Why Meghan must have a coat of arms
To perfect her happiness, the Duchess of Sussex needs just one thing, says Christopher Howse – a freshly painted heraldic shield
Acoat of arms is just the thing for the Duchess of Sussex. I can’t imagine how, as Meghan Markle, she got on for so long without one. It is fashionable, feminist and something money can’t buy – though you have to fork out to get one. Prices start at £6,075. Mutterings from Markle connections want to blame the Queen for not having given her new granddaughter-in-law’s family a coat of arms, as if it were the code for the Sandringham Wi-fi. Samantha Grant, the Duchess’s half-sister, has called it an “insult” that the Queen has not yet granted Thomas Markle Snr such an honour – as she did Michael Middleton before the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge wed.
This is to misunderstand how a coat of arms is obtained. Technically, it is a gift of the monarch. But it is hers only in the sense that Dartmoor is Her Majesty’s Prison, or the unwelcome brown envelope on the doormat comes from Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs. The real grant of a shield, crest, banner and all the trimmings comes from Garter King of Arms and his extraordinary court.
Garter, for short, presides over the College of Arms, the headquarters of the heralds who have held on tenaciously for centuries to their authority over coats of arms. This remarkable survivor operates from a building put up after the Great Fire of London; a whacking great brick-built palazzo that was almost pulled down when Queen Victoria Street was cut through the City of London.
Garters have, until recently, leant towards the colourful. The late Sir Colin Cole, Garter until 1992, sometimes liked to escape from the office to spend an afternoon in El Vino’s in Fleet Street, doing justice to a few bottles of claret. Substantial of frame and rough of tongue, he reminded some of an 18th-century alderman. Yet he lacked rapport with the Queen and his slow attention to duty was blamed for the heralds not being invited to the wedding of the Prince of Wales and Lady Diana Spencer in 1981.
That’s all water under the bridge, and today’s Garter, Thomas Woodcock, is a model of industry, often to be seen at Windsor on a sweltering Garter Day in June dressed in a heavy brocade tabard and stockings, bearing aloft his sceptre.
How, then, could the new bride of the sixth in line to the throne persuade Garter to grant the Markles a nice coat of arms?
Nothing could be easier.
She wouldn’t have had to rely on her father to make the move; women have the right to a direct grant of arms. Feminism is no stranger to Garter, nor to his band of fellow officers of arms, the extraordinarily named Blue mantle, Clarenceux, Maltravers Herald Extraordinary and the rest. They have even “ordained and decreed” that a woman who marries another woman may “impale the arms of her wife with her own”.
Prince Harry was granted arms aged 18. They are those of the Queen, but are distinguished by what is technically called a “difference”. (All this arcane vocabulary is essential to understand that heraldry is a world of its own.) While we’re at it, a crest does not mean the shield or the coat of arms. It only means the device on the helmet above the shield. Women, not being warlike, do not have crests. Harry’s difference is a five-pointed label, on which cockle shells are strung – a touching reference to his mother, who bore them on her own coat of arms. Of course, the Duchess of Sussex could use her husband’s, but I doubt she would like that. With £6,075 in her purse, and reserves for extras such as a banner (essential, surely) she may knock at the door at Queen Victoria Street and ask for the officer of arms in waiting. He will then petition the Earl Marshal – a person of power in the arms world. These days, of course, she could just email them. I have no doubt that the Duchess has already had a conversation with the College and will receive her own coat of arms, even if her father does not. But one thing is clear: she cannot just make one up, as it would be illegal to display them. But, though she be American, the College can grant arms to her, or her father (albeit in an honorary form), as they descend from British stock: Lord Hussey of Sleaford (born 1465).
For the Duchess herself, I fancy something restrained and traditional like his shield, a simple “Barry of six ermine and gules” – six bars across a shield, alternately of plain red and of ermine fur. Perhaps these days fake ermine is available for Meghan, who is known to be an animal-lover. To represent her Californian origins, the Duchess might also consider a sequoia tree, the state emblem. Her former lifestyle blog, The Tig, was named after the red wine Tignanello, and I think two or three glasses would look good on any shield.
Pretty well anyone can be granted arms. It used to be that the petitioner had to be a Gent or Lady. Shakespeare had a big row in 1602 because he had been granted arms – and an actor was said not to be a Gent. Luckily his father had been a Bailiff of Stratford. Today, you seemingly only have to be able to count up to 6,075 to be eligible.
Past grants have erred on the complicated. Lady Thatcher’s arms, designed by Sir Colin Cole, featured an admiral and Sir Isaac Newton, drawn with binoculars and scales respectively – a nod to the Falklands war and her scientific education. Fussy.
The Duchess of Cambridge was fortunate in the shield granted her father in 2011, with three acorns (to represent his children), oak leaves (for West Berkshire, where they were raised) and a golden chevron (Carole’s maiden name having been Goldsmith). Classical. I hope for nothing less elegant for the new Duchess.