Good News for [at Least Some] Heraldry Book Lovers

Boydell & Brewer, the publishers of the first three volumes of the Dictionary of British Arms: Medieval Ordinary, the “new Papworth,” have announced the upcoming publication of Volume IV, Fetterlock – Wreaths.

The publication of this fourth volume finishes out a massive undertaking that resulted in the publication of the first volume way back in 1992, volumes II and III following in 1996 and 2009, respectively.

You can preorder this volume here in the States from the website of Boydell & Brewer (and get more information on this final volume of the four-volume set) at http://www.boydellandbrewer.com/store/viewItem.asp?idProduct=14643  The price listed there is US$165.  (Though the publication date listed there is August 1, 2014, that probably refers to the publication date in Britain.  It may take a little while for copies to make it over to this side of the Atlantic; my copy of Volume III had a similar publication date, but didn’t ship to me until late November or early December as I recall.)

If you live overseas, you might look at the UK website of Boydell, www.boydell.co.uk, where they are offering this volume for a prepublication price (until December 31) of £71.25 (plus £4.00 shipping to the UK, £7.50 shipping to Europe, or £13.50 shipping worldwide).  The flyer I picked up at the recent International Congress of Genealogical and Heraldic Sciences says to use reference 14201 when ordering.

Boydell & Brewer will also be selling the four-volume set (at a 5% discount, I believe, but too late for me; I’ve bought each volume as it became available), if you don’t have any of them yet and want all four volumes.

I plan to be ordering my copy sometime next week.  You might think about when to order yours!

Home Again, Home Again!

I apologize for the lack of a post last Thursday.  We have been out of town (out of town? out of the country!) for the past two weeks, attending the XXXI International Congress of Genealogical and Heraldic Sciences in Oslo, Norway ...

and visiting with old friends and making new ones there, here with our friends from Pro Heraldica, along with David Rencher (second from right) of FamilySearch.org ...

followed by a week in England sightseeing, hunting down ancestors (or at least, their places of worship) and, once again, visiting with friends Richard and Jenny Baker.  (You can always tell a really good friend, because she'll drive you all over Kent on what I now think of as "Chasing Chiltons Tuesday."  And I have now successfully "bookended" my 10th great-grandmother, Mary Chilton, by visiting the church where she was christened in Sandwich, Kent, having already been to her table tomb in Boston, Massachusetts.)

I know I must have had a good time in Europe, because my suitcase coming home weighed a good fifteen or twenty pounds heavier than it did on the way there, from the weight of the heraldry books I got there!

Pictures of heraldry, and stories about some of it, will follow as I can sort through the roughly 1,500 pictures I took.  [Edit: Just got them all copied over onto my computer.  I took 2,316 photos.]  (No, I probably won't bore you too much with the four churches we visited where some of my ancestors attended, except for some of the heraldry in them!)

“Crests vs Coats”

AC Silver in England has posted a nice short article by Rachel O’Keefe over on their website about the difference between “crests” and “coats” (of arms).

It’s a great little article that covers one of the confabulations that tend to annoy heralds and heraldry enthusiasts like me: the use of the term “crest” to refer to either crests or coats of arms.

I’d tell you a lot more about the article, but I really can’t afford to spend very much time at AC Silver’s website, because they sell a lot of antique silver, and a bunch of that antique silver is engraved with coats of arms and/or crests, and frankly, I don’t have the money to buy it all (or a place to put it if I did).  So it’s better for me to just avoid the temptation as much as possible.

But you can go!  Be my guest.  Enjoy!

And check out Rachel’s article (will illustrations from engraved silver) at http://www.acsilver.co.uk/acsnews/2014/07/24/crests-vs-coats/

Once Again …

…. proof that you can find heraldry everywhere.

Reader and correspondent Jon von Briesen shared the following with me, and is graciously allowing me to share it with all of you.

“Snapped this cell phone pic, as we were about to depart from a hospital in so. Jersey. We had just dropped off a patient.

“PennStar is a helicopter operating in our region and, I think, owned by U of Pennsylvania Hospitals.  You can see the arms of U Penn on the side, and belly, of the aircraft.

“The three plates on chevron azure allude to the three plates on a fess sable, in the arms of Wm. Penn.”

You just never know where you are going to see another coat of arms!  Thank you for sharing this, Jon!

Heraldry in the Heraldry News!

A recent (July 29, 2014) article on the website of the College of Arms in London speaks of pedigree rolls and a project to locate, rehouse and list comprehensively the large collection of rolled material held at the College, of which pedigree rolls comprise the largest portion.

As a part of this project to preserve and conserve these materials, the newly-appointed Pigott Library at the College has been fitted out with archival shelving and environmental controls, and the rolls housed in custom-made acid-free boxes. Over 1,100 rolls have now been entered into a searchable database there.

There’s more to the article of course, but I’m not going to repeat it all here for you.  Feel free to go to the website of the College of Arms, or click this link http://www.college-of-arms.gov.uk/news-grants/news/item/100-pedigree-rolls to not only see what the College is doing with this project, but to see some of the pictures that they have included of some of these one-of-a-kind pedigree rolls.  (I especially like how the reverse side of one roll was used to draw out some chess problems!)

The College of Arms is to be congratulated on this massive undertaking, which will preserve and make more accessible these unique materials.

Heraldry in the News!

A recent (July 23, 2014) article in the Wells Journal gives some of the ancient background behind the symbolism of the seal and coat of arms for the city of Wells, England, used since 1867, though only authorized by the College of Arms in 1951.  The coat of arms portrays a large tree, reputed to be an ash, surrounded by three of the wells that give the city its name, and is based on a 13th Century seal used by the city.

Archaeologist Dr. Stephen Yeates, an expert on life in the area before the Roman conquest, notes that one of these ancient peoples, the Dobunni, used an image of a Mother Goddess who is always depicted accompanied by a large bucket or round vessel.   Over the ensuing centuries elements were added to this Mother Goddess myth, one of which is that she usually inhabited the roots of a large tree.  The 13th Century seal and 19th unofficial and 20th Century granted coats (this last shown immediately below) of arms use the image of the tree and three vessels (representing the three wells of the City of Wells) and can be seen as a direct descendant of these far earlier images.

You can read the whole story on the website of the Wells Journal at http://www.wellsjournal.co.uk/New-light-shed-Wells-city-seal/story-21742037-detail/story.html

Always Double-Check Your Assumptions

It may not always pay to double-check yourself when researching or writing about heraldry, but there are many, many times when it does, and so it's something that you, and I, should make a habit.

I had this forcibly brought to my attention the other day, when I was finishing up the research on a presentation I've been preparing on the history and usage of the arms of the United States.  As a part of that presentation, I give examples of some of the individual states of the union which incorporate the arms of the U.S., or some variation of them, in their own official insignia.

One of those examples was the State of Mississippi.

Mississippi has used the same seal since before it became a state way back in late 1817.  The seal has been used from 1798 when it was a territory.  (It was bigger back then; the Territory of Mississippi also include what is now the State of Alabama, another entity which incorporates the arms of the U.S. into its own arms.)  It used this seal from that time until January 31, 2014 (just earlier this year) ...

... at which time it added the words "In God We Trust" to the legend on the seal.

I had been looking at both versions of the state seal and trying to figure out the reasons for the fact that the shield only has eleven stripes while the arms of the United States has thirteen (for the original thirteen colonies), and has eleven stars on the chief, while the arms of the U.S. has a plain blue chief (with no stars).  And not knowing at the time the dates of usage of the seal, I was speculating that it may have been a reference to the short-lived Confederate States of America, of which Mississippi was one.

But the date for the use of the seal, beginning in 1798, was well before the 1861 establishment of the Confederacy.  So I was left with an unsupported assumption, one that seemed to be incorrect.  Doing from more research, just to see if I could find out why eleven stripes and eleven stars, I ran across a photograph of the original seal matrix for the Territory of "Missisippi" (the name is missing an "s").  I've reversed the image here so it appears as a positive:

As you can see, the arms here are actually those of the United States which had been adopted in 1782, heraldically hatched with thirteen white and red stripes and a plain blue chief, and with the eagle supporter holding an olive branch in its dexter talon and thirteen arrows in its sinister one, with the motto scroll in its beak with the words E Pluribus Unum, and the crest of stars in a blue sky surrounded by clouds and a glory (the sunshine-like "rays").

Well, then, when did the state start using only eleven stripes and add the stars to the chief?  I don't know yet.  I'll have to do some more research into the matter.  And it may turn out that my original assumption - that the number eleven has to do with the Confederate States of America - might have been correct, and that all this research will just lead me full circle back to confirm that.  If it does, great.  If it doesn't, and there's a different reason for the number of stripes, that's great, too.

But at least I will know for certain, instead of making an unfounded assumption.  One that could have been wrong by some seventy years.