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?
