Beasts on the Shield

Strange creatures and stranger rules of the coat of arms.

The medieval alphabet of rank is full of monsters, contradictions and improbable beasts. The oddest here, each linking to its place in the book.

A knight pulled a lion's heart out through its throat — and put it on his shield. William de Albini, already engaged to the widow of Henry I, so dazzled the Queen Dowager of France at a tournament that she demanded him in marriage. He refused. She lured him to a grotto in the royal gardens where a famished lion waited instead of a lady. He seized its mane, thrust his arm down its throat, "and from thence dragged back through the astonished animal's gullet its own bleeding heart." Hence the golden lion on crimson still quartered by the Dukes of Norfolk.Read it: Augmentations: Blanche
The scandalous alternative life of St. George. One legend makes England's patron saint "a sort of contractor of bacon for the army" — a rogue and informer who grew rich, fled the country with his money-bags, turned Armenian, got himself made Bishop of Alexandria, and was finally dragged from prison by a mob and lynched in 361. The author's verdict: "This infamous tale we will not believe."Read it: CHAPTER VII: England
St. George's martyrdom, attempt by attempt: spears "snapped like straws" on his body; crushed under a heavy stone he stayed "plump and rosy"; strapped to a wheel of blades, an angel appeared and he saluted it "most courteously after the military fashion of the day"; a pit of quicklime was "as comfortable for the holy man as a bath of warm water"; then boiling oil, then red-hot iron shoes he ran a race in; then a nail-lined iron box flung off a cliff — "out jumped the saint, as smiling, too, and as forgiving as a saint should be." Two cups of poison "proved to be like milk and honey."Read it: CHAPTER VII: George
His final miracle converted "not only forty thousand nine hundred men, but the very wife of the Emperor" — whereupon the exhausted Emperor executed his own wife, and was carried off by a whirlwind of fire.Read it: CHAPTER VII: George
The Union Jack wrote to the newspapers to complain. In a letter reprinted here: "How, sir, may I ask, would you like to be hung up by your heels? or how would any of your readers like to stand on their heads for a week together?" It is flown upside down so often, it says, that it is "turned from a symbol of rejoicing into a signal of distress."Read it: CHAPTER VII: Patrick
The same flag confesses a design flaw: in 1606 and again in 1801 the heralds broke their own rules trying to merge the crosses instead of quartering them, so "I am now a heraldic absurdity" — but having flown over so many glorious fights, no attempt to fix it would ever succeed.Read it: CHAPTER VII: Patrick
St. Andrew's cross may have started as a ladder. The X-shaped saltire commemorates the scaling ladders used to take the walls of Seville on St. Andrew's Day, 1248. Only later did it seem that "a saltire — species of scaling ladder — was scarcely a fit emblem to put upon the banner of a saint," so a story was formed of the saint dying on a cross of that shape. The author is blunt: no one "has ever been proved to have met his death in such an uncomfortable way."Read it: CHAPTER VII: George
The White Horse cut into the English chalk hills survives only because farmers scrape the grass off it every year — "the muscle and good 'elbow-grease' of the farmers in the surrounding country."Read it: CHAPTER VII: England
Hengist and Horsa may never have existed as men. Sceptics held that the terrified Britons named the invaders after the war-horse banner they carried. Horsa planted that banner in the centre of a conquered town, and the town became Canterbury — the horse's rearing attitude being then called the "canter," or Canterbury gallop.Read it: CHAPTER VII: England
St. Cuthbert's banner was believed to guarantee victory, and the Earl of Surrey waited for it to arrive before risking Flodden Field. Its end was domestic: the Catholic wife of a Dean of Durham "made a fire, seized the banner, and that was the end to all benevolent efforts of good St. Cuthbert through the agency of banners."Read it: CHAPTER VII: Cuthbert
The Howards' augmentation for Flodden records the manner of a king's death: the Scottish lion's head set on their shield with an arrow through its mouth, because James IV was found pierced with arrows. It gave the family the name of the "Bleeding Lion of Surrey."Read it: Augmentations: Henry
James IV was talked into that war by the young Queen of France, who "called herself his mistress and his lady-love" and extracted a promise that for her sake he would march three miles onto English ground — sealing it by drawing a ring from her own hand and sending it to him.Read it: Augmentations: Henry
Queen Elizabeth, on a lord who wanted English precedence for a German title: "Faithful subjects should keep their eyes at home, and not gaze upon foreign crowns; that she, for her part, did not care that they should wear a stranger's mark, or dance after the whistle of every foreigner!" The Dutch ambassadors' description of her, quoted approvingly: she "had a tongue well hung in her head."Read it: Augmentations: England
The Duke of Norfolk's full style runs to eleven titles — Premier Duke, Hereditary Earl Marshal and Chief Butler of England among them — prompting the note that "the present duke is now thirty-eight years old, almost a title for every year."Read it: Augmentations: Henry
How the Napiers got their name: Donald of Lennox seized his father's standard, turned the battle, and the king declared that one man among them had "na pier" — no equal.Read it: Augmentations: Scotland
Cosmo de' Medici was proud to add a sixth bezant to his arms — "or shall we call it polka dot" — because the French king let him decorate it with the royal arms of France.Read it: Augmentations: England
The crowned serpent devouring a child, still the badge of Milan and Lombardy, was taken off the shield of a Saracen giant beside whom Otho Visconti "appeared as little greater than a grasshopper."Read it: Augmentations
The Blanche Lion of Norfolk is a white lion trampling and tearing the scarlet lion of Scotland — worn as an arm-badge by the duke's retainers. Surrey's vow at Bosworth: "never shall my flight / Dye black my lion, which as yet is white."Read it: Augmentations: Blanche
The one loyal baron: when the whole Scottish nobility withdrew and left their king, only Scott of Thirlestane stayed. His reward was the Scottish tressure, a crest of spears rising from a fortress, and the motto "Ready, aye, ready."Read it: Augmentations: Scotland
An "augmentation" — a single rose, dagger, star or lily added to a shield — was the most prized reward in English chivalry, ranking above grants of land and annuities.Read it: Augmentations
The rhyme attached to Arundel Castle: "Since William rose and Harold fell, / There have been Counts of Arundel, / And Earls old Arundel shall have / While rivers flow and forests wave."Read it: Augmentations: Blanche
Wittekind bore a black horse on his banner; on being converted by Charlemagne he changed it to a white one, "thus showing the purity of his new faith."Read it: CHAPTER VII: England
King Hungus of the Picts saw St. Andrew's saltire in the blue sky above his army before battle — and so, the Highlanders insisted, did every one of his soldiers.Read it: CHAPTER VII: George
Edward III's battle cry at Calais — "Ha! St. Edward! Ha! St. George!" — and from that day Edward the Confessor quietly lost his place as England's favourite saint.Read it: CHAPTER VII: George