SIR DAVID LINDSAY'S REGISTER.

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is the Book of Blazons executed by Sir David Lindsay of the Mount about the year 1542, and authenticated by the Scottish Privy Council in 1630. The following autograph of the Author accompanies the illumination of his own Arms :-" The Armes of Sir David Lindesay of the Mont, Knytht, alias Lyon King of Armes, autor of the present buke, Anno Domini 1542." As already stated, the original-which is small folio-is preserved in the Advocates' Library, a copy of Mr. Laing's valuable facsimile being deposited among the records of the Lyon Office. This curious manuscript at one time belonged to Sir James Balfour of Denmiln, Lyon King in the reign of Charles I., whose signature is attached to the attestation by the Privy Council. It came into the possession of the Faculty of Advocates, along with the other MS. collections of Sir James, in the year 1698. Besides the heraldic ensigns of many foreign Princes and various members of the Royal family of Scotland, it exhibits, in their proper colours, the armorial bearings of 114 Noblemen and about 320 of the principal families in the kingdom, unaccompanied, however, by any exterior ornaments in the shape of crest, motto, or supporters. With a few exceptions, the illuminations are given without any verbal description of the Arms, the names of the bearers being merely entered over their respective shields, thus:" Gordoun Erle Sutherland "--"Mateland of Lethyntown." The admirable drawing and brilliant colouring of the manuscript presents a very favourable specimen of the state of the arts in Scotland,

1 See Plate I.

+

in the middle of the sixteenth century. While an entire page is usually assigned to the Arms of each of the Kings and Queens of Scotland, in the case of foreign potentates the same space embraces three escutcheons (two and one). The bearings of the nobility are arranged four on every page, the shields of the Earls and higher degrees being surmounted by suitable coronets. The " principal families" are similarly placed, except in the latter portion of the volume, where a smaller shield is introduced in the centre, making five in every page; and occasionally a single coat is illuminated on the back of the leaves. Before the Arms of the principal families, three reasons are stated for including the hearings of persons convicted of treason and other serious crimes viz., 1st, To the honour of their noble predecessors. 2d, To the shame and disgrace of the guilty parties. And 3d, As a warning to others to avoid the like offences.

There is no existing Lyon Register pertaining to the interval between 1542 and 1672. During the first fifty years of that long period, there was no legislative enactment on the subject of armorial bearings, which may perhaps sufficiently account for the absence of a Record; but armed with the distinct and simple provisions of the Statute of 1592, surely the Lyon-King of that period could not have failed to compile an official Register of Blazons. In the "Return" made by the Court of Session to the House of Lords, in 1740, on the subject of subsisting Scottish Peerages, special reference is made to the imperfect state of the ancient national records.

REGISTERS DESTROYED BY FIRE, ETC.

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"Not to mention other misfortunes," to use the language of the Report, "it appears, by an examination, to be found amongst the Records of Parliament, 8th January 1661, that of the registers which, having been carried to England during the usurpation of Cromwell, were bringing back from London, after the Restoration, by sea, 85 hogsheads were in a storm shifted out of the frigate, the Eagle, into another vessel, which sunk with those records at sea." It is, of course, by no means impossible that some of the heraldic registers of the days of Queen Mary and her two successors may have found a place among the "85 hogsheads" which thus unfortunately perished in the waters of the German Ocean; but we know for certain, from the report of the case of Murray (24th June 1778), that a portion at least of these same records were indebted to another of the elements for their destruction. In answer to various questions suggested by the Lord Ordinary (Hailes) in that case, it was stated by the Procurator-Fiscal of the Lyon-Court, inter alia, that most of the ancient records of Arms were traditionally reported to have been destroyed by fire, but that there were still preserved in the Lyon Office several old manuscript books of Heraldry, which proved of great use in the matriculation of armorial bearings. Arnot thus refers to the traditionary conflagration in question:- Upwards of a hundred years ago (ie., cir. 1670), it happened the records of the Lyon Office to be burned; upon which an Act of Parliament was made (1672, c. 21), ordaining all the nobility and gentry

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1 Robertson's Proceedings relating to the Peerage of Scotland, p. 220.