The First World War ended for practical purposes with the Armistice of 11 November 1918, but the state of war between the belligerents came to an end only after the signing of the Treaty of Versailles on 28 June 1919. Following that Treaty the heralds were dispatched to proclaim the Peace, and this was done on 2 July 1919 from St James's Palace and other key points in London. This article by Oswald Barron, later Maltravers Herald Extraordinary, is from the July 1919 issue of Country Life. It shows Sir Henry Farnham Burke, Garter King of Arms, and Gordon Ambrose Lee, York Herald, making the Proclamation. College of Arms reference: Acc 2010/2.
An online exhibition of other documents from the archives of the College of Arms relating to the First World War can be seen here.
A grant of Arms, Crest and Badge was made to Elmar JANAHMADOV of the Royal Borough of Greenwich, by Letters Patent of Garter and Clarenceux Kings of Arms dated 29 June 2018. College reference: Grants 181/191. The blazon is as follows:
A grant of Arms, Crest and Badge was made to Sir Alastair Hubert NORRIS of Marlow, Buckinghamshire, knight, by Letters Patent of Garter and Clarenceux Kings of Arms dated 3 September 2018. College reference: Grants 181, 223. The blazon reads:
The Inner Temple History Society: On 15 October 2018 Thomas Woodcock, Garter King of Arms, gave a talk entitled Peerage Law, Its Evolution and Hereditary Peerage and Baronetcy Claims in the 21st Century. This included reference to James Percy, the trunk maker who claimed the Earldom of Northumberland. James Percy’s claim, set out in the publication illustrated here from the collection of Thomas Woodcock, was dismissed by the House of Lords as “groundless, false and scandalous” and he was sentenced to stand in Westminster Hall bearing a paper on his breast inscribed “the false and impudent pretender to the Earldom of Northumberland”.
Elias Ashmole, Windsor Herald, and the Arms of France: in 1340, King Edward III of England claimed the throne of France as the closest male relative (albeit through a female line) of the late French King Charles IV. To reflect this claim in heraldry, the fleurs de lis of the royal Arms of France were quartered with the three lions of England by Edward and his successors. By the time of the Restoration of 1660, the claim to France by the kings of England had become purely nominal, and the newly crowned Charles II, who led a rapprochement with France, contemplated removing the French quarter from the arms of England. This provoked an anxious letter from Elias Ashmole (Windsor Herald 1660-1675, and founder of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford), of which a transcript, interspersed with sceptical annotations by John Anstis (Garter King of Arms 1718-1744) is preserved at the College of Arms. Ashmole presents to the King historical and material evidence to argue that the arms of England and France were impartible and begs him to weigh the heraldic and political considerations carefully before acting in ‘an affair of so Publick and high a Concern’. The King took Ashmole’s advice, but his successors did not; after the Act of Union with Scotland in 1707 the arms of England and Scotland were impaled within the Royal Arms, and France was displayed as a separate quarter, and after the Act of Union with Ireland in 1801, the French quartering was removed altogether. College Reference: Miscellaneous Collections 2/37. The illustration of the Arms of Charles II right is from College of Arms Ms Sir Edward Walker's Nobility temp. Chas II, p. 1.