my opinion the common-sense rule is that the chief armorial dignities should follow the more substantial rights and dignities of the family. If the heir male succeed to the title and estates, I think it reasonable that he should also succeed to the armorial bearings of the head of the house. I would think it a very difficult proposition to establish that the heir of line, when denuded of everything else, was still entitled to retain the barren honours of heraldry. But I give no opinion upon that point."
Mr. Seton, in his "Law and Practice of Heraldry in Scotland," sums up the matter of inheritance in these words (see p. 357): "As already indicated, however, by one of the learned Lords in his opinion on the case of Cuninghame, the practice in the matter in question has been far from uniform; and accordingly we are very much disposed to go along with his relative suggestion, that 'the chief armorial dignities should follow the more substantial rights and dignities of the family'; and that when the latter are enjoyed by the female heir of line, such heir should also be regarded as fairly entitled to claim the principal heraldic honours."
The result has been in practice that the supporters of a family have usually been matriculated to whoever has carried on the name and line of the house, unless the supporters in question have been governed by a specific grant, the limitations of which exist to be referred to, but in cases where both the heir of line and the heir male have been left in a prominent position, the difficulty of decision has in many cases been got over by allowing supporters to both of them. The most curious instance of this within our knowledge occurs with regard to the family of Chisholm.
Chisholm of Erchless Castle appears undoubtedly to have succeeded as head and chief of his name—"The Chisholm"—about the end of the seventeenth century. As such supporters were carried, namely: "On either side a savage wreathed about the head and middle with laurel, and holding a club over his exterior shoulder."
At the death of Alexander Chisholm—"The Chisholm"—7th February 1793, the chieftainship and the estates passed to his half-brother William, but his heir of line was his only child Mary, who married James Gooden of London. Mrs. Mary Chisholm or Gooden in 1827 matriculated the undifferenced arms of Chisholm ["Gules, a boar's head couped or"], without supporters, but in 1831 the heir male also matriculated the same undifferenced arms, in this case with supporters.
The chieftainship of the Chisholm family then continued with the male line until the death of Duncan Macdonell Chisholm—"The Chisholm"—in 1859, when his only sister and heir became heir of line of the later chiefs. She was then Jemima Batten, and by Royal
