The three lions of England probably trace back to one Angevin count
Medieval heralds happily gave coats of arms to Christ, King Arthur's knights and ancient heroes. In reality, hereditary arms appeared only in the twelfth century. One of the earliest true examples, a blue shield with golden lions belonging to Geoffrey Plantagenet, may explain why lions still guard England's royal arms.
Heraldry covers the design, display and inheritance of armorial bearings. A complete achievement can combine a shield, helmet and crest with supporters, badges and a motto, and each is described in a precise technical language called blazon. What sets heraldry apart from older emblems is regularity and inheritance: a design that belongs to one person or line and passes down the generations.
Symbols of rank are ancient. Egyptian kings wrote their names inside a palace-shaped frame topped by the falcon of Horus, and the Book of Numbers has the tribes of Israel gathering under their standards. Until the nineteenth century writers cited such examples as proof that heraldry was immemorially old; the Book of Saint Albans of 1486 even calls Christ a gentleman entitled to arms. Historians now treat these claims, along with arms invented for Arthur's knights, as fantasy. The Bayeux Tapestry, probably made around 1077, shows decorated shields, but nobody bears the same design twice.
Seals tell the real story. Between about 1135 and 1155 seals in England, France, Germany, Spain and Italy begin showing heraldic devices, and by the end of that century nearly all do. Geoffrey Plantagenet, Count of Anjou, who died in 1151, appears on an enamel commissioned soon afterwards carrying a blue shield with six rampant gold lions. His son Henry II's line kept the beast: the future King John used two lions on a seal before 1189, and Richard the Lionheart is believed to be the first to bear three lions passant-guardant, still England's arms.
A popular theory holds that heraldry arose because closed helmets hid commanders' faces, but there is little evidence for it. Arms outlived battlefield armour, which faded out in the seventeenth century, because people liked the pageantry. Cities, companies and organisations still adopt them, and writers have called heraldry the shorthand of history.
Source: Heraldry
