Heraldic Alphabet 2019

Happy International Heraldry Day. Here is the latest selection of members of the lgbt community who are entitled, in reality or theory, to bear a coat of arms. There are 24 of them this year.

The format is as before. The people are listed in alphabetical order by the surname or name commonly used or known (e.g. Pope Julius III is listed under J, and not under D for his family name of Del Monte). The arms may be inherited, granted by a heraldic authority, assumed (not officially registered but accepted under continuance of use through several generations), marital, or arms of office.

There is only one transgender armiger (a person who has a coat of arms) this year, Jenny Bailey. The arms shown are those she was entitled to use in her official capacity as Mayor of Cambridge. Several others were eligible to bear various arms of office (e.g. Sir Arthur Vicars).

In English and Scottish heraldry unmarried and widowed women are not entitled to put their coat of arms on a shield but on a diamond shaped lozenge. This is the case with several women below. Women who bear arms of office can use a shield. To produce a more uniform look I’ve shown all arms on shields. I mention below which arms would be officially displayed on a lozenge.

Not all of them people listed actually used a coat of arms. Some are theoretical and could be used according to current heraldic regulations.

A) Waheed Alli, Baron Alli (b.1964) – media entrepreneur. Arms granted with a crest and supporters by the College of Arms in 1998 after he was created a life peer.

B) Jenny Bailey (b.1962) – local politician. Arms of office as Mayor of Cambridge 2007-8. These arms were granted to the borough of Cambridge way back in 1575 and illustrate the origin of the town’s name – the bridge over the River Cam.

C) Peter Coke (1913-2008) – actor. Inherited arms. Peter is known mainly for his 14 year career as BBC’s radio detective Paul Temple. Family tradition says that the crescents were adopted as the family emblem by an ancestor who fought in the Crusades with Richard the Lionheart.

D) Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) – artist and inventor. I wrote an article here on Leonardo’s coat of arms to commemorate the 500th anniversary of his death.

E) Martha May Eliot (1891-1978) – paediatrician and Assistant Director of the World Health Organisation. Inherited arms from her direct ancestor Samuel Eliot (1748-1788) of Boston, Massachusetts. Samuel owned a framed watercolour given to him by Sir Isaac Heard, Garter King of Arms, depicting his coat of arms.

F) Margaret Fuller (1810-1850) – journalist. Marital arms. On the right are her paternal arms, the Fullers. On the left are the arms of her husband, Giovanni Orsoli, Marquess of Pietraforte.

G) Eileen Gray (1878-1976) – architect and interior designer. Maternal arms (theoretically on a lozenge). Eileen’s original name was Hon. Kathleen Eileen Smith, and was a daughter of Baroness Gray, a Scottish peer. In 1897 Eileen’s father changed his children’s name to Gray (as their mother’s coheirs). Eileen’s sister inherited the title and registered this ancient Gray coat of arms for herself. As a Scot Eileen would have had to register her own version of these arms. There’s no record of her doing so.

H) Penelope Hoare (1940-2017) – editorial director of several publishers. Inherited arms (on a lozenge). The arms descend from her ancestor, Sir Richard Hoare, Lord Mayor of London in 1713.

I) Jaroslav Iwaszkiewicz (1894-1980) – writer and poet. The Iwaszkiewicz family belonged to the Polish-Ukrainian clan of Gozdawa. Polish heraldry is unique in having clan arms (called a herb) which can be used by many families. Legend says these were conferred upon a Gozdawa ancestor in 1090 by the Duke of Poland.

J) Pope Julius III (1481-1555) – Pope. Inherited arms. Pope Julius was baptised Giovanni Maria de’ Ciocchi Del Monte. Those funny lumpy shapes on the diagonal stripe are heraldic representations of mountains – Del Monte means “of the mountain”.

K) Robert Ketton-Cremer (1906-1969) – owner of Fellbrigg Hall, Norfolk. Inherited arms. Controversy erupted in 2017 when Robert’s family criticised the National Trust, who now own Fellbrigg, for “outing” him during LGBT History Month. These are the arms of the Cremer family.

L) Ned Lathom (1895-1930) – aristocrat and amateur playwright. Inherited arms. Ned Lathom is the popular name for Edward Bootle-Wilbraham, 3rd and last Earl of Lathom. Peers often use their title as their surname. The blue and white quarters are the arms of the Wilbraham family, and the red and white are those of the Bootles.

M) Dr. Heather Morris-Eyton (b.1967) – lecturer in Sport and Movement, Johannesburg University; Gay Games multi-medal-winning swimmer. Inherited arms (on a lozenge in England, on a shield in South Africa). The red quarters are the arms of the Eyton family, and the black quarters those of the Morris family. The arms were united in 1905 by the marriage of Heather’s great-grandfather to the Eyton heiress.

N) Isabella Norcliffe (d.1846) – partner of landowner Anne Lister. Inherited arms (on a lozenge). Born Isabella Dalton her father changed the family name and arms in 1807 when he inherited the Norcliffe family estates from his mother’s brother.

O) Lt. Myles O’Donovan (1896-1918) – World War I casualty. Inherited arms. As mentioned in my article for the centenary of the Armistice of 1918 Myles was a son of the O’Donovan clan chief. He belongs to same family as Connell Hill O’Donovan in my Heraldic Alphabet of 2017. The crescent indicates that Myles was a second son.

P) Isabella Pell (1900-1951) – socialite and member of the French Resistance during World War II. Inherited arms. Isabella was of the same family as Julia Pell, whose arms I described in more detail here.

Q) Dr. Alexandre Quintanilha (b.1945) – molecular biologist and member of the Portuguese parliament. Possible inherited arms. The rules of Portuguese heraldry can cause confusion. Anyone can assume the surname and arms of any ancestor, and they don’t have to match. Various small emblems showing which side of the family the arms come from are placed on the shield. Alexandre’s father (whose birth surname was da Silva) adopted the name of Quintanilha from his grandfather’s grandmother. These are the arms of her family. I don’t know if these arms are used by Alexandre Quintanilha but he is entitled to adopt them to go with the name.

R) Anna Rochester (1880-1966) – labour reformer and journalist. Assumed inherited arms. Anna descends from Nicholas Rochester of Kent who migrated to Virginia in 1689. Even though these arms belong to the Rochesters of Essex there’s no proof that Nicholas was related to them. However, because he were used by him and his descendants they have become the de facto arms of the American Rochester family for use in the USA, since there is no US government heraldic authority to say otherwise.

S) Baroness Ebba Sparre (1626-1662) – lady-in-waiting and possible lover of Queen Kristina of Sweden. Arms granted in 1647 to her uncle, his brothers (Ebba’s father was dead by then) and their families when Queen Kristina created them barons and baronesses. The Sparre family arms are contained on the smaller central shield. The palm trees and antelopes are symbolic elements probably representing righteousness and harmony respectively.

T) Aubrey William Trask (b.1989) – computer technologist. Granted by the Canadian Heraldic Authority in September 2018, making them the newest lgbt coat of arms I know of. Red and white represents Canada in a pattern symbolising electronic circuits. The octopus represents flexibility. Aubrey was administrator of the lgbt student organisation when he was studying at McGill University.

V) Sir Arthur Vicars (1862-1927) – herald. Inherited arms. Sir Arthur could impale (place on the right half of a shield) these family arms next to the arms of office of Ulster King of Arms. He was implicated in the theft of the crown jewels of Ireland.

W) Dorothy Wellesley, Duchess of Wellington (1889-1956) – author, poet and socialite. Marital arms. Dorothy was born Dorothy Ashton and married Sir Gerald Wellesley, 7th Duke of Wellington. As husband and wife they displayed their family arms together. The Ashton arms on our right are impaled with the Wellesley arms on our left.

Y) Prince Felix Yusupov (1887-1967) – Russian prince, known primarily for his role in the murder of the monk Rasputin. Inherited arms. Prince Felix’s father, Count Sumarokov-Elston, married the Yusupov heiress and adopted her name. The Sumarakov-Elston arms were added to hers and they are the two at the bottom of the shield.

Z) Nikolai Zverev (1832-1893) – pianist, tutor to Sergie Rachmaninoff. Inherited arms. Nikolai belonged to an old Russian aristocratic family.

Game of Gay Thrones II

A lot of people, and media publicity, has been raving about the end (thankfully!) of “Game of Thrones”. Like the majority of television viewers I’ve never seen it. Apart from the fact that I can’t afford the subscription, nothing in any preview or interview has told me what the series is actually about, so nothing has got me interested in it. What clips I have seen had very little acting in them, and even then it was the worst ham acting that isn’t even worthy of “Scooby Doo”.

However, it does give me an excuse to celebrate the long-overdue demise of an over-hyped programme by presenting a follow-up to my “Game of Gay Thrones” article which featured five lgbt claimants and pretenders to various crowns. There are actually enough lgbt wannabe monarchs to stretch the theme into three more articles. So here is the second.

Several of today’s pretenders can be described as hypothetical. There are different reasons why they may never have been actual claimants to a throne, but they have, to some extent, been considered as heirs, one way or another.

Let’s have a look at them in chronological order.

1) Gaius Nymphidius Sabinus (c.35-68 AD), claimant to the throne of the Roman Empire. During the reign of Emperor Nero Gaius was a Prefect of the Praetorian Guard, the elite unit of the Imperial army. Although he was the son and grandson of freed slaves Gaius managed to rise in power thanks to the uncovering on a conspiracy to assassinate Nero. After Nero eventually did die Gaius began claiming to be an illegitimate son of a previous emperor, Caligula. To secure his claim Gaius married Nero’s widowed male empress Sporus (it is said that Nero’s body was still burning on his funeral pyre when the marriage took place, Gaius was obviously wasting no time). While it doesn’t necessarily indicate that Gaius had any sexual interest in young Sporus, it is known that Roman emperors indulged in pederastic activity, and as a member of the Praetorian Guard Gaius may even have formed a sexual relationship with a younger soldier. Both activities were influenced by the ancient Greeks. As a Roman soldier Gaius wasn’t allowed to get married anyway, so as soon as Nero was out of the way he married someone with an imperial title and rank to boost his claim to the throne. The only other surviving spouse of Nero was a rather dull woman with no power or influence. However, a rival to the throne, Galba, was approaching Rome with an army and the Praetorian Guard considered him a better prospect as emperor than Gaius, so they murdered Gaius and put Galba on the throne instead.

2) St. Boris, Prince of Rostov (990-1015), regarded by some during his lifetime as the preferred successor to his father Vladimir, Grand Prince of Kiev. I wrote a bit about St. Boris twice before, most recently here. Succession to the throne of Kiev was not by male-preferred primogeniture (as the throne of the UK was until recently) but was often decided by which of the nearest male relatives on the reigning monarch was the most powerful. Rivalry between brothers often resulted in one assassinating the others. This is the case with St. Boris. Grand Prince Vladimir, who converted to Christianity and founded the Russian Orthodox Church, had twelve sons. Not all of them shared their father’s new faith so you can imagine some of them were keen to ensure that their father’s successor was a pagan (none of the Christian sons had any intention of killing off their brothers). This meant that any brother who converted to Christianity was a threat. Boris was a popular ruler in his own principality of Rostov, a popularity which may also alarmed his pagan brothers. This is what eventually led to St. Boris’s assassination in 1015 by his brother.

3) Prince Louis de Bourbon, Duke of Condé (1621-1686), claimant to the throne of Poland-Lithuania – twice. I’ve also written about the Duke before regarding his attempts to be elected king in last year’s “Around the World in Another 80 Gays”. You can read the details there.

4) Harry Domela (1905-1979) claimed to be Prince Wilhelm of Germany, grandson and heir to Kaiser Wilhelm II. He was, in fact, a Latvian-Russian of German ancestry. After World War I Harry moved to Germany where he began to claim various false identities. He was imprisoned several times for being an imposter but this didn’t stop him. He managed to make the acquaintance of several German aristocrats and made such an impression that they thought he was Prince Wilhelm of Germany travelling incognito. There was some resemblance between the two and Harry did nothing to deny it. In fact he willingly went along with it and began adopting the lifestyle that implied he was the disinherited heir to the German empire. This was in despite of the fact that the real Prince Wilhelm was studying at the University of Bonn at the time. Very shrewdly Harry kept well away from people and places where the real Prince would likely to be known. It wasn’t long before Harry was uncovered as a fraud and once again arrested in 1926. While in prison he wrote his autobiography “A Sham Prince”. The courts decided his imposture was harmless and released him. His book sold well, and he even starred as himself in a 1927 film and a play. During this period he lodged in the guest rooms of the Magnus Hirschfeld’s Institute for Sexual Science in Berlin. Openly gay and something of an enigmatic figure after the 1930s Harry had many other adventures, often accompanied by French gay writer André Gide. I’m sure I’ll write about them in the future. Incidentally, the real Prince Wilhelm renounced his rights to the German throne in 1933.

5) James Knight Ord III (b.1976), claimed by perpetually unreliable and homophobic “Daily Mail” and “Mail Online” as the “true heir to the British throne” in an article in 2016. I debunked this claim in this article in which I give proof with actual documentary evidence, something any experienced Daily Mail journalist could have researched for themselves. Last year Mr. Ord himself contacted this blog to welcome my research. He had been aware of his family legend of an illegitimate descent from King George IV of Britain, but has not paid any serious attention to it.

In October I’ll present another set of lgbt claimants and pretenders.

20 More Queer Facts for Pride Month

Here’s 20 more queer lgbt facts to celebrate the start of the US Pride Month. The first five are explained in more detail in articles elsewhere on this blog.

1) Tony DeBlase (1942-2000), the creator of the Leather Pride flag, was also known as “Batman” because he was a world authority on bats.

2) One of the Jack the Ripper suspects was Francis Tumblety (c.1833-1903), an Irish-American quack doctor who kept a large collection of female body parts in jars. Before moving to London (just before the first Ripper murder) he had a stormy love affair with Hall Caine (later Sir Hall Caine). He was arrested for gross indecency with four men and skipped bail by running away to France. The Ripper never struck again.

3) The world’s first specifically-designed flag to represent the lgbt community was probably the black flag with a pink triangle in the centre adopted by the organisers of the Australian Gay Pride Week in September 1973.

4) The Russian Orthodox Christian Church was founded in the year 988. The first people to be made Russian Orthodox saints were St. Boris and his male lover St. George the Hungarian in 1071. They were both martyred in 1015.

5) The first James Bond novel would never have been published if Ian Fleming’s gay friend William Plomer hadn’t persuaded him to do so. Only after it became a success did Fleming decided to write more.

6) Angela Ponce (b.1991) was the first transgender contestant to win a national Miss Universe title. In 2018 she became Miss Spain.

7) The most northern Pride (so far), at 69 degrees north, was the 3rd Sápmi (Lapland) Pride held in Kautokeino, Norway, in August 2017.

8) And the most southern Pride (so far) took place at 77 degrees south in the McMurdo Station on Antarctica on 9th June 2018.

9) The oldest known member of the lgbt community was Swiss opera singer Hughes Cuénod. He died on 6th December 2010 at the age of 108 years and 164 days.

10) And the previous oldest known member of the lgbt community was Australian teacher and educator Ethel May “Monte” Punshon, who died on 4th April 1989 at the age of 106 years and 146 days.

11) The first person in the world to survive a bone marrow transplant from someone who wasn’t a relative was Simon Bostic (b.1972) in 1973. Simon has gone on to become a campaigner for bone marrow donation. He has also win a silver medal in dancesport at the 1998 Gay Games in Amsterdam, and a bronze medal at the 2000 Eurogames in Zurich. His bone marrow donor, Joan McFarlane, died last November and Simon wrote her obituary for The Guardian newspaper.

12) The first printed instance of the term “Gay Pride” appeared in the Chicago Tribune on 28th June 1970. It was in a report on Chicago’s Gay Pride. This was held a day before the commonly believed first Pride event, New York’s Christopher Street Liberation Day Parade held to commemorate the first anniversary of the Stonewall Riots.

13) The annual ancient Greek festival called the Diocleia, held in Megara every spring, included a kissing contest in which young men were required to kiss the male judges. The judges then had to decide which youth gave the “sweetest” kiss. The prize was a garland of flowers. The festival was founded in memory of Diocles, an Athenian soldier who died in battle protecting his young male lover.

14) The tune of “The Star Spangled Banner”, USA’s national anthem, was originally used by the 18th-century Anacreontic Society, a gentlemen’s club formed to promote “wine, women and song”. The society gets its name from the ancient Greek poet Anacreon who wrote poems on those same subjects. Anacreon, like all Greek men of his time, was partial to having sex with boys.

15) The word “buggery”, referring to gay sex, originates in the 13th century. It derives from the name of a heretical sect called the Bogomils, who were said to practice gay sex as part of their religious beliefs. The sect was based in the area now occupied by the nation of Bulgaria – the country gets its names from the Bogomils.

16) There are an estimated 100 million people who owe their existence to King Edward II of England (1284-1327) – they are his descendants. These include many thousands of lgbt people, among them are :

comedian and talk-show host Ellen Degeneres,

Hollywood legend Marlon Brando,

writer and wit Sir Noël Coward,

astronaut Sally Ride,

drag actor Divine,

Rt. Rev. Mary Glasspool, Assistant Bishop of New York,

Russian spy Anthony Blunt,

Laurence of Arabia,

American Gladiator Shelley Beattie (Siren),

gay porn star Ben Barker,

US Founding Father Alexander Hamilton,

Oscar Wilde,

composer and suffragette Dame Ethel Smyth,

writer Tennessee Williams,

Romantic poet Lord Byron,

…. and myself.

 

17) The director of the first episode of “Doctor Who”, the world’s longest running television science fiction series, was a young gay Asian man called Waris Hussein (b.1939). It was broadcast on 23rd November 1963.

 

18) The bisexual Russian Prince Felix Yusopov is responsible for all movies including the general disclaimer “all characters and events portrayed in this film are fictional, and any resemblance to person living or dead is purely coincidental”. The Prince was a leading protagonist in the murder of the mad monk Rasputin in 1916. When MGM produced a film about Rasputin in 1932 Prince Felix successfully sued the film company for defamation and intrusion of privacy. Even the recent films “Rocket Man” and “Bohemian Rhapsody” are officially fictional, not fact.

 

19) The famous statue in Piccadilly Circus, London, is NOT Eros. It portrays his half-brother Anteros, the god of love returned, who was born spontaneously out of the love between Poseidon, god of the sea, and a male sea deity called Nerites.

 

20) Apart from being known as “the Wickedest Man in the World” who was openly bisexual and practiced mystical occult sex “magic” with both men and women, Aleister Crowley (1875-1947) was a member of the first expedition to attempt to reach the top of K2, the second highest mountain in the world, in 1902.

A New Project

One of several projects I’ve been working on this year is starting a YouTube channel devoted to lgbt history. There’s quite a few videos on lgbt history on YouTube already but most of them are about the same things – the same events in the history of gay rights, homophobia, discrimination, personal testimony. There’s very little variety. Although education in these subjects is vital to understand the contemporary lgbt community there is very little about how members of the lgbt community have shaped the world we live in and have made significant contributions to our ways of life. Even the official UK LGBT History Month organisation mentions very few members of the community who have achieved greatness in spite of homophobia. There’s too much about current campaigns and party politics in the interpretation of lgbt history. I’m a historian, leave contemporary politics to activists - activist who distort historical fact to fit their own political beliefs.

In February this year, for UK LGBT History Month, I was interviewed by a student journalist for one of Nottingham’s universities. Throughout the whole hour all she was interested in was what it is like to live as an openly gay man in Nottingham today. She was not remotely interested in any aspect of lgbt history, and the published article didn’t have a single historic fact in it. Even the historic facts I mentioned were ignored.

I hope my blog goes someway to redress this imbalance on the internet and in the media, and this is why I thought of producing my own videos.

The first challenge was finding the time and juggle it around my new re-organised life and new projects. Unlike all those young YouTubers and vloggers out there who seemingly have unlimited amount of free time to produce endless drivel, I have to earn a living.

Next challenge, I needed to find out how easy or difficult it was to produce a short video in a style that I liked. I chose an animated trivia/fact-based list to start off with. There are various animation software packages available and I’m slowly going through them to find the best that works for my requirements in the future.

Until then I’ve produced a short video using something I know more about – Powerpoint. On the few occasions that I was asked to give a talk to my local gay/bi men’s group in Nottingham I produced a Powerpoint presentation which included a lot of animation. That is how I produced my first YouTube video, which you can see below. I hope you like it. It’s just “work in progress” and not as polished as I would like future videos to be. I may include commentary or music on future videos.

As I say in the video description more videos may follow or they may not. It all depends on how quick and easy the various animation packages are to use, and how I can juggle production around my work, home life, research, writing this blog and creating other projects.

I’ll be taking another break throughout May but will be back in June for US Pride Month. Among the subjects will be my annual heraldic alphabet, Game of Gay Thrones II, and a commemoration of 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots.

Thanks for your continuing support and interest, especially to my followers. See you in June.