THE

Third Series Vol. V I I I Part 2 ISSN 0010-003X

No. 224 Price £12.00

COAT
Autumn 2012

OF
ARMS
an heraldic journal published twice yearly by The Heraldry Society
THE COAT OF ARMS
The journal of the Heraldry Society

Third series
Volume VIII

2012
Part 2
Number 224 in the original series started in 1952
The Coat of Arms is published twice a year by The Heraldry Society,
whose registered office is 53 Hitchin Street, Baldock, Hertfordshire
SG7 6AQ. The Society was registered in England in 1956 as registered
charity no. 241456.
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f John Brooke-Little, C.V.O., M.A., F.H.S.

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 CRUSADING FAMILIES AND THE SPREAD OF
HERALDRY
Paul A. Fox

The idea that heraldry was born in the crusades dates back at least to the time of
William Camden, Clarenceux King of Arms (d. 1623), who was aware that many
English families cherished stories of such an origin for their arms. Over the centuries
however students of the origins of heraldry have been divided over their precise role.
Some have argued that either the First or the Second Crusade witnessed the earliest
armorial shields; others have denied that heraldry could have developed whilst on
crusades.1 Planché, for example, described the idea as ‘conjecture’ and a ‘hypothesis’
whilst casting serious doubts on it for chronological reasons. More recently Pastou-
reau stated that ‘all historians are agreed that heraldry began neither in the Crusades,
nor in the Orient’.2 It has however been acknowledged that the phenomenon of the
crusade must have influenced the adoption and dissemination of heraldic devices.3 A
study of individuals and families that were early adopters of coats of arms in the mid-
dle decades of the twelfth century is presented here; it draws attention to the bonds
of kinship and of crusading service that link these families, and may thus suggest
mechanisms for the rapid spread of heraldry in its earliest decades.
The Bayeux Tapestry provides evidence of distinctive pennons attached to lances
and of decorative devices on shields. These devices and pennons are thought however
to lack a consistent system, in contradistinction to heraldry, usually defined as ‘the
systematic use of hereditary devices centred on the shield’.4 There is broad agree-
ment that the first devices of this specific kind can be discerned between the First
Crusade and the Second, with Ailes considering the changes in military equipment
which acted as drivers.5 Two important pieces of evidence demonstrating the absence
of heraldry on the First Crusade itself, and in the 1130s, come from literary sources.
1 Mark Anthony Lower, Curiosities of Heraldry (London 1845), p. 20. Lower stated on p. 22
that ‘The Crusades are admitted by all modern writers to have given shape to heraldry’.
2 J. R. Planché, The Pursuivant of Arms (London 1851), pp. 30-1; Michel Pastoureau, ‘Aux

origines des armoires’, in L’Art Héraldique au Moyen Âge (Paris 2009), pp. 19-28, and
Heraldry, its Origins and Meaning (London 1997), p. 16.
3 Planché, op. cit. p. 31.
4 Anthony Wagner, Heralds & Heraldry in the Middle Ages (2nd edn., Oxford 1956), p. 12.
5 Adrian Ailes, ‘Heraldry in twelfth century England: the evidence’, in D. Williams (ed.)

Proceedings of the 1988 Harlaxton Symposium (Woodbridge 1990), pp. 10 and 13. A later
reference to these connaissances being removed by knights who wished to remain anonymous
suggests that they were pennants attached to lances.

The Coat of Arms 3rd ser. 8 (2012), no. 224, pp. 59-84. 59
 THE COAT OF ARMS

Figure 1: The tomb of William Clito, from Olivarius

Vredius, Sigilla Comitum Flandriae (Bruges 1639), p.
14. He carries a typical shield of the type used in the
First Crusade. Of interest are the crosses on his helmet
and the lions on which he stands. The tomb is thought
to date from several decades after his death. The en-
graver has accidentally given his date of death as 1228.

Anna Comnena, a contemporary witness of the First Crusade, describes the Frankish
shields of that time as being ‘very broad at the top and running to a point, externally
smooth and gleaming, with a brilliant boss of molten brass’.6 That such shields were
still being used in the 1120s is demonstrated by the tomb of William Clito, Count of
Flanders (see Figure 1). An account of the siege of Exeter in 1136 states that it was
impossible easily to distinguish one knight from another, suggesting that England
was still essentially pre-heraldic.7
The idea of the surcoat, which might carry colourful designs, was copied from
the Saracens as a result of the First Crusade. Knights decorated both their shields and
their persons with distinctive marks, including animals, so that they might be recog-
nized by their friends and not come under friendly fire on the field of battle. Near-
heraldic geometric devices can be seen on shields depicted in the Bible of Stephen

6 Anna Comnena, Alexiad xii 8.2; the translation is that of Elizabeth A. S. Dawes, The Alexiad
of the Princess Anna Comnena (London 1928), p. 341.
7 Gesta Stephani, ed. K. R. Potter (Edinburgh 1955), p. 24.

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 CRUSADING FAMILIES AND THE SPREAD OF HERALDRY

Harding, Abbot of Citeaux, produced c. 1109.8 William IX duke of Aquitaine who

died in 1126 famously had an image of his mistress painted on his shield. Changes in
design meant that shields lent themselves more to such painting. Local lords had also
begun to invent personal emblems for use on their coins and seals. It was not unusual
for these to take the form of a visual illusion to the surname, what in later heraldry
came to be termed canting. Good examples of this would be the lucy on the seal of
Richard de Lucy and the oats on the coins of the Counts of St Pol which will be dis-
cussed in further detail below. These developments set the scene for the introduction
of true armory and have therefore been termed ‘proto-heraldry’.
This evolutionary model for heraldry imperfectly addresses a conundrum: what
brought all these influences together? In other words, what ignited heraldry and what
caused it to become such an important social movement? In animal evolution there is
always a common progenitor, but in heraldry there exists strong doubt as to whether
the first person to bear arms can be reliably identified. Pastoureau has remarked that
‘it has yet to be established which are the oldest extant arms, although it is a rather
futile exercise: the appearance of arms is not due to any individual initiative but was
a social phenomenon which took place over a fairly long period of time.’9
In order both to better understand this social phenomenon and to redefine what
role, if any, the crusades had to play in the origins of heraldry, a study has been
made here of the careers and inter-relationships of all those individuals considered
by modern scholars to have borne arms in the early developmental phase of heraldry
between 1130 and 1165.10 What emerges from this analysis is that early heraldry
occurs exclusively in a small interconnected group of families who were integrally
involved with the Crusading movement. Jonathan Riley-Smith and Jonathan Phillips
have separately studied these same families in detail. They are characterized by their
support for the Papacy and religious reform, by links to reformist Cluniac monasti-
cism, by earlier involvement with pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and, following the
First Crusade, by their support for the military religious orders. These families were
extensively inter-married. Their common outlook and their shared participation in the
Crusades bound them together.11

The 1120s
1. Geoffrey, Count of Anjou (d. 1151). There are those who have suggested
that some aspects of the account of the knighting of Geoffrey of Anjou in 1128, when

8 Adrian Ailes, ‘The knight, heraldry and armour: the role of recognition and the origins of
heraldry’, in Christopher Harper-Bill and Ruth Harvey (edd.), Medieval Knighthood IV. Papers
from the Fifth Strawberry Hill Conference 1990 (Woodbridge 1992), pp. 1-21.
9 Pastoureau, Origins and Meaning, p. 18.
10 For the most part these have been assembled by Wagner, op.cit. pp. 12-17; and by D. L.

Galbreath and Léon Jéquier, Manuel du blason (2nd edn., Lausanne 1977), pp. 22-40. Some of
their examples have been discounted, while others not mentioned by either have been added.
11 Jonathan Riley-Smith, The First Crusaders 1095-1131 (Cambridge 1997); Jonathan Phillips,

The Second Crusade: extending the frontiers of Christendom (New Haven 2007). For broad
characteristics of the group see Riley-Smith, op. cit. p. 94.

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 THE COAT OF ARMS

the fifteen-year-old was presented with a shield of arms by his father-in-law Henry I
of England, might be later interpolations. These objections express a concern that the
chronicler describing Geoffrey’s knighting was writing decades after the event, and
may have been influenced by later heraldic practices, as well as by the shield depicted
on Geoffrey’s famous commemorative plaque.12 But John of Marmoutier’s descrip-
tion of Geoffrey differs significantly from his appearance on the plaque: he describes
a helmet covered in jewels with no mention of a lion, whereas on the plaque he wears
a simple heraldic cap. His slippers are described as bearing lions, which do not appear
on the plaque. There are good reasons for doubting that the plaque was ever part of
Geoffrey’s original tomb at Le Mans. The tomb was described in the 1170s as being
sumptuously covered in gold and jewels, showing him dispensing ruin to the haughty
and grace to the lowly; such a tomb no longer existed by the seventeenth century, hav-
ing probably been completely destroyed by the Huguenots in 1562.13
The plaque does not actually name Geoffrey of Anjou. This might imply that
when it was created his heraldry was so well known that any other form of identi-
fication was regarded as being superfluous. Moreover, the inscription on the plaque
is written entirely in the present tense. It may be translated as ‘by your sword O
prince the mob of robbers is routed, and through your vigilance rest is granted to the
churches’. Geoffrey’s subjugation of Normandy, achieved by 1144, brought an end to
long years of fighting between Maine and Normandy. The closest stylistic parallel is
the funeral plaque of bishop Ulger of Angers who died in 1148. It could easily be by
the same artist or workshop, but differs in naming the bishop. A plausible explanation
of Geoffrey’s plaque is that it was set up by a grateful bishop in order to impress his
lord, a form of flattery seemingly so successful that the count chose to be buried at
Le Mans.14
If the Le Mans plaque supports the contention that Geoffrey of Anjou carried
a lion shield from the year 1128, can an examination of his background and influ-

12 Pastoureau, Origins and Meaning, p. 18. He has more recently revised this opinion, see his

‘Aux origines des armoires’, p. 27. Amongst other recent authors Jim Bradbury, in ‘Geoffrey
V of Anjou, count and knight’, in Christopher Harper-Bill and Ruth Harvey (edd.), The Ideals
and Practice of Medieval Knighthood III. Papers from the Fourth Strawberry Hill Conference
1988 (Woodbridge 1990), pp. 21-38; and Adrian Ailes, ‘Heraldry in twelfth century England’,
pp. 14-15, are both confident in the account of Geoffrey’s early heraldry. The section of the
History of Geoffrey le Bel describing his knighting may have been based on an epic poem.
Bradbury informs us that one of John of Marmoutier’s sources was Thomas de Loches who
served a chaplain under both Geoffrey le Bel and his father before him, and who would have
been involved in the knighting.
13 Geoffrey H. White, ‘The Plantagenet enamel at Le Mans’, in GEC, vol. xi appendix G.
14 A relatively recent discussion of the plaque is in the entry by Elisabeth Taburet-Delahaye in

the Metropolitan Museum of Art catalogue Enamels of Limoges 1100-1350 , edd. E. Taburet-
Delahaye and Barabara Drake Boehm (New York 1996), no 15 pp. 98-101. This article dates
the plaque stylistically to the early 1150s. It maintains the established view that it was somehow
part of the tomb, but makes two interesting observations: first, that Geoffrey’s documented
marble tomb would not have been well suited to the insertion of a central enamel plaque;
secondly, that the plaque ‘is not really a funeral effigy but a figure in life attending the tomb’.

62
 CRUSADING FAMILIES AND THE SPREAD OF HERALDRY

ences illuminate this very usage? The actual symbolism of his arms is a pivotal but
neglected topic. Roger Harmignies in his well argued contention that the original
shield bore eight lions, attaches symbolism to the number eight, which according to
St Augustine ‘is the symbol of the life of the righteous and the condemnation of the
impious ’.15 An aspect which has not been considered is that the manner in which the
lions were depicted on Geoffrey’s shield represents something quite new in European
art. Also, as Pastoureau has stated, ‘the twelfth century vogue for the lion in arms
remains poorly explained’.16
It might however be argued that the twelfth century interest in lions was stimu-
lated by the crusades. Depictions of lions can be found from antiquity and throughout
the Middle Ages, with innumerable examples of lion carvings surviving to this day
from the Roman Empire. They were often used as architectural embellishments, a
tradition that continued in the Byzantine Empire through which, of course, the early
Crusades travelled. In the West, lions were no longer to be found in the wild, and the
usage of the lion in art had dwindled. But any visitor to the East would have seen
stone lions, and might also have encountered the animals themselves while cross-
ing Palestine and Asia Minor. Jerusalem itself had a Lion Gate which the brothers
Eustace III Count of Boulogne (d. 1125) and Godfrey de Bouillon (d. 1100) took in
the First Crusade.17 Eustace, before he retired as a monk of Cluny c. 1125, minted
a denier showing a lion passant over an arcaded edifice in commemoration of this
famous action.18
The lion then was linked to Jerusalem in the minds of the crusaders, but there
was another aspect of the animal which also appealed to them: its ferocity. Godfrey
de Bouillon was described by a slightly later chronicler as having courage ‘like a
roaring lion who feared the attack of no man’.19 The crusades took warriors en masse
to Palestine, requiring them to travel across remote areas where some would have
been able to observe directly the awesome power and skill of the lion in stalking and
killing its prey. Earlier pilgrims would have avoided the lion because the church for-
bad them to carry weapons, but the heavily armed crusaders may have looked upon
the animal with profound respect and admiration. From soon after the First Crusade
there are reports of lions being brought back to Europe. At Caen in 1105 King Henry
I of England exhibited a lion or lions and other exotic animals which were later kept
in his menagerie at Woodstock.20

15 Roger Harmignies, ‘The arms of Geoffrey Plantagenet’, Family History 14, no. 110 (Jan.
1987), pp. 69-79.
16 Michel Pastoureau, ‘Quel est le roi des animaux?’, Actes des congrès de la Sociéte des

Historiens Médiévistes de l’enseignement supérieur public 15 (1984), no. 15, pp. 133-42.
17 Heather J. Tanner, Families, friends and allies. Boulogne and politics in Northern France

and England c. 879-1160 (Brill 2004), pp. 251, 261.

18 Arthur Engel and Raymond Serrure, Traité Numismatique du Moyen Age, vol. 2 (Paris

1894), pp. 498-9.

19 See Carol Sweetenham (ed. and trans.), Robert the Monk’s History of the First Crusade:

Historia Iherosolimitana (Ashgate 2003), p. 84, with note 24.

20 For lions and their reputation in Europe see Jonathan Riley-Smith, op. cit. pp. 39, 155. For

the menagerie see Willene B. Clark, A Medieval Book of Beasts (Woodbridge 2006), p. 18.

63
 THE COAT OF ARMS

The manner in which the lions are depicted on the shield of Geoffrey of Anjou
is remarkable because the only historical precedent which can be discerned for the
lion rampant is that of the Assyrian royal cylinder seals dating from the ninth to the
seventh centuries before Christ. Between the fall of the Assyrian empire and the year
1128 the lion rampant posture seems to have been quite in abeyance, and throughout
this intervening period the convention was to show the lion passant, or occasionally
sejant. John Goodall has shown that the Crusaders brought back ancient seals as
highly prized souvenirs, and he postulated that the arrival of a seal in Europe depict-
ing an Assyrian lion hunt could have triggered the lion rampant motif.21
Geoffrey Count of Anjou’s lions have characteristics which would not suggest
the copying of some Assyrian prototype however: they are multiple, they lack manes,
and they all face the same direction. This last characteristic is at variance with an
ancient artistic convention whereby lions occurring in multiples were almost invari-
ably paired and facing each other.22 Most families who adopted a lion rampant in
their arms bore only a single lion. But the posture, multiplicity and lack of manes of
the lions on the Angevin shield in fact require no Assyrian connection. All would be
easily explained if the designer had first hand experience of lion movements and be-
havior. A Crusader could have observed a pride of lions on the attack, and as anyone
who has observed lions knows, it is the mane-less lionesses who work together to do
the hunting and killing. It is documented that lion hunts were taking place in twelfth-
century Palestine.23
There has arisen a notion that because Henry I of England knighted Geoffrey,
he must have been the author of the arms, but there is no reason to suppose that he
was himself armigerous, and the evidence is rather to the contrary.24 Not one single
individual living in England during Henry’s reign can unequivocally be stated to have
borne arms, and Henry could never have observed lions in their natural habitat.
There emerges then an impression that the arms of Geoffrey of Anjou were de-
signed by a crusader who had returned from the East. In the Angevin court it is not
necessary to look far to find such a person because the boy’s own father, count Fulk
V of Anjou, had led a force to Jerusalem in 1120 and had become closely associated
with the Knights Templar within months of their foundation, probably as a lay con-
frater.25 By the time of his son’s knighting and wedding in 1128 he had taken the cross
again, having already spent a protracted period in the Holy Land. Soon afterwards
he returned to Jerusalem and was selected to be its next king. The idea of putting a
charge on his son’s shield and helmet is something which Fulk may have copied from

21 John Goodall, ‘The Assyrian lion hunt in medieval England’, Minerva 12, Sep.-Oct. 2001,
pp. 44-5.
22 Steven Ashley, ‘Lions charged with a cross potent’, CoA 3rd ser. 5 (2009) pp. 1-6, with plates

1 and 2.
23 Goodall, op. cit.
24 David Crouch dismisses the supposed use of a lion by Henry I and shares the belief of this

author that the lion of England came from Anjou; cf. The Image of Aristocracy in Britain 1000-
1300 (London 1992), pp. 223-4.
25 Riley-Smith, op. cit. p. 162.

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 CRUSADING FAMILIES AND THE SPREAD OF HERALDRY

his father-in-law Helias Count of Maine (d. 1110), who after making his Crusader
pledge had the cross engraved on his shield and helmet.26
The choice of the lion for his son would have carried a further appeal for Fulk
of Anjou: there is literary evidence in the form of the autobiography of his father
count Fulk Réchin (d, 1109) that the quality that his line valued most highly of all
was prowess.27 There is a further example of Fulk’s love of symbolism and his desire
to leave symbolic gifts to his son from the time after he became king of Jerusalem
in 1131. He was presented with an ivory tau by the sultan of Egypt which he sent to
Anjou to be used as a symbol of authority in rituals involving his heirs.28
Evidence of the popularity of the lion as an artistic motif in Fulk’s Jerusalem
is supplied by the Melisende Psalter, on whose ivory covers lions were carved. The
psalter was made in Jerusalem, almost certainly for Fulk himself as a gift to his wife
Queen Melisende. On the front cover is King David overcoming a maned lion, while
on the back is a series of six roundels each depicting a king, presumed to be Fulk.
In the top central lacunus a lion gores what appears to be a camel. The animals are
crudely executed, but the attribution is supported by the contemporary coronation
mantle of Roger II of Sicily which also has a lion attacking a camel.29
Fulk’s ancestor Fulk III count of Anjou was typical of his line in combining fe-
rocity with exceptional piety.30 He made the journey to Jerusalem across Asia Minor
on four separate occasions, and after the Muslim destruction of the church of the Holy
Sepulchre he brought a large piece of it back to Anjou. His son, Fulk IV Réchin, did
not himself take the cross, but encouraged his vassals to do so, and Pope Urban V,
the author of the First Crusade, presented him with his own golden rose as a special
mark of favour.31
Soon after Geoffrey of Anjou’s 1128 marriage to Henry I’s daughter the Empress
Maud, he ‘went to the borders of Flanders and to lands far away to seek out tourna-
ments’.32 Thus many knights would have been introduced to his now famous shield.
Crucially for us to be able to call Geoffrey’s arms true heraldry it must be determined
that he transmitted the arms to his sons. The only son for whom there exists incontro-
vertible evidence is William fitz Empress, count of Poitou whose seal of 1156 shows
a lion rampant on both shield and horse caparison.33 The eldest son Henry II of Eng-
land is known to have been armigerous but no record of those arms survives. Henry’s
eldest son Richard the Lionheart has a single lion rampant on his first great seal as
king and there is literary evidence that he carried a banner bearing a single lion on the

26 Adrian Ailes, The Origins of the Royal Arms of England (Reading 1982), p. 37. The church
required that those who had taken the cross continue to wear it until they fulfilled their pledge.
27 Jane Martindale, ‘Secular propaganda and aristocratic values’, in David Bates, Julia C.

Crick and Sarah Hamilton (edd.), Writing Medieval Biography 750-1250: Essays in honour of
Professor Frank Barlow (Woodbridge 2006), pp. 145-7.
28 Riley-Smith, op. cit. pp. 181-2.
29 BL Ms Egerton 1139. The book has been dated 1131-44, and was later donated to the Abbey

of La Grande Chartreuse.
30 Riley-Smith, op. cit. pp. 27-8. 31 Ibid, pp. 54, 88. 32 Bradbury, op. cit. p. 33.
33 Rodney Dennys, Heraldry and the Heralds (London 1982), p. 94-5.

65
 THE COAT OF ARMS

Third Crusade.34 Geoffrey’s grandson William Longspée earl of Salisbury adopted

a version of Geoffrey’s shield, identical except in that it was charged with six lions
instead of eight. It appears that Geoffrey’s sons copied the single golden lion rampant
from their father’s cap, preferring it to his actual shield.
Could the same instinct which encouraged Geoffrey of Anjou to use a consistent
shield device between his marriage in 1128 and his death in 1151, have been arrived
at independently by others at about the same time? This is possible, but a careful look
at the careers and the family connections of this rather special group of early armigers
reveals a very strong interconnection between virtually all of them. Those who them-
selves adopted a heraldic device featuring a lion, may have seen or heard of Geoffrey
of Anjou’s lions; but it was not Geoffrey’s circle who nurtured the spark, possibly
first struck by Fulk of Anjou, to adopt hereditary armorial bearings. Rather it was the
circle of a quite different individual, Ralph count of Vermandois.

The 1130s
2. Ralph, Count of Vermandois (d. 1152) has long been known to be signifi-
cant in the story of heraldry as the owner of one of the earliest extant heraldic seals,
dating from 1146, and showing a chequy shield. His earlier seal from 1135 shows
the same device on his flag.35 Ralph certainly knew Geoffrey of Anjou, to whom he
was also related through the house of Beaugency, and as grand seneschal of France
he may have represented Louis VI at Geoffrey’s wedding. Louis had once entertained
a hope that Fulk of Anjou would serve as his seneschal, it being necessary for the
king of France to try and maintain good relations with his nominal vassals in order to
exercise his influence over them.36 The count of Vermandois was a famous and fear-
less fighter, having been a lynch pin in the royal army since he was a teenager. In the
constantly shifting alliances of French politics men who were comrades in arms one
year could be fighting each other the next, though the early 1130s were years of rela-
tive peace. Vermandois was then on the borders of Flanders, the very area specified
as being part of Geoffrey of Anjou’s wedding tournament circuit.37 This provides a
further avenue by which Ralph might have been influenced by Geoffrey’s arms from
their inception.
A likely year for Ralph of Vermandois to have adopted his own distinctive chequy
arms was in 1131 when he became seneschal.38 Ralph was not only the most impor-
tant representative of the monarchy, he was also a member of the house of Capet, and
the king’s cousin. Ralph’s crusading father count Hugh of Vermandois (died 1101),

34 Itinerarium Regis Ricardi vi 22, ed. William Stubbs, Chronicles and Memorials of the Reign
of Richard I (Rolls Series 38, London 1864), vol. 1, p. 418.
35 Michel Pastoureau, Traité d’Héraldique (5th edn., Paris 2008), p. 31 has illustrations of both

of his seals; the one of 1135, with a chequy flag, has the shield reversed.
36 J. C. L. Simonde de Sismondi, Histoire des Francais vol. 5 (Paris 1823), p. 135.
37 Bradbury, op. cit. pp. 32-3.
38 The tinctures may well have been or and azure, which it has been argued were effectively

already royal colours by this date. See Pastoureau, Traité d’Héraldique, p. 89; id., ‘Aux
origines des armoires’, pp. 37-9.

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 CRUSADING FAMILIES AND THE SPREAD OF HERALDRY

the son of Henry I of France, carried a golden papal banner on the First Crusade.39
Hugh returned home from the Crusade before it reached Jerusalem. His subsequent
attempt to complete his Crusader vow led to his death. Ralph’s mother was Adelaide,
daughter of Herbert IV count of Vermandois, a descendant of Charlemagne. Despite
his own illustrious forbears the house of Vermandois was drawn to the lustre of mar-
riage alliances with descendants of the house of Anjou. Ralph took as his fourth and
last wife the step-daughter of Fulk of Anjou’s daughter Sibilla, while Ralph’s daugh-
ter Elizabeth in 1156 married Sibilla’s son Philip of Flanders, and his son and heir
Ralph II of Vermandois in 1160 married Sibilla’s daughter Marguerite.
Three other new bearers of arms it in the 1130s were nephews of Ralph of Ver-
mandois, suggesting either emulation or encouragement.
3. Waleran, Count of Meulan and Lord of Worcester (d. 1166) who
adopted chequy arms (probably Chequy gules and or) based on those of Verman-
dois by 1136-38, was the nephew of Ralph count of Vermandois, being son of the
First Crusader Robert count of Meulan by Isabel, the daughter of Hugh of Verman-
dois.40 His parents were married on the eve of count Hugh’s departure for the Holy
Land. Waleran sought and received the assistance of Ralph of Vermandois in his
fight against Geoffrey of Anjou in Normandy in 1138, on behalf of king Stephen of
England. He later switched his allegiance and joined Geoffrey’s court in 1141, as-
sisting Geoffrey at the siege of Rouen in 1143/4. In 1146 he took the cross with his
half brother, William III de Warenne, and with Louis VII, at Vezalay.41 Waleran had
a ‘known predilection for emphasizing his Vermandois connection because it gave
him a line of descent from Charlemagne’; his adoption of these arms is a part of that
behaviour.42
4. William II, count of Nevers (d. 1148), from the duchy of Burgundy, was
using arms by 1140.43 He was another nephew of Ralph count of Vermandois, and
also of Ralph de Beaugency (d. before 1130), a participant in the First Crusade and

39 Anna Comnena, Alexiad x 7. 3. This militates against the notion that Ralph’s father carried
a chequy flag on the Crusade.
40 Galbreath and Jéquier, op. cit. p. 22 illustrates his seal which has a chequy design on his

surcoat, flag, shield and saddle.

41 For the details of Waleran de Meulan’s career, see David Crouch, The Beaumont Twins. The

careers of Waleran Count of Meulan and Robert Earl of Leicester (Cambridge 1986), p. 42.
Orderic Vitalis, Hist. Eccles. xiii 37, has details on the fighting in 1138. For his taking the cross
see Phillips, op. cit. (note 11 above) p. 98. Warenne died on the Second Crusade in Asia Minor.
His descendants adopted the arms of Vermandois.
42 Crouch, op. cit. pp. 211-12: ‘it is unlikely that Waleran invented heraldry – we must reserve

him a place as one of its propagators’.

43 Galbreath and Jéquier, op. cit. p. 23 and note 36. For a photograph of the seal see Auguste

Coulon, Inventaire des sceaux de la Bourgogne (Paris 1912), no. 111. The shield is badly
eroded but clearly once bore a charge. Louis Bouly de Lesdain thought it to be an eagle, but
could not definitively rule out the possibility of a lion. There probably is a vestigial wing on
the dexter side of the shield; see Louis Bouly de Lesdain, Sigillographie (Paris 1913), pp. 2-3.

67
 THE COAT OF ARMS

one of the most distinguished warriors of his age. His great uncle, Robert de Sablé,
was another notable crusader and a vassal of the counts of Anjou. William II himself
took the cross for the First Crusade. He succeeded his grandfather as count in 1100
and abdicated in 1146 in favour of his son, William III, retiring to the Abbey of La
Grande Chartreuse. He was a close associate of St Bernard of Clairvaux (died 1153)
and played an important role in promoting the Second Crusade. With Ralph of Ver-
mandois he was one of the most constant and loyal commanders of the French royal
army. He was the first choice of the French nobility to be Regent of France during the
Second Crusade, but he declined on account of his extreme age. William III count of
Nevers took the cross at Vezalay in 1146.44
5. Gilbert fitz Gilbert de Clare, Earl of Pembroke (d. 1148) was the
brother-in-law of Waleran Count of Meulan (no. 3 above) and married to the niece of
Ralph of Vermandois. He came to England in 1137/8 and was created earl of Pem-
broke by King Stephen in 1138, after which he had an armorial seal made showing six
chevronnels on his shield. The civil war in England prevented his participation in the
Second Crusade, but his commitment to the cause is suggested by his benefactions to
the Knights Templar. His nephew Gilbert fitz Richard de Clare, earl of Hertford (died
pre-1153) bore three chevrons on his seal of 1141-46.45
6. Stephen, Count of Brittany and Earl of Richmond (d. 1136) was a
member of a crusading family, having succeeded his nephew Conan as Earl of Rich-
mond after Conan’s death on the First Crusade in 1098. He bore a field semy of fleurs-
de-lys on both shield and surcoat as evidenced by a now lost seal.46 Both Stephen and
his brother, Geoffrey Boterel I, were linked to Anjou, in that they were benefactors
of the Abbey of Saints Sergius and Bacchus at Angers.47 Their cousin duke Alan of
Brittany was married to Ermengarde the sister of Fulk V count of Anjou. A field semy
of fleurs-de-lys can be seen on the background of Geoffrey of Anjou’s funeral plaque.
It is known that at one of Geoffrey of Anjou’s early tournaments near Mont St Michel
he fought on the side of the Bretons, and it seems that here we might have an exam-
ple of heraldry adopted in emulation of Geoffrey.48 Roger de Mowbray, who married
count Stephen’s grand-daughter, Alice, also adopted a shield semy of fleurs-de-lys, as
shown on his seal which dates from before 1157.49

44
Phillips, op. cit. pp. 99-100, 117.
45 For the arms of Gilbert fitz Gilbert de Clare see Wagner, op. cit. p. 15; for his benefactions,
GEC vol. x, p. 348 and note b, p. 351 note h. For the arms of Gilbert fitz Richard de Clare see
Wagner, op. cit. p. 15; cf. J. H. Round, ‘The introduction of armorial bearings into England’,
Archaeological Journal 51 (1894), pp. 43-8.
46 For biographical information see GEC vol. x pp. 785-7 and pedigree. For the seal, see

William Smith Ellis, The Antiquities of Heraldry (London 1869), p. 176; discussion in Ailes,
‘Heraldry in twelfth century England’, p. 5.
47 GEC vol. x, p. 786 note d.
48 Bradbury, op. cit. p. 33.
49 Ailes, ibid p. 5, note 16. The use by both men would appear to be the proof that this was true

heraldry as opposed to proto-heraldry.

68
 CRUSADING FAMILIES AND THE SPREAD OF HERALDRY

Related to nos. 5 and 6 above are the arms of Gilbert de Gant, Earl of Lincoln (d.
1156). On his lost seal, which can be dated after c. 1148, he carries a barry shield.50
He was the grandson of Stephen, Count of Brittany (no. 6), and brother-in-law of
Roger de Mowbray. His wife Rohese de Clare (d. 1156), niece of Gilbert fitz Gilbert
de Clare (no. 5), and sister of Gilbert fitz Richard de Clare, was the first woman
known to have used an armorial seal. 51 Gilbert’s father Walter de Gant (d. 1139)
bequeathed to Bridlington Abbey a reliquary which his brother-in-law Baldwin had
sent to him from Jerusalem.52

The 1140s
7. Hugh II, Duke of Burgundy (d. 1143) was a comrade in arms of Ralph of
Vermandois in the royal army of France, for example in 1124 when he helped to re-
pulse an invasion by the emperor Henry V. By 1142 he was using an equestrian seal
with three pales on the lance flag (see Figure 2, over).53 Possibly the engraver made
a mistake, intending to represent bendy, the later arms of Burgundy, or possibly the
arms began as paly rather than bendy. If the latter is the case then the arms might have
served as a direct inspiration for the arms of the Count of Barcelona (no. 9 below). At
some stage it was felt necessary to fabricate an altered version of this seal depicting
bends on the lance flag, which was attached to a charter of 1106.54 Whether the inten-
tion of the forger was to authenticate the antiquity of the arms of Burgundy, or simply

50 Lewis C. Loyd and Doris M. Stenton (edd.), Sir Christopher Hatton’s Book of Seals (Oxford

1950), no. 297.

51 Galbreath and Jéquier, op. cit. p. 23; BM Seals no. 13048.
52 GEC vol. vii, pp. 672-3. Geoffrey de Mandeville, Earl of Essex (d. 1144), has not been

included here because Round’s thesis that he bore the arms Qtly or and gu., while probably
correct, is based on the adoption of these arms, or variants of them, by various collateral
relations (a phenomenon that might also be explained in terms of different brances of a kinship
group adopting similar arms); see J. H. Round, Geoffrey de Mandeville (London 1893), pp. 392-
6. The dangers of using related families who bore the same arms as proof that their common
ancestor must have been armigerous are exemplified by Calvin Kephart’s Origin of Heraldry in
Europe (2nd edn., Washington D.C. 1953); observing that two families who shared a common
ancestor around 1100 bore the same arms centuries later, he concluded that heraldry must have
begun before the First Crusade. Kephart’s error underscores the need to tread cautiously in
such cases. Returning to Geoffrey de Mandeville, his marked crusading family connections
certainly make it plausible that he was an armiger: his aunt Beatrix was married to a son
of Eustace II of Boulogne; his wife Rohese de Vere was the daughter of Adelisa de Clare,
and his son’s widow married Anselm de Candavène, Count of St Pol. He himself was clearly
much loved by the Templars, who admitted him to their Order on his deathbed, and kept his
excommunicate body for many years until it could be interred in the Temple in London; see
Round, op. cit. pp. 224-6.
53 Simonde de Sismondi, op. cit. vol. 5, p. 176. Pierre-Francois Chifflet, Lettre touchant Beatrix

Comtesse de Chalon (Dijon 1656), p. 178-9; cf. Wagner, op. cit. pp. 16-17.
54 Chifflet’s original notes on this now lost charter from the Abbey of Saint-Benigne at Dijon

are in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Ms Baluze 143, fo. 203. The drawing of the seal
which he attached to the page was later removed, perhaps by Chifflet himself.

69
 THE COAT OF ARMS

Figure 2: Seals of Hugh II Duke of Burgundy, from

Pierre-Francois Chifflet, Lettre touchant Beatrix
Comtesse de Chalon (Dijon 1656). Above is the com-
mon version of which Chifflet found many examples,
only one of which, from 1142, was attached to a datable
charter. Below is the curious forged seal which was at-
tached to a charter of 1106.

to authenticate a forged charter, is not clear.55 On Hugh’s genuine earlier seal of 1131
he carried a sword rather than a lance in his right hand, and the shield simply showed
the decorative metal strips which later evolved into the escarbuncle.56
Hugh was the son of Odo I duke of (French) Burgundy who went to the Holy
Land in 1100 with Stephen of Blois and Hugh of Vermandois, and died there in 1102.
Odo was a close supporter of the Papacy and probably a fidelis beati Petri. Hugh’s
mother was the daughter of William Count of (Imperial) Burgundy, another papal
fidelis who was closely connected with crusading and Cluniac monasticism.57 Hugh’s
mother-in-law was a Beaugency, a kinswoman of the counts of Vermandois and also
of the counts of Anjou. His wife, Matilda, was the daughter of King Alphonse-Hen-
riques I of Portugal, who in 1142 made his whole kingdom a vassal of the Abbey of
Clairvaux.58 The crusading instinct remained strong in the ducal house of Burgundy

55 A seal of Odo III dating 1193 has the bendy arms on his shield, see Douët d’Arcq, Collection

de sceaux. Archives de l’Empire. Inventaires et documents (Paris 1863), no. 466.

56 Wagner, op. cit. pp. 16-17. 57 Riley-Smith, op. cit. pp. 94-6.
58 Michel Ernest Petit, Histoire des Ducs de Bourgogne de la race capétienne vol. 2 (Paris

1888), p. 40. Alfonso in making a gift to the Templars in 1129 described himself as ‘a brother
of your fraternity’. Alfonso Henriques himself is a likely early armiger, his arms being based
on multiples of his blue shield studded with silver roundels, arranged in the form of a cross;
see Roger F. Pye, ‘Descent of the arms of Portugal in fact and legend’, CoA 1st ser. 5 (1958-9)
no. 38, p. 187-91. The mark which he used to validate a document in 1183, close to the end of
his life, suggests that he used these arms or a version thereof at that date, and it is possible that
they originated in his youth.

70
 CRUSADING FAMILIES AND THE SPREAD OF HERALDRY

perhaps because they were familiars of St Bernard of Clairvaux who became the great
exponent of the crusades, and who drafted new statutes for the Templars in 1128. In
the period 1125-33 Hugh II of Burgundy was a benefactor of the Templars.59 His
grandson, Hugh III, died on the Third Crusade in 1192.
8. King Alfonso VII of Galicia and Leon (d. 1157) inherited the kingdom of
Leon in 1126, and in 1135, having also become king of Castile, was crowned as ‘Em-
peror of all the Spains’. He was the son of Raymond of Burgundy and thereby cousin
of Hugh II duke of Burgundy (no. 7 above). His kinsmen Odo I duke of Burgundy and
William Count of Meulan, both came to the aid of his grandfather Alfonso VI after a
disastrous military defeat by the Muslims in 1086.60 From early in his reign Alfonso
VII used a lion on his coinage as a canting emblem, a good example of the rising
reputation of the lion in the early twelfth century. In the earliest coins the engraver
clearly had little idea what a lion looked like, but in later versions the lions took on
a typically heraldic appearance.61 There is no seal evidence to show that Alfonso
adopted a lion as a heraldic device; but there is contemporary literary evidence that
he did so, in the form of the mid twelfth century Chronica Adefonsi Imperatoris.62
This ends in a poem celebrating his great victory at Almeira in 1147, where his troops
carried leonine shields and banners (Argent a lion rampant purpure). The purple sug-
gests adoption some time between 1135, when he was crowned emperor, hence the
imperial colour, and 1147.63 The kings of Spain were on the whole too preoccupied
with their own crusade against the Moors to go to the Holy Land, but their Iberian
campaigns were given the same status by the papacy as those in the Holy Land in the
Second Crusade. Alfonso’s heraldic inspiration is likely to have come from Burgun-
dy. His family had long maintained a close relationship with, and had been heavily
influenced by, the reformist Abbey of Cluny. Alfonso himself visited Cluny in 1132
and 1142, while Peter the Venerable, abbot of Cluny, visited Iberia at his request in
1142.64 He was married in 1128 to Berenguela, the sister of Raymond Berengar Count
of Barcelona (see next entry).
9. Raymond Berengar IV, Count of Barcelona and prince of Aragon
(d. 1162) was using the now familiar paly arms of Aragon by 1150. In 1137 he mar-
ried Petronilla, heiress of the Kingdom of Aragon, whose father Alfonso I had be-
queathed his whole kingdom to be divided between the Templars, the Hospitallers
and the Canons of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. Notwithstanding, the son of
Raymond and Petronilla ascended the throne as Alfonso II of Aragon in 1162, taking
his father’s arms. Raymond Berengar’s father had become a fully professed brother

59 Petit, op. cit. vol. 2 p. 6. 60 Riley-Smith, op. cit. pp. 43-4.

61 It is thought that his lion coinage having the lions with human heads dates to a time before
his became emperor; cf. Engel and Serrure, op. cit. vol. 2, pp. 816-18.
62 Ricardo Chao Prieto, ‘La bandera medieval del Reino de Leon’, Banderas (Boletín de la

Sociedad Española de Vexilología), no. 98.

63 Faustino Menéndez Pidal de Navascués, ‘Le debut des emblèmes héraldiques en Espagne’,

Armas e Troféus (5th ser.) 3-4 (1982-83), pp. 7-48.

64 Phillips, op. cit. p. 43.

71
 THE COAT OF ARMS

of the Templars in 1131, the year of his death.65 In 1144 Raymond allied himself with
his brother-in-law Alfonso VII of Leon and Castile (no. 8 above) in a highly success-
ful Crusade against the Moors. Both monarchs were held in high esteem by Pope
Eugenius III, and their campaign was given his blessing in 1147 when he made it part
of the Second Crusade. Raymond made a substantial grant to the Templars in 1143,
and from this time on the Templars were fighting in Iberia. New gifts to them were
made in 1148 after Raymond captured Tortosa from the Moors, when grants were
also made to the Canons of the Holy Sepulchre.66 His charter of 1150 on which his
earliest intact seal survived, was made jointly with his nephew, Raymond Berengar
Count of Provence, another armiger, (died 1166) in favour of the Knights Hospitaller.
His grandfather and namesake died on the First Crusade.
10. Thierry of Alsace, Count of Flanders (d. 1168). The evidence that
Count Thierry was armigerous is based in part on the earliest known heraldic coins.
Having been supported by Henry I of England to rule Flanders from 1128, in 1139
Thierry went on pilgrimage to Jerusalem and married Sibilla of Anjou, the daughter
of Fulk V of Anjou, king of Jerusalem.67 Their son Philip was still using a non-ar-
morial seal in 1159, but by 1163 his seal showed the lion of Flanders on his helmet,
shield and banner (see Figure 3).68 One might suppose that his adoption of arms was
a consequence of his own marriage in 1156 to Elizabeth daughter of Ralph I Count
of Vermandois, but the lion on his helmet is strikingly reminiscent of the headgear
of Geoffrey of Anjou on his funeral plaque, raising the possibility that it was derived
from the House of Anjou. Such a possibility is supported by a study of the coinage
minted by Count Thierry. Some of these are very similar to the coins minted by Bald-
win II while he was Count of Edessa between 1108 and 1118.69 Baldwin II went on to
become king of Jerusalem in 1118, and was the grandfather of Thierry’s wife whom
he married in 1139. Few men of that era were more completely wrapped up with the
Holy Land than Thierry of Alsace. He went there on no less than four separate oc-
casions, including the Second Crusade, which was triggered by the fall of Edessa in
1144. One of principal aims of that Crusade was to recapture Edessa.

65 For the arms, see Louis Blancard, Iconographie des Sceaux et Bulles conservés dans la

partie antérieure à 1790 des Archives Départamentales des Bouches-du-Rhône (Marseilles

1860), p. 6 and plate 2 no 1. Some have questioned whether the shield on the seal is indeed
paly, it being badly eroded, but the sequence of seal evidence over the decades shown on plates
2 and 3 is extremely convincing when put together. For Raymond Berengar’s father, see Riley-
Smith, op. cit. pp. 163, 167.
66 Phillips, op. cit. pp. 253, 42; Riley-Smith, op. cit. p. 266.
67 Charles Cawley, ‘Counts of Flanders’, in Medieval Lands, an online collection of biographical

genealogies of medieval European noble families, at www.fmg.ac/Projects/MedLands.

68 Galbreath and Jéquier, op. cit. p. 24; Olivarius Vredius, Sigilla Comitum Flandriae et

inscriptiones diplomatum ab iis editorum, cum expositione historica (Bruges 1639), pp. 18-
19; and J.-Th. Raadt, Sceaux armoires des Pays-Bas et des Pays Avoisinants, vol. 1 (Brussels
1898), p. 454.
69 Alex Malloy, Irene Preston and Arthur Seltman, Coins of the Crusader States (2nd edn.,

Fairfield 2004), pp. 243-5.

72
 CRUSADING FAMILIES AND THE SPREAD OF HERALDRY

Figure 3: Seal and counter-seal of Philip

Count of Flanders 1163, from Vredius,
Sigilla Comitum Flandriae, p. 19.

The Flemish deniers resemble their Edessan prototypes on both the obverse and
reverse sides, but their key feature from the heraldic perspective is the armed man
who carries a shield. This in the Edessan coins and in some of the copies is left blank,
whilst in some of the coins of Thierry the shield is charged with a lion rampant (see
Figure 4, over). Alexandre Hermand supposed these to be from the time of Thierry’s
son Philip of Alsace (acceded 1168) because of his abovementioned seal.70 However,
whilst there exists a whole corpus of deniers bearing Philip’s name, none of them are
heraldic and none of them resemble the coins of Edessa. The historical context of the
Edessa-inspired deniers belongs to the time of Thierry of Alsace, who perhaps began
minting them after 1144 as a political statement in support of the recapture of Edessa.
There is a direct connection between Thierry of Alsace and Fulk of Anjou: the two
men met in the Holy Land, and it is thus highly plausible that Thierry’s adoption of

70 Alexandre Hermand, Histoire Monetaire de la Province d’Artois (St Omer 1843), p. 151-
157 and plate III nos. 24-30. Some of the Flemish deniers carried what Hermand described
as a gyronny shield. He believed this corresponded with the ‘gyronny’ shield on the tomb of
William Clito, briefly Count of Flanders in 1127-8 (figure 1). There are two problems with
attributing this shield and these coins to William Clito: firstly the shield on both tomb and
coins is not gyronny at all, but simply has the ‘escarbuncle’ of decorative supports which was
typical of the period, and which is found on a great many seals. Secondly, one of the coins of
this variety was minted in Bruges, which was completely opposed to William Clito during his
brief reign.

73
 THE COAT OF ARMS

Figure 4a: obverse and reverse types

of brass folles minted for Baldwin
II as Count of Edessa 1108-18; cf.
Alex Malloy, Irene Preston and Ar-
thur Seltman, Coins of the Crusader
States (2nd edn., Fairfield 2004), pp.
243-5.

Figure 4b: silver denier of Thierry

Count of Flanders; cf. Alexandre
Hermand, Histoire Monetaire de la
Province d’Artois (St Omer 1843),
pp. 151-7 and plate III nos 24-30.
Obverse (left) illustrated from
Vredius, Sigilla Comitum Flandriae,
p. 15.

a heraldic lion was a result of his father-in-law’s direct influence. Pastoureau’s lion
map has Flanders at its centre in terms of the charge’s popularity, based on medieval
armorials.71
11. Henry the Lion, duke of Bavaria and Saxony (1129/30-1195). It is re-
markable that the first evidence we have for heraldry in Germany is on a seal of this
duke from 1144, which was created when he was only fourteen or fifteen years old.
On his first seal a lion can just be discerned on the shield, especially when compari-
son is made to the better preserved seals from slightly later in his reign.72 Interestingly
one of his later seals reverts to having no lion, the shield being a plain one of the ‘es-
carbuncle’ type. This further emphasizes the uncertainties of using seals as evidence
of early armory.
In view of Henry’s youth when he adopted arms it is probable that he was actu-
ally following his uncle, duke Welf VI (no. 15 below), although the earliest extant
evidence of Welf’s own armory dates from somewhat later. Henry had impeccable
crusading credentials, his great grandfather Welf IV of Bavaria (died 1101) having
been a key figure in the Crusade of 1101, a papal fidelis, and married to the sister
of the famous crusader Robert II Count of Flanders. Welf VI was a supporter of the

71 Pastoureau, ‘Quel est le roi des animaux?’ The figure is reproduced in id., Traité d’Héraldique,

p. 256.
72 Jochen Luckhardt and Franz Niehoff (edd.), Heinrich der Löwe und seine Zeit: Herrschaft

und Repräsentation der Welfen 1125-1235 (vol. 1, München 1995), pp. 154-7; the seal is
illustrated in Anthony Wagner’s chapter on heraldry in A. L. Poole (ed.), Medieval England,
vol. 1 (London 1958), p. 342.

74
 CRUSADING FAMILIES AND THE SPREAD OF HERALDRY

Second Crusade, and when St Bernard visited Germany in 1146 to build up support
for this Crusade he focused his attention on Welf’s territories, meeting Conrad of
Zähringen who was one of Welf’s principal supporters.73 Two years later Henry the
Lion married the daughter of Conrad. Henry later divorced his first wife and she mar-
ried the Count of Savoy.
In 1142 Henry’s mother married Henry II of Austria (no. 18 below) who was
uterine half brother of King Conrad III of Germany. St Bernard obtained papal ap-
proval for Henry and others to fight against the pagan Wends as part of the Second
Crusade, as an alternative to going with Welf to the Holy Land. Henry eventually
managed to visit Constantinople and the Holy Land in 1172-3.

The 1150s
12. Bouchard, Lord of Guise had a roundel charged with an eagle on his long
shield on his seal of 1155.74 The castellans of Guise were vassals of the counts of Ver-
mandois. Bouchard (d. before 1163) was the son of Guy of Guise (d. 1142) and Ade-
line de Montmorency, the daughter of Bouchard III de Montmorency (died 1130/32),
Constable of France.75 Bouchard of Guise was also a second cousin of Raymond
Berengar count of Barcelona (no. 9 above) through the royal house of Aragon. He
accompanied Louis VII on the Second Crusade in 1147.
13. Matthew I de Montmorency (d. before 1160), the uncle of Bouchard of
Guise, was the Constable of France from 1138, and as such was responsible in 1146
for assembling the forces for Louis VII’s crusade. His nephew’s adoption of an ea-
gle would seem to support the contention that it was he who adopted the arms later
known to have been used by his son, Or a cross gules between four eagles displayed
azure.76 In 1141 Matthew married Adelaide de Maurienne, widow of Louis VI of
France, mother of Louis VII, and daughter of Humbert III Count of Savoy. The house
of Savoy used both a cross and an eagle heraldically. This coincidence suggests that
Matthew either adopted the arms after his 1141 marriage, or that the influence worked
in the other direction. Matthew’s sons and heirs were not descended from Savoy as
their mother was a natural daughter of Henry I of England, so if the shield was a hom-
age to the house of Savoy it is unlikely to have been adopted in the next generation.
In going on the Second Crusade Matthew was following in the footsteps of his
father, Bouchard III de Montmorency, who died in Jerusalem some time between
1130 and 1132. Two of Matthew’s sons later died in the Holy Land on the Third
Crusade of 1189. Not only was he closely associated with Ralph of Vermandois in
the royal court and at the forefront of the French royal army, but other close rela-

73 Phillips, op. cit. p. 94.

74 Galbreath and Jéquier, op. cit. p. 23 and figure 8, with reference to G. Demay, Inventaire des
sceaux de la Picardie (Paris 1875), no. 369.
75 Louis-Victor Pécheur, Histoire de la ville de Guise (Vervins 1851), vol. 1, pp. 47-106.
76 André Duchesne, Histoire généalogique de la maison de Montmorency et de Laval (Paris

1624), p. 55. The first direct evidence for the arms is on the seal of Matthew’s son Bouchard of
1177; see Duchesne, ibid, pp. 40-62; Douët d’Arcq, op. cit. no. 2930.

75
 THE COAT OF ARMS

tions were armigerous from an early date. His step-mother was Adeliza de Clermont,
widow of Gilbert fitz Richard de Clare (no. 5 above).
14. Amadeus III, Count of Savoy (d. 1148), may well have used arms, on the
basis of his brother-in-law Matthew I de Montmorency’s usage of the cross and the
eagle on his shield. On his seal of 1143 he carries a pennant bearing a cross, assumed
by D. L. Galbreath and others to have been the cross of Savoy, Gules a cross argent.77
The shield on this seal is facing the viewer, a new trend which was beginning to be
adopted for the purpose of displaying heraldry, but unfortunately surviving examples
are too worn to determine whether these were in fact the arms. His son Humbert III’s
seal of 1150 also has a pennant with a cross but the design has reverted to the older
stereotype of the shield reversed.78 The earliest known shield of Savoy carries an
eagle, presumed to have been Or an eagle displayed sable, as found on the tomb of
Count Peter of Savoy at Aquabella and the seal of his father Count Thomas in 1206.79
The counts of Savoy sit at the centre of the nexus of early armigerous families
due to their extensive network of marriage alliances (see Table B). They were a
family of fideles on whom the Papacy felt it could depend, and even before the First
Crusade Pope Gregory VII had been supported by Amadeus II in an abortive attempt
to put together an army for the Holy Land.80 Amadeus III was the son of Humbert II
(d. 1103) who had pledged to go on the First Crusade but never went. His sister the
queen of France was close to Ralph of Vermandois, who offered his support after the
death of Louis VI in 1137, an event which prompted the abbot of Cluny to write to
Amadeus.81 Adelaide then married Matthew I de Montmorency (no. 13 above). Ama-
deus was first cousin of Hugh II duke of Burgundy (no. 7 above), and of Alfonso VII
of Leon (no. 8). He was long known as ‘the Crusader’ because in 1128, when he came
into conflict with Louis VI, he achieved peace by promising to join Louis’ planned
Crusade. Fatefully, he did not fulfill his pledge until 1147, after Pope Eugenius had
written to him requesting his involvement.82 He never reached the Holy Land, dying
on Cyprus the following year. The banner of Savoy may have been a consequence
of his crusader vow, whilst the fact that the same banner was adopted by the Knights
Hospitaller reinforces the supposition that he took it first.83

77 Galbreath and Jéquier, op. cit. p. 23 and figure 7, Wagner, op. cit. p. 15. For the pledge of

Humbert II see Riley-Smith, op. cit. p. 95. It should be stated that having a cross on the pennant
was not unusual at this time, but in this case a heraldic usage is supported by the improbability
of the House of Savoy adopting what was essentially the Hospitaller flag after about 1147-8.
78 D. L. Galbreath, Sigilla Aguanensia (Lausanne 1927), pp. 9-11, nos. 11 and 12.
79 Samuel Guichenon, Histoire généalogique de la royale maison de Savoye (Lyon 1660), vol.

1, p. 121.
80 Riley-Smith, op. cit. pp. 49-50
81 Marcel Pacaut, Louis VII et son royaume (Paris 1964), pp. 39-40.
82 Phillips, op. cit. p. 97.
83 John Goodall, ‘The origin of the arms and badge of the Order of St John of Jerusalem’, CoA

1st ser. 4 (1956-8), no 33, pp. 372-8, argued that the Hospitaller arms date to 1130 on the basis
of a statement made over 450 years after the event; but the earliest verifiable date for their use
is 1185. The statutes of the Order, in use by 1160, mention the wearing of a cross on the habit.
The Second Crusade is presumed by many to have been the time when the cross was adopted.

76
 CRUSADING FAMILIES AND THE SPREAD OF HERALDRY

15. Simon de Beaugency (d. 1156) was another nephew of Ralph of Vermandois.
Although there is no seal evidence it is highly probable that it was he who adopted the
chequy or and azure field from the arms of Vermandois with a red fess for difference.
In 1218 his descendant Simon II de Beaugency inherited the patrimony in succession
to his elder brother, but he retained his cadency mark of three escallops on the fess.84
Simon I’s mother was Matilda of Vermandois. The family of Beaugency was of great
eminence in the twelfth century, one member being Helias Count of Maine, son of
John de Beaugency, grandfather of Geoffrey of Anjou, and perhaps an early inspira-
tion for the placing of devices on shield and helm. Simon’s grandfather, Lancelin de
Beaugency, is thought to have visited the Holy Land on pilgrimage as he dedicated
a new priory at Beaugency to the Holy Sepulchre in the 1070s, which his son Ralph
I further endowed on his return from the First Crusade. Simon’s uncle Odo was the
standard bearer of Hugh of Vermandois on the First Crusade, while his aunt, Agnes
de Beaugency, was the mother of William and Robert of Nevers who also took the
cross.85
From the 1150s there is evidence of three noblemen from Germany using her-
aldry, all of whom participated in the Second Crusade, and all of whom were related
to Henry the Lion. If they were not in fact already armigerous before the Crusade then
their shared participation in that expedition may have encouraged them to become
so. It seems unlikely that they would have adopted arms in emulation of Henry as
he belonged to a younger generation. Such influences normally work the other way
round, as demonstrated by the various nephews of Ralph of Vermandois who copied
his use of arms. Various families armigerous by the mid twelfth century were well
represented on the Second Crusade. These included William Count of Nevers and
his brother Renaud who died on the Crusade, both sons of William II (no. 4 above);
Simon, the brother of Ralph of Vermandois, who died in 1148 on his way back; Mat-
thew de Montmorency (no. 13 above); Bouchard of Guise (no. 12); and William and
Ralph the brothers of Simon de Beaugency (no. 15) who both died on the Crusade.
Amadeus III of Savoy (no. 14) was another prominent participant.
16. Duke Welf VI (1115-1191) sealed with arms in 1152, the year that his nephew
the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa made him Duke of Spoleto, Mar-
grave of Tuscany, and Prince of Sardinia. He was the grandson of the participant in
the First Crusade, Welf IV, whose wife was Judith of Flanders. He was himself a
prominent participant in the Second Crusade, taking the cross from St Bernard in

84 Douët d’Arcq, op. cit. no. 1325. Jacques Nicholas Pellieux, Essais historiques sur la ville et

le canton de Beaugency (Beaugency [1856]), part 1, p. 111. It was once thought that Ralph I
de Beaugency had a heraldic seal, see Smith Ellis, op. cit. p. 179, but this was a misattributed
seal of his descendant Ralph II from the thirteenth century. The source of the confusion was a
statement made in 1682 when Bernier in his Histoire de Blois (Paris 1682), p. 258, described
a seal on which was a shield chequy a fess, to the right of the shield a fleur de lis between two
towers, to the left a tower between two fleurs de lis, and a legend identifying Ralph Lord of
Beaugency. What he was in fact describing almost exactly was the counter-seal of Ralph II de
Beaugency of circa 1256, see Douët d’Arcq, no. 1324.
85 Riley-Smith, op. cit. pp. 33, 99

77
 THE COAT OF ARMS

1147. In a letter from that period to Louis VII he described himself as ‘a Knight of
Christ and servant of the cross’.86 His heraldic device was a lion, and it would make a
great deal of sense for him to have adopted the lion from the counts of Flanders, from
whom he was descended, and to have passed it on to his then teenage nephew Henry
the Lion (no. 11 above).87 This would date his arms to 1144, the year when Henry
sealed with a lion, or earlier.
17. Otakar III, Margrave of Styria (d. 1164), was the nephew of Welf VI. He
was also a first cousin of Henry II of Austria (see next) through his mother, Elizabeth
Babenberg, daughter of Leopold II Margrave of Austria, and sister of Leopold III.
Elizabeth actually joined the First Crusade, on which she died, as a widow in 1100.
Otakar brought Byzantine artists back with him to his principality in the aftermath of
the Second Crusade. His first seal, last known to have been used in 1157, shows no
arms on his shield, but by 1160 his shield bore a lion.88
18. Henry II, Duke of Austria, depicted no heraldry on his shield on a seal of
1143, but had adopted an eagle by 1156.89 He was the son of Leopold III of Baben-
berg (d. 1136) margrave of Austria and uterine half brother of Conrad III king of
Germany, who created him duke in 1143. For a time he was the step father of Henry
the Lion (no. 11 above). He accompanied Conrad on the Second Crusade in 1146,
and in 1148 married Theodora Comnena, niece of the Byzantine emperor Manuel I in
Constantinople.90 His adoption of the eagle was no doubt influenced by his imperial
Roman connections. Conrad of Germany and his nephew, Frederick Barbarossa, may
have adopted the eagle as a true heraldic charge at this time, following its long usage
by the Holy Roman Emperors as an emblem. Duke Henry is known to have been
present at a magnificent Franco-German meeting near Acre on the Second Crusade
in June 1148, at which were also present Welf VI of Bavaria and Duke Frederick
(Barbarossa) of Swabia.91

The 1160s
Seals of the 1160s provide the identities of two families from Flanders and the Low
Countries that are known to have used arms, perhaps prompted by the adoption of
arms by the counts of Flanders.
19. Anselm de Candavène, Count of St Pol, bore a garb of oats on his shield
and horse caparison on his seal of 1162, whereas his elder brother, Enguerrand, as

86 Phillips, op. cit. pp. 94, 120.

87 Ferdinand Gull, ‘Ein Siegel Herzog Welfs VI vom Jahre 1152’, Archives Héraldiques
Suisses (1916), pp. 57-9, identifies the charge as a lion, an identification made, with a better
photograph, in Luckhardt and Niehoff, op. cit. (note 72 above), pp. 94-5.
88 Alfred von Siegenfeld, Das Landeswappen der Steiermark (Graz 1900), pp. 130-48. Also

illustrated in Poole, op. cit. p. 344.

89 Galbreath and Jéquier, op. cit. p. 23 and Karl von Sava, Die Siegel der Ősterreichischen

Regenten (Vienna 1871), pp. 77-8.

90 For his genealogy see Cawley, op. cit. (note 67 above), s.v. ‘Austria’.
91 Phillips, op. cit. p. 216.

78
 CRUSADING FAMILIES AND THE SPREAD OF HERALDRY

Count of St Pol, bore garbs but only in the field of his seal.92 The area where they
ruled was known to the Romans because of its principal crop as the terra avenae
(Tervana) or land of oats. The family surname from an early period was an allusion to
this. Campus avenae, field of oats, in French is champ d’avoine or later Candavène.
Enguerrand is shown as a knight riding over a field of oats, clearly intended to spell
out his surname. Their father Count Hugh III Candavène (1126-41) and perhaps his
predecessor showed a sprig of oats on his coins.93 The family was closely associated
with the Counts of Flanders: Count Hugh II of St Pol (d. 1118/19) went on the First
Crusade in 1096 with Robert Count of Flanders, and his eldest son, an earlier Enguer-
rand, died on that expedition. Hugh III in 1128 married Margaret of Clermont, the
widow of Charles Count of Flanders, daughter of Adelaide of Vermandois, and half
sister of Ralph of Vermandois. Anselm de Candavène was thus another nephew of
Ralph of Vermandois.
20. Florence III, Count of Holland, sealed with arms in 1162.94 He was the
son of Dirk VI Count of Holland (d. 1157) who went on pilgrimage to Jerusalem
in 1138.95 Florence’s mother, Sophie von Rheinech, herself went to Jerusalem as a
widow in 1173 and was buried there in 1176 in the church of the Teutonic Knights. In
1162 Florence married Ada of Scotland, sister of King Malcolm IV, who created Flor-
ence Earl of Ross. After the death of Malcolm IV in 1165 the kingdom of Scotland
went to his brother William I ‘the Lion’ who is assumed to have adopted the king of
beasts as his royal emblem.96 His son, Alexander II, certainly used a lion, although as
yet without the border or tressure. These were presumably the same arms Or a lion
rampant gules which were being used by the Counts of Holland. The double tressure
was added by Alexander III (1249-1286), perhaps in deference to the fact that his
cousins the Counts of Holland had been the first to adopt the arms. Florence III joined
the Third Crusade in 1189 and was buried in Antioch in 1190. As to the stimulus that
prompted Florence III to take arms: he was the great nephew of Thierry of Alsace
Count of Flanders (no. 10 above).

Conclusion
The early adopters of arms discussed here (for a schematic representation of their
relationships see Table A, over) were bound together by ties of blood and by a shared

92 Galbreath and Jéquier, op. cit. pp. 30-31, figs 16-19. The 1162 seal is in Demay, op. cit.
(note 74 above), no 209; that of Enguerrand is in id., Inventaire des sceaux de L’Artois et de la
Picardie (Paris 1877), p. 11 no. 69, and Inventaire des sceaux de la Flandre (Paris 1873), vol.
1, p. 45 no. 285. Enguerrand’s seal is undated but he acceded by 1145 and was living in 1153.
93 Faustin Poey d’Avant, Monnaies féodales de France (Paris 1862) vol. 3, pp. 413-14 and

plate CLX.
94 Galbreath and Jéquier, op. cit. p. 24; Koninklijke Akademie van Wetenschappen, Corpus

Sigillorum Neerlandicorum (3 vols., 1937-40), nos. 500-503. The seal attached to the 1162
charter is in fact too badly eroded to show any heraldry, but a better impression survives from
1167 (no. 501) on which a lion can be seen on the shield. A better example still is on the seal
of his son Dirk VII dating to 1198 (no. 503).
95 Cawley, op. cit., s.v. ‘Holland’.
96 Bruce McAndrew, Scotland’s Historic Heraldry (Woodbridge 2006), pp. 23-9.

79
 THE COAT OF ARMS

culture and mentality. Early heraldry was so well circumscribed that its spread from
a single point of origin is highly probable. The chronological discussion of early ar-
migers presented demonstrates that heraldry was taken up and developed by a clearly
defined group, in response to a new idea from one or more members of that group.
The overwhelming early popularity of the lion in heraldry, with its epicenter in Flan-
ders, supports the theory that the spark which ignited heraldry was the lion shield of
Geoffrey of Anjou, an idea passed on to his brother-in-law the Count of Flanders.
Ralph of Vermandois must have been an early and prominent exponent of the heredi-
tary shield device within his extended family group. Of the remaining families who
can be shown to have been armigerous in the first few decades of heraldry, nine are
linked directly to Vermandois, including four nephews and a step-brother of Count
Ralph. At much the same time prominent interrelated families in Burgundy and the
Iberian Peninsula were also drawn in.
Furthermore, every one of the early bearers of arms had a close family connec-
tion with the Crusading movement (Table B). This is significant because involvement
in the Crusades was very much to do with the family ethos and many great families
were not involved.97 It may be that a shared set of ideals made this particular social
network receptive both to crusading and to the notion of adopting personal heraldry.
They assumed designs which reminded them of things that were seen in the East.
These included the lion, the eagle and the griffin.98 For these families, then, heraldic
display always carried these additional associations. As well as a means of communi-
cating identity the system provided an opportunity to express their membership of a
small, inter-related and elite group, with an interest in crusading. Devices so charged
with meaning would then tend to become hereditary.
An important reason for the adoption of arms by the crusading families was prob-
ably a perceived connection between heraldic practices and the Holy Land. As well
as promulgating heraldry, for example, the courts of Henry Plantagenet in Normandy,
Maine and Anjou, and of his kinsman Philip of Alsace in Flanders, were the places
where the system of chivalry developed.99 Moreover, in 1147 the Templars adopted
the distinctive red cross on the white background of their habit on the suggestion of
St Bernard, perhaps inspired by the early heraldry of families with a history of cru-
sading. St Bernard knew many of these families and may have had a role to play in
the promulgation of heraldry. The date when the Hospitallers took the reverse colour
scheme on their flag is unclear, but it was most likely quite soon after the Templars,
and perhaps even the same year.
The wearing of the cross goes back to the First Crusade, but it must have been
a little later than this that the arms of the Kingdom of Jerusalem were devised. This
97 Riley-Smith, op. cit. pp. 93-7.
98 Michel Pastoureau, ‘La genèse des armoires: emblématique féodale ou emblématique
familiale?’ in Cahiers d’Heraldique IV. Mélanges héraldiques (Paris 1983), pp. 85-96.
Pastoureau acknowledges this debt to the East but contends that it is due to artistic influences
rather than personal experience. For the animals of the Middle East see Pastoureau, Traité
d’Héraldique, p. 87.
99 William Henry Jackson, ‘Knighthood and the Hohenstaufen imperial court under Frederick

Barbarossa’, in Harper-Bill and Harvey (see note 12 above), pp. 101-20 at 102-5.

80
 CRUSADING FAMILIES AND THE SPREAD OF HERALDRY

Table A: Proposed scheme BEAUGENCY

by 1156
for the dissemination of MONTMORENCY
c.1141
GUISE
by 1155
heraldry in the period BARCELONA-PROVENCE
1128-1165, giving the
NEVERS DE CLARE by 1150
by 1140 by 1138
latest dates by which
MEULAN SAVOY
arms were adopted in the by 1136-8 by 1143
LEON AND CASTILE
families concerned. The VERMANDOIS c.1135
evidence from seals may
by 1135 (1131?)
CAPET BURGUNDY
1137? by 1142
significantly post-date the PORTUGAL
actual time of adoption. ENGLAND
by 1154?
ANJOU
1128
BRITTANY
by 1136

ST. POL FLANDERS HOLLAND

by 1162 (by 1145?) c.1139? by 1162

BAVARIA
by 1144

AUSTRIA
by 1156

very simple design, Argent a cross or, has a strongly proto-heraldic feeling; it would
have required only a very minor modifications to the standard shield of the First Cru-
sade, the polished metal with the polished brass boss seen by Anna Comnena. Such
an early origin would provide an explanation for the design’s unorthodox placing on
metal upon metal. It is plausible that Argent a cross or was in use by the knights of the
kingdom of Jerusalem during the reign of Fulk V (1131-43), although the possibility
cannot be ruled out that this usage began earlier still. One participant of the Second
Crusade, the later Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, is shown with exactly such a shield
in a manuscript of c. 1188.100
If family networks were crucial for the early dissemination of heraldry, we can
offer new insights into the origins of the arms of some of the leading families in Eu-
rope. One such family is the royal house of France. It has long been contended that
Louis VII (1137-80) was the first king of France to bear arms; but the first definitive
evidence comes from the reign of his son Philip Augustus. Philip’s first seal dating
to the year 1180 has a counter-seal which depicts a single fleur-de-lys. The same
monarch is also recorded as having used the banner semy de lys.101 Two key facts are
apparent: firstly, Ralph of Vermandois was appointed as the tutor of young Louis in
1135; secondly, the arms of France might be interpreted as the arms of Vermandois
with the gold checks replaced by gold fleurs-de-lys. While Louis VI may well have
remained aloof when it came to heraldry, the influence which Ralph of Vermandois
exerted over his son may well have persuaded Louis VII to adopt the fleur-de-lys as
his own heraldic device. It is interesting to note that the fleur-de-lys became a popular

100 Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana Ms Vat. Lat. 2001 f. 1r, illustrated in colour in Heinrich de
Lowe, op. cit. vol. 2 p. 43. This is a copy made for Barbarossa of Robert of Rheims’ history of
the First Crusade.
101 Lecoy de la Marche, Les Sceaux (Paris 1889), p. 122. For the banner see Gerard Brault,

Early Blazon (2nd edn., Woodbridge 1997), pp. 209-10.

81
 THE COAT OF ARMS

motif in Palestine immediately following the Second Crusade. An excellent example

of this is carved in the mihrab of the madrasah built in Damascus by Nur ad-din Zangi
between 1154 and 1173.102
Another important case, which provides an example of an elite family that was
outside the group discussed in this paper, is the family of the counts of Blois-Cham-
pagne, who were strongly antipathetic both to Ralph of Vermandois and to the An-
gevins. The shields on their seals remained of the rayonny or escarbuncle type until
the end of the twelfth century.103 This does not conclusively prove they were not
armigerous, but if the propagation of heraldry was connected with Count Ralph’s per-
sonal prestige, it is easy to see why the counts of Blois would have resisted the idea.
The great nineteenth century sigillographer G. Demay illustrated a seal of Theobald
of Blois from 1138 with the rays terminating in fleurs-de-lys.104 This is not true her-
aldry because numerous others were using a similar design; but it might represent
a rival system of shield decoration which persisted as the heraldic escarbuncle. In-
triguingly the coins of Theobald’s brother King Stephen of England carried similar
rayonny fleur-de-lys designs which were dropped by Henry II on his accession.
Heraldry was primarily a Western European phenomenon and the key develop-
ments took place there, but the contention of this paper is that the crusades were
crucial to its spread and popularity. The particular appeal of heraldry to its first ad-
herents may well have been tied up with their passion to secure the Holy Land for
Christendom. The Second Crusade led to the adoption of the later distinctive heraldry
of the military orders, and brought together a significant assemblage of armigers. In
this paper we have shown that early adopters of armorial devices were very often
related to one another and to participants in the First Crusade. We are beginning to
glimpse here the networks through which the concept of hereditary devices upon
shields and seals cam to be disseminated. From the 1170s armory began to have an
appeal outside the privileged circle which first espoused it, perhaps because of its as-
sociations with chivalry, romance and elite culture. Once it became an indispensible
accoutrement of the ruling aristocracy its dissemination amongst aspirational knights
was inevitable. Later crusades took place when heraldry was already widespread, but
like tournaments they must have been a driver towards its international popularity
and codification.105

102
L. A. Mayer, Saracenic Heraldry (Oxford 1933), p. 22 and plate XIX (i). Nur ad-Din’s
father took Edessa in 1144, while he himself triumphed over Louis VII in the Second Crusade.
William of Tyre described him as ‘a just prince, valiant and wise’.
103 Jean-Luc Chassel (ed.), Sceaux et usages de sceaux: images de la Champagne médiévale

(Paris 2003), pp. 40-1; Henry d’Arbois de Jubainville, Essai sur les sceaux des Comtes et des
Comtesses de Champagne (Paris 1856), p. 41.
104 G. Demay, Le Costume au Moyen Age d’après les sceaux (Paris 1880), pp. 112, 140-1 and

figure 60. This is not the place to discuss the origins of the fleur-de-lys, but it should be noted
that the crusaders popularised it among the Arabs, who began to use it in quasi heraldic fashion
from 1154-73, see Mayer, op. cit. pp. 22-3, plate XIX.
105 The author would like to thank Dr Adrian Ailes and Prof. Jonathan Riley-Smith for their

comments on earlier drafts of this paper and for suggesting further source material; also Steven
Ashley for sharing his insights on medieval lions.

82
 Table B (part 1): Genealogical scheme showing some of the family
relationships between the early armigers discussed in this article. The
relationships shown are a small selection of those available and Part 2
(overleaf) contains inevitable overlaps with Part 1.

Alan III, Duke of Odo of Brittany

Amadeus II Brittany
Count of Savoy
Hawise Stephen, Count
of Brittany, Earl
of Richmond
Humbert II Emperor Henry III Bertha Fulk V of Anjou, King
of Jerusalem
Ermengarde = Alan IV, Duke
of Brittany
Count of Savoy
X Welf IV, Duke of Bavaria
Count of = Adelaide de = Renaud de
X X Hugh,
Vermandois Vermandois Clermont
*

Leopold III
Margrave of
= Agnes Emperor Henry IV = Matilda of = Geoffrey, Count Henry the Black Sybille Thierry, Count Ralph of = Petronilla of Margaret = Hugh III de
Candavène
England of Anjou Duke of Bavaria of Flanders Vermandois Aquitaine
Austria
* X Count of St Pol

Amadeus III Anselm, Count

of St Pol
Elizabeth = Ottokar II of Henry II, Duke of Leopold = Sophia Henry the Proud Welf VI, Duke Count of Savoy
Floris II, Count = Gertrude
Styria Austria of Styria Duke of Bavaria of Spoleto X of Holland
X X
Ottokar III of Styria
Henry the Lion, Duke
of Bavaria & Saxony
= Clementia of
Zähringen
= Humbert III = Gertrude
Count of
Philip, Count
of Flanders
= Elizabeth Floris III, Count
of Holland
X X Savoy X

X beneath or adjacent to a name indicates a Crusader.

83
 Table B (part 2): Genealogical scheme showing some of the family relationships between the early armigers
84

discussed in this article.

William I, Count
of Burgundy

Humbert II, = Giselle Agnes de = Bouchard de = Adelisa = Gilbert fitz Hugh, Count of
Vermandois
= Adelaide de= Renaud de Odo I, Duke of = Sibylle Raymond, Count
Count of Savoy Beaumont Montmorency Richard de Vermandois Clermont Burgundy of Burgundy
X Clare X * X
Ada of
Ramerupt
Felicia of
Ramerupt
= Sancho I, King
of Aragon
Hugh II, Duke
of Burgundy
= Aline
Mathilde, dau. of
de Beaugency

Ramiro II, King

of Aragon
Roger II, King
of Sicily
= Sibylle
Amadeus III,
Count of Savoy
Louis VI, King
of France
= Adelaide =Matthew de
Montmorency
Adelisa = Gui, Lord of
Guise
X Petronilla =Count
Ramon Berengar I, Berengaria = Alfonso VII, King of
Bouchard, Lord
of Guise X of Barcelona Leon & Castile
X X
Louis VII, King
of France
= Constance *
Alfonso II, King
of Aragon
X
Robert de Beaumont, = Isabel Ralph of Mathilde =Beaugency
Ralph de Agnes Hildegarde = FulkofIV,Anjou
Count
X Count of Meulan Vermandois
X
Gilbert de Clare,
Earl of Pembroke
= Isabel Waleran, Count
of Meulan
Simon de
Beaugency
William, Count
of Nevers
Fulk V of Anjou, King
of Jerusalem
X X

X beneath or adjacent to a name indicates a Crusader.