Robes, chapeau and insignia of the baronage

The Scottish baronage had a dress of its own — a robe of state, a mantle, a cap — and the records of Parliament, the portraits and the Lyon Register still show it. This paper follows the evidence gathered by Lord Lyon Sir Thomas Innes of Learney in 1945 and sets beside it what the Lyon Court grants today.

The Scottish baronage had a dress of its own, and the Lord Lyon who did most to revive the order — Sir Thomas Innes of Learney — traced it in a paper read to the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland in October 1945. Its evidence is still the fullest account of what a baron wore, and why.¹ A reader’s guide to the paper is at The Lord Lyon’s Case for the Baronage.

The robe of 1455

The first Scottish statute on robes, passed in August 1455 while James II was settling the realm after the fall of the Douglases, assigned the earls “mantles of ‘grained’ brown, open at the front, furred with white”, and “the other lords of parliament” — a phrase that then covered the barons — “a mantle likewise of red, open at the front, lined with silk or furred with grey ‘gris’ fur or ‘pured’ fur”.² Innes read the furs as a mark of rank: ermine for the earls, who had been provincial kings; grey squirrel and vair, the blue-and-white squirrel fur of heraldry, for the baronage. The front-opening mantle was the badge of the higher nobility in both grades; the burgh commissioners were given cloaks that opened on the right shoulder instead.

That velvet robe of state survived in use into the second half of the seventeenth century. Innes’s witnesses are portraits: Sir Duncan Campbell of Lochow in the Black Book of Taymouth, “Black Duncan” of Glenorchy by Jamesone, and Sir John Colquhoun of Luss, 2nd Baronet, painted after 1646 in a crimson robe with a broad cape furred along the edges — a baron’s robe, not a peer’s, because the fur has no ermine tails.²

The circular mantle and the five buttons

Beside the robe of state there was an older travelling mantle — circular, split down the right side and fastened on the right shoulder. Three buttons marked a franklin or freeholder; the baron’s mantle had five. James VI’s orders of 1605–06 put the peers into scarlet circular mantles for the Riding of Parliament, and the Privy Council’s proclamation of 22 June 1606 applied the new robes “in red, lined white” to “Lordis, and Barronis” alike — though Lyon’s record of that year’s Riding notes that “nather Commissioners of Burows nor Barons rode, for vant of furnitur”. The baronial version is seen on James Grant of Grant, 7th Baron of Freuchie, painted in 1658 with five large buttons on the right shoulder, and in the official birthbrief of Innes of that Ilk, c. 1694–1700, where two barons in such mantles hold the family banners.³

The chapeau

The baron’s cap — red, turned up with white fur — is the ancestor of the heraldic “cap of maintenance”. Barbour’s Brus has Sir Ingram de Umfraville carry “a red bonnet” on a spear through Galloway as the token of his rank; when the Roslin vault was opened in 1650, Sir William Sinclair, Baron of Roslin, was found “laying in his armour with a red velvet cap on his head … nothing was spoiled except a piece of the white furring that went round the cap”. The Lyon Court allowed the chapeau to the representative of the barons of Dolphinton in 1836 and, after Innes’s own research, to Gordon of Hallhead, Baron of Esslemont, in 1934; thereafter it was matriculated for barons in possession (gules, furred ermine), for representatives of baronial houses no longer holding the fief (azure), and, for baronies held of the old earldoms or of the Lords of the Isles, furred ermines (Campbell of Dunstaffnage, 1943). The Livingstones of Bachuil alone were allowed vair, as holders “by the grace of God” rather than by Crown erection.⁴

The chapeau is now largely a matter of record rather than of new grant. Lord Lyon Blair is reported to have announced in December 2002 that no baronial additaments would be granted after the appointed day; the 2010 guidance let existing red chapeaux pass to heirs and left the blue chapeau and supporters with representatives of baronial houses; a baron petitioning today receives the helm assigned to barons — the great tilting-helm garnished with gold, or a steel helm with a gold grille.⁵

Supporters

Mackenzie explained in 1680 why “our old Barons who are not Lords, and hold only their Lands in free Barony, have supporters in their Achievement”: they had been “originally Heritable Counsellers to the King, as Members of Parliament”. In 1673 “sundry barons” successfully maintained against the Lord Lyon that “they were as good Barons after that Act (1587) as before”.⁶ Supporters remain with the baronial houses that held their barony before 1587 and have held it continuously in the same family since; barons of later erection, or who have acquired a barony by purchase, are not entitled to them.⁷

The title in use

The paper ends with the evidence that “Baron of X” was the style of the country and of the records: Mary Queen of Scots to “Our traist friend the barroun of Kylrawak”; the ballads of Deeside — “The Baron o’ Brackley”, “The Baron of Leys”; the Scots College at Douai registering “Roger Lindsay, filius baronis de Mains”; Lord Lyon Erskine of Cambo signing himself “Baro de Cambo”; the Banffshire sheriff in 1713 ordering production of charters “that it may be known who are barons and who have power to vote”. The correct form, Innes ruled, is simply “Baron of X”, never “Baron of the Barony of X”; and “esquire” is never added, the baron being the higher degree.⁸ Many of the achievements in the Association’s Armorial show the baronial helm; the older insignia survive in the Lyon Register and in the portraits Innes described.