The Inglis crest is a silver demi lion, with the motto 'Nobilis est ira leonis'. Lions have long been associated with the Kings of Scotland and the kingdom, so we find it repeatedly used by major Scottish families.


The motto is riffing on the bible passage: Proverbs 19:12 (Vulgate): Sicut fremitus leonis, ita et ira regis – “The king’s wrath is like the roaring of a lion.” So here we have a motto and crest associating itself with the Scottish royal house. A Mr Alexander Inglis, Doctor of Decrees and Master of Requests had a seal featuring the lion rampant (with three stars above, a nod to the Douglases), used on a document dated 1473 (Willam Rae MacDonald, Scottish Armorial Seals, 1904, 179). His office in the royal administration perhaps gives the origin of the lion. Given the surname means, in its origin, ‘Englishman’, it’s perhaps unsurprising those of this name in Scotland would want to fiercely proclaim their Scottishness at heart.


This crest is not in Nisbet’s 1720s System of Heraldry, although a silver lion had been on the shield of various Inglis lines, even if it had not been used as a crest up to that point. The chiefly line, Inglis of Mainer and Mainerhead, had established themselves near Peebles by 1396. The crest with motto in its current form appears to have emerged for the Inglis of ‘Manners and Mannerhead’ (the older spellings of the placename) by the 1830s (Thomas Robson, The British Herald or Cabinet of Armorial Brarings of the Nobility and Gentry of Great Britain and Ireland, vol.2, 1830).


Our older Carrick version of the Inglis Crest.


MKP 12 January 2026