James Dempster;105044 wrote:

No Pattillos in Lyon Register up till 1972, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Sir Bruce Pattullo, Governor of the Bank of Scotland 1991-98, wasn’t armigerous.

What percentage of Scottish arms would you estimate the Lyon Register captures, James?

Joe - thanks for clarifying mutatis etc. in #158: "...according to the customs prevailing here."  Makes perfect sense now.  (I need to find my Latin-English dictionary )

I think we’re pretty much on the same page, though your version is (as usual, much) more concise than my rambling.

"Mutatis mutandis" means "changing what has to be changed."  For instance, if I say (contrary to fact) that "German heraldic rules are the same as Scottish heraldic rules, mutatis mutandis," I’m not saying that in Germany it’s unlawful to bear arms without the approval of Lord Lyon, but that it’s unlawful to bear arms without the approval of a German authority corresponding to Lord Lyon.

Thanks!

Joseph McMillan;105034 wrote:

I meant precisely "changing what needs to be changed."  Substitute the word "American" for "Italian, Spanish, Portuguese."  Heraldry used by Americans in the present-day USA according to the customs prevailing here.

Defining those customs may be difficult and complex.  That’s the nature of the society.  It’s an analytical challenge, but no different in kind from discerning what is common vs. what is distinctive among various regional, class, religious, and ethnic subcultures in any society.

I understand mutatis mutandis just fine, but I don’t think you’re really answering the question, and I sense that your reasoning is circular. The question is not rhetorical, but perhaps it encapsulates several others, so let me try again.

At what point was it decided by American heraldry enthusiasts that any inherited coat of arms consisting of anything beyond a shield, crest surmounting a tilting helm, and motto should be purged for use in the U.S.? Does this view appear explicitly outside the AHS Guidelines or is it arrived at purely by way of extrapolation and analogy, and articulated only in the AHS Guidelines? Is there any discernible tradition of Americans adhering to this view? Is the data set large enough say?

If an American inherits a coat of arms from, say, England, consisting only of the elements the AHS doesn’t object to, what exactly causes them to become American rather than English arms? The transformation is invisible, after all, so where and when does it occur? And by whose power? Do the inoffensive American armiger’s English cousins bearing the exact same arms bear English arms or American arms at that point? If it’s within the armiger’s power to declare the arms American, then why doesn’t our hypothetical American inheritor of a peerage (or a lesser Scottish barony) who wants to use his full coat of arms have the same power?

Or, to put it another way, if the inoffensive inherited arms do not declare that the bearer is operating in an English social and legal environment (when he isn’t), how do the arms with nobiliary additaments declare that?

Joseph McMillan;105043 wrote:

Very interesting.  I knew some Pattillos growing up and always assumed the name was Italian.  Now that would have horrified Fred’s Georgia grandmother for sure!

According to the Clan Gregor Society, one of their septs.

Quote:

On the "revival" of ancestral arms, I don’t think we need to be more holier than the Pope, or in this case more scrupulous than Lord Lyon or the College of Arms.

Fair enough, but if you don’t want to be holier than the Pope or more scrupulous that Lord Lyon or the College of Arms in questions concerning rightful inheritance of the central elements of a coat of arms, why would you be holier/more scrupulous in questions concerning rightful inheritance of nobiliary additaments?

Ah yes, clan societies make a lot of claims. Now some MacGregors may have taken the name Pattillo during the period of the ban but… I reckon 95%+ of all "sept" claims are nonsense put about by expansionist clan societies and unscrupulous tartan manufacturers/salesmen.

As to what percentage of arms Lyon Register captures, which figure might you want?

The circular argument would say 100% since arms are not legally arms in Scotland unless in Lyon Register - but I don’t think even Lyon Court would make that argument - it would modify it to something like 100% of all legally borne current arms are in Lyon Register, recognising that there are some people using arms contrary to the Lyon Court Acts, and many historic arms are not in the register because there is no one with a proven right to them and they have never been matriculated.

Taking the larger group of all historic Scottish arms, I’d say that maybe 50-60% of the design concepts make some appearance, in the sense that the simple arms e.g. Azure three widgets Argent may not appear but cadet versions with various degrees of differencing may.

As to all the individual arms known, from seals, monuments, pre-1672 rolls and the like, I think you’d be lucky to find 30-40% of them in Lyon Register, despite the huge increase in the number of matriculations in the last 150 years skewing the distribution of arms towards the modern.

These are just educated guesses based on little more than instinct and knowledge of how much historic local heraldry isn’t in Lyon Register

James

Wilfred Leblanc;105060 wrote:

Fair enough, but if you don’t want to be holier than the Pope or more scrupulous that Lord Lyon or the College of Arms in questions concerning rightful inheritance of the central elements of a coat of arms, why would you be holier/more scrupulous in questions concerning rightful inheritance of nobiliary additaments?

For the simple reason that use of a coat of arms in itself does not assert a status incompatible with a fundamental tenet of our republican polity.  Maybe the use of a coat of arms is a statement of one’s own class status; maybe it isnt’.  But even if it is, it doesn’t proclaim a standing outside the one social estate recognized by our polity:  freeman or commoner.

I’m not being holier than the Pope or the College of Arms on the point of supporters.  I’m being precisely as holy as the College of Arms.  The bearer of a non-British noble title would not not NOT be allowed supporters and a coronet in England.  The same should apply to bearers of non-American noble titles in the United States.

Mutatis mutandis.

(I know Fred understand what this means.  Michael didn’t.)

Joseph McMillan;105062 wrote:

I’m not being holier than the Pope or the College of Arms on the point of supporters.  I’m being precisely as holy as the College of Arms.  The bearer of a non-British noble title would not not NOT be allowed supporters and a coronet in England.  The same should apply to bearers of non-American noble titles in the United States.

With all due respect, Joe, I think you invoke the authority of the College of Arms when it’s convenient and reject it when it isn’t. The College of Arms would grant no arms at all to many people the AHS Guidelines affirm in their assumption of arms.

Perhaps the American is, as de Tocqueville put it, "the Englishman left to himself" (which I think, by the way, is about right). Still, it has to be observed that America has rejected essential elements of the matrix within which the College of Arms has a function. So if on the one hand, "the Englishman left to himself" rejects the existence of nobles as a legal category, it isn’t clear on the other that he (the normative American) cares for any codification or regulation of heraldry whatsoever. It isn’t clear that he cares for anyone at all telling him what it is or isn’t appropriate for heraldry enthusiasts to do. (After all, he has taken it upon himself to do things as he pleases in the several ways you enumerate earlier in this thread. If he can freely assume arms, make cadency marks permanent, inherit arms from non-heiresses, etc., why the heck can’t he use his ancestor’s supporters and coronet of rank?) At the same time, neither is it clear that he rejects the commemoration of noble ancestors, which is the one unambiguous thing using a coat of arms with nobiliary additaments does. I note no efforts to suppress the multiple lineage societies that commemorate royal and noble ancestry, and no feeling of inconsistency on the part of the many members of those societies who also commemorate Revolutionary ancestors. It seems to me like Americans are pretty comfortable with paradoxes like that.

The Papacy is a point of comparison with the AHS Guidelines that is even less flattering to the AHS. Numerically, Roman Catholics are the largest religiously observant group in the United States, so the Pope’s writ does in some sense run here. It’s been a while, I believe, since any Pope ennobled an American, but I can’t see any Pope approving of the idea that an American should purge the coat of arms on his stationery or signet ring of any nobiliary additaments that any previous Pope has bestowed. And I can’t see the average Catholic deferring to the AHS’s view when it conflicts with the Pope’s.

James Dempster;105061 wrote:

Ah yes, clan societies make a lot of claims. Now some MacGregors may have taken the name Pattillo during the period of the ban but… I reckon 95%+ of all "sept" claims are nonsense put about by expansionist clan societies and unscrupulous tartan manufacturers/salesmen.

Go figure.

And thanks for the estimate of Scottish arms captured by Lyon.

As I understand it, the Pope’s infallibility is limited to matters of faith - theology.  Any authority he may have re: titles and arms, for other than his clergy*, flows from his alter ego of head of state of the sovereign Vatican State - in which role he is not infallible, merely (in America) a foreign Prince or Potentate.  I can still remember JFK assuring his fellow Americans that in his role as President (which doesn’t involve theology) he would be independent of Rome - though he worded it more nicely.

(* and IIRC an earlier Pope forbade the display of secular nobiliary additaments and titles by clergy, which AFAIK is still the rule, because that was seen as incompatible with their role as clergy—arguably analogous to our view re: the use of similar items by Americans in that context)

Please note that "best practices" for heraldry in America fall into at least two major categories: technical matters such as the tincture convention, important for purely practical heraldic reasons such as visual contrast; and essentially ideological matters in which heraldry is secondary to American laws, values and norms which differ from those of various foreign nations from which our ethnic and heraldic roots may derive.

We can argue about technical matters and the rules vs the spirit of the rules, but those arguments will generally not involve our American identity.

But any sort of nobiliary nonsense, foreign or domestic, however artistically or emotionally attractive, is offensive per se (if that’s the right Latin term ).  I use the term "offensive" intentionally, because nobility, and the signs and symbols evoking it, run counter to, and hostile to, what it means to be American.  In short, it is foreign to our shores and to our identity, and unworthy behavior by Americans.

Others may say it more diplomatically, but that’s how I see it, and why I am so blunt about it.  Nothing personal - hate the sin, love the sinner & all that, and I love a good argument, but if heraldry here did include or promote nobiliary concepts, it would deserve to be suppressed.

Michael F. McCartney;105065 wrote:

But any sort of nobiliary nonsense, foreign or domestic, however artistically or emotionally attractive, is offensive per se (if that’s the right Latin term ).  I use the term "offensive" intentionally, because nobility, and the signs and symbols evoking it, run counter to, and hostile to, what it means to be American.  In short, it is foreign to our shores and to our identity, and unworthy behavior by Americans.

Any coat of arms borne by an individual also evokes "nobiliary nonsense," inasmuch as heraldry is a vestige of a world in which nobles and monarchs are key to the frame of reference within which having a coat of arms means something. The fact that people have borne arms here does not mean that doing so is consistent with normative American values. It just means that Americans tolerate it.

Quote:

Others may say it more diplomatically, but that’s how I see it, and why I am so blunt about it.  Nothing personal - hate the sin, love the sinner & all that, and I love a good argument, but if heraldry here did include or promote nobiliary concepts, it would deserve to be suppressed.

No apologies needed (and no confessions offered). I’m glad to have an opportunity for a vigorous debate with people who find this subject interesting.

Michael F. McCartney;105065 wrote:

As I understand it, the Pope’s infallibility is limited to matters of faith - theology.  Any authority he may have re: titles and arms, for other than his clergy*, flows from his alter ego of head of state of the sovereign Vatican State - in which role he is not infallible, merely (in America) a foreign Prince or Potentate.  I can still remember JFK assuring his fellow Americans that in his role as President (which doesn’t involve theology) he would be independent of Rome - though he worded it more nicely.

(* and IIRC an earlier Pope forbade the display of secular nobiliary additaments and titles by clergy, which AFAIK is still the rule, because that was seen as incompatible with their role as clergy—arguably analogous to our view re: the use of similar items by Americans in that context).

There is a distinction to be made between the Pope’s pastoral role and his role as head of state, but he is a terrestrial monarch no matter how you slice it (and no matter how much the current Pope eschews the trappings of monarchy), and he does have descending ranks of nobles, knights, etc., beneath him.

Wilfred Leblanc;105063 wrote:

With all due respect, Joe, I think you invoke the authority of the College of Arms when it’s convenient and reject it when it isn’t. The College of Arms would grant no arms at all to many people the AHS Guidelines affirm in their assumption of arms.

With all due respect, Fred, you keep changing the subject, which is nobiliary entitlements.  What the college would do regarding grants of arms has no bearing on the issue.  The tacit assumption underlying your position is that someone who is a nobleman anywhere is a nobleman everywhere and entitled to use any heraldic insignia from his home country wherever he happens to go.  That assumption is factually incorrect, as demonstrated by the practice of the College of Arms.  It also happens to be the practice of Lord Lyon and most likely of the Chief Herald of Ireland (who isn’t supposed to recognize nobility) and the Chief Herald of Canada.

And I’m not particularly interested in what the average American thinks about this subject one way or the other.  I care what the attentive, educated public thinks.

Quote:

The Papacy is a point of comparison with the AHS Guidelines that is even less flattering to the AHS. Numerically, Roman Catholics are the largest religiously observant group in the United States, so the Pope’s writ does in some sense run here. It’s been a while, I believe, since any Pope ennobled an American, but I can’t see any Pope approving of the idea that an American should purge the coat of arms on his stationery or signet ring of any nobiliary additaments that any previous Pope has bestowed. And I can’t see the average Catholic deferring to the AHS’s view when it conflicts with the Pope’s.

And I don’t care what the Pope thinks about heraldic practice in this country, either.  His writ, so far as it runs in this country, is religious.  These issues are entirely secular.

Wilfred Leblanc;105066 wrote:

. The fact that people have borne arms here does not mean that doing so is consistent with normative American values.

What are these normative American values that you believe to be inconsistent with the use of personal heraldry?

A while back, you suggested that I was confusing Jacobinism and republicanism, which means implicitly that you think the two are different.  I completely agree.  The American revolutionaries were not Jacobins and the values of the early republic were not Jacobin values.

The Jacobins abolished personal heraldry in France.  The founders of the American republic did not.  Far from it.  Their own continued use of arms is clear evidence that they did not see personal heraldry as contrary to the values of their revolution, and Washington said as much explicitly.  It may well be true, as you argue, they saw the use of arms as making a statement of social status.  But whether they did or not, they did not pretend to be inventing a society devoid of social gradations.  That would be the Jacobins, not the American revolutionaries.

Your argument seems to be that because the Jacobins, the Founding Fathers, and I take the same view of the incompatibility between nobility and republicanism, we must, to be consistent, also take the same position on the acceptability or unacceptability of all social gradations and, by extension, on personal heraldry.