Two Coats of Arms on Copp's Hill _Not_ Found in the Gore Roll

We've been looking at some of the armorial headstones and tombstones in the historic Copp's Hill Burying Ground in Boston, Massachusetts. The ones we've looked at so far bore arms which are also found in the Gore Roll of Arms, so today, we're going to make a change, and look at two memorials which bear arms that do not appear in the Gore Roll.

The first is the table tomb of the Rev. Francis W.P. Greenwood, the rector of King’s Chapel (just a few blocks away, and which we will be visiting in time to see the armorial memorials erected in that building) in the early 1800s.

The tomb has a Latin cross carved into its top, and a coat of arms (though the stone it is carved into is broken) on the "head" end of the tomb.

The arms show "A fess between three mullets of six points pierced and three ducks." And the crest: "A mullet of six points pierced within a pair of wings conjoined." Burke’s General Armory gives us: “Greenwood (Norwich and co. York, 1594). Argent a fess between three mullets in chief and as many ducks in base all sable. Crest—A mullet between a pair of duck’s wings expanded sable. Motto—Ut prosim.”

So now we know the colors of the arms and crest, having them here "in black and white," as it were.

(Sorry, not sorry. I couldn't resist the temptation of saying "in black and white" for a coat of arms whose colors are, oh, yeah, white and black.

The other non-Gore Roll arms today are on the memorial to "Isaac Dupee, heir to Goodridge." The inscription running around the four sides of the base of the obelisk is: "Erected by Isaac Dupee / Grandson to G. / Aged LXXV / August 31. A.D. 1846"

The Copp's Hill Burying Ground Guide, p. 13, informs us that this monument is "the most elaborate monument in the burying ground," and "demands a level of religious undterstanding few of us have today. It was erected by Isaac Dupee in 1846 and tells little about him or about the Dupee Family. Some were involved with early Boston education and later generations owned mill at Lowell [Massachusetts] and started copper mines in Upper Michigan."

The Heraldic Journal, Vol. II, pp. 81-83, gives the family descent of Walter Gutridge or Goodridge,* naming him as "undoubtedly" the owner of this tomb, and demonstrating that Isaac Dupee was the grandson of Walter through his daughter Mary, who married Elias Dupee.

In addition to the large Latin cross and letter "God Is Love", the four sides of the obelisk each have a Bible verse reference, and those verses were then used to form two couplets. But as the Guide notes, "From our viewpoint today, it is difficult to see how the couplets could be made from the verses cited."

But, of course, it was the heraldry on the front face of the base that is the reason for its being reviewed here.

The arms (untinctured here, obviously) show "a fess and in chief three patriarchal crosses fitchy at the foot." The crest is a bird. Burke’s General Armory cites: “Goodridge (Totness, co. Devon; Walter Goodridge, of that place. Visit. 1620). Argent a fess sable in chief three crosses crosslet fitchie of the last. Crest—A blackbird proper.” So here, too, we now know the colors "in black and white." (Hey, there's no point in using a marginally funny joke if you can't run it right into the ground, right? Right?)

* Spelling was a lot more flexible back then. In working on my own family tree, I have found spellings of the surname now normally spelled "Bigelow" running the gamut from the very short "Biglo" to the very much longer "Biggalough". People wrote what they heard, and spelled it to match. Which is how the good old Scottish surname "Forbes" (which would have been pronounced with two syllables: For-bess) became, upon hearing someone pronounce it with their highlands brogue, "Farrabas". Ain't orthography fun?

Another Armorial Headstone in Copp's Hill Burying Ground, Boston, Massachusetts

Our next armorial headstone in Copp's Hill Burying Ground in Boston is another coat of arm also found in the Gore Roll of Arms, that of Gee, where they are impaled with Thacher or Thatcher.

I recommend that you click on the image above to go to the full-size version, where the shield and its charges are a little easier to make out. They were less obscured when we last visited Boston in 2008, as you can see from this image taken then.

Of the bearer of these arms, the Copp’s Hill Burying Ground Guide, p 22, says: "Joshua Gee, wealthy shipbuilder, whose son [also Joshua] was pastor of 2nd Church 1742-48, once had the only privately owned family plot in the burying ground. His wife 'wanted to be laid away from the multitude,' instead of the helter-skelter way the other graves were arranged."

Joshua Gee of Boston was a freeman in 1675. He married (1st) Elizabeth Harris, 25 Sept. 1688, by whom he had several children besides Rev. Joshua Gee, a colleague of Rev. Cotton Mather.** He married (2nd) Elizabeth, daughter of Judah Thacher, December 7, 1704. (Savage, A Genealogical Dictionary of the First Settlers of New England, Showing Three Generations of Those Who Came Before May, 1692)

The arms are blazoned: Azure on a chevron Argent between three leopard’s faces Or three fleurs-de-lis Gules. The crest is difficult to make out here, being more than somewhat obscured by the growth of lichens on the tombstone, but is given in the Gore Roll as A wolf statant reguardant Ermine.

Dr. Harold Bowditch ("The Gore Roll of Arms," Collections 29 (1-4) of the Rhode Island Historical Society),* says: "The 'Gee' arms turn out to be those of Gay, Guy or Gye. Identified through Papworth, they are found in Burke under Guy of Oundle, Northamptonshire, and of Wiltshire, but with this crest: A lion's head azure with a collar partly azure and sable, between two wings gold. Under the name of Gye of the Cellar they appear in Glover's Ordinary, a compilation by Robert Glover, Somerset Herald in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. By giving the name Guy its French pronunciation it is easy to see how it became spelled Gee in England."

I must say, it always gives me a bit of a thrill to see in real life a coat of arms that has appeared in one (or more) of the books that I own.

* We noted two other publications in our previous post where Dr. Bowditch's full review of arms in the rediscovered Gore Roll of Arms can be found, along with additional information.

** Cotton Mather, and his father Increase, and other Mathers, are also buried in Copp's Hill Burying Ground. I make it a point every time I visit Copp's Hill to stop by their table tomb to execrate Cotton, because of the nasty things that he said about my 10th great-grandmother, Susanna (North) Martin, during the Salem witch trials of 1692. Yes, I know that more than 300 years is a long time to carry a grudge, but while she was an old widow with opinions, she was no witch, and Cotton called her a "rampant hag," described her as "one of the most impudent, scurrilous, wicked creatures in the world," and said that Satan himself had promised her that "she would be the Queen of Hell." So, yeah, I take it a bit personally. We now return you to your regularly scheduled post on heraldry.

We Start Looking at Some Armorial Tombstones in Boston, Massachusetts

I recently made a trip to Massachusetts, where I would be, as I told people, "visiting relatives, living and dead." And along the way, I knew I'd be able to get some pictures of heraldry, too. Because we'd been to Massachusetts before: once in 2008, and again in 2022. On the 2008 trip, we stayed in the Boston area, and I took a lot of photos of the heraldry we saw, but I was using my old 35mm film camera, and took fewer duplicate photos to save film, and couldn't see how the pictures turned out until I got home and had the film developed. As it turned out, a lot of them were either too dark, slightly out of focus, or both.

In 2022, I had a high-quality digital SLR camera that would let me take multiple pictures of each item, so that I would be sure that more of them would come out properly, but we didn't stay in Boston; instead we were down by Cape Cod the whole time, so I wasn't able to get back to the burying grounds in Boston.

I sought to rectify that on this trip, and over the next several posts we're going to review the armorial headstones, tombstones, and memorials found in Copp's Hill Burying Ground, Granary Burying Ground, and King's Chapel Burying Ground, as well as in the interior of King's Chapel. (On this last, I did ask before hauling out my camera. They permit photographs, but not flash, in the interior of the building. "Lucky" for me, I purchased my digital SLR with the ability to take good pictures in low-light situations in mind. I put "lucky" in quotes, because luck had nothing to do with it!)

My first stop was at Copp's Hill Burying Ground, where the first item of business was personal: to find the headstone of my step-8th-great-grandmother, Judith (Itchenor) Copp. (Yes, she was married to my 8th-great-grandfather, William Copp, who owned the land and gave his name to "Copp's Hill." He died in 1670 and was buried here, but has no marker.) But here is his second wife's stone!

Alas, this is probably not the actual place of her burial; in the late 1800s it was decided to rearrange all of the headstones in the burying ground into nice, neat rows, but without regard to the actual burial sites of the individuals so memorialized. Nonetheless, it's her headstone, and I was able to stop by and introduce myself to her.

Having done that, I was able to wander about the rest of the burying ground finding and photographing armorial tombstones. Today, we're going to look at the first two of these, the tombstones of John Clark (died 1728) and his brother, William (died 1743). The brothers are buried next to each other along one wall of the burying ground.

Reliquæ

JOHANNIS CLARKE, Armig:

laudasissime Senatoris et Medicinæ Doctoris;

Probitate Modestia

et Mansuetudine præclaari

Terram reliquit Decem 5, 1728, ætat. 62

Nomen et Pietas manent post Funera.

Here lyes the mortal part of

WILLIAM CLARK Esqr

An Eminent Merchant of this Town, and

An Honorable Counsellor for

the Province:

Who Distinguished Himself as a Faithful and Affectionate

Friend, a Fair and generous Trader,

Loyal To His Prince,

Yet always Zealous for the Freedom of his

Countrey. A Despiser of

Sorry Persons

and little Actions, An Enemy to Priestcraft and

Enthusiasm, Ready to relieve and help the Wretched.

A Lober of good Men

of Various Denominations, and a

Reverent Worshipper

Of the Deity.

The Copp’s Hill Burying Ground Guide, p 18, tells us: “Wm. Clark, the wealthiest of Boston’s ship owners. During the French & Indian War (1744-1749), he lost 40 ships and that hastened his death shortly afterward. Adjoining it is the tomb of his brother, Dr. John Clark, physician and its inscription is in Latin. Seven succeeding generations all produced doctors with the same name. This tomb is called ‘the Winslow Tomb,’ because Samuel Winslow, sexton of 1st Baptist Church, took it over and carved his name as rightful owner.”

These arms are found in the Gore Roll of Arms, an 18th Century roll of arms made in colonial Boston, in the second and third quarters of the inescutcheon of pretense on the arms of McAdams. They are blazoned: Argent a ragged staff bendwise between three roundels sable. The crest on the tombstones is: A goose crowned, gorged and chained maintaining in its dexter foot a roundel.

In his review of the arms found in the then-newly-rediscovered Gore Roll, Harold Bowditch, in "The Gore Roll of Arms," Collections 29 (1-4) of the Rhode Island Historical Society,* noted: "The coat here given for Clarke and previously used on the stones at Copp's Hill has not been found under this name in Edmondson or Burke; it appears to be a variant of a well known Clark coat: Silver a bend gules between three roundles sable on the bend three swans silver. So far as I know no valid claim to this coat exists on the part of any American Clark family. Papworth['s Ordinary of British Armorials] gives a bend raguly between three or six roundles for Walworth, a bend embattled between six roundles for Burnell, and a ragged staff in bend between seven roundles for Sayre."

In looking elsewhere for other possible sources for this coat of arms, I found the Dictionary of British Arms gives us Clerk/Clerke/Clark and cites several individuals bearing "On a bend between three roundels three birds" and "Argent on a bend gules between three roundels sable three swans or."

So, interesting armorial tombstones, but are they also additional evidence that even 300 years ago, in 18th Century Boston, Massachusetts, people were being sold their "family crest" by what we now call "bucket shop heralds"?

* This is where I first saw Dr. Bowditch's review of the arms in the Gore Roll. His review of all of these arms can also be found in a 2006 book, The Gore Roll, written and published by myself (http://www.appletonstudios.com/BooksandGames.htm), and more recently in 2024 in a facsimile edition, The Gore Roll: The Earliest Known Roll of Arms in America, published by the New England Historic Genealogical Society (https://shop.americanancestors.org/collections/heraldry/products/the-gore-roll?pass-through=true).

Some Real Heraldry in This Movie

So there I was, watching the 1957 film Witness for the Prosecution, a courtroom drama set in London, England.

I will say, it's a great little movie! Directed by Billy Wilder and starring Tyrone Power, Marlene Dietrich, Charles Laughton, and Laughton's real-life wife, Elsa Lanchester, it's based on a story by Agatha Christie. And I have to admit, the ending was a twist that I had not seen coming. At all!

Anyway, there are, naturally, a number of scenes inside the courtroom, and it was in those scenes that I was both pleased and somewhat confused to see the heraldry therein. Because while it was set in criminal court in London, nowhere did I see the Royal Arms of the United Kingdom. Not in any scene, not at any angle. And in any court in the United Kingdom, not just a criminal court, one would normally expect to see those arms prominently displayed, as a symbol of the Sovereign's authority as the "source and fountain of justice."

But despite that lack, the chairs upon which sat the judges and the barristers did bear a coat of arms:

As you can see pretty clearly (and you can click on the image above to go to the full-size screenshot I took during the movie), what we have on the backs of each of these chairs is the coat of arms of the City of London!

Here are two of the many examples of London's arms which I found when we were last there.

The arms of London themselves are remarkably simple: Argent a cross and in dexter chief a sword gules. (Yes, it's a sword and not a dagger. The arms combine the emblems of St. George and St. Paul. There is a story that the "sword" represents the dagger used by the Lord Mayor of London to kill Wat Tyler, the leader of the Peasants' Revolt in June 1381, but these arms were brought into use in April of that year, and thus pre-date Tyler's death.)

In the image from the movie and in the street sign, the arms of London are supported by two white dragons, their wings charged with a red cross. The crest is A dragon's sinister wing argent charged with a cross gules, and the motto underneath the arms is Domine dirige nos (God guide us).

Now, this is not to say that I take issue with the use of the arms of London on chairbacks. Indeed, I have seen exactly such a usage with the arms of the Royal Burgh of Rothesay on the Isle of Bute:

So I have no quibble with the arms of London on the chairs in the courtroom; I just didn't see a representation of the Royal Arms in the courtroom scenes where I would have expected them.

Anyway, it's always nice to see actual heraldry used in the movies, even when it really doesn't play a big role in the plotline.

Two Coats of Arms on an Historic Storefront

You can find two different coats of arms on the small-front building at 216 Strand in London, England.

One, the most impressive one, naturally, is the Royal Arms of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, displayed on the front of the building to denote that the proprietors have a Royal Warrant from Her Late Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. (It may, or may not, have been upated since the accession of King Charles III to the throne.)

Be that as it may, this is what I saw when I passed by just a few years ago:

But as I said, there is another coat of arms there, less well-known, perhaps, but just as important to the proprietors:

These are, obviously, the arms of Twinings Tea & Coffee Merchants. The arms are differenced form of the personal arms of the Twining family (by reversing the tinctures and adding the lion), and are blazoned: Sable a fess embattled between two mullets and a lion passant guardant Argent. The crest is: A cubit arm grasping two snakes each entwined around the arm all proper. (So the crest is actually a cant, a stretched one, but still, a cant, or pun, on the surname.) The motto is: Fortiter ac Firmiter (Strongly and Firmly).

You can learn a little more about Twinings, its Royal Warrant, and its "logo", which is claimed to be the oldest one in the world, on-line at https://pagenorth.co.uk/the-worlds-oldest-logo/

It's always a little bit awe-inspiring to me, that you can learn so much by digging into the history of a place that you may have stopped at for only a minute or two, for the purpose of taking a couple of photographs.

Another Piece of Reel Heraldry

It's often interesting to see how moviemakers treat coats of arms, especially when the coat of arms is supposed to be that of a fictional country.

Well, the other day, I was continuing my quest to see movies that, in my opinion, I should have seen before, but which I haven't. And one of those movies which recently popped up on my radar was the old 1957 work starring the unusual, or at least unexpected, combination of Laurence Olivier and Marilyn Monroe, The Prince and the Showgirl.

I'm not going to get into all of details of the movie, its plot, or even (at least not very much) my opinion of it overall. However, there was some heraldry, and that, of course, got my attention.

The prince of the title, played by Sir Laurence, is His Serene Highness the Grand Duke Charles, Regent of the (fictional) Balkan country, the Kingdom of Carpathia.* And as many of the scenes in the movie take place in the Carpathian Embassy in London, there are several depictions of the Carpathian coat of arms, two in color, and one two tone.

None of the screenshots I got of these arms are quite clear enough to make out everything on the shield, but you can certainly easily notice that they are very complex.

The first and fourth quarters are actually pretty clear: 1, Or three lions passant guardant in pale Sable; and 4, Or a double-headed eagle displayed Sable, but it's hard to make out what is on the eagle's breast or what is in chief, though there is clearly something on the eagle's breast and clearly something is in chief. In the second image (and you can click on any image above to go to the full-size screenshot to see the details a little better), the charge on the eagle's breast looks like a lozenge Argent charged with a W throughout Gules, but I don't entirely trust my interpretation of that.

The second and third quarters are grand-quartered. The second quarter, as far as I can make it out, is: Quarterly, i and iv, Azure a fess and canton Or between in chief [something I cannot make out] and in base a tree Proper; ii and iii, Sable a chevron reversed Argent. The third quarter looks to be: Quarterly, i and iv, Gules a chevron between three [leopard's faces?] Or; ii and iii, Vair on a pile reversed throughout Argent a cross pomelly Gules.

Overall is an inescutcheon, Azure a [horse?] passant Argent [saddled? bearing a pack? Or is there something hanging from its neck over its side?] Proper atop a terrace [mount?] Vert.

Somebody, somewhere, put a lot of work into creating this very complex coat of arms for the fictional Kingdom of Carpathia. And the fact that the set builders kept all three examples of this coat of arms pretty consistent meant that they were paying attention to detail.

All in all, I am fairly impressed by the work that went into creating this coat of arms and its several depictions. I am less impressed by what I feel is its unnecessary complexity.

Still, though, its another example of running across some heraldy in an unexpected place, and I am always willing to stop (or in this instance, hit the "Pause" button) and look.

* As Google is happy to inform us, "There is no real country called 'Carpathia'; it is a geographical region that spans across eight Central and Eastern European countries: Austria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, and Ukraine."

Some Foreign Arms in the Supreme Court of the UK Building

One of the lesser-known, perhaps, yet still very important, effects of World War II was the business of running more than one "government-in-exile" based in the United Kingdom.

And it is one aspect of this business that has been commemorated heraldically in the halls of the Supreme Court of the UK building.

The photgraph above is an overview of what we're going to look at today.

The arched frame in the center we have seen before; it contains the arms of the County of Middlesex.

The document in the square frame on the right explains what is being commemorated here:

"In Commemoration of the first authorization by the British Parliament of the establishment in the United Kingdome by the Allied and Associated Foreign Powers during the World War of Maritime Courts for the trail of offences committed by person other than British subjects, and in acknowledgment of the value and the valour of the great contribution made by these nations to the common cause notwithstanding the tragic misfortunes which had overtaken their native lands."

Flanking the text on the left is, of course, the Royal Arms of the United Kingdom, and along the bottom, the saltire of St. Andrew (for Scotland), the cross of St. George (for England), and the saltire of St. Patrick (for Ireland).

The document in the square frame on the left contains the arms of these "Allied and Associated Foreign Powers", governments in exile:

In the center are the arms of the Republic of Poland;* in the upper left, the arms of the Kingdom of the Netherlands; in the upper right, the arms of the Kingdom of Norway; in the lower left, the arms of the Kingdom of Belgium; and in the lower right, the arms of the Kingdom of Greece.

How fitting that these special Maritime Courts are commemorated in the halls of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom.

How much better that they are commemorated heraldically.

* In relation to one of my other big historical interests, airplanes and airmen in World War II, there were some sixteen Polish squadrons who flew with the Royal Air Force. Of particular note are 302 Squadron and 303 Squadron, who fought with distinction in the Battle of Britain.