Surnames in these early times were in a very unsettled state, for the younger branches of a family, acquiring new settlements by marriage and otherwise, abandoned their patronymics, and adopted new ones derived from the seignories so acquired.[80] Hence it often happens that arms are identical or similar, when the relationship is not recognized by identity of appellation.
Illegitimate children generally bore the paternal ensigns differenced by certain brizures. Thus John de Beaufort, eldest natural son of John of Gaunt, bore Per pale argent and azure [blue and white being the colours of the House of Lancaster] on a bend gules, three lions passant-guardant or [the royal arms of England] in the upper part of the bend a label azure, charged with nine fleur-de-lis or.[81] The arms borne in the usual manner were often surrounded with a bordure to indicate bastardy; of this mode of differencing several examples are furnished in the arms of existing peers descended from royalty. Some of the descendants of Henry Beaufort, third duke of Somerset, placed the Beaufort arms upon a fesse, and numerous similar instances might be adduced.
The mode of differencing by alterations, or the addition of new charges, however commended by Dugdale and other great names, is certainly exposed to the same objection as the use of the label, crescent, mullet, &c., as tending equally to confusion; for, with the addition of cross-crosslets, billets, &c., to the primary charge of the Beauchamps, no herald will dare assert that the original arms are preserved. It is a canon of heraldry that “Omnia arma arithmeticis figuris sunt simillima, quibus si quid addas vel subtrahas non remanet eadem species.” Every alteration, however slight, produces a new coat, and thus the principal advantage of coat armour—its hereditary character—is sacrificed. In fact, a coat of arms is the symbol of a generic, or family, name, and it is not within the compass of the heraldric art to particularize individual branches and members of a family by any additions or changes whatever, at least to any great extent.[82]
“The numerous class of men who were termed Armigeri, or gentry of coat-armour,” observes Dallaway, “very generally took, with a small variation, the escocheon of that feudal lord whose property and influence extended over that province which they inhabited,” and Camden, in his ‘Remaines,’ says, “Whereas the earles of Chester bare garbes or wheat-sheafes, many gentlemen of that countrey took wheatsheafes. Whereas the old earles of Warwicke bare chequy or and azure, a cheueron ermin, many thereabout tooke ermine and chequy. In Leicestershire and the countrey confining diuers bare cinquefoyles, for that the ancient earles of Leicester bare geules, a cinquefoyle ermine, &c.” This was a fertile source of new bearings.
Sometimes, in the absence of other evidence of one family’s having been feudally dependent upon another, presumptive proof is furnished by a similarity between the arms. I subjoin an instance. The coat of the baronial family of Echingham of Echingham, co. Sussex, was ‘Azure a fret argent,’ and the crest, ‘A DEMI-LION RAMPANT ARGENT.’
The arms of Jefferay, of Chiddingly, in the same county, were ‘Azure fretty or’ (with the addition of a lion passant-guardant, gules, on a chief argent), and the crest, A lion’s head erased argent, ducally crowned azure. The first settlement of the Jefferays was at Betchington, co. Sussex, an estate which had previously belonged to the lords Echingham, but there is no proof of the feudal connexion except that which is furnished by a comparison of the arms.
Richard III greatly promoted the cause of Heraldry in England by the erection of the heralds into the corporate body which still exists under the designation of the College of Arms. This epoch may be considered the noonday of the history of armory in England; and as two subsequent chapters of this volume, devoted respectively to the history of that institution, and to notices of celebrated writers on heraldry, will bring down the annals of the science to our own times, “I here make an end” of a chapter which I trust may not have been found totally devoid of interest to any reader who loves to trace the records of the past.
