Sir Francis James Grant, KCVO, WS, FSA (Scot) (1863-1953)
ARMS: Gules three antique crowns or within a bordure chequy of the last and the first charged with three crescents azure.
SOURCE/NOTES & CREDITS:
Arms matriculated in the Public Register of All Arms and Bearings in Scotland in 1901, recorded in “An Ordinary of Scottish Arms”, Sir James Balfour Paul, 2nd Ed. of 1903, page 116, no. 1730. Biographical information, in part from Wikipedia.
Francis James Grant was born 4 Aug. 1863, appointed Carrick Pursuivant on 17 May 1886, LLD, WS in 1887, FSA Scot in 1888, and Rothesay Herald, Lyon Clerk and Keeper of the Records of the Court of the Lord Lyon on 8 September 1898. He was appointed as Lord Lyon King of Arms and as Secretary of the Order of the Thistle on 10 March 1929 and given the CVO on 3 June 1931. On 3 June 1935, he was given the KCVO. He demitted the office at age 82, on 30 June 1945 and was appointed Albany Herald by his successor and he died on 17 February 1953. Sir Francis was the representative of Grant of Corrimonie and was the son of John Grant, Marchmont Herald from 1884 to 1889.
Grant was also the author of a commonly seen little volume: “The Manual of Heraldry”, ours is a copy of 1914, a new and revised edition, of some 142 pages. It has been reprinted many times up through the 1920s and 30s and is a basic primer on the subject of Scots heraldry.
His predecessor as the Lord Lyon was Captain George Sitwell Campbell Swinton and his successor was Sir Thomas Innes of Learney, GCVO.
The artwork is a rendering by John Hamilton Gaylor.
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