The grant is interesting because not only does it assign arms of 'Argent a Cross Gules in the first quarter a Roebuck proper' to the city but arms are also given to the Governor, John White, and the twelve Assistants in the same Patent. All these latter coats contain fusils and the tincture Gules derived from the arms of Sir Walter Raleigh, 'Gules five Fusils in bend Argent'.

The text of the Patent states that: 'for the greater honor and splendor of that countrey and the people therein inhabiting it is and will be necessary that there be proper and peculiar Armes thereunto belonging to be used in all such cases as Armes are wont to be by other nations and countries'.

Despite these sentiments, the progress of heraldry in North America was scarcely apparent, and the Seal for Virginia dated 9 August 1662 is of the Royal Arms within the Garter all encircled by a ribbon inscribed 'En dat Virginia Quintum'. This contrasts with the new design of arms, crest, and supporters granted to Jamaica in the previous year.

The first person resident in North America petitioned for a grant, and on 1 March 1693/4 arms and a crest were granted by the brothers Thomas and Henry St. George, Garter and Clarenceux, to Francis Nicholson, described as 'Captain General and Governor in Chief of Their Majesty's Province of Maryland One of the Chief Governors of a College or University now to be erected or founded in Virginia'.

Two months later, on 14 May 1694, the trustees for what became the College of William and Mary in Virginia, of whom Nicholson was the first named, were granted arms of 'Vert a Colledge or Edifice mason'd Argent in chief a Sun rising Or the hemisphere proper'. The patent was endorsed on 18 October 1698, permitting the transfer of the Armorial Bearings from the trustees to the President and Masters when the College was erected.

Heraldry of both a personal and corporate nature was in frequent use in America both before and after Independence in seals, bookplates, and on monuments. Much of the personal heraldry was of English origin, and corporate heraldry tended to be borne without any official sanction from the English Kings of Arms; for instance, the arms of Harvard College were first adopted in 1643 by the Overseers as a seal design without tinctures. The arms then appeared as three books, those in chief being open with the letters 'VE' and 'RI' upon them with that in base face down and inscribed 'TAS' producing the motto 'VERITAS'. Later in the seventeenth century a chevron was placed between the three books, and was used until the nineteenth century, when a seal was adopted without one but with all three books face upwards.

In 1917 a grant was made to Arthur John Lewis Delafield, a British subject, and to the descendants of his great-great-grandfather. These included an American, John Ross Delafield of New York, born in 1874, who was described in 1932 as a Brigadier-General, Ordnance Department Reserve, and graduate of Harvard Law School. In 1916 J. R. Delafield's mother, whose maiden name was Livingston, descended from an emigrant Robert Livingston born at Ancrum in Scotland in 1654, had obtained a grant of arms for Livingston from Lord Lyon.