Re: matching arms on the field (fwd)

[Mark Schuldenfrei <schuldy@abel.MATH.HARVARD.EDU>]

Poster: Mark Schuldenfrei <schuldy@abel.MATH.HARVARD.EDU>

Greetings from Tibor.

Pedro, a question. You wrote:
  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.  

Since you have been searching for legal cases of armorial dispute, I suspect
that you are seeing slightly enriched data.  Wouldn't you say that this case
is (at the least) rather exceptional?

Data shows that arms frequently conflicted (by the standards our college of
arms uses today).  Yet in comparison, the information I have about litigated
cases is far more rare.

What does this indicate to you?  (Besides that I should go and do my own
research...  :-)  To me it indicates that, by and large, conflict of
personal arms (as opposed to arms of territory that Allison cited) was not a
big deal.

	Tibor
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