The Prior and Murray-Prior coat of arms

This is an old revision of the document!

Families with the status of gentry and above, were entitled to their own coat of arms.¹⁾ The photo far left is a faded painting of the Prior crest.²⁾
The next is a drawing of the Prior crest with an explanation³⁾
This drawing of the crest is by TLM-P.⁴⁾ It appears that TLM-P had tried to find out what the Prior coat of arms were, and got it slightly wrong. On 23 November 1885, he wrote about the crest in his Family Bible ⁵⁾ Part of what he wrote is hard to read now, but appears to describe his crest as he drew it: that the family arms are ‘Sa. on a bend arm, three chevronels gn. between stars of eight point wavy’. Motto: Malo mori quam foedari. Seat: Rathdowney, Queens County. This all was part of his determination to assert his family's gentry status and despite the family no longer owning Rathdowney.

TLM-P achieved confirmation of his family's gentry status in October 1888 when, as described in Burke's entry 'Prior of Netherfield' in his Landed Gentry book, TLM-P 'obtained confirmation of Arms from the Ulster King of Arms 1888 - Quarterly 1 and 4, vert on a bend ermine three chevronels gules (PRIOR); 2 and 3 per fess gules and or four mullets countercharged (MURRAY).' You really have to be into heraldry to understand - though a copy can be see here: Grant of arms. Or you can look at the following photo of a section of the parchment scroll sent to TLM-P and which confirmed the M-P coat of arms. As seen, it retained the Prior motto, translated as 'death before dishonour'. The first photo below is of the parchment scroll acquired by TLM-P; the second is a close-up of the M-P coat of arms.⁶⁾

Another depiction of family arms in one of TLM-P's family bible.⁷⁾

Another version of the coat of arms appears in Charles Low, A Roll of Australian Arms, Corporate and Personal:Borne by Lawful Authority Rigby, 1971, p.145-46, although it is hard to argue that any but the scroll sent by the Ulster King of Arms is the correct version.