Letters Patent granting arms to the illegitimate daughters of Thomas Peter Legh (1753-1797). The right to arms passes to all descendants of an acknowledged ‘grantee’ in the legitimate male line but the right must be established by recording their pedigree at the College of Arms. In the case of illegitimacy, the arms are slightly differenced to record this fact. Such patents are still issued today when someone petitions for a Royal Licence for their illegitimate or adopted offspring to bear their arms.
Colonel Thomas Peter Legh is known as the rogue of the Legh family. He inherited Lyme Park from his uncle, Peter Legh XII, in 1792. By that time he had fathered seven children, four girls and three boys, by seven different women, none of them his wife. However, Thomas Peter himself, as his uncle’s name might suggest, came from an ancient – and legitimate – lineage of Peter (or Piers) Legh of Lyme Park.
