Russell and Carol - hayle and hearty

Discovered today that Canterbury has Cornish Choughs in its coat of arms

The arms of the City of Canterbury, featuring Cornish Choughs pic.twitter.com/WCkJ1tEyUt

— Cornish Bygone Times (@PRScredda) July 19, 2013

This seems to be due to Canterbury having adopted them from the Arms of Thomas Becket.

According to http://www.bowdlers.com/index.php?page=the-chough

The original name for a chough was a beckit, which allowed canting heraldry for the City of Canterbury (right) with its commemoration of its martyr Saint Thomas à Beckett. These arms were based on those attributed to Beckett - “Argent, three Cornish choughs (beckits) proper two and one” – Tomas A'Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1162-70.

According to http://www.theheraldrysociety.com/articles/fictional_attributed/beckets_...

Heraldry and the Martyrdom of Archbishop Thomas Becket (1) By Cecil R Humphery-Smith, OBE, FSA, FHS Coat of Arms No. 85, January 1971.

It seemed to me that a general interest in commemorating the eighth centenary of the martyrdom of St Thomas of Canterbury provided an excuse for discussing the meagre heraldry surrounding his murder on the 29th December 1170. Indeed at first sight this paper may appear to be a slight ado about nothing for there is little heraldry associated with the murder of St Thomas of Canterbury and what there is is confused and doubtful. Precisely whether or not a crow did stray into the Cathedral and peck about in the sanguine chaos, staining legs and beak and giving rise to the species pyrrhocorax graculus is not known. Some have it that the chough gained its colouring in like fashion during some Arthurian slaughter half a millennium before. There seems to be a certain problem of carts and horses connected with that of the term beckit. As a soubriquet for the Cornish chough it does not appear in print until the nineteenth century and I can find no official use of the term.(2) The late Hugh Stanford London suggested to me that the pun was achieved by the description of the three choughs sable leggit and beckit gules and the French term bequé in early blazons. No doubt these could be investigated. It is, however, doubtful whether Thomas was called Becket during his lifetime.(3) His father, Gilbert the Brewer and Malt Merchant of London, appears to have had the nickname becket because of his nose and Thomas appears as a' Becket, son of Becket, in references after his death, presumably to distinguish him from other saints of the name. Indeed, at the Reformation, many churches dedicated to him were transferred to the patronage of Thomas the Apostle.