The Roll of Scottish Barons

Originally created a little before 1910, as the baronetage was in a state of disarray, it was given its royal warrant by Edward VII in that year and is maintained today by the Lord Chancellor, with an online version published by the Standing Council of the Baronetage. It records a separate order of hereditary dignity — a baronetcy is not a barony — and recognition upon it follows enrolment strictly: since 1910 no person is received, styled, or accorded precedence as a baronet unless entered upon the Roll, so that, in practice, one is a baronet only if on it.

Established by royal warrant of Queen Elizabeth II on 1 June 2004, maintained by the Crown Office and published by the College of Arms. It registers peers of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain and the United Kingdom, and is maintained independently of the Baronetage. A peerage, by contrast, stands in law whether enrolled or not: a peer remains a peer in legal title, and may bear the title in private life — upon a passport, for instance — with no place on the Roll, which governs only official recognition, such as precedence at ceremonies or public office. A number of established hereditary peers, now private citizens not in the House of Lords, are indeed absent from it (e.g. the Earl of Moray, Baron Inchiquin, Baron Teynham, etc), yet bear their titles in the ordinary way. (A Scottish baron, as noted elsewhere on this site, is not a peer, and holds no place upon it.) For an instructive example of recognition versus legal title — the removal of Andrew Mountbatten Windsor's name from this Roll — see Scottish Baronies, Explained.

Scotland’s heraldic authority and a court of law. The Lyon Court’s letters patent, matriculations and official gazette notices are the Roll’s primary sources: where a dignity is evidenced under the hand of the Lord Lyon, no further proof is asked. The Court is wholly independent of this Association and of every private body within the baronial community.

A non-statutory private register — not an official register — that records the legal transfer of baronies (the transfers voluntarily submitted). Established by members of the Scottish legal profession upon the abolition of feudal tenure in 2004, under a Custodian whose certification the Lord Lyon accepts as evidence of title. We recognise the Register as an authoritative source for inclusion on the Roll, and we recommend that every holder of a Scottish barony record their legal title there. The Roll is complementary to the Register, not in competition with it: the Register records transfers of ownership since 2004, while the Roll also documents the wider historic baronage — dignities held by dynastic succession, by chiefs, baronets and peers — which have never changed families in the modern era and therefore appear in no register of transfers. For these, the records of the Lyon Office stand as primary evidence.

The historic representative body of Scotland’s baronage, revived in the twentieth century with the encouragement of Lord Lyon Sir Thomas Innes of Learney. Though quieter in recent years, the Convention holds a distinguished place in the modern history of the baronage, and the Association honours it.