RE: matching arms on the field (fwd)

[clevin@ripco.com (Craig Levin)]

Poster: clevin@ripco.com (Craig Levin)

Alisoun:

> clevin@ripco.com (Craig Levin) wrote:
> 
> >> A coat of arms is more than a "dress code." There's rather a
> >> tidy body of law behind it-which was enforced, btw-that make it
> >> more than just a fancy suit. Besides, I'd prefer it to be a
> >> formal court hearing, not a drumhead decision by the autocrat.
> >> That's more or less the whole reason why _curiae_ _militaris_
> >> were established in the 1300's.
> 
> You're not kidding!!! In many cases, assuming the arms of a particular
> fief or jurisdiction was considered de facto (and often de jure)
> tantamount to filing formal claim to that property.  It could be quite
> controversial and even a formal casus belli (as in the assumption of the
> arms of France as a component of the arms of the King of England).

Actually, there was a long and very bitter case in the Earl
Marshal's Court between two cousins on this issue, Grey vs.
Hastings, which started in the reign of Henry IV, but because of
Hastings' refusal to give in, resulted in him getting chucked
into the hoosegow for over two decades for contempt of court. The
poor guy died in jail, as a matter of fact. Later, in the
seventeenth century, one of Hastings' descendants tried to get
the old decision reversed in the EM's Court, but got turned down.

Someone <Tibor?> said that mediaeval people didn't set much store
in defending one's title to one's arms. I would say that anyone
who spent twenty years in a mediaeval prison, a place far viler
than the country clubs we call penitentiaries these days, set as
much store in defending his cause as any other prisoner of
conscience. Hugh Hastings was, as far as I can tell, in most
other ways not an unusual man of his day.  

Pedro de Alcazar, AoA
Barony of Storvik, Atlantia
Pursuivant Extraordinary and Junior Minion
Or, six Castles Vert within a Bordure Gules semy of Roundels Or
-- 
http://pages.ripco.com:8080/~clevin/index.html 
clevin@ripco.com
Craig Levin
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