I was surprised a few years back about the name Hatton having such history and a coat of arms. As someone who rejects aristocracy, pageantry and heraldry1; a coat of arms has little appeal to me and my sense of identity beyond that of gimmickry but indeed that’s how I intend to use ours.
I make handmade cards and I’ve enjoyed calligraphy from when I got my first calligraphy set at the age of 10. When I’m making cards and my desk is covered in scraps of paper, cutting tools, embellishments and quilling tools – then I definitely feel this pursuit is under the category of crafts as opposed to ‘art’. Well, I wanted to widen the scope and complete the package with wax-sealed envelopes. I was looking for what would be the best was seal design to use and then it struck me that people use their family insignia and bingo, I discovered our coat of arms.

The three garbs are a prominent feature and probably, like me, you’re thinking what is a garb. Well, having not learned English in the middle ages, I think we’re forgiven. A garb (from the French gerbe) just means a wheatsheaf. Now, if the closest thing you’ve come to a wheatsheaf is stepping in one of the 140 pubs in Britain that bear the name, that is again understandable. But for most people who worked land, in the largely agrarian society of the middle ages, the garb was a recognisable symbol and this is an important feature for a coat of arms.
The chevron (the yellow upside down ‘v’) is a common shape used on shield (one of the ‘ordinaries’) and a leading theory is that it represented a military scarf on a shield. It’s resemblance to a roof truss meant it did later acquire the meaning of “protection, granted to one who has achieved some notable enterprise”.
It must be noted though that there are quite a few variants of the coats of arms as illustrated below. To be honest, when I was deciding which variant would be the one to adopt, I couldn’t justify the time to research so just picked the version I preferred the look of.

Just as there are many blazons, the are a few variations of the spelling of the name and there are a few variations of the mottoes associated with the name and coat of arms. The mottoes identified to date are:
- Quid ni tandem (Why did he not at last (?))
- Nil conscire sib (To be unconscious of guilt)
- Virtus tutissima cassis (Virtue is the safest helmet)
- Pax (Peace)
The name Hatton has found it’s way across the pond to Canada and American states like Kentucky, Indiana and Ohio but its highest ‘market share’ is where it originated in the British Isles, ranking 800th for usage. The actual origins of the word are not definitively known. It could be a ‘habitational’ name i.e. a surname given to someone from a particular place. For a bit of context here, the use of surnames really came about after the Norman Conquest in 1066 when England experienced a huge population growth and people needed to be more accurately identified. Eventually over the next couple of centuries, surnames became hereditary.
Identifying a migrant agricultural worker as the place they came from via their surname became commonplace and soon James of Hatton would have become James Hatton. There are a few places bearing the name Hatton and even a place in Derbyshire, the county of my birth and residence. Wow, after all the places I lived and the extent of my ancestry reaching as far afield as South America, imagine tracing the inheritance of my surname to a place just down the road. Incidentally the etymology of Hatton is believed to be the Old English word hoed (meaning heathland) and tun (meaning settlement).

The oldest ancestor of the Hatton seems to be Herluin II d’Amiens (890 AD) with from what I can make out, the earliest clear usage of the surname being Wolfric Hatton in 1054. Antony, M. (1860, p.150) states “The noble family were descended from Sir Adam Hatton, of Hatton, co. Cheshire, grandson of Wulfrid, brother of Nigel, who was lord of Halton in the same county, by the gift of Hugh Lupus, Earl of Chester, soon after the Conquest”. There’s a pic from the book on the left. I’ll confess to being pleased when I saw the listing for ‘Hatten’ as being a mis-spelling of Hatton and not the other way round. It must be somewhat anti-climactic to trace the etymological and genealogical origins of one’s surname back to a mis-spelling.

There are other documented origins of the name such as in Bernard Burke (1879, p.754) as shown right (click to expand). One branch of the family name (Hatton of Clonard) is discussed here with the genealogy traced back to family who settled in Wexford. I don’t know if I am personally descended from that lineage or not – doubtful. Beyond this book, there have been some notable-ish people who bore the name such as:
Christopher Hatton (1632-1705) who was an English aristocrat and diplomat who was 1st Viscount Hatton, who succeeded his father who was 1st Baron Hatton, and he was the governor of Guernsey in 1670
Ann Julia Hatton (1764-1838) who was an English poet from Worcester
John Liptrot Hatton (1809-1886) who was an English composer, pianist, and singer from Liverpool
Marion Hatton (1835-1905) who was a New Zealand suffragist from Preston, England
Sir Christopher Hatton (1540-1591) who was an English politician that became Lord Chancellor of England during the reign of Elizabeth I of England.
Without any records of descendance, these are just names to me but when I contemplate who these people are and imagine their lives, it does prompt me to consider taking up a little bit of genealogy or even just a few conversations with my Dad or uncle. To be honest, I knew little of my paternal grandmother who died shortly after my brother’s birth and little of my paternal grandfather other than he built houses, liked to gamble and had to be discouraged from singing rude songs when drunk at weddings. I know little about my maternal heritage beyond my mother’s siblings.
If I do take the time to document any findings, I’ll link to it and hopefully, back to the catalyst of this little foray into genealogy, if I do manage to get a wax seal, I’ll probably note it somewhere.
Update (16/06/2022): I did eventually get a wax seal…
References
Bernard Burke (1848) The general armory of England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales; comprising a registry of armorial bearings from the earliest to the present time
Available online at https://archive.org/details/generalarmoryofe00burk/page/n31/mode/2up
Bernard Burke (1879) A genealogical and heraldic history of the landed gentry of Great Britain & Ireland
Available online at https://archive.org/details/genealogicalhera01byuburk/page/754/mode/2up
English Heritage (2016) Why do we have surnames?
Available online at https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/inspire-me/blog/blog-posts/norman-saxon-surname
Mark Anthony (1860) Patronymica Britannica : a dictionary of the family names of the United Kingdom
Available online at: https://archive.org/details/patronymicabrita00lowe
- Heraldry may be defined ” the art of blazoning’, assigning, and marshalling coat armour,” or more particularly ” the art of arranging and explaining in proper terms all that relates or appertains to the bearing of Arms, Crests, Badges, Quarterings, and other hereditary marks of honour (Burke B., 1948, p. v) ↩︎