Fig. 732.—The scheme of Cadency Bordures devised by Mr. Stodart.
In conclusion, attention needs to be pointedly drawn to the fact that all changes in arms are not due to cadency, nor is it safe always to presume cadency from proved instances of change. Instead of merely detailing isolated instances of variation in a number of different families, the matter may be better illustrated by closely following the successive variations in the same family, and an instructive instance is met with in the case of the arms of the family of Swinton of that Ilk. This is peculiarly instructive, because at no point in the descent covered by the arms referred to is there any doubt or question as to the fact of legitimate descent.
Claiming as they do a male descent and inheritance from Liulf the son of Edulf, Vicecomes of Northumbria, whose possession before
1100 of the lands of Swinton is the earliest contemporary evidence which has come down to us of landowning by a Scottish subject, it is unfortunate that we cannot with authority date their armorial ensigns before the later half of the thirteenth century. Charters there are in plenty. Out of the twenty-three earliest Scottish writings given in the National MSS. of Scotland, nine, taken from the Coldingham documents preserved at Durham, refer to the village and lands of Swinton. Among these are two confirmations by David I., i.e. before 1153, of Swinton "in hereditate sibi et heredibus" to "meo militi Hernulfo" or "Arnolto isti meo Militi," the first of the family to follow the Norman fashion, and adopt the territorial designation of de Swinton; while at Durham and elsewhere, Cospatric de Swinton and his son Alan and grandson Alan appear more than eighty times in charters before 1250.
Fig. 733.—Seal of Alan de Swinton, c. 1271.
But it is not till we come to c. 1271 that we find a Swinton seal still attached to a charter. This is a grant by a third Alan of the Kirk croft of Lower Swinton to God and the blessed Cuthbert and the blessed Ebba and the Prior and Monks of Coldingham. The seal is of a very early form (Fig. 733), and may perhaps have belonged to the father and grandfather of the particular Alan who uses it.
Of the Henry de Swinton who came next, and who swore fealty to Edward the First of England at Berwick in 1296, and of yet a fourth Alan, no seals are known. These were turbulent days throughout Scotland: but then we find a distinct advance; a shield upon a diapered ground, and upon it the single boar has given place to the three boars' heads which afterwards became so common in Scotland. Nisbet lends his authority to the tradition that all the families of Border birth who carried them—Gordon, Nisbet, Swinton, Redpath, Dunse, he mentions, and he might have added others—were originally of one stock, and if so, the probability must be that the breed sprung from Swinton.
