 Fig. 450.—Eagle rising, wings elevated and displayed. |
 Fig. 451.—Eagle displayed. |
 Fig. 452.—Eagle displayed with wings inverted. |
 Fig. 453.—Arms of Ralph de Monthermer, Earl of Gloucester and Hereford: Or, an eagle vert. (From his seal, 1301.) |
 Fig. 454.—Arms of Piers de Gaveston, Earl of Cornwall (d. 1312): Vert, six eagles or. |
 Fig. 455.—Double-headed eagle displayed. |
of the Markgrave Leopold of Austria in 1136, where the equestrian figure of the Markgrave carries a shield so charged. More or less regularly, subsequently to the reign of Frederick Barbarossa, elected King of the Romans in 1152, and crowned as Emperor in 1155, the eagle with one or two heads (there seems originally to have been little unanimity upon the point) seems to have become the recognised heraldic symbol of the Holy Roman Empire; and the seal of Richard, Earl of Cornwall, elected King of the Romans in 1257, shows his arms ["Argent, a lion rampant gules, within a bordure sable, bezanté"] displayed upon the breast of an eagle; but no properly authenticated contemporary instance of the use of this eagle by the Earl of Cornwall is found in this country. The origin of the double-headed eagle (Fig. 455) has been the subject of endless controversy, the tale one is usually taught to believe being that it originated in the dimidiation upon one shield of two separate coats
