Dallaway asserts that, after the Conquest, William "encouraged, but under great restrictions, the individual bearing of arms;" but, strangely, does not cite the most slender authority for the assertion. Camden and Spelman agree that arms were not introduced until towards the close of the eleventh century, which must have been within a very short time of the Conqueror's death. Others again, with more probability, speak of the second Crusade (A.D. 1147) as the date of their introduction into this country. But even at this period the proofs of family bearings are very scanty. Traditions, indeed, are preserved in many families, of arms having been acquired during this campaign, and in a future chapter several examples will be quoted, rather as a matter of curiosity than as historical proof; for all tradition, and especially that which tends to flatter a family by ascribing to it an exaggerated antiquity, will generally be found to be _vox et præterea nihil_. The arms said to occur on _seals_ in the seventh and eighth centuries may be dismissed as merely fanciful devices, having no connexion whatever with the heraldry of the twelfth and thirteenth. Towards the close of the twelfth century, and at the beginning of the thirteenth, A.D. 1189-1230, it was usual for warriors to carry a miniature escocheon suspended from a belt, and decorated with the arms of the wearer.[39] [Illustration: (Rich. I. from his second Great Seal.)] It was in the time of Richard I that heraldry assumed more of the fixed character it now bears. That monarch appears on his great seal of the date of 1189, with a shield containing two lions combatant; but in his second great seal (1195) three lions passant occur, as they have ever since been used by his successors. Before coming to the throne, as Earl of Poitou, he had borne lions in some attitude; for, in an antient poem, cited by Dallaway, William de Barr, a French knight, utters an exclamation to this effect: "Behold the Count of Poitou challenges us to the field; see he calls us to the combat; I know the grinning lions in his shield;" and in the romance of 'Cuer de Lyon,' we read the following couplet: "=Upon his shoulders a Schelde of stele, With the 'lybbardes'[40] painted wele.=" The earliest representation of arms upon a seal is of the date of 1187.[41] The embellishment of seals was one of the first as well as one of the most interesting and useful applications of Heraldry. Seals, at first rude and devoid of ornament, became, in course of time, beautiful pieces of workmanship, elaborately decorated with arms, equestrian figures, and tabernacle work of gothic architecture.