PLANT-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE 
99 
fflowet>5e=4uce* 
(1) Lilies of all kinds, 
The Flower-de-luce being one.—• Winter’s Tale , iv. 4, 126. 
(2) What sayest thou, my fair Flower-de-luce?— Henry V, v. 2, 323. 
(3) Cropped are the Flower-de-luces in your arms ; 
Of England’s coat one half is cut away.-— 1 st Henry VI , i. i, So. 
(4) I am prepared ; here is my keen-edged sword 
Deck’d with five Flower-de-luces on each side,— Ibid., i. 2, 98. 
(5) A sceptre shall it have, have I a soul, 
On which I’ll toss the Flower-de-luce of France. 
2 nd Henry VI, v. 1, 10. 
Out of these five passages four relate to the Fleur-de-luce 
as the cognizance of France, and much learned inkhas been 
spilled in the endeavour to find 
out what flower, if any, was in¬ 
tended to be represented, so 
that Mr. Blanche says that “ next 
to the origin of heraldry itself, 
perhaps nothing connected with 
it has given rise to so much 
controversy as the origin of this 
celebrated charge.” It has been 
at various times asserted to be 
an Iris, a Lily, a sword-hilt, a 
spear-head, and a toad, or to be 
simply the Fleur de St. Louis. 
Adhuc sub judice Us est —and it 
is never likely to be satisfactorily 
settled. I need not therefore dwell on it, especially as my 
present business is to settle not what the Fleur-de-luce meant 
in the arms of France, but what it meant in Shakespeare’s 
writings. But here the same difficulty at once meets us, some 
writers affirming stoutly that it is a Lily, others as stoutly that 
