heraldryofyorkmi01custuoft

ROYAL HERALDRY. 351
I may add here that the term "leopard," or " lion leopardez," which
is sometimes applied to the lions, has a purely heraldic significance, and
is the word used for all lions "guardant," i.e. looking towards you.*
But the interest attached to these arms in our Minster, and to the
future development and differencing
of them, depends
not on the fact that
they are mere conventional tokens of loyalty or court flattery in days
gone by, but that they are, as it were, " footprints in the sands of time,"
indicating great national events and changes of which York was the
centre of action, and commemorating those who, in various degrees, were
actors in the great historic events which have contributed so much to
make England what it is.
In order to trace this we must begin with the reign of Edward I.,
" who," says Mr. Green,
" definitely abandoned all dreams of recovering
" the foreign dominions of his race, to concentrate himself upon
the con-
"solidation and good government of Britain itself. We can only fairly
" judge his annexation of Wales, or his attempt to annex Scotland, if we
"regard them as parts of the same scheme of national administration to
"which we owe the final establishment of our judicature, our legislation,
" our Parliament." f
the
York is little connected with the first, it is closely
identified with
two latter.
As regards the last, viz., the establishment of our Parliament, Green
truly says of Edward I.: "He is the first English king since the Conquest
" who loves his people with a personal love, and craves for their love back
" again. To his trust in them we owe our Parliament ; to his care for
"them the great statutes which stand in the forefront of our laws." He
found the country distracted for the want of something like a real and
adequate representation of the people, and he developed and consolidated
the crude efforts which were ready to hand. The great council of the Norman
kings had simply consisted of all tenants who held directly under the
Crown the bishops, greater abbots, and great officers of the Court. But
these had become divided into "the greater" and "the lesser" barons,
and as the ancient earldoms became extinct and lapsed to the Crown,,
"the lesser barons," who formed the bulk of the tenants of the Crown,
desired, as their protection, to have associated with them the country
gentry, freeholders, and substantial yeomen, rapidly rising into affluence
through the long peace and prosperity of the realm, and the increased
export of wool. And the Crown itself desired it as a means of rendering
taxation more efficient, but mistrusting the increased power thereby of the
as far as the
people, had temporized with them until what they required,
the previous reign (Henry III.)
country was concerned, was established in
* Traar Htraldiqtie, Chas. Segoing. t History of the English People.