One Memorial, Two Coats of Arms

London, England, is a sightseers paradise as far as monuments go. You can hardly walk more than a block or two without finding another monument.

For example:

And that's just the top of the monument! Here's the base:

You just have to know it's big when you can't get the entire height on a single photo!

Yes, those are coats of arms hanging from the wreath encircling the marble upright pole. I was distracted by the lions and coats of arms on the pedestal, and so failed to take a close-up of them when I was there. And the detail is not sufficient to identify them upon enlarging the above picture. The same situation appears on each of the photographs of this monument that I have found on-line. Sorry about that! If I ever get to return to London, I will make it a point to circle the monument and get detailed photos of those shields.

But, yeah, this is what was distracting me:

The entire construction is the Lord Raglan Memorial Column, situated, as you can tell from the first two pictures, not far from the Parliament Buildings.

FitzRoy James Henry Somerset, 1st Baron Raglan of Raglan, Field Marshal in the Army, G.C.B., and commander-in-chief of the army in the Crimea (1788-1855). He was the youngest son of Henry, 5th Duke of Beaufort, and raised to the peerage as Baron Raglan 26 October 1852. He was aide-de-camp and military secretary to Field-Marshal Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, in the Peninsula and France, and was present and lost an arm at the Battle of Waterloo. (It is he for whom the Raglan sleeve is so named.) He became a Field-Marshal in 1854, and died 28 June 1855 during the siege of Sebastopol, Crimea.

His arms, which appear on the monument, are: Quarterly France and England within a bordure compony argent and azure (Somerset).

We have seen these arms before, in Cambridge, in the arms of Christ’s College and of St. John’s College, both of whom use the arms of their founder, Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond and Derby. The House of Beaufort continues to exist in an illegitimate line descended from Charles Somerset, 1st Earl of Worcester, the illegitimate son of Henry Beaufort, 3rd Duke of Somerset.

So are these the arms of Beaufort, or the arms of Somerset? The possibly confusing answer is: Yes. With the bonus that they are also the arms of Christ’s College, Cambridge, and of St. John’s College, Cambridge. Do we fully understand English heraldry yet? No. No, we do not.

There is another coat of arms at the base of the column:

Here's a closer view:

These arms are, of course, those of the Westminster Abbey, Azure a cross patonce between five martlets and on a chief or a pale quarterly France modern and England between two Tudor roses barbed and seeded proper, which we have seen before in this blog.

All in all, quite an impressive, and heraldic, memorial.