A rather extraordinary sign of this can be found in the badge of the
‘Beaumont Herald of Arms Extraordinary’, a subsidiary title created for
the duke of Norfolk, in his capacity as Earl Marshal, in 1982. The badge
is based, above all, on the‘Brienne phase’of the house of Beaumont.
It consists of a Brienne lion superimposed onto a Jerusalem cross,
surrounded byfleur-de-lys:in front of a Cross Potent a Lion rampant within
eight Fleur-de-lis in orle Gold.^100
A Florentine TragedyIt is worth noting the neatness of the parallels between Henry of Beau-
mont and his kinsman, Walter VI. In the early 1330s, both were trying,
at long last, to take control of lordships that they had claimed ever since
the early 1310s–and, in both cases, the outcome was little more than
a short-term success. We left Walter when he was just coming of age.
Unsurprisingly, once he was old enough to act for himself, he pinned his
hopes for reconquest on his kinsmen, the Angevins of Naples. Clearly,
he was still regarded aspersona grata at their court, and this comes
across from the excellent marriage that he made there. In the early
1320s, under the auspices of King Robert the Wise, Walter married
Beatrice of Taranto, the daughter of the king’s brother Philip, the titular
Latin emperor of Constantinople.^101 In due course, the couple had a
son and heir, Walter, who was born before the decade was out.^102 For
the Angevins, the marriage was part of their preparations for an ambi-
tious‘joint descent’ on Greece in 1322–3. The plan was relatively
simple. Whilst Emperor Philip and his brother, Prince John of Achaia,
concentrated on the northern and southern parts of the peninsula
respectively, Walter himself would attack the centre and so distract
the Catalans. Yet, like so many of the Angevin‘big pushes’across the
Adriatic, the campaign itself achieved relatively little–apart, that is,
from thefirst involvement of the Florentine house of Acciaioli in Greek
affairs.^103
The affairs of Florence and the Angevins were, of course, deeply
intertwined during this period.‘The two powers formed the core of the
Guelf [that is, the broadly pro-papal] faction in Italy, and looked to each
(^100) A New Dictionary of Heraldry, ed. S. Friar (London, 1987), 58.
(^101) There has been some debate about the precise date of this marriage, but it had clearly
102 taken place by May 1321. See Luttrell,‘The Latins of Argos and Nauplia’,35n.4.
103 See Setton,Catalan Domination of Athens,39.
For this, see Lock,The Franks in the Aegean, 128 – 9.
A Florentine Tragedy 163