Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 3.djvu/367

 s. m. MAY i

NOTES AND QUEEIES.

361

LONDON, SATURDAY, MAY 13, 1899.

CONTENTS. -No. 72.

)TES : Foreign Arms in England, 361 Shakspeariana, ' Servery " Pens and Nibs Bridpor: Dagger Hoy, 365 lomani "Ghili" The 'H.B.D.' Poisonous Gifts Bulls Jromwell Tercentenary, 366 Crosby Place, Bishops- jate, 367.
 * 62 The First Duke of Bolton, 304 " Sagamore "

JERIES : " Go o' simmer "Engraving of William Lilly Cromwells of Henbury Addresses to Richard Crom- wellThe Civil List, 367 Fairy Cucumber Goldsmith's Travels John Mathews Society of Dilettanti Madame Sarcienne Robert Twist F. Shiers and J. Rogers Author of Quotation Wanted Blue Cassocks " To $reen "Thomas Aske White MSS. and Sandersons, 368 Coloured Cow of Hamburg Ochiltree Family Gren Archbishop Lindsay Mary Lloyd Yeed, 369.

BPLIES : Boccaccio, 369 Heraldic " Geese" Leaves marked by Tartarus, 370 Kipling's ' Recessional': ' Dulce Domum ' ' Chaunt of Achilles ' Key and Kay Archery Butts Martyr Bishop of. Armagh, 371" Faunch hind" Northumberland House MS. Armorial Heraldic, 372 " Chal" B. O'Meara Relic of Napoleon, 373 Devil as a Black Dog Three Sergeants ' Graves's ' Marcus ' Church at Silchester, 374 Gray's ' Elegy 'The Azra "Demon's Aversion," 375 Tennyson's 'Ancient Sage' " -ington "Brass at St. Albans Black Images of the Virgin, 376 "Hean" Clare Street Eucharis CM. Quotations Agnes a Fateful Name, 377 The Chesapeake John Bull Alexaodre the Ventriloquist, 378 Bess of Hardwick, 379.

NOTES ON BOOKS : Oliver's 'History of Antigua' Cowper's ' Oldest Register of Hawkshead Parish ' ' Edin- burgh Review.'

Notices to Correspondents.

FOREIGN ARMS IN ENGLAND.

THE query of H. H. (ante, p. 308) tempts me 'to send you a few notes on the point, inas- jmuch as there is a great deal of misunder- standing upon the matter.

A foreigner coming into this country is amenable to the laws of honour of his own country and the authorities controlling them n that country so long as he retains his iriginal nationality. Those foreign laws and he laws of armorial registration and control ary considerably, but there is one funda- mental rule which is now, and has been for orne centuries, admitted practically from one nd of Europe to the other. With countries >utside Europe one need not trouble. Ame- ican heraldry is beneath contempt (I do not refer to the armory of American scions of

nglish families) ; and the barbaric totemism f semi-civilized countries, though the origin f our own heraldry, is hardly sufficiently volved to be considered as armory. The ne fundamental European rule is th'is that rms are a matter of honour, and that the 'onferring of honour and honours is a pre- ogative of sovereignty.

All European countries recognize the overeign acts of every other de facto Euro-

pean sovereign, so long as these acts are constitutional acts, according to the con- stitutional law of the country over which each particular sovereign reigns. Now every de facto sovereign can grant arms to his own subjects. No sovereign can lawfully grant arms to another sovereign's subjects. Arms and titles are precisely identical, and it re- quires the consent or definite documentary recognition of the sovereign of the grantee to render lawful and valid a grant of either arms or title from a foreign sovereign. In England this is conveyed by means of what we know as a royal licence. The formalities are somewhat the same in Germany, which, after our own, is probably the country the most carefully controlled. These royal licences are but very rarely granted in England; but two or three cases of arms come to my mind e.g., Thornton, which was a grant of an augmenta- tion of arms and a title by the King of Portugal to an actual English subject. For the same reason no grant of arms can be made by the English College of Arms to an American citizen.

The universal sovereignty of the Pope is admitted in some countries, and consequently arms and titles granted by the Pope are recognized in Spain and Italy, and perhaps in other countries. They are also recognized by the present French administration. No Papal grant has been officially recognized in this country, that I am aware of, since the Reformation.

A sovereign grants arms to a man and his descendants, and, unless that grant be re- voked (which can only be done in England by attainder), the right remains for ever, and cannot be disputed (after proof of descent) in the country in which the arms originated. But no sovereign can be compelled to recog- nize in his own country honours conferred by another sovereign, beyond the recognition that courtesy demands should be extended to a foreigner and a foreign subject whose cre- dentials are in order. Directly the nation- ality is changed and the status of foreigner is at an end, that courtesy of necessity also comes to an end, for as an English subject an immigrant becomes entirely amenable to English law and the English law recognizes no arms as legal in this country or for Eng- lish subjects save those recorded in the official College and Offices of Arms.

The procedure for the registration of foreign arms in this country is as follows. A certificate is obtained that, prior to be- coming an English subject, the person in question, in the country from which he came, was entitled to bear certain arms. This certi-