Unlike heraldic emblems, badges and mottos were, in the late middle ages and rennaissance, often not simply inherited but were specifically chosen by the individual, to reflect some aspect of themselves, or some lofty aim or aspiration.

Simplest and obvious in meaning was Henry VII’s choice of the Tudor Rose which, by combining the red rose of Lancaster with the white of York was clearly intended to symbolise the reunification of the realm, But clear recognised motifs were also often rich with considerable nuance and subtelty of meaning, which could be ‘read’ even by the illiterate.

For example Catherine of Aragon, shortly before coming to England as Arthur’s prospective bride, adopted as her personal badge the pomegranate. Ostensibly this was in punning tribute to her parents’ recent conquest of Granada  (the wordplay doesn't really work in English but it is clear in a Romance language like French, where the name of the fruit and the city is the same: Grenade). But there were other layers of meaning as well. In classical mythology the pomegranate was the symbol of Proserpina, the queen of the underworld, whose return to earth each spring heralds the reawakening of life after the death of winter. Christianity borrowed this idea, like so much else, and turned the pomegranate into a symbol of the Resurrection. Finally it represented the two opposed aspects of female sexuality deriving from the fruit's physical appearance. The outside is covered in a hard, smooth skin but the inside (always revealed in Catherine's version of the badge by a cut in the surface of the fruit) teems with a multitude of seeds, each surrounded with succulent, blood-red jelly. The hard exterior suggested chastity; the teeming interior fertility.

Her badge therefore proclaimed her royal, christian crusader lineage, and the promise of heirs. She was certainly a devout catholic and 'hard-shelled' to her death, but while she had many pregnancies she left only one living child.

About the same time in France, François I chose the salamander as his personal symbol. In classic mythology the salamander was believed to be able to live in fire without being consumed and to extinguish flames with the coldness of their bodies. Moreover for the neo-platonists of the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, fire was considered both good and bad; it ignited believers even as it consumed the damned. Read in this light, the emblem describes a king nourished by the "good fire" of faith, peace and love, who strives to extinguish the "bad fire" of injustice, greed and disordered passions. And to get the point clearly across François coupled the image of a salamander in flames with the short motto "Nutrisco et extinguo," "I nourish and I extinguish," to create his official emblem.

His reign certainly saw plenty of fire during the Hapsburg and Italian wars, and he was largely successful in nourishing the arts and extinguishing religious revolt at home. But for all the blaze of his magnificence it established some major divisions in French society.

So what other badges, symbols and mottoes were adopted which might, with hindsight, accurately reflect their owners’ aspirations and temperament … or perhaps ironically mirror their actual limitations ... or are just interesting?

Motto of the Revolution:

The Great Seal of the Confederacy, with the motto "Deo Vindice"

And the United States; In God We Trust

The Lion of St Mark - the unmistakable symbol of Venice:



It also featured in the Serene Republic's overseas territories and even when those territories were no longer Venetian:



Flag of the United States of the Ionian Islands, a British protectorate for 55 years from 1809 until union with Greece in 1864. One the very few territories to be ceded by the British Empire during the 19th century.

"In God We Trust"  was only adopted as a the motto of the United States in 1956 as a replacement to the earlier unofficial motto of "E pluribus unum", which had been in use since 1782. The US as founded was supposed to have a clear separation between the state and religion with no established religion, and there are still quite a few groups that object to the use of "In God We Trust,  claiming it is a religious reference that violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the Constitution, and so should be removed from coins and currency.

The Winged Lion long predates St Mark - in fact all four "Evangelists" were given ancient symbols - the Winged Lion (Nergal), the Winged Bull (Marduk), the Eagle (Hinib) and the Winged Man (Nebu). IIRC the same symbols occur in Egypt as well as Babylonia - as the four Astral Guardians.

The motto liberté, égalité, fraternité, predates the creation of the French Republic and has had a rather chequered history. As a motto it seems to have arisen in the populist Club des Cordeliers (also known as  the Society of the Friends of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen - Société des Amis des droits de l’homme et du citoyen) which was based in the notoriously radical Cordeliers district of Paris. It first appears to have first been used in a speech to the Club des Cordeliers by the marquis de Guichardin in May 1791 as Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité, ou la Mort (ie .... or death), but was soon being taken up as a rallying cry, and was being printed on posters and chalked on buildings (usually all written in capital letters). Thereafter it was frequently repeated in the speeches of Robespierre, Danton and others, although sometimes with the words in a different order.

However there wasn't agreement on what the three terms actually meant. It was generally accepted that liberty could only exist within the constraints of the law, but equality it was argued did not necessarily mean just judicial equality of rights, but could also mean the far more communist idea of equality of wealth. Fraternity was also problematic as it was more about moral obligation than of human rights, and while both liberty and equality were essentially individualistic values, fraternity was about the realising a community devoided of any conflicts and opposed to any form of egotism, but this interpretation of fraternity opposed it to the project of individual autonomy.

With the July 1794 Thermidor Reaction - the coup against Robespierre - fraternité disappeared from the slogan, leaving just the two terms of liberty and equality, now re-defined as simple judicial equality and not as the equality upheld by the sentiment of brotherhood. Then when he gained power in the Coup of Brumaire (1799), Napoleon Bonaparte as First Consul established the motto as liberté, ordre public - liberty, public order. With the restoration of the monarchy the phrase reverted to its original role as a rallying cry for insurrection.

The liberté, égalité, fraternité slogan reappeared as a national motto with the 1848 Revolution but as soon as the future Napoleon III gained control (1852) he ordered the words erased from all official documents and buildings as he viewed the slogan to be conflated with revolt and disorder. It was only under the Third Republic (1870-1940) that the motto lost its association with insurrection against the state and was made an official motto of the Republic.

Meles and Gil, this information is all new to me. Thanks.

I am sorry I have not been able to respond to this thread before now, MM, as it is such an interesting topic. May I return to your first post which mentions the pomegranate badge of Catherine of Aragon? Anne Boleyn adopted the falcon as her badge and, although this fearsome bird is usually shown perched on a (barren) woodstock from which sprout Tudor roses, there are images of the Boleyn falcon attacking the pomegranate. The one below is from a piece of embroidery supposed to have been worked by Elizabeth Boleyn (nee Howard), Anne's mother, but I remember seeing a similar motif on a Tudor music manuscript. Unfortunately I can't find it at the moment.





The motto shown - "Ainsi sera, groigne qui groigne" - was adopted by Anne around Christmas 1530: it was a motto she had learned when she had been a maid-of-honour to Margaret of Austria. It means: "Let them grumble, this is how it is going to be!" - a really provocative statement which she had ordered should be embroidered on the livery coats of her servants. However, this device only lasted a few weeks. The Spanish ambassador, Chapuys, had a snide explanation for the swift removal of the motto: that Anne had got into big trouble because the complete motto was actually a triumphant Habsburg assertion: "Grogne qui grogne et vive Bourgoigne". It is unlikely that Anne had forgotten the original imperialist version, but it was perhaps her idea of a joke that Henry, even in his 1530 state of utter besottedness, could not allow.

Here are the mottoes of the six wives of Henry VIII:


Catherine of Aragon: "Humble and Loyal" - Catherine certainly saw herself as this, and she prided herself on her loyalty to the Catholic church and to her husband. But this daughter of the Spanish kings was never humble: she was that infuriating type of woman who has the assumed "Christian humility" of those who believe they are never wrong, and for whom compromise is a dirty word. "Arrogant and Stubborn" would  perhaps have been a more suitable motto. What she thought of her great rival, whose grandfather is usually described as a "mercer" (even if he did reach the bourgeois heights of respectability by becoming Lord Mayor of London) may be imagined.

Anne Boleyn: "The Most Happy" - oddly true, in that it was her child who proved to be everything that Henry VIII had wanted.

Jane Seymour: "Bound to Obey and Serve" - that says it all for the third wife. Can't imagine Anne Boleyn ever adopting such a submissive and wifely motto. I bet Henry thoroughly approved.

Anne of Cleves: "God Send Me Well to Keep" - and he did. Anne got the best divorce deal ever. Clever girl.

Katherine Howard: "No Other Will But His" - oh dear. Sniggers all round. Nice double entendre, worthy of a Shakespeare sonnet. Unfortunately should have been "Any Other Will But His". And who can blame the poor child?

Katherine Parr: "To Be Useful in All I Do" - a very nice motto for a genuinely good woman who was a staunch Protestant: it does make Katherine sound rather like a Tudor Girl Guide though.

Following on from liberté, égalité, fraternité ... the blue-white-red tricolore flag also traces its origin to before the creation of the French Republic. In 1789 when the unrest in France started to get really violent - ie the period just before the storming of the Bastille - it was apparent that the revolutionaries needed some means to identify each other, as there were civilians and regular soldiers on both sides in much of the street fighting. Camille Desmoulins asked his followers to wear green cockades on 12 July 1789, but when the Paris militia was formed a few days later, it adopted blue and red, which were the ancient colours of the city of Paris

     The flag of Paris.

Just a week or so later the city militia was renamed the National Guard under the command of Gen. Lafayette (the hero of the American revolutionary wars) and he suggested the blue and red of the militia cockade be separated by a band of white: white being the ancient colour of the French monarchy (remember at this stage of the revolution the aims of most of the National Assembly were just for a constitutional monarchy).


 
... red on the outside was the official way but it seems many people wore the reverse:

   

However just a year later in 1790 the monarchy was abolished. For the national flag of the new French Republic the same blue-white-red colours were adopted ... although actually in the 1790s, as with the cockade, the colours were often red-white-blue, the reverse of the modern flag, until it was standardised in 1794 to the current design by the painter Jacques-Louis David.

The revolutionary cockade also directly inspired the roundel design for aircraft identification. In the first days of WW1 both allied and axis aircraft rarely bore any standard identification but it was soon realised by both sides that this was needed. Germany adopted the Teutonic Cross while Britain initially used a stylized Union Jack. France alone had recognized the need for aircraft identification symbols before the war and borrowing the design of the cockade from over a century earlier, adopted a red-white-blue roundel as standard in 1912.

    The roundel of l'Armée de l'Air Française.

The British Royal Flying Corps' use of the Union Jack wasn't successful as it was difficult to distinguish and was also liable to be mistaken for a cross … ie the symbol of the enemy, and so Britain followed the French lead and adopted a roundel design, but with the colours being those of the Union flag and arranged in reverse order to the French.

Temp, well done for finding that picture of Anne's falcon eating Catherine's pomgranate ... I'd heard of a similar image (I think in a stained glass window somewhere) but I couldn't find a picture anywhere.

Supposedly Anne's identification as ‘the white falcon’ has its origins in the heraldic crests of the Butlers, earls of Ormonde. In 1529, Thomas Boleyn was recognised as the Butler heir and the falcon appears as a crest on his brass in Hever Church.

But a falcon was also an old Plantagenet badge having been used by Edward III. It descended to Edward IV, who took as his personal badge, a falcon being seated within an open fetterlock. The slightly open fetterlock was apparently supposed to refer to the struggle Edward IV had to obtain the throne — "he forced the lock and won the throne."

I wonder if Anne deliberately chose the falcon partly for these royal Plantagenet associations too.
 
Incidentally today, 1st June, is the anniversary of Anne's coronation, and during her grand procession through the City of London, as was the practice then, many tableaux vivants were presented to her. At one a child delivered these powerful words (scripted by Nicholas Udall and John Leland):

Honour and grace be to our Queen Anne,
For whose cause an Angel Celestial
Descendeth, the falcon (as white as [the] swan)
To crown with a diadem imperial!
In her honour rejoice we all,
Or it cometh from God, and not of man.
Honour and grace be to our Queen Anne!

The message is clear; Queen Anne Boleyn had been placed on the throne by God and not by Henry VIII.
Udall also wrote this ballad about the falcon (that is, Anne):

Of body small,
Of power regal
She is, and sharp of sight;
Of courage halt,
No manner fault.
Is in this falcon white.


PS
Incidentally, while researching stuff for today's 'Dish of the Day' I was reading through a load of state papers (as you do). One of these describes that the route of Anne's procession through the City was hung with banners bearing the initials of Henry and Anne entwined, and how some of "the common people" seeing these royal cyphers everywhere set up a mocking laughter, HA, HA, HA, HA, as she passed by. Another report says, "Though it was customary to kneel, uncover [the head], and cry ‘God save the King, God save the Queen,’ whenever they appeared in public, no one in London or the suburbs, not even women and children, did so on this occasion. One of the Queen's servants told the mayor to command the people to make the customary shouts, and was answered that he could not command people's hearts, and that even the King could not make them do so." Certainly not everyone was in awe of the new queen.

I've found the other pecking falcon image - the one I mentioned above (the one on a music manuscript).

What's the song about, do you know?

I'm not sure, but perhaps it is the carol that Eric Ives mentions in his biography of Anne. The song is anonymous, but even if not by Anne or for Anne, it is certainly expressive of her situation in 1530 and the defiant "groigne qui groigne" motto seems to have inspired the piece. I can't work out whether these words are in the above image - they look like Latin to me (?).

The carol is from the Devonshire manuscript - poems, riddles and mottoes jotted down by various people in the 1520s and 1530s.

1    Grudge on who liste this ys my lott
2    no thing to want if it ware not

3    my yeris be yong even as ye see
4    all thinges{es} thereto dothe well agre
5    yn faithe in face in iche degre
6    no thing dothe wante as semithe me
7    if yt ware not

8    {es}{{th}+t+} {_e} Some men dothe saye that frindes be skace
9    but I have founde as in this cace
10    afrinde wiche gyvith to no man{_a}1 place
11    {u'}{{th}+t+} but makis me happiest that euer was
12    yf &c

13    Groudge on who list this is my lot
14    no thing to wan{_a}t if yt ware not
15    a hart I have besidis all this
16    that hathe my herte & I have his
17    if he dothe well yt is my blis
18    and when we mete no lak there is /
19    yf & c

20    {_a}{{th}+t+} {_a} Yf he can finde that can me please
21    athinckes{es} he dois his owne hertes{es}  ease
22    and likewise I coulde well apease
23    the chefest cause of his misease
24    yf &c

25    Groudge on &c
26    nothing to wan{_a}te &c
27    A master{t'} eke god hathe me sente
28    to hom my will is hollye ben{_e}te
29    {_e}{{th}+t+} {{s}8} to serue & love for that intente
30     both we {_e} {_o} that bothe/we2 might be well contente /
31    yf c

32    And here an ende yt dothe suffise
33    {{th}+e+}{es} to speke fewe wordes among the wise /
34    yet take this note before yor eyes
35    my mirthe shulde doble ons or twise /
36    yf yt ware not






Grudge on who list, this is my lot:
Nothing to want if it were not.

My years be young, even as ye see;
All things thereto doth well agree;

In faith, in face, in each degree,
Nothing doth want, as seemeth me,

If it were not.

Some men doth say that friends be scarce,
But I have found, as in this case,
A friend which giveth to no man place                                                                                      
But makes me happiest that ever was,

If it were not.

A heart I have, besides all this,
That hath my heart, and I have his.
If he doth will, it is my bliss,                                                                                                    
And when we meet no lack there is,

If it were not.

If he can find that can me please
A-thinks he does his own heart’s ease,
And likewise I could well appease
The chiefest cause of his mis-ease,

If it were not.

A master eke God hath me sent
To whom my will is wholly lent                                                                                                  
To serve and love for that intent                                                                                              
That both we might be well content,

If it were not.

And here an end: it doth suffice
To speak few words among the wise;                                                                                        
Yet take this note before your eyes:                                                                                          
My mirth should double once or twice,

If it were not.


The repetition of "If it were not" seems to refer to the marriage of Katherine and Henry - now a publically derided obstacle to the happiness of Anne and her royal lover.

One of the most haunting mottoes is that of Mary Queen of Scots - the famous En ma Fin gît mon Commencement - In my End is my Beginning.

This is the saying which Mary embroidered on her cloth of estate whilst in prison in England and is the theme running through her life. It symbolises her Catholic belief in the eternity of life after death. Mary perhaps drew her inspiration from the emblem adopted by her grandfather-in-law, François I of France - the salamander - as mentioned by MM in his original post.

An entirely suitable motto for this ever-fascinating woman.

Elizabeth I's motto, on the other hand, Semper Eadem - Always the Same - does not appeal as much.

Richard III's motto was Loyaulte me lie, "Loyalty binds me" ... but was that loyalty to the kingdom; to the natural order of succession; to his family; or simply to himself and his own interests?

His badge was a white boar (in heraldic language it's described as "a boar rampant proper, argent, armed and bristled"):



The wild boar was considered to be a beast so fierce that by all accounts when pursued it would sacrifice itself rather than surrender in the hunt.  (We've discussed this in more detail on another thread, but boar spears traditionally always had strong cross-bars just below the spear head because boar, even when impaled, were wont to force themselves up the spear shaft to try and attack the hunter). Richard's choice of the boar therefore might well signify a valiant, wily and brave warrior who prefers to die than to save his life by flight, an eminently  suitable allusion for a soldier of Richard’s prowess. Conversely, overcoming the boar was considered to be the feat of a remarkably courageous hunter.

That said, the badge is also rather obscenely apt when, in the oft-referred-to account of the abuse of Richard’s corpse, we are told that after Bosworth his body was "despoiled to the skin" and then trussed, "as an hog or another vile beast and so all to besprung with mire and filth, was brought to a church in Leicester for all men to wonder upon and there lastly irreverently buried".

Gilgamesh of Uruk wrote:

The Winged Lion long predates St Mark - in fact all four "Evangelists" were given ancient symbols - the Winged Lion (Nergal), the Winged Bull (Marduk), the Eagle (Hinib) and the Winged Man (Nebu). IIRC the same symbols occur in Egypt as well as Babylonia - as the four Astral Guardians.

I had often wondered why St Mark's lion was winged rather than just a lion. Thanks for that clarification Gil. The inscription written in the book often depicted open beneath the lion's paw reads - Pax tibi Marce, evangelista meus. Hic requiescet corpus tuum - which isn't really a motto at all but is a self-justifying statement relating to the remains of St Mark being disinterred from Alexandria and removed to Venice in the 9th century - 'Peace be with you Mark, my evangelist, your body will rest here'. This is potentially ironic as there is some doubt as to whether Mark the evangelist and Mark the apostle were the same person - quite possibly not. The name Mark is intriguing in itself and predates Christianity in several Mediterranean cultures not least of those being the Romans themselves with the likes of Mark Anthony and Marcus Aurelius etc.

You had to be very careful when and how you displayed badges and emblems - certainly during the 16th century. An apparently innocuous piece of embroidery - one featuring a pretty floral design of pansies and marigolds - provided evidence that led to an Act of Attainder and, later, to the judicial murder of a stately and aristocratic old lady - an execution that was a brutal and messy business even by Tudor standards.

On 12th May 1539 the Countess of Salisbury, daughter of the unfortunate Duke of Clarence and niece of Edward IV and Richard III - a woman whom some people regarded as having a better claim to the throne than Henry VIII - was included in the Act of Attainder passed against the leaders of the Pilgrimage of Grace and those implicated in the "Exeter Conspiracy". The Countess and some of her servants were accused of allying themselves with "the false and abominable traitors Henry Pole, late Lord Montague and Reginald Pole, sons to the said Countess, knowing them to be false traitors and common enemies unto your Majesty and this your realm". Margaret Pole and her sons were further charged with "sundry other detestable and abominable treasons to the most fearful peril and danger of the destruction of your most royal person." At this point during the attainder proceedings Thomas Cromwell rose in the silent House of Lords and produced, of all things, a white silk tunic or tabard - one which was embroidered beautifully with the royal arms of England surrounded by marigolds and pansies. The floral motif provided the damning evidence Cromwell needed. This is what the Deputy of Calais, Lord Lisle, read about the embroidery in a letter sent to him from one of his officials:

There was a coat-armour found in the Duchess (sic) of Salisbury's coffer, and by the one side of the coat there was the King's Grace his arms of England, that is the lions without the flowers de lys, and about the whole arms was made pansies for Pole and marigolds for my Lady Mary... And betwixt the marigold and the pansy was made a tree to rise in the midst, and on the tree a coat of purple hanging on a bough in token of the coat of Christ, and on the other side of the coat all the Passion of Christ. Pole intended to have married my Lady Mary and betwixt them both should again arise the old doctrine of Christ."

The marigold flower was the badge used by Mary Tudor and the pansy that of Reginald Pole. The entwining of the two flowers in the design symbolised a union between the Tudor girl and her Plantagenet cousin. The marriage of the two had indeed been hoped for years earlier: Katherine of Aragon and the Countess of Salisbury - who had been firm friends - had often discussed it openly together in younger, happier days. By 1539, of course, it was a taboo subject: the badges embroidered on the tabard spelled out what Desmond Seward has called "the White Rose programme - Mary as queen and Reginald Pole as king consort, together with the restoration of Catholicism - which could only happen if Henry VIII were deposed."

But was the emblem embroidery genuine or did Cromwell have needlewomen run it up as a cunning forgery? It will be interesting to see how Hilary Mantel deals with this in her final part of the  Wolf Hall trilogy. Cromwell no doubt will, as ever, come up smelling, not of pansies or marigolds, but of roses.

The fate of the Duchess of Salisbury sounds a bit like that of Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk, and his son, Henry Howard, the Earl of Surrey. In 1546 an increasingly infirm and paranoid Henry VIII had become convinced that they were planning to usurp the crown from his son Edward and so had them both imprisoned for treason. One of the charges was that they had quartered their heraldic arms with the golden cross emblem of Edward the Confessor (this device was largely a medieval invention as King Edward's reign predated formal heraldry). By supposedly incorporating this heraldic emblem they were said to be demonstrating a treasonous ancient claim to the throne ... although they themselves never voiced any such claim and it is rather doubtful that they did actually try and adopt a new heraldic device (and bear in mind that their legal arms already bore the three Plantagenet lions of England). Again, like the Duchess of Salisbury, they were probably set up and the evidence faked (the treasonous arms were said to have been displayed in just one of the Earl of Surrey's houses). Nevertheless Thomas Howard did cravenly sign a 'confession' which does rather read like an attempt to shift most of the guilt onto his son:

"I have concealed high treason in keeping secret the false and traitorous act, most presumptuously committed by my son Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, against the King's Majesty and Laws in the putting and using of the arms of St Edward the Confessor, King of the realm of England before the Conquest, in his scutcheon or arms, which said arms of St Edward appertain only to the King of this realm and to none other person or persons, whereunto the said Earl by no means or way could make any claim or title, by me or mine or his ancestors."

They were both found guilty of treason and sentenced to death on 13 January 1547. Henry Howard was duly beheaded on 19 January 1547 and his father's execution was set for the morning of 29 January ... but as luck would have it Henry VIII died in the evening of the 28 January before he'd signed the death warrant. Thomas Howard therefore kept his head by the skin of his teeth, although he remained in prison until released on the accession of Queen Mary in 1553, only to die the following year.

Regarding the OP, a now merged army battalion had a sub-unit, a recovery unit for harmed tanks, armoured vehicles, and other vehicles which else might end as shattered debris on a battlefield and clutter up the shop, which proudly bore the texted slogan - here translated from Danish - 
"God may move mountains - we'll take the rest."

Unfortunately I haven't found a picture, but I'm searching.

Another motto (which were actually dying words but have been retroactively ascribed as a motto) was:

Ne frustra vixisse videar (May I not seem to have lived in vain).

This was uttered by the 16th century Danish astronomer Tyge (Tycho) Brahe on his deathbed. One of the wealthiest and best connected nobles in Denmark (he had both Rosencrantz and Guildenstern ancestry in his family tree for example) Brahe dedicated his life to a systematic study of the night sky thus laying the groundwork for much of modern astronomy. When one considers that the generation immediately preceding and the generation immediately succeeding his were more interested in spending their wealth, time and energy on prosecuting wars of religion etc then Tycho can rest assured that he did not and neither does it 'seem' so.

Even Shakespeare wanted to be known as a "gentleman". Around 1595 he was successful in his application for a coat of arms, but his chosen motto unfortunately caused much mirth among his friends, notably Ben Jonson. “Not without mustard” is a line from Ben Jonson’s Every Man out of His Humor, and is thought by some to be a joke reference to the "Non Sans Droit" -  “Not Without Right” - displayed on Wobbleweapon's arms. Poor Will - you can imagine the flak he got down the Mermaid...

Badges, coats of arms and mottos still matter quite a lot these days, particularly to those wi a guid conceit o' themselves. and none more so than the Donald.

If you were to visit his establishments in the US of A you would be greeted by his coat of arms and, guess what, he nicked it.
Joseph Tydings, the husband of the woman who built his Florida mansion was granted a coat of arms by the College of Arms in Britain in 1939 and Trump seems to have believed that by buying the building he got the crest thrown in as an added extra. He did chang it though - he removed the motto Integritas and replaced it with Tump. How little does that surprise?




When he washed up on this sceptic isle and started buying up Scotland, he naturally assumed he could continue to display stolen property on his putting greens but no, the Lord Lyon, King of Arms said, " No way, Jose" and he was forced, after a lengthy court battle, to change it. This version, featuring a double headed eagle clutching golf balls, bears the motto Numquam Concedere which coincidentally is also the motto of the poor sods who have the misfortune live beside his course.





It is with some considerable satisfaction that I see that there are again a number of voucher offers on the go for reductions in the prices to eat, stay and play at his houfs to try to reduce the huge losses he is suffering.

Yes indeed, badges and mottoes do still seem to matter to many people.

A major symbol of the French Republic is Marianne. She is the personification of liberty, equality and reason, and her image or profile appears on official government logos, on French euro coins (as well as former francs) and on French postage stamps. She is usually portrayed as the classical Goddess of Liberty, sometimes with a ‘greek’ helmet but more usually with a laurel wreath, or a halo of sunrays (which is how she appears as New York’s Statue of Liberty), or even more commonly as wearing a Phrygian cap (the ancient symbol of freed slaves), a simple maid’s linen cap, or just bare-headed. She is also sometimes depicted as bare-breasted.

Marianne ... on the Great Seal of France (1848) ... and on the current official logo for all French notaires (ie roughly equivalent to English solicitors):


     


...on a pre-euro 20 centime coin ... and on a modern euro coin:

      


...and here as 'Liberty leading the people' by Eugène Delacroix (1830):



Marianne is often used to represent 'true French values' by either one side or the other, or both, at demonstrations or political rallies. Here she is protesting against same-sex marriage:



And what she wears – or doesn’t – is still seen as vitally important to some people. She might be a mythical person but she has still been invoked in various legal disputes. Her bare- breasted image has been used in support of the right of women to sunbathe topless in public, and more recently she has been used as evidence of a certain idea of Frenchness in the Islamic scarf controversy and in calls to ban the burka in public places. However it has to be said that the inference that bare breasts were somehow a symbol of France has been largely derided by politicians, historians, feminists ... and, well, just most French people.

The Order of the Garter:



The middle is simple enough. Edward III wanted to promote a warrior saint as the new patron of England, so why not make George patron of his new order of chivalry as well? But why a garter? And as for the motto - "Shame on him who things evil of it". What is "it"?

Tradition will tell you that at a ball celebrating one of his victories in France (Calais, I believe, is the usual victory) the Countess of Salisbury's garter dropped off. Edward gallantly tied it back on, uttering the words "Honi soit qui mal y pense" (memorably translated in '1066 And All That' as "Honey, your silk stocking's hanging down") to shut up the sniggering courtiers. It's a nice story, but the earliest version appears around 150 years after the Order was founded, and originally it was Edward's missus, Philippa of Hainault, who suffered the clothing failure. (Incidentally, one version claims that Edward was covering up the fact that the Countesses garter marked her out as a high priestess of the witch cult and that, according to Margaret Murray, the Order arose out of the Plantagenet royal coven!)

One 18th century theory claimed that Richard I had tied blue thongs of leather around the legs of his knights at the Siege of Acre, and that Edward was recalling this. Another is that it is a symbolic sword belt, or perhaps a strap for armour. Members of chivalric orders often wore items of clothing which marked out their allegiance, though, so maybe Edward simply chose something which hadn't been used before.

As for the motto, Edward was busily pursuing his claims to various French titles and lands at the time, including the throne, so maybe it simply referred to anyone who would doubt his rights!

Anglo-Norman wrote:

make George patron of his new order of chivalry

This would correspond with the Crecy hypothesis after which it's suggested that King Edward adopted the cross of St George from the Genoese crossbowmen who were on the losing side that day. Similarly the 16-year-old Edward the Black Prince (supposedly) co-opted the ostrich feather badge from the vanquished Luxembourg soldiers of King John of Bohemia:



Although both stories are likely apocryphal, it is the case that both the cross of St George and the ostrich feather badge along with the mottoes 'Honi Soit Qui Mal Y Pense' and 'Ich Dien' came to prominence in England & Wales around the same time.