One thing I may have overlooked in talking about Supporters is their origin. Confronted animals, where two face each other in a symmetrical pose, is an ancient bilateral motif in art. Bilateral symmetry, with matching figures, often creates a balance that is appealing in artwork. For example, the Lion Gate of Mycenae in Ancient Greece has a column between the protective and confronted lionesses standing with two feet on the ground and two on the same base on which the column rests, just like a pair of heraldic Supporters. Lions have a long history, not only as Charges on the Shield, but also as Supporters, as do other mythical beasts.
Lion of England
Edward was certainly the first king to use Badges freely and frequently and, as mentioned before, Supporters seem to have been more personal to the individual monarch up until King Henry VIII. However, the idea that the Lion may have been a Supporter may have come from the fact that Coats of Arms and Badges were often shown on Banners and if portrayed in Rolls of Arms, i.e. on paper, then something needed to be shown to hold the Banner up. Hence, the possibility that, in those days, the animal was not supporting the Shield, but supporting the Banner.
The next King who may have been attributed with a Lion as a Supporter is Henry IV. Supporters were still not defined as we would see them nowadays and the attribution may still have come from Badges. Henry therefore could have used Ostrich Feathers (a badge from his Seal as Duke of Lancaster before he came to the Throne), Angels (who carried the attributed Shields of Kingly Saints Edward the Confessor and Edmund the Martyr on his Great Seal), a Swan (for his first wife, Mary de Bohun) or even a heraldic Antelope (also derived from the de Bohun family).
These 'Supporters' are also attributed to Henry IV's son, King Henry V, but again appear to be Badges, mainly to fill space in on Seals and not heraldic Supporters as we would know them. As heraldry became more for display than military identification during the next reign, that of Henry V's son Henry VI, the Royal Supporters became fixed, but as two white heraldic Antelopes (maybe spotted with yellow dots or Bezants) as shown at St George's Chapel, Windsor and Eton College. However, having said all that both Edward IV and the short-live Edward V showed a menagerie of animal Supporters, although the most favoured were two white Lions with their tails passing between their legs and over their backs. And Richard III is said to have used his Badge of a Boar, either doubled up or sometimes with a Lion.
Henry VII, who succeeded Richard III famously by right of conquest at the Battle of Bosworth Field, consolidated Supporters by using a red Welsh Dragon (for Tudor) and a white Greyhound (for Richmond). But it was his son who established the crowned Lion as the Sovereign's Supporter by dropping the Greyhound and swapping over the Tudor Dragon halfway through his reign. And so they stayed through to the end of the reign of his last Sovereign child, Queen Elizabeth I.
With the coming of the Stuart Dynasty and the Scottish Unicorn, it was the English Lion which stayed and so the Supporters of Great Britain and subsequently the United Kingdom have so remained, even through the Hanoverian Dynasty.
Unicorn of Scotland
Unicorns featured on coins, which came to be called 'Unicorns', during the reign of King James III of Scotland (1460-1488) but the heraldic office of Unicorn Pursuivant is known to have existed as early as 1426.
Up until the reign of King James IV, the Scottish Supporters had been two Lions looking in towards the Shield as shown here on his Privy Seal. The mythical reasons may be all well and good but more firm reasons to choose the Unicorn may lie in the problems of previous centuries over the authority of Court. The Unicorn is believed to have been introduced as a Royal Badge which had nothing whatsoever to do with ancient Badges of rank and stressing the point that the King of Scotland had never been a vassal of the Roman Empire. James V changed the Scottish Supporters to Unicorns, with Coronets round their necks and Chains hanging from the Coronets and wrapping around the Unicorns' bodies. (Although there is evidence that his daughter, Mary Queen of Scots, still sometimes used Lions for Supporters.) |
As we saw in a previous Blog, two Unicorns still support the Royal Arms of Scotland, although there are no separate Arms for any other constituent country of the United Kingdom. Mary Queens of Scots' son, James VI, brought the Scottish Arms with him when he succeeded Queen Elizabeth I to the English Throne and thus formed Great Britain and the British Arms. The Unicorn Supporter officially replaced the Tudor Dragon on the right-hand (sinister) side of the Shield. Specifically, when in Scotland, the Lion and the Unicorn Supporters swap over, as do the Quarterings on the Shield. This is not something new as many might think, but happened even in the reign of James VI and I.
The Lion and the Unicorn
'The Lion and the Unicorn' is a traditional British nursery rhyme believed to date from the seventeenth century when the Arms of the two countries were combined. Julia H in her Blog 'The History Jar' (thehistoryjar.com/2016/05/14/the-lion-and-the-unicorn-2/) explains that the merger was, in reality, less than friendly – there having been virtually constant warfare between the English and the Scots during the 13th and 14th centuries. The borders between England and Scotland had their own by-laws, let alone the two countries themselves, as the wars turned into sporadic raiding and feuding. James VI and I may have abolished the marches and the wardenry (who controlled the lawless borderers with their own brand of violence) and merged his heraldic supporters, but it didn’t do a great deal of good in the long term. Of course, in 1715 and 1745 the Lion and the Unicorn really were fighting for the Crown during the Jacobite Rebellion. Albert Jack, in his book ‘Pop Goes the Weasel’, suggests that the verse about bread and cake is about the populace’s support of The Young Pretender or Bonnie Prince Charlie whose campaign got as far as Derby. |