Joseph,
Please read the Cox paper and review the relevant sections of the two Lord Lyon acts. Frankly, I would rather you be right than me be right as I would prefer an expansive jurisdiction for Lord Lyon.
snelson;104682 wrote:
Gordon Wavamunno, the recipient of the grant of honorary arms from Uganda, was made a KStJ in the VOSJ back in 2012, so that may have been the basis of the grant.
For the record, Wavamunno registered arms—presumably the same ones—at the Bureau. His application was gazetted in October 2011, and the registration was gazetted in March 2012.
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According to an old letter from the College of Arms that I’ve seen, petitioners for arms who are citizens of countries where the Queen is not the head of state are eligible for grants of substantive arms if they were born in that country when the sovereign was still the head of state.
Interesting information.
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I suspect that these instances may be examples of the policy described above in action. Perhaps the 1998 grantee, although a citizen of the Republic of SA, was born in that country when the sovereign was still the head of state. And maybe the 2005 grantee was born after South Africa became a republic?
No, the other way round! The 1998 grantee was born in the 1960s, and the 2005 grantee must have been born before 1961, as his first child was born in 1967.
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For the record, Wavamunno registered arms—presumably the same ones—at the Bureau. His application was gazetted in October 2011, and the registration was gazetted in March 2012.
Out of curiosity, do you remember the blazon? I can’t remember if the Bureau has an online register.
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No, the other way round! The 1998 grantee was born in the 1960s, and the 2005 grantee must have been born before 1961, as his first child was born in 1967.
D’oh!
snelson;104685 wrote:
Out of curiosity, do you remember the blazon? I can’t remember if the Bureau has an online register.
The Bureau does have an online register, on the National Archives website, but the 2012 registrations aren’t on it as yet.
The blazon, as given in the Government Gazette, is :
Argent, on a chevron Gules between in chief two quill pens in saltire Sable penned Gules and in base an East African bull’s head caboshed Sable armed Gules, three crosses couped Or, therebetween two Maltese crosses argent. The shield is ensigned of a circlet Or embellished with sixteen pearls, issuant therefrom the head of a Crowned Crane proper within an open laurel wreath Vert bound Gules.
Motto : Easy Does It.
The arms are depicted on an oval African shield.
I was (am) under the impression that a 1905 or thereabouts legal opinion re: Imperial jurisdiction, while arguably valid in the British Empire of it’s day, wouldn’t necessarily still apply in a Commonwealth of sovereign states - that is, Imperial jurisdiction died with the Empire.
As to Scottish grants generally, the grant is of Scottish arms under Scottish law. Since the Scots view their authority to grant arms to include petitioners in any Commonwealth nation (i.e. those with some legal tie to the British / Commonwealth Crown) without it’s own granting agency, regardless of DNA, they grant what they view as substantive Scottish arms directly to the petitioner.
For foreigner petitioners (non-Commonwealth) with no legal tie to the Crown, Lyon generally grants to a qualifying ancestor, living or dead, not directly to the petitioner who in their view is not eligible for a grant, but is eligible to matriculate regardless of citizenship. There appears to be (or to have been?) an exception for those with some substantial Scottish tie and plausible occasion to display or use arms in Scotland - certainly ownership of real estate, which creates legal rights and obligations under Scottish law; and apparently a few (viewed as) particularly important baronial or "Clan" offices, subject to the willingness of the LL of the day.
It also now appears (?) that the English COA may be making a distinction, in Commonwealth nations, between those where the Queen of wherever is nominally head of state - e.g. Australia & NZ - where grants are substantive, vs Commonwealth members where the Queen is not head of state (e.g. India & Uganda) where grants are "honourary". But this is extrapolation from scant data so perhaps off base.
It doesn’t sound off base. That seems to sum it up well.
We all know that the heraldic authorities have some of their official “policies” or standards made public. I think any inconsistencies that arise stem from the fact that the COA and LL are Royal corporations, not government bureaucracies. They are anything but watertight. They don’t require forms to be filled out and some don’t require much in the way of identification. A great deal is done on a handshake. Their representatives are not paid to be full-time staff. It’s my impression that a heraldic officer will sometimes allow his arm to be twisted into bending some of the College’s boilerplate standards—if he has a serious customer. Some not-insignificant motivations worth remembering are that the College and Lyon Court are self-funded, dealing in a very-subjective setting that supports an acute genre of artistry.
That said, the main question I see left open is why the CHI grants substantive arms to foreigners. I don’t know why this other than my suggestion that theirs is a republic and thus their arms do not confer status on foreigners granted arms.
As much I’d love to use this as a springboard to start a thread on a case for the US having a Chief Herald of its own based on precedents set by Ireland, South Africa and, to some extent, Canada, I know that the subject has already been heavily discussed in the past; probably at nauseam for some. So I’ll leave it.
JJB;104689 wrote:
That said, the main question I see left open is why the CHI grants substantive arms to foreigners. I don’t know why this other than my suggestion that theirs is a republic and thus their arms do not confer status on foreigners granted arms.
I’m not sure I am clear on the status conferred by arms granted by the College of Arms, substantive or otherwise.
The fundamental effect of a substantive grant of arms from any of the Anglophone heraldic authorities is to convey to the grantee and his or her heirs an exclusive right to the use of those arms within the jurisdiction of the authority making the grant (call it country A). That’s all it does, for all practical purposes.
(There was once a nonsensical theory put about, largely by Arthur C. Fox-Davies and Sir Thomas Innes of Learney, that an English or Scottish grant of arms was a grant of gentility or even "noblesse," but this was preposterous even when F-D and TIOL were alive and kicking, and has been thoroughly and repeatedly exploded by serious heraldic scholars. It can be argued that a grant constitutes recognition that the grantee already is gentle/noble, but there is nothing in their patents of appointment or statutory authorities that empowers any king of arms to make someone gentle/noble.)
This doesn’t preclude the kings of arms of country A from granting arms to residents/citizens of countries B, C, D, or even Z, if country A’s own laws and regulations allow, but country A can only enforce the rights conveyed by its officials’ grants within its own territory.
Whether this exclusive right is recognized and enforced in some other country B is entirely up to country B. (For heraldic purposes, the United Kingdom is two countries, one consisting of England, Wales, and Northern Ireland, and the other consisting of Scotland.)
The imperial jurisdiction thing is an assertion that the English kings of arms retain the right not only to grant substantive arms to residents of those of Queen Elizabeth’s overseas realms in which she has not otherwise delegated her heraldic prerogatives, but to enforce the law of arms of England in those countries. Thus they view the granting of arms to such people by anyone but themselves as an infringement.
The problem is that, as Mike McCartney points out, any such imperial jurisdiction that existed before World War I, when the legal opinions on the matter were issued, can no longer exist today because the Queen of the UK, whose heraldic prerogative is exercised by the English and Scottish kings of arms, is no longer legally identical with the Queen of Australia, New Zealand, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, or South Georgia. The English kings of arms have no more power to take actions that are legally binding in New South Wales than a Los Angeles city cop has to arrest someone on the streets of Sydney. It has been repeatedly stated by Australian legal officials that English grants of arms are of no legal effect in Australia, and the same was already true in Canada, according to a Canadian trial court, even prior to the establishment of the CHA.
That being the legal reality, it is even harder to see a difference between substantive and honorary English arms. A grant of English arms to Tommy Englishman conveys an exclusive right to those arms within England but is just a pretty picture when Tommy takes the vellum scroll to Antigua or Papua New Guinea. Conversely, an honorary grant of English arms to Johnny Foreigner is just a pretty picture in Johnny’s house in Katmandu, but still reflects an exclusive right to the arms as against someone usurping them in Lincolnshire.
eploy;104674 wrote:
This has been a very interesting discussion and one central theme seems to be the Commonwealth Heraldic Jurisdiction. Noel Cox wrote a particularly interesting article on this topic. See: http://www.academia.edu/1991162/Commonwealth_Heraldic_Jurisdiction_with_specific_emphasis_on_the_Law_of_Arms_in_New_Zealand.
In essence it seems (at least to me after having read Noel’s article) that only the Earl Marshal working together with Garter King of Arms have the ‘imperial’ jurisdiction to authorize and grant arms within the Commonwealth. Furthermore, only the Earl Marshal and Garter King of Arms can grant honorary arms to Americans. According to Noel’s article, Lord Lyon does not have imperial jurisdiction on par with the English authority being limited by at least 2 Lord Lyon Acts passed by the Scottish and later by British Parliament (it seems the Lord Lyon Act 1672 & the Lord Lyon King of Arms Act 1867). Lord Lyon’s jurisdiction is limited to the territory of Scotland.
As seems to be his habit, Cox asserts things that don’t actually appear in the sources he cites. He says that the 1867 Lyon Act puts Lyon under the authority of the Earl Marshal when acting outside Scotland, but this is not true. The 1867 act says that "The jurisdiction of the Lyon Court in Scotland shall be exercised by the Lyon King of Arms, who shall have the same rights, duties, powers, privileges, and dignities as have heretofore belonged to the Lyon King of Arms in Scotland, except in so far as these are herein-after altered or regulated." It doesn’t say anything about the Earl Marshal, and it would be a very tendentious reading to interpret "in Scotland" as meaning that Lyon cannot continue to grant Scottish arms to people outside Scotland, as he had been doing for centuries.
Cox also persists in swimming against the tide of British constitutional jurisprudence by refusing to accept the consequences of the separation of the crowns. He cites Macaulay’s critique of his (Cox’s) previous writings on this issue, but doesn’t really refute it, merely repeats his own long-standing position.
kimon;104690 wrote:
I’m not sure I am clear on the status conferred by arms granted by the College of Arms, substantive or otherwise.
Kimon,
I agree with Joseph McMillan’s statement. I used the word "confer" when I should have said "nominally recognize".
Anyway, the styling of "gentleman" is as empty in the UK today as it is in the US. It’s only a traditional thing put on vellum. Maybe it made the Fox-Davies’, Ward McAllisters and Hyacinth Buckets of the world happy though. But it’s just a formality.
The word is not present in an Irish grant of substantive arms to foreigners.
Having arms protected means basically nothing anymore. The ironic thing is that the countries that keep a public roll of "protected arms" are the most likely to have those arms harvested for bucket shop heraldry by researchers. And no one can stop that.
And that is exactly why I asked my question when I saw you write "confer".
So, what exactly is the basis of the use of "honorary" when it is not even consistently applied to non Crown subjects (as was originally argued)?
To summarize thus far the rationale for the honorary vs. substantive distinction (and I may probably have missed or misunderstood something):
<ul class=“bbcode_list”>
<li>It is not a matter of monarchy vs. republic (see the Spanish and Dutch cases)</li>
<li>It is not a matter of non Crown subjects (see examples cited above)</li>
<li>It is not a matter of ancestry</li>
<li>It is not a matter of a conferral of status (like a knighthood)</li>
</ul>
If honorary and substantive grants are treated exactly the same, as John Tunesi has stated multiple times in this forum, then why have the distinction at all?
It might just be as Joseph said:
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The thing is that at one time or another the heralds in the three British Isles realms have felt empowered to make up their own rules as the whim struck them. People nowadays seem less receptive to the arbitrary exercise of power than they might have been as recently as 50 years ago, so this capricious approach tends to get challenged in ways that it wasn’t in the past.
kimon;104694 wrote:
If honorary and substantive grants are treated exactly the same, as John Tunesi has stated multiple times in this forum, then why have the distinction at all?
This is my question, as well.
Ditto Joe above.
One concern with Jeff’s last posting above. While the English College of Arms is a corporation, which relies on it’s fees and other work, Lyon Office / Lyon Court is not—Lyon is a Scottish judge in his own Court, who nowadays applies for the post like any other civil servant. Lyon and Lyon Clerk, IIRC, are salaried, and the Scottish Heralds and Pursuivants draw a very small token salary. Fees paid to Lyon go into the generay Treasury, and the day-to-day operating costs AFAIK are appropriated from the Treasury like any other government office or Court. Because the Heralds and Pursuivants draw only a token salary (set in the mid-1800’s, when it was worth something, but AFAIK not adjusted since) they can and do charge clients (petitioners etc) for their services as researchers and advocates before Lyon Court. (The Scottish Heralds and Pursuivants seem to operate along the same lines as their English counterparts, but I may be off on that point.)
Others can confirm or correct my understanding.
None of which AFAIK has much to do with this topic, but just in case…
One correction: unlike their English counterparts, the Scottish heralds and pursuivants (other than the herald or pursuivant who is dual-hatted as Lyon Clerk) are not involved in the day-to-day business of designing and granting arms.
Thanks! But I assume (?) they might assist or represent their clients in proposing what they would like, subject of course to Lyon’s acceptance, modification or rejection?