Arms and the law
by Mike Oettle
WHAT are the laws of heraldry that I have referred to?
Some people will be surprised to hear that a family coat of arms could be a matter for the law, but that is definitely the case.
But exactly what those laws prescribe depends to a large extent on the country those arms are derived from – and in some of those countries it also depends on the social state of the family that bears those arms.
Perhaps the strictest legal system, as far as heraldry is concerned, is that of Scotland.
Around a thousand years ago the Scottish kings had an official called the Lord High Sennachie, a bard whose responsibility it was to memorise the king’s family tree and recite it at his coronation, to prove that the candidate was worthy of bearing the crown.
The title Lord High Sennachie gradually disappeared – as early as 1318 there is mention of King Robert Bruce knighting this official, referred to as Lord Lyon King of Arms, and another died in office in about 1388. As chief of the king’s heraldic officers, this position is the oldest heraldic office in Britain.
Lord Lyon is a civil servant, like our own State Herald, head of the Bureau of Heraldry, and the Chief Herald of Ireland (or Phriomh Aralt na hÉirann). By contrast, the English kings of arms (there are three of them, attached to the College of Arms) are members of the royal household.
But Lord Lyon is also a judge, and his office is known as the Lyon Court.
It is a real court of Scottish law, and any Scottish armiger (someone who bears arms under the law) may bring a case in Lyon Court against anyone using his arms unlawfully.
The guilty party can be fined heavily. (Don’t take the drawing seriously – it’s an exaggeration!)
Lyon Court sits fairly regularly. In England, its equivalent is the Earl Marshal’s Court, which has sat rarely in its centuries-long history. In fact when it was convened in 1954, it had not sat for 219 years.
It nonetheless tried a case brought by the Corporation of the City of Manchester against a music hall called the Manchester Palace of Varieties, which had been displaying the city’s arms as if the “palace” owned them. With the Earl Marshal (the Duke of Norfolk) presiding, assisted by the Lord Chief Justice of England sitting as a commissioner (wearing the robes of a doctor of laws), the court established that its authority was undiminished.
It found that the mere display of the city arms on the music hall’s stage curtain was of no consequence, but its use of the arms on its seal “implied that the Corporation was in some way responsible for the acts of the defendants”. The Palace of Varieties was prohibited from using the city arms and ordered to pay the costs of the action, amounting to £300.
In other countries the laws vary, and any given case one should look at laws passed down the ages.
In Scotland, Ireland and England (and Wales, too) nobody may bear arms unless they have been granted to him or to an ancestor under royal authority. In some cases, a family’s arms may predate the appointment of heralds, and are a matter of ancient custom.
Except where heraldic inheritance has been passed on by women (there is even provision for this), inheritance must be in the male line.
You cannot simply take over your mother’s or grandmothers’ arms: they belong to the men of those families, to their daughters and to their wives.
But where a woman has no brothers, she may pass her father’s arms on to her sons – provided they have a coat of arms on their father’s side to combine it with. See this article for examples of how this is done.
On the European Continent the rules are a great deal stricter – if you belong to the nobility. In each country the rulers (and sometimes also the aristocrats) made strict regulations which had legal force over bearing and inheritance of arms.
But there are also countries where heraldry has been abolished.
France did this at the time of the Revolution – but afterwards Napoleon created a new aristocracy and a new heraldry, and after his fall the kings restored the old heraldry with honour.
The French State has, in any case, never exercised direct control over coat-armour. The French Crown at one stage set up a college of heralds, but they had no authority to grant arms, and they became moribund. Such control as the State did exercise, was through the courts and in the levying of an tax on armigers (those bearing arms). In the modern-day French Republic, the aristocracy and at times the courts make their own rulings.
In the Netherlands, a kingdom, heraldry is controlled by the Hoge Raad van Adel (High Council of the Nobility), and aristocratic and official arms are granted by Koninklijk Besluit (Order in Council).
But the Netherlands, and other countries that formed part of the Holy Roman Empire, also have a tradition of citizen arms, which are often borne without formal authority.
Such bürgerliche Wappen, as they are called in German, may be borne in South Africa without being registered – provided there is no duplication of an existing coat of arms.
However, it is well nigh impossible to establish whether there is a duplication unless one applies for registration. And since the registration fees charged in Pretoria are the most reasonable levied in the entire world, it is worth making an application.
Comments, queries: Mike Oettle