Official US Arms Granting Authority

 
Guy Power
 
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Guy Power
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17 January 2012 11:59
 

liongam;91810 wrote:

...There may be a host of reasons why individuals do not go any further, but I would guess through experience the number is very few indeed….


John,

 

Wasn’t there a instance within living memory (10 years or so) in which a well-known applicant was sent to prison and his application was either revoked or allowed to expire?

 

—Guy

 
liongam
 
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liongam
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18 January 2012 04:23
 

Dear Guy,

The instance you cite may well have been the case, but as I left the College in 1996, I, therefore have no knowledge of this.

 

There undoubtedly those individuals who initially make approaches to the College, but either get cold feet or the notion of petitioning for arms dies a death for one reason or another.

 

With every good wish

 

John

 
Luis Cid
 
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Luis Cid
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18 January 2012 14:52
 

Fred White;91777 wrote:

Basically, Luis, I agree with you, but mustn’t we add that personal heraldry’s foremost use is not only to distinguish between armigerous families, but to distinguish those who are armigerous from those who are not? The latter dimension may be tacit rather than explicit, but I don’t see how it can be denied.


Fred,

You certainly make a valid point about the association of arms with social status both here in the U.S. and elsewhere, now and in times past.  Your point about the element of vanity in the use of and especially acquisition of arms (either through assumption or petitioning for a grant or official registration) is also valid.  Many customs in all societies are associated with social class in one way or another.  We are all human beings, and for better or worse all of us have some degree of vanity in our personality which is expressed in as many ways as the human imagination can muster.

 

All the above being said and admitted, however vain I may be, I use arms first because it makes me feel more connected to the land of my ancestors, second it gives me another tool with which to assert my identity in an ever more anonymous and disconnected society, and third I love the art, color, and beauty of heraldry.  None of my direct paternal ancestors in the agnatic line in the past four hundred years were famous or important men.  A few of them were poor farmers who’s estate didn’t even have enough cash on hand to pay the priest to administer the last sacraments of the catholic church.  I honor all their lives by my use of arms whichare based on a blazon they all shared as a birthright.  I gain no status by remembering poor farmers from Castile.  Even the higher status members of my extended lineage are now long forgotten by everyone other than genealogists and local historians.  No higher status there for me to be connected with!

 

Fred, I believe my reasons for using arms are probably essentially the same as yours and most other armigers in the AHS.  Vanity is certainly part of it (like keeping my beard clipped, coming my hair, or dressing well) but most of my motivation (like yours I’m sure) has nothing to do with vanity or claiming or asserting a higher social position than others.

 
Wilfred Leblanc
 
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Wilfred Leblanc
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18 January 2012 19:50
 

Luis Cid;91831 wrote:

Fred,

You certainly make a valid point about the association of arms with social status both here in the U.S. and elsewhere, now and in times past.  Your point about the element of vanity in the use of and especially acquisition of arms (either through assumption or petitioning for a grant or official registration) is also valid.  Many customs in all societies are associated with social class in one way or another.  We are all human beings, and for better or worse all of us have some degree of vanity in our personality which is expressed in as many ways as the human imagination can muster.

All the above being said and admitted, however vain I may be, I use arms first because it makes me feel more connected to the land of my ancestors, second it gives me another tool with which to assert my identity in an ever more anonymous and disconnected society, and third I love the art, color, and beauty of heraldry.  None of my direct paternal ancestors in the agnatic line in the past four hundred years were famous or important men.  A few of them were poor farmers who’s estate didn’t even have enough cash on hand to pay the priest to administer the last sacraments of the catholic church.  I honor all their lives by my use of arms whichare based on a blazon they all shared as a birthright.  I gain no status by remembering poor farmers from Castile.  Even the higher status members of my extended lineage are now long forgotten by everyone other than genealogists and local historians.  No higher status there for me to be connected with!

 

Fred, I believe my reasons for using arms are probably essentially the same as yours and most other armigers in the AHS.  Vanity is certainly part of it (like keeping my beard clipped, coming my hair, or dressing well) but most of my motivation (like yours I’m sure) has nothing to do with vanity or claiming or asserting a higher social position than others.


I didn’t mean to imply that vanity is an entirely toxic attribute, and I think I share your rationale for having arms, more or less. The point I was trying to make is that there is a certain inevitability about the use of heraldry in public—signet rings, for instance—being taken as an assertion of social superiority, and that we all must be cognizant of that and comfortable with it if we use our arms in public. Hopefully, the status claimed is one the observer will associate with high-mindedness and not merely with pomposity, but it’s not something to bank on.

 
Luis Cid
 
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Luis Cid
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18 January 2012 22:10
 

Fred White;91838 wrote:

I didn’t mean to imply that vanity is an entirely toxic attribute, and I think I share your rationale for having arms, more or less. The point I was trying to make is that there is a certain inevitability about the use of heraldry in public—signet rings, for instance—being taken as an assertion of social superiority, and that we all must be cognizant of that and comfortable with it if we use our arms in public. Hopefully, the status claimed is one the observer will associate with high-mindedness and not merely with pomposity, but it’s not something to bank on.


Fred, I agree that others may see our use of arms in a negative light. Keeping the above in mind it is best to take care to use arms with good taste and some discretion. Ultimately, what others think of my use of arms matters little to me - and I do not feel the need to educate them. Outside of this forum I seldom discuss my arms or heraldry with anyone other than my wife; so I’m grateful to have the opportunity to do so here with you and the other participants in our online discussions of this ancient custom that we all enjoy!

 
Joseph McMillan
 
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Joseph McMillan
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18 January 2012 23:11
 

eploy;91802 wrote:

In the US, however, it seems that those working in big business had one up on civil servants and military officers. What is for certain is that arms seemed to have played even less of a role or no role whatsoever in determing social class.


At the risk of going even further off topic (albeit briefly), I strongly recommend the works of the wonderfully named E. Digby Baltzell on the subject of social class in the U.S.: Philadelphia Gentlemen (1958 ), The Protestant Establishment (1964), and Puritan Boston and Quaker Philadelphia (1979). Paul Fussell’s Class (1983) is also a very perceptive and funny if rather nasty take on the phenomenon. Both authors tend to be excessively Northeast-centric, especially Fussell, but are still worth reading.

 
Wilfred Leblanc
 
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Wilfred Leblanc
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19 January 2012 01:01
 

Joseph McMillan;91841 wrote:

At the risk of going even further off topic (albeit briefly), I strongly recommend the works of the wonderfully named E. Digby Baltzell on the subject of social class in the U.S.: Philadelphia Gentlemen (1958 ), The Protestant Establishment (1964), and Puritan Boston and Quaker Philadelphia (1979). Paul Fussell’s Class (1983) is also a very perceptive and funny if rather nasty take on the phenomenon. Both authors tend to be excessively Northeast-centric, especially Fussell, but are still worth reading.


Joseph, digressions like this should be encouraged!

 

I’ve always meant to read Baltzell’s The Protestant Establishment, though I suspect that even in 1964, the evanescence of said establishment must have been in view. Tad Friend’s (2009) memoir Cheerful Money reminds us that it is scarcely more than a memory now, but as reviewers of the book were quick to point out, that’s about what one would have anticipated from an establishment that was 50% dipsomaniacal and 50% sincerely behind the rise of meritocracy.

 
Wilfred Leblanc
 
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Wilfred Leblanc
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19 January 2012 01:02
 

Luis Cid;91840 wrote:

Outside of this forum I seldom discuss my arms or heraldry with anyone other than my wife; so I’m grateful to have the opportunity to do so here with you and the other participants in our online discussions of this ancient custom that we all enjoy!


Luis, I commend you on finding such an indulgent wife!

 
eploy
 
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eploy
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19 January 2012 09:45
 

Fred White;91842 wrote:

Joseph, digressions like this should be encouraged!

I’ve always meant to read Baltzell’s The Protestant Establishment, though I suspect that even in 1964, the evanescence of said establishment must have been in view. Tad Friend’s (2009) memoir Cheerful Money reminds us that it is scarcely more than a memory now, but as reviewers of the book were quick to point out, that’s about what one would have anticipated from an establishment that was 50% dipsomaniacal and 50% sincerely behind the rise of meritocracy.

 


Gentlemen,

 

Thanks for the suggestions.  I recall reading parts of Old Money by Nelson Aldrich several years back and liked the chapters I read.  Sadly with such a long reading list, I never got around to finishing it.  :(

 
Joseph McMillan
 
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Joseph McMillan
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19 January 2012 09:54
 

Fred White;91842 wrote:

Joseph, digressions like this should be encouraged!

I’ve always meant to read Baltzell’s The Protestant Establishment, though I suspect that even in 1964, the evanescence of said establishment must have been in view.


I was thinking of all of these simply in terms of the way the authors discussed what sociologists would call "class markers"—how does one identify who is or isn’t a gentleman in the social class sense of the term.  Things like where they go to school, clubs they belong to, what kind of work they do, what churches do they attend, where do they live, etc.  Fussell gets into the things like how do they talk, how do they dress, how do they furnish their houses, and so on.

 

As an aside, the best novelists tend to be very astute observers of these things as well—and not just people who wrote about "society."  I was recently rereading one of Faulkner’s novels—Intruder in the Dust, I think—and was struck by his distinction between the farmers, who came to town on Saturday in their khaki work shirts, and the gentlemen-planters who might have worn just such a shirt in the fields but put on a white shirt and tie when they came to town.

 

On the broader theoretical plane, Baltzell’s central theme in The Protestant Establishment is that the American upper class as it existed from the late 18th to late 19th centuries was atrophying into a closed caste and was therefore becoming irrelevant, to the detriment of the country.

 
eploy
 
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eploy
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19 January 2012 22:42
 

Joseph McMillan;91854 wrote:

On the broader theoretical plane, Baltzell’s central theme in The Protestant Establishment is that the American upper class as it existed from the late 18th to late 19th centuries was atrophying into a closed caste and was therefore becoming irrelevant, to the detriment of the country.

 

 


At the risk of further digression and admittedly starting a tangential debate, the upper middle class seems to have inherited from the upper class (or perhaps it always held) the mantle of leadership.  Looking over much of US history, most of America’s political, military and greatest business leaders came from a decidedly middle or upper middle class backgrounds.  The extremes of Lincoln and the Roosevelts and Kennedys seem to have been more the exception than the rule, albeit these men seem most celebrated (i.e., as examples of striving for the American dream, and those who have lived that dream for several consecutive generations). Just an observation.

 

Relating it all back to heraldry, I have noticed (perhaps incorrectly) that most modern American armigers are middle or upper-middle class, and that fewer American armigers have an upper class background (e.g., Trump does not bother with arms and apparently the Bushes don’t care either, but many middle class Americans are assuming legitimate arms or getting grants from overseas authorities).  Many of these upperclass families do not seem to have any arms whatsoever:  whether ancestral, recently granted or bogus arms attributed to their surnames (just looking at a few of the upper class people I grew up with).  Is this a conscious or unconscious instance of oneupsmanship on the part of "newer" families?  Does anyone else on this forum have a different impression?  Just trying to relate the conversation back to American heraldry before the moderator pulls the plug on this thread…

 
Wilfred Leblanc
 
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Wilfred Leblanc
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20 January 2012 00:52
 

Tangents like this shouldn’t be suppressed, as they might well be woven back into to the original topic (cf. Castiglione’s Book of the Courtier for the discursive but integrated discussion to end them all! That it is no doubt largely imagined is irrelevant). The question of social class certainly has some bearing on the plausibility/desirability of an official arms granting authority in the U.S.

 
Wilfred Leblanc
 
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Wilfred Leblanc
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20 January 2012 00:55
 

Joseph McMillan;91854 wrote:

I was thinking of all of these simply in terms of the way the authors discussed what sociologists would call "class markers"—how does one identify who is or isn’t a gentleman in the social class sense of the term.  Things like where they go to school, clubs they belong to, what kind of work they do, what churches do they attend, where do they live, etc.  Fussell gets into the things like how do they talk, how do they dress, how do they furnish their houses, and so on.

As an aside, the best novelists tend to be very astute observers of these things as well—and not just people who wrote about "society."  I was recently rereading one of Faulkner’s novels—Intruder in the Dust, I think—and was struck by his distinction between the farmers, who came to town on Saturday in their khaki work shirts, and the gentlemen-planters who might have worn just such a shirt in the fields but put on a white shirt and tie when they came to town.

 

On the broader theoretical plane, Baltzell’s central theme in The Protestant Establishment is that the American upper class as it existed from the late 18th to late 19th centuries was atrophying into a closed caste and was therefore becoming irrelevant, to the detriment of the country.


I’ll have to move Baltzell up a notch on my Amazon wish list.

 

Faulkner displays immaculate taste in choosing names for his characters in Intruder in the Dust, doesn’t he?

 
Derek Howard
 
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Derek Howard
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20 January 2012 03:57
 

eploy;91863 wrote:

I have noticed (perhaps incorrectly) that most modern American armigers are middle or upper-middle class, and that fewer American armigers have an upper class background (e.g., Trump does not bother with arms ...

Perhaps you spoke too soon - see: http://www.therichtimes.com/donald-trump-gets-his-own-scottish-coat-of-arms/

Derek Howard

 
Michael Y. Medvedev
 
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Michael Y. Medvedev
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20 January 2012 05:13
 

It seems that Trump remains non-armigerous and it is his company that got a corporative coat of arms with a typical sallet.

http://www.therichtimes.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/TRUMP_ARMS_DN011-550x363.jpg