A Complete Guide to HeraldryFox-Davies, Arthur Charles
History
A Complete Guide to Heraldry
Fox-Davies, Arthur Charles
Heraldry -- Great Britain
Early heraldry, however, when the various positions came into recognised
use, soon sought to impose this definite distinction, that the lion could
only be depicted erect in the _rampant_ position, and that an animal
represented to be walking must therefore be a _leopard_ from the very
position which it occupied. This, however, was a distinction known only to
the more pedantic heralds, and found greatest favour {173} 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_.
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