Leaving Jamestown

Cruising on down the road from Jamestown, we passed through (and ate lunch in) the lovely little town of Williamsburg. They’ve got some fun shops there to look around in; I went into the tie shop just to see what they might have in the way of heraldic ties (since I’m always looking to add to my collection). Alas, the only tie with heraldry in the entire shop had a repeating pattern of the current Royal Arms of Great Britain. As tempting as it was (after all, it would go well with my pair of cufflinks with the same arms on them), I decided to pass. For some reason, there’s only so far I’m willing to go purporting with wearable heraldry to be the Queen of England.

In the same town, however, it’s possible to see a fair bit of heraldry while driving down the street. Williamsburg is home to the College of William and Mary (I recently – April 19, 2010 – posted about their adoption of a new mascot, a griffin), and I am happy to report that they use their 17th Century coat of arms extensively. For example, it appears on all of their signs, from the big sign at the entrance to many of the smaller detached offices to the football stadium.

Alas, that extensive usage does not appear to extend to such things as tee shirts, sweatshirts, and baseball caps. An intensive search of the student bookstore found very few items with the arms on them, the majority having the W&M initials logo, the team name “Tribe”, and/or the griffin mascot. The arms appeared only on some pennants, one hooded sweatshirt, and one tee shirt. Not caring to buy the pennant, and not having much use for a hooded sweatshirt down here in Texas (Dallas is further south than Damascus, Syria!), I opted for the tee shirt, which in addition to the arms says “School of Education”, which I thought was particularly appropriate for me, all things considered.  (After all, not only do I try to "educate" folks about heraldry, but my college degree is in "History/Secondary Education.")

You’d think historians would do better

My wife is always watching out for me (in so many ways), for which I very often have to thank her. Recently, she sent me a photograph (shown here) that she found of part of the Governor’s Mansion at Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia. Central in the photograph is the Royal (British) arms, beautifully carved and placed prominently above the entrance. Beautifully carved, prominently placed, but poorly painted.


Admittedly, they got part of it right. All of the parts which should be gold are, in fact, gold. But everything that should be red is dark blue, even the velvet cap in the Royal crown and the tongues of the two lions (crest and supporter). Everything that should be dark blue is painted a light blue. (The sole exception being the Garter, which is the dark blue that it is supposed to be.) And the white is painted a bluish-gray. (See the drawing of the Hanoverian Royal arms to the right for what the colors are supposed to be.)

I have no idea why these arms were painted this way. Did they run out of red paint? Then why not substitute the light blue for the red, since they obviously had sufficient quantities of dark blue. It still wouldn’t have been right, but it would have been more correct than the current version. Did someone just not care? Did no one double-check to confirm the colors before sending someone out to paint the arms?

For a place which prides itself on being "History in Motion" as "the world’s largest living history museum" containing "hundreds of restored, reconstructed, and historically furnished buildings" (all according to their website http://www.colonialwilliamsburg.com/), I, frankly, expect better than what I see here. I mean, if they can’t get the coat of arms right, what else may they be getting wrong? It’s not like it’s hard to find the correct colors. There are any number of books and websites that give photographs and drawings in full color of the evolution of the arms of England and Great Britain through the centuries. (See, e.g., http://www.fleurdelis.com/royal.htm) So what happened here?

As I said, you’d think historians would do better.