A Complete Guide to Heraldry

by Arthur Charles Fox-Davies

amongst the French; but we find in Glover's Roll, which is a copy of a roll originally drawn up about the year 1250, that whilst he gives lions to six of the English earls, he commences with "le Roy d'Angleterre porte, Gules, trois lupards d'or." On the other hand, the monkish chronicler John of Harmoustier in Touraine (a contemporary writer) relates that when Henry I. chose Geoffrey, son of Foulk, Earl of Anjou, Touraine, and Main, to be his son-in-law, by marrying him to his only daughter and heir, Maud the Empress, and made him knight; after the bathing and other solemnities (pedes ejus solutaribus in superficie Leonculos aureos habentibus muniuntur), boots embroidered with golden lions were drawn on his legs, and also that (Clypeus Leonculos aureos imaginarios habens collo ejus suspenditur) a shield with lions of gold therein was hung about his neck.

It is, therefore, evident that the refinement of distinction between a lion and a leopard was not of the beginning; it is a later addition to the earlier simple term of lion. This distinction having been invented by French heralds, and we taking so much of our heraldry, our language, and our customs from France, adopted, and to a certain extent used, this description of lions passant as "leopards." There can be no doubt, however, that the lions passant guardant upon the English shield have always been represented as lions, no matter what they may have been called, and the use of the term leopard in heraldry to signify a certain position for the lion never received any extensive sanction, and has long since become obsolete in British armory. In French blazon, however, the old distinction is still observed, and it is curious to observe that on the coins of the Channel Islands the shield of arms distinctly shows three leopards. The French lion is our lion rampant, the French leopard is our lion passant guardant, whilst they term our lion passant a léopard-lionné, and our lion rampant guardant is their lion-léopardé.

A lion rampant and any other beast of prey is usually represented in heraldry with the tongue and claws of a different colour from the animal. If it is not itself gules, its tongue and claws are usually represented as of that colour, unless the lion be on a field of gules. They are then represented azure, the term being "armed and langued" of such and such a colour. It is not necessary to mention that a lion is "armed and langued" in the blazon when tongue and claws are emblazoned in gules, but whenever any other colour is introduced for the purpose it is better that it should be specified. Outside British heraldry a lion is always supposed to be rampant unless otherwise specifically described. The earliest appearance of the lions in the arms of any member of the Royal Family in England would appear to be the seal of King John when he was Prince and before he

ascended the throne. This seal shows his arms to be two lions passant. The English Royal crest, which originated with Richard I., is now always depicted as a lion statant guardant. There can be no doubt, however, that this guardant attitude is a subsequent derivation from the position of the lions on the shield, when heraldry was ceasing to be actual and becoming solely pictorial. We find in the case of the crest of Edward the Black Prince, now suspended over his tomb in Canterbury Cathedral, that the lion upon the chapeau looks straight forward over the front of the helm (see Fig. 271).

Fig. 272.

Another ancient rule belonging to the same period as the controversy between leopards and lions was that there cannot be more than one lion upon a shield, and this was one of the great arguments used to determine that the charges on the Royal Arms of England must be leopards and not lions. It was admitted as a rule of British armory to a limited extent, viz., that when two or more lions rampant appeared upon the same shield, unless combatant, they were always formerly described as lioncels. Thus the arms of Bohun are: "Azure, a bend argent, cottised between six lioncels rampant or." British heraldry has, however, long since disregarded any such rule (if any definite rule ever really existed upon the point), though curiously enough in the recent grant of arms to the town of Warrington the animals are there blazoned six "lioncels."

The artistic evolution of the lion rampant can be readily traced in the examples and explanations which follow, but, as will be understood, the employment in the case of some of these models cannot strictly be said to be confined within a certain number of years, though the details and periods given are roughly accurate, and sufficiently so to typify the changes which have occurred.

Until perhaps the second half of the thirteenth century the body of the lion appears straight upright, so that the head, the trunk, and the left hind-paw fall into the angle of the shield. The left fore-paw is horizontal, the right fore- and the right hind-paw are placed diagonally (or obliquely) upwards (Fig. 272). The paws each end in three knobs, similar to a clover-leaf, out of which the claws come forth. The fourth or inferior toes appeared in heraldry somewhat later. The jaws are closed or only very slightly opened, without the tongue being visible. The tail is thickened in the middle with a bunch of longer hair and is turned down towards the body.