Cheshire Heraldry Society 50th Anniversary Celebration

Come and join us in the celebration of 50 years.

April 16th 2011.

The Annual General Meeting of the Cheshire Heraldry Society is to be a celebration of the Society's 50th Anniversary. There is to be an open exhibition to celebrate the 50 years along with a luncheon all to commence at 11.30 am and all are cordially invited to join Society Members in their day of celebration. The exhibition and luncheon is to be held at Sheila's Restaurant, Leek. Tickets for the meal are to be £20 and can be obtained from John Titterton.

Why not come and celebrate the day with us?

Churchill Garter Stall Plate for sale.

Image courtesy of Bonhams.

The auction house Bonhams is to sell Churchill's original Garter Stall Plate at its sale to be held on 29th March 2011. Listed as a part of Roy David's collection the details are given as:

CHURCHILL, Sir WINSTON (1874-1965, statesman, Prime Minister, war leader, and author)
THE ORIGINAL GARTER STALL PLATE USED AT THE INSTALLATION OF CHURCHILL AS A KNIGHT OF THE GARTER AT ST. GEORGE'S CHAPEL AT WINDSOR IN 1953, bronze, gilt and enamel, bearing the Spencer-Churchill fully marshalled coat of arms in their right colours, with the Garter encircling the shield carrying the motto of the Order 'Honi soit qui mal y pense', and surmounted by helmets, one crowned and both mantled with crest, above: the family motto in Spanish 'Fiel pero desdichado' ('Faithful though Unfortunate') and below in three lines: 'Winston Leonard / Spencer-Churchill / MCMLIII', in extremely fine condition, the plate 7¼ x 4½ inches (18 x 11.5 cm), mounted on hardwood and framed and glazed in a good ebony frame, overall size c.13 x 11½ inches (33 x 29 cm), for St. George's Chapel, 1953

Estimate: £10,000 - 12,000, € 12,000 - 14,000
Footnote:
The Garter Stall Plate for the highest honour accepted by arguably the greatest Englishman of the twentieth century, the Most Noble Order of the Garter. A unique and extraordinary item of Churchilliana.

The stall plate was made by the firm William Soper and Son. Due to the shortness of time prior to the Installation, Soper had been unable to finish enamelling the plate to the standard they would have wished, so after it had been temporarily placed in Sir Winston's stall (or seat) in St. George's Chapel for the ceremony of his installation it was returned to Soper for the finishing touches to be made. It is understood that Sir Winston was approached to finance the finishing but declined to do so. A plate of more modest manufacture now marks the stall once occupied by the present plate and Sir Winston.

The Order of the Garter, England's highest order of knighthood, consists of only twenty-four Knights at any one time, other than the sovereign and the Prince of Wales. Each Knight has his seat or stall in St. George's Chapel at Windsor on which his stall plate is mounted.

http://www.bonhams.com/eur/auction/19386/lot/46/

Sir William Brereton

Back in November last year I commented on the arms of Brereton of Ashley and find myself, because of an enquiry from a good friend of Cheshire Heraldry, with an excuse to publish a little more of my research. I have been asked if I have identified the quarterings in the arms of the Brereton Memorial. I have indeed:



These are impaled arms.

Dexter:
1 Argent, two bars Sable [Brereton]
2 Argent, an inescutcheon within a double tressure counter flory Gules [Scotland]
3 Or, three piles in point Gules [Scot Earl of Chester]
4 Quarterly; 1 & 4 (Kevelioc and Lupus) 2 & 3 Azure, three garbs Or (Kevelioc Earl of Chester)
5 Gules, three pheons Argent [pro Egerton inherited from Belward, Baron of Malpas]
6 Azure, three garbs Or [Kevelioc Earl of Chester]
7 Azure, a wolf’s head erased Argent [Lupus Earl of Chester]
8 Argent a cross flory Azure [pro Egerton inherited from Malpas, baron of Malpas]
9 Argent, a lion rampant Gules between three (sometimes as here six) pheons Sable [Egerton of Egerton]
10 Or, two ravens in pale Sable [Corbet of Leighton]
11 Ermine, five chevronels Gules, on a canton of the second a lion passant Or [Orreby]
12 Gules, two lions pasant Argent, a label of three points Or [Strange of Dalby]
13 Quarterly Argent and Gules, over all on a bend Sable three mullets of the first [Ashley]
14 Gules, three cross-crosslets fitchee Or, a chief of the second charged with a crescent for difference [Arderne]
15 Argent, on a bend engrailed Sable, an annulet Or [Radcliffe]
16 Argent, a griffin segreant Gules [Chaderton]
17 Quarterly, Argent and Gules, a bend Azure [Timperley]
18 Gules, a lion rampant Argent [unidentified]

It is believed that there is no real evidence to substantiate the descent bringing in the quarterings of the earls of Chester line.

Sinister:
Warburton, of Arley
1 Quarterly Argent and Gules, in the second and third quarters a fret Or (a crescent for difference) [Dutton]
2 Argent, four bars Gules
3 Argent, a chevron between three cormorants Sable [Warburton]
4 Argent, three chevrons Gules, on a canton of the last a mullet Or [Warburton Ancient, or Orreby]
5 Argent, a shield voided Sable, an orle of martlets of the last [Winnington]
6 Azure, a garb Or, between two bezants in fess [Grosvenor]
7 Sable, a cross patonce Argent [Pulford] [this coat is also recorded elsewhere as that of Eaton]
8 Azure, three pheasants Or [Fesant]*
9 Quarterly Argent and Gules, in the second and third quarters a fret Or (a crescent for difference) [Dutton]

* The charges on this quarter on the Brereton tomb do not admittedly look very much like pheasants, indeed they look more like cocks however quarters 6, 7 and 8 are brought into this family by an alleged alliance with Grosvenor of Caton and therefore this shield is undoubtedly that of Fesant.

Wanted. Facsimilie edition.

If anyone knows of a copy of "The Vale-Royall of England, or, The County Palatine of Chester Illustrated (publ. D. King, 1656; facsimile reprint 1972)" which is offered for sale I would be most grateful to hear of it. I have a pdf scanned copy of the original which otherwise would be way out of my pocket* but would very much like to have this facsimilie not least because it has notes and comments upon the life of the publisher, Daniel King.

I'm not interested in the copy of this offered by Amazon as it is simply an OCR scanned print on demand book and as such it contains no images and includes all sorts of marks on the original which the OCR has interpreted as wierd and wonderful characters.  The OCR can't distinguish between a letter and a smudge!

I once made the mistake of ordering Charles Norton Elvin's "A Dictionary of Heraldry : With Upwards of Two Thousand Five Hundred Illustrations" from General Books via Amazon. I caution all would be buyers of this book not to fall into the same trap I did. I naively thought that it would be a facsimile reprint of the original and do what it says on the cover i.e. "With upwards of two thousand five hundred illustrations". When you get the book, you find that it is a print on demand item and the small print inside tells you that it is a scan of an original using OCR software which can not interpret images. In short, it has none!

Perhaps I missed it on the Amazon page but I was tempted to report this to Trading Standards ... after all, the cover states that the book has upwards of two thousand five hundred illustrations. It's only when you get it that you find it doesn't have any at all! 

*According to the introduction in the 1972 reprint an original copy of the book sold at auction in 1975 for £255 which, according to the financial calculator provided by this is money dot com, would be £1953 in today's money!

Is it really heraldry?

Occasionally I am called upon to wear another hat where I am asked to edit an armorial register. The task is not arduous, gives me a great deal of pleasure and has brought me into contact with many very pleasant people who wish to make public their armorial bearings. There is however one rather sad side to my task and it is one which brings me into contact with an increasingly difficult and embarrassing part of the heraldic world; it is a sort of heraldic subculture populated by those who wish to be perceived as something other than what they are. Amongst the genuine applicants for the register there is a tiny smattering of those who cause my eyebrow to be raised who do not meet the criteria. Some are quite convincing and I freely confess to falling foul to more than one deception which thankfully, because of the public nature of the register, has not gone undetected for long. Most however are naive and easily picked out as being most unsuitable for registration and are easily dealt with; we now have an unofficial, unpublished "rogues gallery" which gives no end of amusement. 

Why, you ask, am I making this post? I invite you to take a look at this so called "heraldic achievement" :



Let us set aside for the moment the titular claim (which is not accepted) and the painfully obvious fact that a genuine barony of European antiquity would have arms which were more easily recognisable as being genuine and look at the "arms" themselves.  I have no doubt that the soi disant baron is very proud of his armorial bearings but it is increasingly worrying that so many people who adopt and assume arms anew seem to be taking the advice of those who really ought not to be giving it.  It is quite clear that whomever designed this particular coat of arms knew nothing about heraldry. This is an abominable example of bucket shop arms which shows no real understanding of the individual elements of armory. The supporters are ridiculous, I very much doubt whether the designer would understand the purpose of or even the term "quartering", the motto has been replaced in the usual bucket shop way by the name and the mantling (if that is what it is) has lost all relationship with the helm and torse and has become a sort of background plantation growing out of the motto scroll!  I can't think what the black radiating lines or wings behind the achievement are supposed to be nor why the helm has horns growing out of the shoulders! I am no expert on European heraldry but I am at a loss as to what Czechoslovakian tradition allows axes in saltire behind the shield.  

Why oh why, when there are so many free and informed resources such as The International Association of Amateur Heralds and The American Heraldry Society to name but two, do people still design such abominations?

Heraldry along the A59.

This Saturday's Cheshire Heraldry Society lecture by Derek Walkden is Heraldry along the A59 and is presented in conjunction with The Heraldry Society.

 All meetings are held at Townley Street Schoolroom, Townley Street, Macclesfield, starting at 2.30 pm, (room opens at 2.00 pm) followed by refreshments. (Pay and Display car park 100 yds.)

 Perhaps we'll see you there?

What a rip off!

A recently developed, fast growing, expose web site has recently caught my eye and I believe that is well worth sharing with my reader.



http://www.scots-titles.com

It's quite possible that most people who treat themselves or their loved ones to their "one square foot of Scotland" don't really take the blurb about being able to call themselves a Lord (corrupted and wholly incorrect form of Laird) or Lady all that seriously; it is quite certain that even if you did own one square foot of Scottish land you would not legally be considered a Laird ... the very thought that you could is quite laughable. But the worrying thing is that some may actually believe that they are a Lord, that they do in fact own a piece of Scotland and what's more they have a piece of paper proving it. I can not believe that this is so.

Ownership of such a small piece of land can't legally be recorded in the Scottish Land Register so what are they actually purchasing? The land legally still belongs to the original owner and as far as I can see there is nothing to stop him, if he so wished, selling it all on to someone else.

My real  worry is that those who purchase these "Lairdships" are funding the lifestyle of the vendor in return for a worthless promise.