[ANSTHRLD] New Question

[tmcd at panix.com]

"Paul Haines" <wyrmclaw at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> From what I've read of the College of Arms of England, not all arms
> that are granted are hereditary,

I believe that that is quite false.

> but there are ways to prove claim to arms and submit an application
> for the granting of those arms to hereditary descendents.

I believe that that is called rematriculation.  It isn't necessarily
just descendents: in Britain, it has been until recently a rule that
it went to the heir(s) general.

> Here we have a son with a legal right to the arms

Almost certainly he does not.
<http://www.americancollegeofheraldry.org/recher.html> et alia
explain in detail via the rec.heraldry most FAQ.

    The short answer is this: Your family probably has no coat of
    arms. Most families don't. Discovering whether your family has
    arms is a time-consuming problem in genealogy. Anyone who claims
    to be able to find your arms simply by looking in a book or a
    database is either ignorant or lying.

    To explain in more detail, we have to clear up some misconceptions:

    * There is no such thing as "the arms of Smith". Arms are
      associated with families or lineages. A coat was inherited by a
      child from his parent, either intact or somewhat modified. But
      any individual's claim to use a specific historical coat of arms
      rests on a family link with someone acknowledged to have used
      those arms.

    * Many unrelated families share the same surname. Sharing a
      surname does not mean that you share the right to the same arms.

    * Conversely, many families with different names have the same
      coat of arms. A coat of arms does not uniquely identify a
      family.

      ...

    * Therefore, if your name is Smith, and a book or a guy in a mall
      shows you a coat of arms with the name Smith under it, that
      proves nothing at all. You are just as likely to be related to
      the founder of the Virginia colony, or the Scottish economist,
      or the nephew of Senator Kennedy, or none of the above. The guy
      in the mall with the database is fudging these issues and trying
      to sell you a pig in a poke. His database is certainly
      incomplete and probably very inaccurate, and he doesn't care
      about pedigrees. He is just out to exploit the similarity
      between your name and some name in his database.

    * In order to determine what your arms are, we would need much
      more than your name: We would need your pedigree traced back to
      someone who used a coat of arms. The standard of proof will vary
      with the needs: If you are of Scottish descent and wish to
      matriculate arms with the Scottish heraldic authority, you'd
      better have a well-documented pedigree, probably stretching over
      several centuries. If you only want to use arms for yourself in
      a country such as the USA where heraldry is unregulated, then it
      is just a matter of satisfying yourself. Strictly genealogical
      matters are best discussed in the soc.genealogy* hierarchy.

My bet is that some "bucket shop herald" told him "these are the arms
of Henderson; you are a Henderson; therefore, these are your arms".

I would expect a few of the Usual Suspects on the CoA level to twitch
about it (Bambi (Alisoun MacCoul of Elphane) and Flieg (Frederick of
Holland)), and I suspect that it would be registered nevertheless.

Daniel de Lincolia
--
Tim McDaniel, tmcd at panix.com; tmcd at us.ibm.com is my work address