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The arms depicted here
represent various aspects of the armiger's family heritage, which is
primarily French, Irish, English and Scots, and thus feature
well-known Western European heraldic components.
The shield is composed of two main elements: the saltire azure on a
field or, which represents the armiger's descent from the Silver
family of Scotland, and (charged in escutcheon) the eagle sable on a
field or, which is the historic heraldic emblem of the Daigle/Daigre
family, originally from the city of Aigre, in the Charente region of
France.
The armiger is a direct descendant of Olivier Daigre, who emigrated to
the North American colony of Nouvelle France in 1663, and is
recognised as the original progenitor of a widespread family group.
This branch of the family later settled in the region known as
Madawaska, in what is now northern Maine, and founded the towns of
Daigle and Saint David, from which latter place the armiger's surname
is derived.
During the second half of the 17th century, Olivier Daigre (ca.
1643-1695), laboureur, and a number of his male descendants farmed
some 2,000 acres in the Acadian region known as the Grand Pré, near
the French colonial city formerly known as Port-Royal (now Annapolis
Royal, Nova Scotia). Thus, the arms granted to Nova Scotia by King
Charles I have also served as a model for the armiger's bearings,
which echo in several ways the composition of those devised for the
colony in 1625.
The armiger's crest is composed of a stag's head affronty (which
further represents the Scots origins of the Silver family, ancestors
of the armiger’s paternal grandmother), bearing between its antlers an
annulet Or, a depiction of the gold annulus worn by members of the
Roman equestrian (knightly) class, ancient Latin prototype of the
modern European orders of knighthood and merit.
The motto, ATTENDRE ET ESPÉRER (To Wait and to Hope) was adopted by
the armiger in homage to the great French writer Alexandre Dumas, père,
author of Le Comte de Monte Cristo, from the closing lines of which
work it was drawn.
In recognition of the armiger's independent writing, research and
document preservation in the domain of French chivalric history, on
December 31, 2003, he was appointed a Chevalier de l'Ordre National du
Mérite (Knight of the National Order of Merit), by a special decree of
then-President Jacques Chirac of France. A depiction of the insignia
of a knight of this order is thus pendant below his shield, and a
knight's helm (affronty, with visor open) rests upon the same.
As a result of his ongoing work in the realm of Napoleonic history, in
2006 the armiger was named a Fellow of the International Napoleonic
Society. In recognition of his independent research on modern Catholic
beliefs and practices in rural China, in 2008 he was elected a Fellow
of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland. In 2010, he
was granted the degree of Master of Theological Studies (MTS) by the
Harvard University School of Divinity, where he pursued a
concentration in the History of Christianity, with a minor focus in
East Asian Religions. |
