Meetings held earlier in the term had led to the formal culmination of a series of discussions for the consolidation and amalgamation.

[citation needed] The structure of the new society was to include a patron and a number of honorary vice-presidents.

These are in the general area of heraldry and genealogy but also include cognate subjects such as ceremonial dress, tartan, local history, customs, military medals or indeed anything of an antiquarian nature.

[citation needed] Lord Mountbatten was succeeded as Patron by Archbishop Bruno Heim, a leading authority on the heraldry of the Roman Catholic Church who designed armorial bearings for several Popes.

Although begun in 1966, it was to be nineteen years before it was published through the efforts of Wilfrid Scott-Giles, Heather Peak, Cecil Humphery-Smith and Dr Gordon H Wright.

[5] In 1995 the society launched a magazine, called the Escutcheon, which appears each term, edited by Derek Palgrave.

The lecture for the year 1984–1985 was concerned with the genealogy of Lord Mountbatten himself and was delivered in the presence of Prince Edward, Duke of Edinburgh who was at that time an undergraduate at Jesus College.