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Why on earth would any sensible body be so keen as to wish for a connection to a family which is as inbred as chinchilla rabbits,  been subject to everything from porphyria & haemophillia to insanity & alcoholism. Hereditary strangers to useful employment and if they lived in your street would probably be sanctioned by ATOS & the "Social" never away from the door & probably take the weans off them. 

Skoosh.

Hello Skoosh,
look at me not taking offence! And I've finally found this thing:
Inbreeding is not confined to the upper classes and nor are hereditary diseases! Obviously our ancestors are what they are, there's nothing anyone do about it. It's the making stuff up to create a link to them which I think most people consider a bit on the foolish side.

Continued from previous post. Hello yet again Guy.

I having been interested in family history for a few years I have had the chance to visit the College of Arms in the 1960s where I did have the privilege to view some of the books containing the signed originals.
I have also seen a number of signed originals in private hands which contain errors and since the heralds based their records on these signed originals that by default means the pedigrees copied from these signed originals and held by the College of Arms are also in error.

Yes, I've been quite recently too. It's fantastic. Yes, that does show that the pedigree records are faulty but only assuming the transcription errors that you cite above have not occurred (and they might). But that is only argumentative hypothesis which I add for completeness. I do not know for sure. I'll clearly state what I meant by "uncontaminated", as looking at my old posts I see that it could justifiably have been misunderstood.

By uncontaminated I mean not messed around with by the numerous pompous, arrogant, deluded and sometimes downright fraudulent antiquarians whose messes we are still clearing up. The Victorians were particularly bad. Not all were like this, but enough were to make the publicly available works based on the original Visitation manuscripts unusable with any confidence. So we very much agree on that I think.

So now the useful part.

We can know certain things about the originals. Firstly one can be quite sure that any Armiger would have made sure that his offspring were properly recorded, grandchildren etc., so that part is fairly secure knowledge. Likewise with fathers, contemporary marriages and maybe also grandfathers. But there it stops. A co-researcher has found instances of a wrong grandmother being recorded in order that the Armiger may claim a more illustrious line than they otherwise might, and one instance only of a bogus mother of a new Armiger. So this is what I mean by uncontaminated: providing a quite reliable cameo of the immediate family in history, but sometimes or perhaps quite often giving a false line up into history from that point, human nature being what it is and always has been. That is one of the things I was referring to when I mentioned historical context, I was not specific enough.

The really useful thing about this is that there are a number of visitations, each giving such a cameo, and they can with luck, patience and other sources be joined to provide a reasonably secure line covering that period in history.

You include two quotes from me above inferring I am confusing the records held at the College of Arms with transcribed copies of visitations made by records societies and the Harleian society.
In the first quote I was referring to the records held by the College of Arms and in the second I was explaining what groups made transcripts of the visitations.
I can assure you I have been round long enough to know the difference.

In reply 18 you seem to think the visitations were a chance to make an application for a grant of “Arms” they were not. Visitations were concerned with “Arms” in use not new applications.

Yes, I see the confusion with the two quotes. If I may say so I think that your comments were too brief and hasty for that to be very obvious, but now we know anyway, and that is accepted.

Your last point, likewise, I've been around a bit too, and no, I don't think that the Visitations were for that purpose. I did say what I thought they were for in previous posts, so that's fine too. I did not intend to have written something confusing.

Are we sorted out to your satisfaction?

Hello again Guy. Thank you for responding at last in sufficient detail for me to make sense of what you are trying to convey. I'll respond in brief to selected points. In some places you have said things which I do not think are quite right, but I take your point now that you have elaborated that you have done some study of this and so I retract the comment that suggests that "you don't know what you're talking about".

Visitations were commenced in the 15th century due to the abuse of “Arms” in use. These visitations were in fact simply a continuation or development of the tours Heralds had been making up and down the country in the 13th and 14th centuries.
It was not until just after the middle of the 16th century that the visitations were held in public, prior to 1560 the visitations were held in the homes of the armigers.

All correct except for the last unless you have evidence to the contrary. The "visits into homes" were actually to find evidence of abuse of Arms "to record and register, deface if unproven" [Fox-Davies (again)] so in fact to remove bogus examples, and regain some control of Crown granting privilege. This most famously took place in 1558, it was a vast purge.

It doesn't seem to have been done at all to create pedigrees in the home. it was essentially a search warrant given to Norrey King of Arms. He was allowed to deface gravestones, family jewellery, in fact was permitted to go anywhere and destroy anything on which bogus Arms might be exemplified. 1528-9 Sir Thomas Benholte (Clarence King of Arms) was commissioned in much the same way. After these the commission was done through the county Sheriff and the county towns became the centre. So I think on that last point you have confused the rights in the warrant with what actually was done. If otherwise do show me firm evidence and I will of course accept it. Don't worry about looking in Fox Davies, Brooke-Little or Woodcock- it's not there.

At each visitation the normal procedure was for the armiger, note he or she would be an armiger not a person who wanted to apply for “Arms” but an armiger would bring his or her pedigree (and occasionally other records) to the visitation.
This pedigree would be examined by the herald and if he was satisfied the herald would get the armiger to sign the pedigree. This was what is/was referred to as the signed original.
When the herald returned to the College of Arms there were two things that could happen to the signed original.
1. It was considered to be a good legible pedigree and was bound with others into a book.
2. It was transcribed or copied to produce an improved record.
As with all transcriptions some mistakes occurred.
However the College of Arms had a short sighted procedure in that instead of archiving the signed originals, they in many cases returned the to the armiger or disposed of them by other means.
This left the situation that the original could not be checked at a later date.
That to me is short sighted.

This is recognisable from a book, I forget which one at present, and is broadly correct. Not keeping records is short-sighted too. You would have hoped that the College would have kept the signed copy and got the Armiger to make their own if they wanted it, but I suppose that it was felt by some Heralds that it was a sort of counterpart. Documents were not as easy to create as they are now. There are some picky little points I could go into here, but not worthy of this debate. Maybe on another thread. e.g. signed originals and their current status.

Thank you for alerting me to the fact that posts have a limited length allowance, I'll have a nice cup of tea now and do a bit more shortly.

Jayson, I'm very glad, and I have no doubt that Guy will be pleased that our exchange was fruitful in this way. A win for all.

Hello again Guy, thank you for your kind response.
We probably ought to make a new thread for this if you were to wish to continue here, it's getting off topic.

Where have I mentioned anything about the transcripts of Heralds Visitations, you assume I was referring to them when I was not, whether they were transcripts by the Harleian society or county record societies some of whom also made transcripts of some Visitation pedigrees.

The main difference between the early visitations and the later visitations were in the early days (pre 1560s) the heralds often stayed with the armiger in his home.
By the time of the later post 1560 many of the pedigrees had already been authenticated by use and were accepted by the heralds.

With regards to the College of Arms many of the pedigrees there are transcripts of the signed originals (original draft pedigrees signed by the armiger (the person whose pedigree was recorded)).
Many of these signed originals are in private hands rather than being at the College of Arms which rather shortsightedly had no use of them after they had been transcribed.
Cheers
Guy

The signed originals that you refer to: you've misunderstood. It was not "short sighted" as these were not needed by the College of Arms because the petitioner's submission was not necessarily taken at face value. Think of the stages between Visitation, petition, scrutiny and Grant (if you know the process- I'll assume that) and you'll see that it had to be so. What was officially recorded was the final version in a bound register, all of which were and are kept at the College and which could have been different from the original submission after scrutiny by the College.

Also you are entirely mistaken about this supposed difference between the earliest and later Visitations. The difference was not major, the Heralds still travelled, and saw the individuals in person. I don't know where you get that idea from, evidence please.

I suggest you might like to read chapter V pp.125-137 especially, of "The Right to Bear Arms" [Arthur C. Fox-Davies], (a College of Arms approved book) and in fact that whole chapter. Here it is stated, as everywhere else I've looked that all of the later visitations were at least centred on the county town of each region, and all pedigrees were amended and updated by the physical person of the Armiger fairly near their place of abode. That is why they were called "Visitations".

I realise that being contradicted may be rather irritating, and I'm sorry about that, but hopefully getting at the truth is what everyone is here for.