Confused…

 
liongam
 
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liongam
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10 June 2012 03:15
 

Nick,

Regarding your last post, it is not a question if you have 719 quarterings that one necessarily needed to have married 718 heraldic heiresses.  This is not the case. The acquisition of quarterings occurs when the male line fails within an armigerious family and only a daughter or daughters pertain.  That girl or those girls is/are the heiress or heiresses to their paternal arms, together with any other quartering/s that may exist.  Therefore when they marry and have issue, their children will eventually quarter their mother’s arms (and any quartering/s accrued therefrom) with their paternal arms.  In this way the representation of these families continue.  In England, Wales and Ireland (in Scotland other rules pertain) a family may display all the quarterings acquired with marriages to heraldic heiresses, although from a practical point of view many families just make a selection of quarterings in chronological order to display.  A case in point is the Duke of Norfolk who displays only four quarterings, but who undoubtedly can claim many hundreds of others.

 

So that with one judicious marriage to an heraldic heiress, one can acquire for one’s children a scheme of quarterings from one or two to tens or a hundred or more!

 

Opening a ‘can of worms’: Even in the USA I believe this is still relevant if one has a heritage that stems from the British Isles in that one should follow the tenets of heraldic succession otherwise arms when used in a genealogical context become a muddle.  I believe this to be the case even if one has assumed arms but have British/Colonial forebears.  I have now closed the ‘can of worms’.

 

John

 
Joseph McMillan
 
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Joseph McMillan
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10 June 2012 10:11
 

I would suggest (subject to being shown otherwise) that these 623 or 719 or whatever quarterings are not arms that anyone would actually use in practice, but rather visual assertions of entitlements made only for special occasions—funeral monuments and so on. Now if someone can find a Chandos or Lloyd bookplate or seal or carriage door, etc, with all of this on it (on a signet ring either could easily be mistaken for "Sable plain" if the engraver had to fit all those criss-cross partition lines in the space of a half-inch or so), I will gladly stand corrected.

I believe the only example with even as many as seven different quarterings in our Roll of Early American Arms is that of Sir Richard Coote, Earl of Bellomont, who was governor of New York and New England, 1695-1701.

 

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

 

During the colonial and early post-independence period, at least in the English-speaking areas, Americans did tend to follow the English customs if they quartered at all. Nevertheless, there are interesting exceptions that I have found where quartering rather than impalement or an inescutcheon was used to marshal the arms of husband and wife—even where the wife was not an heiress.

 

I think the logical common denominator (Charles Drake’s phrase, I think) for modern U.S. use is to quarter only when there’s a good reason, and to follow at least some established system, whether it be English, Spanish, German, or whatever, rather than just making it up as we go.

 

See our Guidelines for further thoughts.

 
Nick B II
 
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Nick B II
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10 June 2012 11:52
 

liongam;93926 wrote:

Nick,

Regarding your last post, it is not a question if you have 719 quarterings that one necessarily needed to have married 718 heraldic heiresses.  This is not the case. The acquisition of quarterings occurs when the male line fails within an armigerious family and only a daughter or daughters pertain.  That girl or those girls is/are the heiress or heiresses to their paternal arms, together with any other quartering/s that may exist.  Therefore when they marry and have issue, their children will eventually quarter their mother’s arms (and any quartering/s accrued therefrom) with their paternal arms.  In this way the representation of these families continue.


Which means it should be very difficult to acquire 718 quarterings without genealogical shenanigans.

 

A heraldic heiress doesn’t multiply the number of valid users of a Coat, it merely allows the Coat to pass through the female line for one generation. Instead of having a couple families headed by sons using the Arms you have a couple families headed by sons-in-law quartering the Arms.


liongam;93926 wrote:

Opening a ‘can of worms’: Even in the USA I believe this is still relevant if one has a heritage that stems from the British Isles in that one should follow the tenets of heraldic succession otherwise arms when used in a genealogical context become a muddle.  I believe this to be the case even if one has assumed arms but have British/Colonial forebears.  I have now closed the ‘can of worms’.

John


It’s not really an ‘even in the USA’ question. It’s more a post-feminist modern woman question. Just about any rich country, and quite a few non-rich countries, act like this.

 

There are vanishingly few women who would think it’s fair their brother’s kids get to use Dad’s arms, but their kids don’t. And when your wife tells you she thinks something’s unfair it’s generally not a good idea to tell her she should stop worrying about it because identifying who the kid’s father is is so much more important then the mother.

 

This is one reason I think that if heraldry takes root in the US in a real way a Scots-like differencing system will be a part of it. That way kids can combine elements of their parent’s arms without ending up with 719 quarterings.

 

@Joe:

I’m referring to the Stowe Armorial. It is currently displayed in the library at Stowe House, but however it was used, but it’s very existence shows that somebody was finding a way around the rule. You just don’t get 719 quarterings without forgetting a couple hundred uncles and a couple hundred more nephews.

 

That ‘flexibility’ in the rule shouldn’t be surprising, given that the official rule for centuries has been no all Arms must be granted; but that it’s only been enforced in Scotland.

 

Nick

 
Joseph McMillan
 
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Joseph McMillan
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10 June 2012 14:39
 

Nick B II;93937 wrote:

@Joe:

I’m referring to the Stowe Armorial. It is currently displayed in the library at Stowe House, but however it was used, but it’s very existence shows that somebody was finding a way around the rule. You just don’t get 719 quarterings without forgetting a couple hundred uncles and a couple hundred more nephews.


I would be willing to bet that in an age and culture even more obsessed with genealogy than ours, and lacking such basic amenities as on-demand TV, smart phones, and Wii U, there were people who spent endless hours hunting down as many heiresses as they could and documenting them for the benefit of the College of Arms.

 

In any case, there is no implication that all the quarterings reflect Grenville men’s marriages to heiresses. Many of them would have been brought in by other ancestors in the maternal lines.

 

Finally, note that there are not 719 different quarterings and they don’t represent 718 different heiresses. Many of them clearly represent the same heiress through multiple lines of inheritance. For example, the arms of De Clare (Or three chevronels Gules) appear 30 or so times, always in one of two sequences:

 

1. Between "Gules a bend Argent surmounting a fess Or" and "Gules a pale Or", or

 

2. Between "Argent on a chief Azure three crosses paty fitchy Argent" and "Gules three lions passant Argent."

 

Clearly all these de Clare quarters represent only two de Clare heiresses. This is only two of a number of examples in which the same sequence or three or four coats appears in various places, probably reflecting cousin-marriages in subsequent generations.

 
Jeffrey Boyd Garrison
 
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Jeffrey Boyd Garrison
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10 June 2012 15:33
 

Shortened version: I agree with those who said quarterings should mainly be limited to use in hatchments and such. Practical use is best with one coat.

 
Michael F. McCartney
 
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Michael F. McCartney
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11 June 2012 16:21
 

Quarterings inherited through pre-immigration matches should IMO follow the rules & customs of the particular "old country"—similar to the treatment of old-country arms & brisures in our Guidelines, one’s immigrant ancestor could only have legitimately brought with him on the boat, what he legitimately owned when he boarded the boat (whether heraldry or other heirloom).  Other wise, it was just stolen goods.

For marriages on this side of the pond, with arms "naturalized" as American arms or subsequently assumed, our customs should prevail; one may limit oneself to a particular old-world custom if one desires but is free to do differently if one’s desire falls within our broader American customs.

 

(Is there a prize for obscure run-on sentences?  If so, in the immortal words of cultural iconn Rocky Balboa, "I coulda been a contender!")

 
Brad Smith
 
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Brad Smith
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11 June 2012 21:11
 

Michael F. McCartney;93985 wrote:

(Is there a prize for obscure run-on sentences?  If so, in the immortal words of cultural iconn Rocky Balboa, "I coulda been a contender!")


Totally off-topic.  I thought that was Brando in "On the waterfront".

 
Michael F. McCartney
 
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Michael F. McCartney
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13 June 2012 02:40
 

Brad - you may be right…with six grand-kids my movie-going is usually limited to "G" & few of those are contenders for much of anything more than an excuse for greasy popcorn and a short cat-nap.

Also off-topic; mea culpa…