Gifts to The College of Arms from the White Lion Society
The Members of the White Lion Society raise funds to provide gifts to The College of Arms. Usually these items are identified by the College as having connections with historical or contemporary heraldry that the College might not otherwise be able to acquire.
The first gift was of Memorial Boards that are installed in the Heralds' Church of St Benet, Paul's Wharf - a magnificent Wren church just opposite the entrance to the College, where the Society's AGM takes place.
St Benet's has been the church of the College of Arms since 1555, and many officers of the College are buried there.
The boards record Officers of Arms and Members of the College Staff who have died since March 1984.
The second gift was the letters patent of the grant of arms to Richard Garth of Morden, Surrey, made on the 8th July 1564 by William Hervey, Clarenceux King of Arms (1557-1567). The gift included cleaning and framing the grant. It now hangs in the College in a room known as the Public Office.
An English oak settle, circa 1825, was the third gift. This had originally been lent to the College by Rodney Dennys Esq., Arundel Herald Extraordinary, and then it was decided to purchase the settle for visitors to use when waiting by the entrance in the Earl Marshal's Court.
Other gifts presented to the College of Arms by the White Lion Society include:
1989 - Framed Badge Grants of the White Lion and Blue Dove.
1991 - Glasses engraved with the coat of arms of the College.
1993 - Settle refurbishment
1994/95 - Engraved glasses
1996 - Books from the libraries of Sir Anthony Wagner (Garter King of Arms) and George Squibb (Norfolk Herald Extraordinary)
1996 - Commonwealth Grant of 1649
1998/99 - Memorial Boards for St Benet's Church
2000 onwards - Photographs of old grant patents held by the British Library, Public Record Office, National Trust and other Record Offices in this country and overseas - an ongoing project at the College with funding help from the Society.
2002 - Sponsorship for the College exhibition "Crowns and Crests,"
2002 - Loyal address to HM the Queen on the occasion of her Golden Jubilee
2003 - The Society presented the College of Arms with a top of the range professional digital camera (a Sigma SD9 single lens reflex camera) and accessories. This will enable College staff to photograph, in house, grants and other documents for the purposes of study or reproduction on the website. This camera is capable of meeting all of the College's present needs and will take future requirements in its stride too.
2004 - In support of a project from The College of Arms to publish an Armorial of the Kingdom of Haiti, the Society covered the cost of a flyer to attract subscribers to this very popular work.
2005 - Digital Scanner
Within the College there is more and
more demand for digitisation of a wide range of archival and contemporary
material and requests from publishers are more and more for digital images, For
2005 The Society identified that
The College needed a sophisticated computer scanner for making digital copies of
the artwork produced within the College including copying pages from the
grant books and the grants themselves.
2006 Photographs of Old Grant Patents
Further support was given
to the
2007 The Society has continued to support the project to photograph old grants and the total sum given is now in excess of £10,000
The photographs were on display at the College at the Society's Annual Reception in January 2007 and a detailed lsit of the grants photographed to date can be obtained from The Society on application to The Secretary.
2nd May 2007 say the publication of The Armorial of Haiti, written by Dr Clive Cheesman. The Society had covered the cost of printing a pre-publication leaflet in 2004 and supported the cost of the publication celebration.
The book is published by The College of Arms at a price of £45 (ISBN 978-09506980-2-1). Copies may be purchased from Heraldry Today (www.heraldrytoday.co.uk) or direct from the College. For information email haitiarmorial@college-of-arms.gov.uk or write to The Haiti Armorial at The College of Arms, Queen Victoria Street, London, EC4V 4BT
2007/2008 The Society continued to fund the photographing of old grants and these pictures show the grants that were on display at the AGM in January 2008.
2007/2008 Collection of 17th Century Pedigrees with Manuscript Armory (Three Volumes)
The Society has acquired for the College an unusual compilation of over 3,000 pedigrees of the early 17th century with a manuscript Armory. The collection, in three volumes, cover surnames beginning with the letters A-C, L-R, and T-Z. Those containing D-K and the section of the final volume that contained S went missing prior to 1781.
The principal unknown compiler of the volumes was at work in the early 17th century, presumably before the death of James I in 1625. Since then there have been many successive annotators and these comments and notes have been preserved.
The volumes came into the possession of the Rt Hon William Burton Conyngham, Irish politician and "profound scholar and antiquary". William Conyngham was a nephew of the 1st Earl Conyngham and uncle of the 1st Marquess. In 1781, he presented the collection to Sir Isaac Heard (Clarenceux, later Garter. More details can be found in the Society Newsletter (January 2008).
In early 2008 it was agreed that The Society will provide funds for the College library to purchase various volumes of Siebmacher's Wappenbuch (their collection of foreign heraldry books is not vast) and has further money for the on-going photographic collection of old grants. Together the gifts to the College amount to £3400.