Getting a COA registered

[thescot]

Jim,

I really can't claim it as my idea per se, but he certainly poses an interesting one in his article. If the CHA allowed Americans to petition for a grant of arms, I'd be one of the first in line, though.

T.

I imagine that I'd be very close in the same line. I fully intend to attain (assume? create? petition? beg?) my own arms in the next few years if for no other reason than vanity, family pride, and a cool set of china to leave to my son.

I have been toying with designs, so when the time comes, I hope to be ready.

[WVHighlander]

I have the design done and it is well thought out etc. It has historical and familial meaning and I am chomping at the bit to get it registered. However....I will add a measure of tactical patience and see what the outcome is.

[thescot]

I have the design done and it is well thought out etc. It has historical and familial meaning and I am chomping at the bit to get it registered. However....I will add a measure of tactical patience and see what the outcome is.

I'd like to see--or at least hear about--your design.

The one I'm working on has similar familial and historical significance, too.

[WVHighlander]

Jim,

I shot you a msg with the rough description.

[SlackerDrummer]

I had, HOWEVER, after emailing them three times and NO RESPONSE I gave up on that option.

It is my understanding that the NEHGS is very old school. You might try writing them a letter. As for their registry, it is the oldest and therefore, arguably, the most prestigious in the country. It is also a filing cabinet. Registration does not come with any sort of emblazonment, certificate or the like.

I had similar issues with the American College of Heraldry and the American Heraldry Society. I began to think an active-duty, combat vet, officer, with multiple degrees etc didn't qualify for the US organizations.

A former member here, Scotus, had his arms registered with NEGHS several years ago with no issues. He and I used to be members of AHS, but left for similar reasons as you describe.

As a current member of the board of governors of the American Heraldry Society, I'd be very interested to hear (here or by PM) your negative experiences with the organization. The AHS is not an arms registry and it is not in the business of designing arms, though there are certainly members who are experienced and willing to help.

I have the design done and it is well thought out etc. It has historical and familial meaning and I am chomping at the bit to get it registered.

The one I'm working on has similar familial and historical significance, too.

I'd be interested in seeing (or reading a blazon) of either of you guys' arms ideas. If you are going back to a Scottish ancestor (in terms of familial meaning), it is the practice of Lyon to go back to the oldest arms on record of the same name (regardless of relationship) and use them as a basis for designing the new arms. If there is a "chief of the name" the arms will be based on those.

[WVHighlander]

Kenneth,

I shot out a PM.

[MacMillan of Rathdown]

My comments are in BOLD:

So basically what we're talkin' about is a wee bit of artwork on a shield background that lets the person who sees it know who you are?

Right, except that "wee bit of artwork" follows certain, specific, rules.

Maybe there was a use for that back in the age of massive illiteracy but now it's just kind of another decorative bit...why not just say that you've designed a LOGO for yourself and have it registered as a trademark®...

Well you could, but it wouldn't be "heraldry" in the accepted sense of the word. Semiotics is the science of non-linguistic sign systems. Heraldry (or more properly armoury) is such a system, although it possesses a diversity of functions and attributes which are not necessarily found in other semiotic systems, such as road signs and logos; for one thing it is hereditary, and that is probably it's single most important atttribute.

You see, heraldry today, just as much as in the 13th century, serves the purpose of identifying the exact relationship of all of the various members of vastly extended families. It is, in effect, a series of technicolour markers in a family's genealogy; multi-coloured decorations on each branch of a family tree.

I'm sorry but any contemporary use of a Coat of Arms seems like a a bit of a pretension.

If taken to an extreme, it could be seen in that light; however in its normal day-to-day applications the use of personal heraldry rarely rivals the pretentious display of "brand names" on tee shirts and baseball caps. A small signet ring somehow lacks the vulgarity of a fake, rhinestone encrusted, "Rolex" watch.

Do people in the UK actually ride around in their autos with their coats of arms emblazoned on the doors?

Well, yes, and probably more than you'd imagine. They do it in the USA and Canada as well. Typically the arms (or more usually the crest) emblazoned on a private motorcar measure no more than about 2"x2" and is certainly more discrete than the "in-your-face" bumper stickers one encounters on most vehicles.

I'd think that a certain degree of anonymity would be a good security measure for anyone who might be considered wealthy or important....why advertise that you're "somebody"? I think that age has passed.

Actually, we seem to live in an age of "look at me" celebrity, where everybody from rap stars to the pool dude married to the middle-aged actress clamors for attention. Compared to the blinged out excesses of your average Cadillac Escalade, or the rice rocket Subaru with the 1000 watt stereo blaring in the trunk, a postage stamp size bit of heraldry on the door of a car is pretty much invisible.

[Joseph McMillan]

For the sake of discussion let's say the arms devised by Lyon to represent your ancestor are: argent a chevron gules within a bordure sable.

Hello, Scott. Kenneth Mansfield pointed me toward this discussion and I couldn't resist registering for the forum to chime in. (I guess that means I should introduce myself--Joe McMillan, not a kilt wearer but a heraldic enthusiast and director of research of the American Heraldry Society. The articles on the heraldry of the U.S. presidents that someone kindly mentioned in this thread are my work.)

A trivial point on this, more significant on what follows: it's unlikely that Lyon would devise a new coat of arms with a bordure of any kind, since in Scots heraldry bordures are almost always used to difference for cadency these days. He'd be more likely to devise arms differenced in other ways from the stem arms of the name.

Based on these arms he may determine that those that might be devised for your grandfather (as an indeterminate cadet of the original ancestor)

But your grandfather couldn't be an indeterminate cadet of the original grantee, because if he were indeterminate that would mean you hadn't proven descent from the person who was subject to Lyon's jurisdiction. Nevertheless, he might indeed be assigned, as you say, the ancestor's arms...

... within a bordure nebuly sable. From this he might deduce that the appropriate cadency for the second son (your father) would be: argent a chevron gules within a bordure nebuly per pale sable and or. Having reached this point Lyon might be prepared to grant those arms to you.

And here I agree completely.

As far as your father and uncle are concerned, unless they petition for arms, they have no entitlement to a portion of the matriculation of the original ancestor, nor do their other children.

Sure they do; they just can't bear them in Scotland unless they matriculate a properly differenced version, just as you (not you, Scott, but you the hypothetical petitioner) did in your application.

Substantive arms -- those backed by the authority of a sovereign state -- are always preferable to self-assumed arms, no matter what private body has recorded them.

This is why I actually decided to pitch into this. As you know (now you, Scott, not you the hypothetical petitioner), this subject is a bit of a hobby horse of mine, so those who don't really care about heraldic theory can stop reading here).

Apart from prestige, which is totally in the eye of the beholder, what makes a grant of arms substantively better than assumed arms is that granted (or officially registered, certified, etc.) arms typically take legal priority over assumed arms. This was first articulated by Bartolo di Sassoferrato, the first legal theorist to systematically address heraldry back in the early 14th entury. This legal priority can take various forms in various countries, but in any case the grant creates some sort of legally enforceable right in the arms.

However, as Sir Crispin Agnew of Lochnaw, Bt, QC (Rothesay Herald and Scotland's leading expert on heraldic law) points out, these rights exist only in the jurisdiction in which the grant was made. If you take a grant of arms out of the granting jurisdiction, it's only worth the vellum it's painted on--unless the jurisdiction you take it to chooses to recognize the rights conveyed. This is why the Dukes of Leinster have no cause of action against the branch of the Neville family in England that bears "Argent a saltire Gules," or, for that matter, against the State of Alabama. The rights to a particular coat of arms don't cross national borders.

Thus granted English or Scottish arms taken to Denmark are no better than assumed arms (which, in Denmark, are perfectly valid). Conversely, arms recorded by the Chapter of the Royal Orders for knights of the Danish orders of knighthood have no automatic validity if taken to England unless the College of Arms chooses to recognize them.

And in the United States, of course, there is neither a granting authority nor any legal provision for recognizing the validity of foreign grants of arms or protecting whatever rights those grants conveyed in the country of origin. That means that in the United States, an English or Scottish grant of arms has the same substantive status as arms assumed at will.

On the broader issue of the status of arms in the United States, and what they mean or don't mean, I think the classic exposition is the statement issued by the Committee on Heraldry of the New England Historic Genealogical Society in 1914, which is linked from http://www.americanheraldry.org/page...Main.Documents . Those interested in exploring this more may also want to look at the Washington-Barton letters and the article by H. S. Ruggles, linked from the same page.

Looking forward to more discussions here, even if I would barely know which end of a kilt is up.

[MacMillan of Rathdown]

SlackerDrummer, in your post (#13), you made several comments that seem to me to be somewhat off the mark, to whit:

Arms were not granted ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD until the 15th century (hardly 1500 years ago) and the original purpose of "granting" arms (in England at least) had everything to do with collecting taxes and exerting control over the feudal system. No more. No less. It was never about recognizing one's merits or social standing.

Unless one wants to really parse the meaning of "granted" then I think it best to roll back that 15th century date to about 1127 when Henry I of England gave/granted Geoffrey Plantagenet, Count of Anjou, a shield charged with three gold lions, the same arms becoming exclusively hereditary within the Plantagenet line.

I think it is a mistake to suggest that the granting of arms in England was all about collecting taxes and was never about recognizing merit or social standing. There are, in English records, scores of accounts of soldiers being knighted and granted arms based on their military merit, as well as many a merchant/artisan receiving arms (and thus being enobled as a gentleman) based on pure talent.

In some countries, in fact most on the continent of Europe, there was NEVER an official heraldic authority.

This isn't quite right. I have before me a list of some 18 Kings of Arms and Heralds, almost all dating from the 14th century; in those places where heraldry had taken root Heralds were appointed by sovereign lords to exercise official heraldic authority. True, the functions of these early heralds differs in many respects from the functions of latter-day Heralds in England, Scotland, and Ireland, but they were and did, never the less, represent and exercise official heraldic authority.

Unless you live in Scotland or South Africa, you have no recourse if someone else uses your arms regardless of whether or not they are granted or assumed.

Actually, coats of arms are vigorously defended as personal property, all the time, in both present day France and Italy. With the coming of EU law, the grants of all heraldic authorities were given equal protection throughout the EU under a doctrine similar to the "full faith and value" doctrine of US law; so, if Mr. McTavish finds his arms being applied to tins of sardines in Portugal he can sue to stop the practice.

But why on Earth would you want a registration from a country with which you have no connection whatsoever? If it is simply so that you can have the seal of approval from a government entity, then I would suggest your self-worth deserves some introspection.

That's like saying because someone wants champagne from France rather than sparking wine from up-state New York their self worth deserves some introspection. Some people just prefer "the genuine article"; to decry this seems to be rather mean spirited

That is simply not true and a very Anglo-centric perspective. The assumption of arms is and always has been the norm on the continent of Europe.

Not really. Europe is a pretty big place, and the laws or rules regulating arms vary widely; to suggest otherwise is to follow a very Anglo-centric path.

Nothing about a grant of arms makes them more real in any substantive way to anyone except those who live in countries where there is an acting granting authority. While a grant to someone living outwith Scotland may be more meaningful to it's recipient, granted arms are in no way, legally, socially, or otherwise better than assumed arms.

Substantive documents-- those issued with lawful authority-- always are regarded as the "real deal"; if anyone doubts this, they should try designing their own driving license, or vehicle registration documents and then set off on a cross country journey.

Yes, anyone with a bit of effort and the requisite cash on hand. Given that all it takes is the ability to pay for a grant of arms to "achieve" one, it makes one wonder who is the real social wannabe, doesn't it?

So as I understand what you've written, it is your opinion that someone who applies for a grant of arms-- what ever that process may entail-- is a social wannabe, while the person who sits down at his kitchen table with a box of stubby crayons and comes up with a coat of arms he then assumes of his own mere motion, to emulate those who have substantive arms, isn't a wannabe?

There is no background check for obtaining a coat of arms from any of the authorities and they are reactive rather than proactive grants.

Actually, at least in the instance of arms granted in Scotland, a prima facie background check is conducted prior to grant. The petition placed before the Court of the Lord Lyon carries "proofs" for each and every statement made; the lawyer presenting the petition, as an officer of the court, is responsible for the veracity of the proofs he sets before the court. If either the lawyer, or Lyon, finds anything "deficient in proof" it is either removed, or the petition rejected, with or without prejudice. Since every request for a grant starts with the assumption that the petitioner is honest (and 99% of them are) it may appear that there are no checks, but there are.

Therefore, they do not convey any type of social status.

Whether or not substantive arms convey any social status is a moot point; assumed arms most certainly do not convey any social status.

I am quite aware of the laws in Scotland regarding heraldry. If one moves to Scotland, that puts them under the jurisdiction of Lyon and that is a game-changer. The law of the land is the law of the land. But I doubt what you're saying applies to everyone with assumed arms. I'd be willing to bet Lyon would recognize the arms assumed by (then Mr.) Daniel Westling.

For those who may not recognize his name, Daniel Westling is the husband of Crown Princess Victoria of Sweden and his last name is now Westling Vasa, Vasa being the name of the Swedish Royal Family; upon their marriage Mr. Westling took the title HRH Prince Daniel of Sweden, Duke of Vastergotland, and was invested with the insignia of the Royal Swedish Order of the Seraphim. The State Herald of Sweden, Henrik Klackenberg, by order of the King, prepared the letters patent conferring HRH Prince Daniel's titles, as well as his arms.

Should Their Royal Highness visit Scotland, their armigerous status will be treated by the Lyon Court in exactly the same manner as any other armigerous visitor; in other words they will be allowed the use of their ensigns armorial without the let or hindrance of any manner of persons during their stay in Scotland. Should Their Royal Highness take up residency, for other than official reasons, then they would be required to register their arms with the Lord Lyon.

[WVHighlander]

MacMillan, I shot you out an email regarding your offer. I want to make sure you got it.