:29
 

David Pope;103942 wrote:

I always had figured that the Bighams had simply left out the two mullets from the base Wauchope arms because it was easier/cheaper not to carve them. I agree with you, though. If I was a direct male descendant I’d be using those arms today, and we wouldn’t be having this discussion. :D


Maybe they did, I hadn’t thought about it. And maybe James Walkup was a descendant of the Wauchopes. In any case, even if not, he would have qualified in the Scottish system as an indeterminate cadet and, as an American citizen, would have been perfectly justified in adopting arms based on those of Wauchope as long as they were sufficiently differenced.


Quote:

IRT the "bucket shop approach", the one that sticks in my mind is the use of the Duke of Argyll’s arms for John Campbell, d. 1790, who is buried in Sugaw Creek cemetery.

For sure. There’s a lady buried at Steele Creek under a close approximation of the royal arms of Portugal, and Robert Bigham himself under the arms of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Hence my qualifier, "most."

 
David Pope
 
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11 April 2015 15:31
 

Joseph McMillan;103941 wrote:

Not so, if we follow the English rules. There was never any concept of dérogeance from the English gentry. As Lord Coke said, gentry and arms descend to all the sons alike.


Lifetime arms instead of lifetime supporters?  Each generation has to re-matriculate with the heraldic authority using the original qualification criteria?

 


Quote:

I don’t see how this can work.  Not even then, certainly not now.


Yep, you’ve convinced me that my ideal is completely unworkable in America.

 
Joseph McMillan
 
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11 April 2015 15:42
 

David Pope;103945 wrote:

Lifetime arms instead of lifetime supporters? Each generation has to re-matriculate with the heraldic authority using the original qualification criteria?


Destroys the entire hereditary principle that makes heraldry heraldry.

 
David Pope
 
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11 April 2015 15:45
 

Joseph McMillan;103946 wrote:

Destroys the entire hereditary principle that makes heraldry heraldry.


Yep.  Thanks for helping me work through this.

 
Kathy McClurg
 
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11 April 2015 20:52
 

David Pope;103939 wrote:

Here’s another example: Only officers* in the US military rate swords.

*Non-Commissioned Officers of Marines are the exception to this rule.  Even in this case those below the rank of Corporal do not rate swords.


One might also note that the US Army at one time had non commissioned officer swords (Model 1840, as an example)

 

I believe the Navy Cutlass can still be worn by the senior enlisted person on the USS Constitution.. I’m not sure if that extends to other enlisted personnel aboard her.

 

Point being that the authorization for Non-Commissioned Officers in the US armed services to carry sword and cutlass has changed over time.  Rank insignia changed over time.  There’s a bit of an interesting read here:  http://usmilitary.about.com/od/jointservices/a/rankhistory.htm

 

All such customs change over time for various reasons…