Crosses in heraldry

Heraldry names dozens of crosses. The commonest are the cross moline, its ends split and curled back; the patonce and the fleury, ending in flared or lily-shaped tips; the crosslet, with each arm crossed; and the botonny, with trefoil ends. A cross with a pointed foot is fitchy.

Heraldry. Also called cross botonny, cross crosslet, cross fitchy, cross fleury, cross moline, cross patonce, heraldic cross types.

Meaning

The plain cross, Boutell writes, is “the great symbol of the Christian Faith”, and it appears in English heraldry in many varieties. The named forms differ in the ends of their arms. A cross moline has each end split and curled back; patonce and fleury ends flare into three points or into fleurs-de-lis; a crosslet has a short bar across each arm; a botonny ends in trefoils. When the foot of a cross or crosslet is lengthened to a point it is “fitched” or fitchy, a cross, Boutell says, that could be fixed in the ground.

Origin and history

Fox-Davies thought a large share of the hundreds of named crosses came from misreadings of the rough drawings of early armorists, later fixed as separate kinds; it was useless, he said, to learn them all, since in a lifetime most would be met once. Oswald Barron was harsher about the “crosses innumerabill” of the Book of St Albans and its successors, left to “the heraldic dictionary makers who have devised them”, and reduced what he called that “monstrous host of crosses which cumber the dictionaries” to a few medieval forms.

The cross moline

The cross moline takes its shape from the mill-rind, the iron at the centre of a millstone (fer de moline), as Barron explains. Boutell finds a cross moline on the shield later heralds attributed to the Saxon kings of England, and the same blue shield with a gold cross moline borne by the Molyneux family. In the English marks of cadency it is the mark of an eighth son (see Marks of cadency).

Patonce, fleury and moline

These three are easy to confuse; Boutell asked his readers to compare them carefully, and gives a cross patonce from the seal of William de Vesci of 1220. Barron argued that the books had turned different medieval drawings of one cross into several, the “cross patonce” for the earlier form and “cross fleurie” for others. His flowered cross is one whose arms end in fleurs-de-lis. A cross patonce between five martlets is the coat heralds gave to St Edward the Confessor, Fox-Davies notes.

Crosslet or botonny?

The two great heraldry writers agree the forms are related and disagree on which name is right. Fox-Davies says the cross botonny, now a separate kind, was the original form of the crosslet. Barron calls them one cross, its arms ending in trefoils or treble buds, and says the squared-off crosslet appeared only with the decadence of the sixteenth century. A shield strewn with crosslets is “crusilly”.

The Latin cross

Heraldry’s plain cross runs out to the edges of the shield. With the lower limb longer than the others, Boutell writes, it is a Latin or long cross, the cross of the Latin cross page.

Where you’ll see it today

whatdoesthissymbolmean.comFlag of GeorgiaGeorgia’s flag is white with a large red cross reaching all four edges and a smaller red cross in each of the four white squares: the “five-cross flag”. Georgia’s law on state symbols calls the small crosses bolnur-katskhuri crosses; Store norske leksikon traces the design to the banner of Georgia’s kings in the 14th and 15th centuries. whatdoesthissymbolmean.comFlag of MarylandMaryland’s flag is quartered with the arms of two families: the gold and black bars of the Calverts, the Lords Baltimore who founded Maryland, and the red and white cross of the Crosslands, the family of the first Lord Baltimore’s mother, the Maryland State Archives says. The law gives the colours no other meaning.

Sources

The Handbook to English Heraldry, Charles Boutell, 11th edition, revised by Arthur Charles Fox-Davies, 1914 (Project Gutenberg ebook 23186), Reeves & Turner, via Project Gutenberg, Chapter VI, The Cross and its heraldic varieties, pp. 53–56
A Complete Guide to Heraldry, Arthur Charles Fox-Davies, 1909 (Project Gutenberg ebook 41617), T. C. & E. C. Jack, via Project Gutenberg, Chapter IX, The Cross, pp. 128–131; Chapter XIV, Birds: the arms of the College of Arms
Heraldry (1911 Encyclopædia Britannica), Encyclopædia Britannica, 11th edition (1911), vol. 13, article by Oswald Barron, Encyclopædia Britannica, via Wikisource, The Ordinary Charges: crosses

The same shape elsewhere

Browse symbols formed from crosses or letters and numbers.

Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 10, 2026. How we research

Added October 10, 2026.

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