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Our well-attended webinar from August 26, 2025, is now online and linked on our website.

Meeting ID: 823 6256 5248
Passcode: 716894

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Our well-attended webinar from June 4, 2025, is now online and linked on our website.

To our Members, Candidates, and Friends :

Founded in 1950, the Descendants of Illegitimate Sons and Daughters of the Kings of Britain (the ‘Royal Bastards’) is a lineage society uniquely conceived by and for dedicated genealogists. Our mission is to promote understanding of the highest genealogical standards, particularly relating to tracing pre-modern ancestral lines.

On Wednesday, June 4, 2025, we will host the first of a new series of public (virtual) information sessions. In this session, we (re-)introduce the Bastards and delve into scholarly and practical aspects of the Bastards’ application process, with broader relevance to rigorously documenting lineages for any organization or purpose. These sessions are aimed at current members, applicants or prospective members, and all interested genealogists.

Below is the link for this event.

We look forward to seeing you there.

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The Royal Bastards & How to Apply
Time: Jun 4, 2025: 6:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)
Join on Zoom:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84527276620?pwd=DWjxSzzZqTWvn0QbrIj3bIgDuTonxZ.1

Meeting ID: 845 2727 6620
Passcode: 816406

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On May 6, 2025, the officers and council of the Descendants of Illegitimate Sons and Daughters of the Kings of Britain conferred honorary posthumous membership on Harold Bowditch, MD, FASG, FSA (1883–1964).

Dr. Harold Bowditch, a urologist by profession, was the leading American heraldic scholar of his generation, with special expertise in medieval armory. While always protesting he was no genealogist, he was elected a fellow of the American Society of Genealogists in 1941 as its sixth fellow, principally as a result of his groundbreaking work as Secretary of the Committee on Heraldry of the New England Historic Genealogical Society, where he collaborated closely over many years with Royal Bastards founders Arthur Adams and G. A. Moriarty and charter members Richard LeBaron Bowen and Sir Anthony R. Wagner (eventually Garter King of Arms), evaluating the genealogical basis of entitlement to coats of arms by American colonists or immigrants.

Dr. Bowditch descended from a colonial Salem maritime family made famous by his great-grandfather Nathaniel Bowditch (1773–1838), author of The New American Practical Navigator (1802), the foundation of modern navigational mathematics. Bowditch’s colleague G. A. Moriarty traced this family’s pre-colonial roots for several generations among the minor gentry of Thorncombe, county Devon, England, finding no known connections to any medieval baronial or royal ancestral lines.

With no royal lines of his own, Dr. Bowditch could not join the Descendants as a regular member; nevertheless he was intimately involved with the group at its foundation. Founder Walter Lee Sheppard Jr. wrote, “he was not a member of the Society, but was in favor of it. He was very pleased with the heraldry of our coat armour and donated his time and effort to make our [original] four-color membership certificate.” Dr. Bowditch also illustrated the Descendants’ lozenge-shaped recognition badge.

Following the recent establishment of honorary memberships, it is entirely fitting that Dr. Bowditch is the first to be so recognized.

A new page has appeared in “Membership Resources”: “A Royal Bastards Bibliography.”

Just added to our “about” section is a new page discussing qualifying bastard ancestors. See here on “Which Bastards?”

Just added to our “about” section is a new page on our distinctive arms and badge.

Our membership application process has been revised as of April 28, 2025: please refer to our membership page, where a new Application Instructions document is now available.