Coat of Arms - the Armorial Bearings of the City of Coventry

Information about the appearance and history of Coventry's coat of arms.

Description of the Arms and Supporters

Arms

The Crest, a cat-a-mountain, or wild cat. It is generally considered to symbolise watchfulness. The helmet is that of an esquire with the visor closed, as with all boroughs. The Shield is coloured red and green, the traditional colours of the city dating back to at least 1441. The device is a golden elephant and on its back a gold castle with three domed turrets.

The Supporters

The Supporters, granted in 1959, comprise the Eagle of Leofric (husband of Lady Godiva) and the Phoenix. The Black Eagle of Leofric recalls the ancient Coventry and the Phoenix arising from the flames represents the New Coventry reborn out of the ashes of the old.

The Motto

Mottoes are not an integral part of coats-of-arms. Camera Principis (the Prince's Chamber) is held to refer to Edward, the Black Prince. The Manor of Cheylesmore at Coventry was at one time owned by his grandmother, Queen Isabella, and eventually passed to him.

History of the Coat of Arms

Mary Dormer Harris, the local historian, thought that the elephant had a religious symbolism. The ancient "Bestiaries" works of unnatural Natural History, treat animals as religious types, and it is from these works that many of the animals and birds in church architecture derive.

The elephant is seen, not only as a beast so strong that he can carry a tower - Coventry's castle - full of armed men, but also as a symbol of Christ's redemption of the human race. The animal, according to one of the "bestiary" stories, is supposed to sleep standing, leaning against a tree. Hunters sever the trunk, and he falls helpless to the ground, until a small elephant approaches and pulls him up with his trunk.

Mary Dormer Harris says that "those familiar with the curious cast of medieval thought will not be astonished that in this story was seen a type of the fall of Adam and Eve and of Christ's redemption of the human race". The foe of the elephant was the dragon, who devoured newly-born elephants, and, like the elephant, Adam and Eve had their dragon, the tempter, for the foe. They eat of the forbidden fruit and are lost. They are redeemed by Christ, as also the young elephant, "through a tree" succors those who have fallen.

The elephant, then, is a dragon slayer and is associated with a tree. There is a now forgotten tradition of dragon-slaying in this neighbourhood - and Coventry to be the birthplace of St. George, who slew the dragon. In the early seals of Coventry, from which our coat-of-arms derives, are shown, on one side, the combat between another dragon-slayer, the Archangel Michael, and the dragon. On the other is the elephant and castle.

Mary Dormer Harris points out that the tree has been dropped out of the armorial bearings of the city, and it is a tree from which Coventry almost certainly took its name - Cofa's tree. In the medieval mind, then, the elephant suggested the eating of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and did not merely symbolise strength.