Page:The book of public arms, 1915.pdf/13

absolutely relied upon. As to foreign arms I merely give the information as the best I can get.

Subject to the liability—a liability I personally am painfully conscious of-of all human work to carry the risk of error, I honestly believe my book may be depended upon as to the accuracy of the details of the arms and the statements of facts as to whether the arms are or are not recorded. The Scottish and Irish ones I speak of with confidence. I searched the registers myself, and, as to the Irish Records--some of which are far from being grant books-I had the invaluable assistance of Mr G. D. Burtchaell, Athlone Pursuivant of Arms. In Ireland, where Visitations were practically never made and where the registers of Ulster's Office before the eighteenth century admittedly might be more perfect, there is a tendency of thought which admits as proof of the right to arms many things such as draft grants and the private papers of dead and gone officers of arms to fill up possible gaps. To what extent such evidences are actually proof might be questioned were it not the habitual practice of Ulster's Office to stretch the point in their favour. I don't think that any Irish coat I have included is likely to be disallowed. In Scotland there is a hard and fast line. The Register is the register, and a coat is in it, or not in it. There is no half-way house, no matter what may be the value of various other records as proof of ancient user entitling a coat to be matriculated, and not granted, to win its way into the charmed circle of authorised arms.

With regard to the records of the College of Arms the position is this. There is a proper record by docquet or copy of grant of every coat of arms that has ever been granted by Letters Patent. I don't know exactly upon what basis of authority we find, as we do, records of most of the ancient impersonal arms in the Visitation Books. Most of the ancient City and Town arms which are genuine are to be found there, but I am bound to say that frequently the essence of the record seems to be the registration of the common seals of the Corporations rather than their arms. Where arms are recorded as arms, or where the device of the seal is plainly armorial and the tinctures are tricked, there is no difficulty, but there are one or two cases concerning which it is difficult to speak with assured certainty. The Visitation Books are official records, and a perfect record therein is, of course, conclusive admission of right. But there are of some coats of arms contemporary enrolments at the College of Arms in books which are neither grant books nor visitation books-books which are principally the painstaking work of bygone officers of arms, the records their industry created. Some, of course, can be dismissed at once as quite accurate but of no validating authority-evidence of user but not evidence of right. But there are one or two which cannot be lightly dismissed, and for that reason I would like to add the warning that I am not entirely certain as to all of the records, and though all of the coats which I state to be "recorded in the College of Arms" are so recorded, I cannot in every case in which I use the words guarantee the quality and authority and the validity of the particular book in which the record appears. Then there are a number of visitation records in which the arms without their tinctures are to be found. These are formally, I believe, held to be imperfect records. Then take such an example as the record of the arms of the Middle