God is my right. Dieu est mon droit is the motto or device of the army of England, first taken by Richard the Lionheart who lived at the end of the thirteenth century, which he did to mark that he took his kingdom from no mortal as a vassal.

Edward III in the fourteenth century then took it when he began to promote his claims to the Crown of France; and his succeeding kings continued to do so without interruption until the time of King William III, Prince of Orange, who used the phrase “ je maintiendrai / I will maintain,” although he ordered that the former still be used on the Great Seal. Queen Anne also used it, although she took as her particular device the two Latin words semper eadem , “always the same,” modeled on Queen Elizabeth. See Device.