The Flemish Origins

Because of its ancient traditions and the sheer volume of international trade, the comte of Boulogne had more sophistication, more wealth than Flanders. Ernicule of Ponthieu, who married the heiress of the counts in 965, kept a court at Boulogne which, in the words of a contemporary chronicler, proceeded to arrogate to itself “les droits et les prerogatives de l’autorites royale elle-meme”. His court, and that of his desendants, was run with the help of a seneschal, an advocate (or defender), a master of hunting, a constable, a gonfanonier (or standard bearer), a marshal and a butler; and supported by four chatelains, two under-counts (or viscounts), and twelve barons. The whole formed an administrative council which descended directly from the synodic pattern laid down by Charlemagne.

The count of Boulogne himself, courted by all his peers, paying a token homage to the count of Flanders but also a grand feudatory of the King of France, was sovereign within his state. He had the power of life and death over his subjects, and of peace or war with his neighbours. He could fortify his own territories, wall his towns, build castles, mint money. His ships could, and did, sweep the Channel seas. Because of its geographical situation as the gateway of Europe, Boulogne had long had an intimate knowledge of the processes of money which bred wealth, and those customs which must support the circulation of currency. Boulogne weights and measures, like Boulogne coins, are well known to French antiquaries.

The colours of Boulogne were the “or” and “gules” of heraldry – in common language, gold and red. The official emblem, that borne personally by the count, was or, three torteaux gules – which is to say, three red balls on a yellow ground.

This one unquestionable armorial device occurs soon afterwards in the tapestry, where invading horsemen are meeting the unmounted Saxons. The leading calvaryman (the gonfanonier?) carries a bannered lance, and this time the flag is unmistakably ornamented with the three red balls on a ground of gold borne by the counts of Boulogne. So inherited devices of the kind we call heraldic were known in 1066, and were carried at the Battle of Hastings.

But, permanently and irrevocably, the Conquest changed the system. Domesday shows the huge grants made by William of Normandy to his non-Norman allies. The English lands acquired by the Boulonnais nobility would expect to follow the continental custom and have their own territorial mark. Extra allegiances brought with them the need for further explanatory devices. A younger son, founding his own dynasty in a new land, would want his own symbol, something individual and recognizable as his, but also plainly derived from the parent pattern. For in the medival world a man’s past was as important as his present; and it was necessary to indicate with both clarity and precision not only who he was but from where he had come. The resultant heraldic shake-up was to the biggest since the division of Europe after Charlemagne’s death in 814. It’s effects in England are fascinating and informative; in Scotland they are the very fabric of that nation’s history.

Like all European princes of the time, William the Conqueror was a product of international breeding. He knew, from his wife, his aunts, his grandmother, and the foreign nobles who attended them at the Norman court, something of the manners and traditions of the European aristocracy. The vast rewards he made to the followers of Eustace of Boulogne must have been bestowed with peculiar pleasure; the sometimes landless heirs of Charlemagne would thus be placed permanently in his debt; pirate turned patron was a pleasing role for this subtle and calculating man to play.  His protégés were also, most of them, his wife’s kinsmen.