In Scotland the arms, and the arms only, constitute the mark of a given family, and whilst due difference is made in the respective shields, no attempt is made as regards crest or supporters to impose any distinction between the figures granted to different families even where no blood relationship exists. The result is that whilst the same crests and supporters are duplicated over and over again, they at any rate remain in Scotland simple, graceful, and truly heraldic, even when judged by the most rigid mediæval standard. They are, of course, necessarily of no value whatever for identification. In England the simplicity is relinquished for the sake of distinction, and it is held that equivalent differentiation must be made, both in regard to the crests and the supporters, as is made between the shields of different families. The result as to modern crests is truly appalling, and with supporters it is almost equally so, for by their very nature it is impossible to design adequate differences for crests and supporters, as can readily be done in the charges upon a shield, without creating monstrosities. With regret one has to admit that the dangling shields, the diapered chintz-like bodies, and the fasces and other footstools so frequently provided for modern supporters in England would seem to be pedantic, unnecessary, and inartistic strivings after a useless ideal.
In England the right to bear supporters is confined to those to whom they have been granted or recorded, but such grant or record is very rigidly confined to peers, to Knights of the Garter, Thistle, and St. Patrick, and to Knights Grand Cross, or Knights Grand Commanders (as the case may be) of other Orders. Before the Order of the Bath was divided into classes, Knights of the Bath had supporters. As by an unwritten but nowadays invariably accepted law, the Orders of the Garter, Thistle, and St. Patrick are confined to members of the peerage, those entitled to claim (upon their petitioning) a grant of supporters in England are in practice limited to peers and Knights Grand Cross or Knights Grand Commanders. In the cases of peers, the grant is always attached to a particular peerage, the "remainder" in the limitations of the grant being to "those of his descendants upon whom the peerage may devolve," or some other words to this effect. In the cases of life peers and Knights Grand Cross the grant has no hereditary limitation, and the right to the supporters is personal to the grantee. There is nothing to distinguish the supporters of a peer from those of a Knight Grand Cross. Baronets of England, Ireland, Great Britain, and the United Kingdom as such are not entitled to claim grants of supporters, but there are some number of cases in which, by special favour of the sovereign, specific Royal Warrants have been
issued-either as marks of favour or as augmentations of honour—conveying the pleasure of the sovereign to the kings of arms, and directing the latter to grant supporters—to descend with the baronetcy. Of the cases of this nature the following may be quoted: Guise (Royal Warrant, dated July 12, 1863), Prevost (Royal Warrant, October 1816), Guinness, now Lord Ardilaun (Royal Warrant, dated April 15, 1867), Halford (Royal Warrant, May 19, 1827), Otway (Royal Warrant, June 10, 1845), and Laking. These, of course, are exceptional marks of favour from the sovereign, and this favour in at least two instances has been extended to untitled families. In 1815 Mr. George Watson-Taylor, an especial intimate of the then Prince Regent, by Royal Warrant dated September 28, 1815, was granted the following supporters: "On either side a leopard proper, armed and langued gules, collared and chained or." A more recent instance, and, with the exception of an Irish case presently to be referred to, the only other one within the knowledge of the writer, is the case of the Speke[[25]] arms. It is recited in the Royal Warrant, dated July 26, 1867, that Captain John Hanning Speke "was by a deplorable accident suddenly deprived of his life before he had received any mark of our Royal favour" in connection with the discovery of the sources of the Nile. The Warrant goes on to recite the grant to his father, William Speke, of Jordans, co. Somerset, of the following augmentations to his original arms (argent, two bars azure) namely: on a chief a representation of flowing water superinscribed with the word "Nile," and for a crest of honourable augmentation a "crocodile," also the supporters following—that is to say, on the dexter side a crocodile, and on the sinister side a hippopotamus. Some number of English baronets have gone to the trouble and expense of obtaining grants of supporters in Lyon Office; for example Sir Christopher Baynes, by grant dated June 10, 1805, obtained two savages, wreathed about the temples and loins, each holding a club over the exterior shoulder. It is very doubtful to what extent such grants in Scotland to domiciled Englishmen can be upheld. Many other baronets have at one time or another assumed supporters without any official warrant or authority in consequence of certain action taken by an earlier committee of the baronetage, but cases of this kind are slowly dropping out of the Peerage books, and this,
combined with the less ostentatious taste of the present day in the depicting of armorial bearings upon carriages and elsewhere, is slowly but steadily reducing the use of supporters to those who possess official authority for their display.
Another fruitful origin of the use of unauthorised supporters at the present day lies in the fact that grants of supporters personal to the grantee for his life only have been made to Knights Grand Cross or to life peers in cases where a hereditary title has been subsequently conferred. The limitations of the grant of supporters having never been extended, the grant has naturally expired with the death of the life honour to which the supporters were attached.
In addition to these cases there is a very limited number of families which have always claimed supporters by prescriptive right, amongst whom may be mentioned Tichborne of Tichborne (two lions guardant gules), De Hoghton of Hoghton (two bulls argent), Scroope of Danby (two choughs), and Stapylton. Concerning such cases it can only be said that in England no official sanction has ever been given to such use, and no case exists of any official recognition of the right of an untitled family to bear supporters to their arms save those few exceptional cases governed by specific Royal Warrants. In many cases, notably Scroope, Luttrel, Hilton, and Stapylton, the supporters have probably originated in their legitimate adoption at an early period in connection with peerage or other titular distinction, and have continued inadvertently in use when the titular distinctions to which they belonged have ceased to exist or have devolved upon other families. Possibly their use in some cases has been the result of a claim to de jure honours. The cases where supporters are claimed "by prescriptive right" are few indeed in England, and need not be further considered.
Whilst the official laws in Ireland are, and have apparently always been, the same as in England, there is no doubt that the heads of the different septs assert a claim to the right to use supporters. On this point Sir Bernard Burke, Ulster King of Arms, wrote: "No registry of supporters to an Irish chieftain appears in Ulster's Office, in right of his chieftaincy only, and without the honour of peerage, nor does any authority to bear them exist." But nevertheless "The O'Donovan" uses, dexter, a lion guardant, and sinister, a griffin; "The O'Gorman" uses, dexter, a lion, and sinister, a horse; "The O'Reilly" uses two lions or. "The O'Connor Don," however, is in the unique position of bearing supporters by unquestionable right, inasmuch as the late Queen Victoria, on the occasion of her last visit to Dublin, issued her Royal Warrant conferring the right upon him. The supporters granted to him were "two lions rampant gules, each gorged with an antique crown, and charged on the shoulder with an Irish harp or."
The right to bear supporters in Scotland is on a widely different basis from that in any other country. As in England and Ireland, peers and Knights Grand Cross are permitted to obtain grants of these distinctions. But outside and beyond these there are many other families who bear them by right. At the official inquiry concerning the Lyon Office, the Lyon-Depute, Mr. George Tait, put in a Note of Persons whom he considered might lawfully bear supporters under Scottish Heraldic Law. The following is the text of the note in question:—
"Note of Persons who are considered by George Tait, Esq., Lyon-Depute, to be entitled to supporters, furnished to the Commissioners of Inquiry by their desire, intimated to him at his examination this day, June 27, 1821.
"1. Peers.—By immemorial usage, Peers have right to supporters, and supporters are commonly inserted in modern patents of Peerage. This includes Peeresses in their own right.
"2. Ancient Usage.—Those private gentlemen, and the lawful heirs-male of their bodies, who can prove immemorial usage of carrying supporters, or a usage very ancient, and long prior to the Act 1672, are entitled to have their supporters recognised, it being presumed that they received them from lawful authority, on account of feats of valour in battle or in tournament, or as marks of the Royal favour (see Murray of Touchadam's Case, June 24, 1778).
"3. Barons.—Lawful heirs-male of the bodies of the smaller Barons, who had the full right of free barony (not mere freeholders) prior to 1587, when representation of the minor Barons was fully established, upon the ground that those persons were Barons, and sat in Parliament as such, and were of the same as the titled Barons. Their right is recognised by the writers on heraldry and antiquities. Persons having right on this ground, will almost always have established it by ancient usage, and the want of usage is a strong presumption against the right.
"4. Chiefs.—Lawful heirs-male of Chiefs of tribes or clans which had attained power, and extensive territories and numerous members at a distant period, or at least of tribes consisting of numerous families of some degree of rank and consideration. Such persons will in general have right to supporters, either as Barons (great or small) or by ancient usage. When any new claim is set up on such a ground, it may be viewed with suspicion, and it will be extremely difficult to establish it, chiefly from the present state of society, by which the traces of clanship, or the patriarchal state, are in most parts of the country almost obliterated; and indeed it is very difficult to conceive a case in which a new claim of that kind could be admitted. Mr. Tait has had some such claims, and has rejected them.
"5. Royal Commissions.—Knights of the Garter and Bath, and any others to whom the King may think proper to concede the honour of supporters.
"These are the only descriptions of persons who appear to Mr. Tait to be entitled to supporters.
"An idea has gone abroad, that Scots Baronets are entitled to supporters; but there is no authority for this in their patents, or any good authority for it elsewhere. And for many years subsequent to 1672, a very small portion indeed of their arms which are matriculated in the Lyon Register, are matriculated with supporters; so small as necessarily to lead to this inference, that those whose arms are entered with supporters had right to them on other grounds, e.g. ancient usage, chieftainship, or being heirs of Barons. The arms of few Scots Baronets are matriculated during the last fifty or sixty years; but the practice of assigning supporters gradually gained ground during that time, or rather the practice of assigning supporters to them, merely as such, seems to have arisen during that period; and it appears to Mr. Tait to be an erroneous practice, which he would not be warranted in following.
"British Baronets have also, by recent practice, had supporters assigned to them, but Mr. Tait considers the practice to be unwarranted; and accordingly, in a recent case, a gentleman, upon being created a Baronet, applied for supporters to the King—having applied to Mr. Tait, and been informed by him that he did not conceive the Lord Lyon entitled to give supporters to British Baronets.
"No females (except Peeresses in their own right) are entitled to supporters, as the representation of families is only in the male line. But the widows of Peers, by courtesy, carry their arms and supporters; and the sons of Peers, using the lower titles of the peerage by courtesy, also carry the supporters by courtesy.
"Mr. Tait does not know of any authority for the Lord Lyon having a discretionary power of granting supporters, and understands that only the King has such a power.
"Humbly submitted by
(Signed)"G. Tait."