From: betsyp@apollo.hp.com (Betsy Perry)
Subject: Review: *The Oxford Guide to Heraldry*
Date: Tue, 15 Sep 1992 15:03:34 GMT
Organization: Hewlett-Packard Corporation, Chelmsford, MA

Thomas Woodcock, Somerset Herald, and
John Martin Robinson, Fitzalan Pursuivant Extraordinary,
*The Oxford Guide to Heraldry*,
Oxford University Press, 1988
ISBN 0-19-211658-4

I received this book as a Christmas present from my parents, and have
enjoyed it heartily.  It's a coffee-table book of sorts (although not
in size), giving a 200-page history of heraldic practices.  Its focus,
as one might infer from the title, is British heraldry, but it has a
15-page chapter on European heraldry which is quite enlightening,
although occasionally condescending.  

Example, p. 38:
"[Sir William Segar] confirmed arms granted in a letter of safe
conduct of 1603 by Sigismund Bathori, Duke of Transylvania, to John
Smith.... The arms *Vert a chevron Gules between three Turks heads
couped proper turbanned or* were granted... Segar was apparently
happy to confirm a red chevron on a green field, which by placing a
colour on a colour, transgressed the rule of armory in England, if not
those of Transylvania."

Although the book has the customary apparatus for beginners (an
illustrated glossary, a brief rundown of the colors and honourable
Ordinaries), I suspect that somebody with a modest knowledge of
heraldry would enjoy it more.  The book's subject is the
historic development of British heraldic practices, not "How to
research your family's arms."  It is studded with wonderful color
pictures of historic arms taken from period sources.  Typical is a
two-page spread from "Flower's Ordinary" of 1520 showing "Warenne and
other checky coats".

There's an interesting chapter on American heraldry which, alas, does
NOT contain the citation I was thinking of about the British College
of Arms.  (I may have hallucinated the ruling about not granting arms
to Americans.)  Here are the two citations that come closest, although
they don't match the claim I rashly made.

p. 168-9: "For those not entitled to arms by descent the only way to
obtain a grant from the English Kings of Arms was to find a remote
cousin who could petition for a grant with extended limitations to
include descendants of the common ancestor.  Thus, in 1917 a grant was
made to Arthur John Lewis Delafield, a British subject, and to the
descendants of his great-great-grandfather.  These included an
American, John Ross Delafield of New York, born in 1874...

"At what seems to be an unrecorded date, ... the English Kings of Amrs
began to make honorary grants of Armorial Bearings to eminent
Americans descended in an unbroken male line from subjects of the
British Crown.  These grants are recorded in the same series as other
grants, the only difference being the inclusion of the word
'Honorary'.  The restriction as to descent means that this must be in
the male line from an ancestor resident in American at ... 1783, or
from a subsequent emigrant.  ... In 1964 Garter stated to the Chapter
of the College that the Kings of Arms would not in future be prepared
to make honorary grants on the basis of British descent unless the
pedigree establishing the descent was registered at the college."

Reading between the lines, I infer that creating an official claim
(under the British system) to newly-created arms will cost Big Bucks. 
If you can establish male descent from a British armiger, you can
use the existing arms, of course.
-- 
Betsy Hanes Perry   (note P in userid)     betsyp@apollo.hp.com
Hewlett-Packard Company
"It seems to us that the readers who want fiction to be like life are
considerably outnumbered by those who would like life to be like fiction."