Presidential Arms of Office

 
gselvester
 
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gselvester
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22 April 2010 15:32
 

Joseph McMillan;75986 wrote:

But those arms don’t belong to her as Elizabeth Windsor, only as Elizabeth II, Queen of the United Kingdom.  There are any number of moments in British history when the normal rules of armorial inheritance would have dictated one thing and the realities of succession to the throne—legal or extralegal—have dictated something else.  This has been absolutely clear since the accession of George I, who would have had neither the throne nor the arms if not for the Act of Settlement, which settled the throne on him as the senior Protestant descendant of the Electress Sophie.  The arms of the UK came with the job, not because they were his by armorial inheritance.


But your examples don’t have anything to do with completely throwing the monarchy out. Yes, the arms don’t belong to Elizabeth Windsor-Mountbatten but they do belong to her as sovereign.

 

When George I became king the arms of the House of Hanover were added to the royal arms. Did Hanover become part of the UK? No. So if Hanover didn’t become part of the country, (and the arms belong to the country as you see it) why was the Hanover coat of arms added to the sovereign’s arms? Furthermore the royal arms of the UK became the coat of arms of Hanover (first as an electorate and also as a kingdom). But the UK and Hanover weren’t united into one kingdom. So, why use the same arms? Because there was a personal union where the two countries remained distinct but had the same sovereign. So, the sovereign’s arms were used by both countries because the coat of arms was the sovereign’s not the country’s.

 

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/64/Hannover1837.jpg

 

So, the country uses the coat of arms as it’s own because it is the arms of its sovereign. If the monarchy were abolished completely it would not automatically have the use of the sovereign’s coat of arms.

 

In the world of today would the parliament pass some law whereby it gave itself the authority to allow the country to continue using the former sovereign’s coat of arms? Probably, but that wouldn’t make it right. Cromwell didn’t. And, in some new "Republic of the UK" there would still have to be a Head of State, likely an elected President distinct from the Prime Minister (as in other parliamentary republics) and some other device would likely be used by him.

 

I have no doubt that lots of people think the sovereign’s arms are really "the country’s" coat of arms that they "allow" her to use. Recently, there was a problem in Wales with unauthorized use of the Prince of Wales’ three feathers heraldic badge and some idiot tried to assert that it was a "Welsh symbol" that the Welsh people "allowed" Prince Charles to use. What bullcrap. It’s quite the other way around. The Prince of Wales’ feathers are his (not as Charles Windsor-Mountbatten, but as the heraldic badge of the Prince of Wales) and since he is Prince of Wales the Welsh have adopted it as one of "their" symbols. But, it’s only theirs because of him. It isn’t his because of them.

 

That is my sole point. There is already a precedent to which to look: the Commonwealth under Cromwell.

 

http://www.biblepath.org/11/Daniel 7.1_files/image002.gif

 

Interestingly enough the external ornamentation remained the same and the arms on the shield changed to national, not royal, symbols.

 
gselvester
 
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gselvester
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22 April 2010 15:46
 

xanderliptak;75988 wrote:

When Emperor Charles I & V inherited the thrones of Spain, the Romans, Naples, Austria, Italy and so forth, he did not use different arms in right of each country, but just one.  If the Windsors truly thought of the "UK arms" as their own, why would they have a "Canadian arms", "Manx arms", "New Zealand arms" and so forth?


I refer you back to my answer in post #34 where I’ve already addressed this.

 
Dcgb7f
 
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Dcgb7f
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22 April 2010 23:15
 

Is there a reason why the Irish quarter didn’t change during the Commonwealth? Is that coat not considered royal?

 
Alexander Liptak
 
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Alexander Liptak
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23 April 2010 08:22
 

Dcgb7f;76061 wrote:

Is there a reason why the Irish quarter didn’t change during the Commonwealth? Is that coat not considered royal?


The Irish quarter was not inherited, but an augmentation added that showed dominion as Kings of Ireland.  The first monarch to use them was King James I & VI.

 
Joseph McMillan
 
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Joseph McMillan
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23 April 2010 09:38
 

xanderliptak;76063 wrote:

The Irish quarter was not inherited, but an augmentation added that showed dominion as Kings of Ireland. The first monarch to use them was King James I & VI.


Yes, but it was then inherited by Charles I.  All the quarterings had a start at one time or another, and by 1648 all of them were associated not with a family but with a country—the three yellow cats on red are the "Leopards of England," not the leopards of Plantagenet or Lancaster or York or Tudor, just as three yellow fleurs-de-lis on a blue field, which were quartered with the leopards until 1801 were "France Modern," not Valois or Bourbon.

 

It seems to me that this has become a circular discussion with neither side persuading the other (not to mention that it’s now far removed from the topic of the thread).  Maybe we just ought to move on.

 
Michael Y. Medvedev
 
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Michael Y. Medvedev
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24 April 2010 02:39
 

That the arms borne by a monarch are normally of a dual nature (of the Dominion and of the House) may be illustrated by the aforementioned arms of Saxony in their capacity of the family arms of Her Brittannic Majesty. These arms certainly became family arms of the Wettins but were first used (and still retained among the marshalled parts) by the Ascanians of Anhalt; only then the famous coat was achieved by the Wettins, certainly as arms of dominion. The Prussian Zollerns followed in obtaining a version of the Saxon arms together with a part of Saxony, that is, exactly as arms of dominion. Another sovereign house, that of Savoy, claimed (and, again, still claims) the same Saxon arms for a purely genealogical reason, being even more dynastically-minded in the dominional heraldry for the united Italy, etc etc.

I mean, it’s all multidimentional indeed.

And such broadness is normal; usually arms encompass all social roles and "projections" of an armiger (established by land, blood, allegiance or whatever) and the majority of the royal arms are not so profoundly different.

As to the republican Russia (briefly mentioned supra as an usurper of Imperial arms), she sports new arms, only resembling the lesser Imperial ones (actually almost identical in outline) but pretty different in tinctures (they are closer to the colours commonly, although not regularly, used for the eagle in the pre-heraldic times [15 to 17 centuries]) and in some other aspects (again, like it was before the heraldisation, the inescutcheon displays a symbolic ‘Rider’ defending the nation, not St George, and is not seen as a coat of Muscowian Gd Duchy but rather as "Russia Ancient").

 
Jeffrey Boyd Garrison
 
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Jeffrey Boyd Garrison
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26 December 2014 14:46
 

I’ve never seen the arms of the United States occur "officially" as only the shield device isolated from the rest of the achievement.

Is there any application, real or imagined where the shield device alone might be used… in at least a semi-official capacity?

 

An example which springs forth would be… President participates in a joust?

[ATTACH]1387[/ATTACH]

 
Joseph McMillan
 
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Joseph McMillan
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26 December 2014 16:25
 

Lots of examples of the U.S. shield being used officially without the supporter, etc.

Coins:

http://www.americanheraldry.org/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=1388&stc=1&d=1419628656

 

Military insignia:

http://www.americanheraldry.org/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=1389&stc=1&d=1419628759

 

Carried by the personification of Liberty (here in the painting "The Apotheosis of Washington" in the Capitol rotunda):

http://www.greatseal.com/liberty/LibertyEagleDome.jpg

 

As decoration on warships (albeit in this case in an erroneous emblazonment):

http://www.americanheraldry.org/pages/uploads/Official/usoly.jpg

 
Joseph McMillan
 
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Joseph McMillan
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26 December 2014 16:28
 

In fact, you (Jeffrey, who lives in the US) may well have several of these in your pocket right now:

http://www.pcgscoinfacts.com/UserImages/Lincoln Cent Shield Reverse reverse.jpg

 
Michael F. McCartney
 
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Michael F. McCartney
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27 December 2014 02:52
 

The or better or worse, official governmental heraldry in the US is it’s own thing - derived from largely English roots, but not bound by them.  In some aspects it draws from or resembles other European traditions, but not bound (or limited) to any or all of them either.  One of the earliest examples is the arms (shield) of the new nation, paly of thirteen rather than six pallets - which at least some of the founders knew violated British norms but chose it anyway because it better met the intended symbolism.

Similarly, in spite of the general heraldic norm that any emblazonment that reflects the blazon is acceptable, our military heraldry administered byTIOH specifies (imposes) one standard rendition as to shape and colors for each unit’s heraldic insignia - while outsiders like us can exercise artistic license in our unofficial exercises, the units and their members cannot in any official context; they must honor not only the blazon, but also the standard emblazonment - the artwork and specifications mandated by TIOH.  We may perceive the English dodge "as shewn more clearly in the margin" as merely an example, but in our military heraldry it is "i.e." rather than "e.g."

 

In the present argument re: Presidential arms, and by extension other official variations on the arms of the US: whether or not we see it as "" correct" or even "best practice" the narrow definition of arms = shield is de facto, and for practical purposes de jure, not applicable.  Instead, for better or worse, it often means arms = achievement, with the terms used essentially interchangeably.

 

As a result, a wide range of emblazonments have, once adopted and used by various offices, departments and organizations as their distinctive seal or emblem, each become distinctive and official "arms" (we would say "achievements") in spite of being heraldically similar or even interchangeable in our view.

 

This serves the practical governmental function and purpose of establishing distinctive official visual images for various offices and purposes that would not be well served by strict adherence to our traditional understanding of artistic license and what is heraldically identical or distinctive.  While we heraldry buffs can recognize visually different renditions as heraldically identical, and visually quite similar renditions as heraldically distinct, most folks would find this unacceptably confusing.  Clear identity, in official government arms, trumps artistic license.

 

This hasn’t (IMO luckily) slopped over into our personal and familial heraldry, which has its American roots and practices that predate most of our governmental heraldry.

 

Anyway, that’s how I see it.  I’m sure others may not be all that comfortable with it.