A blue griffon with black talons and beak and a gold crown on its head.


James Coat’s 1725 Dictionary of Heraldry says that griffons were used ‘to express strength and swiftness join'd together, and extraordinary Vigilancy to preserve things they are entrusted with’.


Blue crowned Griffons had been used on the shield of Forsyth of Forsyth since at least Sir Robert Foreman’s heraldic manuscript of 1563 and the Workman manuscript of 1565-6.


In the 1520s James Forsyth of Nydie married a wealthy heiress, Elizabeth Leslie, who was granddaughter of the Earl of Rothes. It is possible that the Griffon was adopted by the Forsyths at this time, as the griffon was a Leslie emblem and the Forsyths followed their more powerful kinsmen in politics thereafter. In 1538 John Forsyth was appointed king’s macer and became Falkland Persuivant, which may explain the little crown on the griffon. Elizabeth Leslie was also great granddaughter to James III, so the Forsyths may be expressing their royal descent through that.


The motto is ‘Instaurator ruinae’, Latin for a repairer of ruins. The significance of this is unclear, but it has some age to it. The earliest record of a Forsyth crest is in the Lyon Register of the later seventeenth century for Mr James Forsyth of Tailzerton (descended from Forsyth of Dykes) which had a green half-griffon (no crown) with motto Instaurator Ruinae. This is also recorded in Nisbet’s 1720s System of Heraldry. Not quite the modern crest, but on its way.


The uncrowned half-griffon was still the crest in the 1960s when our Carrick line of cap badges was devised. The adoption of the full griffon with crown was probably adopted in 1970 when the Lord Lyon recognised Alistair Forsyth as the chief. 


MKP 6 September 2024