Arthur Charles Fox-Davies - Name and Arms of Fox-Davies

Name and Arms of Fox-Davies

Fox-Davies added his mother's maiden name to his own by deed poll on his nineteenth birthday in 1890, thereby changing his own surname from Davies to Fox-Davies. In 1894, his father took the same course for himself and the rest of the family, assuming the additional surname of Fox (hence Fox-Davies) by Royal Licence.

Neither the Davies nor the Fox families were entitled to bear a coat of arms. In 1905, when Fox-Davies was 34 and already well-advanced in his career as a writer on heraldic and genealogical subjects, he organised grants of arms to his father and in respect of the family of his mother. The arms granted to his father on 26 December 1905 were a plain (not quartered) coat for all the descendants of the grantee's own father Charles Davies (Fox-Davies' paternal grandfather). One day later, on 27 December 1905, arms were granted for the family of his maternal grandfather John Fox (who had died in 1893) which consisted only of two daughters, one of whom was Fox-Davies' mother.

The paternal arms of Fox-Davies (formerly Davies) granted in 1905 were: "Sable, a demi sun in splendour issuant in base or, a chief dancetee of the last" with, for crest, "on a wreath of the colours, a demi dragon rampant gules collared or, holding in the dexter claw a hammer proper". The motto, in Welsh, was "Da Fydd" (meaning "Good Faith", and punning on "Davies")

The arms granted in 1905 to the maternal family of Fox were: "Per pale argent and gules, three foxes sejeant counterchanged" with, for crest, "on a wreath of the colours a demi stag winged gules collared argent."

In a letter to his father shortly after the grants of arms, Fox-Davies explained that he had deliberately avoided grant of a quartered shield for Fox-Davies, preferring to establish separate shields for the families of his father and of his mother. However, since his mother Maria Jane Fox-Davies outlived him (dying in 1937), the result was that Fox-Davies never displayed a shield quarterly of Fox and Fox-Davies, but only his father's plain coat. The same letter also shows that Fox-Davies was considering one day obtaining grants of arms for his wife's families of Crookes and Proctor, so that his children might bear these coats as additional quarterings. He said: "These things are a case of little by little." His wife, Mary Ellen Blanche Crookes, was the daughter of Septimus Wilkinson Crookes and his wife Anne Blanche Harriet Proctor, daughter of Richard Fellowes Proctor. The letter shows that Fox-Davies did not have enough money to obtain further grants of arms at that point, however.

In 1921, Fox-Davies obtained the grant of a heraldic badge, which was "a crown vallery gules".