Quarterings for offspring of married cousins?

 
MohamedHossam
 
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MohamedHossam
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05 September 2008 19:59
 

Hey everyone

I had a question, but it’s a bit difficult to explain, so I will just give you the scenario.

 

John Q (arms: azure a bend or) married Mary Z (gules a fess or). Mary’s sister Maggy Z (gules a fess or) marries Bob R (vert a lion or).

 

Ok so a few years have passed and they have kids. Now if what I know about inheritance of arms is correct, here is the second part of the scenario.

 

John and Mary Q’s son William Q(arms of John Q and arms of Mary Z impaled) marries Maggy and Bob R’s daughter Jane R (arms of Bob R and Maggy Z impaled). (assume this is allowed in the area in which they live)

 

OK, so the third generation, William and Jane Q have a son, George Q. Would his arms quarter just his father’s family’s arms (azure a bend or) and his mother’s family’s arms (from her father’s side) (vert a lion or)? Or would he quarter John-and-Mary-impaled with Bob-and-Maggy-impaled? Or would he quarter John, Mary, Maggy, Bob (respectively in that order) so that the second and third quarters would be the same?

 

Would Mary and Maggy have the same arm or can only one of them be the heraldic heiress in that family? Would one of the two ladies have to difference her respective arms or what? What exactly would go about?

 

If anyone sees any errors/holes/contradictions in this scenario please point it out and explain it to me. smile

 

Cheers,

 
Kenneth Mansfield
 
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Kenneth Mansfield
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05 September 2008 20:40
 

Your first mistake is that the children don’t bear the arms of their parents impaled. Only the married couple impales the arms. The children would bear their parents’ arms quartered. So . . . start over from there and ask again. wink

 
 
Alexander Liptak
 
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Alexander Liptak
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05 September 2008 22:21
 

usually woman do not pass the arms down, and if they did, it would only be the eldest sister because no brothers were born.

but yes, the arms get quartered if inherited. impaled is to show marriage.  I and IV show the arms of the father.  II and III the arms from the mother.  subsequent generations will add the third arms to III, and fourth arms to IV.  since inheritance from woman are unaltered, if a woman has quartered arms, what happens is those all get placed in one quarter and are subsequently sub quartered.  it gets very complicated.

 
MohamedHossam
 
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MohamedHossam
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05 September 2008 22:44
 

OK, I see. Thanks.

When would an inestucheon be used?

 

Cheers,

 
Kelisli
 
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Kelisli
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05 September 2008 23:56
 

It totally depends.  What Xander wrote holds true in mostly British heraldry.  In Iberian and Germanic heraldry, things are a bit different.

 
Charles E. Drake
 
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Charles E. Drake
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06 September 2008 01:59
 

The matter is actually quite complicated. First of all, in British heraldry, the usual scenario is that none of the arms are passed on by the daughters unless they are heraldic heiresses.

If there are no sons, then both are heiresses and both transmit the arms. It is incorrect only the eldest is the heraldic heiress.

 

As Kenneth has pointed out, the children quarter the arms, not impale them.

 

Generally in British heraldry when an heiress brings in quarters, these are not kept in grandquarters and grand-grand quarters, but rather the grandquarters are broken up and distributed on the shield. The exception to this would be when the quarters were inherited through a name and arms clause, in which case the grandquarters would be left intact.

 

When cousins marry cousins who are heraldic heiresses (so-called "line breeding"), many of the quarters get repeated, which leads to those huge shields with hundreds of quarters we have seen. Repeating the same shield over and over may make a genealogical point, but is considered heraldic decadence by many. There are some examples of this in Burke and Fox-Davies Armorial Families (Fox-Davies liked this kind of thing.)

 

The Scots, on the other hand, are less likely to pile on quarters, for Lyon used the requirement to re-matriculate as an opportunity to clean up a shield and create something more esthetically pleasing. As long as the arms are distinct, various Lords Lyon have seen fit to rearrange and eliminate quarters to compose the arms of different sons or cadets.  This is analogous to the system of bordures or brissures, which provide a theoretical starting point, but need not be rigidly followed, especially as things become complicated.

 

An inescutcheon is used in English heraldry when the wife is an heraldic heiress and her father is deceased. The husband in this case "represents" her father. A case in point is my own shield.

 

Inescutcheons are used in different ways in other traditions. In Germany, for example, they often bear the pronominal coat, and the quarters may represent inheritance, territorial holdings, and even pretensions.

 

Kind regards,

 

Charles

 
David Pritchard
 
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David Pritchard
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06 September 2008 07:38
 

Charles E. Drake;63105 wrote:

The matter is actually quite complicated.


Charles you are quite correct in this but the situation is even more complicated than that which you tried to explain to us, which is why Fox-Davies took thirty-seven pages to explain the complexities of this topic in his writtings. In regard to marshalling inherited arms in Great Britain and Ireland, there are two different systems, that of England and Ireland, and that of Scotland, the former being rather simple to acquire quarterings through the female line and the latter being much more stringent on what constitutes an heraldic heiress.

 

In former Holy Roman Empire countries acquiring additional quarters is more likely to be the result of acquiring additional substantive estates through either the male or the female lines, the actual quarterings representing the estates themselves rather than ones genealogy.

 

In Spain, Portugal and Brazil all females may transmit their arms to their children be they heiresses or not.

 

In pre-1917 Russia additional quarterings had to be approved by the Russian Sovereign and were more likely to be augmentations rather than genealogical inheritances.

 

Of course a book could be written about each of these countries’ rules for marshalling (and probably has been). This is not a simple subject.

 
Joseph McMillan
 
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Joseph McMillan
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06 September 2008 08:57
 

David Pritchard;63108 wrote:

In Spain, Portugal and Brazil all females may transmit their arms to their children be they heiresses or not.


And Spain and Portugal were not the same, either, although English heraldic writers often lump them together.  As I understand it, Spanish quarterings were normally acquired by inheritance of an entailed estate.  The founder of the entail would stipulate that inheritance was conditional on the heir adopting his name, his arms, or both.  The armorial condition was normally satisfied by quartering, the position of the quarter(s) being determined by the terms of the entail, unless the founder of the entail had stipulated that the heir had to abandon his previous name and arms altogether.  In short, you normally didn’t simply quarter your mother’s arms willy-nilly, but only if there was a reason to do so.

 

I don’t fully understand the Portuguese rules, other than that the number of quarters was limited to four, and the senior member of an armorial lineage was prohibited from quartering—he had to bear the arms of that lineage in their original form—unless he was the the senior member of more than one lineage.

 
David Pritchard
 
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David Pritchard
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06 September 2008 10:32
 

Joseph McMillan;63109 wrote:

....the number of quarters was limited to four, and the senior member of an armorial lineage was prohibited from quartering—he had to bear the arms of that lineage in their original form—unless he was the the senior member of more than one lineage.


I believe that this is a correct description of the rules used to quarter personal arms in Portugal. It should be mentioned that although the senior male of a lineage or head of a noble house did not quarter his arms, he still transmitted the right to quarter earlier inherited arms onto his children.

 

As I wrote earlier, the subject of marshalling arms is a complicated one with Joseph’s observations on my comments simply reinforcing that point.

 
Wilfred Leblanc
 
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Wilfred Leblanc
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06 September 2008 13:25
 

This question to Charles is a digression, but I’m curious: I detect an innovation in the third quarter of your shield. What does it refer to/reflect? Sorry if I missed an update posted elsewhere.

 
David Pritchard
 
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David Pritchard
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06 September 2008 14:38
 

Fred White;63113 wrote:

This question to Charles is a digression, but I’m curious: I detect an innovation in the third quarter of your shield. What does it refer to/reflect? Sorry if I missed an update posted elsewhere.


I noticed the same change and am curious as to the origin of this third quarter.

 
Charles E. Drake
 
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Charles E. Drake
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06 September 2008 23:38
 

Fred White;63113 wrote:

This question to Charles is a digression, but I’m curious: I detect an innovation in the third quarter of your shield. What does it refer to/reflect? Sorry if I missed an update posted elsewhere.


These are my mother’s arms, which were assumed and registered with the Augustan Society in 2003.

 

You can read about them at the relevant Burke page:

http://www.armorial-register.com/arms-us/nail-ec-arms.html

 

I am toying with the idea of display them as a quarter, so I’m using the avatar as a version of the ‘fridge test.

 

I tend to enjoy more complex arms (though not the hundreds of quarterings variety), though YMMV.

 

/Charles

 
MohamedHossam
 
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MohamedHossam
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07 September 2008 05:16
 

Thanks to everyone who replied. I see the answer to my question now. :D

Cheers,

 
Daniel C. Boyer
 
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Daniel C. Boyer
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28 October 2008 13:29
 

Charles E. Drake;63105 wrote:

The matter is actually quite complicated. First of all, in British heraldry, the usual scenario is that none of the arms are passed on by the daughters unless they are heraldic heiresses.


The only exceptions are that an illegitimate woman is regarded as a heraldic heiress period, even if she has brothers of the same parentage, and in the case of a woman with brothers who is an original grantee her arms impaled with those of her husband within a "bordure of distinguishing tincture" are quartered.

 
Michael F. McCartney
 
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Michael F. McCartney
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28 October 2008 15:25
 

Quote:

Originally Posted by Charles E. Drake View Post

The matter is actually quite complicated. First of all, in British heraldry, the usual scenario is that none of the arms are passed on by the daughters unless they are heraldic heiresses.

Daniel Boyer:

The only exceptions are that an illegitimate woman is regarded as a heraldic heiress period, even if she has brothers of the same parentage, and in the case of a woman with brothers who is an original grantee her arms impaled with those of her husband within a "bordure of distinguishing tincture" are quartered.

 

IMO/FWIW, while this is interesting as "how they do it there" I would hope we don’t get into this sort of nitpickery in the US, except as a personal choice for those (hopefully few) who for personal reasons happen to like it—especially the business re: woman grantee with brothers etc.  If the goal is simplicity and ease of recognition, the impaled & bordured business strikes me as contra-indicated.