Getting a COA registered

[MacMillan of Rathdown]

Joe, your post really covers a lot of territory-- mostly concerned with personal arms, and who grants 'em, and who doesn't. In every instance you've cited you are referring to the prerogative of "government" to regulate the use of arms-- be they personal, corporate, civic, or governmental. The final result is that with regards to "governments" granting personal arms, "some do, some don't". Nowhere in your post have I seen anything that says that a government can't grant personal arms, merely that for what ever reason, they choose not to.

Looking at this from my perspective it seems that in some jurisdictions personal arms are generously granted; in others they are only rarely granted; in others no personal grants are made, and existing personal arms are either tolerated or ignored. I can't find an instance-- today-- where they are officially outlawed. In the past, under some regimes, personal arms have been outlawed, as you have pointed out:

Sometimes the bearing of arms is outlawed altogether (France, 1790, for instance), which invalidates your statement below that "In those countries that in former times were monarchies (and this includes the states which comprised the Holy Roman, Austrian, Russian and German Empires) but which, through the vicissitudes of regime changes, are no longer monarchies, the status of all armigers created under the ancient regimes remains valid, ie: substantive."

Simply because something is outlawed, for example "modern art" in Nazi Germany, its character is not changed. A successor state can outlaw "the old religion", tear down its places of worship, forbid the holding of religious services, and arrest those wearing its vestments-- but that does not cancel the substantive nature of the ordination of the surviving clergy, even if the ordination of future clergy is prevented; the same applies to arms. The state may prohibit or outlaw their use, but it can not erase the substantive nature of those arms which pre-date its foundation no matter how it may try.

As an aside, in present day France, to the best of my knowledge, there is no prohibition on the bearing or public use of arms; indeed, armorial bearing are protected before the civil courts, and assumed arms, if found to infringe upon older arms, are not tolerated.

...most European states today take no official interest in the granting or regulation of personal arms whatsoever[/U].

As far as granting personal arms is concerned you are correct. However in the countries you've named, all armigers have recourse to the courts to protect the property rights inherent in their personal arms. Germany, as you have previously mentioned, actually has defined the legal status of arms in the body of it's civil law.

In Ireland, the Chief Herald's office was subordinate to the government (and emphatically, since 1937, not to the head of state) until 2005, when the National Library became an independent agency.

I know what you mean, but your time line is off; the physical Office of Arms in Dublin Castle was under the control of the Irish Government from 1922; its incumbent, the Ulster King of Arms, remained under the control of the head of state (a sort of join "shared powers" after 1937 due to the unique position of the nature of the office) until it was transferred to the state in 1943. After a brief period in bureaucratic limbo the office moved to the Department of the Taoiseach, then to the Department of Education, where it was finally shifted to the National Library. In a bureaucratic shuffle in 2005 the National Library was placed on the same footing as the National Museums of Ireland; in common with the museum it now has its own state-funded budget, and management is by an independent board of directors. The library staff, and the Chief Herald of Ireland, remain government employees. Neither the function nor the duties of the office have been changed.

In Spain, personal heraldry was formerly the business of the cronistas de armas, who were appointed by the government, not the head of state (specifically by the Minister of Justice). The last cronista with authority over personal arms died several years ago.

In 1951 the document appointing Don Vicente de Cardenas as Cronista, was signed by Francisco Franco in his capacity as both Chief of State and Head of Government, a nicety that prevented anyone from accusing him of usurping the position of the exiled king. I am told that following the death of Cardenas there was a bit of a squabble between two of the king's cousins who both wanted the job, with the result that the king has elected to leave the post vacant. (Don Vicente, by the way, was appointed for life.)

(quoting MoR) "Virtually every government in Europe has a "department of heraldry" hidden away in the bureaucracy of it's civil service. While most do not concern themselves with personal heraldry, they are actively creating civic and governmental arms on a regular, almost daily, basis."

And those who do mostly place this function either under the government or under the provincial/state governments, not directly under the head of state.

I never said they did, nor did I mean to imply so, hence my use of the word "government" with a small 'G'.

We cannot possibly conclude that heraldry is generally considered a "head of state" prerogative.

Actually Joe, as expressed above, I never said that heraldry was, exclusively, reserved to the head of state; rather I suggested that it was an either/or situation, with the responsibility for heraldry accruing to either the head of state or the head of government. In both instances the function and authority of the heraldic "office", within the terms of its mandate, is usually placed in a bureaucratic "pigeon hole" for ease of administration.

(FWIW, the U.S. also has an authority that devises and approves official arms at the federal level, and it's under the Department of Defense.)

As you have pointed out, in 1919 President Woodrow Wilson (head of state and chief executive of the government) authorized the War Department to create an Institute of Heraldry; in 1957 the authority of the Institute of Heraldry, managed by the US Army, was expanded to cover all branches of the military and federal government.

So, simply because a state-sponsored heraldic authority does not, at present, concern itself with personal heraldry, there is no reason why, if the government of the day so chooses, that it could not decide to grant personal arms, which would then be of a substantive nature.

See above for the general statement. As to Ireland, the continuing validity of rights conveyed under letters patent (which would include Ulster's grants of arms) was ensured by specific provisions of the 1922 and 1937 constitutions, so this really can't be cited as evidence that such rights automatically survive these transitions.

Actually it was the 1921 Treaty that provided for the slow and gradual devolution of Crown offices to the Irish Government; the subsequent Irish constitutions merely reinforced the on-going commitment of the then current regime to protect the property rights off all the people and institutions in Ireland. Even had the government of the day made the decision not to continue the practice of the Ulster office, it would have had no effect on the status of Ulster's grants. Were one to argue to the contrary, then it would have to be said that during Cromwell's republic, all previous grants made by the CoA became non-substantive; further, that with the removal of the Stuarts, all grants made under their regime lost their status as substantive arms. Clearly this just isn't so.

We also have to keep in mind that the vast, vast majority of armigers in virtually every country on the Continent were never created as such...

Joe, I can appreciate what you are driving at-- that some people (the nobility) early on assumed arms as a prescriptive right. And that's true; however this armorial free-for-all lasted for a relatively short period of time, basically from the middle of the 12th century to the beginning of the 15th century and involved only a tiny portion of the European population. During the 15th century arms were clearly seen as the significant mark of nobility (ie: property ownership) and "the powers that be" across Europe began to turn the screws on the "free adoption" of arms. By about 1600 virtually all European arms are being recorded, and by 1700 it could be argued that all arms are now substantive, in so far as the owner can prove a legal right to those arms, other than the assertion that he has borne them "since time, immemorial." In other words we enter a period of at least 300 years where government exercises an absolute right to control the assumption of arms by its subjects/citizens.

so the fact that arms continued to be arms through the transition period also doesn't help support the distinction between the value of substantive and non-substantive arms, whatever the latter term means in a non-British context.

I think "substantive" --in any heraldic context-- means a legally provable right to ownership. "Value" in this same context means, I presume, the worth ascribed to the arms by the person who bears those arms, and in the wider sense, whether or not society as a whole views them as having any intrinsic or social value (as opposed to an artistic value).

My personal, and probably old-fashioned, view on arms is that the moment they become entered in a register maintained by the government for the sole purpose of recording of arms, they become substantive as and from the date of registration.