Officially Recognised: the Lyon Court’s Rolls in the Gazette

Between 1951 and 2005 the Court of the Lord Lyon published its Rolls of the Chiefs, and Heads of Territorial Houses in The Edinburgh Gazette: thirty-six notices of the names it had “Officially Recognised”. They recognised names and territorial designations. They were never a register of baronies. A mark against a name showed a minor baron, usually without naming the barony. Not one notice uses the word “feudal”.

The Lyon Court’s Rolls

The Court of the Lord Lyon compiled a Roll of its own, the “Rolls of the Chiefs, and Heads of Territorial Houses”. From 1951 to 2005 it published that Roll in The Edinburgh Gazette, Scotland’s edition of The Gazette, the United Kingdom’s official public record, in thirty-six notices.¹² Each is headed as a list of “the Styles of Ordinary Names wherein they have been Officially Recognised by the Lord Lyon King of Arms in matriculating for them Arms ‘of that description’ (i.e. of the names or titles specified)”.³

A baron is on such a Roll as the head of a house. Sir Thomas Innes of Learney, the Lord Lyon who wrote the fullest study of the Baronage’s dress, put it plainly: “The Feudal Baron was Chef de Famille”, French for head of the family.⁴

The first notice, of 16 January 1951, continued an unpublished roll “for the years 1866-1948 compiled for the Lord Chamberlain’s Department in 1948”.⁵ The notices kept no fixed schedule; once almost six years passed without one.⁶ The Lyon Clerk signed each.⁷ The last appeared on 19 August 2005, and no explanation of why the series stopped has been found.⁸

These were official acts, and the Gazette treats them as such. Its own record files the notices under “State”, as “Change of Name and/or Arms”.⁹ On the printed page they are headed “Court of the Lord Lyon” from 1968.¹⁰

A designation is not a barony

A territorial designation is the “of X” added to a surname, taken from land its owner holds. It does not make anyone a baron. Most of the people named in the Rolls were not barons: in the notice of 15 March 1968 only four of the sixteen entries carry the baron’s mark.¹¹ The right goes back to the Lyon King of Arms Act 1672, which let anyone who was not a nobleman or bishop “adject the designations of their lands prefixing the word ‘of’”.¹² How that practice developed is set out more fully in Lairds, lords and barons. The Rolls record the next step: the Lord Lyon’s official recognition of the name with its designation, once arms have been matriculated in it.³

What the Rolls recognise is the name. Almost every entry is a surname with its territorial designation; from 1988 a few barons without a designation appear, styled by their barony. The baron’s mark is a note about the arms. It says the holder is a minor baron, not which barony he holds, nor how many. “*ø Way of Plean” in 1986 stood for the Barons of Plean and Elphinstone.¹³ Nor does the mark say what colour the chapeau was. A red chapeau shows a baron still holding some of the barony’s lands. A blue one shows a family that has parted with the lands and the barony with them: it no longer holds the title, and the Lord Lyon recognises its head as representer of the baronial house. Burke’s marks the blue ones “(B)”; the Rolls print the same mark for both.¹⁴ So a marked name proves a minor baron. It does not prove the barony’s name, how many baronies stood behind it, or whether the family still held the barony at all.

The Minor Baron and the chapeau

From 24 January 1967 the notices carried a new note: “† indicates that the Arms have been matriculated with chapeau in respect of being a Minor Baron.”¹⁵ No entry in that issue actually carried the mark yet. The first to do so was the notice of 15 March 1968, where four names were daggered: Forbes of Brux, Gordon of Abergeldie, Innes of Edingight and Vans of Barnbarroch.¹¹

The chapeau itself, the baron’s cap of maintenance, had been settled as the baronial mark by the Lord Lyon’s decision of 4 September 1934, in the petition of Gordon of Hallhead, Baron of Esslemont, told in full in The Esslemont petition of 1934.¹⁶ “Minor” in Minor Baron does not mean small. It means the barons below the peerage, the barones minores. In 1943 the Lyon Court declared that the minor barons “are, and have been both in this nobiliary Court and in the Court of Session recognised as a ‘titled nobility’”. That was not a new finding but an old position made plain, as Untitled or titled nobility? sets out.¹⁷ The mark itself did not stay fixed. It was a dagger in 1968, a different, curled glyph in 1984, and a slashed “ø” in several notices between 1986 and 2000, among them the one of 17 May 1988.¹⁸ Through all of that the note explaining it barely changed.¹⁸

Three ways a baron appears

Most entries take the first form. From 1988 it is usually shorthand: when a baron’s designation was already his barony’s name, the Gazette printed the name once with the mark, as with “†Sturzeneggar of Arran” in 2002.¹⁹ In full that would read “Sturzeneggar of Arran, Baron of Arran”. Irvine of Drum shows it. His matriculation of 25 November 1992 names him “Baron of Drum in the County of Aberdeen”. The Gazette of 26 April 1994 prints only “ø*Irvine of Drum”, with the same date and register page.²⁰ The mark saved printing the word twice.

Before 1988 the same form tells less. The Gazette then printed the name and the mark alone, whatever the barony was called. “†Forbes of Brux” in 1968 was Baron of Brux. But “Humphrey of Dinnet”, marked a minor baron in the notice of 17 January 1984, was Baron of Ochtercoull, and “*†Cumyn of Rattray” in 1977 was Baron of Broadland.²¹ In those notices the mark shows that a man was a minor baron, not of which barony. The first notice found to name a barony is that of 17 May 1988. Even after 1988 the rule was not kept every time: “ø*Kinsey of Fea” in 1994 was Baron of Tranent and Cockenzie.²²

Sometimes the two differed, and then the Gazette printed both. Dennistoun Gordon Teall’s designation was Teallach, not Huntly, so the 1997 notice reads “†Teall of Teallach Baron of Huntly”.²³ The 2002 notice does the same: “*†McLeod of Rothie, Baron of Rothienorman”.²⁴ Huntly and Arran are themselves non-peerage earldoms, a separate subject covered in Non-peerage earldoms.

Some barons carried no separate territorial designation at all, and for them the Gazette printed the barony on its own next to the mark. The earliest found is “øHolman, Baron of Rickarton” in the notice of 17 May 1988.²⁵ The 2002 notice gives “†Thacker, Baron of Fetternear”, on the same page as the Sturzeneggar and McLeod of Rothie entries above.²⁶

Not every baron was gazetted

The Rolls are a partial record. A name appears only where arms were matriculated in it, and only while the series ran. Some barons were gazetted and others were not. That was so in earlier times too. The first notice continued a roll for 1866 to 1948 compiled for the Lord Chamberlain’s Department, and no Gazette notice of that roll has been found. Barons recognised in those years, such as Gordon of Hallhead, Baron of Esslemont, in 1934 and Wauchope of Niddrie in 1945, appear in no notice.²⁷ Nothing was gazetted after 2005, so barons recognised in Letters Patent of 2007, 2010 or 2018 appear in no notice.²⁸ Even inside the series there were gaps. Burke’s list, compiled from the Lyon Office, records the matriculation of Barclay of Towie Barclay on 8 October 1997; no notice carries it. Ironside, Baron of Lawers, matriculated in 1995 and was gazetted only in 2005, as a correction.²⁹ Diana Adair, Baroness of Kirknewton, matriculated on 16 January 1992; the notices of 1992 and 1994 that cover that year do not list her.³⁰

So a Gazette entry is good evidence, but its absence proves nothing.

Not once “feudal”

The word “feudal” does not appear in any of the thirty-six notices. Every notice page, from 1951 to 2005, was searched for it. It was not found once, not even in the note that explains the Minor Baron’s mark.³¹

The Lyon Court’s own word, in the Gazette, was always “Minor Baron”. When the series began in January 1951, Sir Thomas Innes of Learney had been Lord Lyon for some years. The notices are signed by his Lyon Clerk, not by him.⁵³² About five years earlier, in 1945, Innes of Learney had given his own paper to the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, and titled it “The Robes of the Feudal Baronage of Scotland”.³³ The Gazette never used his word. Why “feudal” is the wrong word for a barony today is set out in Scottish Baronies, Explained.

How the Roll of Scottish Barons uses them

No single rule held across the series. The mark changed shape from notice to notice, the barony was named from 1988 but not every time, entries were missed, printed late or printed without their mark, and Burke’s and the Gazette each contain slips. A marked entry is Lyon Court evidence that a man was a minor baron. It may not name his barony, and its absence proves nothing. The sources also contain human error. The notice of 16 July 2002 prints “ordinary sure” for “ordinary name”. Burke’s list dates one matriculation “6 May 19978”, and gives Auchmacoy’s register page as 64/5 where the Gazette has 65/5.³⁴ The mark itself could be dropped. The notice of 19 August 2005 prints “* Cairns of Finavon” with no dagger, though his Letters Patent were officially recognised by the Lord Lyon King of Arms on 8 August 2003.³⁵ So the Roll of Scottish Barons checks each record against the others, and against Letters Patent and other Lyon Court and government records, wherever it can.

The Roll and the Pledge

From 1967 to 2005 the Lyon Court marked minor barons in its gazetted Rolls. The Rolls were never complete, and the series has stopped.

The Baronage of Scotland Association keeps the Roll of Scottish Barons, which enters a holder only on evidence, and offers the Pledge: an undertaking, in honour and not in law, to preserve a barony within the family for future generations and to uphold the Baronial Code of Honour. The precedent is the baronets’ Roll of 1910.