Norroy and Ulster King of Arms
Officers of Arms of the College of Arms of the United Kingdom
Norroy and Ulster King of Arms is the provincial King of Arms at the College of Arms with jurisdiction over England north of the Trent and Northern Ireland. The two offices of Norroy and Ulster were formerly separate. Norroy King of Arms is the older office, there being a reference as early as 1276 to a "King of Heralds beyond the Trent in the North". The name Norroy is derived from the Old French nor(t) meaning "north" and roy which means "king", a "North King". The office of Ulster Principal King of Arms for All-Ireland was established in 1552 by King Edward VI to replace the older post of Ireland King of Arms, which had lapsed in 1487.
Ulster King of Arms was not part of the College of Arms and did not fall under the jurisdiction of the Earl Marshal, being the heraldic authority for the Kingdom of Ireland (the jurisdiction of the College of Arms being the Kingdom of England and Lord Lyon's Office that of the Kingdom of Scotland).
Ulster was Registrar and King of Arms of the Order of St Patrick. Norroy and Ulster King of Arms now holds this position, though no new knights of that Order have been created since 1936, and the last surviving knight died in 1974. Heraldic matters in the Republic of Ireland are now handled by the office of the Chief Herald of Ireland (a part of the Genealogical Office in the National Library).
The arms of the new office of Norroy and Ulster King of Arms were devised in 1980 based on elements from the arms of the two former offices.
The public source identifies “Norroy and Ulster King of Arms” as officers of Arms of the College of Arms of the United Kingdom. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Norroy, Ulster and King.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q953355. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1276, 1552, 1487 and 1936.
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This entry incorporates text from “Norroy and Ulster King of Arms” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.