I had personally not encountered, as far as I can remember, a seize
quartiers certified by a king of Scotland, James VI or other.
I would think that such certification of so many little genealogical
details, if ever happened, was exceptional and rare.
What I somehow remember, are mentions of sort of introductions made by a
king of Scotland, iirc saying that a person is of born nobility, and
perhaps mentioning (approx) one prominent ancestor or relative of the
person. That Hepburn text looks like much like that sort of content,
written in express intention of certifying the nobility.
Those seize quartiers, or other sorts of pedigrees, when from Scotland,
generally came in form of a bunch of do***ents, or as a re****t of a
genealogist. The Lichtoun case I mentioned, he had a priest in scotland
working for him, collecting written evidence, and writing up a genealogy.
I think that was a comparatively carefully done thing - and it has proved
well in comparisons.
Another Scots family had taken in signed affidavits from a number of
living kinsmen in Scotland, certifying that a person was their relative
and what the signator had heard of his detailed ancestry as it coincided
with his own.
Some other Scots family simply presented a sort of genealogical re****t
written by someone in Scotland, and there iirc looked to be lots of
mistakes and confusions. Or falsification of parentages.
There were several sorts of cases, for example:
* in one type, a scotsman had won an ennoblement from the Swedish king.
Their nobility would then not be affected at all, whatever the result of
their genealogy in Scotland. But still they left a detailed genealogy to
the Swedish House of Knights and Nobility, and used those names like
name-droppers, presumably in order to look like old nobles. With that they
won social prestige and such.
* Another case type was a noble family seeking naturalization. They showed
a parentage in attested scottish nobility, and on basis of it may have been
granted naturalization as noblemen. It did not require seize quartiers - a
father of establishedly noble family, and preferably also a noble mother,
may suffice.
Seize quartiers were, as far as I understand, more often for winning
social prestige than necessity for getting recognition as nobles.
Some large ancestral genealogies were, no doubt, false in content.
The Swedish HOuse of K & N did practically no double-checks of foreign
genealogical info. The nobility itself usually did not depend on that,
instead it was a prestige thing mostly, and also other families are known
to have embellished their earlier pedigrees with historically unattested
roots in the same 1600s and 1700s genealogies then given to that House's
collections.
The Swedish House simply relied on foreign certifications of genealogies.
Occasionally (although firtunately not often) it even allowed pedigrees
based on an ennobled's own memories.
Occasionally, as to scots families, there are attestations made by other
scots of the era living in sweden and having their own nobility too,
giving information about what they knew of their kinsmen, other scots.
In some cases, this may have meant a network of scots to vouch for each
other an embellished pedigree, or producs of faulty memory added by
wishful thinking. (Let's think: two cavalry officers from Scotland get
ennobled. They know, because their gramma or so has told in guys'
childhood, that they are in one way second cousins, another way third
cousins. They do not remember precisely how it was, but they have both
some partly different reminiscences of names in pedigrees and talked about
in family circkle. They togethjer gobble something up from such, in order
to have mutually consistent pedigrees. Guess the result in regard to
historical truth...)
Some material in internet may lead to who were well-known scottish
emigrants:
http://www.electricscotland.com/history/sweden/16-1.htm
http://www.electricscotland.com/history/sweden/17-1.htm
http://www.electricscotland.com/history/sweden/17-2.htm
James Spens was a diplomat, at times in British service, at other times in
Swedish. I think my reminiscence of James VI certifying his nobility is
some mention or other simply in correspondence, possibly in some
introduction of him to Swedes. IIRC James also knighted him, and Sweden
granted a barony. His correspondence is published somewhere (I think
usually mentioned as Jacob or Jacobus Spensius). Also he is frequently
mentioned in published correspondence of Axel Oxenstierna.
If you look where all those correspondences are published, possibly
there's that and such 'certificate'.
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