[1] In Scotland, these types of cases are heard in the Court of the Lord Lyon, which is a standing civil and criminal court, with its own judge – the Lord Lyon King of Arms and its own procurator fiscal (public prosecutor) under the Scottish legal system.

[3] The court was established some time prior to the late fourteenth century with jurisdiction over certain military matters, which came to include misuse of arms.

That understanding was authoritatively overturned, however, by a revival of the court in 1954, when the Earl Marshal appointed the then Lord Chief Justice to sit as his surrogate.

It also had ruled that the Earl Marshal was allowed to sit in judgment without the Lord High Constable of England, an office which until 1521 was also held as a hereditary dignity by the Dukes of Buckingham.

Since then the office of Lord High Constable of England has only been appointed to perform ceremonial duties during a Coronation[12] and there has only been the Earl Marshal acting as the sole judge.