Some notices of the surname of Shand, particularly of the County of Aberdeen

It is a somewhat remarkable circumstance that in the
records of the office of the Lord Lyon in Edinburgh, several
coats of arms, in no respect resembling each other, are
assigned to the name of Shand. Which of these may be the
oldest in date it is not easy to determine, as there is no
precise date, so far as we can discover, attached to any of
them, but we may begin with the escutcheon given in
"Workman's MS. which dates, we believe, from about the
year 1570, additions having been made to it during the
period from 1610 to 1620. These bearings are, Vert, on a
pack of wool, or cushion, a camel's head and neck argent, in
chief two crescents of the last. These arms would appear to
point to some connection, commercial or other, with the
East, but no account of their origin, or trace of any person
or persons who may have used these or similar armorial
ensigns has been preserved.
The next coat of arms appropriated to the name of Shand,
in " the registers of the L} 7 on office, is a very striking and
beautiful escutcheon, viz. Azure, in the Sun, the Virgin Mary
with the Babe, all proper. To the entry is subjoined the
following note, "see Handle Holme's Book, ii. c. 1, fig. 45, for
the manner of drawing." It appears, as we shall see by and
by, that in the times before the Reformation there were
several dignified ecclesiastics in the diocese of Aberdeen of
the name of Schand. This fact, taken in connection with
the peculiar nature of these armorial bearings themselves,
led us at one time to think that they might have been used
by some of those individuals. We know that the great
events* of our faith have been often prominently depicted by
heralds in all the countries of Europe, and assigned and
appropriated to Bishops and other clerics in the different
grades of their sees, offices, and jurisdictions. But, on
further enquiry, we are satisfied that this is really French
heraldn r , and that these bearings are the arms of the family
of Chandos or Shandos, which, as is well known, produced