The Arms of an Earl in the Supeme Court of the UK Building

Having looked at the arms of the 2nd Duke of Wellington on and in the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom building in our last post, today we're going to look at similarly placed arms of an earl.

These are the arms of George Henry Charles Byng, 3rd Earl of Strafford, on the exterior of the building:

The reasons for his arms appearing in this building are many:

In 1857, he became a Member of Parliament for Middlesex under the courtesy title Viscount Enfield and served as a junior minister under Gladstone. In 1874, he entered the House of Lords as Baron Strafford of Harmondsworth in the County of Middlesex, and later served as Under-Secretary of State for India (1880-1883) and 1st Commissioner for the Civil Service (1880-1886).

In 1884, as Viscount Enfield, he was appointed Lord Lieutenant of Middlesex. He became Earl of Strafford on his father’s death in 1886.

He also served with the Middlesex Militia. He was Honorary Colonel of the 17th (North) Middlesex to 1885, and of the 2nd Middlesex (The Edmonton Rifles) 1871-1878. In addition he was Honorary Colonel of the Royal Middlesex Rifle Militia and of the 29th Middlesex Rifle Volunteers, and Lieutenant-Colonel of the Middlesex Rifle Corps.

Later on, the Middlesex Guildhall (now the Supreme Court of the UK building) was the site where Edmund Byng, the 6th Earl of Strafford, served as a County Alderman and Deputy Lieutenant in the early 20th century, holding various offices and engaging in local administration within Middlesex County.

Here are some of the other representations of his coat of arms which can be found inside the building. First, once again, on the memorial plaque, here on the bottom right, next to the arms of Middlesex in the center:

In stained glass, on right, alongside the Middlesex coat of arms:

And in a window by itself:

The arms are blazoned: Quarterly sable and argent, in the first quarter a lion rampant argent overall in bend sinister a representation of the colours of the 31st Regiment.

Crests: 1st, Issuant from a mural coronet an arm embowed grasping the colours of the 31st Regiment and pendant from the wrist by a riband the gold cross presented by royal command for Lord Strafford’s gallant achievements and on an escroll the word “Mouguerre”; 2nd, An antelope statant ermine armed maned and unguled or.

Supporters: Dexter, An antelope ermine attired and crined or; Sinister, A lion argent.

Motto: Tuebor (“I will be seen”)

Once again, a wonderful display of the heraldry of a man important to the County of Middlesex.

The Arms of a Duke in the Supreme Court of the UK Building

Continuing our look at the heraldry contained in and on the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom building in London, formerly the Middlesex Guildhall, we find several instances, both inside and outside of the building, of these arms, seen on the exterior of the building next to one of the several renditions of the arms of Middlesex:

And in detail:

These arms are not, as some of the more eagle-eyed among you may have assumed, the arms of Arthur Wellesly, the 1st Duke of Wellington of Napoleonic Wars fame.

No, these are actually the arms of his son, Arthur Richard Wellesley, 2nd Duke of Wellington (1807-1884).

Having succeeded his father, the 1st Duke of Wellington, the 2nd Duke also inherited all of his late father's other titles. The best way to list them all is to take them from his obituary, which gives the 2nd Duke's name and titles as:

Arthur Richard Wellesley, KG., Duke and Marquis of Wellington (Somerset), Marquis of Douro, Earl of Wellington (Somerset), Viscount Wellington of Talavera and of Wellington, and Baron Douro of Wellesley, both in the same county, in the Peerage of the United Kingdom; Earl of Mornington, Viscount Wellesley of Daugan Castle, and Baron Mornington, of Mornington, county Meath, in the Peerage of Ireland; Prince of Waterloo in the Netherlands, Duke of Ciudad Rodrigo, and a Grandee of Spain of the 1st Class, Duke of Vittoria, Marquis of Torres Vedras, and Count Vimiera, in Portugal.

Now, the main reason, I presume, for his arms to appear both inside and outside of the Supreme Court building was that Wellington became Lord-Lieutenant of Middlesex in 1868. He was, in fact, the last Lord Lieutenant to command the Middlesex militia and volunteers; the Regulation of the Forces Act 1871 removed that responsibility from the Lord Lieutenants from 1872, and the volunteers came under the War Ministry.

In addition to his arms appearing on the exterior of the building (the first image, above), we also find the following examples in the interior:

At the bottom left  of this plaque, which we saw in our last post:

In stained glass, here on the right:

And in its own window:

And finally, carved in wood heldby an angel:

The arms are blazoned: Quarterly: 1st and 4th. Gules, a cross argent, in each quarter five plates; 2nd and 3rd, Or a lion rampant gules armed and langued azure; for augmentation, an inescutcheon of the union badge of the United Kingdom.

Crest: Issuant from a ducal coronet or a demi-lion rampant gules maintaining a swallowtailed pennon argent charged with the cross of St George, the ends gules.

Supporters: Two lions gules gorged with an Eastern crown chained or.

Motto: Virtutes fortuna comes (“Deeds of bravery are the companions to fortune”).

The second Duke of Wellington may not be as well-known as his more militarily (the Peninsular War, and Waterloo) and politically (Prime Minister, 1828-1830) prolific predecessor, yet his heraldic legacy lives on both inside and outside of this building just yards away from the Houses of Parliament and Westminster Abbey.

Middlesex Coat of Arms Inside the Supreme Court of the UK Building

Last time, we saw some of the representations of the arms of Middlesex (or more properly, of the former County Council of Middlesex), granted by the College of Arms in 1910, which appear on the exterior of the Supreme Court building (formerly, the Middlesex Guildhall).

The Middlesex arms, as I will refer to them hereafter, features three "seaxes" (notched swords) on a red background, a symbol of the Anglo-Saxons, with a Saxon crown added in the 1910 grant to differentiate it from Essex's arms. The coat of arms was granted to the Middlesex County Council and is based on traditional heraldry associated with the historic Kingdom of the Middle and East Saxons. (That this "traditional heraldry" didn't exist at the time of those kingdoms is a quibble I'm not going to get into. Heraldry as we understand it appeared later; let's just go ahead and say that these are "attributed arms", and move along.)

Having now passed through the main door and into the interior of the building, we find many more representations of the Middlesex arms inside.

Painted:

Cast in bronze on a WWI Memorial:

In stained glass. Most of the building's stained glass windows were produced in 1913 by Abbott and Co of Fleetwood, Lancaster. (We will discuss the arms on the right in a later post.)

Carved in wood:

And carved in stone, in a plaque commemorating the laying of the foundation stone of the building in 1912. The stone also displays the Royal Arms at the top, and two other personal coats of arms at the bottom, flanking the Middlesex arms. Here, too, we will discuss the personal arms in a later post.

All those different media, all displaying the same coat of arms, Gules three seaxes in pale below a Saxon crown or, the arms of Middlesex.

All in all, what a display of civic pride, both inside and outside of the building!

An Heraldic Jewel in Central London, UK

Today we're going to start a short series on the heraldry contained on and in a building in central London,* near the Houses of Parliament and Westminster Abbey.

The Middlesex Guildhall was completed in 1913 as a joint home for Middlesex County Council and for the Middlesex Quarter Sessions. It was built as a work of art: “a dainty piece of ornament set among the austere and formal buildings of the neighbourhood”. After the disbanding of the Council in 1965, the Guildhall continued to serve as a court (The Crown Court at the Middlesex Guildhall) and was then refurbished extensively between 2007-2009 to become the home for the new Supreme Court of the United Kingdom and the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. 

While some county councils have decorated their palaces with representations of the boroughs within their area, there is none of that here; only Middlesex itself is celebrated. The arms of Middlesex (or rather of the former County Council) appear throughout the Guildhall: Gules three seaxes in pale below a Saxon crown or. The arms were granted in 1910 and Middlesex was evidently proud of them, for they appear just about everywhere you look, inside and outside of the building.

Here are just a few examples from the exterior of the building:

And here, over the main entrance, along with a more modern example of the Royal Arms of the United Kingdom:

So, having made our way along the building and to the main entrance, next time we'll look at some of the representations of the arms of Middlesex inside the building!

* Yes, I know that technically this building is situated in Westminster, Central London. Just like I happen to live in Duncanville, a part of the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex. It is a distinction that pretty much only the people who actually live here care to make. I tell people I live in Dallas, even though technically speaking, I don't. Here, I'm going to say that the Supreme Court building is located in London, even though technically speaking, it isn't.

I Know Nothing About Heraldry, But ...

How many times I have seen a thread on-line, for example, in Reddit/heraldry, that begins with a statement along the lines of: "I don't know anything about heraldry, but I have made this design on a shield." And they attach a drawing whose only relationship to actual heraldry is that there is, in fact, an identifiable shield of some kind in it.

For example, an actual post header from July 2025: "WIP but I know absolutely nothing about heraldry", followed by "Literally just my doodles in class but I really like thus design aesthetically." The attached design was a round-bottom shield, quartered but with the fess line a little abased, with two plain quarters and completely different types and numbers of charges in the other two, with an oddly-designed coronet the full width of the shield atop it, and a snake-wrapped sword overlying everything to chief and to base,

Another example: "Next iteration of personal CoA/Achievement." My blazon would be: Azure on a chevron enhanced vert fimbriated between two starlings and [a concoction] argent three peach blossoms proper/pink. The "concoction" is composed of several elements: crossed knitting needles, four pen nibs, four diyas (small Indian oil lamps), and a chakra.

Everything in the design, of course, is full of deep and personal meaning for the designer. But is it identifiable as heraldry? Are the elements identifiable, as heraldry or anything else?

And then there's this one: "I made this [coat of arms for the Kingdom of America] for an Alternate History story I thought this would be the best place to post it. It's certainly not the best but I worked hard on it."

The arms consist of a blue shield charged with a brown eagle proper charged on the breast with the coat of arms of Washington, all within a mantle azure lined ermine, surmounted by the coronet of an English Earl, and with the arms or seals of the thirteen original colonies encircling the whole.

Someone did ask:

Q: If these are the arms of a kingdom, why does it have the coronet of a British earl rather than a king's crown on top?

A: I don’t know much about heraldry. I just used what I thought looked cool I will continue researching, and I'll make something better.

"I don't know much about heraldry" indeed.

I generally do not get involved in responding to such posts. It's not good for my equanimity. Or my gall bladder.

And as someone once noted some years ago: "It is actually very easy to come up with ugly designs if one just takes a pen and paper and starts drawing, with no prior knowledge of heraldry."

I have sometimes made the analogy of someone who has seen (not studied, but seen) a few examples of  art and has decided they want to paint something in the style of, say, Art Deco, and then produce something that could have been painted by one of the Pre-Raphaelites. Or has created something that they say is in the style of a Mughal painting.

This, to me, these examples of "heraldry" is pretty much the same thing.

I know, I sound a bit critical here. And another reason that I try not to respond to such posts is because I don't want to discourage someone from their new but not entirely formed interest in the field of heraldry. But, really, please, go out and look at some coats of arms. They're easy enough to find on the internet. And just by looking at them, you will start to learn a little about how coats of arms are designed. Because it's not just "I really like thus design aesthetically" or "I just used what I thought looked cool."

Like any other artistic style, there are some rules, often unwritten, about what makes a work Art Nouveau or Impressionistic or even Pointillist. Heraldry, for all of its variation by time and place, is the same way.

So please, do just a little looking around before you begin designing even fantasy arms for something. It will be worth it to you.

Plus, it will mean that I can reduce my dosage of Pepto-Bismol.

A Piece of U.S. Navy Heraldry

Well, there I was, at the annual Aviation Discovery Fest hosted by the Commemorative Air Force at a nearby local airport. And because I have had an interest in and love for old military aircraft, especially planes from World War II, and having some "free" time, I spent a pleasant afternoon seeing what was on display and taking photographs. I was also reveling a bit in just being able to be near some of these aircraft, as well as being reminded just how big (F4U Corsair) or comparatively small (B-24 Liberator long-range bomber) these planes seem now.

Anyway, there I was, reveling and looking and taking photographs, and I spotted a bit of heraldry on a display off to one side.

It wasn't an aircraft, but it had a coat of arms on it, and so I had to snap a picture of it to share with you.

It's a pretty standard Willys Jeep of WWII vintage, but unusually painted blue. The lettering just below the windscreen explains: "Tribute to: NAVY BLUE ANGELS".

For those of you who don't already know, the Blue Angels are the U.S. Navy's Flight Demonstration Squadron, a precision aerobatic team. (The U.S. Air Force also has a flight demonstration team, the Thunderbirds. I was lucky enough some years ago to have seen both the Thunderbirds and the Blue Angels flying at an airshow, and got a nice photo of both teams' planes lined up in a row. This was back when both were flying the F-4 Phantom jet. So it was kind of cool -- sorry, but I'm kind of a plane nerd, in addition to heraldry -- to see all these Phantoms lined up in a row with the two different paint schemes, one white, the other blue, used by the two teams.)

Anyway, if you look closely at the Jeep, you'll notice a shield on the left rear fender.

This is the U.S. Navy Blue Angels insignia, designed in 1949 by Lt. Commander Raleigh "Dusty" Rhodes, featuring the team's diamond formation aircraft silhouette flying through clouds on a per bend blue and gold shield. The charges in the lower portion of the shield include a "nose-on" view of an aircraft carrier above a Navy pilot's wings, surrounded by the words "Naval Air Training Command" between two stars. The scroll beneath the shield simply says: "Blue Angels".

The overall design of the shield has remained the same since 1949, but the specific aircraft depicted in the clouds are updated to reflect the current aircraft used by the team. Zooming in (and you can click on the image above to do that yourself), the planes here do not appear to be the F/A-18 Hornets that the team currently flies; they may be the A-4 Skyhawks that were being flown around 1985.

It turned out to be a pleasant afternoon seeing a bunch of old airplanes, but it also turned out to have a bit of heraldry in it as well. And how nice is that?

And Now, For a Little Japanese History and Heraldry

Let me just say this right up front: I probably spend more time watching various shows on NHK, the Japanese English-speaking channel, than I do just about any other channel. (Although PBS probably runs a reasonably close second.) I like shows about Japanese art, history, scenic travel, and so on, and over the years I have learned a lot about the country.

So much, in fact, that my late wife and I decided that we could never visit Japan. Not because we didn't want to, but because we couldn't afford to ship all of the stuff we would buy there back home. You know, the pottery, the metalwork, the art, the fabrics and the yarns (for her), the paper, and so on and so forth. 

With all that as background, I was recently watching a show entitled Samurai Castles, and it covered, in part, Nagoya Castle and its history.

The Castle was built in the early 1600s on the site of an earlier castle. The port of Nagoya was important at that time, because it lay on the main route between Edo (now Tokyo) and Kyoto, the old capital of Japan, and it was a way for the new shogun to help consolidate his newly-acquired power following his victory at the Battle of Sekigehara in 1600.

And as I was watching that episode of Samurai Castles, it was obvious to me that the new castle there had been built by the new shogun, Tokugawa Ieyasu. Now this was in part because I had been listening to the narrator, but more than that, because the castle is covered, Covered!, I say, in the Tokugawa kamon.

For those of you unfamiliar with the term, mon, also called monshō, mondokoro, and kamon, are Japanese emblems used to decorate and identify an individual, a family, or (more recently) an institution, municipality or business entity.

While mon is an encompassing term that may refer to any such device, kamon and mondokoro refer specifically to emblems that are used to identify a family.

Let me show you what I mean with these screenshots of the program.

In each of these photos, on the eaves at various places, and on the circular ends of the roof tiles, you can clearly see the three hollyhock leaves of the Tokugawa kamon. All of which serve to designate just whose castle this is.

Naturally, though, Ieyasu didn't build this castle himself. Following the Battle of Sekigehara in 1600, he reorganized roughly 200 daimyo and their territories into han, which were assessed by rice production.

Now, daimyo were powerful magnates, feudal lords who, from the 10th century to the early Meiji period in the middle 19th century, ruled most of Japan from their vast hereditary land holdings. They were subordinate to the shogun and nominally subordinate to the emperor and the kuge (an aristocratic class). In the term, dai means 'large', and myō stands for myōden, meaning 'private land'. (So, not terribly unlike the counts and their counties in Europe. Just sayin'.)

So in 1609, when the new shogun decided to rebuild Nagoya Castle, he levied the daimyo in central and southern Japan to supply the money, materials, and labor to do so. (As a plus, at least from his point of view, this would keep the daimyo sufficiently occupied and sufficiently poor that they couldn't set up an effective opposition to his rule. This tactic worked so well here and elsewhere that Japan had a nationwide peace for the next 250 years.)

Anyway, all that is basically an introduction to this next graphic, which shows the kamon of the daimyo from central and southern Japan who were drafted into helping to rebuild Nagoya Castle:

And there you have it! A brief introduction and explication with examples of Japanese "heraldry" as found in the history and in the structure of Nagoya Castle in central Japan.

Who knew you could find out so much about Japanese heraldry in a single 50-minute show while sitting in your own living room?

Heraldry of the Duchy of Grand Fenwick

"The Duchy of Grand Fenwick?" I hear you ask.

Well, yes, but ...

The fictional Duchy of Grand Fenwick was stated to be the smallest independent country in Europe, in the novel The Mouse That Roared by Leonard Wibberly.

In 1959, the novel was made into a movie of the same name, starring Peter Sellers (in three different roles), Jean Seberg, William Hartnell, and David Kossoff.

The plot of both the book and the movie is: An impoverished very small nation declares a war on the United States of America hoping to lose and then get financial support, but things don't go according to plan.

In the book, the arms of the Duchy are said to be a red double-headed eagle displayed, with two small scrolls held one in each beak, one with the word Aye (or here in the movie, Yea) and the other with the word Nay.

Unwilling, apparently, to leave it at something so relatively simple, the movie includes a much grander, far more complicated, coat of arms, complete with quartered arms on the breast of the eagle, complete with inescutcheon, along with other shields placed on the eagle's wings, as well as three crowns à la Russia. All, I have to assume, on the theory that a duchy with "grand" in its name should have an equally "grand" coat of arms.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you the arms of the Duchy of Grand Fenwick, as appeared in various scenes in the 1959 movie, The Mouse That Roared:

There was also another coat of arms that appeared in the movie on the side of a building in the Grand Duchy. It was very crudely painted, and, frankly, looks a little too much like something from a bucket shop to be real arms.

Nonetheless, there it was, and so I include it here for your perusal:

It is a quartered coat. I cannot make out what the charge in the first quarter is supposed to be. It looks vaguely like a seated human figure facing dexter, but that is only a guess. The second and third quarters appear to be Argent a lion passant gules, and the fourth quarter is an argent bend on a field of indeterminate color.

The shield is surmounted by a gentleman's helm which is so drawn as to be impossible for anyone to have actually worn (i.e., no one could get their head through that neck!), flanked by what looks like palm branches trying to be mantling. Above the helm is something golden, but impossible to make out what it is supposed to be.

Be that as it may, this is what the 1956 filmmakers used for heraldry in the fictional Duchy of Grand Fenwick.

Another Old Movie, Some More Old Heraldry

So there I was, watching the 1936 movie Rembrandt, about the life of Dutch artist Rembrandt van Rijn and starring Charles Laughton, Gertrude Lawrence, and Elsa Lanchester, produced and directed by Alexander Korda.

And by golly, wouldn't you know it? There were a couple of scenes with heraldry in them!

The first was this great flag with the arms of Amsterdam:

You can click on the image above to see the full-size picture, which shows the arms surmounted by a crown and the lion supporters more clearly.

The arms of Amsterdam are remarkably identifiable. Here's a depiction I saw, and photographed, in Maastricht:

There was a later, interior scene which also had some coats of arms. Alas, the combination of old black-and-white movie, watched on a television screen, and photographed with my phone's camera, left them just a little too blurry to adequately identify.

If you click on the image above to go to the full-size version and then zoom in, it's possible to get an inkling of what some of the charges on the shields might be, as well as the crowns that ensign each shield.

But, alas, not quite sharp enough for me to be able to see if these are real Dutch arms, or something just created for Hollywood. And this was back in the days before "on-location" shooting.

Still, I have seen windows like this, with many clear glass panes containing a single coat of arms more or less central to the window in a number of places in the Low Countries, so it's certainly evocative of the Netherlands of the time. Here's a modern example, found in Antwerp, Belgium:

It is nice to see Hollywood, even back in the day, getting at least some of the heraldry right!