Dear Cousins I have had a reply from the College of Arms in London. It confirms what many of us had suspected, that there is no basis to the "Count Hlawford" story as set out in W T Laird's 1888 letter, though many other elements in the letter are correct. The rest is speculation. Yours aye Iain The College of Arms, London, E.C.4. 22 September 1999 Dear Mr Laird, Thank you for your fax of 12 September addressed to the College of Arms which has been passed to me as Officer in Waiting. I am afraid that I can find nothing here to support the story contained in the letter of 1888 of which you sent a transcript. There is no such position, or anything like it as a "commissioner in the National Heraldic Office". A coat of arms and crest does not lie in Chancery. The Chancery Courts never had anything to do with heraldry. I have searched our official records here and there is no pedigree of Laird recorded here in this century or the nineteenth century. There has been no grant or confirmation of arms to any person named Laird in this century or the last 50 years of the nineteenth century. I did not search back any further than that. The possibility remains that one of the heralds here might have undertaken genealogical research on the Laird family but that the resulting pedigree was not entered into the official records here. But certainly no right to arms or crest was established. Yours sincerely, D.V. White Rouge Croix Pursuivant