The Court of the Lord Lyon is the Scottish heraldic authority and a court of law of the Crown. The Lord Lyon King of Arms has judicial responsibility for questions of arms, certain matters of precedence and ceremonial, and the granting and matriculation of Arms in Scotland. The Court maintains the Public Register of All Arms and Bearings in Scotland and issues Letters Patent on behalf of the Sovereign.
Scottish feudal barons and baronesses fall within the Lord Lyon’s jurisdiction in heraldic matters, and in many cases the existence of a barony is reflected, confirmed or clarified through grants and matriculations of Arms. The Court of the Lord Lyon is entirely independent of the Forum for the Scottish Baronage and of all other organisations listed on this page; nothing here should be read as implying that the Court endorses or is affiliated with the Forum.
Those seeking formal recognition or confirmation of arms, or authoritative rulings on heraldic or related legal questions, should treat the Court of the Lord Lyon as the ultimate source of guidance.
The Scottish Barony Register is a non-statutory register created by members of the Scottish legal profession in the wake of the Feudal Reform (Scotland) Act 2000, when feudal land law was abolished and barony titles ceased to be recordable in the public land registers. It is incorporated as a company limited by guarantee and maintained by lawyers with long experience in property, feudal and baronial law. The Custodian, Alastair Shepherd WS, is a retired solicitor, and the board includes leading practitioners and academics such as Dr Michael Yellowlees, Professor Stewart Brymer and Professor Roderick Paisley.
Although registration is not compulsory, each application is examined against the underlying deeds, and only titles that satisfy the Register’s evidential standards are accepted. In practice the Scottish Barony Register has become the principal modern record of ownership of Scottish feudal baronies and related dignities. The Lord Lyon King of Arms routinely treats an entry in the Register as sufficient evidence that an applicant holds the barony for the purposes of petitions for arms, and many Scottish solicitors now treat registration as best practice when advising on baronial transactions.
The Forum for the Scottish Baronage regards the Scottish Barony Register as a highly valuable and credible resource for the baronage, for the legal profession and for the wider heraldic community. Eligibility for membership of the Forum requires either registration of the barony in the Scottish Barony Register or confirmation of the title in a grant of arms from the Lord Lyon. We are pleased to support and encourage the Register’s continued work.
The Registry of Scots Nobility is an independent organisation which aims to record and bring together holders and heirs of a range of Scottish dignities, including (but not limited to) feudal barons and baronesses. Its scope is therefore broader than that of the Forum for the Scottish Baronage, which focuses specifically on the baronage.
A number of Forum members also belong to the Registry, and in the past the two organisations have cooperated on occasional events. We remain on amicable terms, but the Forum and the Registry are entirely separate bodies with distinct governance, membership criteria and purposes.
The Registry maintains its own roll of persons whom it considers to hold, or to be entitled to, various Scottish dignities. The Forum for the Scottish Baronage has no role in compiling or updating that roll and cannot verify the accuracy or completeness of entries on it, particularly in respect of individuals who are not members of this Forum. Our confirmation of status is limited to our own membership, which is assessed by reference to recognised evidential standards such as registration in the Scottish Barony Register or confirmation by the Lord Lyon. Enquirers should therefore treat the Registry’s roll as a privately-maintained list and take independent advice where formal verification of status is required.
The Convention of the Baronage of Scotland is a long-established private association of holders of Scottish feudal baronies. It has existed in various forms for several decades and has taken part in discussions on feudal and heraldic matters, including submissions during the reform of Scotland’s feudal system. The Convention has been granted Arms as a noble corporation and is recorded in international heraldic directories as such.
Today the Convention is incorporated as a small private company limited by guarantee and files its accounts at Companies House on a dormant basis; public records show dormant accounts being submitted for sixteen straight years, with no indication of trading or other financial activity. Its visible activity is limited, and membership is widely understood within the baronial community to be less than 20. Membership criteria are deliberately restrictive: candidates must produce Letters Patent from the Court of the Lord Lyon and are required to demonstrate a “definite and permanent Scottish connection”, typically including Scottish descent and Scottish domicile for the candidate or for at least two generations of the family. In practice this excludes many present-day holders of Scottish feudal baronies, particularly those whose families are based overseas.
The Forum for the Scottish Baronage is not a continuation of the Convention and shares no governance, finances or membership roll with it. A handful of individuals belong to both bodies, and we acknowledge its historical role, but its very limited and restrictive membership means that unlike the Forum for the Scottish Baronage, it no longer reflects the baronage as a whole.
The “Baronage of Scotland” website and its associated Roll of the Baronage of Scotland are privately run projects. They describe themselves as “an open-source verification register representing titles within the Baronage of Scotland” and publish an online list of baronies with some entries incorrectly labelled “Hereditary Title” (there is no such thing in Scottish property law). The site gives no clear information about who operates it or who its claimed “small team of researchers, genealogists and scholars” actually are, and provides no obvious corporate or editorial details; any assertions made there – including its “Hereditary Title” labels – should therefore be treated with skepticism and checked against recognised legal and heraldic authorities.
The Roll is not an official record of the Crown, the Court of the Lord Lyon, or the Scottish Barony Register. Those bodies maintain their own, independent legal and heraldic registers and do not delegate that role to any external roll. Labels such as “verified”, “awaiting verification” or “Hereditary Title” on baronage.com are internal to that project and have no legal or heraldic force in Scots law.
The Forum for the Scottish Baronage welcomes serious historical and genealogical research, but we do not treat the Roll of the Baronage as an authoritative register of titles, nor do we endorse its claims that they “maintain the Roll of Scottish Barons.” For the purposes of Forum membership and the recognition of barons and baronesses, the only evidential sources we rely on are:
Barons and baronesses should therefore understand that inclusion, exclusion, or status labels on baronage.com have no bearing on their standing within the Forum or in Scots law more generally.
