Heralds’ College
The corporation of the College of Arms consists of 13 officers—namely, three Kings of Arms (Garter, Clarenceux, and Norroy), and, we believe, six heralds and four pursuivants. According to a Parliamentary Return, the most onerous of their duties is the preservation and safe custody of the vast mass of records and evidences which relate to the genealogical history, pedigrees, and arms of the nobility and gentry of England, from the earliest period to the present time. These officers have no Government grant, but they are household servants of the Crown, under the Earl Marshal; and their duty as such consists in the ordering and conducting all public funerals, such State ceremonials as coronations, and other ceremonials where the person of the Sovereign is more immediately concerned. For these services they receive salaries, the aggregate amount of which to the 13 officers is 252l. 18s. per annum. In their capacity of household servants they also receive certain fees on the creation of dignities and upon the installation of Knights of the Garter, paid by the persons on whom such honours are conferred. A herald and a pursuivant answer all public inquiries, make such searches as may be required, and give official extracts from records; the fees received for such searches and extracts amounted to 94l. in 1861. From all these sources, therefore, they received 600l. in that year. The officers of arms are the agents through whom applications are made to the Earl Marshal (acting in this behalf on the part of the Crown) for the registration of armorial bearings, or the solicitation of the Royal licence for a change of name, or change of name and arms. For the one case it becomes the duty of the officers of arms to see that no memorial be presented to the Earl Marshal by any individual not occupying a fit station in life for such distinction; and in the other that no petition be, through them, presented to the Crown, the allegations of which have not been, before such presentation, fully established, inasmuch as the Crown accepts and endorses such allegations, and directs the Earl Marshal to make them matter of record. The number of these patents and grants of arms or change of name or arms has been 869 in the period from 1850 to 1862 inclusive. The fees taken upon them are:—For grants on voluntary applications, 66l. 10s. and 10l. stamp duty; under Royal licences, 66l. 10s. and 48l. 17s. 6d. for exemplifications, 3l. 10s. of which goes to the Home-office; for grants of supporters, 55l.; for grants to wives or spinsters, 53l. and 10l. stamp duty; for grants of quarterings, 42l. 10s. and 10l. stamp duty; for grants of crests, 42l. 10s. and 10l. stamp duty; and for change of name, 44l. 13s., whereof 10l. 2s. 6d. goes to the Home-office.