The Scottish Heraldry Society

The society was founded in 1977 with an eye toward a scholarly study group for Scottish heraldry. Enthusiasts from anywhere were encouraged to join. This organization followed the American College of Heraldry in 1972. The “heraldic community”, being of those enthusiasts only has always been small relative to other fields as heraldry is a very arcane subject with different rules applying to any country that recognizes it: the United States not being among them. With the advent of the internet and due to a very interesting case of fraud, the tone at the Heraldry Society of Scotland became decidedly ugly.

In 1999, Irish journalist Sean Murphy uncovered a very interesting case of a fraudulent claim, made by one Terrance MacCarthy who had submitted a false genealogical pedigree. His claim was presented to the Chief Herald of Ireland who indeed granted MacCarthy the title of the MacCarthy Mor (the great), Prince of Desmond. Wherewith MacCarthy formulated another fraud in the organization he called Niadh Nask:
http://homepage.eircom.net/%257Eseanjmu ... dhnask.htm

Other experts rendered opinions on the Niadh Nask as well:
http://www.heraldica.org/topics/orders/niadh.htm

The controversy became so big that it made Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niadh_Nask

You can read here about alleged “ancient Niadh Nask artwork”
http://palimpsest.stanford.edu/byform/m ... 00221.html

You can read Sean’s Article on Terrance MacCarthy here
http://homepage.eircom.net/~seanjmurphy ... carthy.htm

Jul 20, 09 This just added:
in this forum thread you can read about what was happening as Terrance MacCarthy was unseated.
http://groups.google.ie/group/rec.heral ... 340ae4dd6b


Now, to most, this Terrance MaCarthy episode will not seem to be such a big deal, although it did involve some rather big names. The American College of Heraldry and its publisher Gryfon Press were taken by this as well. It was a very big and embarrassing situation for many around the world. Not the least of which were members of The Heraldry Society of Scotland. The timing for all of this could not have been worse for the society. A number of is membership had paid up to $5,000 for “a coat of arms” and submitted all manner of material to the Office of the Chief Herald of Ireland who had sanctioned MaCarthy’s fraud. The Chief Herald to this day has no legal authority to grant arms, so he rather offers “certificates of arms”, the same way that The American College of Heraldry does for a much lower fee that carries with it an equal amount of inauthenticity.

The Heraldry Society of Scotland for its part during this period had entered into the internet with an old idea that was being resurrected and modernized: the over the counter purchase of ancient long ago shelved Scottish baronies. A “barony”, a title, came from the old feudal system of land tenure. Barons owned their land, wherewith they either petitioned the crown for “erection into a barony”, or when a baron decided: or the decision having been made for him… sold the land and the property with the stationary title of baron becoming the heritable property of the new purchaser.

Barons at one time exercised their own court systems and attended parliament. After centuries of Scottish history, and culminating in the 19th century, the Baron became a relic of the past and fell into disuse, though the title of baron still remained. A Scottish baron, although a legally recognized, was then, as it is today, nothing more than a purchased vanity title that can sell for upwards of $200,000.

In the 1940s, the then Lord Lyon King of all Arms and Bearings in Scotland: Sir Thomas Innes of Learny, a terrible romantic, but otherwise a very good officer of the crown and brilliant writer, took the title of Baron off its old shelf and made a few decisions, within his jurisdictional rights, concerning the representations of a Baron’s coat of arms. These decisions in no way effected the non-status of a baron, but the idea of what was known as additaments were now available to new barons as well as older surviving long held family titles. The baron (the lowest in the line) was now on par with peers of the realm from a descriptive drawing perspective. However in the year 2000, right on the heels of the MaCarthy Mor hoax. Scotland decided that feudal tenure – from which the new (rather useless) barony claimed its pride, should be abolished. This meant of course that any value left clinging to these titles has effectively been washed away by statute. http://www.statutelaw.gov.uk/content.as ... esize=8961

A dispute naturally followed: any future or past over the counter sales of any barony in Scotland was now literally just a piece of paper. Not unlike a US vanity license plate: you pay for the privilege of having the government sanction your little message to the world on a piece of tin and screw it to your car. And for an additional cost, you can choose from a host of pretty pictures to put on it as well. So, the buyers of these baronies were now left holding a bag of what? And what would become of the barony market?

The plot thickens.

A number of members of The Heraldry Society of Scotland were also – new barons, known as “paper barons”. Not only had they purchased a vanity Barony title, but they each had gotten a real fancy coat of arms, for another few thousand dollars: just a rich man’s toy to be sure. And, with The Heraldry Society of Scotland’s new web site, they now had a place to display these arms and direct others… potential society members, who pay up front fees and yearly dues to be members. However, given the new statute of Abolition of Feudal Tenure, a new controversy erupted in the society immediately: was the new “paper baronage” really just - reaching, and were they in danger of being seen as just another version of MacCarthy Morism? Those who were still stinging from the MacCarthy Mor scandal did not want any undue attention drawn to the society that might come back to haunt them.

Thee chief defender of the Scottish baronage and member of The Heraldry Society of Scotland was and is Brian Gregory Hamilton: BGH as he sometimes signs himself. He is known in the legal sector as “The Raider of the Lost Titles”. The ‘legal sect’ refers to his various difficulties in court over the years for trying to extract money and evict elderly people for not paying him a surcharge that emanated from a very antiquated and arcane rule connected to feudalism, for which Brian Hamilton received non other than a parliamentary condemnation:

S1M-123# Michael Russell: Lanarkshire Eviction Threat—That the Parliament condemns the actions of Mr Brian Hamilton, the so called ‘Raider of the Lost Titles’, whose present attempt to evict Mr and Mrs Baxter of Auchenheath, Lanarkshire on 23 September, because of a feudal title which was vulnerable to challenge, typifies the suffering caused by leasehold casualties and other anomalies of the feudal system and calls upon the Scottish Ministers to take early action to prevent yet more misery for ordinary people who are blameless but often defenceless in the face of such opportunistic use of the archaic land laws.
Supported by: Tricia Marwick, Alasdair Morgan, Mr Adam Ingram, Robin Harper, Irene McGugan, Richard Lochhead, Alex Neil, Mr Kenneth Gibson, Andrew Wilson, Ms Sandra White, Linda Fabiani, Fergus Ewing

http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/busin ... 10-14f.htm

And then other meetings advise that Brian G Hamilton is not really a pillar of the community.

Col 33 Tricia Marwick (Mid Scotland and Fife) (SNP): Over the past few years there has been great concern about the activities of people such as Brian Hamilton, the raider of the lost titles. I am sure that Mr Wallace will wish to confirm that the proposed bill on the abolition on feudal tenure will not cover the activities of Mr Hamilton.

Tricia Marwick: It cannot have escaped the minister's attention that a great number of people in rural as well as urban Scotland are concerned and affected by the activities of people such as Brian Hamilton. Will the minister assure the committee that, within the term of office of this Administration, we will have legislation to tackle leasehold casualties?

Brian Hamilton has been at this kind of thing for some time:
http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/comm ... p-scotland

Brian Hamilton sold the new paper baronies and land superiorites to members of The Heraldry Society of Scotland and with – new membership – his group began to heavily influence not only the mission of the society but all discourse surrounding Scottish Heraldry. One of his chief defenders, Martin Goldstraw, actually went to court to change his name to Martin Goldstraw of Whitecairnes (his superiority that he aquired from Hamilton) in a move to force the Lord Lyon to include what now only “appeared” to be a Territorial Designation in Lyon’s official grant. Lyon refused. Goldstraw later filed an appeal and submitted a rather dubious address in Scotland, when he is not only an English citizen by birth (who’s only tie to Scotland is through a family member), but Goldstraw’s primary residence in Shropshire England.


You may click on the image to read it.
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_RF9PgQmU7Ic/S ... nation.jpg


This letter was sent to me by Mr. Goldsrtaw’s sidekick, John Duncan, now webmaster of The Heraldry Society of Scotland. Mr. Goldstraw is one of Mr. Hamilton’s chief promoters as well.

In 2003 when Brian Hamilton was compiling his team that would be used to force the Lord Lyon into the submission of this cabal, Mr. Hamilton had enough security in the paper baronial political force of The Herladry Society of Scotland to send this email to the webmaster:

From: Brian Hamilton BGHRockhall@btinternet.com
Date: 31 March 2003 23:32
To: webmaster@heraldry-scotland.co.uk
Subject: The lord Lyon and Feudal Baronies

Dear Web-Master,

I write to you in confidence for some advice. I would like to enter the
thread on barony titles; I would intend to cover a lot of ground so my
submission would be quite lengthy. I would also intend to solicit
financial support from the baronage for an action in the Court of
Session against the Lord Lyon. Always supposing my language is moderate
would you feel obliged to censor such a submission?

Yours sincerely,



Mr. Barry Harden, the “Baron” of Cowdenknows. Was instrumental in leading the charge of the new barony at The Heraldry Society of Scotland and who even saw himself as able to “bestow citizenship” on average people at gatherings. These barons had flags and banners, and this (class of nobility) formed quite a group: and the quality of a man they say, is often judged by the company he keeps. Note the inclusion of Mr. Rommily Squire, then Committee Chairman of The Heraldry Society of Scotland, who boasted ‘his work as a heraldic artist in Lyon’s court', but who in fact hadn’t done anything of the kind in some fifteen years. These pictures appeared on Barry Harden’s “Baron of Cowdenknows” web site and where suddenly removed when it was coming clear what these pictures really say about The Heraldry Society of Scotland. The captions were written by Baron Harden's webmaster.

These photos are all from the same event at The Baron's house


left to right, Mitch Taylor, Lord Charles The Marquise of Ailsa, Baron Barry Harden, Martin Goldstraw, Hardens’ son and Romilly squire. Note "The Baron's banner" to the left and Goldstraw's plastic banner in center.



John Duncan receives from the Baron a commendation for outstanding service



Left To Right, Lord Ailsa, Brian Hamilton, Romilly Squire, Major Massey of Dunham, John Duncan



And then later that day there was this curious little happening:


The Baron confers upon the Marquise of Ailsa the status of Honorary Citizen and Honorary Freeman of Cowdenknowes.


At the height of this insurrection some of the most enlightening and intelligent discussion was taking place on The Heraldry Society of Scotland web forum, that continues to this very day:


2007 rec.heraldry.com, Anthony Maxwell (former society webmaster) and Brian Hamilton have an exchange with respect to the Baronage as a subject of forum discussion, note the use by Brian Hamilton of society governance influence.

On Apr 16, 10:12 am, "Brian G. Hamilton."
bghrockh...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

“Just so there is no ambiguity and that everyone understands
what I am saying. Mr. Maxwell you are a liar (you already have my
lawyers contact details). It was your refusal to carry out the
instructions given to you by the HSS committee that was the reseaon you
were removed as the Society's web−master. It was your personal
censorship of the Forum that divided the membership. Your continued
attempts to bring the Society, and in particular the Society's web−master,
into dis−repute is noted by all.
Twice you closed the Forum down in an attempt to stop me
bringing to the attention of the membership your authoritarian conduct. I
am pleased to have played my part in your downfall.”


Anthony Maxwell wrote:


“I and every member of the then HSS committee knows full well that they
subscribed to the censorship of certain topics on the old HSS forum
and it is noted in the Minutes of the Committee meetings on several
occasions. The fact that the topics not allowed on the forum covered
your seedy business Mr Hamilton was deliberate as the topic caused
several people, lead not surprisingly by yourself, to attack the
office of the Lord Lyon and Lord Lyon Robin Blair personally. It was
these attacks and yours in particular which brought the HSS into
disrepute. This all happened in the summer of 2002, which was two full
years before my removal from the position of HSS webmaster from which,
of course, the HSS claim I had 'tendered my resignation' which I
myself dispute.
In the unlikely event of your being elected to the HSS Committee, you
will I am sure, be able to take the Minutes of the HSS Committee home
with you and read and confirm what I am saying is the truth.
I twice closed down the HSS forum in 2002 because you 'spammed' the
forum constantly with your attacks on the Lord Lyon which was nothing
to do with my conduct but everything to do with the way you behaved! I
then had to introduce registration to keep you off the forum so the
true heraldic enthusiasts could enjoy their debates without your
malicious posts. As always Mr Hamilton, you twist the truth to suit
you ever more desperate needs.
Calling me a liar Mr Hamilton, I know is just another one of your
disreputable practices. I won't drawn, thank you. I will not add
further to this thread which was started merely to inform the HSS
members that their bulletin board was down and has now been hijacked
by Mr Hamilton to insult and offend. The nature of the man is plain
for all to see.

Anthony Maxwell”

Anthony Maxwell suffered a great deal of abuse form these people and fought to keep the society out of the barony business.


In that exchange, along with all of the evidence put into this article, it is very clear that there is no doubt that a willfull colaberation had been taking place to wrest control of The Heraldry Society of Scotland from a fair and impartial study group of heraldic enthusiasts into a rather convoluted and very self-centered gathering place that is only interested in its members self-promotion. Members of this group still occupy positions of authority and The Heraldry Society of Scotland’s own web forum now includes a section on “The Scottish Baronage”, where one should be forewarned, only gentile encouragement is allowed.


The Heraldry Society of Scotland

Martin Goldstraw for his part appealed Lord Lyon’s decision to the higher Court of Sessions, an opinion drawn by Lord Uist, in which he ruled, using the laws of The International Human Rights Commission and the ‘respect for a person’s name’ to rule in favor of Goldstraw forcing Lord Lyon to use Martin Goldstraw’s new legal name of Martin Goldstraw of Whitecairnes on any document produced by Lyon’s court. This new legal precedent effectively says that, if any person possesses an intentionally unusual name, say, “Box of Corn Flakes Lord of all he Surveys”, The Lord Lyon King of all Arms and Bearings in Scotland is now bound by the ruling to use that name in a grant of arms or other significant document and enter it as such in registers that come from a centuries old tradition.

It seems then that Terrance MacCarthy’s example didn’t fall far from the tree. The Heraldry Society of Scotland, to this day, has not (publicly) acknowledged any wrong doing on their part for allowing this. Nor have they or any member of its governing board offered an apology to those people who were hurt and embarrassed by this clandestine group operating so insidiously under an umbrella held up by otherwise good people and the using of The Heraldry Society of Scotland’s name in their design.

Only one thing applies to The Heraldry Society of Scotland my friend: “caveat emptor”.


Thee chief defender of the Scottish baronage and member of The Heraldry Society of Scotland was and is Brian Gregory Hamilton: BGH as he sometimes signs himself. He is known in the legal sector as “The Raider of the Lost Titles”. The ‘legal sect’ refers to his various difficulties in court over the years for trying to extract money and evict elderly people for not paying him a surcharge that emanated from a very antiquated and arcane rule connected to feudalism, for which Brian Hamilton received non other than a parliamentary condemnation:

Lord Lyon Blair brought himself into disrepute by
attempting to ignore the intentions and effects of an Act of the
Scottish Parliament to suit his own personal agenda. The Abolition of
Feudal Tenure, etc (Scotland) Act 2000 specifically preserved barony
titles and provided for their transfer, but the Lord Lyon Blair tried
to ignore this. This was dishonest of a judge and it was only
appropriate that he retired early. Such actions put the monarchy in
danger, as they go against the foundations of our constitutional
monarchy, which accepts that the monarch is the figurehead but that
the parliamentary legislature holds political and legal power. Lord
Lyon Blair acted contrary to that principle. He may well have been
honourable in respect of how he carried out his office otherwise, but
on this one issue he was misguided to act contrary to the will of the
law. Much of the criticism that has ensued has followed directly from
his actions and embarassing court cases would have been avoided had he
not acted in this way. This is all just personal opinion, but I do
not think that the Lord Lyon can hide behind his office in the modern
day. Just as Mr Brian Hamilton must face the music for his actions in
respect of feudal land tenure, so should Lyon Blair for his judicial
decisions. In effect, Lord Lyon Blair was overturned by the
compromise agreement, which shows that he got the law wrong. And
getting the law wrong means that your decisions will be overturned and
that people will criticize your legal decisions.

It is the Crown Charters that provide for the transfer of baronies and
state that the said grants cannot be revoked.

Armed with this knowledge, would YOU hand over £60,000 to Brian Hamilton of www.baronytitles.com , be very wary of identity fraud.

.

regardless of what version the following could be adapted:
below should work for solaris on le0 interface

for arpent in `arp -a | grep "^le0" | awk ''{ print $2 }' ` ; do
arp -d $arpent
done

you could specify multiple/all interfaces by substituting grep with egrep and us
ing the following:
egrep "^le0|^hme0|^net0"

If you need to reset your latop to factory defaults but the partition is hidden and Alt+F10 does not work then this method in my opinion is much simpler than messing with partition managers.

I'm assuming here you just want it like it was when you bought it, You will loose all data.

Step1:
Download the latest version of Ubuntu desktop from Ubuntu Desktop

Step2:
Burn the iso to disk with Magic ISO, Alchohol120%, Nero or similar software that can burn an ISO to a bootable disk

Step3:
Boot up with the Ubuntu disk and follow the instructions for installing Ubuntu.
**** Don't choose Use entire disk, it will delete your hidden partition, use either the free space option or advanced then go in and shrink your Windows partition, the options are obvious when you see them. Basically use any option other than 'Use Entire Disk'.

Step4:
Reboot and when the GRUB boot loader screen appears there is an 'Other Operating Systems' entry and one of the options will be Vista loader. Choose it and it will boot from your hidden partition where you can restore back into Vista.

Job Done

Suppose you want to find all files larger than 500MB on a Linux or Unix system and have them sorted to display the largest first then log in as root and execute the following command.


find / -type f -size +500000k -exec ls -lh {} \; 2> /dev/null | awk '{ print $NF ": " $5 }' | sort -nrk 2,2

If you cannot log in as root dont try sudo find .....

Log in as a normal user then execute the command sudo bash and then execute the find command

On restarting Apache you get this message
(98)Address already in use: make_sock: could not bind to address [::]:443 no listening sockets available, shutting down Unable to open logs

Look for any processes listening on http or https ports, typically ports 443 nd 80.

From a root console type the following command

$ /usr/sbin/lsof -i | grep http

The output will look something like this.

baliem 4442 apache 3u IPv6 2361222 TCP *:http (LISTEN)
baliem 4442 apache 4u IPv6 2361224 TCP *:https (LISTEN)
baliem 4442 apache 103u IPv4 2917715 TCP example.co.uk:46613->12.6.41.35:http (ESTABLISHED)
httpd.vmw 5831 root 16u IPv4 10626 TCP *:8333 (LISTEN)
httpd.vmw 5831 root 17u IPv4 10627 TCP *:8222 (LISTEN)
httpd.vmw 5851 nobody 16u IPv4 10626 TCP *:8333 (LISTEN)
httpd.vmw 5851 nobody 17u IPv4 10627 TCP *:8222 (LISTEN)
httpd.vmw 5857 nobody 16u IPv4 10626 TCP *:8333 (LISTEN)
httpd.vmw 5857 nobody 17u IPv4 10627 TCP *:8222 (LISTEN)


In my case it was athe process called baliem, some sort of proxy hack I think. Simply kill it with

$ kill -9 4442

or

$killall -9 http

Then execute:
/etc/rc.d/init.d/httpd start and you should be ok.

I have installed the Standard Payments module for Paypal.

It works all the way through (incuding entering into admin) until the end when I click on the

Quote:
Return to Store Button
I get the following error

[Quote]
Fatal error: Call to a member function update_credit_account() on a non-object in /home/a1352804/public_html/catalog/includes/modules/payment/paypal_standard.php on line 471


Soulition:
You can add
" if (isset($order_total_modules))" in front of each line indicating error.

Can't comment on all server/CMS configurations but my problem was when uploading images to a gallery the thumbnails were not generated. Particularly on CMSMS V1.6x. My server is running MySQL 4.1 and PHP 5.2.8 also tested with no difference on PHP V4.3.9

The problem was I'm using the GD Library (php-gd) to generate graphics. The version I have is GD V2.0.8. It turns out jpg is not supported in vesions < 2.1

Rather than muck about with server upgrades e.t.c. my solution was to upload the images in .png format (although .gif will also work). This solved my problem immediately.

A brand new Scottish Borders Tourism Portal web site has been launched in the Scottish Borders, by the Scottish Borders, for the Scottish Borders. This site is designed as a web based magazine for anybody planning a holiday to the Borders. It is constantly updated with articles on History, Castles, Outdoor persuits, Events calander, everything to do with the Borders.

It also has listings and advertising for any small business in the Scottish Borders, mainly in the Scottish Borders Tourism sector where Hotels, B&Bs, Holiday cottages can advertise for a minimal fee.

This site is fantastic, see it at Scottish Borders Tourism