supporters, and shield are all equally differenced, but the difficulty of adding difference mark on difference mark when no marriage or heiress can ever bring in any alteration to the crest is very generally recognised and admitted, even officially, and it is rare indeed to come across a crest carrying more than a single difference mark.
The grant of an augmentation to any cadet obviates the slightest necessity for any further use of difference marks inherited before the grant.
There are no difference marks whatever for daughters, there being in English common law no seniority between the different daughters of one man. They succeed equally, whether heiresses or not, to the arms of their father for use during their lifetimes, and they must bear them on their own lozenges or impaled on the shields of their husbands, with the difference marks which their father needed to use. It would be permissible, however, to discard these difference marks of their fathers if subsequently to his death his issue succeeded to the position of head of the family. For instance, suppose the daughters of the younger son of an earl are under consideration. They would bear upon lozenges the arms of their father, which would be those of the earl, charged with the mullet or crescent which their father had used as a younger son. If by the extinction of issue the brother of these daughters succeed to the earldom, they would no longer be required to bear their father's difference mark.
There are no marks of difference between illegitimate children. In the eye of the law an illegitimate person has no relatives, and stands alone. Supposing it be subsequently found that a marriage ceremony had been illegal, the whole issue of that marriage becomes of course illegitimate. As such, no one of them is entitled to bear arms. A Royal Licence, and exemplification following thereupon, is necessary for each single one. Of these exemplifications there is one case on record in which I think nine follow each other on successive pages of one of the Grant Books: all differ in some way—usually in the colour of the bordure; but the fact that there are illegitimate brothers of the same parentage does not prevent the descendants of any daughter quartering the differenced coat exemplified to her. As far as heraldic law is concerned, she is the heiress of herself, representing only herself, and consequently her heir quarters her arms.
Marks of difference are never added to an exemplification following upon a Royal Licence after illegitimacy. Marks of difference are to indicate cadency, and there is no cadency vested in a person of illegitimate birth—their right to the arms proceeding only from the regrant of them in the exemplification. What is added in lieu is the mark of distinction to indicate the bastardy.
