To those to whom these words come, greetings from Olwynn ni Chinneidigh, Laurel Queen of Arms and Juliana de Luna, Palimpsest Herald.

The Laurel office is starting to review our policies and procedures for submissions. We expect that the eventual outcome will be a complete rewrite of the Rules for Submissions.

To start this process, we're asking the populace and heralds to give us feedback about the heraldic submissions process and how it should work. A survey which asks some basic questions can be found at http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/GLJZDDZ ; we'd appreciate it if interested people would take time to answer the questions there. Anyone can complete this; we promise to read all answers. We expect the survey to take fifteen to twenty minutes. Additional comments about or ideas for this process can be sent to rules@heraldry.sca.org.
We have several goals for this process:
- to make the Rules for Submissions easier to use for heralds and submitters alike
- to reduce discrepancies between the Rules as written and the rules as applied
- to reflect on the degree of authenticity we want for the registration process and how best to codify rules to evaluate it
- to reconsider the level of difference we should require between names and devices for registration

In all areas, the Society for Creative Anachronism has moved towards progressively better understandings of what people did in our period. Given this, we are not interested in discussing rules changes that would substantially lower our standards for registration of names and armory. But we are interested in exploring ways to make it easier for people register items that are in period style, whether or not they fit the rules as they currently exist. We welcome ideas about how to do that from all sources.
We look forward to hearing from you! The deadline for the survey is January 31; we will continue to accept comments by e-mail until the review of the rules is completed. Please forward this message to other mailing lists, so that as many people as possible can respond.

Juliana and Olwynn

NOTE FROM MODERATOR: I have deliberately turned off comments on this post - the best way to have your suggestions and voice heard is to fill out the survey and/or email to rules@heraldry.sca.org. When the time comes for making decisions and changes, side discussions and comments may fall through the cracks, but the survey answers will be all in one place.

Greetings!

I've been doing a bit of research with the online armorial and had a question.

I was looking to see if the Lion of Hesse (rampant barry argent and gules) was a prohibited charge. I've done searches on the blazon and the name and came up with bupkis.

Any ideas?

Thanks!

Been browsing the British History Online site, and found this document:

Register of the Freemen of the City of York: Vol. 1 - 1272-1558
Author Francis Collins (editor)
Description Publications of the Surtees Society, vol. 96. The register records admissions to the freedom of the city, arranged chronologically by regnal year. This first volume covers the period from the accession of Richard I to the death of Mary I.

What's charming is that the names do not appear tohave been normalised - the author has preserved the spelling and language of the recorded names, right down to the abbreviations. So the first half of the names are in Latin, but sometimes with English references to trades.

People apparently sought the 'freedom of the city' in order to set up a business. This was probably a city corporation fund-raiser, as well as a means to protect existing traders, much the way the guilds did.

If it hasn't already been done, this book looks like a terrific source of trade-based names, bynames, and intensely local names for those interested in northern-ish English personas, from 13th-16th century.