The Hereditary
Sheriff of Fife

Introduction

The sheriff proved the most enduring of the local offices by which the medieval kings of Scots exercised their authority. David I introduced the office on the Anglo-Norman model: the vicecomes presided over the king's court in the shire, collected royal rents and fines, commanded the shire's men in arms and supervised the royal burghs.¹ Fife was among the kingdom's wealthiest provinces, and Dunfermline was the burial place of its kings. The sheriffdom of Fife acquired its definitive form towards the end of the twelfth century, with Cupar as its seat.² During the next three centuries the king appointed its sheriffs from successive knightly families. James V's heritable grant of 1529 to George Leslie, fourth Earl of Rothes, established the office in the House of Leslie, where it remained; in 1663 it became part of the feudal Earldom of Rothes.³

Under the Heritable Jurisdictions (Scotland) Act of 1746, offices of this kind lost their judicial powers and the administration of justice reverted to the Crown. The Earl of Rothes received the compensation required by the Treaty of Union for a right that the law had consistently treated as heritable.⁴ The withdrawal of jurisdiction did not extinguish the office. Queen Victoria's Charter of Confirmation under the Great Seal of 1859 expressly confirmed to Henrietta, Countess of Rothes, "the Office of Sheriff of the foresaid Sheriffdom of Fife … in so far as … not abolished" by the Act. Its destination extended beyond the heirs of the entail to "her other heirs and assigns whatsoever".⁵ The office has descended with the feudal earldom under that destination ever since. A deed of assignation dated 5 November 2024 vested it in His Excellency Dario Item, Ambassador of Antigua and Barbuda; his claim of entitlement was entered in the Scottish Barony Register on 25 November 2024.⁶

The account that follows draws on the royal charters recorded in the Register of the Great Seal, the Exchequer Rolls and the Acts of Parliament, together with the certificate of the Lords of Session of 1748, the Crown charter of 1859 and the registers of the present century. Gaps in the record and points of dispute are expressly noted.

Part IThe King's Officer: the Sheriffdom of Fife, c. 1150–1500

The office of sheriff emerged in Scotland during the twelfth century. In his study of 1922–23, still fundamental to the subject, Charles Malcolm derived the title from the Old English scirgerefa and traced the institution to the shire-reeve familiar to David I (1124–1153) from the court of Henry I. The first Scottish sheriff recorded in the sources appears as a witness to a charter of 1120.⁷ Every sheriffdom established before 1292 had a royal castle as its caput. There the sheriff convened the head court of the shire, to which the freeholders owed suit. His Exchequer accounts covered the crown lands; the feudal casualties of ward, marriage and relief; and the fines and escheats arising in his own court and at the justiciar's ayre. He also commanded the shire levies, conducted the weaponshaws and exercised royal authority over trade through the burghs' prepositi.⁸ Alice Taylor, in her study of the medieval Scottish state, places the decisive consolidation of the shrieval system between about 1160 and 1230, the period in which the sheriffdom of Fife itself was formed.⁹

Royal sheriffs served at both Crail and Dunfermline during the reign of William the Lion (1165–1214), although the boundaries of their respective jurisdictions remain uncertain. A unified sheriffdom of Fife was established towards the end of his reign.¹⁰ Geoffrey son of Richard of Inverkunglas is its earliest securely documented holder: sheriff of Crail from about 1200, he appears as "sheriff of Fife" in 1213.¹¹ Subsequent holders came from the county's knightly families. They included Thomas of Lundin (1217 × 1219); John Hay of Naughton (1228–1244); David de Wemyss, the recipient on 7 October 1239 of a precept from William, Earl of Ross and justiciar of Scotia, concerning fines levied at the justice ayre of Cupar; Sir David of Lochore, whose accounts as sheriff for 1264 and 1266 survive in the earliest Exchequer Rolls; Sir Alexander of Synton (1281); Hugh and Constantine of Lochore (1288–1291); Sir David Barclay (1295–1328); Sir John of Balfour; another David of Wemyss (1353–1359); and Sir Alan of Erskine (1387).¹² An instruction issued by Alexander II on 17 August 1227 required "his sheriff of Fife" to pay the abbot of Dunfermline one eighth of the king's profits of justice within the sheriff's jurisdiction. It supplies early evidence of the office's duties and of the abbey's share in royal justice, subsequently confirmed by the precept of 1239.¹³

Cupar served as the sheriffdom's caput. By about 1170 a motte-and-bailey castle occupied the Castlehill, and in 1239 the justice ayre met in the town. The designation "burgh or sheriffdom of Cupar" occurs in a record of 1372. Sir Robert Sibbald's account of 1710 places sittings of the sheriff court on the Moothill of Cupar in 1464–65, followed by sittings in the burgh's tolbooth.¹⁴ Cupar's position as the county's judicial seat found expression in the proverb "He that will to Cupar maun to Cupar". The County Buildings, erected in 1812–1817 on the site of the former tolbooth, housed the sheriff court until 2014, when the court at Cupar was closed and its business transferred to Dundee.¹⁵

The sheriff represented the king rather than the earl. As chiefs of Clan MacDuff, the ancient Earls of Fife possessed privileges predating the shrieval office: they could enthrone the King of Scots, lead the vanguard and invoke the "Law of Clan MacDuff". Under that law, relatives within the ninth degree could seek sanctuary at MacDuff's Cross near Newburgh and compound for slaughter. Parliament recognised the earl as capitalis legis de Clenmcduffe in 1384.¹⁶ No Earl of Fife, however, is recorded as sheriff of his own county. Earl Duncan held the sheriffship of Dumbarton in 1288, while Fife was administered by royal sheriffs chosen from the lesser nobility. Following the forfeiture of the Albany Stewarts in 1425, the comital jurisdiction was converted into a royal stewartry seated at Falkland; it coexisted with the sheriffdom until the reform of both jurisdictions in 1748.¹⁷ Writing of Argyll, the editors of the Exchequer Rolls had already remarked that the accounts from Alexander III's reign offered no support for the view that the sheriff's office "had begun to be considered an heritable one". The Fife accounts provide no evidence to the contrary.¹⁸ In Fife the office became heritable only in the sixteenth century.

Part IIThe House of Leslie and the Heritable Grant, 1529–1747

The Lindsays of the Byres held the office for a brief and disputed period in James V's reign. Patrick, Lord Lindsay, was "constituted sheriff of Fife" in 1519; the index names his grandson John, fifth Lord Lindsay, as sheriff in 1528.¹⁹ The earliest extant sheriff court book of Fife records the business of the court at Cupar from 1515 to 1522. Edited for the Scottish History Society by W. Croft Dickinson, it documents these years immediately preceding the grant to the Leslies.²⁰ George Leslie, fourth Earl of Rothes, secured the office for his house. His family had possessed the lands and castle of Leslie on the Leven since the fourteenth century and had been raised to the earldom by James II between November 1457 and March 1458. The history of the family and its earldom is treated on the companion site, earl-of-rothes.info, rather than recounted here.²¹ The Earl's appointment as sheriff came in the spring of 1529; the Dictionary of National Biography gives the date as 2 March 1528/29. The grant that secured the office to his family followed: James V, pro bono servitio, granted the officium vicecomitis de Fiffe to George, Earl of Rothes, et ejus heredibus, with authority to hold courts (cum potestate curias tenendi) and the customary fees and duties. The office was to be held of the king for an annual blench ferme of one penny.²² A further charter, issued at Edinburgh on 7 December 1540, accepted the Earl's personal resignation and regranted the office to him in liferent (in libero tenemento) and to his son Norman Leslie, Master of Rothes and fiar of the earldom, et ejus heredibus, hereditarie, "ministering justice as is fitting".²³ These grants established the hereditary sheriffdom in law, as a Crown grant to a man and his heirs for a nominal reddendo, upon the same terms as the kingdom's other heritable fiefs.

The grant soon faced its first test. Norman Leslie's involvement in the murder of Cardinal Beaton at St Andrews in 1546 led to his forfeiture, returning the fee of the office to the Crown. Queen Mary restored it to Andrew, fifth Earl, through charters of 22 July 1564 and 8 May 1565; in a writ of 3 June 1566 she undertook "on the word of a princess" to uphold his possession against every claimant.²⁴ The competing claim belonged to the Lindsays and derived from their title of the 1520s. Arbiters settled the dispute by a decreet of 9 May 1573 awarding the office to Rothes and redeeming the Lindsay claim. The marriage of the Earl's daughter Euphemia to the Master of Lindsay confirmed the reconciliation, and in April 1575 Lord Lindsay formally relinquished all claim to the sheriffship.²⁵ Subsequent successions were uncontested. James, Master of Rothes, received the office by charter of 14 January 1600/01; in 1642 a royal commission sitting "in the burgh of Cupar" served the young seventh Earl heir to his father "in the office of Sheriff of Fife, with the power and privileges of the same".²⁶ Distrust of hereditary jurisdiction led the revolutionary Parliament of 1649 to provide for the annual election of sheriffs principal. In Fife it elected the young Earl himself. George Jamieson, provost of Cupar, protested that the election must not prejudice the burgh's "just rights and liberties".²⁷ The heritable office returned to its ordinary course at the Restoration. The Earls, like their thirteenth-century predecessors, administered it through deputes: on 16 May 1661 the Earl, "as Sheriff-principal of Fife", appointed George Heriot of Ramornie and John Malcolm of Balbedy. James Leslie became sheriff-clerk in 1708, and from 1718 Robert Hay of Naughton served as sheriff-depute under the ninth and tenth Earls.²⁸

The office assumed its lasting form under John Leslie (c. 1630–1681), seventh Earl, Lord High Treasurer and, from 1667, Lord Chancellor of Scotland. Following the Earl's resignation, Charles II issued a charter under the Great Seal at Whitehall on 4 June 1663. It brought together the whole lands, baronies, fairs and weekly market of Leslie, the Earl's house in the burgh of Cupar, the "office of Sheriff of Fife" and "the Honor Title and dignity of Rothes" within "a whole and free Lordship and Earldom, Barony, burgh of Barony and Lordship of Leslie and Earldom of Rothes". The destination favoured the heirs-male of the Earl's body and, failing them, his eldest heir-female. Parliament ratified the charter on 9 October 1663.²⁹ The sheriffdom consequently ceased to be a separate office and became a constituent of the feudal, or "territorial", earldom of Rothes. It thereafter accompanied the earldom's lands under every subsequent entail, including that executed by Margaret, Countess of Rothes, on 1 January 1684, "the basis of all following entails"; the Crown charter of 1859 recites both that entail and the charter of 1663.³⁰ The Earl's subsequent dignities, the palace of Leslie and his great funeral of 1681 are considered in the history of the earldom on the companion site. For the sheriffship, Sibbald's account of 1710 supplies the pertinent testimony: "the magnificent palace of Leslie" was a seat of "John Lesley Earl of Rothes heritable sheriff of Fife", whose office had been "heritably in that family since king James V's time".³¹

Heritable tenure of a sheriffship had by then become commonplace. Grants had proliferated under Charles II, and by 1700 twenty-one of Scotland's thirty-three sheriffdoms were heritable. With their court at Cupar, their deputes and their sheriff-clerks, the Earls of Rothes ranked among the kingdom's most prominent heritable sheriffs.³² The twentieth article of the Treaty of Union of 1707 reserved "all heritable Offices, Superiorities, heritable Jurisdictions, Offices for life and Jurisdictions for life … to the Owners thereof as Rights of Property", thereby protecting such offices from ordinary legislation unaccompanied by compensation.³³ Within forty years the Earl of Rothes would rely upon that provision.

Part IIICulloden and the Heritable Jurisdictions Act, 1746–1748

In the wake of the rising of 1745, George II's ministers concluded that heritable jurisdiction could not be reconciled with a modern state. The Act of 1746 (20 Geo. II, c. 43), "An Act for taking away and abolishing the Heretable Jurisdictions in Scotland; and for making Satisfaction to the Proprietors thereof; and for restoring such Jurisdictions to the Crown …", ordered the cessation of all heritable sheriffships and similar jurisdictions from 25 March 1748, and the transfer of their records to the new sheriff courts. Thereafter the Crown was to appoint sheriffs-depute learned in the law, initially for seven-year terms and subsequently ad vitam aut culpam.³⁴ The Treaty's recognition of these offices as property also required provision for "satisfaction". Proprietors had until 11 November 1747 to submit their claims to the Court of Session, subject to objection by the King's Advocate. The Lords of Council and Session were then to assess each jurisdiction's value and certify their opinion to the King in Council.³⁵

John Leslie, tenth Earl of Rothes (1698–1767), submitted his claim on 10 November 1747 in the capacity of "heritable Sheriff of the Shire of Fife", placing a value of £10,000 on the office. A major-general at Dettingen and commander of the cavalry at Rocoux, he belonged to a family that had supported the House of Hanover in both 1715 and 1745.³⁶ In their certificate presented to the House of Lords in April 1748, the Lords of Session valued "the Heretable Office of Sheriffship of the Shire of Fife, claimed by John Earl of Rothes" at £6,268 16s sterling. This was among the higher valuations for the 112 jurisdictions considered to warrant compensation; the sheriffship of Kinross was valued at £2,000 and the stewartry of Fife at £1,200.³⁷ The Hon. James Leslie of Milndeans, advocate and brother of the Earl, was appointed in 1748 as Fife's first sheriff-depute under the new arrangements. His salaried judicial office was the direct predecessor of the present sheriffdom.³⁸

The Act removed jurisdiction, namely the authority to convene courts and administer judgment. It neither revoked nor purported to revoke the heritable right conferred by the Crown in 1529 or the charter of 1663 incorporating the office into the earldom. The Earls of Rothes retained the style of hereditary sheriffs of Fife, and the office remained in the recitals of their titles. A century later, when the Crown confirmed the entailed earldom to a new heir, the office was included in that confirmation, with an express and precise qualification acknowledging the Act of 1746.

Part IVThe Crown Charter of Confirmation, 19 October 1859

On 2 January 1859 George William Evelyn Leslie, sixteenth Earl of Rothes, died unmarried at the age of twenty-three. His elder sister, Henrietta Anderson Morshead Leslie (1832–1886), inherited the peerage as seventeenth Countess. Before the Sheriff-Substitute of Fifeshire on 19 April 1859, she was served as her brother's nearest and lawful heir of tailzie and provision in the entailed earldom; the General Register of Sasines recorded her sasine on 3 May.³⁹ Queen Victoria confirmed the entire estate to her by a Charter of Confirmation dated 19 October 1859, issued under the seal "now used for the Great Seal of Scotland". The charter survives in the Register of the Great Seal, held by the National Records of Scotland under the reference C2/262, no. 4. This site provides access to a certified copy and reproduces the full text in the Appendix.⁴⁰

Engrossed in English, in accordance with the practice for Victorian Crown writs, the charter confirms "for ever" to "the Right Honourable Henrietta Anderson Morshead Leslie Countess of Rothes and the heirs and substitutes entitled to succeed to her", under the entail of 1684, "All and Sundry the Earldom, lands, Lordship, Baronies" of Rothes and Leslie. Its subjects include the barony of Leslie "united into one whole and free barony", the burgh of Leslie's four free fairs and Tuesday market, and the Earl's house in the burgh of Cupar. The provision concerning the sheriffdom reads:

"And All and Whole the Office of Sheriff of the foresaid Sheriffdom of Fife within the whole bounds of the same with All and Sundry fees, salaries, profits and duties of the said office, faculties, privileges and just pertinents whatsoever pertaining to the said Office of Sheriff in so far as the said Office of Sheriff and pertinents thereof are not abolished by the Act of Parliament passed in the twentieth year of the reign of his late Majesty George the Second entituled 'An Act for taking away heritable Jurisdictions in Scotland &c.'"

Charter of Confirmation under the Great Seal, 19 October 1859. National Records of Scotland, C2/262, no. 4, fo. 10r.⁴¹

The charter goes on to rehearse the incorporation of all these subjects, including the "office of Sheriff of Fife", under Charles II's charter of 4 June 1663. They had been "united annexed created erected and incorporated", with "the Honor Title and dignity of Rothes", into a single Lordship and Earldom; the complete recital appears in the Appendix.⁴² Derived from Countess Margaret's entail, the destination proceeds through the heirs of the Leslie line before concluding with the clause decisive for the office's subsequent descent: "whom all failing to the said Margaret Countess of Rothes her other heirs and assigns whatsoever".⁴³ John M. Lindsay, Director of Chancery, signed the writ. James Hay Mackenzie, Depute Keeper of the Seal, sealed it at Edinburgh on 19 October 1859.⁴⁴

The wording establishes three points concerning the Crown's position in 1859. The office of Sheriff of Fife was regarded as a subsisting heritable subject, susceptible of confirmation under the Great Seal; the Act of 1746 was understood to have abolished its jurisdiction and pertinents only "in so far as" the Act extended to them. Confirmation was given to the office as part of the feudal Earldom of Rothes, descending with its lands to "heirs and assigns whatsoever". The present hereditary sheriffdom therefore has its legal foundation in a Crown writ, rather than in a private assertion of title.

Part VOne House, Two Lines: the Peerage and the Feudal Earldom part company, 1886–2004

Henrietta, Countess of Rothes, married the Hon. George Waldegrave in 1861; he adopted the surname Waldegrave-Leslie. She died without issue on 10 February 1886.⁴⁵ Her death began the separation of the peerage from the feudal earldom and its office, which had accompanied one another since 1663. Under its own terms the peerage of Rothes passes to heirs general. It accordingly descended by blood to her aunt Mary Elizabeth Haworth-Leslie, eighteenth Countess, and in 1893 to Mary Elizabeth's grandson, Norman Evelyn Leslie, nineteenth Earl.⁴⁶ The line remains unbroken, with James Malcolm David Leslie as the present twenty-second Earl of Rothes in the Peerage of Scotland and Chief of the Name of Leslie. His rank and dignity are wholly distinct from the feudal earldom considered here. The companion site recounts the peerage's later history.⁴⁷

Succession to the entailed estate followed the destination set out in the charter of 1859. George Waldegrave-Leslie retained Leslie House until his death in 1904, when it was inherited by the nineteenth Earl; the trustees of the Rothes estates made provision for the succession in a deed of assumption and conveyance dated 9 March 1905.⁴⁸ The title deeds record a disposition of 9 December 1919 by which those trustees conveyed the estate of Leslie, together with the feudal earldom and the heritable office incorporated in it by the charters of 1663 and 1859, to Captain Alexander Crundall. Historic Environment Scotland describes the same event from the family's perspective, recording that in 1919 the nineteenth Earl parted with Leslie "to a Captain Crundall". Later that year the mansion house was conveyed to Sir Robert Spencer-Nairn, whose family donated it to the Church of Scotland in 1952. The dignities remained with the Crundalls, as the subsequent deeds attest.⁴⁹ Following Captain Crundall's death, his son William Alexander Crundall succeeded to the office by general service, recorded on 9 July 1957; the office subsequently passed from him to William Patrick Alexander Crundall. A disposition dated 29 November 2003 and recorded on 1 April 2004 conveyed the earldom, lordship and office from the last of the Crundalls to Sheldon Gustav Franco-Rooks. The next deed records that Franco-Rooks had received them "ex facie absolutely but truly in trust for Sir Christopher Ondaatje". By a disposition subscribed at Bexley in Kent on 4 May 2004, with entry as at 9 December 2003, and recorded in the General Register of Sasines for the County of Fife on 21 May 2004, he conveyed them to Sir Christopher "and to his successors and assignees whomsoever heritably and irredeemably". This was six months before the abolition of feudal tenure on 28 November 2004.⁵⁰

The final conveyance of the office under feudal land tenure was the deed of 2004. Its wording demonstrates the continuing operation of the clause of 1859 a century and a half later. Alongside "All and Whole the lands and other heritages forming the Barony and Lordship of Leslie and Earldom of Rothes", the deed dispones "also All and Whole the office of Sheriff of the Sheriffdom of Fife within the whole bounds of the same with All and Sundry fees, salaries, profits and duties of the said Office, faculties, privileges and just pertinents whatsoever pertaining to the said Office of the Sheriff insofar as the said Office of Sheriff and pertinents thereof are not abolished by the Act of Parliament passed in the Twentieth year of the reign of his late Majesty George II", together with the weekly market of the burgh of Leslie, "being the subjects described in Instrument of Sasine in favour of Henrietta Anderson Morshead Waldegrave Leslie, Countess of Rothes recorded in the General Register of Sasines on the Third day of May … 1859 and also as in Charter of Confirmation under the Great Seal granted by Her Majesty Queen Victoria in favour of the said Countess of Rothes dated the Nineteenth day of October … 1859". In describing the office, the conveyancers of 2004 adopted precisely the characterisation used by the Crown in 1859: a heritable office belonging to the earldom, as the charter of 1663 had made it, surviving to the extent that the Act of 1746 had not abolished it. Jurisdiction had reverted to the Crown, whereas the office and its title and dignity remained with the earldom. The deed thus expresses in conveyancing terms the distinction traced throughout this account.

Born in Ceylon, Sir Philip Christopher Ondaatje (1933–2026) was a financier, author and benefactor of the National Portrait Gallery, where the Ondaatje Wing bears his name. His services to museums, galleries and learned societies earned him a knighthood in 2003; the companion site gives a fuller account of his life.⁵¹ His petition to the Lord Lyon for arms was submitted on 27 October 2004. On 26 November 2004, two days before the appointed day for the abolition of feudal tenure, he was infeft in the lands, lordship and earldom. By a warrant dated 5 September 2006, amending the warrant of 6 December 2005, Lord Lyon Robin Blair designated him "Feudal Earl of Rothes and Baron and Feudal Lord of Leslie and holder of the territorial office of Sheriff of Fife". Letters Patent were granted on 6 August 2007 and matriculated that day on pages 112 and 113 of the eighty-seventh volume of the Public Register of All Arms and Bearings in Scotland.⁵² Those Letters Patent formally embody the Court's recognition, styling the grantee "Feudal Earl of Rothes and Baron and Feudal Lord of Leslie and Holder of the territorial office of Sheriff of Fife". Their recital states that "by Disposition of date 4 May 2004 recorded in the General Register of Sasines for the County of Fife of date 21 May 2004 the Petitioner was as at 26 November 2004 infeft in All and Whole the Lands and other heritages forming the barony and territorial lordship of Leslie and the territorial earldom of Rothes together with the territorial office of Sheriff of Fife". The petitioner "having prayed that he might be granted such Ensigns Armorial as might be found suitable according to the Laws of Arms, together with additaments, Badge and Standard appropriate to a feudal earl in the baronage of Scotland", the Letters Patent assign, ratify and confirm to him and his descendants the arms Or, a coconut palm tree couped and fructed with three coconuts Proper, the trunk surmounted by a leopard passant guardant Sable, with the feudo-baronial mantle Gules doubled of silk Argent, a chapeau Gules furred Ermine, and a badge and standard granted "in respect of his feudal earldom of Rothes and the barony and feudal lordship of Leslie", under the motto FAC VELIS PERFICIES. His tenure of the feudal Earldom of Rothes and the Sheriffdom of Fife lasted twenty years. He died in his ninety-fourth year on 20 July 2026.⁵³

Part VIThe Assignation of 2024 and the Present Holder

Sir Christopher Ondaatje's deed of assignation of 5 November 2024 transferred "all my whole right and entitlement" in the Earldom of Rothes and the Sheriffdom of Fife to His Excellency Dario Item, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Antigua and Barbuda. The deed records the assignation as a token of personal esteem.⁵⁴ On 25 November 2024 the Scottish Barony Register accepted and registered the Ambassador's Claim of Entitlement "to The Dignity of the Feudal Earldom of Rothes and the Hereditary Office of Sheriff of Fife" in Volume 6, folios 27 to 29. The Custodian, Alastair Kennedy Shepherd WS, issued the Certificate of Registration on 19 December 2024; publication of the registration followed in the Edinburgh Gazette of 19 December 2025.⁵⁵ In his annual report, evidently referring to this entry, the Custodian described it as "the first time the Register has been asked to record an hereditary sheriffdom". Such an office, he explained, "prior to 1745 … was passed down from father to son in just a few aristocratic families". He added, with some amusement, that "the family concerned had passed this ancient office down to future generations, perhaps in case the government decided to amend the 1746 decision".⁵⁶ Debrett's includes "Rothes (Earldom) and Sheriffdom of Fife" in its current listing of Scotland's feudal dignities, recording the Ambassador's tenure from 2024.⁵⁷

The Ambassador petitioned the Lord Lyon King of Arms on 5 February 2025. By a Warrant issued at Edinburgh on 4 April 2025, the Lord Lyon authorised the Lyon Clerk to prepare Letters Patent granting the following Ensigns Armorial to the Ambassador and his descendants, and granted warrant for their matriculation in the Public Register of All Arms and Bearings in Scotland.⁵⁸

Ensigns Armorial · Warrant of the Lord Lyon King of Arms, Edinburgh, 4 April 2025

Vert, a hauszeichen Or, on a chief enarched two dragon's heads couped combatant Vert.

Helm

Above the Shield is placed an Helm befitting his degree, with a Mantling Vert doubled Or.

Crest

On a Wreath of the Liveries, a demi-dragon rampant Vert.

Motto

In an Escrol over the same, GRADATIM FEROCITER — step by step, and boldly.

Pennon

Of 120 centimetres in length or thereby, two tracts of the Liveries Vert and Or, with the Arms of the Petitioner in the hoist bearing his Motto counterchanged; limited to the Petitioner and his heirs and successors in the said Armorial Bearings.

The Ambassador

Dr Dario Item serves as Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Antigua and Barbuda to the Kingdom of Spain, the Principality of Liechtenstein and the Principality of Monaco. He presented his credentials to their sovereigns between December 2018 and February 2019.⁵⁹ Since Antigua and Barbuda joined the World Tourism Organization in December 2021, he has also served as its Permanent Representative to that organisation.⁶⁰ A Swiss attorney and author of specialist legal publications, he is a graduate in law and political science, with a master's degree in law and a doctorate in criminal law. He joined Antigua and Barbuda's diplomatic service in 2016 and opened the country's first resident embassy in Spain in 2018.⁶¹ Further details of his career appear on this site's biographical page.

Part VIIThe Law of the Dignity Today

Feudal tenure in Scotland came to an end on 28 November 2004 under the Abolition of Feudal Tenure etc. (Scotland) Act 2000. Section 63, headed "Baronies and other dignities and offices", stipulates that "nothing in this Act affects the dignity of baron or any other dignity or office (whether or not of feudal origin)". The dignity of baron, "though retained, shall not attach to the land", and "shall be, and shall be transferable only as, incorporeal heritable property". For these purposes, "dignity" expressly "includes any quality or precedence associated with, and any heraldic privilege incidental to, a dignity".⁶² In the report of 1998–99 that formed the basis of the Act, the Scottish Law Commission expressly disavowed any intention "to affect … any peerages, or any of the ancient offices or positions which may have been feudal in origin". It recommended that barons "should retain the right to call themselves baron and should retain any precedence and ceremonial or heraldic privileges deriving from their barony".⁶³ Section 62 leaves "the jurisdiction or prerogative of the Lord Lyon King of Arms" wholly intact.⁶⁴

Once these dignities could no longer be entered in the land registers, members of the Scottish legal profession founded the Scottish Barony Register. It began operating on the appointed day under Alistair Rennie, a former Deputy Keeper of the Registers of Scotland; Alastair Kennedy Shepherd WS has been its Custodian since December 2020. Applications must be made by Scottish solicitors. The Register records assignations of baronies and of higher dignities belonging to the same genus: lordships, regalities and feudal earldoms.⁶⁵ In the Lord Lyon's description, it is "the only register for the Lord Lyon to have reference to in these matters, albeit a non-statutory register"; the Custodian's report is accepted as that of "a person of skill". Lord Lyon Morrow's Menking note of 30 April 2015 held that "the higher dignities are of the genus of barony" and that ownership evidenced by a deed of assignation recorded in the Register "brings the Petitioner within the jurisdiction of the Lord Lyon, King of Arms".⁶⁶ The Court had previously taken a different approach: its note on the petition of Sturzenegger of Arran declined to treat the warrants of 2005–06, Sir Christopher Ondaatje's included, as precedents for the style of "feudal earl". The Menking note now governs its practice.⁶⁷ The present Sheriff's arms were granted under that jurisdiction.

"Nothing in this Act affects the dignity of baron or any other dignity or office (whether or not of feudal origin)."

A heritable sheriffdom is distinct from a barony, but the statutory saving covers "any other dignity or office (whether or not of feudal origin)". The Explanatory Notes state that it was intended to preserve "ancient offices in, for example, the Royal Household which might be regarded as relics from the feudal era". The Scottish Law Commission likewise disclaimed any intention to affect "any of the ancient offices or positions which may have been feudal in origin".⁶⁸ Incorporated in the feudal Earldom of Rothes since 1663 and confirmed by the Crown in 1859, the office of Sheriff of Fife falls naturally within that saving, though no court has yet ruled on the point. Its succession follows the earldom's, the basis on which the Scottish Barony Register accepted it for registration.

Part VIIIA Titled Nobility: the Baronage of Scotland

For much of Scottish history, nobility attached in equal measure to land and to blood. Only the Crown could erect a free barony, and the grant extended beyond the land. The 1590 charter erecting the free barony of Spynie conferred with it the Titulum, Honorem, Ordinem et Statum liberi Baronis, the title, honour, order and estate of a free baron.⁶⁹ The institutional writers of Scots law expounded the implications. Stair referred to lands "erected into the dignity of a barony; which comprehendeth lordship, earldom, etc." and characterised lordships and earldoms as "more noble titles of barony, having the like feudal effects"; for Bell a barony was "truly only a feudal dignity conferred on territorial proprietors", lordships and earldoms "being only nobler titles for a barony, as connected with personal dignities".⁷⁰ The barons constituted an Estate of the realm separate from the peerage. In December 1567 Parliament declared that "of law and reason the barons of this realm ought to have vote in Parliament as a part of the nobility". Sir Thomas Innes of Learney, who served as Lord Lyon from 1945 to 1969 and was the foremost modern authority on the subject, read this Act as recognising "the (obvious) nobiliary fact, that the Barons are a part of 'The Nobility' in its constitutional sense".⁷¹

The modern Court of the Lord Lyon affirmed the tradition by judicial declaration. The description "untitled nobility", applied to Scotland's minor barons in some early twentieth-century birthbriefs, had practical consequences for Scottish families whose baronies had admitted them to the titled nobility of the Continent. Sir Francis Grant, the Lord Lyon, corrected it at the first suitable opportunity, on 26 February 1943. His interlocutor, pronounced on a petition for a birthbrief and entered in the Court's Register of Genealogies, declared:

"Further, with regard to the words 'untitled nobility' employed in certain recent birthbrieves in relation to the Minor Baronage of Scotland, Finds and Declares that the Minor Barons of Scotland are, and have been both in this nobiliary Court and in the Court of Session recognised as a 'titled nobility' and that the estait of the Baronage (i.e. Barones Minores) are of the ancient Feudal Nobility of Scotland."

Interlocutor of the Lord Lyon King of Arms, Edinburgh, 26 February 1943. Court of the Lord Lyon, Register of Genealogies, vol. iv, p. 26.⁷²

Writing in 1945, Innes of Learney, Grant's successor, reaffirmed the principle. A barony's date of erection, he held, gave rise to no social distinction: "all are equally, and in the European sense, 'Barons' in a 'Feudal Baronage', and constitute a 'titled nobility' in the feudal sense".⁷³

This terminology also appears in the courts of law. Lord Clyde, later a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary, observed in Spencer-Thomas of Buquhollie v Newell (1992) that "in feudal classification a barony falls into the class of noble as opposed to ignoble feus".⁷⁴ In its preparatory work for the abolition of feudal tenure, the Scottish Law Commission noted that a barony enabled its holder "to claim ennoblement by the 'nobilitating effect' of the 'noble quality' of the feudal title". As discussed above, the Act of 2000 preserved the dignity with "any quality or precedence associated with" it and "any heraldic privilege incidental to" it.⁷⁵

The Crown's court of honour has continued to treat the baronage as a rank. Matriculations of arms made "with chapeau in respect of being a Minor Baron" were still being published by the Lyon Clerk in the Edinburgh Gazette in 2002.⁷⁶ Since the abolition of feudal tenure, the Lord Lyon has held that a holder of the dignity of barony, or of a higher dignity of the same genus, falls within his jurisdiction. Such holders have received from him grants of arms with the additaments proper to a baron, including a helm befitting their degree, the formula used in the 2025 Warrant for the present Sheriff's arms.⁷⁷ The dignity also receives acknowledgment in civil administration. HM Passport Office permits the holder of a Scottish barony to include his territorial designation as part of the surname in his British passport, accompanied by an observation identifying him as "Baron of" his barony.⁷⁸

Scots law accordingly recognises two orders of hereditary dignity, both also recognised in the law of the United Kingdom. A peerage proceeds from the royal prerogative. Created by the Sovereign through patent or charter, it descends by blood in accordance with the limitation of the grant. Scotland's barons, lords and feudal earls form the baronage, whose nobility has its source in the feu. The erection of lands held of the Crown into free baronies, lordships and earldoms brought these dignities into being. They remained inseparable from the land for eight centuries; since 2004, their existence as heritable dignities transmissible by inheritance, bequest or assignation has rested on statute. From the Union of 1707, parliamentary membership marked the decisive division: peers sat in the House of Lords, whereas feudal barons did not. Until 1963, the peers of Scotland were represented there by sixteen members elected from among themselves. Parliamentary membership no longer distinguishes the two orders. The House of Lords Act 1999 removed the hereditary peers' right to sit, making an exception for ninety-two members. Royal Assent was given to the House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Act 2026 on 18 March 2026; that Act abolished the remaining exception when the parliamentary session ended on 29 April 2026.⁷⁹ Neither dignity now entails a legislative function, and the practical distinction lies in precedence and ceremony. Peers take the places allotted to them under the Royal Warrants of precedence. The baronage occupies its own position at court beneath the peerage and, as Innes of Learney noted, was ranked in the Lyon Register after knights and before esquires. Statute preserves its "quality or precedence" and "heraldic privilege".⁸⁰ Their origins, modes of transmission and present precedence at court distinguish the two orders; each, however, constitutes a titled nobility.

Among the higher degrees of the baronage is the feudal Earldom of Rothes, erected by the Crown in 1663 with the office of Sheriff of Fife incorporated in it. As a dignity of the genus of barony, it answers to Bell's description of the "nobler titles for a barony". In the language of the Lord Lyon's declaration of 1943, its holder belongs to "the ancient Feudal Nobility of Scotland". The hereditary office that descends with the earldom is of the same nobiliary character, the two having shared their history for more than three and a half centuries.

Part IXThe Sheriffdom in the Twenty-First Century

For the administration of justice, Fife now belongs to the Sheriffdom of Tayside, Central and Fife. This is one of Scotland's six sheriffdoms, each served by a Sheriff Principal and Crown-appointed sheriffs. In Fife the sheriff court sits at Dunfermline and Kirkcaldy; the court at Cupar closed in 2014, when north-east Fife was added to the district of Dundee.⁸¹ Since 25 March 1748 the hereditary office has exercised no authority to hold courts, levy fines or command men, and it makes no claim to those powers. Its significance lies in the survival, as a heritable dignity, of a twelfth-century royal office through every reform of the past eight hundred years. Its charters record the constitutional history of Scotland from David I's Anglo-Norman settlement through the Union and the aftermath of Culloden to the devolved Parliament's land reforms. The present holder, like those who have borne the office since 1529, owes a duty to its memory and to the county whose name it bears. The sheriffdom of Fife endures: "He that will to Cupar maun to Cupar".

ReferenceTables of Succession

Milestones

1. 1124–1153David I introduces the sheriff into Scotland.
2. 1213Geoffrey of Inverkunglas, first attested sheriff "of Fife".
3. 1227 · 1239Royal brieve and justiciar's precept to the sheriff of Fife: an eighth of the king's profits of justice to Dunfermline Abbey.
4. 1264Sir David of Lochore accounts as sheriff of Fife in the earliest Exchequer Rolls.
5. 1457–1458George Leslie, Lord Leslie, created Earl of Rothes by James II.
6. 1 June 1529James V grants the office of Sheriff of Fife to the Earl of Rothes and his heirs (RMS iii, no. 798).
7. 7 December 1540Regrant to the Earl in liferent and to Norman Leslie, Master of Rothes, and his heirs heritably (RMS iii, no. 2227).
8. 1564–1575Queen Mary's charters to the 5th Earl; the Lindsay claim arbitrated (1573) and renounced (1575).
9. 4 June 1663Charles II unites lands, fairs, market, the office of Sheriff of Fife and the dignity of Rothes into the Lordship and Earldom of Rothes; ratified by Parliament 9 October 1663.
10. 1667–1672Leslie House built for the 7th Earl, later Duke of Rothes.
11. 1684The Countess Margaret's entail, "the basis of all following entails".
12. 1707Article XX of the Treaty of Union reserves heritable offices and jurisdictions "as Rights of Property".
13. 1747–1748Heritable Jurisdictions (Scotland) Act: jurisdiction ceases 25 March 1748; the Lords of Session certify £6,268 16s for the sheriffship of Fife; James Leslie of Milndeans first Crown sheriff-depute.
14. 19 October 1859Queen Victoria's Charter of Confirmation to Henrietta, Countess of Rothes, confirms the office "in so far as … not abolished" by the Act of 1746.
15. 1886Death of the Countess Henrietta: the peerage passes by blood to her aunt; the entailed estate and office follow the destination of 1859.
16. 9 December 1919Disposition of the Leslie estate, with the feudal earldom and office, to Captain Alexander Crundall.
17. 26 February 1943The Lord Lyon declares that the minor barons of Scotland are recognised as a "titled nobility", "of the ancient Feudal Nobility of Scotland".
18. 4 May 2004Disposition to Sir Christopher Ondaatje, recorded 21 May 2004, conveying the office "insofar as … not abolished" by the Act of 1746; infeft on 26 November 2004.
19. 28 November 2004Feudal tenure abolished; dignities preserved by section 63 of the Act of 2000; the Scottish Barony Register opens.
20. 6 August 2007Letters Patent of the Lord Lyon to Sir Christopher Ondaatje, "Feudal Earl of Rothes and Baron and Feudal Lord of Leslie and Holder of the territorial office of Sheriff of Fife" (Lyon Register, vol. 87, pp. 112–113).
21. 5 November 2024Assignation to Ambassador Dario Item; Claim of Entitlement registered in the Scottish Barony Register on 25 November 2024 (Vol. 6, ff. 27–29); certificate 19 December 2024.
22. 4 April 2025Warrant of the Lord Lyon King of Arms for Letters Patent of Ensigns Armorial, on the petition of 5 February 2025.
23. 19 December 2025Registration published in the Edinburgh Gazette.
24. 29 April 2026The last hereditary peers leave the House of Lords under the Act of 2026.

ReferenceDocuments

Both principal instruments of the modern title are available in full on this site.

AppendixThe Charter of Confirmation of 19 October 1859

The Register of the Great Seal preserves the charter in the clerk of Chancery's copy, entered as no. 4 on folios 8 to 12 of the volume now catalogued by the National Records of Scotland as C2/262. The transcription below follows the certified copy issued by the National Archives of Scotland, which may be consulted in full under "Documents". Its spelling and capitalisation have been retained and punctuation lightly supplied. Square brackets give the folio at which each passage begins; "[?]" marks an uncertain reading of a place-name in the copy, and "[sic]" an apparent slip by the copyist. The clause confirming the office of Sheriff of Fife is set off below.⁸²