In heraldry, a bordure is a band of contrasting tincture forming a border around the edge of a shield, traditionally one-sixth as wide as the shield itself. It is sometimes reckoned as an ordinary and sometimes as a subordinary.
A bordure encloses the whole shield, with two exceptions:
Humphrey of Lancaster, Duke of Gloucester (3 October 1390 – 23 February 1447) was an English prince, soldier and literary patron. He was, and styled himself as, "son, brother and uncle of kings", being the fourth and youngest son of Henry IV of England, the brother of Henry V, and the uncle of Henry VI. Gloucester fought in the Hundred Years' War and acted as Lord Protector of England during the minority of his nephew. A controversial figure, he has been characterised as reckless, unprincipled, and fractious, but is also noted for his intellectual activity and for being the first significant English patron of humanism, in the context of the Renaissance.
Unlike his brothers, Humphrey was given no major military command by his father, instead receiving an intellectual upbringing. Created Duke of Gloucester in 1414, he participated in Henry V's campaigns during the Hundred Years' War in France: he fought at Agincourt in 1415 and at the conquest of Normandy in 1417–9. Following the king's death in 1422, Gloucester became one of the leading figures in the regency government of the infant Henry VI. He proved a rash, impulsive, unscrupulous and troublesome figure, he quarrelled constantly with his brother, John, Duke of Bedford and uncle, Cardinal Henry Beaufort and went so far as to violently prosecute a dispute with the Duke of Burgundy, a key English ally in France, over conflicting claims to lands in the Low Countries.
View the full Wikipedia page for Humphrey, Duke of GloucesterIn heraldry, an ordinary componée (anciently gobonnée), anglicised to compony and gobony, is composed of a row of squares, rectangles or other quadrilaterals, of alternating tinctures, often found as a bordure, most notably in the arms of the English House of Beaufort.
Like a baton sinister, a bordure compony can be used as a difference to delineate cadency and often indicates an illegitimate son, acknowledged but legally barred from inheritance of the feudal estates of his father. The first Earl of Somerset was later legitimized (allowed to inherit the feudal estates) by an act of Parliament, yet retained his original arms as also displayed by his legitimate descendants.
View the full Wikipedia page for Compone