Society for Creative Anachronism
College of Arms
1194 Firwood Dr.
Pittsburgh, PA 15243
412-306-0416
kvs+@cs.cmu.edu

June 14, 2000

Unto the members of the College of Arms and all others who may read this missive do Dame Elsbeth Anne Roth, Laurel Queen of Arms, and Master Pietari Pentipoika, Pelican King of Arms, send greetings.

The April Laurel meeting was held Sunday, April 2, 2000, and considered the following letters of intent: Atenveldt (November 1) (delayed due to late receipt of paperwork), Middle (November 28) (redated to December 9 based on postmark), Atenveldt (December 1), Lochac (December 1), Artemisia (December 6), Meridies (December 15), Atlantia (December 16), Æthelmearc (December 21), An Tir (December 30). The April Pelican meeting was held Sunday, April 9, 2000.

The May Laurel meeting was held Sunday, May 7, 2000, and considered the following letters of intent: Drachenwald (December 13) (delayed due to late receipt of paperwork), Outlands (December 15) (redated to January 4 based on postmark), Caid (December 22) (delayed due to late receipt of paperwork), Middle (December 24) (delayed due to late receipt of paperwork), Ansteorra (December 31) (redated to January 4 based on postmark), Atenveldt (January 1), Lochac (January 1), Outlands (January 1), Atlantia (January 17), West (January 19), Middle (January 20), Drachenwald (January 26), Lochac (January 26), An Tir (January 27), and Ansteorra (January 31). The May Pelican meeting was held Sunday, May 14, 2000.

The June Laurel meeting was held Saturday, June 3, 2000 and considered the following letters of intent: East (December 31) (delayed due to late receipt of paperwork), Meridies (January 30) (delayed due to late receipt of paperwork), Atenveldt (February 1), Outlands (February 1), Caid (February 14), Atlantia (February 18), Lochac (February 20), Middle (February 20), Calontir (February 21), Drachenwald (February 21), Trimaris (February 21), and Meridies (February 29). The June Pelican meeting is scheduled for Sunday, June 18, 2000. Also, the Ansteorra letter dated February 29 was considered by Laurel at the Æthelmearc Heralds and Scribes Symposium on June 10, 2000, and the Atlantia letter dated February 18 will be considered by Pelican and laurel at the Knowne World Heraldic Symposium on June 25, 2000.

The July Laurel meeting is scheduled for Sunday, July 16, 2000, and will consider the following letters of intent: Calontir (February 14) (delayed due to late receipt of paperwork), Ealdormere (February 15) (redated to March 25 based on postmark), East (February 27) (delayed due to late receipt of paperwork), Atenveldt (March 1), Æthelmearc (March 11) (two letters), Caid (March 12), Atlantia (March 13), Outlands (March 15), Artemisia (March 17) Lochac (March 19), Middle (March 21), An Tir (March 29), Meridies (March 30), and Ansteorra (March 30). Responses and rebuttals to commentary must be in the College's hands no later than June 30, 2000.

The August Laurel meeting is tentatively scheduled for Sunday, August 5, 2000, and will consider the letters of intent from April.

Not all letters of intent may be considered when they are originally scheduled on this cover letter. The date of mailing of the LoI, date of receipt of the Laurel packet, or other factors may delay consideration of certain letters of intent. Additionally, some letters of intent received may not have been scheduled because the administrative requirements (receipt of the forms packet, receipt of the necessary fees, etc.) have not yet been met.

REMINDER: Until the packet containing the paperwork is received, the letter may not be scheduled.

From Pelican - Documentation in LoI's

There has recently been some discussion about summarising name documentation in LoI entries. This started with some items which had as the summary a S. Gabriel client number and the names of the people who had worked on it. This caused some relatively harsh criticism.

I'm afraid I have to agree with the critics. Section V.B.2.d of the Administrative Handbook states that a "summary of all supporting evidence provided for the submission must be included on the letter of intent". Now, a "summary" like the one that started this discussion is essentially similar to saying simply "the name is found in Withycombe", without mentioning what Withycombe writes about the name. Both these "summaries" may fulfill the letter of the rule (although even that can be doubted) but they most certainly don't fulfill the intent, which is to make sure that each commenting member of the College can judge the merits of the documentation.

Granted, the Academy of Saint Gabriel has its letters publicly available on the Web. Also, their work is excellent, although the goals are not quite the same as those of the College of Arms. We have recently renewed the agreement whereby the letters of the Academy are accepted as documentation, so that a copy of the letter is sufficient without attaching copies of the sources cited.

All this, however, does not mean that the client number is a sufficient summary of the documentation. Immediate and affordable net access is something we neither do nor can require from commenting members of the College; for instance, the default method for distributing letters is by regular mail and people have to specifically request e-mail commentary. However, this is in fact beside the point: even if everyone had such access we would still need a summary, just like we need a summary when a name is documented from the reference works listed in Appendix H of the Administrative Handbook.

Starting with the July 2000 LoI's we are going to tighten our interpretation of V.B.2.d. so that items that don't have a proper summary of supporting evidence may be returned instead of pended. Blatant cases (such as "<name> is Saint Gabriel Client #1234", or "<name> is Irish" or "<name> is in Withycombe") will be returned unless the College of Arms is able to provide appropriate supporting evidence in its commentary.

If you are unsure about how to properly summarise name documentation, help is available. One possibility, at least for the majority who have e-mail access, is the submission heralds mailing list <SCASubmissionHeralds@onelist.com>; another possibility is to ask either Laurel or myself. Asking for help is no reason to be ashamed; on the contrary, knowing when to ask for help is a major part of the skills needed for any serious office.

The Submission Heralds Mailing list

As noted above, there is a mailing list for submission heralds. I strongly recommend that all submissions heralds (internal and external) with e-mail access subscribe to the list, although it is open to anyone. To subscribe send an empty message to SCASubmissionHeralds-subscribe@onelist.com, or go to http://www.onelist.com/community/SCASubmissionHeralds and follow the instructions from there.

Administrative Handbook

I will discuss suggestions for the Administrative Handbook in the June LoAR. For now I am looking for a volunteer to head the discussion. I am hoping that the discussion will be similar to the rules discussion, with a faster pace.

Siebmacher is now available

Johann Siebmachers Wappenbuch von 1605 is now available in Germany. This is an excellent book containing a large number of late period German arms (the book description says over 3400 examples), in color. If you know German, or know Amazon.com you can order it through Amazon.de for about 20 DM plus shipping (shipping adds a lot, so if you can combine orders it will be substantially cheaper). For a single book, the cost including shipping turns out to be around $25.00 to the US; when I ordered 12, the cost including shipped turned out to be aroudn $13.00.

Administrivia

Send roster changes, roster corrections, to Lord Symond Bayard le Gris, Bruce R. Nevins, 2527 E. 3rd St., Tucson, AZ, 85716-4114, (520) 795-6000, (520) 795-0158 (Fax), bnevins@nexiliscom.com. College of Arms members can also request a copy of the current roster from Symond. Send all other administrative requests or payments to Laurel.

For subscriptions to the paper copy of the LoAR, please contact Symond, above. The cost for an LoAR subscription is $25.00 a year. Please make all checks or money orders payable to "SCA Inc. – College of Arms." For subscriptions to the electronic copy of the LoAR, please contact Laurel at herald@sca.org. The electronic copy is available free of charge.

Until then, I remain

In service

Elsbeth Anne Roth
Laurel Queen of Arms


Created at 2000-06-29T14:23:16