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IRREGULAR PROCEDURE

Speaking generally, there is probably not very much to object to in the preceding statement, but it cannot be denied that, both before and after the year 1819, the practice of the Lyon Office exhibited numerous instances of "heraldic anomalies," to which particular reference will hereafter be made. Various writers have alluded to these official irregularities in pretty strong terms; in some cases, indeed, the strictures appear to have been unnecessarily severe. Thus, within the last twenty years, it has been asserted that "ignorance of aught but the exaction of fees, displayed in a hundred capricious vagaries, is the ruling characteristic of the establishment, not one member of which, from the Lyon to his meanest cub, has ever produced a work or exhibited any skill in the sciences of Heraldry, Genealogy, or the cognate accomplishments!"

Arnot, writing in 1779, makes the following remarks in the course of his notice of the Lyon Office:—“ The office of Lord Lyon has, of late, been held as a sinecure, in so much that it has not been thought necessary, that this officer should reside in, or ever visit the nation. The business, therefore, is entirely committed to deputies, who manage it in such a manner, that, in a country where pedigree is the best ascertained of any in the world, the national record of armorial bearings, and memoirs concerning the respective families inserted along with them, are far from being the pure repository of truth. Indeed, there have of late been instances of genealogies enrolled in the books of the Lyon Court, and coats of arms, with supporters and other marks of dis

OF THE LYON OFFICE.

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tinction, being bestowed in such a manner as to throw a ridicule on the science of Heraldry."

1

An eminent legal antiquary of our own day has, on more than one occasion, expressed his opinion with respect to the subject in question. In the year 1818, he says, "The extraordinary forbearance and laxity of our practice in matters of arms and pedigree has long been a subject of complaint, and may, to the extent to which it has now arrived, be assuredly deserving of some reprehension. No statutory enactment has succeeded that of Charles I. in the year 1672, which is now nearly obsolete; and hence--independently of other circumstances -the greatest anarchy prevails in all that is connected with the rudest principles of Honour.' Without entering more deeply, at present, into a point which I have promised at some future period to discuss, and certainly without intending any particular reflection, I cannot help in general remarking how singularly our policy on this head is contrasted with the stern and rigorous ordin ances of other countries." The same learned author, in a later work, refers to the "old and salutary form" of recording Peerage creations in the Lyon's Registers, which, he remarks, "have been so miserably kept and purloined "being "now in ancient matters a mere blank-deformed, as they besides are, by every incongruity and misrepresentation, at a modern period.'

23

These are, no doubt, very serious charges, but it must be borne in mind that, blameworthy though it unques

1 History of Edinburgh, p. 493. 2 Riddell's Saltfoot Controversy, p. 121.

3 Scottish Peerage and Consistorial Low, ii. 629-30.

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TENDENCY TO IMPROVEMENT.

tionably is, the procedure which has called them forth has not been peculiar to Scotland. Whatever may have been the character of the practice at a later period, it would appear that towards the end of the sixteenth century, many very scandalous abuses were perpetrated by the English Heralds; and, during the reigns of Louis xv. and his successor, an open and shameless venality is known to have prevailed in the French College of Arms. In the case of the Lyon Office, however, there has been a very decided tendency, for some time past, to cultivate the rules and principles of that earlier age, to which we are indebted for a system of Scottish Heraldry, whose purity has certainly not been surpassed in any other corner of Christendom.

Deferring for subsequent consideration the question of heraldic Succession, as involved in the claims and competitions that may occur before the Lyon Court, and also that of the right to wear Supporters, which are both referred to in Mr. Tait's Deposition, it is now proposed to make some observations, under separate sections, on the state of the existing Register of Arms, the mode of differencing Cadets, the practice usually followed in "composing" new coats armorial, the Fees charged for Grants and Matriculations, and the statutory Penalties imposed on the unlawful assumption of heraldic ensigns.

SECTION 1.- -EXISTING REGISTER OF ARMS.

The earliest Register of Arms now extant in Scotland

1 See Appendix to Noble's History of the College of Arms.