when in consequence
of the wrongful assumption of baronetcies, an old and then increasing evil,
a royal warrant was issued (6th of December) directing that no one should
be recognized as a baronet in official documents till he had proved his
right to the dignity, and also that those created in future must register
their arms and pedigree at the Heralds' College. In consequence of the
opposition of the baronets themselves, the first of these two regulations
was rescinded and the evil remained unabated. Since the union with Ireland
(1800) baronets have been created, not as of Great Britain or of Ireland,
but as of the United Kingdom.

In 1834 a movement was initiated by Mr Richard Broun (whose father had
assumed a Nova Scotia baronetcy some years before), to obtain certain
privileges for the order, but on the advice of the Heralds' College, the
request was refused. A further petition, for permission to all baronets to
wear a badge, as did those of Nova Scotia, met with the same fate in 1836.
Meanwhile George IV. had revoked (19th of December 1827), as to all future
creations the right of baronets' eldest sons to claim knighthood. Mr Broun
claimed it as an heir apparent in 1836, and on finally meeting with
refusal, publicly assumed the honour in 1842, a foolish and futile act. In
1854 Sir J. Kingston James was knighted as a baronet's son, and Sir Ludlow
Cotter similarly in 1874, on his coming of age; but when Sir Claude de
Crespigny's son applied for the honour (17th of May 1895), his application
was refused, on the ground that the lord chancellor did not consider the
clause in the patent (1805) valid. The reason for this decision appears to
be unknown.

Mr Broun's subsequent connexion with a scheme for reviving the territorial
claims of the Nova Scotia baronets as part of a colonizing scheme need not
be discussed here. A fresh agitation was aroused in 1897 by an order giving
the sons of life peers precedence over baronets, some of whom formed
themselves, in 1898, into "the Honourable Society of the Baronetage" for
the maintenance of its privileges. But a royal warrant was issued on the
15th of August 1898, confirming the precedence complained of as an
infringement of their rights. The above body, however, [v.03 p.0424] has
continued in existence as the "Standing Council of the Baronetage," and
succeeded in obtaining invitations for some representatives of the order to
the coronation of King Edward VII. It has been sought