Re: matching arms on the field (fwd)

[clevin@rci.ripco.com (Craig Levin)]

Poster: clevin@rci.ripco.com (Craig Levin)

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?

Gray vs. Hastings? I should say so! If nothing else, the fact
that it's been so fully reported and archived makes it a curio of
history. Mostly, all I found of others were mentions in the major
Peerage collections or the Patent Rolls (appointing substitute
judges for the Earl Marshal's Court).

> 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.

It's also quite possible that these disputes were settled outside
of the courts, much like people will go to outside arbitrators or
mediators today. Also, as I've written in my study on the matter,
the Earl Marshall's Court wasn't a court of record. On top of
that, I don't think we've considered fully just what "conflict"
meant to our predecessors. If we examine the verdicts in Scrope
vs. Grosvenor and Carminow vs. Scrope, it looks like one CD was
all the court found necessary.

> 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.

I think it requires more research, not just yours and mine, but
on the part of other people, to see what the consensus, not just
in England, but on the Continent as well, was on "conflict," and
how it evolved through the years.

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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