350th Anniversary Lectures - March 2022
The first three of our free 350th Anniversary Lectures, celebrating the Public Register of All Armorial Bearings in Scotland, will take place in March. Tickets are available via Eventbrite.
Lecture 1: GLASGOW
Date: Thursday, 3 March 2022
Venue: Glasgow City Chambers, George Square, Glasgow G2 1DU
Time: 6:30 pm Registration, 7 pm Start, 8 pm to 9 pm Civic Reception
People Make Heraldry: Stories from the Lyon Register
Speaker: Rothesay Herald, Liam Devlin
From its creation by the Scottish Parliament 350 years ago in the reign of Charles II, the Lyon Register has contained all the coats of arms in legal use in Scotland. We might think of it as a national memorial cairn, each individual stone telling the history of a person or a place. The opening talk of our year-long series will tell some of these personal stories from the Register, some moving, some shocking, some almost farcical as people have tried over the centuries to mark their place in the national memory.
Lecture 2: INVERNESS
Date: Tuesday, 8 March 2022
Venue: The Highland Council, Inverness Town House, High Street, Inverness, IV1 1JJ
Heraldry – How and Why the Flowering?
Speaker: Gordon Casely, Heraldist and Journalist
When it comes to heraldry, Gordon Casely is an unashamed modernist who pushes forward with the present and the future. His lecture examines both the present, and some of the context that’s created this present. He reflects on both the rise in grants of arms across 21st-century Scotland, as well as the growing interest in heraldry.
He asks how and why this has occurred, and how arms have been put to use – and raises the dual questions of how we ensure that more people take up heraldry and gain arms. Or gain arms and then take up heraldry.
Date: Wednesday, 16 March 2022
Venue: Council Chamber, Town House, Broad Street, Aberdeen, AB10 1LP
Time: 6:30 pm Registration, 7 pm Start, 8 pm to 9 pm Civic Reception
The Pride of Lyons
Speaker: Mark Dennis, Advocate and Armorist
For at least seven hundred years Scotland has always had two kings: our Sovereigns, of course, but also their ‘familiar daylie servitour’, their Lord Lyon, King of Arms. Still one of the great officers of state, our Lyons have managed royal and national ceremony, acted as ambassadors and headed the heraldic executive through the rise and fall of dynasties, interregna, and both foreign and civil wars. Their stories are as varied and volatile as the times in which they served. This talk may be seen as a genial ‘photo safari’ of our Lyons across the broad savannah of Scots history from the, relative, safety of the 21st century.
