Tag Archives: Timothy Noad

Early Summer Heraldic News

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10th June is International Heraldry Day. It’s not a widely-known occasion, of course, and I don’t have any particular way of celebrating it, but it felt like the occasion to post some updates.

Humphrey Lyttelton

Over the last few months I have been listening obsessively to the archives of the classic panel show I’m Sorry, I Haven’t A Clue (which, incidentally, is back for a new series this week). Among the hundreds of hours of babble and bickering, I picked up on a couple of heraldic references in Humphrey Lyttelton’s introductory monologues:

William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury from 1633, was born in broad street where WH Smith stands, which is evidenced by the Laud family crest of a crossed pen and pencil set Argent topped by readers’ wives rampant.

(S37E1, 28th May 2001)

 

The story of Darlington’s history is neatly encompassed in its coat of arms. The Cross of St Cuthbert represents the town’s resistance to Viking raids, a bull’s head signifies the local breeding of fine cattle, and white chevrons with black lines indicate no overtaking on an urban freeway.

(S41E1, 26th May 2003)

If I manage to find enough of these, I could create a new armorial page called Humph’s Heraldry or I’m Sorry, I Haven’t A Crest.

Humph himself would be no stranger to heraldry, coming as he did from the aristocratic Lyttelton family. Humph was the only son of Hon. George William Lyttelton, himself the second son of Charles George Lyttelton, 8th Viscount Cobham. He was too far removed from the peerage to gain any style or honorific from it, but he still would have been an esquire by some of the traditional definitions, and of course that would make him an armiger too.

Lord Cobham’s arms were Argent a chevron between three escallops Sable and his crest was a Moor’s head in profile couped at the shoulders Proper wreathed about the temples Argent and Sable. Humph would have presumably displayed these with a crescent for difference, if following the rules of cadency.

The mention of William Laud prompted me to look for his actual heraldic bearings. The blazon I uncovered for his shield was Sable on a chevron between three estoiles Or three crosses pattee fitchy Gules. I cannot find the blazon for his crest, though as a clergyman he obviously would not have used one. That means I cannot explicitly disprove Humph’s suggestion, though as Laud died over a century before the establishment of the WH Smith company I suspect a direct homage is unlikely.

Anglican Archbishops

I was surprised to find that Laud’s personal arms, and those of several other Anglican bishops, were listed on Heraldry of the World, which normally only carries corporate arms. I then went about adding as many blazons as were available to their owners’ Wikipedia pages. When I got to William Temple I discovered that the arms were already cited, and the link was to the book The Blazon of Episcopacy by William Bedford, 1897. I don’t know how I missed this before. I have long been frustrated by the fact that Burke’s and Debrett’s only list the Lords Spiritual by the corporate arms of their sees instead of the personal arms of the incumbents, so this book was a revelation, if you’ll pardon the pun. This has given the the opportunity to start illustrating arms en masse again, having run low on material in the last few years. It also pushed my edit count past 24000, allowing me to upgrade my user rank to Senior Editor or Labutnum.

I have now set about creating an Armorial of the Archbishops of Canterbury, and after that will probably do so for all the other bishoprics in Bedford’s book too. Five years ago I created one for the Bishops of Chester because there was already a website which collated them, but did not have the necessary resources to go any further.

Articles on Other Sites

Yesterday The Atlantic published an article by British journalist Helen Lewis about the phenomenon of Americans applying to the College of Arms in London for honorary grants. Despite the timing, no mention is made of IHD and the article is clearly intended more as part of the commemorations for the 250th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. It includes snippets of interviews from several American armigers, as well as Dominic Ingram (Chester Herald) and an account of Lewis’s own visit to the College’s headquarters. Ingram makes a comment about his heart sinking when a client asks for lions due to their overuse. David White, now Garter, made the same comment a while back.

On 1st April the retired rector Ian Gomersall posted about receiving his letters patent, and even included some photographs of the artistic process. Four days ago Ian Leslie posted a long article which included a paragraph about William Shakespeare’s quest for heraldry, something which I have also discussed before.

Miscellaneous

In less exciting news, it has now been an entire year since the College posted a new edition of its own newsletter. The message in the sidebar still insists that the letter is produced every three months, but that has not been true for quite a while now.

On a quasi-related note, today would also have been the 105th birthday of the late Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh (he was eighteen days younger than Humph). Recently I inherited a copy of H.R.H. Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh: A Portrait by his Valet. The book was curiously undated, but Google Books tells me it was published in 1954. That feels remarkably early to be writing a biography like this, given that he would go on to live until 2021. The use of “Prince” in the title is also interesting, given that this book came out after he relinquished his Greek & Danish princely title but before he was granted his British one. Of course, I will have to get around to actually reading the book before I can make further judgement.

UPDATE (13th June)

The King’s Birthday Honours were published late last night. David Vines White, Garter since 2021, has been appointed a KCVO. This is routine for holders of his office, though it is interesting that he got it at what must be about the halfway point of his tenure, whereas his predecessors Woodcock and Gwynne-Jones didn’t get theirs until very near the end.

UPDATE (16th June)

Birkbeck College has published an interview with Timothy Noad, exploring the creative process behind the creation of the new royal cypher.

Ongoing Heraldic Stories

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In this post I have new updates on three different heraldry-related stories that I have covered before.

The Greater London Authority

The campaign by the Greater London Authority to acquire the iconic armorial achievement of its predecessor body the Greater London Council has been successful. The King issued a royal warrant on Thursday 13th November authorising the transfer, though frustratingly it the corresponding notice in the London Gazette was not published until yesterday.

British Passports

(I’ve discussed this topic ad nauseam by now so won’t link specific earlier posts.)

It was announced by the Home Office in October that a new British passport design would be coming out which featured Timothy Noad’s illustration of the royal arms with the Tudor crown in place of the previous design favoured by Elizabeth II. Recently the story has been picked up by newspapers as the new passports actually come out.

The Prince & Princess of Wales

I and other heraldists have been waiting for some time to see evidence of William & Catherine updating their personal heraldry to reflect the former’s status as heir apparent. While searching for news stories about the GLA I found articles in Hello!, People, Marie Claire and The News International (though curiously none of the more mainstream outlets) reported that when the couple attended the Royal Variety Performance last month, their invitation printed by the charity featured their conjugal coat of arms in the updated format. The style is very clearly Sodacan, and it looks as if the particular image was created on 12th April 2023 by user Mangwanani but not actually used in any articles until 22nd November this year, presumably for lack of evidence of real-life usage. Whoever found the image for the invitation must have dug rather deeply into Wikimedia Commons to find it. Reports in the aforesaid magazines that the Prince & Princess have made this change themselves seem a little misguided as it would not have been their own office in charge of producing the image, and recent evidence of their own correspondence still shows their old-style cyphers in use (not the lack of an arch on the coronet). This is thus yet another example of Wikipedians not just getting ahead of real life, but actually pushing it along a little, however inadvertently.

The new programme can be contrasted with this one from 2023, which still uses their conjugal arms as Duke & Duchess of Cambridge (or rather as son & daughter-in-law of the heir apparent), even though the new graphic image had already existed for seven months and William had held the status of heir apparent for more than a year. The old graphic still showed Catherine’s shield with a cordelière around it to balance William’s Garter circlet, even though she had been made a GCVO in 2019. Note too that the great many depictions of the main royal arms still alternate between old and new variants.

Miscellaneous Monarchical Minutiae

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Alright, I couldn’t find a more recent picture.

More from Torrance

In an update to my post from two days ago, I noted that Dr David Torrance had put out a research briefing for the House of Commons Library covering much of the same substance as I had. Today, hot off his own heels, he put out an “Insight” on the concept of Royal Warrants. It examines the distinction between Royal Warrants and Letters Patent, which has long been a source of confusion to me. The Insight covers some details about process and format, though any distinction in fundamental purpose is not resolved.

What struck me in both his recent updates were his repeated links to this site: the Corpus of British Administrative Instruments. This is a website by Jason Loch of Venerable Puzzle fame. I can’t work out how recent this is as Loch doesn’t mention the site on his aforementioned blog or on his Twitter feed. The Wayback Machine shows no records at all until today.

CBAI has a lot of overlap in principle with Heraldica, which I mentioned on Sunday, although a little more modern in terms of the coding and presentation. It collates the texts of reems of patents, warrants, ministerial letters and other documents of state and royal authority. The most fascinating part is that it includes photographs of these items as well. My favourite document so far is the patent from 12th April last year appointing Mark Scott as Somerset Herald. It features a delightful illustration by Timothy Noad of Charles III at his coronation.

Following on from the main thrust of yesterday’s article, a look now at the disused duke’s wife and daughters:

The Other Yorks

None of those called “The Yorks” actually use the word York in their names anymore.

Sarah Ferguson married The Prince Andrew in 1986. Their actual marriage did not last long as they separated in 1992 and divorced in 1996. Despite being separated almost thrice as long as they were married they still live together and often behave as if still a couple. As a wife she was “Her Royal Highness The Duchess of York” and subsequently she was “Sarah, Duchess of York” — the latter following the standard formula for how divorced former peeresses are styled, and also how wives of all royal peers are styled in biographical indexes as well as the titles of their Wikipedia articles (e.g. Sophie, Duchess of Edinburgh, whose marriage is still going strong). There have been quite a few contexts, such as their daughters’ engagement announcements, in 2018 and 2019, where Palace communications have still referred to the couple together as “The Duke and Duchess of York”, probably because “His Royal Highness The Duke of York and Sarah, Duchess of York” would have looked a bit strange. Although there wasn’t a direct statement from her, news reports said that when Andrew had ceased use of the Dukedom of York Sarah had also ceased use of the courtesy title Duchess and had reverted to her maiden name. Talks are ongoing on both their Wikipedia pages as to how to present this. It would have been interesting to see what happened if a formal deprivation of the peerages had taken place, I’m not sure there is any precedent for whether the formally depriving a divorced peer of his peerage would automatically remove the courtesy title of his ex-wife as well.

Their daughters Beatrice and Eugenie also bear the title of Princess and the style of Royal Highness as children of a son of a sovereign per the 1917 letters patent. As is custom for second-generation descendants, they originally bore “of York” after their given names. We do not yet have a good custom for what to do when British princesses acquire commoner husbands: formally they are “Her Royal Highness Princess Beatrice, Mrs* Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi” and “Her Royal Highness Princess Eugenie, Mrs Jack Brooksbank”. In practice most references, and the names of their Wikipedia pages, omit anything after their first names. As with their father, this can be a little difficult for disambiguation**, as their have been other princes named Andrew (including his own paternal grandfather) and other princesses called Beatrice and Eugenie. This is also a problem for Princess Alexandra, originally “of Kent”, later “The Honourable Lady Ogilvy”. Even adding “of the United Kingdom” would not solve the problem in most of these cases, so either birth years are given in brackets or the living British one is given primacy over all others on the basis that they are overwhelmingly the most famous among current English-language sources.

Wrap-Up

In other news, His Majesty has recently appeared on another podcast. Not The King’s Music Room this time, but Unearthed with Cate Blanchett, looking at the progress of the Millennium Seed Bank. The Queen, meanwhile, has gotten herself written into the crime novel The Hawk is Dead by Peter James.

FOOTNOTES

*She might have been a Countess, but Edoardo’s comital title from the former Kingdom of Italy has no official recognition now.
**This is less of a problem for Anne, who also has the title Princess Royal.

UPDATE (31st October)

Loch has now put out a new post explaining the launch of the CBAI.