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Joseph McMillan
 
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Joseph McMillan
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15 September 2011 16:29
 

Caledonian;87709 wrote:

So there is no proof either for or against the American Flag being derrivative of Washington’s star-spangled red and white striped coat of arms? In cases such as that, what passes for the "truth" is more often than not whatever people happen to believe based on their own personal mindset.


No, there is such a thing as a historical fact.  Believing a lie does not make it the truth.  Neither does believing a fantasy make it a fact.

 

I refer people once again to the Akins of that Ilk thread in rec.heraldry for an excellent example of this.

 
Caledonian
 
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Caledonian
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15 September 2011 16:33
 

Joseph McMillan;87710 wrote:

The U.S. flag and coat of arms is clearly derived not from the arms of Washington but from the those of Philip Richard Fendall, a contemporary who was a cousin of the Lees of Virginia and Maryland.

http://www.americanheraldry.org/pages/uploads/Roll/fendall.gif

 

General "Light-Horse Harry" Lee was a frequent visitor of the Fendalls and his brothers Edmund and Charles lived across the street and next door to the Fendalls.

 

Now here’s the clincher:  Arthur Lee, a cousin of Harry, Edmund, and Charles was a member of the 3rd committee for the design of the great seal, the one that settled on the final design of the U.S. arms?  A coincidence?  I think not!

 

Don’t think it happened this way?  Prove that it didn’t!


That may well be the case, but without proof one way or the other, it would be difficult to either accept or dismiss it. Some things are simply not knowable, at least for the present; so all we have to go on is our faith in what we consider to be the most likely. Much of accepted history is merely educated guesswork that is biased according to the agenda of those who write it.

 
Caledonian
 
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Caledonian
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15 September 2011 16:40
 

Joseph McMillan;87711 wrote:

No, there is such a thing as a historical fact.  Believing a lie does not make it the truth.  Neither does believing a fantasy make it a fact.

I refer people once again to the Akins of that Ilk thread in rec.heraldry for an excellent example of this.


Yes, that is an excellent example of what we are talking about. Many people hold quite a number of misconceptions and false notions based on mistakenly held beliefs. One of which being that the determination of clan chiefships is somehow under the jurisdiction of the Lord Lyon. While the Lord Lyon is the foremost authority and arbiter in matters pertaining to the legal possession and use of coats of arms in Scotland, he has no power to determine the status of Clan Chiefship. This is made clear in the Introduction to the Law of Scotland, 9th edition, 1987, p. 25, where we read:

 

“The Lord Lyon King of Arms has jurisdiction, subject to appeal to the Court of Session and the House of Lords, in questions of heraldry, and the right to bear arms. (Hunter v. Weston (1882) 9 R 492, Mackenzie v. Mackenzie (1920) S.C. 764, affd. 1922 S.C. (H.L.) 39.) He has no jurisdiction to determine rights of precedence (Royal College of Surgeons v. Royal College of Physicians, 1911 S.C. 1054.), nor to decide a disputed question of chiefship or chieftainship. (Maclean of Ardgour v. Maclean, 1938 S.L.T. 49; and see 1941 S.C. 613.)”

 

This was determined in part by the case of Maclean of Ardgour v. Maclean, in which Lord Wark stated:

 

“I agree with your Lordships that Lyon has no jurisdiction to entertain a substantive declarator of chiefship of a Highland clan, or of chieftainship of a branch of a clan….The question of chiefship of a Highland clan, or chieftainship of a branch of a clan, is not in itself, in my opinion, a matter which involves any interest which the law can recognise. At most, it is a question of social dignity or precedence. In so far as it involves social dignity it is a dignity which, in my opinion, is unknown to the law. It was decided in the case College of Surgeons of Edinburgh v. College of Physicians of Edinburgh (1911 S.C. 1054), that Lyon has no jurisdiction except as is conferred by statute, or is vouched by the authority of an Institutional writer, or by continuous and accepted practice of the Lyon Court….in my opinion, there is no practice or precedent which entitled Lyon to decide a question of disputed chiefship or chieftainship, either by itself or incidentally to a grant of arms….But it is a different thing altogether to say that in a case of dispute Lyon has jurisdiction to determine and declare who is chief. For that no precedent has been cited to us. In my opinion, it is outwith his jurisdiction to decide because (1) at best it is a question merely of social status or precedence; (2) this social status is not one recognised by law; and (3) and, most important of all, it depends, not upon any principle of law of succession which can be applied by a Court of Law, but upon recognition by the clan itself. Like your Lordship, I am at a loss to understand how any determination or decree of Lyon ever could impose upon a clan a head which it did not desire to acknowledge.”

 
Joseph McMillan
 
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Joseph McMillan
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15 September 2011 17:11
 

It’s quite true that Scottish courts have held that Lord Lyon can’t decide a dispute over who is the chief of a clan.  It’s also true that the present Lord Lyon acknowledges this to be the law.  But since most people who care about such things believe that Lord Lyon can decide who is the chief of a clan, doesn’t this example rather undermine your assertion that the truth is what most people believe to be the truth?

In matters of pure opinion, one may even say that what people believe to be true is ipso facto true, at least for those who believe it.  This, however, does not apply to questions of objective, verifiable fact, such as the existence of physical objects like tombstones and wills.  A digital photograph either is or isn’t a picture of a real tombstone; that tombstone either was or wasn’t concocted hundreds of years after the person whose name it bears was dead.  A photocopy either is or isn’t of a document on official record in a state archives.  A diary either was or wasn’t written by a particular person.  Certain words either were or weren’t used during a particular period of history.  Certain kinds of ink and paper either did or didn’t exist at a particular time and place.  All these are questions of objective, verifiable fact.

 

In short, it doesn’t matter how many people are suckered into believing that a phony tombstone or a falsified will is evidence of hereditary chiefship of a Scottish clan that never existed.

 

I trust it is not necessary to explain this any more clearly.

 
kimon
 
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kimon
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15 September 2011 17:14
 

2 points:
<ol class=“bbcode_list”>
<li>Proving a negative is an impossibility (example: prove you’ve never stolen money from me) so, fantasy hypotheses and the like have no place here.</li>
<li>This is the Armigerous American Presidents section. The happenings, decisions, laws, whatever that happens outside these borders and are irrelevant to the topic at hand, are off topic for this area.</li>
</ol>

 
Caledonian
 
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15 September 2011 18:05
 

Joseph McMillan;87714 wrote:

It’s quite true that Scottish courts have held that Lord Lyon can’t decide a dispute over who is the chief of a clan.  It’s also true that the present Lord Lyon acknowledges this to be the law.  But since most people who care about such things believe that Lord Lyon can decide who is the chief of a clan, doesn’t this example rather undermine your assertion that the truth is what most people believe to be the truth?

In matters of pure opinion, one may even say that what people believe to be true is ipso facto true, at least for those who believe it.  This, however, does not apply to questions of objective, verifiable fact, such as the existence of physical objects like tombstones and wills.  A digital photograph either is or isn’t a picture of a real tombstone; that tombstone either was or wasn’t concocted hundreds of years after the person whose name it bears was dead.  A photocopy either is or isn’t of a document on official record in a state archives.  A diary either was or wasn’t written by a particular person.  Certain words either were or weren’t used during a particular period of history.  Certain kinds of ink and paper either did or didn’t exist at a particular time and place.  All these are questions of objective, verifiable fact.

 

In short, it doesn’t matter how many people are suckered into believing that a phony tombstone or a falsified will is evidence of hereditary chiefship of a Scottish clan that never existed.

 

I trust it is not necessary to explain this any more clearly.


You would do well to explain why it is that in the case of the 18th century heraldic tombstones found in Steele Creek Presbyterian Church cemetery, you have chosen to dismiss the coats of arms appearing on them as being nothing more than a decorative element arbitrarily devised by the tombstone carvers when you have no evidence that this is in fact the case. Would you have people believe that the family of the deceased would pay the maker of the monument to simply devise a random coat of arms based on nothing more than the stone-mason’s whim, while other tombstones made by the same maker had non-heraldic designs or were unadorned altogether. You seem to have very little evidence to go on for such a dismissive, derrogatory and offensive conclusion.

 
kimon
 
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kimon
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15 September 2011 18:09
 

ok, let me try being a little more direct this time:

STAY ON TOPIC OR THIS THREAD WILL BE LOCKED

I am deleting the off-topic posts

 
Caledonian
 
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15 September 2011 18:12
 

kimon;87717 wrote:

ok, let me try being a little more direct this time:

STAY ON TOPIC OR THIS THREAD WILL BE LOCKED

I am deleting the off-topic posts


Why bother censoring posts?

 
kimon
 
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kimon
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15 September 2011 18:18
 

Caledonian;87718 wrote:

Why bother censoring posts?


Do not meddle in the affairs of moderators, for they are quick to anger and have not need for subtlety

 
Joseph McMillan
 
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Joseph McMillan
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16 September 2011 07:54
 

People devise new coats of arms all the time.  There’s nothing any more dishonorable about having the stonecarver do it than hiring a high-priced heraldic artist to do so.  I think it’s perfectly valid for someone today to look to an ancestor buried with one of these armorial stones and use the arms thereon as his own, assuming that he’d be entitled to it through the normal rules of heraldic inheritance, and assuming that the arms carved on the stone didn’t already belong to someone else.

The same is true of the watercolor paintings of arms that were often contrived by the Coleses, father and son, in Massachusetts at roughly the same time.

 

But there’s a limit to this.  As I pointed out in the other thread, the fact that Andrew Bigham, the stonecarver himself, is buried beneath a stone with the arms of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania carved on it does not convince me that the Bigham arms consist of a ship, a plow, and three garbs.  Nor is the presence of the Portuguese royal arms on another tombstone carved by the Bighams going to persuade me that the lady buried there was a princess of the House of Braganza.

 

Moreover, when I see a stone with the name Campbell and the arms of the Duke of Argyll, I’m going to ask for some fairly serious genealogical proof before I concede that the descendants of the fellow in Mecklenburg Co have a right to those arms.