Nobiliary Entitlements (was Spanish/Mexican Law)

 
JamesD
 
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JamesD
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07 October 2015 17:23
 

Joseph McMillan;104842 wrote:

And click here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vaaU3NziwGI

Cleverly funny!

... and, bang on topic, for a particularly awkward moment in an anyway awkward interview, at 4:05 (to about 6:05) Christopher Guest talks about the significance of his peerage to his British and American personas.

 

https://youtu.be/SqY5HGVJEvI

 
Michael F. McCartney
 
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Michael F. McCartney
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07 October 2015 17:25
 

Since we have a number of non-Americans in our forum, please note that my recent comments shouldn’t be taken as criticisms of the heraldic (or nobiliary where relevant) practices in other countries.

For those with dual citizenship, I would only expect "when in Rome…" based on where they happen to be at any given time.

 
JamesD
 
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07 October 2015 17:41
 

Michael F. McCartney;104846 wrote:

For those with dual citizenship, I would only expect "when in Rome…" based on where they happen to be at any given time.

Mr Guest/Lord Haden-Guest pretty much agrees with you, Michael, it would seem from the interview I posted a link to.

 
snelson
 
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snelson
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07 October 2015 22:42
 

Hi all,

I was reading some accounts of the debates in the House of Representatives surrounding the Naturalization Act of 1795 on the website of the Library of Congress, specifically the portion regarding the renunciation of noble titles.  Very interesting stuff!  The account of one Congressman (a Mr. Murray…perhaps Congressman William Vans Murray [1760-1803] of Maryland) caught my attention.  It reads, in part:
Quote:

...Mr. Murray was sorry that the House had begun the new year with such a discussion…of nobility, however, the gentleman had no alarming apprehensions.  There had been once in this House a baronet.  He was there for two years before it was known, and it was then discovered that a baronet was a thing perfectly harmless.  As for titles of nobility, he believed that all the wholesome and sensible part of the community looked upon the whole as stuff.  When Mr. M. contemplated this subject, it reminded him of Holbein’s Dance of Death.  He saw nothing in this country but the ghosts of nobility.  In Europe, indeed, it was a matter of importance.  It established the etiquette of precedence among the ladies in leading down a country dance…http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=llac&fileName=004/llac004.db&recNum=522

Does anyone here know the identity of this harmless baronet who was in the House?  If so, what arms did he use (if any)?

Cheers!

 
Michael F. McCartney
 
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07 October 2015 23:20
 

James - I’ll go back and read your link when I can - I’m traveling & having trouble connecting to links.  In any case, sounds like Mr. Guest is treating this appropriately, in which case none of my ire is directed at him.

EDIT - got lucky with the link.  I didn’t know Guest from Adam, but immensely enjoyed the interview.  He handled the peerage issue nicely.

 

As for the baronet in Congress early on, the most telling thing to me at least, is that no one even knew he was a baronet for two years - so obviously he wasn’t flaunting it!

 
Wilfred Leblanc
 
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08 October 2015 17:59
 

I seldom weigh in, but I think David is right. However, I’d go further and split semantic hairs: The "having" a coat of arms in itself might pass muster with the folks back on the block until you informed them that they were assumed. And you’d have to explain that "assumed" means made up—by you!—at which point they would think you at best a harmless eccentric and at worst a fraud. And it wouldn’t do, I don’t think, to launch into a lecture on the true history of heraldry (the earliest arms all being assumed, regulation of heraldry as a late innovation, differences among national traditions, etc.), which has a way of sounding even to someone who knows it’s the truth kind of like a desperate rationalization. At least subconsciously, we all associate the supplying of such detail with lying, because liars so often spin elaborate tales in response to straightforward questions, such as "Are you entitled to that?"

As nearly as I have ever been able to determine, arms are legitimate in the eyes of Americans if they are granted or otherwise ratified by a credible overseas heraldic authority and/or inherited from ancestors predating the Revolution (the mists of antiquity seem to be adequate camouflage for our ancestors’ own assumptions and usurpations, the notion of "ancient use" evidently having some validity here). Anything else is an invitation to target practice, I suspect. Although even a recent grant of arms would likely be suspect, too, I think, because it would be clear, from the standpoint of normative American values, that you deliberately sought it and are therefore a vain and possibly self-deluded person.

 

I’ll go further and say that nobody outside this forum is going to interrogate you about the legitimacy of displaying, as your own, a coat of arms borne by an ancestor outside of your direct male line. Nobody gives a rip about that violation of historical norms, as far as I can tell. You say, "It belonged to my great x 4 grandfather, Peregrine Surname-other-than-my-own," and there are no further questions.

 

Perhaps I digress. The bottom line is that on a certain, ultimate level, you cannot use any personal/familial coat of arms here without communicating a desire that elevated social status be ascribed to you on the basis of accidents of birth. To say otherwise is, I reluctantly conclude, to kid yourself. Therefore, the worst you could possibly be claiming here by including nobiliary additaments to which you are notionally entitled in some other jurisdiction is that your genealogical accidents are a little better than someone else’s genealogical accidents. How this is worse than displaying luxury goods acquired with inherited wealth escapes me.


David Pope;104843 wrote:

Michael,

My point is simply that the reaction of folks "back on the block" standard would likely result in all of us being convicted of pretentiousness for merely having a coat of arms.

 

 
Michael F. McCartney
 
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08 October 2015 20:33
 

Nice to hear from you again, however much we may disagree!

We’ve seen this argument before on this forum. and I don’t see or anticipate any significate new twists, so I won’t rehash the old back & forth at this point - we’re vacationing and it’s time to make dinner.  Others are of course welcome to respond pro & con, and I may later; but like most Hollywood remakes of old favorites, a link to the earlier debates may be more useful.

 
JJB1
 
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09 October 2015 16:01
 

Joseph McMillan;104818 wrote:

I know a fair amount about Arab culture and politics.  "Sheikh" can mean lots of things, but it’s not a title granted by the Iraqi government, and if used by members of a tribe in referring to a foreigner is almost certainly an informal respectful style of address, not a substantive honor.  I’ve been called "McMillan sahib" by Pakistani desk clerks and bellboys, but their doing so didn’t make me a "lord."


This person I was referring to was made a sheik (the spell check says I’m right!) by a tribe. They gave him a postage stamp of land and gave him some sort of document. It was a nice blurb in the Army Times. I wish I could remember everything about it. I didn’t mean to imply the Iraqi government gave him anything though. I’m not even sure the interim government was in place yet.

 

Interesting on all the points you made.

 
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09 October 2015 16:55
 

Wilfred Leblanc;104855 wrote:

I seldom weigh in, but I think David is right. However, I’d go further and split semantic hairs: The "having" a coat of arms in itself might pass muster with the folks back on the block until you informed them that they were assumed. And you’d have to explain that "assumed" means made up—by you!—at which point they would think you at best a harmless eccentric and at worst a fraud. And it wouldn’t do, I don’t think, to launch into a lecture on the true history of heraldry (the earliest arms all being assumed, regulation of heraldry as a late innovation, differences among national traditions, etc.), which has a way of sounding even to someone who knows it’s the truth kind of like a desperate rationalization. At least subconsciously, we all associate the supplying of such detail with lying, because liars so often spin elaborate tales in response to straightforward questions, such as "Are you entitled to that?"

As nearly as I have ever been able to determine, arms are legitimate in the eyes of Americans if they are granted or otherwise ratified by a credible overseas heraldic authority and/or inherited from ancestors predating the Revolution (the mists of antiquity seem to be adequate camouflage for our ancestors’ own assumptions and usurpations, the notion of "ancient use" evidently having some validity here). Anything else is an invitation to target practice, I suspect. Although even a recent grant of arms would likely be suspect, too, I think, because it would be clear, from the standpoint of normative American values, that you deliberately sought it and are therefore a vain and possibly self-deluded person.

 

I’ll go further and say that nobody outside this forum is going to interrogate you about the legitimacy of displaying, as your own, a coat of arms borne by an ancestor outside of your direct male line. Nobody gives a rip about that violation of historical norms, as far as I can tell. You say, "It belonged to my great x 4 grandfather, Peregrine Surname-other-than-my-own," and there are no further questions.

 

Perhaps I digress. The bottom line is that on a certain, ultimate level, you cannot use any personal/familial coat of arms here without communicating a desire that elevated social status be ascribed to you on the basis of accidents of birth. To say otherwise is, I reluctantly conclude, to kid yourself. Therefore, the worst you could possibly be claiming here by including nobiliary additaments to which you are notionally entitled in some other jurisdiction is that your genealogical accidents are a little better than someone else’s genealogical accidents. How this is worse than displaying luxury goods acquired with inherited wealth escapes me.


Fred,

 

I’m fairly new. So I have some different perspectives.

 

Maybe it’s "small-r" republican values or devotion to common law that make so many people think that we have to have official documentation for everything in order for it to carry weight.

 

I view "bearing arms" as a right in the US that extends to arms of historic or antique types; or purely ornamental types—like heraldry. Calling the display of personal devised arms "delusional" is no different than calling a person delusional for displaying a custom-engraved Scottish broadsword in their study that they neither inherited nor were given permission to have by a nation-state. Some people just like to decorate or personalize things in their own ways. Heraldry happens to be a very acute art form that is based on historic weaponry/armor. Its general personal use in the US is neither protected nor regulated. That doesn’t mean the arms don’t exist. It just means, like so many other things, we can do what we want.

 

As far as the possession of arms implying social status, we can always look at the Republic of Ireland. Not only does the Chief Herald of Ireland grant personal arms to individuals that are hereditary and protected, but the heraldic arms do in no way imply a social status. And Ireland is far-more egalitarian than the US ever was.

 
Wilfred Leblanc
 
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09 October 2015 17:59
 

I love heraldry, and though I do, ultimately, stand behind normative American values, I am ambivalent about them. No one who assumes (or seeks a grant of) arms should anticipate ridicule from me. I understand their purpose. I think it’s valid. My point is simply that people who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones—and that everyone in this forum who is taking dead aim on Americans displaying nobiliary additaments that were legitimately acquired somewhere outside the U.S. is inside a glass house. Eppur si muove.

 
JJB1
 
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10 October 2015 10:07
 

I can’t speak for anyone here. But I don’t I see it the same way you are describing.

Regarding the stone throwing; I think few here would object if someone in the US who inherited a peerage title dating back to the Stuarts (or whenever) subtly reflected that in the heraldry of their bookplates or family genealogy books. I think the AHS Guidelines and particularly the discussions here offer advice to keep one from embarrassing themselves or, worse, appearing rude by putting their titles on cards or email signatures or in introductions.

 

Regarding the glass house, bearing arms in the US is not a statement or implication of social status. In Britain, it was once the case where only the nobility were permitted to hunt deer. Lots of people in US hunt deer. That doesn’t mean they are asserting themselves as being high-up on the social ladder. Regardless of how some practices, like heraldry, are perceived in England, the US is different in many ways.

 
Wilfred Leblanc
 
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10 October 2015 23:10
 

JJB;104865 wrote:

Regarding the glass house, bearing arms in the US is not a statement or implication of social status.


It is certainly perceived as one, the intentions of the individual armiger nowithstanding. How can there be any serious debate about this?

 
Michael F. McCartney
 
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11 October 2015 04:23
 

It may well be perceived in any number of different, conflicting and unreconcilable ways by any number of people.  The same could be said of any human activity.  Picking just one perception and presenting it as "the" general public perception, without compelling evidence and argument as to the claimed consensus, doesn’t resolve an argument.

I don’t question that you personally hold that perception, but merely stating it as self-evident doesn’t make it true.

 
Wilfred Leblanc
 
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11 October 2015 18:01
 

Michael F. McCartney;104868 wrote:

It may well be perceived in any number of different, conflicting and unreconcilable ways by any number of people.  The same could be said of any human activity. Picking just one perception and presenting it as "the" general public perception, without compelling evidence and argument as to the claimed consensus, doesn’t resolve an argument.

I don’t question that you personally hold that perception, but merely stating it as self-evident doesn’t make it true.


I don’t expect my stating that it’s self-evident to make it true. I expect the fact that it is self-evident to make it true. If you seek to denude heraldry of any class connotations, that may be very much to your credit, but for you to deny that you do so in an environment where heraldry generally, to this day, connotes some measure of superior social standing strikes me as disingenuous. You demand evidence that my observation is valid? This is to demand that I be a master of the obvious, which is that to study heraldry, overwhelmingly, is to study the history of elites and those who aspire to be included in their ranks. Which is that the armorials the AHS is so hell-bent on armigers checking to avoid usurpation amount to directories of elites. Which is that heraldry is a visual language that emanates from feudalism, such that there is no speaking this language on one’s own behalf without assenting to some semblance of a feudal hierarchy, wherein it’s plainly better to be a knight than a serf, etc.—or let’s just call it a stratified society—and placing oneself rather high within it.

 

Would you demand evidence that the swastika is generally seen as something other than an ancient symbol of good luck or that the Confederate battle flag is generally seen as a symbol of something other than regional identity? I’m guessing you wouldn’t. Of course, there are those who would use those symbols to symbolize those very benign things and might vacuously forbid everyone else to see them differently, but such people don’t control the relevant historical narratives any more than you control the narrative about heraldry.

 
Wilfred Leblanc
 
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11 October 2015 23:00
 

Mindful that moderators here like to see discussions remain on topic, let me just add that my point, again, is to second the point David Pope was making below: The line you draw between what a U.S. citizen who happens to be a nobleman is doing in displaying his complete hereditary arms in an American context and what you are doing in displaying your arms with no such additaments in the same context is arbitrary and self-serving. Neither of you is acting in better taste or better faith than the other.