After ten months of inactivity, the Lyon Court’s YouTube channel has at last released another video – this is a recording of a virtual lecture by George Way of Plean, the Rothesay herald, on the topic of Scottish heraldic flags.
In the past fortnight there have been a handful of significant developments in the world of British heraldry.
Firstly, on 15th August the College of Arms published the 76th edition of its newsletter. Much of the text deals with topics already explained (such as the coronation roll and the year’s garter appointments) but there were some new details, such as the grant of arms to the University for the Creative Arts, which will be another addition to my list on Wikipedia.
Secondly, there are two long-form videos on YouTube of armorial interest: On August 20th a video by the White House Historical Association about the making of the Presidential Seal and on August 23rd by American Ancestors interviewing the York Herald Peter O’Donoghue. These videos speak for themselves so I will not elaborate them.
Thirdly, and of most interest, is a Tweet from 24th August by Alastair Bruce. It includes three photographs from inside the High Kirk of Edinburgh, showing the stallplate and banner of Queen Camilla. There is not much of surprise about the composition of the arms – they show the arms of King Charles impaling the arms of Bruce Shand – but it is reassuring to have confirmation that both shield and banner exist in formal usage, given the persistent uncertainties of Her Majesty’s status in England.
The most intriguing of the three photographs is the one which shows Camilla’s stallplate accompanied by five other royal ones: In the left column are Prince William, Earl of Strathearn (middle) and Olav V, King of Norway (bottom). In the right column are Queen Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon (top) the Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh (middle) and the Prince Albert, Duke of York (bottom). The fact that these six achievements are put together like this is itself a little confusing since some of those members of the order had overlapping tenures so could not have occupied the same stall. Also noteworthy is the way in which the artistic styles have changed over the years:
The Prince Albert, (later King George VI) was appointed to the order by his father in 1923 and presumably this is what it says on the scroll underneath (although it’s not legible in the photograph). He uses the royal arms differenced by a label of three points argent the centre bearing an anchor Azure. He has the coronet of a child of the sovereign sitting on top of a forward-facing golden helmet, and the coronet itself is topped by the lion crest, gorged at the neck by another label of three points argent – although that one doesn’t have the anchor in the middle. While that could be dismissed as an omission by the painter (perhaps too small to draw properly) it is unmissable that this stallplate clearly uses the English version of the royal arms and crest as well as referring to the prince by his England-based title (Duke of York) instead of his Scottish-based one (Earl of Inverness).
Queen Elizabeth was appointed by her husband in 1937. Her stallplate shows his arms impaling those of Claude Bowes-Lyon. Again the English arrangement of the royal arms is used, especially confusing as Elizabeth was herself of Scottish ancestry. The shield is topped by the royal crown. I can’t work out if it is the English or Scottish version of the crown shown, given the vagaries of the art style.
The Prince Philip was appointed by his wife in 1952. His stallplate shows his arms as granted in 1949. He used the same coronet as his sons and uncles-in-law, but here it is depicted beneath the helm rather than atop it as in the other examples. Philip apparently used the same arms in every heraldic jurisdiction, as well as the same title. His personal motto “God Is My Help” appears on a scroll above the crest, as is the Scottish tradition.
Prince William was appointed by his grandmother in 2012. Earl of Strathearn was his secondary peerage, his primary being Duke of Cambridge. His arms are in the Scottish arrangement. He uses the coronet of a son of the heir apparent on top of a front-facing grey helmet with gold bars, itself topped by the Scottish royal crest. Both crest and shield are differenced by his label of three points Argent, the centre bearing an escallop Gules. The Scottish motto “In Defens” flies over the crest. The tinctures used for this stallplate look a little off, with the Or in particular being shown as a much darker shade of yellow than that used for all the others.
Queen Camilla was appointed by her husband in 2023. Her shield uses the Scottish arrangement of the arms. The royal crown is drawn rather differently to that used by her grandmother-in-law, but it’s still just as unclear which one it is supposed to be.
Olav V, the only foreign member here, was appointed by his first cousin one removed in 1962. Crests are not a traditional feature of Norwegian heraldry, but the royal crown of Norway is placed atop a forward-facing grey helm with gold bars. The mantling is Gules doubled Or whereas the British princes here use Or doubled Ermine. Domestic depictions of the Norwegian arms tend to omit helm and mantling altogether or use a pavillion Purpure doubled ermine.
Today was the last in a string of high-profile royal engagements that went ahead despite the ongoing general election – although there are reports that the traditional “royal week” has been shortened due to the need for His Majesty to run back to London on Friday to meet the prime minister.
Unlike last year’s Presentation of the Honours of Scotland, this was a standard ceremony of the Order of the Thistle. The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh were due to have their banners installed at the High Kirk.
This excursion also featured the Ceremony of the Keys – which will be Alastair Bruce’s last as Governor of Edinburgh Castle.
It would be nice if I could include some photographs of either event, but it seems that unlike last year (when the Scottish Government Flickr account uploaded many) there are only commercial ones to be found. I hope that perhaps some amateur ones may be released under the right licensing arrangements soon. I also hope that we will soon get a good look at the Scottish arrangement of Her Majesty’s coat of arms – not that we don’t already know exactly what it should look like, but just to get proof that it exists!
The Prince Edward seems to have made a habit of collecting new titles on his birthdays. For the occasion of his wedding in 1999 he was ennobled as Earl of Wessex and Viscount Severn. These both refer to places in England, in contrast with the normal convention for royal peerages. On his fifty-fifth birthday he gained a surprise Scottish title – Earl of Forfar – and then for his fifty-ninth he gained another, long-awaited and far more prestigious one – Duke of Edinburgh. Now that his primary title refers to a Scottish place – and the capital at that – it would seem a little strange for him not to join Scotland’s highest order of chivalry.
It was not exactly surprising, then, to learn that on his sixtieth birthday he had been appointed an Extra Knight of the Order of the Thistle. In this category he joins his nephew the Duke of Rothesay and his sisters the Queen and the Princess Royal. We can expect that soon his banner of arms will be hung alongside theirs at the High Kirk in his namesake city.
The King also announced three new appointments among the ordinary membership of the order – the Baroness Black of Strome, the Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws and Sir Godfrey “Geoff” Palmer – all of whom, curiously, have academic careers. This brings the order up to its full complement of sixteen members (excluding royals). It is unusual for all the appointments to be made today as traditionally they are announced on 18th June.
Finally, a concurrent press release confirmed that the duke had been appointed to a second term as Lord High Commissioner to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, a post which he last held in 2014-15. In the Scottish order of precedence he will rank immediately below the sovereign himself, rather than his natural precedence as a brother thereof.
Donald Andrew John Cameron was elected to the devolved Scottish Parliament in 2016 on the regional list for Highlands & Islands. He served in many roles in the shadow cabinet at Holyrood, but last month resigned his seat upon appointment as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Scotland in the national government at Westminster. To facilitate these duties he was ennobled yesterday as Baron Cameron of Lochiel, of Achnacarry in the County of Inverness. Although this is a life peerage, he also holds the hereditary chieftancy of Clan Cameron, of which two other members currently sit in the upper house – and both of them acted as supporters to his introduction ceremony.
Ewan James Hanning Cameron, Baron Cameron of Dillington, has sat as a crossbencher since 2004, having previously worked in semi-political rural advocacy roles during the premiership of Tony Blair. He is a grandson of Sir Donald Walter Cameron, the 25th Clan Chief, thus making him an agnatic first cousin once removed of Lord Cameron of Lochiel.
David William Donald Cameron, Baron Cameron of Chipping Norton, should already be familiar to most readers as the former prime minister and current foreign secretary. His consanguinity to the new peer is very distant, his great-great-grandfather Sir Ewen Cameron having claimed descent from the Camerons of Erracht, themselves being descended from a younger son of the 13th Lochiel and branching from the main clan in the sixteenth century.
The arms of Clan Cameron are Gules three bars Or. Lochiel naturally bears these undifferenced, while Dillington differences with in the honour point an escallop of the second. Chipping Norton differences with four bezants in chief.
The House of Commons also saw an introduction ceremony yesterday when George Galloway returned after a nine year absence having been elected MP for Rochdale. MPs who win by-elections are also traditionally escorted to the clerks’ table by two incumbent members. There were reports that Galloway had asked Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) and Sir David Davis (Haltemprice & Howden) to act as his sponsors but both had turned him down. He was instead accompanied by Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) and Neale Hanvey (Kirkcaldey & Cowdenbeath).
Today’s virtual lecture took me back to the Heraldry Society of Scotland, where our speaker – the Lyon Court’s vexillologist – gave a fascinating talk about the history of flag culture in Scotland, and the process by which flags – heraldic or otherwise – come to be invented.
At least I think that was what happened. Unfortunately I cannot say for certain due to glaring technical problems. We virtual attendees did not actually see the inside of the venue, for the visual feed was only of the slideshow (and even that did not seem to be aligned properly with the speech), but we guessed that the microphone was positioned a great distance away from Mr Tibbetts’s mouth and much closer to an audience member with a recurrent cough. As a result only about half of the speaker’s syllables could be heard, which rendered most sentences unintelligible. Edward Mallinson made several attempts to resolve the sound problem but it made no difference. He even turned on the automated subtitles, but those are notoriously poor even when the sound is good. Before even thirty minutes into the planned ninety-minute event I and a few other Zoom-watchers had given up and logged out.
Today and yesterday, Charles III was formally proclaimed as King across the world, following the meeting of his accession council. This is only the fourth accession in Britain since the invention of the television, and the first time that the council itself has been broadcast live. Indeed, to my knowledge the only other time that any meeting of the council in Britain has been recorded was for the 1993 documentary Days of Majesty, and even then only a small clip was shown. There was supposed to have been a meeting (probably done virtually) some days ago for the swearing in of Liz Truss’s new cabinet, but the fading of Queen Elizabeth’s health prevented it. When that session will eventually take place is unknown. We are in an odd situation where the new monarch is having his accession confirmed by a set of ministers whose own office-holding has not been fully confirmed either. The ceremony was something of a consolation prize for Penny Mordaunt, who lost the bid to become Prime Minister but was instead appointed Lord President. She took the lead role in the day’s proceedings. Once the proclamation had been approved and various oaths had been taken it was read out by David White, Garter King of Arms, on the palace’s balcony. Not long later it was repeated by Timothy Duke (Clarenceux) on the steps of the royal exchange. The next day it was read by Robert Noel (Norroy & Ulster) at Hillsborough Castle. Joseph Morrow (Lyon) read it at Mercat Cross, as did Morfudd Meredith (Lord Lieutenant of South Glamorgan) and Thomas Lloyd (Wales Herald) in Cardiff. The other proclamations made around the British Isles, and the Commonwealth, are far too numerous to list.
Times such as this are a rare opportunity (others being state openings and, next year, the coronation) to see officers of arms in their full finery. They will be very busy over the coming months.
It can be taken as read that, following his ascent to the throne, the undifferenced arms of the United Kingdom, and those of all his other realms and territories, now belong to His Majesty. The arms of his siblings, niblings and cousins have no reason to change from what they were before. The arms of his wife, sons, and daughters-in-law are all due for upgrades.
Probable arms of Camilla, Queen Consort
Camilla, as Queen Consort, can now be expected to impale the Shand arms with those of the King. Given that William now has all of the statuses and titles that his father held a week ago, it is most probable that he will bear the same heraldic achievement, with which Catherine will impale the Middleton arms. It is yet to be seen (and there are conflicting precedents) of the Duke & Duchess of Sussex will similarly upgrade by swapping their five-point cadency label for one of three points, and removing the strawberry leaves from their coronets. The ever-present yet ever-uncredited Sodacan has already uploaded multiple illustrations of how he expects the revised armorial achievements to look.
Probable arms of Catherine, Princess of Wales
There is some controversy over whether Charles will change the heraldic depiction of the crown from St. Edward’s (depressed arch) to Tudor (no depression). There is a perception that St. Edward’s Crown is for queens and the Tudor crown for kings (due to the latter being preferred from 1901 to 1952) but this is not binding and St. Edward’s was regularly used by kings before Victoria’s reign.
I’ve just finished readingCharles III: New King. New Court. The Inside Story by Robert Hardman. Chapter Three: London Bridge explains that the Truss ministry was supposed to be sworn in on 7th September with the politicians meeting in Westminster and Queen Elizabeth attending by audio-only link from Balmoral, but the meeting was cancelled at short notice when her health took a downturn.
UPDATE (September 2025)
Historian Jason Loch has published this article analysing the intricacies of the accession council and the legal status of Truss’s cabinet.
A downside of the fading of the pandemic and return to normalcy is that a lot of the institutions which had taken to putting on virtual meetings have now reverted to doing them in person only. Since these events are in many different locations around the world, far away from each other and from me, my ability to attend is severely limited.
One particular frustration has been been the Lyon Court, which for the last few months has been commemorating the 350th anniversary of the Lyon Register. Many times I have seen these lectures advertised on EventBrite, but I have not been able to go to them.
Now, belatedly, there is happy news, for the Lyon Court’s formerly-sparse YouTube channel has in the past fortnight seen a flurry of uploads from this lecture series. It is a little disappointing to have to catch up months later instead of taking part live, but getting to see them at all is still a great improvement compared to what would have been expected three years ago.
Developments in England have been less encouraging – there has been no newsletter from the College of Arms for this July. Upon inquiry, Portcullis told me that they hope to publish one later in the year. The heraldic decisions of Amess, Amos, Blair and Hoyle remain elusive.
Another date with the Scottish Historic Buildings Trust, this time concerning the tour taken by James Gibbs and the Earl of Mar in 1712. The presenter was Professor Margaret Stewart.
Donald Andrew John Cameron was elected to the devolved Scottish Parliament in 2016 on the regional list for Highlands & Islands. He 
Robin Stanley Taylor 
