No. 359.— Henry,
Earl of Worcester.
The earliest known example of the arms of a man of illegitimate birth is the fine Shield of William Longespée, Earl of Salisbury, son of Henry II. and Fair Rosamond, [No. 197]. This Shield is supposed to have been assumed and borne by the Earl on his marriage with the daughter and heiress of D’Evreux, when in right of his wife he succeeded to the Earldom of Salisbury: but this theory does not rest upon any solid foundation, since it would be very difficult to show that the Shield with the six lioncels was certainly borne, on his armorial ensign, by the father-in-law of Earl William. Also, if a Shield charged with an escarbuncle and many lioncels, which has been assigned to Geoffrey Count of Anjou, was really borne by the Founder of the House of Plantagenet, Earl William Longespée may have derived his own Shield from his paternal grandfather. Upon his Counterseal the Earl displays his own “long sword” as his proper device. In like manner, certain other personages, also illegitimate, appear to have borne arms which were either expressly assigned to themselves by the Sovereign, or such as they assumed in right of their mothers or wives. In all such cases as these, the Arms were not the paternal coat in any way differenced, but what now would be designated “fresh grants.” Towards the beginning of the fifteenth century, however, a peculiar kind of Differencing for Illegitimacy gradually prevailed throughout Europe: thus, illegitimate children either altered the position of the charges in their paternal Shield; or they marshalled the entire paternal arms upon a bend or a fesse; or they composed for themselves a fresh Shield, either using their father’s badges and the actual charges of his Shield, or adopting devices evidently derived from the paternal bearings; or they bore the paternal Shield differenced in a peculiarly conspicuous manner with certain marks by which they might be readily and certainly distinguished.
When the composition of the paternal Shield would admit of such an arrangement, the field not being argent, an illegitimate son sometimes bore his father’s arms marshalled fesse-wise, so as to leave both the chief and the base of his Shield plain white. Henry, Earl of Worcester, whose father was an illegitimate son of Henry Beaufort, third Duke of Somerset, bore the arms of Beaufort couped in this manner in chief and in base, as if they were charged upon a very broad fesse on the field: No. 359.
| No. 360.— Beaufort before 1397. | No. 361.— Beaufort after 1397. |
John de Beaufort (great-grandfather of Henry, Earl of Worcester), eldest illegitimate son of Prince John of Ghent, before the Act for his legitimation was passed in the year 1397, bore his father’s hereditary arms of Lancaster—England with a label of France, [No. 249]—on a broad bend, the field being per pale arg. and az., the Lancastrian livery colours: No. 360. After their legitimation act had become a law, this same John de Beaufort, with his brothers, sons, and grandsons, bore the Royal quartered shield of France and England, No. 361, differenced, not with labels, but with a bordure componée arg. and az. (the Lancastrian colours): the different members of the Beaufort family slightly varied the bordure, but by the head of their house it was borne as in No. 361. It will be seen that this is the coat that Henry, Earl of Worcester (himself the legitimate son of an illegitimate son), bore fesse-wise, as in [No. 359]. The father of this Earl Henry, Charles Somerset, Earl of Worcester (illegitimate son of the third Duke of Somerset), differenced Beaufort, No. 361, with a silver bendlet sinister, as in No. 362, the bendlet covering the quarterings, but being included within the bordure.
No. 362.— Charles,
Earl of Worcester.