BRANDING | The Master Goes Back to His Roots

My photo of Paul Walton on one of his frequent visits
to New York. He resides in Oxford.

June 3, 2018 – Paul Walton has an international following as a branding expert. He matriculated at Brasenose, Oxford in 1974, 12 years after I went up at Trinity. (In a tribute to Trinity, he named one of the craft beers at his Shotover Brewery after the college.) He read History, and then went into advertising, and did well at it.

He understands the thread of Identity Display (ID), from the ancient symbols on the battlefield by which friends and foes identified one another, to the exotic heraldic emblems by which jousting knights played at warfare before their fans, a kind of voluntary Gladiators tournament.

The closest modern equivalent to jousting, other than reenacted jousting tournaments themselves in places like Canada and New Zealand (don't watch this YouTube clip if you are squeamish), would be one-on-one contact sports like boxing. But the knights had a regional following the way football teams do so the collective spirit around the lists might be more akin to an international football game.

Paul has recently gone back to his roots to write a book last year about the school he attended, St Mary's in Wales. It is called Marians on the Mawddach, Marians being the name for students at his school, and the Mawddach being the nearby river, oops, estuary. The History faculty at Oxford recently posted an interview with Paul here:
https://www.history.ox.ac.uk/the-uselessness-of-history-historian-engineer-brand-man. A worthy tribute to a scholarly gentleman who hit some home runs in the branding business.

OXFORD & CAMBRIDGE ARMS: Martlets

L to R: Your blogger (Trinity, Oxon.) and Cheryl-Lisa Hearne-
McGuiness, Hon. Sec. of the Oxford University Society's London
Branch. Photo by branding expert Paul C. Walton (BNC, Oxon.).

Oxford, U.K., Wednesday, April 18, 2018 – Yesterday, and the day before, Alice and I stayed at the fine Oxford and Cambridge Club in London.

On Monday I spoke there to 70 members of the Oxford University Society, London Branch, about the 38 coats of arms of the Oxford colleges and the six coats of the Permanent Private Halls.

On Tuesday I was speaker at a "Discussion Supper" of the Oxford and Cambridge Club and I added in most of the 31 Cambridge colleges.

My objective was to make the college coats of arms more accessible to students, alumni, tourists and anyone else curious about Oxford and Cambridge.

Dropping the usual baggage of lists of tinctures, furs, metals, ordinaries, subordinaries and so forth, I also skipped past explanation of the history of coats of arms, how they were brought over by the Normans with William the Conqueror and became widespread through the growth of tournaments among the knights in the 12th century, etc.

Instead, I dove right in to the Oxford (and Cambridge) coats of arms by selecting two or more college shields at a time that have a device in common, such as a form of cross or a species of bird (big or small), and focusing on the meaning of the device and of significant differences.

I used each set of shields as a prompt to tell stories about how the devices relate to the history of the colleges, and inevitably the history of England. Along the way I slipped in a few comments about relevant heraldic conventions.

To illustrate my approach, consider a little footless bird on the arms of three colleges and one permanent private hall – three of them at Oxford and one at Cambridge.

The bird is the MARTLET, which is important in heraldry because it is a brisure, a mark of cadency on a coat of arms indicating that it is being carried by a fourth son of the owner of the arms. The discussion below is amplified, and a few references added, from my remarks yesterday.

The perfect venue was the Oxford and Cambridge 

Club room named after Queen Victoria's grand-

daughter, Princess Marie Louise of Schleswig-

Holstein, Germany's northernmost state.

University College's shield shows four (on its website) or often five golden martlets around a cross on a blue (azure) field. The St Benet's shield includes an almost identical coat of arms on its top right (the sinister side in chief). The difference between the two crosses (Univ's is a cross patonce, while St Benet's is a cross fleury) is not significant, as both crosses have been used interchangeably in the posthumously attributed arms of Edward the Confessor. Edward was of course the last of the great Anglo-Saxon kings, whose death in 1066 precipitated a nine-month succession battle that culminated in the death of Harold Godwinson and victory of William, Duke of Normandy at Hastings. With the accession of William I, Norman nobles arrived with their knights and heraldry. Univ has claimed the arms attributed to Edward the Confessor, although the founding in 1249 was by William of Durham, long after Edward the Confessor. As the Univ website explains, "a legend grew up in the 1380s that we were actually founded even earlier, by King Alfred in 872, and, understandably enough, this became widely accepted as the truth." (The Univ martlets are a possible origin of the four martlets in the St Peter's College coat of arms.)

St Benet’s Hall seems to have more claim to the arms of Edward the Confessor than Univ because the Hall is a foundation of Ampleforth College [full disclosure: I was a pupil there in 1952-55], which was created by the same English Benedictines who occupied Westminster Abbey at its inception. When Edward the Confessor built the original Benedictine Abbey and Church, he decided that English monarchs should be crowned there [all but two subsequent monarchs have been]. The other half of the top of the shield (the chief) shows the imputed coat of arms of St Peter, to whom Westminster Abbey is dedicated; the bottom of the shield is from the original Abbey. Henry III built the Gothic Abbey Church in honor of Edward, who by then had been canonized.

Pembroke College, Cambridge is the owner of the third shield. The five red (gules) martlets look dissimilar from the martlets in the previous two shields, but they are meant to be the same bird, in that they have no feet. Pembroke was founded by Aylmer de Valence, Earl of Pembroke, a man of importance in the reigns of Edwards I and II. The left side (dexter to the bearer) of the shield is half of his arms, which are split (impaled or dimidiated) with his wife Mary de St Pol, who came from Brittany.

Worcester College, represented by the fourth shield, has two chevrons and six martlets, which are blazoned as black (sable) or sometimes red (gules). The coat of arms is that of Sir Thomas Cookes [someone at the meeting at the Oxford and Cambridge Club said it should be Crookes, but he was being funny, I think], a Worcestershire baronet, whose bequest of £10,000 back in 1698, when a pound sterling was really worth something, founded the college. The Worcester College shield is almost always shown, as here, with black (sable) martlets, but the blazon often calls for red (gules) as in the Pembroke arms. [Sir Thomas also founded Bromsgrove School, which uses the arms with red (gules) martlets, corresponding to its blazon.] 

MEANING: So what does the martlet signify? All sources I have consulted agree that the lack of feet means that they can't land, so they are always aloft. This suggests that the martlets are always searching and is a good symbol for the search for knowledge. A lovely idea – although when you think about it, it makes the intellectual life sound tiring. (Tiring, but surely not as discouraging as the fates of Sisyphus or Tantalus.)

Another interpretation is that the martlet is a symbol of the self-made man, someone without foundation. But to impute such arms to a King like Edward the Confessor would hardly be appropriate with that interpretation, unless one was imputing modesty.

Links to Further Reading: Use of Star-Like Devices in the Oxford Colleges . Creation of Arms in the Newer Colleges at Oxford (Oxford Today, Michaelmas 2015)

Set of 46 Newly Design Coats of Arms: Oxford City and Oxford University coats of arms, 38 colleges, and six Permanent Private Halls. Below is a low-resolution version of an original set of shields drawn for me by heraldic artist Lee Lumbley. I plan to be at the 2018 BookExpo America at the Javits Center in New York City, May 31-June 2 and will be looking for appointments to talk with publishers at this event. My email address is teppermarlin at aol dot com.

OXFORD OPEN DAY | Selling the Colleges, 2017

1. Jesus College on Turl Street flaunts its
 green color, attributed to its Welsh and
Celtic appeal or its revised arms.

 Oxford is continuing to seek applications from the broadest possible pool of secondary school students.

This is good for Oxford and good for secondary schools.

Students have to apply to one of Oxford's 38 colleges or six Permanent Private Halls (PPHs). 

So every year the colleges open their doors about two weeks before Michaelmas term opens, and then a week and a half after the Trinity term ends (in 2018, the Open Days are June 27-28).

2. Exeter College, also on the Turl, has
the Welcome banner out.

The Michaelmas term is so named because term starts soon after the feast of St Michael the Archangel, on September 29. The colleges then open their doors to students and it is inconvenient for there to be an Open Day.

The colleges and halls are becoming more competitive about Open Day. 

3. Trinity College is central, next to the
White Horse, Blackwell's, and the Bodleian.

For that day, the college gates are opened wide. The Keep Out signs are replaced by welcoming  banners and balloons.  

Some colleges take it a little bit further, to get an edge. Unfairly? You be the judge. Here are some Open Day stories from five colleges. 

We start our walking tour going north on Turl Street. We pass Lincoln College on our right, visit Jesus on our left, then Exeter on our right. We now face Trinity College. We turn left to the corner, intending to head for St Regent's College in St Giles. 

However, as we pass Boswell's, we are hijacked. We are offered a free ride akin to that in Midnight in Paris, to a place called LMH, with the promise of free ice cream at the destination. Read on.

4. Regent's Park College makes its presence known
in front of the Sheldonian, perhaps to prevent
hijacking of young students on their way to St Giles. 

1. Jesus College. As one walks on The Turl north from High Street, Jesus is on the left. I was advised by Paul Walton, who knows a thing or two about Wales, that the green color of Jesus is related to its Welsh affiliation, because its foundation was promoted by Welshman Dr Hugh Price of St David's Cathedral, in 1571. However, the original field of Price's coat of arms was azure (blue). The field was later revised to vert (green), perhaps in honor of the Green family, or in homage to Price's Welsh heritage.  Queen Elizabeth is the founder of Jesus College; it is the only college she founded, and the only one founded during her long reign. Its Celtic Studies library is special. Its most famous alumnus is surely Welshman T. E. Lawrence ("Lawrence of Arabia"). Its student body is 15 percent Welsh.

2. Exeter College. Exeter College's color is purple, referencing the fact that it was founded in 1315 by Walter de Stapeldon, a Devon man who rose to become Bishop of Exeter and Treasurer of England under Edward II. Purple is the color of bishops. The eight pairs of golden keys in the Exeter coat of arms reflect the episcopal origin of the college, as  St Peter, the first bishop, was given "the keys to the kingdom of heaven". Exeter was originally called Stapeldon Hall; it is considered the fourth-oldest college at Oxford.

3. Trinity College. Trinity's arms are those of its Founder, Sir Thomas Pope. The tincture on his  arms is azure (blue), with the metal or (gold). The college colors are blue and white. Pope was a Catholic entrusted with the task of dissolving and emptying out church-owned colleges. Durham College was a seminary established by the Bishop Prince of Durham. After Catholicism was reinstated by Mary I, Pope established a new Catholic college on the spot.

Offering a Free Ride to LMH.

4. Regent's Park College. Things are not always what they seem. Regent's Park College is not a college, but is the smallest of the six Permanent Private Halls. The PPHs are increasingly being given similar status as the full colleges, but because of their governing are presumed to be less independent of their religious origins as the colleges. 

Dishing the free ice cream.

Regent's Park College sells itself as a quiet place near the center of Oxford. Its origins go back to a Baptist conference in 1752. The original institution was founded in 1810 and moved to Pusey Street, off St Giles, in 1927. It is near to St Cross College, which shares an entrance with Pusey House. Regent's Park College welcomes students in the arts, humanities and social sciences. A few study to be Baptist ministers. The Library includes a special focus on the history of dissenters. In fact, because of its history of religious dissent, members of Regent's Park College are discouraged from using Latin! The college Grace is recited in English by the Principal: For the gifts of your grace and the community of this college, we praise your name, O God. Amen. At the end of Formal Hall the Principal signals the departure of senior members (there is usually no High Table) with the words: "The grace and peace of God be with us all. Amen." Amen to that.

5. Lady Margaret Hall (LMH). Just as Regent's Park College is a hall, so Lady Margaret Hill is a college, as is St Edmund Hall.

LMH is located at the end of Norham Gardens, with property extending to a wide frontage on the River Cherwell. 

Since this is a bit of a hike from central Oxford, the offer of a lift with ice cream waiting at the end is a clever way of attracting the interest of potential applicants.While the lure of free ice cream may seem to be unfair competition, how else expose impressionable students to the glory of the Banks of the Cherwell, where this 1918 photo of three LMHers (two Saunders sisters at left and someone at right identified as named C.S.L. who is clearly not C.S. Lewis).

Picnic at LMH by the Cherwell, 1918. Two Saunders sisters (L) and C.S.L.

OXFORD BEER: Brewer Walton of Shotover Hill

Brewer Walton
Keeps the malt on.
His Trinity brand
Is ever so grand.
(Clerihew by JT Marlin.)

I have previously recorded a visit in New York City from Paul Walton, a branding expert who contacted me after reading my article on the coats of arms of the Oxford Colleges in the Michaelmas issue of Oxford Today.

Arms as Brands

We both see coats of arms as one of the earliest forms of branding.

It was important in battle to know who was trying to kill you, and who you were supposed to kill. Imagine a sports field where everyone wore the same color shirt...

(Hey, wait, Yoko Ono already Imagined this; her message was that chess matches would be very peaceful if all the chess pieces had the same color and the chess board squares were undifferentiated. No thrill of battle, but the compensating joy of peace.)

Brewer Walton

Earlier this month I was in Oxford and visited with Paul at the Coffee House at the Broad Street end of the Turl (its formal name is the Turl Street Kitchen).

We talked inter alia about his craft-beer enterprise, Shotover Brewery. He says the Trinity brand of his beer (one of the Brewery's four brands) is doing well and he thinks its success reflects both its good name and good taste:

• Trinity is certainly a good name – why else would the Great Gatsby have chosen it as the name of the college at Oxford that he claimed to have attended, when he had the pick of the litter?
• On the taste front, the brewery recently won an award as the best beer in Oxfordshire. 

Shotover?

Shotover Brewery gets its name from Shotover Hill, which is located in Headington (leave Oxford by  Magdalen Bridge and take the Old Road) on the other side of the Ring Road.

But how did Shotover Hill get its name? A couple of sources say that Oliver Cromwell shot his musket over Shotover Hill when he was engaged in the Siege of Oxford. If you remember, Cromwell and his New Model Army eventually overwhelmed Charles I and a few years later beheaded the hapless king, the only sitting English king ever executed (after Charles, the "divine right of kings" dogma was peddled less aggressively).

But Paul says that Shotover Hill is a lot older than Cromwell's musket:

It was an arrow that shot over the hill. Shotover was an ancient royal hunting forest. Another good contender for the origin is from the French Chateau Vert.

Just to confuse us all further, I consulted Widow Wikipedia, Grandma Google's sister, and she agrees with Brewer Walton that Shotover is older than Cromwell–so old that in her opinion the "Shotover" is derived from the Old English scoet ofer, meaning "steep slope".

Take your pick.

HERALDRY: Simple and Fun

The Earl Marshal (Duke of Norfolk) is the English
authority on arms, and his Court at the College
of Arms decides disputes. In Scotland, it is Lord
Lyon King of Arms. [All illustrations from the
1953 book, Simple Heraldry].

As a relative newcomer to the heraldry field, bitten by the bug less than ten years ago, earlier this year (in February and September) I was haunting heraldry collections in Oxford and London, such as:

• the Bodleian's newly reopened Weston Library with small open-stack collection of useful books, 
• the British Library's huge collection, easily accessible, 
• the College of Arms library, which sadly in February I could not consult because it was being renovated, and 
• the Society of Genealogists, which I have joined; it has a decent collection and is well-staffed with paid and unpaid experts on hand.

The genealogy and local history room at the New York Public Library is disappointing because the stacks that are open are strong on local history but not on heraldry.

The book that best fits my attitude toward heraldry – that it is loads of fun, Tolkien on steroids – is Simple Heraldry Cheerfully Illustrated, by Iain Moncreiffe (Falkland Poursuivant) and Don Pottinger (Herald Painter Extraordinary to the Court of Lord Lyon). My first copy was given to me by Paul Walton (Brasenose College, Oxford). I have since acquired a second copy online.

The book takes a light-hearted approach to its subject while it gets everything, so far as my amateur scan can determine, right. In other words, the style is like 1066 and All That, but the content is non-fiction.

Simple Heraldry is not a book of recent vintage. In fact it is 62 years old – if it were an American citizen, the book could get in line for a national pension, although the penalties for early withdrawal suggest that the book should wait a little longer before applying for its monthly direct deposit.

The publisher is Edinburgh-based Thomas Nelson and Sons, founded 1798 and now a subsidiary of HarperCollins. The last edition on record is 1955, being a reprint of the original edition.

Note the Moray or Murray arms – three stars argent on
a field azure. The main difference with the Douglas
arms is that for Douglas the azure is in chief only
and the stars are three in a row.

Its age shows up on p. 62, where it reports that

you may apply to the Earl Marshal through the College of Arms for Letters Patent granting you special arms of your own. This costs £105...

In February, Windsor Herald told me that the cost for an individual was now £5,500. The cost is higher for institutions like nonprofits and local governments. It is highest for large businesses.

What Blazon are You? What a
blazon is, from Simple Heraldry.

Two copies of the book were available second hand online via Amazon for $35 each – a bargain.

I purchased one of them instantly. So there is one left. The book is underpriced.

Comment

This is just the kind of self-mocking book to rekindle more interest in heraldry. It should be updated and reissued. If someone knows what the status of the rights is, please contact me at john[at]boissevainbooks.com.