Joe McMillan recently posted on the Heraldry Society of Scotland forum, in a thread with the same name as above, the following information (I’m summarizing, hopefully accurately, rather than posting his words verbatim, since I haven’t requested his OK to do so; omitting specifics e.g. blason of the arms - though Joe may wish to post them, or you can read them there. I’m also throwing in my own questions & comments that IMO may be relevant in the Ameriucan context that might not matter in the Scottish context.
Joe found two interesting examples in colonial (& maybe early post-colonial ?) Maryland of men who quartered rather than impaled their wives’ arms; in both cases the wives were not heraldic heiresses:
* Tombstone of Daniel Dulany (d. 1753) & wife Rebecca Smith (d. 1737) in Annapolis—clearly well pre-Independence. Their son also named Danial Delany used Dulany arms on seal & bookplate (no dates given for Daniel Jr. as to b, d, & actual use of seal or bookplate, so unclear if pre- or post-Independence)
* Seal & silver of Charles Carroll, Barrister (1723-83) quartering his arms with a variant of his wife’s family arms. Unclear if the seal & bookplate were engraved and/or actively in use pre- and/or post-Independence.
These examples raise a few questions in my mind relevant to how the quartering, rather than impaling, the arms of non-heiress wives might, or might not, be considered as fitting within our concept of "best practices" for American heraldry. I have some half-baked & somewhat self-contradictory initial impressions, but would rather see how others here might view these questions. In no particular order:
* Should we view these as relevant examples of acceptable pre- and/or post-Independence practice, or as abberations?
* How much weight, if any, should we give to the question of whether a given example occurred before or after Independence, and fopr colonial practices, whether or not they appear to have continued post-Independence?
* Where an early (pre-or post-Independence) useage runs counter to more recent generally published information, how much weight should we give to possible or likely mis-perception of the significance of a given form of marshalling by generally knowledgeable modern observers whose understanding of the meaning of e.g. impalement vs. quartering, based on generally available modern published reference material? (sorry if too long-winded).
Whatcha think?
Michael F. McCartney;96845 wrote:
Joe McMillan recently posted on the Heraldry Society of Scotland forum, in a thread with the same name as above, the following information (I’m summarizing, hopefully accurately, rather than posting his words verbatim, since I haven’t requested his OK to do so; omitting specifics e.g. blason of the arms - though Joe may wish to post them, or you can read them there. I’m also throwing in my own questions & comments that IMO may be relevant in the Ameriucan context that might not matter in the Scottish context.
Joe found two interesting examples in colonial (& maybe early post-colonial ?) Maryland of men who quartered rather than impaled their wives’ arms; in both cases the wives were not heraldic heiresses:
* Tombstone of Daniel Dulany (d. 1753) & wife Rebecca Smith (d. 1737) in Annapolis—clearly well pre-Independence. Their son also named Danial Delany used Dulany arms on seal & bookplate (no dates given for Daniel Jr. as to b, d, & actual use of seal or bookplate, so unclear if pre- or post-Independence)
The arms are in our early American roll, but for convenience, Quarterly, 1st and 4th Argent a cross lozengy Gules and on a chief Or a lion passant Gules; 2nd and 3rd Azure a saltire betewen four birds close Argent (for Smith). Daniel Dulany, Jr. (1722-97) was a prominent politician in Revolutionary-era Maryland who ultimately opted against independence but stayed on in the newly independent US. I would assume that he kept using his bookplate and seal after independence, but don’t have any evidence one way or the other.
Quote:
* Seal & silver of Charles Carroll, Barrister (1723-83) quartering his arms with a variant of his wife’s family arms. Unclear if the seal & bookplate were engraved and/or actively in use pre- and/or post-Independence.
Quarterly, 1st and 4th Gules two lions rampant combatant Or supporting a sword palewise proper hilted and pommelled Or; 2nd and 3rd Argent a lion sejant regardant Sable (for Tilghman). The Tilghman quartering is a variation on the crest of his wife’s family. Their arms are Per fess Sable and Argent a lion double-tailed rampant regardant counterchanged crowned Or, with the crest A demi-lion statant Sable.
These quartered arms are on the seal (ordered from London shortly after Carroll married Margaret Tilghman in 1763), and engraved on a silver chocolate pot and cake basket dated to circa 1764.
The bookplate of Charles Carroll, Barrister (so-called to distinguish him from Charles Carroll of Carrollton, Charles Carroll of Annapolis, Dr. Charles Carroll, and Charles Carroll of Duddington) shows only the Carroll arms, as does that of his nephew James Carroll (1762-1832, born Maccubbin, who took the Carroll name and arms after his uncle’s death under the first of the Maryland name and arms acts). The same arms are also on a number of pieces of silver in the collection at the barrister’s house, Mount Clare, in Baltimore.
Quote:
These examples raise a few questions in my mind relevant to how the quartering, rather than impaling, the arms of non-heiress wives might, or might not, be considered as fitting within our concept of "best practices" for American heraldry. I have some half-baked & somewhat self-contradictory initial impressions, but would rather see how others here might view these questions. In no particular order:
* Should we view these as relevant examples of acceptable pre- and/or post-Independence practice, or as abberations?
* How much weight, if any, should we give to the question of whether a given example occurred before or after Independence, and fopr colonial practices, whether or not they appear to have continued post-Independence?
* Where an early (pre-or post-Independence) useage runs counter to more recent generally published information, how much weight should we give to possible or likely mis-perception of the significance of a given form of marshalling by generally knowledgeable modern observers whose understanding of the meaning of e.g. impalement vs. quartering, based on generally available modern published reference material? (sorry if too long-winded).
Whatcha think?
What I found in doing my research was that the English rules of marshalling (impalement for most husbands and wives, escutcheon of pretense for husbands of heiresses, quartering only for children of heiresses) were not officially fixed until shortly before the English settlement of North America began. In Scotland (and probably in Ireland, where the elder Dulany and Carroll’s father were both born), it was not until some considerable time afterward that the English rules became the norm.
I think Mike’s question depends on one’s philosophy as to whether the rules of American heraldry should be descriptive (i.e., derived from actual practice) or prescriptive (i.e., based on the rules laid down by official heralds in the countries from which the US was settled).
Here’s the Carroll-Tilghman seal ring. Please do not disseminate this outside the AHS site—I paid for a license for the image for an article I’ve submitted to the Heraldry Society journal, The Coat of Arms, and even sharing it here is pushing the terms and conditions.
http://www.americanheraldry.org/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=1169&stc=1&d=1355672415
Keep in mind that as this is a seal, it is engraved in reverse.
Is there some possibility that these men simply went ahead and had the items quartered rather than impaled, particularly on the silver, knowing that it would be passed on to the next generation where quartering would be the appropriate depiction?
Kenneth Mansfield;96853 wrote:
Is there some possibility that these men simply went ahead and had the items quartered rather than impaled, particularly on the silver, knowing that it would be passed on to the next generation where quartering would be the appropriate depiction?
Neither wife was a heraldic heiress, and in neither case did the next generation (in Carroll’s case, his Maccubbin nephews who adopted the name and arms of Carroll) use the quartered arms.
I suppose reading rather than skimming is a tool I ought to employ. :whistle:
Joseph McMillan;96849 wrote:
I think Mike’s question depends on one’s philosophy as to whether the rules of American heraldry should be descriptive (i.e., derived from actual practice) or prescriptive (i.e., based on the rules laid down by official heralds in the countries from which the US was settled).
This is a pretty good and pretty provocative formula. If I may put my two kopecks in, both attitudes seem to me mutually complementary. An armorial norm, a convention or a mere guideline must reflect the actual practice (to avoid being unrealistic and to make any set of principles genuinely related to the correspondent nation or territory). But once formulated, any description-based principle must tend to gain at least certain flavour of prescriptiveness. Even on the level of the initial description any heraldry-minded observer would bear in mind certain context and would impose certain system, that is, would trespass the borders of pure description and make a step or two towards the obtemperable.
As far as we are discussing the heraldic tradition of the USA, the British practice<strike> and [to a slightly lesser extent] the British doctrine<strike> form the natural closest context. But it is not that easy to define what an extension of the English system is without a heraldically active Sovereign and his officers-of-arms (be it in the USA or, say, in Australia). This re-accentuates all the image.</strike></strike>
Joe—thanks for posting the additional information, and especially for sharing the not-to-be-further-shared photo of the real thing!
You wrote, "I think Mike’s question depends on one’s philosophy as to whether the rules of American heraldry should be descriptive (i.e., derived from actual practice) or prescriptive (i.e., based on the rules laid down by official heralds in the countries from which the US was settled)."
That’s an interesting formulation for discussion, but not what I had in mind. I don’t much care (oops—too blunt—"I wasn’t thinking of") following foreign rules as such, since their writ no longer runs here. Rather, my concern was the likelihood that most Americans, whose only language is English & whose knowledge is what they have read in English, would naturally interpret what they see in light of what they have read. In that regard, the system described in most English-language heraldic books would likely be seen as descriptive—i.e. here’s how it’s done—even if the reader would reject any attempt to impose foreign prescriptive authority as such—i.e. because I say so.
So to me the question would be how to balance the wider descriptive variety of historic American practice, with the narrower current descriptive perception of the meaning of various forms of marshalling.
Hopefully that clarifies what I was asking—sorry I wasn’t clearer initially—though of course the other formulation also poses questions worth discussing.