Three years ago I had a stab at designing a coat of arms for the Reverend Wilbert Vere Awdry, believing that he never had one officially granted or descended to him. Now, however, I discover that he most likely did.

When searching through the Internet Archive I found a digital copy of The Thomas The Tank Engine Man, a biography of Awdry by Brian Sibley (who also edited The Fall of Númenor and wrote several companion books about Tolkien’s legendarium and its cinematic adaptations).

The early pages recount some of the vicar’s family history, including his uncle William and grandfather Sir John. Sir John Wither Awdry spent three years as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Judicature at Bombay and William Awdry spent twelve as Bishop of South Tokyo. I quickly found that these two men already had their own Wikipedia biographies, both of which mentioned their kinship to Wilbert. If only there had been links in the other direction I might have discovered this information much earlier.

William, August 1900

Unfortunately Debrett’s Peerage would be of no use here as it tends to list only the corporate and not the personal arms of the Lords Spiritual, and even then only those diocesan bishops within the United Kingdom – Awdry meeting neither condition. Happily, Sir John did have an entry in Burke’s Landed Gentry 1862, which lists his dynastic arms of unspecified antiquity as Argent three cinquefoils Or on a bend Azure cotised of the same with crest Out of a ducal coronet a lion’s head Azure and motto Nil Sine Deo.

William and Wilbert being legitimate agnatic descendants of Sir John, it naturally follows that whatever armorial ensigns he possessed, they possessed also. It is curious, therefore, to have found so little record of him or his son Christopher actually using them. This is amplified by the fact that the fact that he and his brother George clearly had an active interest in and working knowledge of heraldic blazon, which Sibley’s book even notes:

George…was exploring matters of heraldry and coats of arms ‘A real beauty occured to me for Tidmouth,’ he wrote to his brother, ‘It ought to be rather elaborate, as it is relatively new, and the simple ones are doubtless allotted already.’ The proposed arms for Tidmouth were to feature a smith’s hammer and tongs, a lymphad (a heraldic ship), three herrings and a wheel. ‘This,’ George explained, ‘covers all Tidmouth’s titles to importance: shipping, transport, fishing, engineering…’

I did, of course, illustrate Tidmouth’s arms two years ago as well.