Okay, this should start looking familiar! By the time of Henry II, the three lions we know and love today were well established. There are a few potential sources for the lions; the most popular origin story Iāve seen has Henry adopting the two lions of Normany via his mother, Empress Matilda, and adding another lion (the arms of Aquitaine) when he married Eleanor. There is not a whole lot of proof for this theory, but it is a pretty common approach to arms, especially in the early days of heraldry, before systems of quartering, dimidiation, and cadency came into use. (Unsurprisingly, the Burkes go with this theory; itās got more of a narrative shape to it.)Ā
The other possible source is that Henryās three lions are a modified version of the arms borne by his father, Geoffrey Plantagenet. Geoffreyās funeral effigy is one of the oldest examples of European heraldry in existence, dating to around 1160. It depicts him bearing azure (probably) six lioncels or. Itās certainly possible that Henry swapped out the tinctures and continued using his fatherās well-known gold lion. This could be a bit circular; a late 12th-century writer whom the Burkes identify as āJohn, the Monk of Harmonstier, in Tourainā recounts that Henry I gifted Geoffrey with āan image of golden lioncels hung around his neckā (very rough translation). The Burkes do reproduce this quote in the original Latin, but donāt necessarily draw the connection between Geoffrey and Henry II. Not that Iām necessarily surprised; itās not uncommon for English heraldic writers of this period to just kind of ignore the whole āAnarchyā business.