MOA

[Timothy A. McDaniel]

Michael Heydon <Marrock at msn.com> wrote:
> I am a student to Master at Arms Daniel Blackaxe.  As I understand
> it, anyone can swear the oath of fealty to the king, yet a Master at
> Arms, by its definition implies he swears oath of fealty to his
> weapons and the use of his weapons.

As a tangent: the concept of swearing fealty to an inanimate object
(or here, to a verb!) is not at all period.  That's part of the
problem I have with swearing fealty to "the Crown": in period, you
swore fealty to that guy wearing the crown (if he wore it at all: the
English Henry II used the Norman practice of wearing it only thrice a
year at ceremonial crown-wearings).

I have never heard of Masters of Arms swearing fealty as a rule to
anything; has anyone else heard of this terminology, or is this Master
Daniel's personal interpretation?

> As a Master at Arms, you may interrupt court without permission
> also.

Has anyone else heard of this practice?  I recall reading kingdom law
saying that the conduct of the court is at the pleasure of the Crown.
Personally, as someone who has heralded some courts, I would think Bad
Thoughts Indeed about anyone who interrupted court without permission
or a really good reason (e.g., "look at that funnel cloud over
there!", "chiurgeon!", truthfully calling "fire!").  It's the Crown's
court or the Baron's court, not yours.  (Unless "you" == Madhi,
Valeria, soon Kein or Alicia, or the baron in question, of course.)

-- 
Daniel de Lincoln
Tim McDaniel; Reply-To: tmcd at crl.com