I have heard that one of the many marks of illegitimacy is the border compony… how often is this the case?  Is compony nearly always a mark of illegitimacy or is that just one possible interpretation of a symbol that is use in lots of other ways?  What is the status of bordure compony as a mark of cadency?

Thanks! :yoda:

If I remember correctly, the bordure compony is only used as a mark of illigitimacy in Scottish heraldry. English heraldry these days uses the bordure wavy, if they use anything at all, the baton sinister being reserved for royal use.

I don’t know of any other system of cadency that uses the bordure compony. Anyone?

My understanding is similar to Patrick, only in Scottish heraldry is the bordure compony used as a mark of illegitimacy. I even seem to recall it being Argent and Azure (possibly specificity of color is an indication of illegitimacy although not sure).  I have seen the bordure compony used as a mark of cadency in Italian, Iberian, Scandinavian and Germanic heraldry.  In Italy, the Aosta and Geneoa branches of the Royal House of Savoy use the bordure compony as a mark of cadency. I have also used the bordure compony as a mark of cadency for my personal arms, but in no way do I claim illegitimacy

The bordure compony is used to denote illegitimacy in Scotland but not only in Scotland. It was in use in England in earlier days.

The Duke of Beaufort has a bordure compony Argent and Azure (John of Gaunt’s livery colours).

The Duke of Richmond has a bordure compony Argent and Gules charged with roses Gules. These are not recorded in Lyon Register so they can be assumed to be English arms even though many of his titles are in the peerage of Scotland.

The bordure wavy is used in England to denote illegitimacy - but maybe not always so.

The Lords Egremont & Leconfield bear the arms of Wyndham with a bordure wavy Or due to their descent from a son of the 3rd Earl of Egremont born before his marriage. Similarly the Lords Hothfield have a bordure wavy Or due to their supposed descent from the 11th Earl of Thanet.

The Lords Hankey bear a bordure wavy Ermine, but there is nothing in their lineage as shown in Burkes to suggest illegitimacy. However there may be something in the wording of an 1815 Royal Licence to bear the name of Hankey.

Sometimes there is no obvious mark of bastardy. The Lords Bolton bear the arms of Powlett with a canton charged by an escutcheon of Orde. They are male line Ordes and illegitimate female line descendants of the Dukes of Bolton.

James

so you are saying that in Scotland and in England (and by default Wales and Mann and other such British holdings) they still use such symbols to denote this situation?

i was under the impression that this sort of thing was no longer practiced…guess i was wrong…

I’m not sure if they *still* use such marks, but there are plenty of historic arms that use such marks - showing an illegitimacy at some time in the past.

Certainly I have no doubts that Lord Lyon Sir Thomas Innes of Learney could well have granted arms with bordures compony (given he produced the only arms with an abatement outside the imagination of heraldic writers). The use of the Bordure Compony for illegitimacy survived the drastic pruning that was Sir Malcolm Innes of Edingight’s revised 3rd Edition of Scots Heraldry.

It is worth noting that as far as I know the improvement of the treatment of illegitimate children has gone only so far as to give them rights equivalent to children who are not illegitimate - which in Scotland would be the right to rematriculate arms with appropriate differences. They tended in Scotland to have this anyway. I believe that the law had more effect in England, where historically illegitimate children were filius nullius. In this case England and Wales are the same but I couldn’t say for certain that places such as Man are. The College of Arms probably claims rights to grant arms to the Manx but the law on the Isle of Man is different from that of England.

It is also important to note that the law in Scotland has always legitimated children born to a couple before wedlock upon their marriage. That is why the Macdonald of Sleat Baronetcy (a Scottish creation) and the Barony of Macdonald (in the Peerage of Ireland) became separated. The couple concerned had children both before and after a marriage that was recognised (in England) as valid. The older children were not illegitimate in the eyes of the law of Scotland.

It is also possible for an armiger (in Scotland) to nominate a successor to their arms (with the approval of Lyon - usually given if the nominee is a blood relative). Thus the plain undifferenced arms could pass to an illegitimate child or illegitimate sibling (or illegitimate cousin). There is a quote from Sir Iain Moncreiffe of that Ilk from his book "Highland Clans" which sums up the situation very well.

Quote:

At a meeting of the Standing Council of Scottish Chiefs, while discussing the Succession Bill, the present writer pointed out that illegitimacy did not necessarily in Scotland exclude a son from succession even to a chiefship, if covered by a parental nomination accepted by the Crown - and that this applied in fact to a fellow chief present. After the meeting two other chiefs (neither of them the one I had in mind) came up to me separately and protested: ‘I’ve never been called a bastard in public before’

James

James Dempster wrote:

It is also possible for an armiger (in Scotland) to nominate a successor to their arms (with the approval of Lyon - usually given if the nominee is a blood relative). Thus the plain undifferenced arms could pass to an illegitimate child or illegitimate sibling (or illegitimate cousin).

James

It is also possible in England for an armiger to nominate a successor to their arms (with the approval of the College of Arms - and the nominee need not even be a blood relative!). Thus the plain undifferenced arms could pass to an illegitimate child, an illegitimate sibling, cousin or anyone else at all. The process by which this can be achieved is by way of Royal Licence, which is usually applied for via the College of Arms and is most often, but not always, a result of a "Name and Arms" clause in the will of a deceased armiger.

I have no experience of how strict the College is in recommending a Royal Licence to a person who is of no blood relationship but I don’t think it is unheard of for a name and arms clause to apply to a person who originally bore a completely different name.

I do not think that there would be anything to prevent an armiger, during his lifetime, from petitioning the Crown for a Royal Licence to ensure the succession to the undifferenced arms went to an illegitimate son or perhaps indeed even an adopted son who was of no blood relationship. I have on occasion read (I can not recall where) that an adopted son would have his arms differenced by a chain of three links which may be fine if he is not to be the heir to the estate (that is to say there is no legitimate male heir), but if he is to be the heir then it would seem to me that he should be allowed the undifferenced arms as representer of the estate - achieved through said Royal Licence.

It think that it was A.C. Fox-Davies in his Complete Guide to Heraldry who pointed out quite well that the purpose of differencing armorial bearings is to clearly indicate that the differenced arms do not belong to the head of the house or successor to the family estate. It therefore matters not whether the arms are differenced to indicate bastardy or simply a junior cadet.

Regards,

Martin

And thus the provisions in the draft recommended guidelines for American heraldic practice:

- Allowing a child born out of wedlock to inherit the parent’s undifferenced arms if the laws of the state of domicile give him an entitlement to the estate.

- Giving adopted children identical rights to inherit the arms as those enjoyed by biological children, on the grounds that the law treats them identically.

- Recommending against differencing for cadency, on the grounds that estate laws in the US give no preference to the eldest son.

- Permitting the person adopting new arms to specify a destination of the arms, deviating from the normal inheritance rules, if he/she wishes.

Joseph McMillan wrote:

- Recommending against differencing for cadency, on the grounds that estate laws in the US give no preference to the eldest son.

That clause would add to the misconception that there exists such an heraldic beast as "a family coat of arms."  Or are you specifically speaking of bastardy & adoption cadency marks?

—Guy

Guy Power wrote:

That clause would add to the misconception that there exists such an heraldic beast as "a family coat of arms."

How is this a misconception? There is such a thing as a family coat of arms. Virtually every personal coat of arms is actually or potentially a family coat of arms—family being defined as the descendants (determined by whatever rule of succession is in force in the place concerned) of the original armigerous ancestor.

Even in England, all legitimate sons of an armiger have always inherited their father’s arms. That is the meaning of Sir Edward Coke’s 1628 statement that "gentry and armes is of the nature of gavelkinde, for they descend to all the sonnes. Which gentry and armes do not descend to all the brethren alone, but to all their posterity." Gavelkind was a type of land tenure that existed in a few parts of England in which all the sons divided the property if their father died intestate, as distinct from the primogeniture system that prevailed in most of England. Coke’s meaning is that all a gentleman’s descendants in the male line inherit both his status as a gentleman and his arms. That is the basis of my proposed guideline on armorial inheritance in the US; it is also the prevailing rule of armorial inheritance in most of Continental Europe. Before Arthur Fox-Davies began propagating his one-man-one-arms "rule," it was common for English heralds and heraldic authors to refer to the arms of a family. There are even cases of brothers and cousins being granted the same identical arms.

Now it is true that at one time there was a system of cadency marks that were supposed to be applied to inherited arms. This was justified by Coke in the next sentence following those quoted above: "But yet jure

primogeniturae, the eldest alone shall beare as a badge of his birthright, his father’s armes without any differences for that as Littleton saith, sectione 5 he is more worthy of his blood but all the younger brethren shall give several differences." The Oxford Guide to Heraldry says that this statement by Coke—or rather by his predecessor Littleton—is the most recent legal justification for the custom of differencing for cadency. So if differencing for cadency is justified by the law of primogeniture land inheritance, it is not surprising to find that in places where primogeniture did not prevail (e.g., Germany), differencing for cadency was, for all practical purposes, unknown. Similarly, it is only logical that when the US states abolished primogeniture (as they all did soon after independence), the justification for cadency differencing would also disappear. (In fact, there is little evidence that differencing for cadency ever caught on in the United States, even before the abolition of primogeniture, but certainly the theoretical justification for it ceased to apply with abolition.)

Even in England, the marks were never applied with any consistency, and the Oxford Guide to Heraldry itself comes close to admitting that they are now all but obsolete.

The one place I’m aware of where the one-arms-one-man principle still prevails is Scotland. But of course, this isn’t Scotland.

Joe,

I completely agree with you regarding cadency and primogeniture.  However, to my knowledge, The Irish, the Canadian, and to some extent, the South African heraldic authorities still insist on the use of marks of cadency to indicate birth order within the family, not necessarily inheritance laws.

The South African Bureau of Heraldry strongly recommends the use of some mark to personalize the arms, but not necessarily to identify birth order.

Point taken, but how can they actually "insist"?  There’s no requirement to go back and reregister/matriculate arms following the death of the original armiger, so no way to enforce any theoretical requirement.  Irish grants generally say something about "due and proper differences according to the law of arms," but no one has yet found a copy of the law of arms and it’s not at all clear what said law requires on this matter.

As Joe notes in his draft Introduction to the Best Practices (and I’m paraphrasiong) there’s the more or less universal law of arms (i.e. those customs generally followed in most if not every country that has a heraldic tradition) and the local laws of arms peculiar to a particular country or tradition.  Cadency is a bit in-between, since historically it has been part of the custom in several countries (& even there, essentially optional most places, de facto if not de jure)— but not all (or even most).  In any case, its certainly not one of the more-or-less universal laws of arms that we should feel particularly bound to follow.

IMO in the American context it should be optional within families—use it if you wish, ignore it if you prefer; & the "best practice" would normally be to ignore it, with certain limitations I’ve discussed elsewhere.  That is, for inherited arms, treat the "original" arms for American purposes as being whatever version the original immigrant properly owned/used in the old country, since that’s the version he brought over the pond.  Once here, his descendants would be free to use or ignore any further cadency, since they would (by our "best practice") inherit their immigrant ancestor’s arms by gavelkind unless they made a conscious decision & agreement to observe further cadency among themselves.  They would not be free, however, to abandon any cadency marks their immigrant ancestor was required to use "back home" since the immigrant never owned, & thus could not transmit, the undifferenced version.

For those (like most of us) designing & adopting new arms here, of course the previous paragraph would be merely spectator sport.

Joe,

I believe that Guy was refering to "surname" coat of arms which as you know is the basis of the bucket shops. Ex. All people who have the surname Shorey and therefore are part of the "Shorey family" have the Coat of Arms listed for Shorey. Which at one point meant my Coat of Arms was, if I remember correctly: argent a lion rampant double queued purpure.

Of course that was before I found out that my family name was Shore and the y was added a couple generations after my family arrived in the "new world".

Dave

Joe,

You are absolutely correct in the fact that none of the heraldic authorities that require the use of cadency (with the exception of the Scottish) require re-matriculation, once the arms have been granted to an individual. And, none of them enforce the often mentioned "law of arms." However, when an individual registers or is granted arms, and that individual has descendents, they are all mentioned in the grant and are all granted the appropriate mark of cadency.  I believe there are some examples on the Canadian Heraldic Authority’s web site as well as the Irish. Once the arms have been granted, I don’t believe there is any requirement to re-matriculate or enforcement of the said "law of arms."

For what it’s worth, the South African Heraldry Act of 1962 (as amended) says this on differencing for cadency in section 7:

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Quote:

(5) Any person in whose name a family coat of arms has been registered may apply to the bureau for the registration, upon his death, with or without differencing, of that family coat of arms in the name of any of his descendants, or in the name of any other person who bears the same family name.

 

(6) Any descendant of any person who lawfully bears or bore a particular family coat of arms, or any adopted child, as defined in the Children’s Act, 1960 (Act No. 33 of 1960), of such person bearing the same

lawfully conferred family name as that person, may apply to the bureau for the registration, with or without differencing, of that family coat of arms in his name.

 

So the South Africans leave it up to the grantee or his heirs to decide whether to difference or not.  Sensible folks.
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