Recently one of the cathedral guides was asked about the lions painted on the shields of King John’s tomb. The visitor asked if they were lions or leopards as they had heard them described as leopards elsewhere. The short answer is that they are lions, but in old heraldry a leopard was thought to be a lion that was prowling. Where does the idea of the lions on the royal coat of arms come from? Heraldry in its earliest forms, much like standards, allowed identification of an individual or a military unit on a battlefield.
If you see an image from the Bayeux tapestry you may notice that King Harold and his Anglo-Saxon army have individual shield designs but fought under a dragon banner and the dragon banner continued to be used on occasions by English armies right into the fifteenth century[i]. The dragon of course was also used by many other nations and at times in history such as Roman or post-Roman Britain[ii]. The first English king who is known to have used a lion as a heraldic device was King Henry I[iii]. It was not until King Richard I (The Lionheart) that three lions were put onto the royal coat of arms[iv].
In the Angevin era of King Richard the Lionheart and his brother John, English heraldry was still developing and not everything was set in stone. Opinions differ even into the modern era. Herald Ralph Brooke writing in 1622 claimed that Richard the Lionheart had one lion on his shield and then later had three[v]. Herald Francis Sandford writing in 1677 showed the seals of the medieval kings in his book, including Richard’s early seal, although it only shows one lion and is viewed only from one side[vi]. This has led to some dispute as to whether Richard the Lionheart had one or two lions on his early shield. The likelihood that it was two lions is given by crusade chronicler Geoffrey de Vinsauf who stated that it was two golden lions as C. Wilfrid Scott-Giles pointed out[vii]. The three lions for his shield only came in after he had returned from the crusade[viii].
Equally when he was a Prince of the realm, one historian noted that his brother John adopted a coat of arms with two lions opposite each other but with their heads turned away, deliberately to distinguish his own coat of arms from that of his father[ix]. Although even this seems to be in contradiction of an engraving of Prince John’s seal. Whatever the case, it was only when he became King himself that John adopted the three lions that we see on the tomb chest. Ralph Brooke writing in 1622 claimed this was John joining the two lions of the Kings of England and Dukes of Normandy, with a lion passant gardant which was the then arms of Aquitaine through his mother Eleanor of Aquitaine[x]. However, as the later seventeenth century engravings of the royal seals show, John’s older brother was in fact the originator of the three lions.
When visitors look at King John’s tomb today a little bit of caution is also needed. The tomb chest section is believed to have been added in early Tudor times, raising the effigy and matching the style of Prince Arthur’s tomb chest nearby. John’s effigy therefore was not only much closer to the ground when first placed in the Cathedral but originally had no heraldic designs on it. The only lion on King John’s original effigy is a lion that was carved at the feet of his effigy with its mouth biting his sword.
It was not until the reign of King Edward III that the coat of arms of the English kings was quartered with those of the Kings of France[xi]. Heraldry was a developing system in the Middle Ages that also later in that period could be adapted to political events or marriages between families. The fourteenth century Beauchamp tomb in the Cathedral’s nave with the heraldry of Sir John Beauchamp of Powick and his wife Elizabeth Pateshull and the exterior south wall of Prince Arthur’s chantry c.1502 near to the High Altar with the heraldic badges and symbols of the Lancastrian and Spanish royal families are testament to that.
David Morrison
Bibliography.
Ralph Brooke, A Catalogue and succession of the Kings, Princes, Dukes, Marquesses, Earles, and Vicounts of the realme of England, since the Norman Conquest to this present yeare 1622.
Francis Sandford, A Genealogical History of the Kings of England and Monarchs of Great Britain etc from the conquest anno 1066 to the year 1677, London 1677
C. Wilfrid Scott-Giles, The Romance of Heraldry, London 1965, J.M.Dent & Sons.
Sir Anthony Wagner, Historic Heraldry of Britain, Phlilimore & Co.Ltd, London and Chichester 1972.
Terence Wise, Medieval Heraldry, Osprey Publishing 1980.
[i] Scott-Giles, pp.40-41
[ii] Scott-Giles, pp.16-17
[iii] Scott-Giles, p.40
[iv] Scott-Giles, p.45
[v] Ralph Brooke, p. 11
[vi] Sandford, pp. 54-55
[vii] Sir Anthony Wagner, Historic Heraldry of Britain, Phlilimore & Co.Ltd, London and Chichester 1972, p.40; but see Scott GiIles, pp.48, 57-58
[viii] Scott-Giles, p. 58.
[ix] Scott Giles, p.48
[x] Brooke, p.12
[xi] Scott-Giles, p.96
Worcester Cathedral Library and Archive Blog 
Wow! Three lions on my shirt is not just a new football anthem then! There is nothing new under the sun is there?
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