This is the first class in the three-part warranting series. Please read through the page, then take the quiz that is linked at the bottom. If you have any questions, please reach out to the Coracle Herald.
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When you become a local herald, there’s a lot more involved than just taking people’s submissions. The office ranges from just being a sounding board for people trying to figure out what name or device they want, to being the ceremonial representative of your group, and needing to maintain the dignity and integrity required thereof. Being a local herald requires patience, dedication, responsibility, and the ability to maintain confidentiality no matter how tempting it might be to reveal the information.
In this article we’re going to cover the office of the local herald from top to bottom, inside out, so that you can walk away with confidence that you would be able to do the job in such a way as to make your group grateful to have you.
There are 4 main duties that every local herald has to be aware of. They are education, reports, submissions, and voice work. There are also 2 peripheral duties you should be aware of, which are commenting, and consulting. Let’s start with the big 4.
Education. It is the responsibility of the local herald to make sure that his/her group is receiving the opportunity to learn about heraldry. The most common way of fulfilling this duty is to teach a class at one of your meetings. Often it is a ‘basic heraldry’ class, but you don’t have to do just that. See what the needs of your group are. Have most of the members been around a while, but don’t have anything submitted? Then maybe you’d want to do a ‘how to pick a name’ class, or maybe a ‘how to design a device’ class. Maybe everyone has their stuff registered, and there are a lot of scribes in your group. Then you could do a ‘heraldry for scribes’ class. There are endless possibilities, based on what would work best in your particular situation. Don’t be afraid to ask other heralds to teach, either. You don’t have to be the only one who does. So if there is a herald that you know that is really good at something, ask them to come teach a class about it. If you provide the information, people will listen. You can never have too much learning, and an educated populace will make your job much easier.
Voice. Voice work can be a large part of your duties, or a very small part. It all depends on the activities of your individual group. Almost all groups will need the herald to make announcements, and help with the lysts at any local events. It is also good courtesy to offer to help at other events, if you enjoy doing voice. If you are the herald for a barony, however, then voice gets a little more involved. Being a baronial herald means that you will need to herald court from time to time. If you know that this is the case, then you should make sure you have a pen and several index cards. It is also handy to have access to the Order of Precedence online, so that you can make sure you are calling people in to court by their correct title. Your baron/ baroness will provide you with whatever business they have, and you will need to collect the cards from the populace (court box) as well. Your coronets will most likely establish with you whatever system works best for them. Just remember to be flexible. They are your boss, don’t forget! There is also a certain confidentiality involved in court. You will often be privy to information that others don’t have. You can compare this to lawyer/client privilege. Whatever your coronets tell you, if it is ‘under the tabard’, you need to make absolutely sure that the information stays private. The one nice thing about voice, is that you are not required to be the one actually doing it. You are only required to make sure that it happens. So if you happen to know someone who has a great voice and enjoys using it, feel free to ask them to do it!
Reports. Reports are far and away one of the most important things for a local herald. There are two main facets to your reports. The first is your quarterly report. This is what you turn in to Triskele at the beginning of each and every quarter. It basically just tells them what you’ve been doing in the office over the last 3 months. It covers what submissions you had, any awards that members of your group received, any heraldic activities you did, etc. It’s very important that you turn this report in. Triskele is required to report to their superiors as to what’s been going on in the kingdom, and it’s a lot harder to do that when locals don’t turn in their reports. It’s also a back up for the O.P. If you make sure to turn it in with any and all awards that members of your group received, then Triskele has another source in case the court report should get lost, or not turned in. This one little thing can make a world of difference for your clients, and it only takes about 15 minutes of your time. The other extremely important report is your court report. This is directed mainly at baronial heralds. This basically just tells what awards were given out and to whom. Again, this is crucial in order for the O.P. to be correct. If you herald court, then you are responsible for filling out and submitting a court report form. Also, if you have someone else herald the court for you, you still need to make sure the report gets done. It’s your group and your event, so in the end you are the one responsible. Nothing upsets people more than to have received an award, and for there to be no record of it. Imagine if you received a grant of arms, but the court report was never turned in so you were never credited with actually getting it. When it’s time to write your reports, both can be filed directly on the Trimaris website. You simply fill out the appropriate web-form using the drop down menus and filling in the appropriate blanks. Once you hit submit, a copy will be emailed to the appropriate people, as well as to you. Be sure to forward your copy of the quarterly report to your group’s seneschal, so that they have your information for their report. You should also forward a copy of the court report to your Baronial nobles, so they have a record. Filing your reports takes very little time to complete, and yet is so important to the success of your job.
Submissions. Submissions tend to be a very intimidating subject. People hear that word and think ‘oh no, I don’t know nearly enough to be able to handle that!’. Believe it or not, they are not half as difficult as you might think. The first step is being a sounding board. This is your chance to make sure your clients are on the right track. If someone comes up and says ‘hey, I found a name in this baby book…’ then you can sit down with them, gently explain why we don’t use those books, and point them in the direction of what we do use. The same thing goes for devices. If someone says ‘hey, what do you think of this’ and it’s a black bird on a green field, again you can sit down with them and explain that we don’t allow a color on a color. If you can redirect them before they get set on what they want, you can save yourself and them a lot of headaches in the long run. Don’t ever forget that you have the power to determine how someone will view heralds. If you are polite, friendly, and respectful of their design, regardless of its quality, you will make the process a lot better for them and improve the reputations of heralds everywhere! It’s also important to remember that you are not alone in this process. There are a team of Kingdom deputies whose job is to consult with submitters. If you do not feel able to assist a submitter with everything they need, don’t hesitate to reach out to Ensign, Archive, Lymphad, or even Triskele for help.
The second part of the process is accepting the submissions. You have a checklist that you should be going down to make sure everything is in order before you send it out.
First: does it have all the necessary forms to send to Lymphad? For armory (devices and badges) it should be 1 color form. For names, it’s 1 form and 1 set of documentation. (Please remember to advise the submitter to keep a copy of each form/document, and that you should keep a copy for the local office). If it doesn’t have all that, you should sit with the client and figure out the best way to complete it.
Second: run it through the insta-boing checklist. Look for the things that would be glaring mistakes, so that you can catch and fix them now, rather than wasting 2-3 months for them to go to kingdom and then get returned.
Third: pass them on. It is a good rule of thumb to not take money from your clients until their submission is complete. All funds should be sent directly to the Kingdom Exchequer with a note stating that it is for a heraldic submission. If Epay is available, encourage submitters to make use of that method. As soon as the submission is complete, you need to send it to kingdom, to the Hulk Herald. Be sure to include a note stating how the client has paid so that the Hulk Herald can confirm with the exchequer office that payment has been received.
Fourth: working with clients on returns and acceptances. As soon as you know if a client’s item has been passed or returned, you need to inform them. If it has been accepted, look forward to a very happy reception to your news. If it’s a return, take a few minutes beforehand to look over the reasons, make sure you understand them, and be prepared with a few suggestions or ideas to help fix the problem. By taking care of this promptly, you can help the client to resubmit as soon as possible and decrease the amount of time for the overall process.
Now that we’ve covered the big 4, let’s go over the other 2 main duties. The first one is going to be consulting. This goes hand in hand with being a sounding board and working with submissions. Here are a few tips to help you out.
When you take office, one of the first things you should do is take inventory of any reference materials and files that your predecessor gave you. You’re going to need to be familiar with these in order to be able to help your clients.
You’ll need to make yourself available. A herald should always be approachable, so that his/her clients can feel free to come and ask their questions.
When they do, don’t be afraid to say that you don’t know the answer. Nobody knows everything. The key is to know where you can find the answer. Your clients will respect you far more if you tell them that you don’t know but you’ll find out, then if you make something up or tell them you can’t help them.
Always remember that it’s not your items that you are consulting on. These are things that someone has spent a lot of time, effort, and thought on, and deserve respect. No matter what your personal opinion may be, you need to be objective and look at it from a rules standpoint. Will it pass or not? You always have to remember to be considerate of your client’s feelings.
Be in stock on all your supplies. There’s going to be various supplies that you’ll need to have with you whenever you might be ‘in office’. We’ll cover these in a later section.
The other duty you need to try and take care of is commenting. Every local herald should make an attempt to participate in commentary on internal submission letters. If you don’t feel you know enough to contribute, then just read over what everybody else says. At the very least, you’re going to learn a whole lot about what makes a good submission and what makes a bad one. And as we discussed earlier, there’s no such thing as too much education.
OSCAR. There is one more tool that you should have when it comes to submissions, consulting, and commenting. The Online System for Commenting And Response, or OSCAR, is the method the Society College of Arms uses to process submissions. As part of that system, we have a portion that is dedicated to our internal Kingdom process. All heralds within Trimaris are welcome to sign up for a login so that they can stay informed about the submissions from their group and where they are in the process. This is where commentary takes place, and is a great way to learn more about submissions in general. OSCAR can be found online at oscar.sca.org.
Contrary to popular belief, you don’t have to be an expert on heraldry to be a herald. It’s all about knowing where to get the information you need. There are lots and lots of places and people where you can get all the help you might need. You just need to know where to look! Here are some of the best places:
SCA.org. Our society website is actually a great source for basic information. The College of Arms has a great deal of information on the site. You can find SENA (the rules for submissions), the Administrative Handbook, and lots of other great tools. It is very important to read over the submission rules and the handbook when you first take office, to make sure that you are knowledgeable on the current rules and standards. There are also several names articles, as well as links to other good sites, namely the Medieval Names Archive. It’s probably the best place to start when you have a question, and then work out from there. Explore it well, explore it often.
St Gabriel’s. This website belongs to a group of heralds who specialize in researching period practices. While they no longer take requests for personal reports, their past letters and articles are still available. This is a great resource for someone who wants to make their name as authentic as possible.
E-groups. There are several e-groups out there pertaining to SCA heraldry. Most are active and easily accessible on Facebook and Discord. It starts with our kingdom group, Heralds of Trimaris. This is where information pertaining to those involved with the College of Heralds in Trimaris will be posted. It is strongly recommended that you join this group so that you will be aware of any announcements from Triskele or their deputies that pertain to you or your office. This is also a good first place to post questions. There are several groups that are Society wide. If you are new to heraldry, Baby Heralds of the SCA is recommended. This group is especially designed for those just learning. Another highly recommended group is SCA Heraldry Chat. This one has a very high number of heralds, and the response time on questions is usually exceptionally quick. There are a number of specialized groups out there as well, that are tailored to specific interests such as court heraldry or sign heraldry. All of the heraldry groups on Facebook are great learning tools, and are very helpful. When posting questions, try to have as many details ready as you can. Senior heralds definitely like to encourage people to think through and help find the answers!
Other Heralds. Your friendly neighborhood heralds are one of the best sources for help you have. They’ve been there, done that, gotten the t-shirt. If you haven’t already noticed, heralds LOVE to talk. If you ask another herald a question, they will probably fall all over themselves thinking of the 20 different ways to answer you. We’re here to help each other.
Deputies can be the best thing that happens to you. Deputies can handle things at meetings you may miss, they can help make sure your water goblet is always full when you’re doing voice; overall, they just help take some of the weight off of your shoulders. When you’re in a small group, a deputy may not be that important. If the volume is low enough, you can handle everything yourself. In the larger groups, however, having one or two deputies is a big help. They can take care of all the little stuff that doesn’t need your particular attentions. Not to mention that having someone with you in court, to hold the scroll case or your goblet is an immeasurable help. Another advantage to having a deputy is that if for some reason you should ever become unable to hold your office, there is already somebody trained who can take the job should it become absolutely necessary.
The other thing to keep in mind about deputies is that you need to be very careful in picking them. Not everybody is a good match for the office. You want somebody who is open-minded and flexible. They need to be patient and have good people skills. They should have a desire to learn. The world of SCA heraldry is constantly changing, and you have to be able to learn and adapt. Your choice should also have a good dose of responsibility. The local herald is the only herald much of the populace ever interacts with. They need to be able to represent the College in a suitable manner, not only in how they deal with their clients, but also with their coronets (if they have them) and with other members of the College. The office also deals with money. This makes responsibility imperative.
One more thing to keep in mind. If somebody comes to you and says that they would like to become one of your deputies – you have reservations about them actually holding the office, but you know that they have awesome voice/research/people skills – don’t automatically rule them out because they don’t meet all the qualifications. It is possible to have deputies that do specific things and are never in line to succeed to the office. That doesn’t make them any less important or useful, they just need to be put in a position to maximize their abilities, while keeping in mind their limitations.
There are lots and lots of things that you could have to help you do the job of the local herald. Here we’re going to try to pare them down to what you really need.
A file box or carry-case. This is something to transport paperwork to and from meetings and events. It can be a simple tote bag, or an actual file box with a handle. It’s a matter of whatever suits you best.
Markers. Markers are a herald’s best friend! The brand that is accepted on submissions is Crayola Classic Color Markers. These last the longest and are the truest in color. You should have a box of large ones and a box of small ones. And yes, the one with the most markers wins!
Forms, Forms, and More Forms. The main ones you are going to need are name submission, device submission, and badge submission. You’ll need lots of these. (Make sure you are using the most recent version available on the Kingdom website!) Another good one to have is some type of ‘doodle’ form. Something with lots of smaller shields on it so that a person can draw several different ideas for a device on one page in order to compare them.
A Journal. Keeping a heraldic journal can help you out tremendously. It lets you keep track of all the things you do in regards to the office, so when you go to write your quarterly report, you’re not stuck trying to remember everything you did for the past three months. A simple composition book works great.
Handbooks. There are a couple different handbooks that you should make sure you have access to. The first is your kingdom college of heralds’ handbook. This will tell a lot of general information, and a lot that is specific to your individual kingdom. The next is the College of Arms Administrative Handbook. This goes over all the general rules and procedures relating to the College of Arms as a whole. The last is the Standards for Evaluation of Names & Armory handbook. This one covers all the rules specific to submissions. All of these documents can be found online. It is recommended to have the bookmarked on your device(s) so you can reference them quickly and easily.
Pictorial Dictionary. This is not a required supply, but it is a highly suggested one. This is a great source for people to look through and get ideas for charges they might want on their device. It is also a great source for people who are not artistically inclined. It is now available as a website that you can bookmark, but a printed copy is also very useful.
Index Cards. This will probably sound fairly silly, but a good herald should never be without a least a small stack of index cards and a pen. When you’re a herald, you are constantly being called on to make announcements, deliver a message, etc. Index cards are great for that, and especially for when you’re doing court business and an unexpected item comes up. In some ways a herald should be just like the boy scouts -always prepared!
When you agree to become your group’s local herald, there are a couple prerequisites that you should keep in mind.
You should have at least a working knowledge of basic heraldry. If you’ve taken the office by default, take a basic heraldry class as soon as possible. With some foundation knowledge under your belt, you’ll feel much more confident dealing with your clients.
You will need to take the warranting classes. They are taught by the Coracle Herald, and are offered both online and in person.
If possible, take the pursuivant classes & quizzes. They are not that difficult and will make sure that you understand the core concepts. It’s not required, but it is highly recommended that all heralds take them.
Don’t forget the old saying: ‘a mind is a terrible thing to waste’. From time to time the kingdom college will hold a symposium with a full day of heraldry classes. These are a great opportunity to meet other heralds, and broaden your heraldic knowledge. In addition, there is a Known World Heralds & Scribes Symposium that is held every year in June. These rotate around the country, but if you have an opportunity to attend one it is highly recommended. They also now do a virtual symposium every January for those not able to travel! You should never think that taking 1 basic heraldry class will cover everything you’ll ever need to know. Heraldry is a widely varied subject and can take quite a long time to master. Even the experts continue to take classes. A different teacher might have a new and unique way of looking at something that you really like. Or maybe they will cover an aspect of the topic that you never even would have thought of. There’s no such thing as too much education.