Box 352

Mount Pleasant, SC 29465

31 July, 1990

Unto the Members of the College of Arms and any others who may read this missive, greetings from Alisoun MacCoul of Elphane, quondam Laurel Queen of Arms!

Good people,

This final letter of acceptances and return is being issued with the kind permission of my successor, Master Da'ud ibn Auda. That being the case, it seems most appropriate to omit the usual scheduling of future meetings and roster changes from this letter.

For the most part, the acceptances and returns in this letter derive from the primary June laurel meeting, held on June 17, to consider the letters from the West (2/28), Caid (3/12), Meridies (3/21), East (3/25), West (3/30) and Calontir (3/31). (The remaining two letters from June were considered at the Heraldic Symposium and were the subject of a somewhat shorter letter of acceptance and return issued by Master Da'ud.)

We have also made a concerted attempt at clearing any pending items possible and resolving any valid blazon or spelling errors reported to the South Carolina Laurel Office. (Indeed, that attempt was responsible for a good part of the delay in issuing this letter.) As always, there will be errors and omissions which have not been caught, decisions and interpretations with which some members of the College may differ. Those I must leave to my successor to resolve.

After consultation with Master Da'ud, it has been determined that the decision made at the Symposium on the issue of the release of the name of Alia through the East was unintentionally omitted from the letter of acceptance and return issued by Master Da'ud for that meeting.

This issue was raised before the College assembled to get a 'sense of the College' on the most appropriate manner in which to proceed. Alia was a group founded in the Bay Area of California in the dim past. When the first batch of releases were made by the East following the newly established procedures for the release of such name, somehow the East thought it was an Eastern group. The intent to release the group name was properly advertised in Pikestaff (the Eastern newsletter), approved by Crown and Curia and placed on a letter of intent. That letter was considered for three months with negative comment or suggestion by any commentor (including the West) that the group was not an Eastern group. At the time of the meeting at which the release was approved, the files were pulled, but noone on Laurel staff made the connection that this was a Western group (at the time, a number of East Kingdom groups had 'accommodation addresses' in the West).

In other words, the procedures were followed, but we all goofed! This being the case, it was the sense of the meeting that the release should be rescinded until such time as the Principal Herald of the West (who had no objection in principal to the release) should fulfill the requirement of advertising the intent to release in the Page and gain the appropriate permission for release from the Crown of the West.

In some cases there is no actual record in the files for the acceptance of certain titles nor do they appear as separate "acceptances" in letters of acceptance and return. This appears to have caused Morsulus to drop them from the "official" listings in the 1989 edition of the Armorial and Ordinary.

However, it is clear that these names have appeared in official lists of titles and orders which have been published under the auspices of the Laurel Office (and in many cases specifically under the signature of the current Laurel) for nearly a decade.

Moreover, in all versions of these lists that we have been able to fin, some formula specifically implied the official status of the listing. The phraseology of the 1987 Armorial is typical: "Included herein is a list of awards and titles of both SCA and mundane origin, generated both from Letters of Acceptances and Returns from Laurel, and mundane encyclopedias and similar sources."

Over this long period names on these lists have been protected from conflict as if they were registered ) i.e., submissions which conflicted under existing rules with items on the lists were returned). During that period heralds at all levels, including the most senior members of the College of Arms, have considered names which appeared on these lists to be registered and therefore require no further action before the College unless it be to change or release the name.

This being so, it would seem grossly unfair at this late date to withdraw protection from these order names and titles merely because we cannot point to a specific piece of paper in the files for the groups in question which records the point at which the Laurel office determined the order name or heraldic title to be acceptable. Justice would seem to demand some sort of official action on the part of the Laurel Office tantamount to an heraldic visitation which would once and for all validate these items and resolve the issue of their status. Therefore, Mistress Alisoun as one of her final official administrative acts as Laurel Queen of Arms made the following decision at the June 17 Laurel meeting:

Your servant,

Alisoun