Trump’s arms had previous owner
Emblem branding golf clubs was granted by British to a U.S. diplomat in 1939
LONDON— At the Trump National Golf Club outside Washington, which hosted the Senior PGA Championship last weekend, the president’s coat of arms is everywhere — the sign out front, the pro shop, even the exercise room.
The regal emblem, used at U.S. President Donald Trump’s golf courses across the United States, sports three lions and two chevrons on a shield, below a gloved hand gripping an arrow.
A different coat of arms flies over Trump’s two golf resorts in Scotland. The lions have been replaced by a two-headed eagle, an image the company has said represents the “dual nature and nationality” of Trump’s Scottish and German roots.
But this emblem was not just about honouring his heritage.
The British are known to take matters of heraldry seriously, and Trump’s American coat of arms belongs to another family. It was granted by British authorities in 1939 to Joseph Edward Davies, the third husband of Marjorie Merriweather Post, the socialite who built the Mara-Lago resort in Florida that is now Trump’s cherished getaway.
In the U.S., the Trump Organization took Davies’ coat of arms for its own, making one small adjustment — replacing the word “Integritas,” Latin for integrity, with “Trump.”
Joseph Tydings, a Democrat and former U.S. senator from Maryland who is the grandson of Davies, learned that Trump was using the emblem, at least at Mar-a-Lago, when he visited the property. Trump had never asked permission.
“There are members of the family who wanted to sue him,” said Tydings, a lawyer who wears his family’s coat of arms on a ring. “This is the first I’ve ever heard about it being used anywhere else.”
Trump tried to bring the American version to Scotland a decade ago. He used the emblem on promotional materials when he started marketing a new golf course development in Aberdeenshire, on Scotland’s east coast. But the materials ran afoul of coat-of-arms authorities in Scotland and he was forced to change the design.
The College of Arms, which oversees coats of arms in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, said that the emblem originally submitted in 2007 by Trump to Britain’s trademark office matched one that had been granted to Davies, an American of Welsh descent who once served as ambassador to the Soviet Union.
“It couldn’t be a clearer-cut case, actually,” said Clive Cheesman, one of the college’s heralds, who oversee coats of arms, their design and their use.
“A coat of arms that was originally granted to Joseph Edward Davies in 1939 by the English heraldic authority ended up being used 10 or 15 years ago by the Trump Organization as part of its branding for its golf clubs,” said Cheesman, a lawyer by training. “This got them into difficulty.”
The White House referred ques- tions to the Trump Organization, which did not respond to requests for comment.
The organization has trademarked the Davies coat of arms in the United States, which has far less attachment to such symbols. It is used on the company’s website and is a prominent branding detail of Trump’s many U.S. golf courses and resorts — emblazoned on everything from golf balls, shirts and bottles of body lotion. When the Trump Organization created a Civil War memorial at the golf course near Washington commemorating a battle and a “river of blood” that never occurred, a plaque marking the fictitious event was embossed with the coat of arms.
Tydings, who still practices law, said that several years ago he talked some of his cousins out of suing Trump, because he knew it would prove to be an endless and costly exercise.
“I know Trump very well,” he added. Tydings was a senior partner at Finley, Kumble, a giant law firm in its day that represented Trump and other owners of the fledgling U.S. Football League in an unsuccessful suit against the NFL.
“I knew him and the way he operates,” Tydings said. “And the way he operates, you don’t sue Trump, because you’ll be in court for years and years and years.”