Nobiliary Entitlements (was Spanish/Mexican Law)

 
Michael F. McCartney
 
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Michael F. McCartney
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21 October 2015 13:17
 

Did the 1737 seal include supporters?  Or (more likely) just the undifferenced arms?

Just curious, since that was well before Independence.  Not surprisingly my view is that continued use of these supporters, and/or the title (feudal) Baron of Wedderburn, in the American context (other than the limited situations allowed under our Guidelines) would be inappropriate.

 
Joseph McMillan
 
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21 October 2015 16:37
 

Apparently only the arms (the seal, that is), but I haven’t seen a picture.  There may be one in the genealogy, I don’t remember.

The tricky thing about supporters in this case is that they aren’t an indication that you own a barony.  I doubt that the Humes still own Wedderburn.  They are an indication that you are the genealogical "representer," to use the Scottish expression, of someone who (a) was a lesser baron before the lesser barons were excluded from the Scottish Parliament, and (b) bore supporters as of that date.  It’s basically heritage but not privilege, and thus a little hard to differentiate from other similar accoutrements.

 

As I said, I’m of a mixed mind about this, but it’s not as open and shut as "this is the mark of a feudal baron."

 
Michael F. McCartney
 
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Michael F. McCartney
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21 October 2015 23:44
 

But supporters in this case are still indicators of a special distinction or status in a foreign country.  True that it is a less elevated status than a peerage, but still higher than those who are not feudal barons.

And to me at least, it would make no sense to deny supporters to those with a higher status foreign peerage but allow them for those with a lower status foreign non-peerage distinction.

 

The "best practice" principle is, or IMO ought to be, no additaments representing any foreign distinction, except as specifically allowed in the Guidelines.

 
Wilfred Leblanc
 
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Wilfred Leblanc
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22 October 2015 00:38
 

Joseph McMillan;104930 wrote:

You may say, if you wish, that the Founding Fathers were deluding themselves, particularly in light of their simultaneous acceptance of the continued existence of slavery, and I won’t argue with you.


I wouldn’t be so irreverent as to say they were deluding themselves, but I would say that there was a gap between rhetoric and behavior, not just with regard to slaves, but with regard to other classes of people who could not vote (i.e. all women, men who owned no real property). The voting issue alone seems to me like proof positive that the Founders believed in a stratified society, not one in which there was only one legal or social class.

 

Just to be clear, my point in asserting this is to illuminate a connection to what bearing a coat of arms has historically meant in the U.S. It is clear that the Founders had no problem with stratified societies per se and that they understood themselves to be at the apex of such a society. It is clear that they inherited an English custom of viewing arms as certificates of gentility. For these reasons, I think it very unlikely that they believed bearing a coat of arms was appropriate for people unlike themselves—unlikely that they didn’t see arms as badges of membership in a restricted, more or less elite group. Some of the restrictions on membership in that group could be said to have been formal. Some were plainly not. But it was, basically, a restricted group. You have to take this into account if you claim the Founders as sources of norms in American heraldic usage.


Quote:

I couldn’t read their minds if they were still alive, let alone at a distance of 200+ years.  I can only go by what they said and wrote.


The excerpts you present here are certainly relevant to our getting at what they really thought. But in addition to reading things they wrote and transcripts of what they said, we can, for starters, look at material culture—their art, their architecture, their decorative goods, the characteristic titles in their personal libraries, etc. These make it clear that they had their fingers very much on the pulse of the classical revival underway in Europe.

 

References to The Society of the Cincinnati in this discussion occasion the observation that Cincinnatus could not possibly have been a source of inspiration to the officers of the Continental Army had it not been standard for men of their class to know a good deal about, and admire, the Roman Republic. And it was standard.

 

The bottom line is that they did identify closely with the Roman Republic and were great admirers of the Greeks—mainly Pericles’ Athens, of course, but of other Greek city states, too. This is relevant, because none of those was an egalitarian society.


Quote:

the Founding Fathers were virtually unanimous in believing not only that the U.S. should have no noble class but that, as an objective fact, it actually had no noble class.  They also agreed, without significant dissent, that this nobility-free situation should be preserved by means of the titles of nobility clauses in the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution and parallel provisions in many state constitutions.


I don’t want to accuse you of making a straw man argument, but I feel it oddly necessary to point out that I am not making the preposterous assertion that the Founders intended to permit a home-grown titled nobility with exclusive legal rights. Are there good reasons to think they were not altogether of one mind about hereditary elites (call them what you will), and that a good many thought that these were inevitable, or at least desirable? Anyone can see that they wanted to prevent hereditary elites from being permanently ensconced in government offices, but that’s different from saying that they envisioned no room in the society they created for hereditary elites of any description. That they did is perhaps most obvious in the case of the South, but the culture of New England also provides many illustrations of a belief in hereditary elites. Think of the differing levels of prestige assigned to the descendant of a ship’s owner and the descendant of a ship’s captain. Who was (and still is, in the besieged bastions of this sort of thinking) in the top drawer?


Quote:

Beyond that (and again, turn to the article cited by Seb), discussion of the issue revolved mainly around how to ensure that a de facto noble class not evolve unintentionally or surreptitiously.  The Naturalization Act of 1795, which introduced the requirement for immigrants who held noble status in their native country to repudiate that status as a condition of citizenship, is indicative of the determination to preserve the U.S. as a nobility-free zone.  Madison spoke in support of the amendment that added this requirement to the bill; so did John Page, as "aristocratic" a Virginian as one could ever find; so did Richard Bland Lee—one of those Lees.  Washington was the President who signed it into law.


There can be no doubt that the consensus among the Founders was that no title a native-born U.S. citizen might acquire elsewhere should entitle (sorry about the pun) him to any legal status here beyond that of citizen. But it does not follow from that observation that a native-born American citizen who legally inherits a coat of arms with noble additaments, and displays the arms entire, is, ipso facto, asserting some legal status in the U.S. beyond that of citizen.


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Because the United States has no class of nobility, there is logically no room in American heraldry for things that symbolize nobility.


You are not being as logical as you insist you are.

 

What counts as American heraldry, anyway? Heraldry itself is hardly indigenous here. What does a coat of arms refer to that is characteristically or irreducably American? Can an American bear a coat of arms that isn’t American, or does any coat of arms become American by dint of an American’s displaying it as his own?

 

To say that arms created by Americans for themselves should not include unambiguously noble additaments is one thing. But if it is legal for an American to inherit a title of nobility (which may confer no tangible power on him, but definitely is his possession, and does not at any time cease to exist), why should it be verboten for him to display the coat of arms that goes with it? Why isn’t it appropriate to view the inherited arms simply as heritage, or—at worst—just as something amusingly ironic, a curious wrinkle in someone’s identity? Doesn’t your comparatively radical endorsement of the use of coats of arms by Americans of any description—no matter how dubious the Founders, for instance, would very likely have found this—oblige you to take a more gracious stance on inherited arms with noble additaments than you are taking?

 
Wilfred Leblanc
 
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Wilfred Leblanc
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22 October 2015 02:14
 

JJB;104947 wrote:

Anyone who Googles their surname + “family crest” or “coat of arms” will get a result unless their name is of non-European origin. When I do this, the bucket shop site shows me a slightly-modified version of arms that I happen to know were granted to a George Bolding circa the 1890s; who is of no relation to me. But the site insists that the arms apply to my surname, Bouldin. It is a reasonable assumption for me to say that because everyone with a European surname has one of these by this method, there can be no perception of distinction or superiority by the millions who believe it is correct.


Consider John Steinbeck’s observation, "Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires." If he had it about right (and I think he did, whatever my disdain for his politics and his prose alike), then the brutal individualism of American culture makes Americans prone to searching neurotically for evidence that they really are "somebody," regardless of what "nobodies" their objective circumstances may tell them they are. The bucket shop tells them that they are temporarily embarrassed gentry, in effect, and that their genes will enable them or their posterity to triumph one of these days, just as their forebearers’ genes enabled them to triumph at Agincourt or wherever. And for that prospect to be satisfying, there have to remain the great unwashed to provide counterpoint to their (latent) distinction.


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I don’t see what’s tasteless about a signet ring.


You completely misread me if you think I’m saying that heraldic signet rings are always in bad taste.


Quote:

I’ll admit that the signet ring is iffy in the business community, which is one of our few upholders of contemporary standards of pragmatic American communication, style and manners. Only business owners, consultants and board members might wear heraldic signet rings without anyone thinking anything of it.


Exactly.


Quote:

In substance, the Chief Herald of Ireland has proved that even officially-sanctioned hereditary heraldry does not have to be associated with social rank and is in keeping with republican values.


No, the CHI has not proven that. Republican values do not exclude acceptance of social strata, and the cost of a grant from the CHI is itself evidence that the CHI does not intend to give grants to just anybody with Hibernian blood in the same way the USHR offers to register arms to anyone whomsoever as long as his blazon doesn’t egregiously violate the rules of blazoning. All either the CHI or the USHR proves is that heraldry is an appealing way for some people and organizations to identify themselves.

 
Wilfred Leblanc
 
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22 October 2015 12:04
 

Michael F. McCartney;104976 wrote:

The "best practice" principle is, or IMO ought to be, no additaments representing any foreign distinction, except as specifically allowed in the Guidelines.


I won’t insist that this is an expression of egotism on the part of anyone holding the same view, but it seems awfully convenient for the ego of the armiger to say that no one can have a coat of arms more grand than his own, his having postulated that there is nothing at all grand about any coat of arms as long as it consists only of a shield, crest, and motto—that "burgher arms," "gentry arms," or whatever you wish to call them, are a complete non-statement about rank, when anyone can see that the status of a burgher is not low and that this country has never suggested that burgher status is a concomitant of citizenship. This country does suggest (nay, promise, and to the eventual disappointment of a vast multitude) that burgher status is within reach of anyone of moderate talent who will work hard and play by the rules, but it has to be underscored that this means we promise the opportunity to rise (and fall) in the world, not the opportunity to make only lateral moves in the world.

 
Luis Cid
 
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Luis Cid
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22 October 2015 15:16
 

Wilfred Leblanc;104978 wrote:

I wouldn’t be so irreverent as to say they were deluding themselves, but I would say that there was a gap between rhetoric and behavior, not just with regard to slaves, but with regard to other classes of people who could not vote (i.e. all women, men who owned no real property). The voting issue alone seems to me like proof positive that the Founders believed in a stratified society, not one in which there was only one legal or social class.

Just to be clear, my point in asserting this is to illuminate a connection to what bearing a coat of arms has historically meant in the U.S. It is clear that the Founders had no problem with stratified societies per se and that they understood themselves to be at the apex of such a society. It is clear that they inherited an English custom of viewing arms as certificates of gentility. For these reasons, I think it very unlikely that they believed bearing a coat of arms was appropriate for people unlike themselves—unlikely that they didn’t see arms as badges of membership in a restricted, more or less elite group. Some of the restrictions on membership in that group could be said to have been formal. Some were plainly not. But it was, basically, a restricted group. You have to take this into account if you claim the Founders as sources of norms in American heraldic usage.

 

 

 

The excerpts you present here are certainly relevant to our getting at what they really thought. But in addition to reading things they wrote and transcripts of what they said, we can, for starters, look at material culture—their art, their architecture, their decorative goods, the characteristic titles in their personal libraries, etc. These make it clear that they had their fingers very much on the pulse of the classical revival underway in Europe.

 

References to The Society of the Cincinnati in this discussion occasion the observation that Cincinnatus could not possibly have been a source of inspiration to the officers of the Continental Army had it not been standard for men of their class to know a good deal about, and admire, the Roman Republic. And it was standard.

 

The bottom line is that they did identify closely with the Roman Republic and were great admirers of the Greeks—mainly Pericles’ Athens, of course, but of other Greek city states, too. This is relevant, because none of those was an egalitarian society.

 

 

 

I don’t want to accuse you of making a straw man argument, but I feel it oddly necessary to point out that I am not making the preposterous assertion that the Founders intended to permit a home-grown titled nobility with exclusive legal rights. Are there good reasons to think they were not altogether of one mind about hereditary elites (call them what you will), and that a good many thought that these were inevitable, or at least desirable? Anyone can see that they wanted to prevent hereditary elites from being permanently ensconced in government offices, but that’s different from saying that they envisioned no room in the society they created for hereditary elites of any description. That they did is perhaps most obvious in the case of the South, but the culture of New England also provides many illustrations of a belief in hereditary elites. Think of the differing levels of prestige assigned to the descendant of a ship’s owner and the descendant of a ship’s captain. Who was (and still is, in the besieged bastions of this sort of thinking) in the top drawer?

 

 

 

There can be no doubt that the consensus among the Founders was that no title a native-born U.S. citizen might acquire elsewhere should entitle (sorry about the pun) him to any legal status here beyond that of citizen. But it does not follow from that observation that a native-born American citizen who legally inherits a coat of arms with noble additaments, and displays the arms entire, is, ipso facto, asserting some legal status in the U.S. beyond that of citizen.

 

 

 

You are not being as logical as you insist you are.

 

What counts as American heraldry, anyway? Heraldry itself is hardly indigenous here. What does a coat of arms refer to that is characteristically or irreducably American? Can an American bear a coat of arms that isn’t American, or does any coat of arms become American by dint of an American’s displaying it as his own?

 

To say that arms created by Americans for themselves should not include unambiguosly noble additaments is one thing. But if it is legal for an American to inherit a title of nobility (which may confer no tangible power on him, but definitely is his possession, and does not at any time cease to exist), why should it be verboten for him to display the coat of arms that goes with it? Why isn’t it appropriate to view the inherited arms simply as heritage, or—at worst—just as something amusingly ironic, a curious wrinkle in someone’s identity? Doesn’t your comparatively radical endorsement of the use of coats of arms by Americans of any description—no matter how dubious the Founders, for instance, would very likely have found this—oblige you to take a more gracious stance on inherited arms with noble additaments than you are taking?


I must say that I cannot disagree with anything you have stated above.

 
Luis Cid
 
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22 October 2015 15:33
 

Wilfred Leblanc;104981 wrote:

I won’t insist that this is an expression of egotism on the part of anyone holding the same view, but it seems awfully convenient for the ego of the armiger to say that no one can have a coat of arms more grand than his own, his having postulated that there is nothing at all grand about any coat of arms as long as it consists only of a shield, crest, and motto—that "burgher arms," "gentry arms," or whatever you wish to call them, are a complete non-statement about rank, when anyone can see that the status of a burgher is not low and that this country has never suggested that burgher status is a concomitant of citizenship. This country does suggest (nay, promise, and to the eventual disappointment of a vast multitude) that burgher status is within reach of anyone of moderate talent who will work hard and play by the rules, but it has to be underscored that this means we promise the opportunity to rise (and fall) in the world, not the opportunity to make only lateral moves in the world.


Fred, I once more must state that I feel you won this argument (with me at least) some years ago.  There has always been a connection between heraldic arms and social/economic status - including in the USA.  I have never heard (or read) anything that has convinced me to the contrary.  I therefore do not see a problem with the use of inherited insignia of social rank of any kind as these are no more than a cultural or social matter of a personl private nature and not a political or economic advantage of any kind.  I would not on the other hand accept newly assumed arms with these elements in the same manner.

 
Wilfred Leblanc
 
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22 October 2015 19:31
 

Luis Cid;104984 wrote:

Fred, I once more must state that I feel you won this argument (with me at least) some years ago.  There has always been a connection between heraldic arms and social/economic status - including in the USA.  I have never heard (or read) anything that has convinced me to the contrary.  I therefore do not see a problem with the use of inherited insignia of social rank of any kind as these are no more than a cultural or social matter of a personl private nature and not a political or economic advantage of any kind.  I would not on the other hand accept newly assumed arms with these elements in the same manner.


Luis, you remind me to be grateful that good sportsmanship is the sine qua non of gentlemanly behavior. I’m glad we see eye to eye.

 
Wilfred Leblanc
 
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22 October 2015 19:48
 

Joseph McMillan;104969 wrote:

Apparently only the arms (the seal, that is), but I haven’t seen a picture.  There may be one in the genealogy, I don’t remember.

The tricky thing about supporters in this case is that they aren’t an indication that you own a barony.  I doubt that the Humes still own Wedderburn.  They are an indication that you are the genealogical "representer," to use the Scottish expression, of someone who (a) was a lesser baron before the lesser barons were excluded from the Scottish Parliament, and (b) bore supporters as of that date.  It’s basically heritage but not privilege, and thus a little hard to differentiate from other similar accoutrements.

 

As I said, I’m of a mixed mind about this, but it’s not as open and shut as "this is the mark of a feudal baron."


The horns of this dilemma are sharp, aren’t they? I do wonder how Gen. Hume would respond to your assertion in the on-again, off-again supporters argument that the entire case against them can be rested when we remember that Gen. Washington bore none. I wonder how Washington himself would respond when faced with the example of his eventual successor as President General of the Society of the Cincinnati, Gen. Hume. I’m confident Washington would look askance at an American of British extraction in the male line’s assuming supporters, but I can’t fathom his objecting to Hume’s inherited supporters—or having much patience with the AHS’s presuming to correct Hume.

 
Joseph McMillan
 
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22 October 2015 20:23
 

Wilfred Leblanc;104978 wrote:

I don’t want to accuse you of making a straw man argument, but I feel it oddly necessary to point out that I am not making the preposterous assertion that the Founders intended to permit a home-grown titled nobility with exclusive legal rights.


Again, I think several things have gotten muddled together in this discussion. My post was expressly a response to the issue of whether the United States has an established public policy against the existence of a nobility (and therefore of nobles) within our society and polity. And the answer, I think unequivocally, is that we do not. This, I contend, has necessary implications for whether those of us who are members of this society (i.e., citizens of the United States of America, not members of the AHS) should correctly use heraldic insignia by which we assert ourselves to be part of a noble class. If there are no nobles, there can logically be no insignia of nobility, only empty bric-a-brac.

 

As promised (delayed by our canine visitors and other commitments) I will in due course offer my views on the tangentially related but separate issue of whether the use of arms itself makes a class statement, and if so whether the statement it makes is inconsistent with classic American republicanism.

 
Joseph McMillan
 
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22 October 2015 20:28
 

Wilfred Leblanc;104979 wrote:

... my disdain for [John Steinbeck’s] politics and his prose alike.


Something we agree on.

 

As a now-anachronistic adherent of the New Criticism, I’m perfectly happy to ignore an author’s (or artist’s) political and personal failings or virtues and to judge his or her works on artistic merit alone.  "Annie Hall," "Manhattan," and "Midnight in Paris" are brilliant movies notwithstanding Woody Allen’s less-than-admirable history with younger women.  Bill Cosby’s early standup comedy is still hilarious.  And Steinbeck’s work is unreadable dreck.

 

Sorry, but you struck a chord with me on this one.

 
Wilfred Leblanc
 
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22 October 2015 20:39
 

Joseph McMillan;104988 wrote:

Something we agree on.

As a now-anachronistic adherent of the New Criticism, I’m perfectly happy to ignore an author’s (or artist’s) political and personal failings or virtues and to judge his or her works on artistic merit alone.  "Annie Hall," "Manhattan," and "Midnight in Paris" are brilliant movies notwithstanding Woody Allen’s less-than-admirable history with younger women.  Bill Cosby’s early standup comedy is still hilarious.  And Steinbeck’s work is unreadable dreck.

 

Sorry, but you struck a chord with me on this one.


I’m sure we agree on plenty. smile

 
Michael F. McCartney
 
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22 October 2015 21:22
 

Off-topic but re: Fred and Joe’s latest—I still after 45+/- years cannot stand and will not watch a certain actress who among other crimes posed for a photo op on a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun while Americans were slogging and in some cases dying in rice paddies and jungles, or abused in NVA prison camps.  No degree of artistic talent (in her case over rated) can excuse behavior that in earlier wars would have deservably resulted in prison or worse.

 
Wilfred Leblanc
 
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22 October 2015 22:12
 

Michael F. McCartney;104991 wrote:

Off-topic but re: Fred and Joe’s latest—I still after 45+/- years cannot stand and will not watch a certain actress who among other crimes posed for a photo op on a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun while Americans were slogging and in some cases dying in rice paddies and jungles, or abused in NVA prison camps.  No degree of artistic talent (in her case over rated) can excuse behavior that in earlier wars would have deservably resulted in prison or worse.


I don’t blame you, but I’m pretty sure you’re not missing much.