Talk:Lord Lyon King of Arms

John Brooke-Little

Hey...I've added the John Brooke-Little article to the list for peer review. Any of you contributors are welcome to make additions to the discussions. I know he's not a Scottish herald, but your input is valued.--Evadb 10:16, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Court of Claims

Somewhere I wonder if we should mentioned that the Court of Claims at the 1953 coronation of QEII refused the right of the LL to the title LL "KofA"Alci12 15:18, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

What is your source for this? I can't see any mention of it in Coronation of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second : minutes of the proceedings of the Court of Claims (Crown Office, 1952). The section dealing with the Lord Lyon's claim states

"Claim of Lyon King of Arms: To be assigned the usual place in the Procession and at the Ceremony pertaining to his office and permitted to perform its duties as heretofore or as may be on the present occasion found appropriate

... (similar claim by the Scottish Heralds and Pursuivants)...

The Lord Chancellor: On these claims appearance has been dispensed with. The Court adjudges that the right of the respective claimants to be present be allowed but that no duties be assigned by this Court."

Dr pda 20:48, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

You wrote

I was going on memory of having read this long ago. Performing a quick google I get back "Sir Malcolm Innes as Marchmont in the first issue of Double Tressure (1979) describes the inscrutible workings of the Court of Claims at the time of the 1953 coronation noting that the said court refused to Lyon the designation Lord Lyon King of Arms in the ceremonial (though the Earl Marshall of England continued to so style him in correspondance)"

Now of course that entry could be wrong as could my memory. Of course it would hardly be the unique if Lyon was entitled to one style in Scotland and another in EnglandAlci12 16:41, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

OK, I've had a look at that issue of the Double Tressure. The case seems to be that Lyon submitted his claim to be present under the name Lord Lyon King of Arms, however the Court considered and granted the petition for Lyon King of Arms, i.e. they dropped the Lord, not the King of Arms as I think your original statement said. (This style is indeed seen in the passage I quoted above from the minutes of the Court). Lyon also appears as Lyon King of Arms in the order of the ceremonial published in the Gazette (supplement to Nov 19th (?) 1953). Innes makes various legal arguments as to why this should not have been done. He also points out that for the same Coronation the Lord High Constable of Scotland, despite managing to retain the Lord in her (I believe) dealings with the Court of Claims, was similarly 'demoted' to High Constable of Scotland in the ceremonial, and also in correspondence, by Garter and the Earl Marshal.

However as regards the Lord Lyon, I think the dropping of the Lord is a minor point. It wasn't the first time this had happened, for example the Act which reformed the Scottish heraldic establishment in the 1860's was the Lyon King of Arms (Scotland) Act 1867 - no Lord there either. However in the Scotland Act 1998 which set up the devolved Scottish Parliament, Schedule 5 refers to the Lord Lyon King of Arms. Lyon has presumably been addressed by various styles over the last several hundred years (I think he even started off as a herald) and the omission of Lord from his title on the occasion of the Coronation probably doesn't warrant mentioning in the article as it stands.

Dr pda 23:18, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

British Airways anecdote?

I heard a rumor that the Lord Lyon sent someone down to a Scottish airport to remove a coat of arms from the tail of a British Airways jet; he felt BA was using it inappropriately. Anyone know if there is any truth to this? --Jfruh (talk) 02:57, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Hi Josh, I think this is a good source: https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=2507&dat=19850601&id=mO89AAAAIBAJ&sjid=2UgMAAAAIBAJ&pg=3135,257162&hl=en It looks like the story Hugh told me which I think I was the one that passed on to you was a little bit embellished as he certainly implied that the Lyon's Fiscal actually sent men with hammers to the airport to threaten to smash the arms off the tails of the planes - this report suggests it never quite got that far.

Roy

--Rpjs (talk) 16:17, 4 October 2015 (UTC)

Permission?

Unlike the English Kings of Arms, he does not need permission from the Earl Marshal. I think this is doubly unclear. "He" should be "Lord Lyon" (I think), but I have no idea what he does not need permission for (issue arms, render judgment, whatever). OtherDave (talk) 16:09, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Noblemen?

The introduction has The post was formerly held by an important nobleman, whose functions were in practice carried out by his assistant, the Lyon-Depute.

but the list of office-holders has no important noblemen that I can see. If any of these are Lyon-Depute it should be noted. Gordon Findlay (talk) 05:23, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Robert Hay-Drummond (1796 - 1804) and Thomas Hay-Drummond (1804 - 1866) were the 10th and 11th Earls of Kinnoull respectively, but they appear to be the only 'important noblemen' in the list.

According to some notes I made two and a half years ago (which I did mean to include in the article at some point! the name of the book escapes me at the moment) "from 1760 to 1866 it would appear that the duties of the Lord Lyon were performed in part, if not altogether, by the Deputy". The statement in the article appears to be conflating these two facts. this article from Notes and Queries in 1858 may also be of some interest. Dr pda (talk) 11:55, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Official website

What is the evidence that the "Court of Lord Lyon", insofar as that term refers to the office and functions of a UK government official, has designated this website as the Court's official website? It is unusual, if not unique, for an office whose authority derives from being part of and operated by government to use a ".com" domain name -- which usually denotes a privately owned, non-governmental, commercial site. Even if not unique, how do we know that this particular website (which is being cited as a reliable source for various allegations in Wikipedia articles) has been designated as the official online source of the Court's and/or Lord Lyon's communications? Do the courts or offices of the other kings-of-arms and official UK heralds have similar websites with similar domain names? Is this website funded from the Lord Lyon's governmental budget? How does it qualify as a reliable source for Wikipedia purposes? FactStraight (talk) 03:58, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

We know this because we can do a domain proprietor check using a WHOIS service (see http://www.whois.com/whois/lyon-court.com). As the registered registrant the Lyon Court would receive all correspondence related to the website and were this not their own they would publicise it as being such. Besides, we also know it is their web site as a number of the Court's policy decision are first declared on this web site. We know this too because the type of web sites you refer to, ones using a .gov.uk suffix, all point to this as the official website, e.g. http://www.stirling.gov.uk/services/law-and-licensing/police-courts-and-criminal-justice/courts/court-of-the-lord-lyon and http://www.scotlandspeoplehub.gov.uk/research/usage-of-coat-of-arms.html, the most obvious of which being the Scottish Courts Service website: http://www.scotcourts.gov.uk/the-courts/more/other-courts-and-tribunals, it also being confirmed here: http://www.scotland-judiciary.org.uk/16/0/Court-Structure. Furthermore, this can be considered a reliable source as there is no greater authority on this subject than the Officer of State who determines heraldic policy. That they have a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy can be seen in the fact that they will regularly revise material for accuracy, e.g. http://www.lyon-court.com/lordlyon/217.182.html. In addition, the source is archived, as a published source should be (See http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.lyon-court.com/). It therefore meets the criteria for being a reliable source. Editor8888 (talk) 06:04, 30 August 2013 (UTC)