ARMS: Azure between three lions’ heads a fess argent
SOURCE/NOTES & CREDITS: The source of the arms and basic illustration found on page 3965, BP, 107th Edition, 2003, volume III.
John Buchan, GCVO, born in 1875 was created 1st Baron Tweedsmuir, in the UK 1 June 1935 by King George V over the protest of the Canadian Prime Minister who didna want the Governor Generals of Canada to be Lords anymore and he died 11 Feb 1940 while serving in office as Governor General of Canada.
In 1939 when King George VI and Queen Elizabeth were visiting Canada just prior to their famous visit down south to the Roosevelt’s for “Hot Dogs”, one of the King’s last acts whilst on the Royal train heading east was to invest Buchan with the GCVO but the King couldna open the case and requested Buchan’s aid.
Buchan was a prolific author of over a hundred books including the famous, “The Thirty-Nine Steps” ( 1915 ) and an active politician. He was knowledgeable about heraldry and wrote the foreword to Learney’s 1st Edition of “Scots Heraldry”, 1934, and a rather nice biography of the career of King George V, entitled “the King’s Grace, 1910-1935”, 1935. There are some who put him in the company of authors like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Robert Louis Stevenson or perhaps he has more in common with Anthony Powell and C. P. Snow. Give them a read and lemme know.
The original blazon from BP read: azure a fess between three lions’ heads erased argent. This was re-arranged by John Gaylor because the basic Buchan arms are three lions’ heads; mentioning the heads first keeps the blazon within a Buchan environment as it were.
The artwork is a rendering by John Hamilton Gaylor.
2019 0521
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