Getting a COA registered

[Joseph McMillan]

For the sake of discussion let's say the arms devised by Lyon to represent your ancestor are: argent a chevron gules within a bordure sable.

Hello, Scott. Kenneth Mansfield pointed me toward this discussion and I couldn't resist registering for the forum to chime in. (I guess that means I should introduce myself--Joe McMillan, not a kilt wearer but a heraldic enthusiast and director of research of the American Heraldry Society. The articles on the heraldry of the U.S. presidents that someone kindly mentioned in this thread are my work.)

A trivial point on this, more significant on what follows: it's unlikely that Lyon would devise a new coat of arms with a bordure of any kind, since in Scots heraldry bordures are almost always used to difference for cadency these days. He'd be more likely to devise arms differenced in other ways from the stem arms of the name.

Based on these arms he may determine that those that might be devised for your grandfather (as an indeterminate cadet of the original ancestor)

But your grandfather couldn't be an indeterminate cadet of the original grantee, because if he were indeterminate that would mean you hadn't proven descent from the person who was subject to Lyon's jurisdiction. Nevertheless, he might indeed be assigned, as you say, the ancestor's arms...

... within a bordure nebuly sable. From this he might deduce that the appropriate cadency for the second son (your father) would be: argent a chevron gules within a bordure nebuly per pale sable and or. Having reached this point Lyon might be prepared to grant those arms to you.

And here I agree completely.

As far as your father and uncle are concerned, unless they petition for arms, they have no entitlement to a portion of the matriculation of the original ancestor, nor do their other children.

Sure they do; they just can't bear them in Scotland unless they matriculate a properly differenced version, just as you (not you, Scott, but you the hypothetical petitioner) did in your application.

Substantive arms -- those backed by the authority of a sovereign state -- are always preferable to self-assumed arms, no matter what private body has recorded them.

This is why I actually decided to pitch into this. As you know (now you, Scott, not you the hypothetical petitioner), this subject is a bit of a hobby horse of mine, so those who don't really care about heraldic theory can stop reading here).

Apart from prestige, which is totally in the eye of the beholder, what makes a grant of arms substantively better than assumed arms is that granted (or officially registered, certified, etc.) arms typically take legal priority over assumed arms. This was first articulated by Bartolo di Sassoferrato, the first legal theorist to systematically address heraldry back in the early 14th entury. This legal priority can take various forms in various countries, but in any case the grant creates some sort of legally enforceable right in the arms.

However, as Sir Crispin Agnew of Lochnaw, Bt, QC (Rothesay Herald and Scotland's leading expert on heraldic law) points out, these rights exist only in the jurisdiction in which the grant was made. If you take a grant of arms out of the granting jurisdiction, it's only worth the vellum it's painted on--unless the jurisdiction you take it to chooses to recognize the rights conveyed. This is why the Dukes of Leinster have no cause of action against the branch of the Neville family in England that bears "Argent a saltire Gules," or, for that matter, against the State of Alabama. The rights to a particular coat of arms don't cross national borders.

Thus granted English or Scottish arms taken to Denmark are no better than assumed arms (which, in Denmark, are perfectly valid). Conversely, arms recorded by the Chapter of the Royal Orders for knights of the Danish orders of knighthood have no automatic validity if taken to England unless the College of Arms chooses to recognize them.

And in the United States, of course, there is neither a granting authority nor any legal provision for recognizing the validity of foreign grants of arms or protecting whatever rights those grants conveyed in the country of origin. That means that in the United States, an English or Scottish grant of arms has the same substantive status as arms assumed at will.

On the broader issue of the status of arms in the United States, and what they mean or don't mean, I think the classic exposition is the statement issued by the Committee on Heraldry of the New England Historic Genealogical Society in 1914, which is linked from http://www.americanheraldry.org/page...Main.Documents . Those interested in exploring this more may also want to look at the Washington-Barton letters and the article by H. S. Ruggles, linked from the same page.

Looking forward to more discussions here, even if I would barely know which end of a kilt is up.