Your College at Work: Inheritance & Cadency

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]Your College at Work: Debate on Arms for Women[/url]

siervicul said:

clemente said:

In Talossa, what is the legal and traditional definition of "heir"?
* Oldest Child?
* Oldest Son?
* Defaults to one of the above, but can be changed by a will?
* Or does it default to the State unless specifically outlined in a will?

Good question. Our statutes do not define the term, so we would default to the common law. The common law as Colonial America inherited it from England generally provided for male primogeniture (oldest son inherits) of real property and equal division among all children of personal property. That's not getting into rights of surviving spouses. Primogeniture was dropped even from real property inheritance at some point after independence. So "heir" does not, as a rule, refer to a single individual. Of course, descent of arms does not have to follow the same rules as descent of other kinds of property. We could allow undifferenced arms to be inherited by one individual or many.[/quote]
Thank you, Brother Bartleby, for this clear description. It seems that the challenge for the College is to define the process for naming an heir who can inherit on particular type of real property - a family coat of arms.

siervicul said:

The English cadency system is well-established in theory, but little used in practice, it seems. The home page of the English College of Arms says that a man's arms "pass equally to all his legitimate children, irrespective of their order of birth," and that cadency marks " *may* be used to identify the arms of brothers." In the long term, we need to decide whether we want Talossan heraldry to be more like that of Scotland, where each individual has a unique coat of arms, or Continental heraldry, which tends to link arms with families more than specific individuals. I think we should avoid clinging to closely to any one ( i.e. English) tradition.

The Canadian system of cadency has a separate set of brisures for daughters - heart, ermine spot, snowflake, fir twig, chess rook, escallop inverted, harp, buckle, claricord.

The Bartleby Pursuivant

With prescience, Bartleby points out the next issue - if arms can be inherited, how will they be differenced? Should Talossa adopt the traditional Engish system of cadency, or the Canadian?

Fellows of the College, we have much to do. Please post your thoughts here.

-- Jaune Sabre Herald,
Squirrel King at Arms

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Here is one of Lord Hooligan's favorite cartoons, explaining the English system of cadency:

[Sir C. M. Siervicül]

clemente said:

It seems that the challenge for the College is to define the process for naming an heir who can inherit on particular type of real property - a family coat of arms.

Armourial bearings are a kind of intangible personal property, like a copyright in a work of art. Real property means, in short, land.

siervicul said:

With prescience, Bartleby points out the next issue - if arms can be inherited, how will they be differenced? Should Talossa adopt the traditional Engish system of cadency, or the Canadian?

Fellows of the College, we have much to do. Please post your thoughts here.

-- Jaune Sabre Herald,
Squirrel King at Arms

I will break this down into three questions.

The Three Questions

First, does Talossa follow the "one coat of arms per individual" rule (Like Scotland, as an extreme example), or the "one coat of arms per family" rule (like Poland, as an extreme example)? Family-based heraldry is cool in a way, but we've been tending toward individual heraldry. But let's think about it and make a conscious decision, rather than just defaulting to whatever the Brits do.

Second, who has the right to bear arms (in a heraldic sense)? Only those who are granted arms, or may arms be assumed as well? And what is the relationship between granting and inheritance of arms? These questions should be answered comprehensively and definitively. The authority of the College in this area is somewhat unclear, and additional legislation may be necessary if we prefer an aggressive approach to prevent the free assumption of arms.

Third, if we adopt the "one coat of arms per individual" rule, or something close to it, how do we difference the arms of relatives? England and Wales use a set of brisures for sons. Canada uses the same set, plus a separate set for daughters. Scotland uses a system of bordures. But the English brisures were adopted by the Tudors, and various other methods were used before that, as well as after that in other places. For example, things like bordures, orles, geratting, changes to lines of division, changes of tinctures, and addition of ordinaries.

Talossan Cadency

The English system is best known, but is also very English. It also has the disadvantage that it can lead to unattractive and ambiguous results in just a few generations (e.g., "is that the third son of a second son, or the second son of a third son"). Its main advantage (besides being well known) is that it's easy to apply consistently in at least the first generation of heirs.

But I think that, if we're careful, we can come up with an original Talossan system. We could even draw inspiration from cadency in Arthurian literature, which offers examples of several of the older methods I mention above.

Here's a very tentative idea, starting with the widely-recognized label (overall, of three points) for eldest sons: We can generalize the label and represent other sons and even other generations with changes of tincture, changes of number of points, making the label (for example) barry, or charging the points of the label. This idea draws inspiration from the use of labels in the Middle Ages and by the UK royals as discussed here, and from the examples of cadency in Portuguese royal heraldry shown here.

A Holistic Approach

Here are my preliminary thoughts on an approach to deal with all three questions. Grants of arms are to an individual and his heirs. Any grantee and any heir of a grantee may bear arms. A grantee is the only person entitled to bear the specific arms described in a grant during the life of the grantee. During the grantee's life, his heirs must properly difference their arms. But if they use a standard default set of brisures, they may rightfully bear such properly differenced arms without further grant. Upon the death of the grantee, one particular heir inherits the undifferenced arms (we'll have to deal with that further), while the grantee's other heirs retain the differenced versions.

At the same time, to keep things interesting and encourage innovation, we would encourage those entitled to bear arms differenced in the default manner to petition for a grant of arms in their own right. These new personal grants would normally draw from the ancestor's arms, but use some of the more drastic methods of differencing like addition of ordinaries or major charges, changes of tincture, and changes of lines of division.

BP

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siervicul said:

clemente said:

It seems that the challenge for the College is to define the process for naming an heir who can inherit on particular type of real property - a family coat of arms.

Armourial bearings are a kind of intangible personal property, like a copyright in a work of art. Real property means, in short, land.

BP

Brother Bartleby -

Please excuse my error - I was using real in the sense of tangible - the family coat of arms is a tangible thing, not merely an honour thing like a title. Please substitute "actual" for "real".

Sorry about that.

-- Jaune Sabre Herald, SKA.

PS: In your ever-incisive manner, which we of the College appreciate, you have laid out the major issues in your three questions.

Let us keep the discussion going!