"William the Lion has popularly got the credit of being the first to introduce heraldic bearings into Scotland, and to have assumed the lion as his personal cognisance. The latter statement may or may not be true, but we have no trace of hereditary arms in Scotland so early as his reign (1165-1214). Certainly the lion does not appear on his seal, but it does on that of his son and successor Alexander II., with apparent remains of the double tressure flory counterflory, a device which is clearly seen on the seals of Alexander III. (1249-1285). We are unable to say what the reason was for the adoption of such a distinctive coat; of course, if you turn to the older writers you will find all sorts of fables on the subject. Even the sober and sensible Nisbet states that 'the lion has been carried on the armorial ensign of {143} Scotland since the first founding of the monarchy by King Fergus I.'--a very mythical personage, who is said to have flourished about 300 B.C., though he is careful to say that he does not believe arms are as old as that period. He says, however, that it is 'without doubt' that Charlemagne entered into an alliance with Achaius, King of Scotland, and for the services of the Scots the French king added to the Scottish lion the double tressure fleur-de-lisée to show that the former had defended the French lilies, and that therefore the latter would surround the lion and be a defence to him." All this is very pretty, but it is not history. Chalmers remarks in his "Caledonia" that the lion may possibly have been derived from the arms of the old Earls of Northumberland and Huntingdon, from whom some of the Scottish kings were descended; and he mentions an old roll of arms preserved by Leland,[10] which is certainly not later than 1272, in which the arms of Scotland are blazoned as: _Or, a lion gules within a bordure or fleuretté gules_, which we may reasonably interpret as an early indication of what may be considered as a foreign rendering of the double tressure. Sylvanus Morgan, one of the very maddest of the seventeenth-century heraldic writers, says that the tressure was added to the shield of Scotland, in testimony of a league between Scotland and France, by Charles V.; but that king did not ascend the throne of France till 1364, at which time we have clear proof that the tressure was a firmly established part of the Scottish arms. One of the earliest instances of anything approaching the tressure in the Scottish arms which I have met with is in an armorial of Matthew Paris, which is now in the Cottonian MSS. in the British Museum, and at one time belonged to St. Alban's Monastery. Here the arms of the King of Scotland are given as: "Or, a lion rampant flory gules in a bordure of the same." The drawing represents a lion within a bordure, the latter being pierced by ten fleurs-de-lis, their heads all looking inwards, the other end not being free, but attached to the inner margin of the shield.