coat of arms

sonic85

hey all

im looking for my coat of arms and after a bit of a search ive found a couple of different ones but dont know which is the right one




the bottom one is the one i thought was right - i have something similar hanging on my sitting room wall but now im not sure. any help would be great.

mods i wasnt sure if this was the right forum for this so if its not feel free to move the post. thanks

shanew

Coats of arms relate to specific male lines rather than surnames - so if your Freeman line was granted arms at some stage, you would need to trace back step by step to find the details and associated arms.

sonic85

shanew wrote: »

Coats of arms relate to specific male lines rather than surnames - so if your Freeman line was granted arms at some stage, you would need to trace back step by step to find the details and associated arms.

sounds like an awful lot of work. a trip to the genealogy forum would probably be my best bet then

shanew

not many families have actual coats of arms and they tend to be gentry etc, and usually appear in publications like Burke's peerage.

sonic85

shanew wrote: »

not many families have actual coats of arms and they tend to be gentry etc, and usually appear in publications like Burke's peerage.

so basically the coat of arms was given to an individual and it wouldnt represent the whole family just the person? didnt know that. kind of disappointed now!

thanks for the replies though

shanew

correct - so as an example you can get unrelated people with the same surname and completely different coats of arms - even branches within families can have slight variations. There's a lot of money in selling scrolls, mugs and even tea towels etc of these details. Not relevant Coats of arms or genealogy for the person concerned in most cases... but if these get people interested in their history and they realize what they are dealing with, then there's probably no real harm in that..

The only official coat of arms for someone in Ireland I can think of off the top of my head is for the family of Henry Mount Charles of Slane Castle - more correct title is 'Marquess Conyngham'. You can see his arms here on Wiki

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marquess_Conyngham

pedroeibar1

shanew wrote: »

The only official coat of arms for someone in Ireland I can think of off the top of my head is for the family of Henry Mount Charles of Slane Castle - more correct title is 'Marquess Conyngham'. You can see his arms here on Wiki

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marquess_Conyngham

Not quite Shane, lots of individuals are armigerous, although many have not bothered to register their arms following ithe death of the holder.
McLysaght did heraldry a big disservice. One of my pet hates. Log onto the office of the chief herald / Ulster King at Arms on the National Library ste for all the grants of arms in recent years. A money racket until it stopped , mainly because The McCarthy Mor nonsense showed up the lack of professionalism. Every village is allowed it's idiot. The heraldry "industry" has a multiplicity of them, sadly including more than a fair share at the NLI office.

shanew

didn't explain that very well - was just using the Conyngham line as an example of an established line and coat of arms.

I wouldn't say lots of people are entitled to arms - I would think a minority

pinkypinky

Just to add to what was said above, I believe MacLysaght actually said that anyone could use a coat of arms that had the same name but possibly he said this in an unofficial capacity, and this led to the whole coat of arms industry.

I don't know why anyone would want a feudal remnant like arms if their family didn't already have one, especially considering we're a Republic but it doesn't do any harm. I have looked at the original manuscript books of arms in the National Library (for my genealogy course in UCD) and they are beautiful works of art, often incorporating family stories and nature. Most families associated with a "big house" and all titled families will have a coat of arms. In the 19th century, wealthier middle class and merchant class families started getting them too, to up their social standing.

pedroeibar1

shanew wrote: »

didn't explain that very well - was just using the Conyngham line as an example of an established line and coat of arms.

I wouldn't say lots of people are entitled to arms - I would think a minority

I too should have been more precise – I agree its a minority but there are hundreds of people who hold and thousands who are entitled to hold an achievement of arms. The NLI site has more than 250 examples here and it is just a matter of spending about a €3,000 fee & the cost of research for proof of entitlement to have Arms confirmed by the Chief Herald. Many people do not bother as heraldry is seen as an anachronism. As you rightly say a coat of arms(emblazonment) is unique to an individual and they belong to that individual in the way the Apple logo belongs to the Apple Corp.

Where the 'family crest' charlatans trade is a gray area (‘Crest’ ) because a crest has no armorial entitlement, as it cannot be granted on its own; it forms one part of a grant of arms. So use of any crest on its own does not breach any rules, nor does the added use of a motto.

Some of the most recent grantees go back just one or two generations - one would think that spending that amount of money it would merit a bit of family research rather than just announce oneself as an 'arriviste'.