Tracts, legal and historical

144
faithful services done, and to be done by him to us,
Therefore we hereby authorize and order our Lyon
King at Armes, in our said ancient kingdom of
Scotland, to add to the Paternall coat of Armes of
the said Sir Francis Scott a double tressure flowered,
and contre-flowered with flower-de-lis as in our
Royal armes of Scotland, and to give him crest, sup-
porters, and other exterior ornaments as is above
exprest, or as to him shall seem most proper."
It must be confessed, upon the whole, that there is
something suspicious in this transaction. There was,
hence, more than a century ago, no proper warrant
or authority for the alleged grant in 1542 — merely
an inventory is referred to, and after all, it is not
likely that either there, or in a copy, so palpable an
error as was detected by Pinkerton — and counte-
nancing the idea of forgery — should have been com-
mitted. Independently, too, of the unauthorized in-
terpolation of supporters in the grant in 1700, of
which there is no mention in the supposed warrant
in 1542, the wording of the latter may not be alto-
gether satisfactory ; but, be this as it may, the ho-
rn ologatory act, or new concession, as it proceeds di-
rectly from the Sovereign, must be held of itself to
be quite sufficient, and fully to vest in the family
the transcendent privilege in question. The use of
these arms in modern times, to which the late Lord
Napier appeals, will not therefore prove the authen-
ticity of the warrant in 1542, as that may be as-
cribed to an intervening circumstance, of which his