rendered legal, without giving offence to those who had borne these arms merely by strength of user for some prolonged but at the same time insufficient period to confer an unquestioned right. That has always seemed to me the obvious reason which accounts for these numberless grants of crests to apparently existing arms, which arms are recited and emblazoned in the patents, because there are other grants of crests which can be referred to, though these are singularly few in number, in which the arms are entirely ignored. But as none of these grants, which are of a crest only, appear to have been made to families whose right to arms was not absolutely beyond question or dispute, the conclusion above recited appears to be irresistible. The result of these numerous grants of crests, which I look upon as carrying greater importance in the sense that they were also confirmations of the arms, resulted in the fact that the value and dignity of the crest slowly but steadily declined, and the cessation of tournaments and, shortly afterwards, the marked decline in funereal pageantry no doubt contributed largely to the same result. Throughout the Stuart period instances can be found, though not very frequently, of grants of arms without the grant of a crest being included in the patent; but the practice was soon to entirely cease, and roughly speaking one may assert that since the beginning of the Hanoverian dynasty no person has ever been granted arms without the corresponding grant of a crest, if a crest could be properly borne with the arms. Now no crest has ever been granted where the right to arms has not existed or been simultaneously conferred, and therefore, whilst there are still many coats of arms legally in existence without a crest, a crest cannot exist without a coat of arms, so that those people, and they are many, who vehemently assert a right to the "crest of their family," whilst admitting they have no right to arms, stand self-convicted heraldically both of having spoken unutterable rubbish, and of using a crest to which they can have no possible right. One exception, and one only, have I ever come across to the contrary, and very careful inquiry can bring me knowledge of no other. That crest is the crest of a family of Buckworth, now represented by Sir Charles Buckworth-Herne-Soame, Bart. This family at the time of the Visitations exhibited a certain coat of arms and crest. The coat of arms, which doubtless interfered with the rights of some other family, was respited for further proof; but the crest, which did not, appears to have been allowed, and as nothing further was done with regard to the arms, the crest stood, whilst the arms were bad. But even this one exception has long since been rectified, for when the additional name and arms of Soame were assumed by Royal License, the arms which had been exhibited and respited were (with the addition of an
