to be differentiated, and when lordships and lands had lapsed to a bastard branch. To this fact must be added another. The armorial control of the heralds after the days of tournaments was exercised through the Visitations and the Earl Marshal's Court. Peers were never subject to the Visitations, and so were not under control unless their arms were challenged in the Earl Marshal's Court by the rightful owner. The cases that were notorious are cases of the arms of peers.
The Visitations gave the officers of arms greater control over the arms of Commoners than they had had theretofore, and the growing social opinions upon legitimacy and marriage brought social observances more into conformity with the technical law, and made that technical law of no inheritance and no paternity an operative fact. The result is that the hard legal fact is now rigidly and rightly insisted upon, and the claim and right to arms of one of illegitimate descent depends and is made to depend solely upon the instruments creating that right, and the conditions of "due and proper marks of distinction" always subject to which the right is called into being. Nowadays there is no release from the penalty of the bordures wavy and compony save through the avenue of a new and totally different grant and the full fees payable therefor. But, as the bearer of a bordure wavy once remarked to me, "I had rather descend illegitimately from a good family and bear their arms marked than descend from a lot of nobodies and use a new grant." But until the common law is altered, if it ever is, the game must be played fairly and the conditions of a Royal Licence observed, for the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children.
Although I have refrained from giving any extended list of bastardised coats as examples of the rules for indicating illegitimacy, reference may nevertheless be made to various curious examples.
The canton has occasionally been used. Sir John de Warren, a natural son of John, Earl of Surrey, Sussex, and Warenne (d. 1347), bore a canton of the arms of his mother, Alice de Nerford ["Gules, a lion rampant ermine"], over the chequy shield of Warren. A similar instance can be found in modern times, the arms of Charlton of Apley Castle, co. Salop, being bastardised by a sinister canton which bears two coats quarterly, these coats having formerly been quarterings borne in the usual manner.
The custom of placing the paternal arms upon a bend has been occasionally adopted, but this of course is the creation of a new coat. It was followed by the Beauforts before their legitimation, and by Sir Roger de Clarendon, the illegitimate son of the Black Prince. The Somerset family, who derived illegitimately from the Beauforts, Dukes of Somerset, first debruised the Beaufort arms by
