Arthur Charles Fox-Davies (28 February 1871 – 19 May 1928) was a
BritishThe British are citizens of the United Kingdom, of the Isle of Man, any of the Channel Islands, or of any of the British overseas territories, and their descendants...
author on
heraldryHeraldry is the profession, study, or art of creating, granting, and blazoning arms and ruling on questions of rank or protocol, as exercised by an officer of arms. Heraldry comes from Anglo-Norman herald, from the Germanic compound harja-waldaz, "army commander"...
. By profession, he was a
barristerA barrister is a member of one of the two classes of lawyer found in many common law jurisdictions with split legal professions. Barristers specialise in courtroom advocacy, drafting legal pleadings and giving expert legal opinions...
but he also worked as a
journalistA journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...
and novelist.
Born in
BristolBristol is a city, unitary authority area and ceremonial county in South West England, with an estimated population of 433,100 for the unitary authority in 2009, and a surrounding Larger Urban Zone with an estimated 1,070,000 residents in 2007...
, he was the second son of T. Edmond Fox-Davies of
CoalbrookdaleCoalbrookdale is a village in the Ironbridge Gorge in Shropshire, England, containing a settlement of great significance in the history of iron ore smelting. This is where iron ore was first smelted by Abraham Darby using easily mined "coking coal". The coal was drawn from drift mines in the sides...
,
ShropshireShropshire is a county in the West Midlands region of England. For Eurostat purposes, the county is a NUTS 3 region and is one of four counties or unitary districts that comprise the "Shropshire and Staffordshire" NUTS 2 region. It borders Wales to the west...
.
Heraldic writings
Fox-Davies' writing on heraldry is characterised by a passionate attachment to heraldry as art, history and also as law. He was something of a polemicist, and issued one of his most controversial works,
The Right to Bear Arms, under the pseudonym
X. However, he always supported his arguments with specific historical and manuscript evidence.
He conducted a lifelong campaign against the bearing of coats of arms without lawful authority in accordance with the
Law of ArmsThe law of heraldic arms governs the "bearing of arms", that is, the possession, use or display of arms, also called coats of arms, coat armour or armorial bearings. Although it is believed that the original function of coats of arms was to enable knights to identify each other on the battlefield,...
, whether that authority was a right recognised at the
VisitationsHeraldic Visitations were tours of inspection undertaken by Kings of Arms in England, Wales and Ireland in order to regulate and register the coats of arms of nobility and gentry and boroughs, and to record pedigrees...
conducted by heralds between the 16th to 18th centuries or, more commonly, a right deriving from a specific grant entered in the records of the
College of ArmsThe College of Arms, or Heralds’ College, is an office regulating heraldry and granting new armorial bearings for England, Wales and Northern Ireland...
. In support of this campaign, he produced a directory which attempted to list all living bearers of arms in England and Wales who could prove such authority, under the title
Armorial Families. This served as an incentive to families who had not got such authority to regularise their position at the
College of ArmsThe College of Arms, or Heralds’ College, is an office regulating heraldry and granting new armorial bearings for England, Wales and Northern Ireland...
and the size of the work increased considerably until its final edition in 1929, which remains the most comprehensive published record (the records of the College of Arms being largely unpublished) of post-Victorian heraldry in Britain. Many of the arms were illustrated with specially commissioned heraldic drawings, and Fox-Davies drew on this large resource when illustrating his more systematic treatises on heraldry.
The most lavish of these was
The Art of Heraldry, which was originally conceived as an English translation of a German publication but transformed, in Fox-Davies' hands, into a largely original work specifically directed to the history, theory and practice of English heraldry, with illustrations in black and white and in colour throughout. Much of this material was re-used in a shorter, cheaper and more popular exposition of contemporary English heraldic practice,
Complete Guide to Heraldry, which proved very successful and influential. Another even shorter guide was
Heraldry Explained, but even this balanced a clear and didactic text with plentiful illustration.
Fox-Davies' emphasis on practical and officially authorised heraldry caused him to showcase mostly recent grants of arms. This was in contrast to the medieval emphasis of other scholars, of whom his most prominent critics were
Oswald BarronArthur Oswald Barron , always known as Oswald Barron, was a journalist and scholar on heraldic and genealogical subjects....
, author of the celebrated article on heraldry in the 1911 edition of the
Encyclopædia BritannicaThe Encyclopædia Britannica , published by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., is a general knowledge English-language encyclopaedia that is available in print, as a DVD, and on the Internet. It is written and continuously updated by about 100 full-time editors and more than 4,000 expert...
, and
Horace Round Horace Round was a historian and genealogist of the English medieval period. He translated the Domesday Book for Essex into contemporary English. As an expert in the history of the British peerage he was appointed Honorary Historical Adviser to the Crown.-Family and early life:Round was born on 22...
.
Round, in an essay called "Heraldry and the Gent" (eventually published in his collection
Peerage and Pedigree), ridiculed another thesis with which Fox-Davies was particularly associated, namely, that an English grant of arms was equivalent to a continental patent of nobility, and that, not only were all English armigers to that extent noblemen as well as gentlemen (if male), but that no one without an official right to bear a coat of arms could claim to be a
gentlemanThe term gentleman , in its original and strict signification, denoted a well-educated man of good family and distinction, analogous to the Latin generosus...
at all.
Fox-Davies' influence on English heraldry continued long after his death in 1928, not least because of his lawyerly insistence on backing his opinions with solid evidence, and because of the continuing popularity of his books with the general public and with expert heraldists alike. One of his admirers in the next generation was
John Brooke-LittleJohn Philip Rudolph Dominic Derek Aloysius Mary Brooke-Little, CVO, KStJ, FSA, FSG, FHS, FHG , FRHSC , FHSNZ, KM, GCGCO was an influential and popular British writer on heraldic subjects and a long-serving officer of arms at the College of Arms in London...
, Clarenceux King of Arms and founder of the Heraldry Society, who edited a new edition of
The Complete Guide to Heraldry and in many ways propagated similar, albeit somewhat less aggressively expressed, ideas.
Fox-Davies did not become a herald or pursuivant at the College of Arms, but he served as Gold Staff Officer at the Coronation of
George VGeorge V was King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions, and Emperor of India, from 6 May 1910 through the First World War until his death in 1936....
.
Non-heraldic career
Fox-Davies was brought up at
CoalbrookdaleCoalbrookdale is a village in the Ironbridge Gorge in Shropshire, England, containing a settlement of great significance in the history of iron ore smelting. This is where iron ore was first smelted by Abraham Darby using easily mined "coking coal". The coal was drawn from drift mines in the sides...
,
ShropshireShropshire is a county in the West Midlands region of England. For Eurostat purposes, the county is a NUTS 3 region and is one of four counties or unitary districts that comprise the "Shropshire and Staffordshire" NUTS 2 region. It borders Wales to the west...
. His paternal family (Davies) was of Welsh origin. His maternal grandfather was John Fox of Coalbrookdale.
Fox-Davies was educated at
Ackworth SchoolAckworth School is an independent school located in the village of High Ackworth, near Pontefract, West Yorkshire, England. It is one of eight Quaker Schools in England. The school is a member of the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference and SHMIS . The Head is Kathryn Bell, who succeeded...
,
YorkshireYorkshire is a historic county of northern England and the largest in the United Kingdom. Because of its great size in comparison to other English counties, functions have been increasingly undertaken over time by its subdivisions, which have also been subject to periodic reform...
. He does not appear to have received a university education, but was called to the Bar by
Lincoln's InnThe Honourable Society of Lincoln's Inn is one of four Inns of Court in London to which barristers of England and Wales belong and where they are called to the Bar. The other three are Middle Temple, Inner Temple and Gray's Inn. Although Lincoln's Inn is able to trace its official records beyond...
.
As a barrister, he practised on the South Eastern Circuit, at the
Old BaileyThe Central Criminal Court in England and Wales, commonly known as the Old Bailey from the street in which it stands, is a court building in central London, one of a number of buildings housing the Crown Court...
, and at the Surrey and South London Sessions. He also prepared printed cases for peerage cases in the
House of LordsThe House of Lords is the upper house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Like the House of Commons, it meets in the Palace of Westminster....
.
In addition to his writing on heraldry, he published a number of works of fiction.
He was a Conservative in politics, and unsuccessfully stood for election as
Member of ParliamentA Member of Parliament is a representative of the voters to a :parliament. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, the term applies specifically to members of the lower house, as upper houses often have a different title, such as senate, and thus also have different titles for its members,...
for
Merthyr TydfilMerthyr Tydfil was a parliamentary constituency centred on the town of Merthyr Tydfil in Glamorgan. From 1832 to 1868 it returned one Member of Parliament to the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, and in 1868 this was increased to two members...
in 1910, 1923 and 1924. He was, however, elected as a member of
Holborn Borough CouncilThe Metropolitan Borough of Holborn was a Metropolitan borough in the County of London between 1900 and 1965, when it was amalgamated with the Metropolitan Borough of St Pancras and the Metropolitan Borough of Hampstead to form the London Borough of Camden....
in London.
He married in 1901 Mary Crookes, by whom he had one son and one daughter. He lived at Warwick Gardens,
KensingtonKensington is a district of west and central London, England within the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. An affluent and densely-populated area, its commercial heart is Kensington High Street, and it contains the well-known museum district of South Kensington.To the north, Kensington is...
, London, and had chambers at 23 Old Buildings, Lincoln's Inn.
Publications
- Dod's Peerage (editor)
- Burke's Landed Gentry (editor)
- Armorial Families
- The Book of Public Arms
- The Art of Heraldry
- The Law of Names and Changes of Name
- Heraldic Badges
- Heraldry Explained
- The Complete Guide to Heraldry
- The Right to Bear Arms (published under the pseudonym "X")
- Their Majesties' Court
- The Dangerville Inheritance
- The Average Man
- The Mauleverer Murders
- The Finances of Sir John Kynnersley
- The Sex Triumphant
- The Troubles of Colonel Marwood
- The Duplicate Death
- The Testament of John Hastings
- The Ultimate Conclusion
- The Book of Public Speaking