The bordure counter-compony is assigned to fifteen persons, none of them, it is believed, of illegitimate descent, and some expressly said to be "lineallie and lawfulie descended" from the ancestor whose arms they bore thus differenced. The idea of this bordure having been at any time a mark of bastardy is a very modern error, arising from a confusion with the bordure compony.
Fig. 732.—The scheme of Cadency Bordures devised by Mr. Stodart.
In conclusion, attention needs to be pointedly drawn to the fact that all changes in arms are not due to cadency, nor is it safe always to presume cadency from proved instances of change. Instead of merely detailing isolated instances of variation in a number of different families, the matter may be better illustrated by closely following the successive variations in the same family, and an instructive instance is met with in the case of the arms of the family of Swinton of that Ilk. This is peculiarly instructive, because at no point in the descent covered by the arms referred to is there any doubt or question as to the fact of legitimate descent.
Claiming as they do a male descent and inheritance from Liulf the son of Edulf, Vicecomes of Northumbria, whose possession before
