Part 61 (1/2)
[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 738.--Arms of Swinton. (From Swinton Church, 163-.)]
Of his son, the second Sir John, ”Lord of that Ilk,” we have no seal. His lance it was that overthrew Thomas, Duke of Clarence, the brother of Henry V., at Beauge in 1421, and he fell, a young man, three years later with the flower of the Scottish army at Verneuil; but in 1475 his son, a third Sir John, uses the identical crest and s.h.i.+eld which his descendants carry to this day (Fig. 736). John had become a common name in the family, and the same or a similar seal did duty for the next three generations; but in 1598 we find the great-great-grandson, Robert Swinton of that Ilk, who represented Berwicks.h.i.+re in the first regularly const.i.tuted Parliament of Scotland, altering the character of the boars' heads (Fig. 737). He would also appear to have placed upon the chevron something which is difficult to decipher, but is probably the rose so borne by the Hepburns, his second wife having been a daughter of Sir Patrick Hepburn of Whitecastle.
Whatever the charge was, it disappeared from the s.h.i.+eld (Fig. 738) erected on the outer wall of Swinton Church by his second son and eventual heir, Sir Alexander, also member for his native county; but {506} the boars'
heads are turned the other way, perhaps in imitation of those above the very ancient effigy of the first Sir Alan inside the church.
Sir Alexander's son, John Swinton, ”Laird Swinton” Carlyle calls him, wrecked the family fortunes. According to Bishop Burnet he was ”the man of all Scotland most trusted and employed by Cromwell,” and he died a Quaker, excommunicated and forfeited. To the circ.u.mstance that when, in 1672, the order went out that all arms were to be officially recorded, he was a broken man under sentence that his arms should be ”laceret and delete out of the Heralds' Books,” we probably owe it that until of late years no Swinton arms appeared on the Lyon Register.
[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 739.--Bookplate of Sir John Swinton of that Ilk, 1707.]
[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 740.--Bookplate of Archibald Swinton of Kimmerghame.]
Then to come to less stirring times, and turn to book-plates. His son, yet another Sir John of that Ilk, in whose favour the forfeiture was rescinded, sat for Berwicks.h.i.+re in the last Parliament of Scotland and the first of Great Britain. His bookplate (Fig. 739) is one of the earliest Scottish dated plates.
His grandson, Captain Archibald Swinton of Kimmerghame, county Berwick (Fig. 740), was an ardent book collector up to his death in 1804, and Archibald's great-grandson, Captain George C. Swinton (Fig. 741), walked as March Pursuivant in the procession in Westminster Abbey at the coronation of King Edward the Seventh of {507} England in 1902, and smote on the gate when that same Edward as First of Scotland claimed admission to his castle of Edinburgh in 1903.
[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 741.--Bookplate of Captain George S. Swinton, March Pursuivant of Arms.]
The arms as borne to-day by the head of the family, John Edulf Blagrave Swinton of Swinton Bank, a lieutenant in the Lothians and Berwicks.h.i.+re Imperial Yeomanry, are as given (Plate IV.). {508}
CHAPTER x.x.xII
MARKS OF b.a.s.t.a.r.dY
It has been remarked that the knowledge of ”the man in the street” is least incorrect when he knows nothing. Probably the only heraldic knowledge that a large number possess is summed up in the a.s.sertion that the heraldic sign of illegitimacy is the ”bar sinister.”
No doubt it is to the novelists--who, seeking to touch lightly upon an unpleasant subject, have ignorantly adopted a French colloquialism--that we must attribute a great deal of the misconception which exists concerning illegitimacy and its heraldic marks of indication. I a.s.sert most unhesitatingly that there are not now and never have been any unalterable laws as to what these marks should be, and the colloquialism which insists upon the ”bar sinister” is a curiously amusing example of an utter misnomer. To any one with the most rudimentary knowledge of heraldry it must plainly be seen to be radically impossible to depict a bar sinister, for the simple reason that the bar is neither dexter nor sinister. It is utterly impossible to draw a bar sinister--such a thing does not exist. But the a.s.sertion of many writers with a knowledge of armory that ”bar sinister” is a mistake for ”bend sinister” is also somewhat misleading, because the real mistake lies in the spelling of the term. The ”barre sinistre” is merely the French translation of bend sinister, the French word ”barre” meaning a _bend_. The French ”barre” is not the English ”bar.”
In order to properly understand the true significance of the marks of illegitimacy, it is necessary that the attempt should be made to transplant oneself into the environment when the laws and rules of heraldry were in the making. At that period illegitimacy was of little if any account. It has not debarred the succession of some of our own sovereigns, although, from the earliest times, the English have always been more prudish upon the point than other nations. In Ireland, even so late as the reign of Queen Elizabeth, it is a striking genealogical difficulty to decide in many n.o.ble pedigrees which if any of the given sons of any person were legitimate, and which of the ladies of his household, if any, might be legally termed his wife. In Scotland we find the same thing, though perhaps it is not quite so {509} blatant to so late a date, but considering what are and have been the Scottish laws of marriage, it is the _fact_ or otherwise of marriage which has to be ascertained; and though in England the legal status was recognised from an earlier period, the social status of the illegitimate offspring of a given man depended little upon the legal legitimacy of birth, but rather upon the amount of recognition the b.a.s.t.a.r.d received from his father. If a man had an unquestionably legitimate son, that son undoubtedly succeeded; but if he had not, any technical stain upon the birth of the others had little effect in preventing their succession. A study of the succession to the Barony of Meinill clearly shows that the illegitimate son of the second Lord Meinill succeeded to the estates and peerage of his father in preference to his legitimate uncle. There are many other a.n.a.logous cases. And when the Church juggled at its pleasure with the sacrament of marriage--dispensing and annulling or recognising marriages for reasons which we nowadays can only term whimsical--small wonder is it that the legal fact, though then admitted, had little of the importance which we now give to it. When the actual fact was so little more than a matter at the personal pleasure of the person most concerned, it would be ridiculous to suppose that any perpetuation of a mere advertis.e.m.e.nt of the fact would be considered necessary, whilst the fact itself was so often ignored; so that until comparatively recent times the Crown certainly never attempted to enforce any heraldic marks of illegitimacy. Rather were these enforced by the legitimate descendants if and when such descendants existed.
The point must have first arisen when there were both legitimate and illegitimate descendants of a given person, and it was desired to make record of the true line in which land or honours should descend. To effect this purpose, the arms of the illegitimate son were made to carry some charge or alteration to show that there was some reason which debarred inheritance by their users, whilst there remained those ent.i.tled to bear the arms without the mark of distinction. But be it noted that this obligation existed equally on the legitimate cadets of a family, and in the earliest periods of heraldry there is little or no distinction either in the marks employed or in the character of the marks, which can be drawn between mere marks of cadency and marks of illegitimacy. Until a comparatively recent period it is absolutely unsafe to use these marks as signifying or proving either legitimate cadency or illegitimacy. The same mark stood for both, the only object which any distinctive change accomplished, being the distinction which it was necessary to draw between those who owned the right to the undifferenced arms, and owned the land, and those who did not. The object was to safeguard the right of the real {510} possessors and their true heirs, and not to penalise the others.
There was no particular mark either for cadency or for illegitimacy, the distinctions made being dictated by what seemed the most suitable and distinctive mark applicable to the arms under consideration.
When that much has been thoroughly grasped, one gets a more accurate understanding of the subject. One other point has to be borne in mind (and to the present generation, which knows so well how extensively arms have been improperly a.s.sumed, the statement may seem startling), and that is, that the use of arms was formerly evidence of pedigree. As late as the beginning of the nineteenth century evidence of this character was submitted to the Committee of Privileges at the hearing of a Peerage case.
The evidence was _admitted_ for that purpose, though doubt (in that case very properly) was thrown upon its value.
Therefore, in view of the two foregoing facts, there can be very little doubt that the use of armorial marks of b.a.s.t.a.r.dy _was not invented or inst.i.tuted, nor were these marks enforced, as punishment or as a disgrace_.
It is a curious instance how a careful study of words and terms employed will often afford either a clue or confirmation, when the true meaning of the term has long been overlooked.
The official term for a mark of cadency is a ”difference” mark, _i.e._ it was a mark to show the difference between one member of a family and another. The mark used to signify a lack of blood relations.h.i.+p, and a mark used to signify illegitimacy are each termed a ”mark of distinction,”
_i.e._ a mark that shall make something plainly ”distinct.” What is that something? The fact that the use of the arms is not evidence of descent through which heirs.h.i.+p can be claimed or proved. This, by the way, is a patent example of the advantage of adherence to precedent.
The inevitable conclusion is that a b.a.s.t.a.r.d was originally only required to mark his s.h.i.+eld sufficiently that it should be distinctly apparent that heirs.h.i.+p would never accrue. The arms had to be distinct from those borne by those members of the family upon whom heirs.h.i.+p might devolve. The social position of a b.a.s.t.a.r.d as ”belonging” to a family was pretty generally conceded, therefore he carried their arms, sufficiently marked to show he was not in the line of succession.
This being accepted, one at once understands the great variety of the marks which have been employed. These answered the purpose of distinction, and nothing more was demanded or necessary. Consequently a recapitulation of marks, of which examples can be quoted, would be largely a list of isolated instances, and as such they are useless for the purposes of deduction in any attempt to arrive at a correct conclusion as to what the ancient rules were. In brief, there were no {511} rules until the eighteenth, or perhaps even until the nineteenth century. The only rule was that the arms must be sufficiently marked in _some_ way. This is borne out by the dictum of Menestrier.
Except the label, which has been elsewhere referred to, the earliest marks of either cadency or illegitimacy for which accepted use can be found are the bend and the bordure; but the bend for the purpose of illegitimacy seems to be the earlier, and a bend superimposed over a s.h.i.+eld remained a mark of illegitimate cadency until a comparatively late period. This bend as a difference naturally was originally depicted as a bend dexter, and as a mark of legitimate cadency is found in the arms of the _younger_ son of Edmund Crouchback, Earl of Lancaster, before he succeeded his elder brother.
There are scores of other similar instances which a little research will show. Whether the term ”left-handed marriage” is the older, and the sinister bend is derived therefrom, or whether the slang term is derived from the sinister bend, it is perhaps not necessary to inquire. But there is no doubt that from an early period the bend of cadency, when such cadency was illegitimate, is frequently met with in the sinister form. But concurrently with such usage instances are found in which the dexter bend was used for the same purpose, and it is very plainly evident that it was never at that date looked upon as a penalty, but was used merely as a _distinction_, or for the purpose of showing that the wearer was not the head of his house or in possession of the lords.h.i.+p. The territorial idea of the nature of arms, which has been alluded to in the chapter upon marks of cadency, should be borne in mind in coming to a conclusion.