36 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



conferred without reference to the conditions of the original patent until 

 the legislative union of Scotland with England, when such se]xirate 

 ordei*s were superseded by the one general title of baronet of the United 

 Kingdom.' 



A number of nati^'cs of Scotland came to Halifax during its early 

 days, and many of the New England immigrants of 17C0 62 were of 

 Scotch descent.'-' As early as the 20th March 1708, the North British 

 Society was instituted in Halifax, and has had a continuous and success- 

 ful career to the present time. On the same day St. Andrew's Lodge of 

 Free and Accepted Masons was organized an<l subsoquenth' chartered. ' 



The great Scotch immigration, which has exercised such an im- 

 portant influence on the eastern counties of Nova Scotia — and I include 

 Cape Breton of course — commenced in 1773, when over thirty families 

 arrived fi'om Scotland and settled in the present county of Pictou, where 

 a very few American colonists from Pennsylvania had preceded them,* 



' By a royal warrant of Charles I. in 1629 the baronets were entitled to wear as 

 a " personal decoration," an orange tawny riband and badge — viz. : in a scutcheon, 

 argent, a St. Andrew's cross, azure, thereon an inescutcheon of the royal arms 

 of Scotland, with an imperial crown above the scutcheon and encircled with the 

 motto " Fax Mentis Honestae Gloria," being the motto of Henry Prince of Wales, 

 the eldest son of the royal founder of the order." (See Burke's Peerage and Baronet- 

 age, p. 39.) The title is still borne bj- heirs of the baronets created ia the seven- 

 teenth century. For instance, the Earl of Aberdeen, late governor-general of 

 Canada, inherits the title from Sir John Gordon of Haddo, who was created in 

 1642. The premier baronet is Sir Robert Glendonwyn Gordon of Letterfourie, 

 Banffshire, by virtue of his descent from that Sir Robert Gordon of Gordontown, 

 a younger son of the Earl of Sutherland, who was the first person dignified with the 

 title in 1025. The Earl of Granard dates his baronetcy to that of Sir Arthur Forbes, 

 who wjis created in 1()28. Sir W. Stuart Forbes, of Pitj-ligo, can trace the title to 

 1626; Sir Duncan Edwyn Hay, of Smithfield and Haystoun, Peeblesshire, to 1035; 

 the baronetcy of Sir Arthur Henry Grant, of Monymusk, was created as late as 

 1705 ; that of the Earl of Minto (Elliot), now governor-general of Canada, in 1700 ; in 

 both cases, before the union of the two kingdoms in the days of Queen Anne, 



Fora list of the original baronets of Nova Scotia, see "Royal Letters, Charters 

 and Tracts relating to the colonization of Xova Scotia and the institution of the 

 order of knights baronet of Nova Scotia, 1021-10;i8. Published by the Bannatyne 

 Club, ?]dinburgh, 180S," The sketch of the badge in the text is taken from one sent 

 me by Sir E. M. Maunde-Thompson, and differs slightly from the one in Debrett. In 

 most cases the badge is described as oval in shape, but the sketch in the text shows 

 that it was not necessarily so, 



-' In 1707, according to the oflicial return of that year, there were only a hundred 

 and seventy-three persons given as Scotch, but among the large proportion of people 

 recorded as Americans and Irish there were a considerable number of Scotch origin. 

 See Appendix F. 



=' See " Annals of the North British Society of Halifax, N.S., for 125 years ; com. 

 piled by T, S. Macdonald, Halifax, N.S., 1894." The first members of this body were 

 as follows : John (Jillespie (Moderator or President), John Taylor, Janies Clark 

 (Secretary), William Scott, William McLennan, Robert Kills, .lohn Fraser, Walter 

 Harkness, John Geddes, Daniel Morrison, James Thomson, John McCrae, William 

 Luke, and Thomas McLennan. 



* See Dr, Patterson's " History of the County of Pictou," Montreal, 1877. 



