Armorial bearings
Sir: Peter Bauer (12 November) is surely right in his contention that the main differences between English and continental patterns of class distinction arise from the fact that we have had more social mobility for much longer. Because of this we have long paid to minute class and social differences a close attention unknown to more rigidly stratified societies. It is our fascinated interest in such minutiae that now worries the foreigners.
Nearly forty years ago I sought to show how the difference in heraldic practice here and on the continent affords historical evidence of this situation in Tudor and Stuart times. Noble status on the continent was defined by legal privilege, so that merely heraldic distinctions were relatively unimportant. But the absence of such legal privilege in England made the right to armorial bearings into a main test of gentility (the equivalent of the continental nobility) — supplemented in some cases by yet more elusive criteria. The implications of this line of thought have of late aroused some interest in France.
(Sir) Anthony Wagner Garter King of Arms College of Arms, Queen Victoria Steet, London, E.C.4.
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