FLOWERS OF HISTORY. 457 



prosperity her nobles wore wreaths of this flower, 

 and had it embroidered on their robes. Another 

 Margaret, the friend of Erasmus, Margaret of Valois, 

 had the daisy flower worn in her honour. It is said 

 that she was called by her brother, Francis I., his 

 " Marguerite of Marguerites." 



The Lily of France, viz., the heraldic lily, is 

 evidently one of those corruptions which are not 

 uncommon when the origin or meaning of an emblem 

 is forgotten or has become corrupted. It is generally 

 considered that the Fleur-de-lys is a corruption of 

 Fleur-de-Luce, which, again, was in itself the repre- 

 sentative of Fleur-de-Louis. The flower itself was 

 the common purple iris, and not a white lily, and the 

 whole history is apparently summed up in the tradi- 

 tion that when Louis VII., King of France was 

 setting out on his crusade to the Holy Land, 

 he chose the purple iris as his heraldic emblem. 

 Thenceforth it became the Flower of Louis, or 

 Fleur-de-Louis, subsequently Fleur-de-Luce, and , 

 in more degenerate times it settled into Fleur- 

 de-lys. The similarity of colouring in the purple 

 iris of Louis and Napoleonic violet is a strange 

 coincidence. 



It has been believed that the association of the 

 violet with the Bonaparte dynasty originated in this 

 wise. When Napoleon I. left France for Elba it is 



