COAT-ARMOR.

A PAPER READ BEFORE THE MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL
SOCIETY AT ITS STATED MEETING,
FEBRUARY 14, 1901.

BY

THE REV. EDMUND F. SLAFTER, D.D.
RESIDENT MEMBER OF THE SOCIETY, HONORARY FELLOW
OF THE ROYAL HISTORICAL SOCIETY, ETC., ETC.

BOSTON; 1901.

REPRINTED FROM THE PROCEEDINGS OF THE MASSACHUSETTS
HISTORICAL SOCIETY.

COAT-AKMOR

The use of coat-armor in England dates back to a very early
period. Its beginning is fixed by no existing record. The
right to use heraldic insignia was a privilege granted by the
sovereign, in the exercise of his princely prerogative, and was
a royal recognition for the achievement of some important and
distinguished public service.
We cannot doubt that the ulterior design of the sovereign
was to attach his most prominent and influential subjects
among the yeomanry to his person and his government, and
thus augment his authority and increase his power.
In the early centuries the granting of coat-armor was ap
parently subject to few conditions and controlled by no fixed
rules. But when the population of England became expanded
and the public interests enlarged, numerous, and varied, it
became important to regulate the use of coat-armor by the
sanction of organic laws and chartered rights. To meet this
exigency, a corporation, commonly known as the Herald's
College, was organized and chartered. This took place in
the brief reign of Richard III., either in the year 1488
or 1484.
Similar institutions were established in Scotland^ and like
wise in Ireland. To these organizations, as representatives of
the sovereign, are committed the grant, the design, the blazon,
and the registration of coat-armor.

From the incorporation of the Herald's College, all arms
legitimately granted are recorded in the Herald's office. The
genuineness of coats of arms which have been granted since
the establishment of that college, or within the last four hun
dred years, can therefore be proved by reference to the records
of that corporation.
But previous to this, arms had been granted to large num
bers of the yeomanry of England, for a period stretching through
several centuries, possibly to the advent of William the Con
queror. Of these early grants no records were apparently
kept, or, if so, they were left in such confusion as to be of no
practical value. To enable this class to put their right to bear
arms upon record, and to prevent the illegal assumption of arms,
commissioners were sent into different parts of the kingdom to
hear and adjust all claims which might be presented for the
registration of arms. Five of these commissions, commonly
called visitations, were at different times appointed, the first
in 1528 and the last in 1686. It is therefore highly probable
that at the present moment most of those, who at any time
received the royal grant to bear coat-armor, are properly re
corded in the Herald's College, and consequently their right
can be proved by reference to that institution.1
It is interesting to observe that the grants were made mostly,
if not exclusively, to the yeomanry of England, who were hold
ers of small landed estates. It constituted them technically,
and in a restricted sense, gentlemen ; but this term was also
used in England in a broader sense, and comprehended all
ranks, extending to the royal family. A gentleman, in the
higher, nobler, and better sense, is determined largely by
temperament and by manners and bearing, moulded and in
spired by a delicate, subtle, and refined taste. It was in this
sense that one of the kings of England is reported to have said
1 It is understood that the fees charged for investigations in the Herald's
office are large, varying somewhat according to the dignity of the family for
which they are made.

that he could easily create a nobleman, but he could not make
a gentleman. While in England there is a commendable ambition to rise
into the higher ranks, there is little apparent jealousy between
different classes. The serving man or the serving woman is
proud of having been in the family of a nobleman, and each
looks upon it as a coveted distinction. The public sentiment
and taste have been so adjusted by long usage and education
to this condition in their social relations, that it is hardly prob
able that any considerable number of persons could be found
in England to-day who would wish to abolish the prevailing
class distinctions. They are fixed and permanent, changing
only by the slow process of evolution, whose movements are
reckoned by centuries and not by years.
But in this country, in the United States, class distinctions
are not recognized ; they do not exist. They have been re
jected from the beginning. They are not in accord or har
mony with our popular institutions. The United States
government and our State governments are prohibited by the
Constitution from granting any titles of nobility. The Presi
dent of the United States attaches to his name no title beyond
the simple designation of the office he bears.
In 1867 an attempt was made to establish what might be,
in this country, an equivalent to the Herald's College in Eng
land. The Hon. John W. Chanler, of New York, offered in
the House of Representatives a resolution requesting the
Committee on Ways and Means to levy a tax on family crests
and coats of arms, worn as ornaments on vehicles or household
furniture, actually in use.
The scheme was ingenious and well considered. The late
Mr. William H. Whitmore, a member .of this Society, whose
knowledge of heraldry and of the use of coat-armor was prob
ably more thorough and comprehensive than that of any other
person in this country, was deeply interested in the project.
He prepared and published an elaborate argument in advocacy

of the scheme,1 and set forth in the " Heraldic Journal," of
which he was the editor, the principal provisions of the law
which he wished to be enacted by the Congress. These
provisions were in substance as follows : —
First, any person who desires to be authorized to use coat-
armor must file a description of the arms he elects to use, in
the United States District Court.
Second, he must pay into the Treasury of the United States
the sum of fifty dollars or more, as may be determined by
statute. Third, he must pay a yearly tax for the privilege of bearing
said arms.
Fourth, he must take out a license, annually, for the en
graved plate, or seals, or paintings of the arms which he is
entitled to use.
It will be observed that, according to this proposed scheme,
any person could be authorized to use coat-armor who should
pay into the United States Treasury a fixed sum of money and
a yearly tax for the privilege of bearing arms, without any
other personal qualification whatever. In other words, the
right to bear arms was to be granted for money, and not
for merit. This scheme was doubtless as good and feasible as
any which could be devised. But it was in itself incongruous.
It was an attempt to unite oil and water, to join things to
gether which were in their nature repugnant. It proposed to
bestow with government sanction, on the payment of money,
badges or insignia which had been held for many centuries
by the English-speaking people as emblems or symbols to be
granted only to persons who had performed in war, in science,
in art, or in government, some important and distinguished
public service. It is plain that no person could qualify him
self in this manner to be the bearer of coat-armor without the
sacrifice of personal dignity and self-respect.
1 Reasons for the Regulation of the Use of Coat Armor in the United States,
etc. By W. H. Whitmore. Boston, 1868.

It its hardly necessary to add that this proposed scheme died
in embryo. There is no law or authorization whatever in this
country for the use of coat-armor. The structure of our national
government and the social relations of our people are such that
it is clearly impossible to organize any system here that shall
be an equivalent of the Herald's College in England.
But while this is true, there is nevertheless a considerable
number of families in this country who are properly and rightly
entitled to use coat-armor. This right is in all cases an inher
itance. The method of proving a valid claim or title to coat-
armor is as well defined as is that of proving an inheritance of
real estate, and in most respects the two methods are similar.
Recourse to original records is necessary in both cases. When
the use of coat-armor is granted by concession of the sovereign,
through the Herald's College, it is granted to a particular hon
ored citizen and to his posterity.1 It follows therefore, of neces
sity, that whoever claims by inheritance under this grant must
prove that he is descended from this identical honored citizen
or grantee. He must trace his ancestry back, step by step, to
the first receiver of the royal favor. Bearing the same name
gives him no claim whatever, any more than it does to the
claimant of inherited real estate. If Mr. John Brown should
die, leaving a large landed property, and all the innumerable
Browns should come forward in endless procession and claim
a part of the inheritance on the ground that they bore the
honored name of Brown, they would doubtless retire from the
ignominious contest in shame, humiliation, and disgrace. We
need hardly add that whoever claims a right to coat-armor, as
an inheritance from a fancied ancestor of his own name, but to
whom he cannot trace his lineage, must find himself in a not
less embarrassing situation.
1 The grant is sometimes, by special favor, extended to the brothers of the
grantee, but it must be so stated in the original charter. The descendants of
the brothers are in such case entitled to bear arms, and the method of proving
their right is the same.

8
In England only a few of any given name can claim the
right to bear coat-armor, and the same is- equally true in this
country. There is, however, in New England a very small number of
persons who may claim the right to use coat-armor by pre
scription ; in other words, by immemorial use. To validate
this claim, it is necessary to prove that the claimant's direct
ancestors used the arms in question far back in the past,
probably before the Herald's College was established in 1483.
This evidence must pass under the scrutiny of the Herald's
College, and if to them it is satisfactory, the claim is by them
ratified and confirmed. But without this confirmation such
arms are regarded as invalid and worthless.
In England the assumption or infringement of the arms of
another is punishable by a heavy penalty ; but in this country
there is no legal impediment, and the jackdaws may adorn
themselves in borrowed plumage, if so be it comports with
their sense of propriety and good taste.1
Spurious arms have been fabricated both in this country
and in England in large numbers. In New England there
were, from about the year 1700 down to the year 1825, sev
eral painters of coat-armor. Among the most conspicuous
were Mr. John Coles and his son of the same name. With
them the delineation of armorial bearings was a specialty,
and they appear to have conducted an active and thriving
business. In the first volume of the " Heraldic Journal," published in
Boston in 1865, a correspondent gives a sufficiently clear de-
1 The following free method of assuming arms without any show of authority,
as illustrated in a work entitled the " Halls of New England," is not uncommon
in the numerous books on family history recently published. The author explains
as follows : —
" Much inquiry has been made for arms preserved in the Hall families in New
England, and although several have been found, no one of them is satisfactory
in every respect, yet most of them point to the Halls of Warwickshire, Eng., as
their origin. Therefore I have chosen that as a representative illustration."
An engraving of the arms accompanies the above statement.

9
scription of the fraudulent arms painted and sold by Mr. John
Coles. The following is a brief abstract of this correspondent's
communication : There are many families in New England
who possess old paintings of their coats of arms. They are
blazoned on a sheet of paper about fourteen inches by ten.
The shield is generally surmounted by a closed side-faced hel
met of blue and gold. Outside of the two corners of the shield
are often, if not always, two green branches. On the scroll
instead of the usual motto is inserted " In the name of" John
Brown or whoever applies for the said arms. Mr. John Stott,
an English engraver, living in Boston about 1840, states that
Mr. Coles painted the helmets, the shields, and ornaments at
his leisure, and filled them up whenever he found a purchaser.
He sometimes completed his heraldic design by introducing the
United States flag.
We may here add a brief note, found in the same journal,
from the Rev. William Jenks, D.D. Dr. Jenks was a dis
tinguished member of this Society, a man of great learning in
many directions, an antiquary of long experience and excellent
judgment, who died in Boston in 1866. His note is in reply
to an inquiry by the editor of the " Heraldic Journal," and is
as follows : —
" With respect to your question concerning Mr. Coles, I can reply
that I knew him in my early life, and often called on him, as I remem
ber, in making inquiries about heraldry. Mr. Coles' authorities for
his drawings of coats of arms were very scanty, being, as I have sup
posed, confined to Guillim's folio volume.1 And he was in the habit
of giving arms to applicants, whenever he found them assigned in that
book to the family name of his employer, without much, if any, genea
logical research or inquiry. If no crest were found in Guillim, he did
not hesitate to raise on the torse our national flag. His charge for fur
nishing such drawings, of folio size, was, I recollect, a guinea." 2
1 A DISPLAY OF HERALDRY, manifesting a more easie access to the
knowledge thereof then hath hitherto been published by any, through the benefit
of Method ; wherein it is now reduced by the Study and Industry of John Guillim
late Pursuivant at Arms. London, 1660.
2 Vide Heraldic Journal, vol. i. p. 108.

10
Beside the method here mentioned by Dr. Jenks, we have
recently seen an example of these heraldic paintings in which
the bearings in the escutcheon are absolutely the same as found
in Guillim's work, but nevertheless under an entirely different
name. Another device to which these painters appear to have
resorted was the selection of emblems or bearings from dif
ferent shields, which they found in books on heraldry, and
bringing them together in a new escutcheon, in a kind
of mosaic work, they found it not difficult to cover up
their method, and thus shield themselves in their nefarious
fraud. It would, perhaps, be an exaggeration to say that in the last
part of the eighteenth and the early part of the nineteenth
centuries, from about 1750 to 1825, New England was inun
dated by these fraudulent paintings of coats of arms, but it
would not be an exaggeration to say that numbers of them
were palmed off upon some of our most worthy and intelligent
citizens. While the paintings of Mr. Coles were for the most part dis
tinctive and could in general be identified, nevertheless, as there
were six or eight others who were given in some measure to
the same occupation, we cannot always tell who were the
painters of the spurious arms of any particular family. Neither
can we tell what learned wag induced the rich tobacconist to
place upon the panel of his carriage his spurious arms, with
the significant motto, Quid rides ! ! a motto singularly appro
priate, whether it be Latin or English.
There is in all men a natural pride of ancestry. There are
few, unless they are far gone from original righteousness, who
have not a distinct satisfaction in knowing that they are
descended from a line of ancestry both distinguished and
respectable. This characteristic is deeply seated in the con
stitution of man. To ignore it is a false modesty ; to parade
it too freely before others is a want of good taste. It is not

11
therefore, on the whole, a matter of surprise that a consider
able number of our New England citizens, our landed farmers,
our thrifty merchants, our lawyers, our doctors, our clergymen,
uninformed as they were and unsuspecting, should, under the
seductive words and smiles of Mr. John Coles, be willing to
sacrifice the modest sum of an English guinea to become
the possessor of a precious heirloom, a memorial certifying
to a distinguished ancestry living far back in the distant
centuries. Most of these fraudulent arms are now either kept as me
morials of a successful imposition, or they have been wholly
discarded and long since relegated to the dusty precincts of
ancient garrets, where they have already slumbered in obscu
rity for several generations.
On the breaking up of families or the abandonment of old
mansions they come forth from time to time with other kin
dred rubbish to garnish the walls of some cheap museum,
where they may well find a last, abiding and congenial home.
The right to use coat-armor, however derived, is not in
these times a great distinction. It is the lowest form of royal
recognition, and moreover it confers no honorary title. In
itself it is a thing of small importance, but nevertheless it is
a matter of the highest moment that whoever assumes the
right to bear arms should be quite sure that they are genuine,
and are not the product of an artful avarice and an unques
tioning credulity.

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