Dimidiated Tudor rose and Scottish thistle joined beneath an imperial crown as the badge of King James I - Bildbanksillustration

This vintage black-and-white line drawing illustrates the historic personal heraldic badge or device of King James I of England, showcasing the method of dimidiation to symbolize the union of the English and Scottish crowns in 1603. The composition centers on a single botanical stem, split vertically down the middle to combine two distinct national emblems into a unified whole. The left half depicts a traditional multi-layered Tudor rose with rounded petals, small sepals, and a slender leafy branch extending outward, while the right half features a Scottish thistle with a spiky, bulbous head, dense vertical florets, and a sharply jagged, prickly leaf. Surmounting the combined floral emblem at the apex is a detailed imperial crown, decorated with alternating crosses pattée and fleurs-de-lis along its upper rim, which is topped by a central globus cruciger. Relying on clean contours and minimal linear hatching, the engraving represents a classic woodcut aesthetic typical of historical reference books or dictionary plates. A formal typeset textbook caption is neatly centered directly beneath the illustration on the plain white paper background.