A Complete Guide to Heraldry

by Arthur Charles Fox-Davies

supporters, and shield are all equally differenced, but the difficulty of adding difference mark on difference mark when no marriage or heiress can ever bring in any alteration to the crest is very generally recognised and admitted, even officially, and it is rare indeed to come across a crest carrying more than a single difference mark.

The grant of an augmentation to any cadet obviates the slightest necessity for any further use of difference marks inherited before the grant.

There are no difference marks whatever for daughters, there being in English common law no seniority between the different daughters of one man. They succeed equally, whether heiresses or not, to the arms of their father for use during their lifetimes, and they must bear them on their own lozenges or impaled on the shields of their husbands, with the difference marks which their father needed to use. It would be permissible, however, to discard these difference marks of their fathers if subsequently to his death his issue succeeded to the position of head of the family. For instance, suppose the daughters of the younger son of an earl are under consideration. They would bear upon lozenges the arms of their father, which would be those of the earl, charged with the mullet or crescent which their father had used as a younger son. If by the extinction of issue the brother of these daughters succeed to the earldom, they would no longer be required to bear their father's difference mark.

There are no marks of difference between illegitimate children. In the eye of the law an illegitimate person has no relatives, and stands alone. Supposing it be subsequently found that a marriage ceremony had been illegal, the whole issue of that marriage becomes of course illegitimate. As such, no one of them is entitled to bear arms. A Royal Licence, and exemplification following thereupon, is necessary for each single one. Of these exemplifications there is one case on record in which I think nine follow each other on successive pages of one of the Grant Books: all differ in some way—usually in the colour of the bordure; but the fact that there are illegitimate brothers of the same parentage does not prevent the descendants of any daughter quartering the differenced coat exemplified to her. As far as heraldic law is concerned, she is the heiress of herself, representing only herself, and consequently her heir quarters her arms.

Marks of difference are never added to an exemplification following upon a Royal Licence after illegitimacy. Marks of difference are to indicate cadency, and there is no cadency vested in a person of illegitimate birth—their right to the arms proceeding only from the regrant of them in the exemplification. What is added in lieu is the mark of distinction to indicate the bastardy.

Fig. 709.—John de Holand, Duke of Exeter, son of preceding. Arms as preceding. (From his seal.)	Fig. 710.—Henry de Holand, Duke of Exeter, son of preceding. Arms as preceding. (From his seal, 1455.)	Fig. 711.—Thomas of Brotherton, Earl of Norfolk, second son of Edward I.: Arms of England, a label of three points argent.
Fig. 712.—Thomas de Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk (d. 1400). (From a drawing of his seal, MS. Cott., Julius, C. vii., f. 166.) Arms, see page 465.	Fig. 713.—John de Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk (d. 1432): Arms as Fig. 711. (From his Garter plate.)	Fig. 714.—John de Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk (d. 1461): Arms as Fig. 711. (From his seal.)
Fig. 715.—Edward the Black Prince: Quarterly, 1 and 4 France (ancient); 2 and 3 England, and a label of three points argent. (From his tomb.)	Fig. 716.—Richard, Prince of Wales (afterwards Richard II.), son of preceding: Arms as preceding. (From his seal, 1377.)	Fig. 717.—Edmund of Langley, Duke of York, fifth son of King Edward III.: France (ancient) and England quarterly, a label of three points argent, each point charged with three torteaux. (From his seal, 1391.) His son, Edward, Earl of Cambridge, until he succeeded his father, i.e. before 1462, bore the same with an additional difference of a bordure of Spain (Fig. 316). Vincent attributes to him, however, a label as Fig. 719, which possibly he bore after his father's death.

The method of differencing the English Royal Arms is quite unique, and has no relation to the method ordinarily in use in this country for the arms of subjects. The Royal Arms are not personal. They are the sovereign arms of dominion, indicating the sovereignty enjoyed by the person upon the throne. Consequently they are in no degree hereditary, and from the earliest times, certainly since the reign of Edward I., the right to bear the undifferenced arms has been confined exclusively to the sovereign upon the throne. In early times there were two methods employed, namely, the use of the bordure and of varieties of the label, the label of the heir-apparent to the English throne being originally of azure. The arms of Thomas of Woodstock, the youngest son of Edward I., were differenced by a bordure argent; his elder brother, Thomas de Brotherton, having had a label of three points argent; whilst the eldest son, Edward II., as Prince of Wales used a label of three points azure. From that period to the end of the Tudor period the use of labels and bordures seems to have continued concurrently, some members of the Royal Family using one, some the other, though there does not appear to have been any precise rules governing a choice between the two. When Edward III. claimed the throne of France and quartered the arms of that country with those of England, of course a portion of the field then became azure, and a blue label upon a blue field was no longer possible. The heir-apparent therefore differenced his shield by the plain label of three points argent, and this has ever since, down to the present day, continued to be the "difference" used by the heir-apparent to the English throne. A label of gules upon the gules quartering of England was equally impossible, and consequently from that period all labels used by any member of the Royal Family have been argent, charged with different objects, these being frequently taken from the arms of some female ancestor. Figs. 700 to 730 are a somewhat extensive collection of variations of the Royal Arms.