JMcMillan wrote:Even at that, it's a bargain compared to what the College of Arms is charging--6,857 euros at today's exchange rate. By comparison, Lord Lyon is dirt cheap at 2,862 euros. I'm surprised the cost differential hasn't led to mass migration across the Tweed. Or arms smuggling in the opposite direction.
But what are we comparing? What are we actually paying for?
A Scottish grant allows one man to use the coat of arms that has been granted along with the courtesy right of his wife and his heir to use them (there is also a minor courtesy right of his daughters during their lifetime and his younger sons but only in their minority). His younger sons have a right to become armigerous but in order to do so they must open their purses and pay over the required sovereigns to matriculate arms. If they don't, they have no right to use armorial bearings.
An English grant allows the same courtesy rights to the wife and children of the armiger but, and this is the important difference, it also grants a substantive right to all of the male descendants of the grantee to use those arms as their own (suitably differenced or not as they choose).
Therefore, when comparing costs, we ought to imagine a scenario several generations down the line where there have been a number of male descendants of the grantee and work out a suitable cost comparison. In England, there would have been no additional cost even if we are talking about 10 20, 30 or even hundreds of male descendants of younger brothers, cousins etc.; every single one of them would be armigerous automatically In Scotland however, apart from the direct male heirs (who in any case are encouraged to matriculate every third generation but don't really have to) every other younger male descendant, be it younger brother/cousin etc. will have to pay to matriculate if they want to become armigerous. If we want to achieve an equivalency between the males of these two nation's families, in the end the Scottish family would have paid a lot lot more.
In a few hundred years time, with my English grant, I could have a boat load of male descendants all of whom would be armigerous and none of whom would have had to pay one penny more. Unless a great deal more money is spent, no matter how many hundreds of years have passed, my Scottish friend would have but one single descendant who could claim to be armigerous.
Now that's what I call value for money.