functions ; but, unlike that official, these functions
did not become permanently a part of his office.
At the Union the office of Clerk Register was
preserved with all its dignity and emoluments, and
that the records of Scotland should always remain
in that kingdom. '
The salary of the office was abolished between
186r and 1868; but a select committee was so
strongly irr favour of its maintainance, that it was
restored by the 25th section of the Writs' Registration
Act of the latter year.
Under the Act passed together with the Treaty
of Uiiion, no election of representative peers can
47
take place in Scotland without the presence of ,the
Lord Clerk Register.
Perhaps no holder of this important office ren-
' dered better service than the late Sir Wiliiam
well known for his talents, energy, and great
urbanity of manner. He was born in 1797, and
in 1837 represented Midlothian in the Whig interest.
In 1841 he was returned for the city as one
of its representatives along with Lord Macaulay,
and continued to sit till 1852, and ten years after
was appointed Lord Clerk Register and one result
of the careful charge and supervision he took of
his department, was that the histoid documents
370 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [Moultray?s HilL
of the realm have been open to all genuine scholars.
Another result of his tenure of office has been the
publication of a series of documents and works of
the utmost value to students of Scottish historythe
completion of the Acts of Parliament begun
by Thomas Thomson and finished by Cosmo Innes,
the Treasurer?s accounts of the time of Tames IV,,
the Exchequer Rolls, &c.
No person sleeps in any part of the building
generally, the whole being allotted to public purposes
only. In the sunk storey under the dome,
when the house was built, four furnaces were constructed,
from each of which proceeded a flue in a
spiral direction, under the pavement of the dome,
for the purpose of securing the records from damp.
Among other offices under the same roof are the
Privy Seal, the Lord Keeper of which was, in 1879,
the Marquis of Lothian; the signet officer; the
Register of Deeds and Protests ; and the Sasine
Office, in the large central front room up-stairs,
where a numerous staff of clerks are daily at work,
under the Keeper of the General Register and his
five assistant-keepers.
The Register of Sashes, the corner-stone of the
Scottish system of registration, was instituted in
1617. It had, however, been preceded by another
record, called the Secretary?s Register, which existed
for a short period, being instituted in 1599,
but abolished in 1609, and was under the Scottish
Secretary of State, and is thus referred to by
Robertson in his Index of Missing Charters,?
I798 :-
?The Secretary?s Register, as it is called, was
the first attempt to introduce our most useful
record, that of sasines. But having been committed
to the superintendence of the Secretary of
State instead of the Lord Clerk Register, and most
of the books having remained concealed, and
many of them having been lost in consequence of
their not being made transmissible to public
custody, the institution became useless, and was
abolished by Act of Parliament, The Register of
Sxsines in its present form was instituted in the
month of June, 1617.?
In the register of this office the whole land writs
of Scotland are recorded, and the correctness of it
is essential to the validity of title. To it all men
go to ascertain the burdens that affect land, and
the whole of such registration is now concentrated
in Edinburgh. In 1876 the fees of the sasine office
amounted to ~30,000, and theexpensewas AI 7,000,
leaving a profit to the Treasury of &13,000.
In a part of the general register house is the
ofice of the Lyon King-of-arms. , This offiqe is
one of high rank and great antiquity, his station
n Scotland being precisely similar to that of the
;arter King in England; and at the coronation
)f George ,111. the Lord Lyon walked abreast
with the former, immediately preceding the Lord
;reat Chaniberlain, Though heraldry now is little
mown as a science, and acquaintance with it
s, singular to say, not necessary in the Lyon Office,
n feudal times the post of a Scottish herald was
ield of the utmost importance, and the inauguration
3f the king-at-arms was the mimicry of a royal
me, save that the unction was made with wine
nstead of oil.
In ?? The order of combats for life,? ordained by
lames I. of Scotland in the early part of the fifteenth
:entury, the places assigned for the ? King-of-Arms,
Heraulds, and other officers,? are to be settled by
:he Lord High Constable. In 1513 James IV.
jent the Lyon King with his defiance to Henry
VIII., then in France, and the following year he
went to Pans with letters for the Duke of Albany.
kcompanied by two heralds he went to Paris
igain in 1558, to be present at the coronation of
Francis and Mary as King and Queen of Scotland.
Of old, and before the College of Arms was
.econstructed, and the office of Lord Lyon abolished
iy a recent Act of Parliament, it consisted of the
ollowing members ;-
The Lord Lyon King-oFAms.
The Lyon-Depute.
Rothesay. Kintyre.
Marchmont. Dingwall.
Albany. Unicorn.
Ross. Bute.
Snowdon. Carrick.
Islay. Ormond.
Heralds. Pursuivants.
3ix trumpeters ; a Lyon Clerk and Keeper of Records, with
lis deputy; a Procurator Fiscal, hiacer, and Herald
Painter.
According to the ? Montrose Peerage? case in
t 850 there would appear to have been, about 1488,
mother official known as the ?? Montrose Herald,?
Zonnected in some manner with the dukedom of
3ld Montrose.
By Acts of Parliament passed in the reign of
James VI. the Lyon King was to hold two
zourts in the year at Edinburgh-on the 6th of
May and 6th of November. Also, he, with his
heralds, was empowered to take special supervision
of all arms used by nobles and gentlemen,
to matriculate them in their books, and inhibit
such as had no right to heraldic cognisances,
?under the pain of escheating the thing whereupon
the said arms are found to the king, and of one
hundred pounds to the Lyon and his brethren, or
of imprisonment during the Lyon?s pleasure.? ,
