Elizabeth Roads is the daughter of Lieutenant Colonel James Bruce Military Cross and his wife Mary Hope Sinclair. She was born in 1951 and educated at Lansdowne House in Edinburgh, the Cambridgeshire College of Technology, the Study Centre for Fine Art in London, and Edinburgh Napier University (Bachelor of Laws with distinction).
Elizabeth Roads joined the staff of the Court of the Lord Lyon in 1975 and was appointed Lyon Clerk and Keeper of the Records in 1986. In this position, she maintains, among other things, the Public Register of All Arms and Bearings in Scotland. She was appointed Linlithgow Pursuivant in 1987, becoming the first female officer of arms.
This was a temporary appointment, when she represented the Lord Lyon in Canada in the discussions that led to the establishment of the Canadian Heraldic Authority.
Roads was appointed Carrick Pursuivant in 1992 and promoted to Snowdoun Herald in 2010. She was appointed Secretary of the Order of the Thistle in 2014.
She was Chairman of that Society in the late 1990s and is now a Fellow of the Heraldry Society of Scotland and an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Heraldry Society of Canada. She is an Academician of the Academie Internationale d"Heraldique and a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, both honours in recognition of her heraldic expertise.
She has published many articles and lectures regularly on heraldic and genealogical subjects.
1986: Lyon Clerk and Keeper of the Records
1986: Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland
1987: Linlithgow Pursuivant of Arms Extraordinary
1992: Carrick Pursuivant of Arms
1996: Fellow of the Heraldry Society of Scotland (Founding Member 1977, Chairman 1997–2000, Chairman of Heraldic Exhibition “Lions and Thistles” 1995)
1998–2011: Honorary Treasurer, Scottish Record Society
2003: Associate Member, L’Academie Internationale d’Heraldique
2004: Honorary Fellow of the Royal Heraldry Society of Canada
2007: Council Member, Scottish Records Association
2008: Assistant Secretary, Order of the Thistle
2008: Academician, L"Academie Internationale d"Heraldique
2010: Snawdoun Herald of Arms
2010-date: Chairman, Scottish Records Association
2013-date: President, Old Edinburgh Club
2013: Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries
2014: Secretary of the Order of the Thistle
Elizabeth Roads bears Arms appropriate to her maiden name of Bruce. The blazon of the arms is: Or a Saltire Gules on a Chief Gules a Pale Argent charged of a Cross engrailed Sable.
Above the shield is placed a crest which is blazoned: From a Wreath of Or and Gules a dexter Arm in armour embowed the hand proper grasping a broken Sceptre Gules. The motto is shown on a scroll over the crest and is “Signal, Image, Communications FUIMUS”.
