Quote:

And if we discard the connection between status and arms themselves, are we not obliged to discard the notion that certain armorial elements are themselves status-linked and therefore objectionable?

This, a mingling of my phrasing and Joe’s, remains, perhaps, the key question for which I can’t discern a compelling answer in Joe’s magnum opus here. That said, I remain flattered at all the credit he’s giving me for prompting it and hope I am eventually in a position to respond symmetrically.

I think that one of the aspects of the American Revolution that tends to be taken for granted is the extent to which a whole range of customs, behaviors, etc., that formerly had a public, official character were relegated to the entirely private, personal sphere.  I think that this separation of public and private spheres, and leaving heraldry to the private side, is what made it possible for personal arms to survive.

There were a lot of things more important than heraldry that were left out of the public sphere in our republic.  Religion is one.  The dependence of social status on state (royal) recognition was another.  The disappearance of the concept of fons honorum was a third.  As in pre-Tudor times, where someone stood (and sat) socially did not depend on an official order of precedence—there was no official order of precedence—but on how he was regarded by his fellow citizens.  A man in public life certainly had a hierarchical rank among other officials, but it carried over into private life only to the extent that his public office reflected the respect in which he was held by his fellows.  No longer did some functionary prescribe that that a gentleman’s unmarried daughters should take precedence immediately after his eldest son’s wife, let alone try to dictate that such a scale of precedence should apply to purely private occasions.  (If you don’t believe that people in England worried about such things, take another look at the novels of Jane Austen.)

Yet another reflection of this division between the public sphere and the private is the abandonment of the English concept that a public office was a form of property that the incumbent legally “owned.”  (Interestingly, American commissions of office still use the same legal formulas typical of a grant of property, another instance where something that looks like a continuation of English practice has “suffered a sea change.”)  I would argue that this accounts for the fact that the English practice of impaling personal arms with arms of office has never caught on in the United States, except among bishops.

In think we can detect this separation of public and private roles in several aspects of heraldic behavior in the years following the Revolution.

• Colonial governors and other officials, as a matter of officially mandated practice, used seals of their personal arms for a number of official purposes. Depending on the colony, these might include militia commissions, warrants for surveying land, documents authorizing the application of the colony’s great seal, etc.  This ended after the Revolution as soon as the several states could adopt new seals and get the dies produced.

• During the colonial period, a Massachusetts militia unit known as the Governor’s Company of Cadets was traditionally presented with a new standard by each new governor.  The flag had the Indian device from the old provincial seal on one side and the governor’s personal arms on the other.  When John Hancock became the first governor of the independent Commonwealth of Massachusetts, he ordered a re-design to omit any personal heraldry.  Instead, the Commonwealth’s newly adopted arms were painted on one side and the company’s own badge on the other.

• In the early 1790s, when the capital of the U.S. was in Philadelphia, a local silversmith named Joseph Cooke, from whom George Washington had bought a number of pieces, proposed to put up a sign with Washington’s coat of arms, imitating the custom of British tradesmen who supplied goods to the royal family.  Washington angrily refused.

Seen from this perspective, the fundamental flaw in William Barton’s original 1788 proposal for a federal heraldic authority was that it sought to bring back into the public, official realm something that had tacitly become private and unofficial.  Certainly there were social distinctions within American society, but they no longer had any official standing.  If we are correct in supposing that most Americans who thought about such things viewed the bearing of arms as an indicator of gentility (a view that Barton explicitly shared), official recognition of inherited arms would have amounted to government ratification of this social distinction, and the granting of hereditary arms to “men of merit” would arguably have lodged in the federal government the power to add to this hereditary privileged class, however trivial the tangible privileges may have been.  Moreover, it seems to me that, in addition to formalizing a line between the gentry and non-gentry, it would also have created a boundary within those who were fully accepted as gentlemen in social terms—e.g., the members of the various clubs and societies I discussed way back in post #19 of this thread—a government-recognized boundary between those who (or whose ancestors) had been honored with a coat of arms and those who hadn’t.

This public-private distinction is the basis for my disagreement with the view expressed by John Tunesi in post #34.  Great Britain, perhaps more than any other modern state, uses heraldry as a means of representing its socio-political structure to the world and to itself.  The very practice, mentioned by John, of the institutionalized display of the arms of various office-holders, both public (sheriffs, mayors, etc.) and semi-private (vice-chancellors of universities, principals of colleges, masters of livery companies, treasurers of the Inns of Court) is a reflection of this.  As one of the English officers of arms suggested in conversation a few years ago, much of this kind of display seems to originate in the successful effort of British ministries to counter the appeal of Jacobin rationalism by emphasizing the use of symbols expressive of the prescriptive, history-based nature of British liberties within an orderly hierarchical society.  I’ve never dug into this theory, but if the number of grants of arms is any indication, I think he’s on to something.  According to data at http://heraldica.org/topics/britain/grants.htm, in the hundred years from the Glorious Revolution to the French Revolution, the English kings of arms issued an average of sixteen grants a year.  The figure jumps to over 100 a year during the decades of war with post-Revolutionary France, and then subsides dramatically after about 1830.  On a per capita basis, the numbers work out to roughly:

- 1530-1689:  9 grants per million per year

- 1690-1789:  3 grants per million per year

- 1790-1829:  12 grants per million per year

- 1830-1899:  4 grants per million per year

Apart from the numbers, and apart from its esthetic value as a form of decoration, I would say that the kind of display John describes served four utilitarian purposes in Britain, whether people nowadays realize it or not.  Not necessarily in order of importance, it (1) expressed historical continuity, showing that a given year’s sheriff/mayor/master/treasurer was more or less the same sort of person (one with arms) who filled the position centuries ago; (2) reassured a society typified by what political scientists used to call a “subject-deferential” culture that the people making decisions were certified gentlemen, and therefore both entitled and qualified to govern; (3) through the use of officially regulated external additaments, constantly reminded everyone of the hierarchical nature of British society; and (4) through the assertion that all of these arms ultimately derived from a single font of honor, constantly reminded everyone of the paramountcy of the Sovereign.

I will not belabor point by point the inapplicability of all this to the American situation.

Anyway, returning to Barton and Washington:  I don’t want to credit Washington being a deep theoretician of heraldic semiotics, but I think he was a remarkable judge of what was and wasn’t politically sustainable, and his military and political record suggests that he certainly learned from previous mistakes.  As is clear in his response to Barton’s proposal, the popular blowback to the purely private Society of the Cincinnati—the trappings it had taken on that made it look visually like an order of chivalry as well as its hereditary nature—made Washington properly wary of anything that smacked of official recognition of hereditary privilege, however empty that privilege might be in practical terms.

But (as Barton and, 100 years later the NEHGS COH, eventually figured out) heraldry could survive just fine if it was left in the private sector.  In the 1880s, Lord Bryce observed that “one thing, and perhaps one thing only, may be asserted with confidence.  There is no rank in America, that is to say, no external and recognized stamp marking one man as entitled to any social privileges, or to deference and respect from others.  No man is entitled to think himself better than his fellows, or to expect any exceptional consideration to be shown by them to him… To be sprung from an ancient stock, or from a stock which can count persons of eminence among its ancestors, is of course a satisfaction to the man himself [and] legitimate pride in such an ancestry excites no disapproval” (my emphasis).  “But,” the homesteader or cowboy on the Kansas prairie would tell the Brahmin in his Beacon Hill parlor, “don’t for one second think that even the most glorious lineage entitles you to any special privileges, or even any particular respect that you haven’t earned in your own right.  I’m just as good a man as you are.”

That’s why heraldry historically gets a bad name in the U.S. whenever someone asserts that it’s available only to those whose ancestors were certified as “gentlemen” by the King of England’s functionaries.  If anything, heraldry gets an even worse name from Americans whose Anglophilia (or Scotophilia, or Hibernophilia) is so uncontrolled and uncritical that they truly believe a grant of arms from Garter and his brethren, Lyon, or the Chief Herald of Ireland makes them something special.  (I have nothing against people who get foreign grants of arms—my objection is to those who think they can use the fact as a sort of social bludgeon.)  Ultimately, if heraldry is to have anything more than antiquarian interest in the United States, the right to bear heraldic arms must be available on an equal basis to everyone, the same as any other right, and without the requirement that we subject that right to the interference of some foreign official.

Our former member, Father Dohrman Byers, once wrote in these forums:  “It is unusual for heraldry to be used without any discernible social basis, but such is the American way. Arms have been used in this country since its inception, and they stand in historic continuity with the traditions of European heraldry. American heraldry, however, has taken its own course with regard to the right to bear arms. Any general account of heraldry simply has to take that fact into account.”

I think Fr. Dohrman’s view is absolutely consistent with the political theory of our country, and perhaps more importantly with the history of heraldry in general.  In the previous thread that provoked all this, Fred argued (post #123), that “It seems awfully convenient for the ego of the armiger to say … that ‘burgher arms,’ ‘gentry arms,’ or whatever you wish to call them, are a complete non-statement about rank, when anyone can see that the status of a burgher is not low and that this country has never suggested that burgher status is a concomitant of citizenship.”  In fact, according to Albert McKinley’s The Suffrage Franchise in the English Colonies, this equivalency between “burgher” and “citizen” is precisely what the Founders had in mind.  They did not use the term "burgher," but rather “freeman.”  But a “freeman” in 18th century parlance did not mean merely “not a slave or indentured servant;” it meant someone with the right to exercise all the rights and privileges of the corporate community in which he lived.  The term derived by analogy with the freemen of English cities and boroughs—citizens and burgesses, or, in German, Burgher.  As Fred says, not everyone who lived in a German city was a Burgher, and neither was everyone who lived in an English borough a freeman or burgess.  But it’s also true that, in colonial America, not every free inhabitant was a freeman in this technical sense.  As discussed above, there were property, religious, and other qualifications, and many of these still applied at the time of the Constitutional Convention, when Pinckney, Madison, and others were discussing issues of nobility and class in the new United States.  But things have changed since then.  Now every citizen above the age of 18 (with a few exclusions such as convicted felons) is a “freeman,” a “burgher.”  The quality is the same, only the proportion of the populace enjoying the status has changed.

Does this mean that I think every American should adopt a coat of arms?  Not at all.  I think that before adopting armorial bearings a person ought to ask himself whether he really has achieved the standing in life—who he is, what he has done, not who his great-great-grandfather was—that makes his use of arms truly within the traditions of heraldry.  Is he (or she) qualified to occupy positions of responsibility in the community?  Not political or public positions, necessarily, but to take an active part in the business of our society.  Does he or she possess politia?  Is he or she a person that his or her neighbors take seriously?

Further than that, I cannot go.  I can’t offer any hard and fast criteria.  As Thrupp and Keen say of medieval and early modern England, ultimately every person must be the judge of his or her own gentility, subject only to the acceptance of his or her neighbors and peers.  And I don’t see how anyone, other than as a matter of private opinion, can put forth even such a self-assessment of standing to bear arms as a binding rule.  If someone I don’t think should bear arms decides to do it anyway, I assert the liberty to find it ridiculous.  But I don’t see how I as an individual, or even we as a society of people who are serious about heraldry, can demand that such a person refrain, any more than we can demand in some other context that he remain silent merely because we think what he’s saying is absurd.  Not even, in fact, if it is empirically absurd.

Finally, finally:  nobiliary additaments.  In England, in the beginning, whether someone was a gentleman or not, or the equivalent of a gentleman or not, or in any case worthy of bearing arms or not, was of uttterly no concern to the crown.  Even though the settlement of this country began during the era of the visitations, formally adjudicating who is a gentleman has never been of any major concern to any public authority on this side of the Atlantic since our founding.  By contrast, whether one was a noble or not was a matter of state concern, not just in England and its colonies but in all the other imperial powers and everywhere else that heraldry existed.  The Founders did not consider whether someone was a gentleman or not a matter of any official interest.  But they did consider whether someone was a noble or not a matter of official interest.  They made an explicit decision to have no noble class; everyone, whether gentleman, yeoman, whatever informal, unofficial designation one might choose, was in the eyes of the state just another commoner.

In the heat of debate, I may have created the impression that I am angered by the use of additaments connoting nobility in the United States, that I see this as a high moral issue.  I’m not, and I don’t.  I see it as purely a logical matter.  Nobility is not an inherent human quality but a status that exists only in relation to a particular society’s political arrangements.  If the United States (or any other country) has no nobility, does not recognize any nobility, requires renunciation of nobility as a requirement of naturalization, and enunciates as an explicit fundamental premise of its political life that everyone belongs to the same social rank, namely that of commoner, then it seems illogical to me for anyone to decorate his coat of arms with emblems denoting this non-existent status.  I simply do not believe someone who knows enough about heraldry to tell a barred helm from a tilting helm, someone who knows what supporters and manteaux are, when he tries to tell me he uses them merely as decoration with no intend to mislead.  Especially if he then gets testy when someone points out that they do in fact suggest a claim of special status instead of thanking them for saving him from a faux pas.

I am willing to admit the use of elements that would seem to imply noble rank if it can be plausibly explained that they don’t.  Following a Facebook discussion the other day, I reexamined what pictures I could find of arms used by Dutch families in New Netherland/New York in the 17th century.  Something like 90% of a pretty small sample used a barred helm that in most places would be indicative of nobility, but in the Netherlands isn’t and wasn’t.  Now I personally wouldn’t be inclined to tell a Schuyler or a Beeckman that he couldn’t keep displaying his arms the way his family had been using them for 350 years.  (This would not apply, in my scheme of things, to someone of Dutch ancestry who assumed a new coat of arms in the United States last month—it’s the prescriptive usage that matters, not the ethnic origin.)  But it’s different, to me, where the intention is to signify possession of something that the person, as an American, simply does not possess.  If you or your ancestor renounced the status when you (or he) took American citizenship, then you need to let the trappings of the status go along with the status itself.  That logic, to me, simply doesn’t apply to the coat of arms that indicates no special status, or at least no status that our society deems politically suspect.  If anyone who wants a coat of arms can have one, it’s not sustainable to object that arms in themselves assert the kind of superiority to which Americans reflexively object, as Bryce described.  Sure, some people who don’t know better may perceive a coat of arms as saying "I’m better than you are."  There’s not much that can be done about this; there are also people who take offense if you wear a tie to church, if you use correct grammar, if all kinds of things.  The fact that we’re all of the same formal social rank doesn’t mean that there isn’t such a thing as vulgar ignorance.  You enlighten where you can and move on where you can’t.

Okay.  Done.  Feel free to fire back.  But I’ve dominated this discussion far too long, so will force myself to let you all have your say rather than exchanging further salvoes for a while.

As a suggestion to the group, I think it would be useful for those who wish to comment, and helpful for those reading your comments, to first reread Joe’s umpteen postings; and if commenting on particular points in Joe’s presentation, to cite posting #  for context.

For that matter, these suggestions might also be useful for comments on other folks’ postings as well.

As noted, just suggestions; we have moderators but I’m not one of them.

Personally, I think there is far too much there to address at all.  It’s a great article (or articles).  Joe’s already alluded to and lightly remade his point in context of his world view on points where I disagree with his conclusions based on my world view.  It stands as a nice history of arms on these shores.  Personally, I think it should be placed in it’s entirety on one of our permanent pages - perhaps.. "Thoughts on the history of arms in the US and their effect on assumptions in the 20th century" - It could certainly be developed into an appendix for the book he’s writing or a paper/lecture.

I agree that it would be good to save this thread as Kathy suggests; and that tackling the whole thing is likely to be daunting for any one reader.

But I do hope and expect to see reasoned back-and-forth on points of particular interest to various forum participants, either in bite-sized chunks, or overall conclusions (including world views as relevant ).

Let the Games begin!

Hi all,

I’d like to join with the others in congratulating Joe on all of his efforts!  One question that pops to mind: does anyone here know of any examples of nobles who, after ceasing to be nobles or renouncing their titles, have “retired” their nobiliary additaments (coronet, supporters) but still continued to use a coat of arms?  Just for the record, I believe that the use of an hereditary title of nobility (and associated additaments) by US citizens is un-American.  Hypothetically, if I inherited a title of nobility, I wouldn’t use any associated coronet or supporters.  If a fellow heraldist from another country quizzed me about this, I would certainly point to resources like Joe’s postings to help explain my decision.  However, I also view heraldic practices that have some precedent in a more positive light than those that don’t.  For example, in 1960 a member of Parliament, Anthony Benn, succeeded his father as Viscount Stansgate and was forced out of the House of Commons.  After the passage of the Peerage Act of 1963, he renounced his title and was re-elected to his old seat.  Does anyone know if Benn used a coat of arms between 1963 when he renounced his title and his death in 2014?  If so, what heraldic elements did he continue using?  Other examples of peers who disclaimed their titles appear to include Christopher Silkin (b. 1947, succeeded as 3rd Baron Silkin in 2001, disclaimed in 2002), Quintin Hogg (b. 1907, succeeded as 2nd Viscount Hailsham in 1950, disclaimed in 1963, created Life Peer in 1970) and Alec Douglas-Home (b. 1903, succeeded as 14th Earl of Home in 1951, disclaimed in 1963, created Life Peer in 1974).

Thanks!

I’ll second what Kathy says about it being a good idea preserve Joe’s serialized essay as a single publication, perhaps with appropriate edits to save the audience references to a thread that will eventually go into the forum archives. Whether one shares his conclusions or not, it’s a remarkable labor of love. I doubt there’s anyone else in the United States as conversant with the primary sources. I wouldn’t challenge the accuracy of any of Joe’s quotations, even if I might—given time—contextualize some of them a bit differently.

At any rate, my sense in reading these installments is that the area of disagreement between me and Joe is really quite narrow, and when I come to the passage below, it seems narrower still.

Joseph McMillan;105418 wrote:

Does this mean that I think every American should adopt a coat of arms?  Not at all.  I think that before adopting armorial bearings a person ought to ask himself whether he really has achieved the standing in life—who he is, what he has done, not who his great-great-grandfather was—that makes his use of arms truly within the traditions of heraldry.  Is he (or she) qualified to occupy positions of responsibility in the community?  Not political or public positions, necessarily, but to take an active part in the business of our society.  Does he or she possess politia?  Is he or she a person that his or her neighbors take seriously?

Further than that, I cannot go. I can’t offer any hard and fast criteria. As Thrupp and Keen say of medieval and early modern England, ultimately every person must be the judge of his or her own gentility, subject only to the acceptance of his or her neighbors and peers.  And I don’t see how anyone, other than as a matter of private opinion, can put forth even such a self-assessment of standing to bear arms as a binding rule.  If someone I don’t think should bear arms decides to do it anyway, I assert the liberty to find it ridiculous.  But I don’t see how I as an individual, or even we as a society of people who are serious about heraldry, can demand that such a person refrain, any more than we can demand in some other context that he remain silent merely because we think what he’s saying is absurd.  Not even, in fact, if it is empirically absurd.

 

Finally, finally:  nobiliary additaments.  In England, in the beginning, whether someone was a gentleman or not, or the equivalent of a gentleman or not, or in any case worthy of bearing arms or not, was of uttterly no concern to the crown.  Even though the settlement of this country began during the era of the visitations, formally adjudicating who is a gentleman has never been of any major concern to any public authority on this side of the Atlantic since our founding.  By contrast, whether one was a noble or not was a matter of state concern, not just in England and its colonies but in all the other imperial powers and everywhere else that heraldry existed.  The Founders did not consider whether someone was a gentleman or not a matter of any official interest.  But they did consider whether someone was a noble or not a matter of official interest.  They made an explicit decision to have no noble class; everyone, whether gentleman, yeoman, whatever informal, unofficial designation one might choose, was in the eyes of the state just another commoner.

 

In the heat of debate, I may have created the impression that I am angered by the use of additaments connoting nobility in the United States, that I see this as a high moral issue.  I’m not, and I don’t.  I see it as purely a logical matter.  Nobility is not an inherent human quality but a status that exists only in relation to a particular society’s political arrangements.  If the United States (or any other country) has no nobility, does not recognize any nobility, requires renunciation of nobility as a requirement of naturalization, and enunciates as an explicit fundamental premise of its political life that everyone belongs to the same social rank, namely that of commoner, then it seems illogical to me for anyone to decorate his coat of arms with emblems denoting this non-existent status.  I simply do not believe someone who knows enough about heraldry to tell a barred helm from a tilting helm, someone who knows what supporters and manteaux are, when he tries to tell me he uses them merely as decoration with no intend to mislead.  Especially if he then gets testy when someone points out that they do in fact suggest a claim of special status instead of thanking them for saving him from a faux pas.

 

I am willing to admit the use of elements that would seem to imply noble rank if it can be plausibly explained that they don’t.  Following a Facebook discussion the other day, I reexamined what pictures I could find of arms used by Dutch families in New Netherland/New York in the 17th century.  Something like 90% of a pretty small sample used a barred helm that in most places would be indicative of nobility, but in the Netherlands isn’t and wasn’t.  Now I personally wouldn’t be inclined to tell a Schuyler or a Beeckman that he couldn’t keep displaying his arms the way his family had been using them for 350 years.  (This would not apply, in my scheme of things, to someone of Dutch ancestry who assumed a new coat of arms in the United States last month—it’s the prescriptive usage that matters, not the ethnic origin.)  But it’s different, to me, where the intention is to signify possession of something that the person, as an American, simply does not possess.  If you or your ancestor renounced the status when you (or he) took American citizenship, then you need to let the trappings of the status go along with the status itself.  That logic, to me, simply doesn’t apply to the coat of arms that indicates no special status, or at least no status that our society deems politically suspect.  If anyone who wants a coat of arms can have one, it’s not sustainable to object that arms in themselves assert the kind of superiority to which Americans reflexively object, as Bryce described.  Sure, some people who don’t know better may perceive a coat of arms as saying "I’m better than you are."  There’s not much that can be done about this; there are also people who take offense if you wear a tie to church, if you use correct grammar, if all kinds of things.  The fact that we’re all of the same formal social rank doesn’t mean that there isn’t such a thing as vulgar ignorance.  You enlighten where you can and move on where you can’t.

We seem to agree, for instance, that bearing arms is only appropriate for some people—for people with a certain standing in the community. Joe might minimize any role for heredity—for any sort of ascribed status based on the achievements of ancestors—where I would see it as having at least a hint of relevance, especially in marginal cases, to the question of who is and isn’t, for lack of a better term, a gentleman, but basically we agree that there’s a finite range of stations in life that bearing arms really suits. And we seem to agree that there are some for whom bearing arms is just out of place or even downright ridiculous. My feeling is that holding that position militates in favor of discouraging such people from bearing arms, because I think it’s just not right to tell someone that doing something is fine with you if you know, a priori, that you’re going to ridicule him for doing it and that anyone else with any sophistication will also. Joe seems not to see it quite that way, but again, we basically agree that a coat of arms is a comparatively high status marker appropriately used by some and not others.

As to nobiliary additaments, the conditions under which I have suggested they should be acceptable are really rather limited. I have not argued that all additaments traditionally coded as nobiliary can simply be adopted by anyone who happens to like they way they look. I’ve argued that if they’re an actual inheritance or an actual gift from a sovereign, and if one has not formally renounced the status they denote, then their use is inoffensive. I’ve referred to the situation of the birth citizen (not required to renounce anything, unlike the naturalized citizen, right?) who inherits a title from abroad (perfectly legal, right?). I’ve referred to the birth citizen recipient of a newly created title (e.g., by the Pope). I’ve referred to the case of one, like Edgar Erskine Hume, whose immigrant ancestor arrived in the colonial era with a coat of arms that included supporters. I contend that such people can use their complete armorial bearings without asserting that they have any legal status in this country other than citizen. Here, Joe has disagreed for sure, but he says now that it’s merely a logical and not a high moral issue—so not a huge deal. I’m sure he would agree with me that the number of cases of the aforementioned sort is miniscule, at any rate. We’re certainly alike in being skeptical of a claim by anyone who knows anything about heraldry that a coronet of rank he’s added to his assumed arms is "merely" decorative.

What am I missing?

Dear Sebastian,

Regarding your question on British hereditary peers who renounced their respective peerages for life under the terms of the Peerage Act 1963.  Of the peers you mention all were armigerous save for Baron Silkin.  To my certain knowledge, the Silkins have never borne arms, although I stand to be corrected on this point if needs be.

Anthony (Tony Benn) Wedgwood Benn was not forced out of the Commons, but having inherited the Viscountcy of Stansgate on his father’s death he had to resign his seat in the Commons by virtue of the fact that being a peer of the United Kingdom as with those of England, Scotland, Great Britain he was disqualified to remain a Member of Parliament.  If he had been a peer of Ireland, he could have remained a member of the Commons.  But with the passing of the Peerage Act as you say allowed Viscount Stansgate to renounce his peerage and return to the Commons.  I doubt very much given Tony Benn’s political leanings that he would used his arms thereafter.  With his death in 2014, his eldest son is now the 3rd Viscount Stansgate.

The other peers you mention: Viscount Hailsham and the Earl of Home would have been able to continue to use their arms without the incidents of peerage (ie: coronet and supporters).  In the case of Quintin Hogg (the 2nd Viscount Hailsham) as he had no other titles outside of the peerage he would have borne his arms as an esquire or gentleman, whilst Sir Alex Douglas-Home (the 14th Earl of Home) would have borne his arms with an open faced helmet as a Knight of the Thistle.  Likewise, all other armigerous peers who have subsequently renounced their peerages for life would revert to whatever heraldic achievement for their rank be it, baronet, knight, esquire or gentleman.  It would be difficult to guess if any disclaimed peers used their arms on a day to day basis much like the newly-minted gentlemen today who have received a grant of arms one is never too sure how they employ their arms, if at all.

With every good wish

John

Wilfred Leblanc;105429 wrote:

We seem to agree, for instance, that bearing arms is only appropriate for some people—for people with a certain standing in the community. Joe might minimize any role for heredity—for any sort of ascribed status based on the achievements of ancestors—where I would see it as having at least a hint of relevance, especially in marginal cases, to the question of who is and isn’t, for lack of a better term, a gentleman, but basically we agree that there’s a finite range of stations in life that bearing arms really suits. And we seem to agree that there are some for whom bearing arms is just out of place or even downright ridiculous.

Fred, thanks for this point, because it gets to a point I may have made somewhere in my meandering but meant to highlight in the summing up.  Arms absolutely have to be hereditary, or it’s not heraldry.  So let’s consider another one of my relatives, whom I may have mentioned before.  Excuse me if I’m repeating myself.

My maternal grandfather’s maternal grandfather was named Nathaniel Barham, an ordinary farmer in 19th century Neshoba County, Miss.  He did his bit in the War like most of his neighbors, was a member of the Baptist church like most of his neighbors, and as far as I can tell was pretty much like most of his neighbors in all other respects as well.  Except that, he had but known it, he was entitled to a coat of arms (Argent on a fess Gules between three bears passant Sable muzzled Or a fleur-de-lis between two martlets Gold), confirmed at the 1619 visitation of Kent to his 5th great-grandfather Robert Barham of East Hall, Boughton Monchelsea.

Now, it is absolutely clear that Nathaniel Barham had a right to bear heraldic arms.  And if we have any kind of social qualification for bearing arms in the United States, we have to allow Nathaniel’s neighbors to have coats of arms if he does, because our ethos is that lineage, while a nice thing to have, doesn’t give you any special privileges or status.  Which means (as I already argued) that everyone has to be allowed to assume arms if, in his own eyes, he thinks it appropriate.

Joe, thanks so much for this labor of love.  I appreciate you having the knowledge to write such a history and the dedication to actually do so.  Please find a way to have this preserved and available for the future.

Having just viewed American assumed arms (exquisitely painted, by the way) which feature supporters, a peer’s helm, and an escutcheon of pretense (?in canton?), though, I’m more than just a little skeptical concerning the ability of social censure (i.e. Joe’s "ridiculousness criterion") to effectively police American armory.  Ridiculousness abounds in America.  The fact that something is ridiculous doesn’t prevent Americans from doing it.  In fact, it seems to encourage them.

With no recognized authority, and honest disagreement about what constitutes American heraldic tradition among those who know something about the subject, I’m about ready to jettison the whole American heraldry thing.  Baby out with the bathwater, perhaps, but I’m more and more convinced that seeking a grant from a foreign heraldic authority is what makes sense for me.

Joseph McMillan;105431 wrote:

. . . Which means (as I already argued) that everyone has to be allowed to assume arms if, in his own eyes, he thinks it appropriate.

Well, of course (and if I miss your point, somehow, forgive me), but we can’t be talking about what’s "allowed," because it goes without saying that no American heraldist has the prerogative of allowing or disallowing anything. We’re just talking about what kind of counsel best serves the end of preserving/enhancing the integrity of American heraldry—which means, on some level, making it coherent with the way it’s generally practiced elsewhere while at the same time allowing for some margin of regional variation. I don’t see evidence that our variation, historically, has extended to it generally being thought appropriate for all and sundry to bear arms. Some flexibility on that point? Some willingness to speculate on ways that more widespread assumption of arms might not be unhealthy? I guess so, but it seems to me the consistent standard is that one only succeeds in pulling it off if he has achieved a certain standing in the world. Again, we may differ slightly on how genealogy plays into it, but I suspect we’re both familiar enough with the sort of genteel impoverished family—what Orwell memorably described as the lower-upper-middle class, the type William Alexander Percy describes quite lyrically in Lanterns On The Levee, "regarding their poverty as an incident and their status as an immutability"—to agree that a person from such a family can pull off something like a signet ring in a way that a more materially prosperous neighbor can’t simply because of exquisite manners, speech patterns, and other hard-to-quantify but real things.

Anyway, the bottom line, I think, is what we should be advising anyone is likely to play well, not what is "allowed." We don’t want to encourage people to behave in a way that we, ourselves, will judge foolish.

David Pope;105432 wrote:

I’m more than just a little skeptical concerning the ability of social censure (i.e. Joe’s "ridiculousness criterion") to effectively police American armory.  Ridiculousness abounds in America.  The fact that something is ridiculous doesn’t prevent Americans from doing it.  In fact, it seems to encourage them.

I wouldn’t suggest it would make people in general stop; only people who care.  Of course there’s a lot that’s ridiculous.  No more here, I would argue, than most other places, however.

Quote:

With no recognized authority, and honest disagreement about what constitutes American heraldic tradition among those who know something about the subject, I’m about ready to jettison the whole American heraldry thing.

We’re only just recently working on thinking this stuff out.  Debate’s part of it.  All our predecessors cared about was forcing things into the English mold.  Give it time.  Generations of time.

Quote:

Baby out with the bathwater, perhaps, but I’m more and more convinced that seeking a grant from a foreign heraldic authority is what makes sense for me.

To each his own, but since a grant from a foreign heraldic authority has no more reality in the United States than any of our assumed arms, including the ridiculous ones, it’s not clear to me how it makes anything better.  Among other things, I personally would rather explain why its okay to assume arms, and why people who play the game of heraldry should play by a sensible set of rules, than what the heck "honorary arms" mean if all arms are an honor, and why I should subject what I do in this country to the judgments of an official of a foreign country.  And if you dig far enough, you’ll find just as many ridiculous arms and ridiculous armigers in countries with granting authorities as in countries without.

(Not to mention that I have lots better uses for $4,000 to $9,000, with my daughter and son hoping to go to medical and law school respectively and simultaneously.)

Joseph McMillan;105434 wrote:

To each his own, but since a grant from a foreign heraldic authority has no more reality in the United States than any of our assumed arms, including the ridiculous ones, it’s not clear to me how it makes anything better.  Among other things, I personally would rather explain why its okay to assume arms, and why people who play the game of heraldry should play by a sensible set of rules, than what the heck "honorary arms" mean if all arms are an honor, and why I should subject what I do in this country to the judgments of an official of a foreign country.  And if you dig far enough, you’ll find just as many ridiculous arms and ridiculous armigers in countries with granting authorities as in countries without.

As I suggested in another thread, I am susceptible to toying with the idea of honoring my direct-male-line descent from a Carignan-Salieres Regiment soldier by participating in some family association sort of effort to get a grant from the CHA, or perhaps registering arms just for myself in France with the Ministry of Culture, but at the end of the day, I think Joe’s logic here is sound, even if there’s a sentimental or romantic dimension to the question that I, personally, would take a smidge more seriously.

Your bona fides as "a gentleman" are clearly solid. If you’ve got several grand to drop on a grant from the COA, for instance, why not A) spend $200 or whatever to get your arms recorded with the NEHGSCOH, our most venerable, home-grown heraldic authority; B) spend seven or eight hundred getting a first-rate heraldic artist to produce a library painting of your assumed arms; C) get a signet ring; D) get some armorial stationery, making sure to have the dies given to you so that you can pass them on to posterity; and E) put the remainder towards having the arms engraved on your tombstone in a discreet fashion? You might still have some shekels left over.

I’m being totally serious.

Wilfred Leblanc;105435 wrote:

I’m being totally serious.

But . . . I also understand that the heart has its reasons, and that there is an inescapable sense in which the COA projects a power to certify the prerequisite status for bearing arms that no entity in the U.S. really possesses.

I do indeed understand the business of sentimental attraction.  When I designed my arms, it was in the old HSS-related Scots Heraldry forum with the thought in the back of my mind that I might some day want to petition for an ancestral Scottish grant.

In my case, however, the more I studied heraldry, the more I came to feel that people’s preference for English, Scottish, or Irish grants more often stems from a feeling that our own unilaterally chosen arms are not real.  We Americans are in exactly the same position armorially as people living in many other countries where there is no granting authority or heraldic regulation (e.g., the Netherlands, Germany, and the Scandinavian countries).  In none of these places does one seem to encounter the same sense of insecurity, anxiety, and inferiority about assuming arms that we do in the United States.

"We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved."

I say we need to take that seriously.  By all means, let us sympathize with our cousins across the sea who had their armorial freedom taken from them by an overweening Crown, but there’s no reason we’re required to share their misery.