Heraldry
Created | Updated Jan 28, 2002
The earliest solid evidence for the English heraldic lion is both textual and iconographic. Henry I knighted his son-in-law Geoffrey of Anjou in 1127 on the occasion of the latter's wedding, and bestowed on him a blue shield painted with gold lions (according to the chronicler Jean de Marmentier). The shield can be seen on Geoffrey's tomb (now in a museum in Le Mans), and the lions are also found on the shield of Geoffrey's grandson William Longespee - one of the earliest evidences that these heraldic devices had become hereditary. The earliest known example of a heraldic shield depicted on a seal is 1136, and there is some speculation that battlefield heraldry evolved from seals (rather than the conventional wisdom that heraldry was a military invention).
Henry I (1100-1135) was known as the 'Lion of Justice' and started a royal menagerie at Woodstock, which included lions (allegedly the first seen in England - at least since Roman times). His seal had no lions, but his shield may have borne one and later two. Some have conjectured that the second lion came from his marriage to the daughter of Godfrey of Louvaine, whose seal had a lion. The theory that the third lion came from Eleanor of Aquitaine, wife of Henry II (1154-1189) is now somewhat discredited, but her seal certainly is known to have had three lions on a shield. (The joining of devices through marriage is called 'marshalling'.)
Matthew Paris, the earliest chronicler of a Roll of Arms, credits Henry II's eldest son Henry with three lions on his shield. Henry II's son John had two lions, and the three lions as royal arms first definitely appear in the second royal seal of Richard I late in his reign (1198). That this redesign of the seal came after Richard's crusading escapades may be significant. (Richard's shield during the crusades is conjectured to have been red with two gold lions, like his father's. All artistic portrayals of Richard with three lions are derived from the royal seal at the end of his reign, but there is no solid evidence of Richard's lions prior to the second royal seal.) The lions remained thereafter a symbol of England (soon quartered with the French fleur de lis, 1340-1801, to represent England's claim to the French throne).