A Right to Bear Arms

Welcome to Red Herrings!

This week, Chris discusses the revival of an ancient court and how the modern judiciary dealt with a medieval case. 

Hosted by: Brittany Warren & Joccoaa Gray

Sound Engineer & Co-host: Christopher Brown

Edited by: Joccoaa Gray

If you would like to get in touch, please contact us at redherringspod@gmail.com.

Sources:

1. Judgement of Manchester Corp v Manchester Palace of Varieties Ltd
2. The High Court of Chivalry: A Study of the Civil Law in England by G. D. Squibb
3. College of Arms
4. Newspaper.com
5. The Heraldry Society

Transcript

SPEAKER_05 0:01

Welcome to Red Herrings. I'm Jacoa, Master's student in law and human rights, host of True Crime Club Newcastle, and creator of True Crime Forum Newcastle.

SPEAKER_01 0:12

Hi, I'm Brittany. I have two degrees in history and 15 years experience in genealogy. We're the red herrings.

SPEAKER_00 0:20

Well, well, well. What do we have here? Two red herrings and the catch of the day. Don't forget about me.

SPEAKER_07 0:26

Hi, Chris! We're the red herrings.

SPEAKER_05 0:29

And Chris. Hello, hello. It is us three again. Except there is no Britney. Who's the third down?

SPEAKER_00 0:41

This is my very good friend Nuha.

SPEAKER_05 0:44

Very, very good friend. I was gonna make a joke, you know, that um we got Chris's other wife from the other port in while Britney was out, and Nuha was like, Don't do that.

SPEAKER_00 0:54

Oh my god, she'd murder me.

SPEAKER_06 0:55

From the African born.

SPEAKER_05 0:59

Very interesting. Our um, what did I say? Our exotic friend friend. Not that exotic, but alright. Quite exotic, really. For the British. Yeah. This week we have Chris giving a case.

SPEAKER_00 1:12

I'm so excited.

SPEAKER_05 1:13

This is your first ever case that you've given us.

SPEAKER_00 1:17

I know. Well, usually it's hard to get the women to shut up, so if I was your woman from another porch, you'll be divorced.

SPEAKER_05 1:29

So I'm very excited.

SPEAKER_00 1:31

Honoured to be invited to give a a case on this Illustratus podcast.

SPEAKER_05 1:35

So excited about this for weeks.

SPEAKER_00 1:37

Oh god, no pressure.

SPEAKER_05 1:40

Don't worry. Are you ready?

SPEAKER_00 1:42

I'm ready. So what do you know about the right to bear arms?

SPEAKER_06 1:49

Oh. Nothing.

SPEAKER_00 1:52

Okay.

SPEAKER_06 1:52

In England.

SPEAKER_04 1:53

In England.

SPEAKER_06 1:54

No, in Morocco.

SPEAKER_04 1:56

I think it's okay, no problem.

SPEAKER_00 1:59

I didn't see anything. Okay, so we're not actually talking about guns. We're not even talking about swords.

SPEAKER_05 2:06

We're talking about bear arms.

SPEAKER_00 2:08

Yes, bear arms. The arms of bears.

SPEAKER_05 2:10

Oh, I mean what?

SPEAKER_00 2:12

No, no, not the arms of bear arms.

SPEAKER_05 2:13

Unclothed. No.

SPEAKER_00 2:16

So in England, in the Middle Ages, the right to bear arms relates to something altogether different. It's the right to bear a coat of arms.

SPEAKER_04 2:24

Oh. The one you like the one you made for your Yes.

SPEAKER_00 2:27

Exactly.

SPEAKER_04 2:29

Like the little shield. Like a little shield, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:32

So I've tried to find a case that sort of overlaps with like everything we like in this podcast, which is lore, history, maybe, and genealogy. Ooh. So yeah. Here we go. What do we know about cuts of arms? Anything? Nothing.

SPEAKER_04 2:47

I think a shield. Yes. I think they're very cool. Okay. They have them in like some very weird places. Like we know when you go to an old market and they're like on top of like the close to the ceiling. It's just very interesting to look at. I don't remember any anyone of any county or any place.

SPEAKER_05 3:06

You have to have them in a courtroom.

SPEAKER_00 3:09

Yes. Do you? Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 3:10

Otherwise it's not a courtroom. Otherwise, it's not official.

SPEAKER_00 3:14

Oh right. Are we talking about like the royal coat of arms above the judge? Yes. Yes.

SPEAKER_05 3:18

Oh, I didn't know they had one. What what is that you asked me what I know about courts of arms?

SPEAKER_00 3:24

That's what I know about courts of arms. Oh no, that's that's good. I like it. Okay. I like I love it. Right, amazing. So we're So for centuries people have wanted a way to identify themselves by a sign or device. This could be for as practical a reason as sealing documents or just a way to depict graphical representations of the owner's family. So these symbols became useful as a practical solution to a battlefield problem. Knights encased in armour were indistinguishable from one another, and brightly coloured shields allowed them to be recognized. Wow. The patterns from the shields were also displayed on the knights' surcoats. So that's like a little well like a jacket they'd wear over their armour. And that's it's suggested is why we call them coats of arms. Because they'd have a little a little coat on with their with their little, you know, symbols on.

SPEAKER_04 4:13

Makes perfect sense. Always wondered why it's like why is it a coat of arms?

SPEAKER_00 4:18

If you open your supplementary material.

SPEAKER_05 4:20

Oh, okay. So what we're seeing is lots and lots of men on a battlefield, they're all dead, they were indistinguishable.

SPEAKER_00 4:27

How do you know who's your ally, who's your enemy, how do you know who's who? How do you know who's important, who's just like a pleb?

SPEAKER_04 4:33

Right. When was this? When did they come up with this?

SPEAKER_00 4:35

Um it was around it it's not entirely sure, but it's around the 12th century. So we're talking like after that William the Conqueror comes over, but not when he came over. So it's a little bit later than that.

SPEAKER_05 4:47

And are we so are we saying this is about when they're dead, we're telling their families?

SPEAKER_00 4:52

Um not so much when they're dead. We're talking about if you've captured someone, or if you're and you want to get a ransom, maybe you want to know, oh, that's Sir, what's his name? Or you see someone in the distance, you see their banner. Who's that banner represent? Oh, it's this guy, he's our friend. Fine.

SPEAKER_05 5:09

But then wouldn't you think that right? Well, then I have to wear a plebs coat of arms so that no one knows how the Yeah, I mean that's where chivalry and like being honourable and all that comes in. Right, okay, I'm turning to my supplementary.

SPEAKER_00 5:21

Supplementary material. Do you see picture one?

SPEAKER_05 5:23

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 5:24

So that's a guy. I've forgotten what I put in the supplementary material, but I think that's a man in a brightly current Yes, exactly. So that's an example of this sircoat we were talking about. So you can see he's got little little jacket on with his coats of coat of arms on, and that is these people here in their colourful uniforms are what's called heralds, and they're a current office under the crown, and we will come back to them later.

SPEAKER_05 5:47

So a reason why they're all men. Well are women not allowed? No, there is one woman.

SPEAKER_00 5:52

There is one woman. I knew you'd ask this, so I made sure there is one woman. There's no uh black people though, funnily enough.

SPEAKER_04 5:58

Oh, how surprising. Yeah, because black people are not British.

SPEAKER_00 6:02

Oh, there you go.

SPEAKER_04 6:04

You're gonna cut that, right?

SPEAKER_00 6:06

Yeah, they are all all old and white. So Yeah, they are, aren't they? Perfect for my case. So yeah, what would you have on your coat of arms?

SPEAKER_05 6:14

Or do you get to pick?

SPEAKER_00 6:16

So you do get you kind of get to pick when you when you we'll come back to this, but when you get your coat of arms, you kind of aren't allowed to design it yourself, but you are uh kind of allowed to sort of guide the person designing it for you in certain directions. So you can pretty much pick.

SPEAKER_05 6:33

What's on yours?

SPEAKER_00 6:35

Well, I again kind of kind of nicked mine, but mine's got like a thistle in the middle, and it's um it's well, I I like it. I can't I can't say it means a whole mu a whole lot to me personally because I j I didn't come up with it. We just did some genealogy research and figured out that it belonged to one of my ancestors, kind of questionably, and kind of nicked it from them.

SPEAKER_05 6:57

Okay, so I would have to pick a hare. Oh yeah. Because they're my favourite animal. Oh and because there's folklore that witches ride on the backs of hairs, and I'm a gay feminist woman, and I think I would have been Are you gay? I think it was another podcast.

SPEAKER_00 7:19

And I think I would have-uh, shut up about it.

SPEAKER_05 7:23

Yeah. I think I would have been burnt at the stick.

SPEAKER_00 7:27

Ooh, okay. So maybe like a pyre, like a big bonfire on top, maybe?

SPEAKER_05 7:32

Well, I would no, I was still just talking about the witch on the hair. So I would have a hair, and then the it's the idea you have two things.

SPEAKER_00 7:38

Well, you can have as many as you like, really.

SPEAKER_05 7:40

I mean So maybe okay.

SPEAKER_00 7:41

See, this is the issue because all the like simple designs have been taken already. You can't use someone else's, so you kind of have to get a bit inventive sometimes.

SPEAKER_04 7:48

Are there like a repertoire of symbols? Because they kind of look like each other, or can you just put whatever you want?

SPEAKER_00 7:54

So there's a lot of like things that get reused, like um you have like chevrons, um, you have lions, yeah, lions are big. Um but you can pretty much choose whatever you want.

SPEAKER_04 8:04

So I think I'm gonna put a door in the middle. Like uh you know those Moroccan doors, yeah, like you know, the architectural carved ones. Because that's like a symbol of Morocco.

SPEAKER_00 8:14

No, I have never I've never needed a picture of this. Um what the hell did you do? I'm ill-educated. I've no idea what you're doing about. I didn't know they had doors in Morocco, but it was just like all of yeah.

SPEAKER_04 8:27

That's the symbol of Morocco before. It'll be like this.

SPEAKER_00 8:31

Oh, okay. That's that's really cool actually. I think that would that would be pretty good.

SPEAKER_04 8:34

Yeah, so and they changed uh geographically and so on. But like I'll just make I'll just put a jar a coin in the middle. Then I think I'll have a patch of blue to symbolize, you know, the beach, the water. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 8:48

That sounds pretty good to me. If you could pick your own coat of arms, but unlike some other jurisdictions in England you can't just pick your own coat of arms.

SPEAKER_05 8:55

I just want to say that I decided it would be a hair on the bottom and then roll in hills on the top, sorry. Oh, cool.

SPEAKER_00 9:00

Oh, I like that. That's pretty cool. Yeah, nice.

SPEAKER_05 9:04

Well don't be racist here. We need to make these online. Okay, anyway, so yes.

SPEAKER_00 9:10

So they need to either be inherited from ancestor or to be directly granted by the crown.

SPEAKER_05 9:16

Like why what do you have to do to get it directly granted by the crown? Well suck his cock or something.

SPEAKER_00 9:21

Honestly, nowadays it's more like pay some money. But back in the day you had to sort of be a noble person, you had to do some worthy deed, you had to be, you know, a good guy, or, you know, suck his cock.

SPEAKER_05 9:34

I'm so sorry, but this is all made up. If you want your fucking coat of arms, make your own coat of arms and just put it on your house, put it on your coat, put it on it on the back of your car. Oh.

SPEAKER_00 9:46

Perhaps we'll get into what would happen theoretically if you did that.

SPEAKER_09 9:52

Right.

SPEAKER_00 9:52

In practice, rather than coming from the crown, because you let's be honest, the king's got better things to do probably at the moment than um grant people coats of arms. So it this duty is now exercised through the College of Arms in London. This consists it's a college of people. It consists of three Kings of Arms, six heralds, and four persuans. Nice names, right? Well persuavants. It's basically a fancy name for a guy.

unknown 10:22

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 10:23

So that the picture in your supplementary material it uh is some of those heralds. So they get fancy tabards, they get cool staff sometimes, and they're in charge of the College of Arms. And they've got fun names such as Garter King of Arms, Rouge Dragon Persuavent, Blue Mantle Persueant, and Portcullis Persuavent. I know, ridiculous.

SPEAKER_05 10:46

It's just rich boys' club. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 10:49

Well, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 10:50

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 10:51

So these are directly appointed by the monarch, and they're trained genealogists.

SPEAKER_05 10:55

So that's trained genealogists. Yes. Interesting. Yes. They're all men.

SPEAKER_00 10:59

They are all well apart from the one woman. There's some vacant posts maybe you could apply.

SPEAKER_05 11:03

Brittany could. I just don't for some reason trust a male genealogist.

SPEAKER_00 11:07

Fair enough. Maybe we'll write to them and get them to comment on that.

SPEAKER_05 11:11

Yeah? Yeah. Please write us at uh red herringspod at gmail.com. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:16

These guys are responsible for granting new coats of arms, recording pedigrees, so that means basic I know. So this is if there's in the House of Lords, you know there's hereditary peerages, or at least they used to be. They would be in charge of sort of deciding who the title was inherited by, which is quite important really, because they were making our laws. You need to make sure you've got the right person. Yeah. They're in charge of recording pedigrees and maintaining the official registers of all these coats of arms. So they've got public duties and they're paid for by the taxpayer.

SPEAKER_05 11:46

Of course they are.

SPEAKER_00 11:47

Would you like to guess their salaries?

SPEAKER_05 11:50

Hit me. I'm gonna get so cross. Is it like it's right, I'm looking at the high. Is it like 250k?

SPEAKER_00 11:58

It's slightly less than 250k. Slightly less.

SPEAKER_05 12:00

220.

SPEAKER_00 12:02

Here's a hint. The salary was set in 1672.

SPEAKER_05 12:05

And like adjusted for inflation, it's the same, or what do you mean?

SPEAKER_00 12:08

No, it's not been adjusted for inflation.

SPEAKER_05 12:10

It was like that Okay. Like one pound.

SPEAKER_00 12:12

No, well it's 49 pounds a year they get. Oh. That's the the head guy gets £49 a year.

SPEAKER_05 12:18

Right, so n I see, I see. So now is it just a symbolic thing?

SPEAKER_00 12:21

Yeah, it's pretty much a symbolic thing. Oh so they don't ri Well, officially from the public funds, they get fuck all, basically. The heralds get like £17.80. The the lowest rank, the persuavants, get £13.95 a year.

SPEAKER_05 12:35

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 12:36

Um but other than that, they also have access to the records of the College of Arms, which it they guard quite fiercely. Like public can't really have access to them unless you pay them a lot of money. I know, right? Public information. I get so annoyed about this because I want to research that stuff, you know? Anyway, don't get me started on that.

SPEAKER_05 12:53

Well, yeah, gatekeeping. Oh no, not for your pesky little peasant eyes.

SPEAKER_00 12:58

Yeah, pretty much. So they undertake private genealogical research for clients to subsidise their paychecks, and the vast majority of their funding comes from this work and the fees collected from people petitioning them for grants of coats of arms. Right. So I think at the moment it's about £9,000 to get be granted a coat of arms, that's what they charge. It's a lot of money for what is essentially a little piece of paper. For too much they make your own house. You literally could just make your own. Well, can you though? Can you though? Okay. So imagine you've just been granted your coat of arms, you're very happy with it, you paid a lot of money for it, you just finish painting your new shield, and you see your neighbour has painted your coat of arms on his house.

SPEAKER_05 13:37

Oh no.

SPEAKER_00 13:39

What do you do?

SPEAKER_05 13:39

Uh literally go over and knife him.

SPEAKER_00 13:41

So perhaps not.

SPEAKER_05 13:43

Oh.

SPEAKER_00 13:44

Legally, what do you do?

SPEAKER_05 13:46

Okay. I'm not in the 1200s.

SPEAKER_00 13:48

No, you're not in the 1200s. Well, you could be in the 1200s, but that's not a very noble thing to do for someone that's just been granted a coat of arms because they're so noble.

SPEAKER_05 13:56

What do I I go over and I splash black paint all over his house. Well, that's common assault.

SPEAKER_00 14:10

Oh god. You should always listen to every single podcast, otherwise you won't get the jokes.

SPEAKER_05 14:14

You're very quick, Nuha. So proud of you. You're very cute.

SPEAKER_00 14:20

Oh Jesus. Oh god. We need a homosexual alarm.

SPEAKER_06 14:30

What would that sound like? Ring a link.

SPEAKER_00 14:35

How do you know what my text alert sounds like?

SPEAKER_09 14:44

Sorry.

SPEAKER_00 14:45

Okay, so in the earliest days, disputes of this nature fell under the authority of the High Constable of England. So the office of High Constable was one of the great offices of state dating back to ten sixty-six and the Norman Conquest. The duties attached to the office were Chief Command of the Army, jurisdiction over all military offences, so like court martials. They regulated all matters of chivalry, such as tournaments and coats of arms, and they were also the supreme judge in the court of chivalry, in which he sat in conjunction with the Lord Marshal. So what's the Lord Marshal? The office of Lord Marshall existed in most of Europe and it involved managing horses, very important in the Middle Ages, and protecting the monarch. So it was like the king's bodyguard, basically.

SPEAKER_04 15:29

Right. Very important.

SPEAKER_00 15:30

Very important. In England, these duties evolved to include the organization of state ceremonies, control over heralds, so those are the people in the College of Arms, and the supervision of matters relating to arms and pedigrees. So do you remember the crown? Did you watch the crown?

SPEAKER_04 15:48

No. I watched the crown.

SPEAKER_00 15:50

Okay. Do you remember the bit where it's they're organising the Queen's coronation?

SPEAKER_04 15:56

Probably not.

SPEAKER_00 15:56

Right. Okay. So if listeners remember the bit in the crown where they're organising the Queen's coronation and Prince Philip tries to take over, and he wants it televised, all that sort of thing. And one of the lords gets really upset because it's always been the Lord Marshall's duty and privilege to arrange the coronation. Down through history, that lord has always been, and his family, his ancestors have always organised the coronations. That's their job. So that was being taken away, and that's why he got upset.

SPEAKER_04 16:25

Right. I do remember that. And question, does it do they still do it up to now?

SPEAKER_00 16:29

Yeah, they still do it. They're still a Lord Marshall. They're called an Earl Marshall now. But yeah, they're still in charge. They organised the most recent coronation.

SPEAKER_02 16:38

Interesting.

SPEAKER_00 16:38

So in the twelfth century, these great offices became hereditary. The Lord Marshal became known as Earl Marshall after it was granted to the Earls of Norfolk, and even after the Earldom was upgraded to a dukedom, we still refer to the office as the Earl Marshall. To this day, the Duke of Norfolk still holds the office as the most senior non royal peer in England. So if you've got a parade of dukes, I don't know when how often that takes place, but he's always the most senior one. He's in charge, he's in front, he's telling everyone what to do. So he remains responsible for state ceremonial ceremonial occasions, coronations, funerals, and the state opening of parliament. And he retains authority over this College of Arms. So you've got these two people, the Lord Marshall, Earl Marshall, and the High Constable of England, and they are in charge of all chivalry-related matters.

SPEAKER_05 17:27

Right.

SPEAKER_00 17:28

Do we understand what that means? No. People So it's if there's a tournament, there's some sort of dispute about who won this tournament, you'd go before this the What kind of tournament? Like a joust. I don't know. Oh my god. Or like I know, we're right back in the Middle Ages. No. Okay, when we're talking about it. We're talking about the origins of the office. I'm with you. Okay. And it say if there was a they did a lot of like ransoms of noblemen. They would decide what a an acceptable ransom was, they'd make sure that the ransom was paid, they'd make sure that soldiers were paid their wages, things like that.

SPEAKER_05 18:01

Alright, I'm with you.

SPEAKER_00 18:02

Okay. So it was like a military judge almost.

SPEAKER_05 18:06

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 18:06

So these two officers were given jurisdiction over the court of chivalry. And in 1389, so we're pretty far back, during the reign of Richard II, this court, already centuries old, was recognised and limited by statute as the court of the Lord High Constable and the Earl Marshall, having cognizance of contracts touching deeds of arms and of war out of the realm, and also of things that touch arms or war within the realm, which cannot be determined nor discussed by the common law with other usages and customs to the same. So I've got no idea what that means. But basically, they dealt with coats of arms. Right. So it could issue injunctions, for example, to stop people using a coat of arms. It could issue fines, it could force public apologies, it could order removal from the Commission of the Peace, which basically meant stripping a judge from being a judge. And it could even remove knighthoods.

SPEAKER_07 19:02

Oh.

SPEAKER_00 19:02

Yeah. So this was like a really significant thing. It only happened three times that we know about what removing knighthoods. Removing a knighthood, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 19:11

And why it happened?

SPEAKER_00 19:13

Great question. I don't know. But it must have been pretty bad. Yeah. But that just goes to show at what level the you know using someone else's coat of arms was taken really seriously. It was like the worst thing you could do.

SPEAKER_05 19:25

Right. So what knighthoods were removed for using someone else's coat of arms. Oh.

SPEAKER_00 19:30

Yeah, so that's why in your example you gave of someone putting up the wrong coat of arms to trick someone, that was like a big no-no. That was yeah.

SPEAKER_05 19:38

I see, because they had to enforce it properly because you couldn't be pro pret changing your identity basically. You couldn't be pretending to be someone else.

SPEAKER_00 19:46

Yeah. Right. So they really had to be bad.

SPEAKER_04 19:49

Okay. The old times are funny.

SPEAKER_00 19:51

Yeah. They are funny. But they had to think of something to do. They didn't have the internet, they didn't have porn, you know. Maybe cut that out. Never. In 1547, Henry Howard, the son of the then Earl Marshall, used the royal coat of arms of Edward the Confessor within his own coat of arms, and while technically he was allowed to do so because he was a descendant of Edward the Confessor, the king at the time, Henry VIII, used this as an excuse to arrest him and his father and charge them with treason.

SPEAKER_04 20:29

Typical Henry.

SPEAKER_00 20:30

Yeah. So the idea was because he put a king's coat of arms within his coat of arms, he was saying he had a claim to the throne. Oh. So he got executed for that. I was gonna say I thought. Yeah. Which to me seems crazy. You just put a coat of arms in your shoulder. It seems a lot crazy.

SPEAKER_03 20:47

Identity theft. Identity. Well, what does um what's that quote from the office?

SPEAKER_06 20:53

Identity theft is a it's a serious crime, Jim. No, it's identity theft isn't a joke, Jim. Yeah, a lot of people suffer from it, Jim. If you haven't seen the office, that'll go totally over your head.

SPEAKER_00 21:10

If you haven't seen the crown, my entire case will go over your head. So the son got executed. The father was scheduled to be executed, but on the day of his execution, Henry died.

SPEAKER_07 21:21

Oh, happy days!

SPEAKER_00 21:23

So the Privy Council took over from the king, was like, Yeah, we don't want to start off this new reign by executing someone. So instead they just imprisoned him for six years.

SPEAKER_04 21:32

Better, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:34

Goodbye. Well, yeah, I mean your son has just been killed, but yeah, I mean he probably was pretty relieved.

SPEAKER_05 21:38

Probably didn't like him anyway.

SPEAKER_00 21:40

Um, so that wasn't technically related to this court of chivalry, but it does go to show how seriously they took this stuff.

SPEAKER_05 21:45

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 21:46

Even though to us it just seems like people arguing about shields.

SPEAKER_05 21:49

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 21:50

So the court saw great activity until around the end of the Wars of the Roses in fourteen eighty five, and it fell into disuse until it was revived by James I in sixteen twenty. So we're going through the centuries here. In the meantime, in 1521, the High Constable was accused of listening to prophecies of the king's death and intending to kill the king. And he was tried, found guilty of treason, and executed. Yeah. There's a lot of executions.

SPEAKER_09 22:16

Brilliant.

SPEAKER_00 22:17

If in doubt, chop off the head. So his titles were stripped from him, including the position of High Constable. Wow. And since then there's not been another High Constable. It's only been recreated temporarily for coronations. So recently, when Charles was had his coronation, there would have been one made specifically for that.

SPEAKER_05 22:38

Ah, so it's not a permanent role.

SPEAKER_00 22:40

Yeah, exactly. So from this point onwards, 1521, it was solely the Earl Marshall that was taking on jurisdiction of this court. So from 1622 to 1640, the court enforced the law relating to heraldry and also dealt with cases where scandalous words provocative of a jewel had been spoken. And we would now call that slander. So they were dealing with like cases of slander, so where people have said something about someone that wasn't true or was defamatory. That was where that those cases got held in those times. After that, it was abolished by Parliament in 1640. So this is around about Oliver Cromwell Civil War sort of time. And it was seen as a bit unfashionable for the King to be granting coats of arms, and it was a bit weird. Um so they got rid of it in 1640 and replaced it in 1646 with a parliamentary heraldic tribunal. But that they only did that for a little bit. Got rid of it when the king came back in 1660. And in 1687, so a few decades later, James II formally reconstituted the court and ordered the Earl Marshall to hold a court of chivalry, as any constable or marshal had theretofore done.

SPEAKER_05 23:51

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 23:52

At that point there was a determined attempt to put a stop to the unlawful assumption of arms, so making up your own coats of arms without actually being granted them, the painting of false arms, and the marshalling at funeral pomp without the licence of a king at arms.

SPEAKER_05 24:06

What's that mean?

SPEAKER_00 24:07

It was basically holding a funeral without the permission of the heralds, because noblemen would like to put up all their banners and have lots of pageantry at their funeral. They wanted sort of like a flag over their coffin, that sort of thing. And this all had to be regulated by this College of Arms. And they would get very upset if you tried to circumvent their fees, because they charge a lot of money for this. Right. And and did a funeral on your own. So that was an offence. Um I know, crazy. Rich people. Yeah. Well, rich people in old. Commoners were just having funerals quietly and just getting on with it. They didn't need a banner and a coat of arms and shields in their coffin and literally getting on my life.

SPEAKER_04 24:46

Do they still have like um in all the oldie times graves? Um, do they still have ch shields? Like, can we see that? Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:55

If you go to like I don't know, cathedrals in London especially, there's well, even graves up here, a lot of graveyards here have coats of arms. Whether they were entitled to them. Oh. That's another question. But interesting. Certainly, I think the idea was the further you got from London and this College of Arms, the less likely people were going to put up with people from London coming along to them and saying you can't use this coat of arms that your family's used for decades and would just send them right back where they're. Yeah, exactly. I like that. So up here it's a bit more common to see great uh uh coats of arms on gravestones because it's yeah, they were more they were more a little bit more lax about things up there. From 1700, proceedings brought before the court dwindled with brief periods of revival until 1737 when the last case was brought. Until 1954.

SPEAKER_02 25:45

Ooh.

SPEAKER_00 25:46

Dun dun dun! Ooh. So 217 years later. Oh god.

SPEAKER_02 25:51

Whoa!

SPEAKER_00 25:52

No one had even heard of this court of chivalry, okay? So we're in Manchester.

SPEAKER_05 25:57

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 25:58

Manchester.

SPEAKER_05 25:58

Manchester.

SPEAKER_00 25:59

I don't know if that's a Manchester accent. We're gonna go with it.

SPEAKER_05 26:01

What would be a Manchester Mancunian accent? Was that?

SPEAKER_00 26:04

Manchester? No.

SPEAKER_05 26:06

Manchester.

SPEAKER_04 26:09

I'm really bad with accent, I can't.

SPEAKER_00 26:11

We're thinking, what's that guy from Manchester? Andy Burnham. Who?

unknown 26:15

Okay.

SPEAKER_05 26:16

Oh yeah, that MP.

SPEAKER_00 26:17

Yeah. Who's gone who wants to be PM? Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 26:21

Yeah, he's not the MP, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:22

So do we know what do we know about Manchester? What's the animal associated with Manchester? No.

SPEAKER_05 26:27

Do they have an animal?

SPEAKER_00 26:28

It had an animal, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 26:30

It's Newcastle the Magpie, right?

SPEAKER_00 26:31

Yeah, possibly.

SPEAKER_05 26:33

Is it like related to football or something like that?

SPEAKER_03 26:36

Oh, it's the bees. Yes, it's the bees.

SPEAKER_00 26:40

Let me see the supplementary material because I've forgotten what I put in there. Okay, sorry, we've skipped a few, but that big coat of arms with all the little different shields in, up a bit. The second picture, that was Edward the Confessor's arms, is the blue one with the cross on. That's what he got executed for.

SPEAKER_02 26:54

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_00 26:55

So if you scroll down a bit, that's the coat of chivalry there, that's what it looks like. And we're moving to this this coat of arms here with a red shield on and the little globe on top with bees on it.

SPEAKER_07 27:06

It's so cute.

SPEAKER_00 27:08

So they get bees on their coats of arms, is is the point I'm making. They got to choose what they want on their coat of arms. And yeah, on the top bit they've got some bees.

SPEAKER_05 27:17

They look like wasps on the globe. Well, I'm sorry, but their bums aren't fat enough, they look like wasps.

SPEAKER_00 27:24

Is that the difference between a bee and a wasp?

SPEAKER_05 27:26

Yeah, the bees are much chunkier.

SPEAKER_00 27:28

Bees are thick. Yes. They make honey.

SPEAKER_05 27:30

Yes, they look like wasps to me, sorry.

SPEAKER_00 27:33

Fair enough.

SPEAKER_05 27:33

Who designs these coats of arms?

SPEAKER_00 27:35

Well, it's honestly it's it's the people in the College of Arms. They're like a cross between graphic designers and um But they actually suck genealogists. You think really good. Technically, when you're granted a coat of arms, you're not actually granted the picture. You're granted like a description. I know. Oh crazy. So you just get some words describing the coats of arms, and it's up to the individual artist to to draw it.

SPEAKER_04 27:58

And that's Latin concilio elabore.

SPEAKER_05 28:02

Yes, that's the I mean are you really telling me there's people out there that design these coats of arms and are proud of them?

SPEAKER_00 28:07

Yes. And they get paid a hell of a lot of money to do that.

SPEAKER_05 28:09

I mean, I do like the symbolism behind it, like you know, like the the the crown, but it's like a bit of a wall. Terrible cartoon. It's almost like they're trolling.

SPEAKER_00 28:19

Which cartoon are you talking about? The thing on top?

SPEAKER_05 28:21

The Manchester one. The whole thing.

SPEAKER_06 28:23

I don't think that's really good.

SPEAKER_04 28:24

I think it's good.

SPEAKER_00 28:24

I don't, Chris.

SPEAKER_04 28:26

Um I mean the line is a bit creepy.

SPEAKER_00 28:28

There might be Mancunians watching or listening. Very offended.

SPEAKER_05 28:32

We do love it. Sorry. If you love it, we love it. Are you scared of Mancunians or something? Doesn't matter if they don't like us. What do people Google to go and see this, Chris? So they can see what I'm talking about.

SPEAKER_00 28:42

Google Manchester coat of arms.

SPEAKER_05 28:43

I'm sorry, but if you agree with me, can you write in to Red Hands for you?

SPEAKER_00 28:49

Um so the idea is you kind of put things in the coat of arms that are related to them. City, um, the the roses on the on the support on the like the lion and the uh it's another one. Apparently.

SPEAKER_05 29:02

That's what it's an antelope. Oh.

SPEAKER_00 29:06

One newspaper called it a sort of weird-looking goat. Yeah, with a dog face. It looks like a dog.

SPEAKER_02 29:12

Oh well, there you go. Looked familiar to me.

SPEAKER_00 29:15

So the red roses on that on their shoulders, apparently, um, from John Agunt, who was a guy that apparently had something to do with Manchester back in the day.

SPEAKER_05 29:24

And the knight helmet?

SPEAKER_00 29:26

Um, on top. Yes. Um, so this might be getting too tenuous a link, but depending on your rank in society, you get a different helmet on your on your shield. So that's for just like normal people. If you're a knight, the the helmet turns to face the viewer.

SPEAKER_02 29:42

Oh.

SPEAKER_00 29:42

If you're royal, it turns into a gold helmet. If you're like a a baron or a lord, you get a little crown.

SPEAKER_04 29:48

Typical classists.

SPEAKER_05 29:49

What about the world?

SPEAKER_00 29:50

The world, that's so that's on top of the helmet? Yeah. So that is what they call the crest, and that is you can either display the crest on its own, but that's meant to be a world covered in bees.

SPEAKER_05 30:00

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 30:01

I think the idea was Manchester was a port. They were sending things out across the world.

SPEAKER_05 30:05

Okay, love it.

SPEAKER_00 30:06

So yeah, they got this coat of arms. All well and good. They used this for the next hundred odd years, very happily.

SPEAKER_05 30:10

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 30:11

Until someone in the council noticed when they went to the Manchester Palace of Varieties, which was a music hall in the city, that above the stage curtain was a pelmet. Do we know what a pelmet is? Because I sure didn't.

SPEAKER_02 30:24

No.

SPEAKER_00 30:25

So apparently it's like a little bit of curtain on top of a curtain. So you've got the two curtains and you've got like a little frilly bit on top. Okay. Oh, okay. So that's a pelmet. Right. The number of times I've read the word pelmet this week. Sounds like a pelvic helmet to me.

SPEAKER_06 30:40

Penis helmet. Pelvic helmet.

SPEAKER_00 30:44

It's the tip of the penis.

SPEAKER_05 30:46

Bell end.

SPEAKER_00 30:50

So above the stage curtain, there was a pelmet displaying the city's coat of arms. Huh. And it turned out that not only was the coat of arms displayed on the above the stage, the theatre had also been using the design on its common seal for the last sixty years. Do we know what a common seal is? It's not a creature.

SPEAKER_05 31:09

That's not where I was going.

SPEAKER_00 31:12

This is 1954. So it's when you in incorporate a company, you need something to seal your documents with. Oh yeah. So it's just like a little stamp thing.

SPEAKER_05 31:22

Yes, that's exactly what I was thinking it was.

SPEAKER_00 31:24

So they'd use the coat of arms on their stamp.

SPEAKER_05 31:27

Okay. Naughty.

SPEAKER_00 31:28

Yes, naughty. Very naughty. So the town clerk wrote to the theatre in April 1954 requesting that they cease the display of these coat of arms. The theatre replied a week later stating that they did not admit the city's right to require them to cease the display, nor did they propose to do so.

SPEAKER_09 31:45

Huh.

SPEAKER_00 31:46

Badass. You might think. So the council had little little conflab and they decided to sue. But how do you bring a case in the Court of Chivalry? Well, no one really knew because they hadn't done it for 200 years. But it turns out it's not as simple as just writing to your lawyers, getting them to sue in the High Court. Of course not. You need to write a petition to the Earl Marshall. Literally is not that far off. So you need to write a petition to the Earl Marshall requesting that he sue. Or he allow the court case to be brought. So the petition sets out the alleged cause of action, describing the coat of arms alleged to have been infringed, as well as the manner in which the defendant has displayed it. So in this case, Jaco is going to read the beginning of the petition in her best barrister's voice.

SPEAKER_05 32:38

That's a barrister's voice, darling. To the most See, that's what I was going to do. To the most noble Bernard Mamaduke, Duke of Norfolk, Knight of the Most Noble Order of the Garter, Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order. This is going on a bit. The humble petition of the Lord Mayor, Alderman, and citizens of the city of Manchester Sheworth.

SPEAKER_00 33:19

Amazing. Fantastic. So after that point, that's the address. And then you've got to say what went wrong. Why do you want to bring this action? Blah blah blah blah blah. So it was fourfold. It was firstly that the Corporation of Manchester was entitled to this coat of arms. They needed to show that they were granted it legitimately, they had the right to bring this case. Secondly, they needed to show, or they wanted to show, that the theatre displayed the arms above the stage. Thirdly, that the theatre used the coat of arms on their common seal, and that the theatre had re refused to cease doing so. So it's not enough to just write that letter to the Earl Marshal. You also need to lodge a bond with the court. So would you like to guess how much the bond costs? So this is some money you have to pay so that the court can enforce its decision. The court can decide to fine whoever loses out of that money.

SPEAKER_05 34:11

£14,000.

SPEAKER_00 34:14

Honestly, that's pretty that's not bad. However, it hasn't, again, changed since the 17th century. So it's actually £100.

SPEAKER_05 34:22

Oh. How was my £14,000 worth of $100?

SPEAKER_00 34:25

Well, I mean, nowadays it's worth about £20,000. Oh, okay. So it's perfect. Okay. Yeah. So even at the time, 1954, it was about the worth of £2,000. So it was, you know, a decent amount chunk of change, but it wasn't quite the £20,000 that it was back in the day. So this was kind of a way to ensure that not everybody was suing everyone constantly. Okay. So once the Earl Marshal has granted permission to sue, a citation is granted by the court to be served on the defendant. And at this point the defendant must also enter their bond of £100. So the next step is to draft the libel. So this is roughly the equivalent of the particulars of claim that you might get in a civil case.

SPEAKER_05 35:06

Can I just ask a question? Did you say that the defendant has to pay £100 as well?

SPEAKER_00 35:11

Well, they it's not so much they're paying it, they're sort of putting it into the care of the court so that the court can then pay the whoever wins or loses out of that money. So So if you win, you get it back.

SPEAKER_05 35:23

If you're being brought to court to sue, would you just not pay the £100 so it never happens?

SPEAKER_00 35:29

That's a great question, actually. I don't know what happens if you just refuse to pay. Probably you get held in contempt of court.

SPEAKER_05 35:34

Right, yeah, maybe okay.

SPEAKER_00 35:35

Yeah, good question. Not sure.

SPEAKER_05 35:37

Because you'd be like, well, I know I'm gonna lose, so I'm just gonna keep £100 and not go. They must like ha they m it must be a way around it. If you don't pay it within twelve months, you've got a jail.

SPEAKER_00 35:47

So yeah, you've got this particular claim, and it's also addressed to the Earl Marshall. So these kind of take the place of sort of letters, again addressed to the most honourable Bernard Marmaduke, Duke of Norfolk, blah blah blah blah blah. It's exhibited in court on the arrival of the defendant. The defendant will then respond with an answer also addressed to the Earl Marshall. So this goes to show how procedural this whole s crap is, and it's so antiquated, and it's crazy that this is still in force in the UK. Or in England and Wales anyway. It must answer each of the paragraphs in the Libel. So the Libel had four paragraphs. We talked about it was that they were granted this coat of arms, they put it on the pelmet, they put it on their seal, and they refused to do so. You'd have to respond to each of the paragraphs and say, I agree with that, I don't agree with that.

SPEAKER_05 36:33

Right, so like guilty or not guilty.

SPEAKER_00 36:34

Basically, yeah. Okay. So the Manchester Corporation did this. They wrote to the Earl Marshal, they presented their petition to him in May, and this set the long, silent machinery of the court in motion. A citation was granted and served on the theatre in October. In their answer, the theatre admitted that they had displayed the arms in the manner alleged by the city. So that's paragraphs two and three sorted. They denied, however, that such display was contrary to the law, usages, or customs of arms, and argued that the city had no right to prevent them from doing so.

SPEAKER_05 37:03

I think by law they're wrong, aren't they? By the sounds of the thing.

SPEAKER_00 37:05

Well, it sounds like it, yeah. Right. I mean they do argue in court, but and we'll get to that. But so their argument was that they'd used these arms as the common seal for over sixty years without complaint, and the pelmit had been displayed for twenty years without complaint.

SPEAKER_05 37:18

Yeah, maybe by law they might have some sort of right as like No one.

SPEAKER_00 37:21

It's like copyright, right?

SPEAKER_05 37:23

But like if isn't it, isn't there something somewhere that's like if you use something for long enough, it's like basically yours?

SPEAKER_00 37:30

Yeah, I mean I know in trademark cases you've got to actively defend your trademark, otherwise you choosing not to defend it is considered you giving up your trademark, and then anyone can use it.

SPEAKER_05 37:40

Even like squatters, right?

SPEAKER_00 37:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 37:42

I'm like, if if no one had contested it for 60 years, then they could like something inside me is like, ooh, I would be arguing that that that's my free to use now.

SPEAKER_00 37:53

Yeah. Well, that was pretty much what they said. They said, look, we've been doing it for ages, no one's complained. Why are we wasting this time and money doing this? Firstly, the theatre denied that the court had jurisdiction. They were referring to the statutes from the reign of Richard II. Do you remember that? 1389? Yes. Which I mentioned earlier. They were sort of they took the statute that was written in French, because that was how laws were made back then. They were um they translated it, they were like, I don't think this really applies to what we're doing. And that was one of the arguments they made. Okay. In the alternative, they relied upon several precedents, which they argued showed firstly that private persons were not answerable to the court of chivalry for making their own arms, ordering funerals, or painting arms contrary to heraldry. And secondly, that the display of arms was not in itself an assertion that the arms were those of the person displaying them. Yeah. So they were arguing that just because we put this on our We're not saying it's arms, we're saying it's the city.

SPEAKER_05 38:47

I mean, we're proud of our city. The theatre of the city. Yeah. We have not written anywhere that these are our court of arms. We're proud of the city, and everybody knows everybody else knows of the city's arms, so we can put them here. Yeah.

unknown 38:58

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 38:58

I mean, that was their argument, yeah. Right. So what are what are we thinking?

SPEAKER_05 39:01

You're thinking I think they have a case. Okay. I think they have a strong case. Yeah, I'm with the theatre as well. Yeah. Actually, reviving like the use of the coat of arms. Are you going to tell me like half the theatre are still in prison today or something?

SPEAKER_00 39:19

Well, honestly. So this is the point where we might need to cut this entire section out because I might not know what I'm talking about, but I think I do.

SPEAKER_05 39:27

No, we'll get there. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 39:28

So at this point, sorry. Right. At this point, we're going to step away from this precise case and talk about civil law versus common law.

SPEAKER_06 39:35

Shit.

SPEAKER_00 39:36

I know. So we're not talking about civil law as opposed to criminal law. Right. That's a different concept.

SPEAKER_06 39:40

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 39:41

So, as far as I understand it, civil law is unlike common law in that it's based heavily on the Roman and Napoleonic systems, where there was far greater emphasis on codified principles and written laws. So it's generally more academic and doctrine-based as opposed to common law courts, which operate on an adversarial system. So that's where you're sort of you've got a prosecution and a and a defence, and they're sort of cross-examining witnesses in the courtroom, they're asking them loads of questions, they're trying to catch them out. It's adversarial.

SPEAKER_06 40:12

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 40:13

So procedure tends to be more inquisitorial in nature. You don't examine and cross-examine.

SPEAKER_05 40:18

In civil law.

SPEAKER_00 40:19

Yeah. Witnesses in court take evidence on commission, which is roughly. Have you seen like depositions in the United States? Yes. So it's where you examine the witnesses beforehand, you ask them a list of questions, you take that written evidence into court, and that's what you what is used in the case. There's no witnesses giving statements.

SPEAKER_02 40:38

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_00 40:39

You can still use precedent in court, as in common law, but it's always treated as less important than codified statute law. So you can still use precedence, because I was confused because I was I was thinking, well, you if if it's not common law, you can't use court precedence, but I'm reading this court case where they're using a lot of precedents, but you can still use them. It's just they take a second second place. You can use them to inform your decision, but you can't rely on them totally. And you can choose to just overrule them. Yeah. You can just say, Well, I think that was wrong. I'm going to do something different. Yeah. And that's fine. So there used to be some civil law courts in England and Wales. The main ones were ecclesiastical courts. So that's sort of religious courts. They dealt with marriage and divorce, legitimacy, wills and probate used to be under the ecclesiastical courts, and moral offences, so like adultery. Right. So that all went before these religious courts. Okay. There was also the High Court of Admiralty, which I think you dealt with in the Mary Celeste case. There was a court case about um the salvage and the piracy, who was going to get the salvage, who was getting the money for that. So that was a civil law court. And there were also university courts, which was just in Oxford and Cambridge, and it sort of had it had primary jurisdiction over um cases involving members of that university. So if I know some students got drunk and smashed up a pub, they'd go to the university court. Wow. I know.

SPEAKER_04 42:00

Quite posh.

SPEAKER_00 42:01

Yeah, quite posh. There was even the case. Yeah, rich people shit. They have their own fucking courts. They don't even come to the public court. Oh my gosh. They were also, um I did I this was also something I saw about the university courts. They were entitled to um indict prostitutes that students had used. Sex workers. Yep, exactly. Sorry. Sex workers. They even called them prostitutes back then. I think they were a little more I think they called them light women, I think was the euphemism they used. Oh and they could like arrest them, they could um and they put them in sort of halfway houses and to sort of be rehabilitated from their immoral ways.

SPEAKER_05 42:41

Who would do that?

SPEAKER_00 42:41

The university courts, if they slept with a student, that was that was their problem, apparently. Oh my god. They got stuck in this sort of like they got kidnapped. Well, basic well, I mean it was legal. Legal kidnap.

SPEAKER_05 42:53

I mean Yeah, legal kidnap then. Still kidnapped me. Oh my god. Yeah. Anything to just like oppress women, eh?

SPEAKER_00 43:01

I know the students got weren't involved. That was fine. But it was the fact that the prostitutes had corrupted the UN.

SPEAKER_04 43:09

So like it's okay.

SPEAKER_00 43:11

In the 19th century, so we're talking about 18 end of the eight uh eighteen hundreds. Okay. These courts were all reformed and brought under common law. Firstly, with the Matrimonial Causes Act, 1857, that got rid of the divorce and the and the marriage parts of the ecclesiastical courts, and the Court of Probate Act, which got rid of the um ecclesiastical courts' jurisdiction over wills, and later the Supreme Court of Adjudicature Act of the 1870s, and it consolidated all these courts under the High Court, with various divisions. You've got the Chancery Court, you've got the family law court, all parts of the High Court, and there was the Court of Appeal, which you got an appeal. So if you weren't happy with your result in the High Court, you appealed to the Court of Appeal.

SPEAKER_05 43:53

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 43:53

Okay. We there? We're still with me.

SPEAKER_05 43:55

I've got ya.

SPEAKER_00 43:56

Okay. So when they drafted these acts, they list out all lists. out all these civil law courts which were being subsumed into the High Court, but they missed one court.

SPEAKER_05 44:07

The Chivalry Court.

SPEAKER_00 44:09

The Chivalry Court, yeah. No one had used it in hundreds of years or like 150 years at that point. And they missed it out. And so the High Court of Chivalry is the last civil law court in England and Wales. And it still is. But why was it a civil law and court in the first place? So the kind of academic consensus is because the court would deal with foreign nobles a lot. They came from the Napoleonic system. Foreigners. Foreigners, yeah. They would deal with oh this foreigner was granted a coat of arms in the another in another country that was the same as one that had been granted in England. These people are using the same coat of arms, we can't have that. Let's decide about it in court. Usually it ended with them fighting a duel. So amazing. Yeah. Or one of them being executed anyway. So yeah they thought it would be fairer to run it under civil law or this is the theory of this academic anyway because foreigners were more used to civil law.

SPEAKER_02 45:09

Right. Interesting.

SPEAKER_00 45:11

Because common law at that point it was pretty much just England and Europe that used it.

SPEAKER_02 45:14

When you say foreigners are talking about the French.

SPEAKER_00 45:17

Yeah the French. That was one of the cases I read about the French sailed up and burnt down Edinburgh. This is a when Edinburgh sorry when Scotland and England went obviously before the ATS union. So the English and the French were burning down Scot uh burning down Edinburgh together and two people had the same coats of arms and that was a court case. I think that one they did fight a duel to sort it out.

SPEAKER_02 45:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 45:40

Amazing.

SPEAKER_00 45:40

Very point crazy. So they're in court in a civil law court and this immediately caused some issues mainly because at this point 80 years after they got rid of all the civil law courts no one had actually practiced in a civil law or court in living memory. So civil cases that those are in the high court right so you know you're suing your neighbour because I don't know he caused you he ran over your your favourite tree or something. That's a civil case.

SPEAKER_05 46:04

Right.

SPEAKER_00 46:04

But it's not under civil law it's under common law. Everything in England and Wales is common law even civil cases. I know they should have come up with a different name for it.

SPEAKER_05 46:13

It's a different thing.

SPEAKER_00 46:14

Yeah it's a totally different thing. I understand that there's criminal law and civil law. Those are under common law and then there's also a totally different legal system called civil law civil law that is no longer practiced in Europe. No longer practiced in England apart from this one court they missed. Ah interesting right yeah they really should come up with some better names.

SPEAKER_05 46:33

Yeah yeah it should have been named something else that's the it really should.

SPEAKER_00 46:36

I mean they probably didn't think it was relevant because again they tried to get rid of it.

SPEAKER_05 46:40

But Right yeah no that's really confusing.

SPEAKER_00 46:43

They could have called the old one the old civil law or something they could have okay so a lot of the different differences are procedural. So there'll be no examining of witnesses to make a case for example but it turned out it wasn't necessary in this case anyway because the theatre admitted they'd done it they admitted they'd put the seal on the on the pelmet. They'd admitted they'd used the seal on their common seal. And so they didn't actually need to examine any witnesses. But had they needed to they would have been examined beforehand and their statements presented to the court as writing. So the main difference obvious to the lay people watching the case was the dress of those involved. So they're not wearing normal court dress as we know it. They were the judge wasn't wearing a judge's robe the you know the officers of the court were dressed totally different. The Earl Marshall presided because he's the hereditary guy in charge of this court and if you turn to your supplementary material we can see a newspaper picture of him arriving to court. Unfortunately there's no picture Yeah that guy with the hat there's no pictures of them in court because you're not allowed to take photos in court but they packed them on the way to the on the walking down the street to the court.

SPEAKER_02 47:48

He looks very serious.

SPEAKER_00 47:49

Yeah so he's in full court dress it's called levee dress. It's a highly formal style of dress traditionally worn when being presented to the monarch it's just rich boys playing dress up. Yeah it's like Bridgetton vibes. But it's it's important it's part of the yeah whatever because see I'm not selling you on this I thought it was really cool. So the Earl Marshall appointed the Lord Chief Justice at the time Lord Goddard to preside over the court in his place. I think we've talked about Goddard before in another case okay he was actually interesting because he was the first Lord Chief Justice to actually be legally trained.

SPEAKER_05 48:27

Right.

SPEAKER_00 48:28

He had a doctor in law from Oxford and because this was a civil law court he wore his academic dress in court. So he wore a red Doctor of laws gown and he wore his bonnet a doctor's bonnet from Oxford which is like a little puffy hat. Probably looked pretty ridiculous. And a short bench wig that yeah on the next page you see Lord Goddard a picture of Lord Goddard. That's not the dress he was wearing but he looks pretty jolly doesn't he what is he this this guy? Yeah the fat guy.

SPEAKER_02 48:55

Ooh the wig is interesting.

SPEAKER_00 48:57

Yeah it's it's a style choice isn't it so he also had the heralds in court they were wearing their also levee dress they were wearing military uniforms if they were in the military or they were wearing their tabards if they weren't their little little fancy coats of arms coats. And the joint registers of the court um one was a herald but he wore his academic Oxford gown and hood and the other wore his livery gown of the Scrivener's company which is one of the you know in London they have you they have the companies of of trades certain trades you have like a gun makers company you have a scrivener's company which is like writing and maps and things you have like a um pottery company probably they all get robes as well because it's like the City of London how has these ancient robes and ancient companies and they all have fancy robes and they all get to dress up in them.

SPEAKER_04 49:44

Right. Very fun times like hobby clubs.

SPEAKER_00 49:49

Basically yeah it's like it's like Freemasonry or something. Yeah. LARPing LARPing exactly that's basically this entire court case. So both participants chose to be represented by barristers and no one really knew what to do at this point because they just chose to wear their normal gowns and wigs but this was also the first time barristers had appeared before any non-eclesiastical civil court because advocates in civil courts had always been members of this other organisation called Doctors Commons. So that's roughly the equivalent of like the barristers inns of court you know you know what I'm talking about. So you didn't have barristers in civil law courts you had these doctors' commons right and this their this inn, because that's basically what it was an inn of court it had been dissolved in 1858 so there were no Doctors Commons left to represent anyone so they were like can we be represented by barristers and sort of decided that it was for the best that they allowed them to. Interesting fact these Doctors' commons they were all appointed by the Bishop uh the Archbishop of Canterbury. No it just seems crazy to me that the you know these proper judicial officers were just appointed by some priest. It doesn't surprise me at all. I don't know as late as the Victorian times. I mean you can see why you got re they got rid of it because it was pretty weird but yeah. So the first thing the court had to do was decide whether it still existed because people were as you seem fairly sceptical as when this was still a thing. Okay. And if it was a thing is it sensible to still do it. Okay. And if it did exist whether it could impose judgment on someone. The court registrars read out letters patent from 1622 which was these are these sort of orders by the king letters patent. They authorised the Earl Marshall to revive the court we did mention that briefly when when they were bringing the court back from when it had fallen out of use and 1672 when the hereditary office of Earl Marshall was confirmed by Charles II to belong to the current Earl Marshall's ancestor and granted them permission to call the court of chivalry and adjudicate on heraldic matters. So they figured out that yeah the Earl Marshall is who he says he is he's got the authority to call this court then they needed to work out whether this court should still exist.

SPEAKER_05 51:59

Right.

SPEAKER_00 51:59

So the parties didn't actually seek to argue this but the Lord Chief Justice was like I don't know whether this is a thing. I think we should probably work out whether this is still a thing. So Manchester the Council for Manchester the city of Manchester they relied on various sort of legal authorities through the years that had sort of figured out this court still technically existed.

SPEAKER_05 52:18

I'm sorry Is well what Jobsworth did all of this?

SPEAKER_00 52:22

Well the thing is the funny thing is this the barrister appoint appointed by Manchester was a real heraldry nerd. He was really into this shit. Right. He's written hundreds of books well not hundreds but lots of books about coats of arms he's written lots of books about the court he was a big nerd I don't know where they found him but they got the best person they possibly could to represent him why why were they bothered by this? Well I think I think a lot of it was they thought it was cool. A lot of this wasn't actually taken seriously like they were just excited to bring back this court and it was kind of a friendly court case. It was described in newspapers as really friendly. The barristers were sort of joking around with each other this was not taken super seriously. Okay. They just thought it was really cool. Everyone got dressed up in their fancy gear they thought it was a good excuse to have a good time. I see yeah they weren't actually upset about this. Right good so they went through all these legal um documents legal precedents from like 16th century, 17th century. The newspapers described it as sort of like these poor people were running around the courtroom going to bookshelves that hadn't been touched for hundreds of years pulling out these precedents to pour through and yeah it just became a bit almost farcical.

SPEAKER_05 53:34

Right.

SPEAKER_00 53:34

Almost became a bit almost so a lot of the issue was a lot of these laws that they were quoting were in Norman French which the judges couldn't the judge couldn't understand. The barristers could barely understand they were all arguing about the translations but eventually they decided that well Lord Goddard concluded that whatever interval may have elapsed since its last sitting there is no way so far as I know of putting an end to it save by an Act of Parliament. So that was the end of it. Especially because it was a civil law court and they had to go by what the law said. So you can't get rid of it unless it's dissolved by an Act of Parliament. And because they missed it it still exists.

SPEAKER_06 54:13

Right.

SPEAKER_00 54:14

So they decided that they still existed that was step one out the way they need then needs to understand whether it had the power to enforce a judgment so they went back against these three options for enforcement they said firstly we could sue on the bond that had been placed this hundred pounds secondly the parties could be imprisoned by the Earl Marshall they then ran into an issue that the Earl Marshal no longer actually owned a prison. Of course he used to back in the day but now obviously you can't just own a prison. So that was a big issue. Well no well yeah and thirdly by contempt of court if you issue an injunction telling them to stop using this coat of arms and they don't then you they sort of agreed that it would be acceptable to be brought before the High Court and um yeah sued for contempt of court or at least held to account by the High Court. What a waste I know so the plaintiffs were only asking that defendants be be enjoined which is basically like we just want the court to say this is out of line, stop doing it. However, the barrister did want it put down in writing that technically the Earl Marshall could imprison someone. He said it is of some importance that the Earl Marshall's power to imprison does exist if there were no other way of dealing with a recalcitrant litigant. It was suggested that perhaps they could write to a prison governor and ask politely for them to imprison someone. Yeah. Oh man the transcript of this case I really want to get my hands on it because it sounds like the Lord Chief Justice was totally bemused as to why he was even here. He was just like is this really a thing? Are we really doing this? Oh my God and the barristers were really into it and they were they were having the time of their lives and the Chief Justice was like I'm not even sure I should be here this seems like I'm way out of line but yeah he was really reluctant to make any decision whatsoever because he really didn't want to put into common law that the L Marshal or like nobility in general can imprison people. Absolutely but technically apparently they can they decided that if the theatre went against their injunction they could possibly get imprisoned. That was a that was an option open to the court anyway so they had a big problem now because obviously the press were really interested in this because they you know it's a once in a lifetime well once in several centuries kind of thing and they had this tiny court in the College of Arms that was packed. So they then paraded down to the Royal courts of justice in all their finery and gowns and etc etc this big spectacle of people striding down the strand in all their get up followed by the press followed by you know just people walking down the street thinking what the hell's going on and it attracted a large number of spectators many of whom were very bemused by the interplay between the ancient uniforms and relatively modern setting so the judge Lord Goddard had to remind the audience that laughter is quite in order so long as there is not too much of it. Oh wow so you unusual well quite you so you're kind of getting the the vibe that he didn't really think this was serious. Yes. The spectators obviously didn't think this was this serious but the barristers were really into it.

SPEAKER_05 57:23

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 57:25

So at this point yeah at this point the counsel of the theatre put the case that the statutes of Richard II which we talked about before this was the 14th century one excluded the case from the jurisdiction of the court there are arguments about the precise meaning of certain words in the statutes which were written in Norman French and Lord Godard decided the statutes limit the power of the constable. They do not deal with the jurisdiction of the court but merely say that the court must not encroach upon the common law courts. So anything related to common law the court of chivalry can't touch. So that means for example slander. Right. Slander can be dealt with under common law so the court of chivalry is no longer where you can deal with that stuff. So he was saying that's what that's what the statutes for Richard II were saying. They weren't saying you can no longer enforce any judgments. The counsel for the theatre then cited a case in which the court decided that the absence of a high constable which was the guy who got executed 1521 meant that it could not try a case. He argued that since the abolition of the constable the practice of the court had been in excess of its jurisdiction and precedence provided by the cases it had decided since then ought not to be followed. Again Lord Goddard was like I'm not sure I want to totally having just decided that the court existed he didn't want to completely strike out all of its precedents set since 1521 he said are you asking this court to say that all decisions of the courts of chivalry are illegal? To which the council replied not all of them, only those in the last five hundred years so this is the point at which it kind of not descended into fast but like it was getting a bit silly. Yes um this is ridiculous I thought it was interesting because they were the barristers have pulled all this sort of legal precedent they'd done a hell of a lot of historical research to pull out all these ancient cases and the I just felt sorry for this judge in the middle that clearly had no idea what was going on, didn't care about coats of arms at all, thought it was all totally stupid and he was having to deal with them both. The Council of the Theatre's final submission was that the city's coat of arms had been used above the stage decoratively so this comes back to what Nuhar was agreeing with and it did not constitute bearing the arms in the heraldic sense of that word. They weren't saying that this was their own coat of arms it belonged to them and he said on the seal that the arms of Manchester in the centre were just an embellishment. It was just saying we're in Manchester, you know?

SPEAKER_08 59:46

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 59:46

He further argued that in medieval times it was not uncommon for men to seal with another seal and quoted examples. At this point Lord Goddard remarked Just because some people did it it does not follow it was a legal thing to do, does it? Okay, fine at the conclusion of the proceedings Lord Goddard held the court had jurisdiction and who do we think he found in favour of the council. Yeah he found in favour of the council and he retired to issue his judgment in a written form at a later date. The court adjourned with a crier asking the congregation to depart in in the peace of God and our beloved sovereign for the High Court of Chivalry doth now stand adjourned. In Goddard's judgment he was very clearly concerned that the court would end up being used to enforce medieval standards of heraldic custom without being updated to modern standards. He writes I would very respectfully suggest to the Earl Marshall that leave must be obtained he means from the court, rather than the Earl Marshal just deciding before any proceedings are instituted. It would, I think, prevent frivolous actions and if this court is to sit again it should be convened only where there is some really substantial reason for the exercise of its jurisdiction. Moreover should there be any indication of a considerable desire to institute proceedings now that this court has been revived, I am firmly of the opinion it should be put upon a statutory basis defining its jurisdiction and the sanctions it can impose. Which I think is fair enough really. He was he was worried that because of all the spectacle around this, all the press reports, people were going to start taking a hits. He was not convinced that the display of the coat of arms above the above the stage on the curtain was particularly egregious, but agreed that the use of arms of the city as the common seal of the defendant company was a legitimate subject of comp of complaint. A seal bearing armorial bearings authenticates a document as the act of the person entitled to those arms and in law it is the seal that gives a deed its form of validity. By adopting the city's arms as its own seal, the company appeared to be presenting itself as the city was entitled to prevent.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:51

Sorry I didn't know that seals were so deep.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:54

Yeah well I mean I think what he was saying was this is like a legal document which is still relevant. Common seals of companies that's that's that's still relevant you know you need to be able to and of individuals really you need to be able to be sure that a document comes from who it says it comes from. Yes.

SPEAKER_05 1:02:10

So I think what well what he was saying was if it was just on the curtain look I don't think we need to be then we can call it decorative but as it's sealing the letters and it's a formal document that is you are then yeah misrepresenting yourself.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:25

So he expressed doubts that modern court should intervene simply because arms are used decoratively. On houses and in other ornamental contexts, often without any continuing connection to the original family or institution. Such practices had been tolerated for generations without legal interference and he was the of the opinion that strict enforcement would be out of step with contemporary usage. In deciding where to draw the line Goddard held that because the company had not only displayed the arms but also used them as his official seal and advanced arguments justifying that use, the court concluded intervention was appropriate.

SPEAKER_05 1:03:13

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:14

Mm-hmm so interesting point for this court specifically because he laid out this written judgment this was the first time a judge had actually bothered to write out their reason judgment after a case. All the other records of this court the judge just decides and doesn't bother explaining why. So that again was why they ran into some difficulty when they were trying to litigate this case because there's no reason judgments to go off in terms of precedent. I see as one newspaper put it thus blandly is a court to be revived which once struck terror into the hearts of noblemen and common alike. How the world changes I know shocking.

SPEAKER_05 1:03:52

But that's it it hasn't come back since so was there an act of parliament that quashed this Nope nope it still exists and it's still the only civil law court and so what happened to the theatre?

SPEAKER_00 1:04:05

The theatre they were issued with the injunction they just took took it down I think they took it down Yeah they took it down got rid changed the seal and I think costs were set at like three hundred pounds or something.

SPEAKER_05 1:04:15

And so can you make your own court of arms and use it?

SPEAKER_00 1:04:20

Well I mean according to that judgment which again we're not under common law so it's not binding the law justice Wait I thought Oh because it's civil. Because it's civil it's sort of kind of it can guide you but it's not law. Mm-hmm. It's not on the same footing as statute law. So he was what he was saying at the end of that case was look we're not going to start suing people for using coats of arms. Okay. Um so you can you can really yeah yeah but technically you could you could if the courts so decided you could be sued for it. But realistically it's not going to happen.

SPEAKER_04 1:04:55

If you're just making your own who would sue you well quite yeah but if I steal yours for if you steal mine and start sealing your name under it can we go to that court yeah I think we should why don't we just do it and see what happens meetup and it doesn't cost that much yeah no a hundred quid hey I've spent more of a night out yeah get like two grams I think there was uh did you say two grams?

SPEAKER_00 1:05:21

No Christopher So there was one other other threatened use of this court that I found it was in a Weatherspoons. Barry Town Council in Wales threatened to petition the Earl Marshall in July 2019 they received a letter from the architects responsible for the installation of a carpet bearing the council's coat of arms at the Sir Samuel O'Romelly a weatherspoons in the town. The letter requested retrospective permission for the use of the council's coat of arms on a carpet which had already been laid. The permission was refused. I think they had concerns about people walking over the carpet was somehow disrespectful.

SPEAKER_05 1:05:56

Fine.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:57

Tim Martin do we know Tim Martin If not, there's a picture of him in your supplementary material. I think you might recognise him possibly. Very, very into Brexit.

SPEAKER_05 1:06:07

See the owner of Weatherspoons. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:09

Yeah. You can see him there. He looks jolly, doesn't he?

SPEAKER_05 1:06:12

Yeah. Extremely rich.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:14

Why wouldn't he be? Yeah. So Tim Martin, the founder of Weatherspoons, refused to remove the carpet. However, he offered to replace it once it bore out in an estimated three years. Despite the council taking legal advice on how to proceed to the court of chivalry, I couldn't find anything further on the story, and it seems likely that COVID, lockdowns, they had more to worry about than a carpet.

SPEAKER_09 1:06:35

How well?

SPEAKER_00 1:06:36

Yeah, I know, they got away with it. Anyway, given Goddard's caution about allowing cases to be brought to the court for mere decorative use, it seems unclear to me that the council would have been granted leave to bring the case anyway.

SPEAKER_05 1:06:48

Fine.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:49

Yeah. So there you go. That's the story of the High Court of Chivalry. Technically Scholar Court.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:56

Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:57

I hope that wasn't too nerdy and rich people and no such thing.

SPEAKER_05 1:07:03

Loved it. I thought it was really cool. I liked it. I learned so much. Yeah. I absolutely love that. It was so interesting. There's nowhere else that we would ever have learned anything like that.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:13

I was I yeah, I I've never heard of that before until I was found it about six months ago, and I thought, oh good. It's pretty cool.

SPEAKER_05 1:07:22

Oh well, thank you so much. That was your first ever amazing. Round of applause. I think Chris, you need to do us another one on our year anniversary.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:31

Yes, murder. Murder in the next one. Um I'll make it more juicy then. September. It was so juicy. It was great.

SPEAKER_05 1:07:37

Dressed in fancy clothes. We got some executions though. That's perfect. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:42

It seemed to be just like if anything goes wrong, just execute one of the parties. Well. That's gonna be most of the court precedents.

SPEAKER_05 1:07:48

Which again, what could go wrong? Tune it in next week for a real good tale.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:13

Fantastic.