A few weeks ago, I was at a garage sale and saw this heraldric crest sort of thing is the free box. At that price, it was cool enough to be worth getting, but I don’t know what it is: It’s basically a pewter plate, with the design embossed onto it in deep relief. At the bottom of the design is a shield with a rampant lion on it, holding a sword in one forelimb and a set of scales in the other. Atop the shield is a helmet facing forward, and atop that is what appears to be an illustration of the old legend of the pelican feeding its young from its own blood. The rest of the disk is taken up by decorative curlicue ribbon things, and the outer edge of the plate is in the shape of a five-petaled rose not unlike the ones used by the English royal houses in the War of the Roses.
So, what is it? Is it an emblem of some notable individual or house? And what’s this sort of presentation of the heraldric symbology, on a pewter plate, called?
I don’t recognize that coat of arms. Lions are a popular beast in heraldry, of course, and the rose likewise among flowers. A pelican feeding her blood to her young is called “a pelican in her piety” or “vulning herself.” For more, see here: Pelican - Wikipedia
Be warned: There are a lot of American mail-order businesses that will sell you a plaque or certificate displaying the arms of whoever is legitimately entitled to them, even if you’re not directly related to that person. In British heraldry, probably the most expansive and best-documented such system in the world, only one person is entitled at a time to a particular coat of arms. Just because you share a rare last name with a British aristocrat doesn’t mean you’re entitled to display them, or claim them as your own.
Both the lion with the sword and scales and the pelican vulning herself feature in the arms of various branches of the Stewart family of Scotland. In the plaque you describe the lion is a “charge” and the pelican is the “crest”; off-hand I’m not aware of any branch of the Stewarts with that particular combination, but there could well be one.
That’s interesting, in Spain the coat of arms belongs to the family; an individual can display the one for his family or a “cuarteado”, made up of the four coats of arms of his for first lastnames; siblings or cousins could add something to their coats to differentiate each other. There’s still a problem where different families that have coincidental lastnames will have different coats of arms: someone who had the same lastname as, say, the Duchess of Alba (I think it’s Fitzjames), won’t have the same single-lastname coat of arms as she does unless he’s got a common foreparent up the line.
And of course, too many of the people who decide to get a decorative parchment with “their” coat of arms to display in the living room don’t bother do the research themselves. The people preparing those out of a cart in a summer fair aren’t particularly picky about inventing and add elements just because they’re “pretty” - sometimes things that are from the wrong part of the country altogether, bastard bands…
In the USA I’m pretty sure you can display any you want and that there are no laws against it. Does anybody have a cite for a law against this in the USA?
There’s no law against it anywhere, as far as I’m aware, although it is illegal in the US to style yourself as a member of the nobility (hence the US usage of esquire to mean a member of the bar, rather than the aristocracy).
It’s against the law in the UK to display arms to which you are not entitled. It’s not against the law in the US to do so, and many people do.
The Constitution doesn’t prohibit Americans from calling themselves aristocrats or nobility (however deluded or pretentious they may be); it states simply, “No title of nobility shall be granted by the United States,” and bars US citizens from accepting “any present, emolument, office, or title… from any king, prince, or foreign state.” Art. I, Sec. 9.
Cite? It’s illegal for the federal government or the states to create or grant titles, and immigrants must renounce titles before naturalization, but any citizen may inherit or receive a title as long as it does not conflict with one’s allegiance to the US. And, of course, you may freely make up your own: I, for instance, hereby declare myself the Earl of Ingleside.
NO! It says “no person holding any office of profit or trust under them, shall, without the consent of the Congress, accept of any present, emolument, office, or title, of any kind whatever, from any king, prince, or foreign state.”
Private citizens may do as they please, as long as they do not swear allegiance to a foreign power, and even office-holders may hold titles, with the consent of Congress.
Rest assured, I was under no illusions that this thing represents me in any way, and I’m quite aware that the proper means of obtaining one’s own coat of arms is not to just pick it up for free at a garage sale. It’s nothing more than an interesting little mathom for me, and I was just a bit curious about it.
I’m reasonably certain that whatever this is, it was not some one-off item custom-made by a RenFaire merchant for a pretentious and gullible Yankee: It seems pretty likely to have been mass-produced (which doesn’t vouch at all for its authenticity, of course). Also, I just noticed that the back side has a small stamp saying “Rein Zinn Germany”, which appears from a quick Google to be a manufacturer of pewter collectibles. This might indicate that the heraldry is of German origin, too.
Eh, it sounds as good a way to become an armiger as any other I can think of. I tempted to say you should use it as your own and let the haters squirm ineffectually.
Although the honorific has come to mean a member of the bar generally, it didn’t come about for that reason. Certainly it didn’t come about through any deliberate decision, law, or regulation, and I would be surprised if there are any laws prohibiting anyone in America from tacking an “Esq” onto their name. To paraphrase Wikipedia, although the precise significance of Esquire was once carefully defined, and the right to use the title regulated by law, its use in England came to be roughly co-extensive with “gentleman”, and similar to it that the appropriateness of its use was largely a matter of perception. Education and occupation came to carry as much weight as birth and wealth. If the term “gentleman” still has any meaning other than a customer at a strip bar, it isn’t something you are born with and you rarely if ever proclaim your status as such. So with Esquire. You would never put Esquire on your own calling card or stationery; it was up to others to acknowledge yiour Esquireness when addressing mail to you, or when referring to you formally in a spoken context. I don’t think the term was ever terribly popular in the US, but it did achieve some currency among Anglophiles…
For reasons I still can’t explain, I became fascinated with the manners and customs of upper class England some time around 1972. I’m pretty sure that lawyers hadn’t started using the honorific at that time. Why it has come to mean lawyer now I’m not sure, but in my (nonlawyerly) opinion it was seen to be a handy shorthand for “attorney-at-law”. Certainly it fits on the business card better. Moreover, the system of law degrees is somewhat idiosyncratic, for which reason it can be a little confusing to lay people.
As for the pewter dish, the helmet above the shield is typical for most coats of arms; the arms of titled nobility and royalty have coronets or crowns in place of helmets. Often, the crest is a repetition of a charge on the shield, or in some way relevant to it, so the pelican in this case seems a little unusual.
Nava, I think the system in most Continental countries is similar to Spain’s by tradition, though the actual laws and regulations vary. The coat-of-arms belongs to the family as a whole, and male descendants of the original grantee are entitled to bear the same achievement. In UK the right to use the arms as originally granted passes much like a title to the eldest son, or other male descendant in the absence of sons. Other male descendants can use the arms, but they have to “difference” them. Differencing can be done by changing colors or “metals”, or by adding marks of cadence. The right to use arms is thus hereditary, but each individual man (other than the current patriarch) has his own variation on the family’s arms.
If I ever had occasion to use a coat of arms, I’d go with that of my maternal family. Which I’m probably not entitled to use, either, but my paternal family doesn’t seem to have a coat of arms at all, and I like Mom’s side better anyway.
Incidentally, if you are a foreigner holding a title of nobility, you must give it up to become a U.S. citizen:
*In case the person applying for naturalization has borne any hereditary title, or has been of any of the orders of nobility in any foreign state, the applicant shall… make under oath in the same public ceremony in which the oath of allegiance is administered, an express renunciation of such title or order of nobility, and such renunciation shall be recorded as a part of such proceedings. *