Chapter 6 Baliganz veit sun gunfanun cadeir

E l'estandart Mahumet remaneir.

[Baligant sees his gonfanon fall

And the standard of Mahomet remain (defenceless).]

In speaking of the flags the poet (or perhaps poets) uses either the words "enseigne" or "gunfanun" or, in one instance, "orie flambe." What then was the "Standard of Mahomet" which the author of this section has in mind? The story he is telling is, of course, purely mythical, so that he, or the original inventor of the myth, must have met the word and the object which it connoted in some other connection. The most likely source of this knowledge is the First Crusade. During the struggle for the possession of Jerusalem in the summer of 1099, Robert of Normandy, in personal combat, seized from one of the Saracen Emirs an object which is described as a very long pole covered over with silver, having at its top a golden ball or apple (pomum aureum). This was called a standard, a word which was evidently at that time of recent introduction, for the contemporary historians, some of whom had been eye-witnesses of the events they relate, have various ways of spelling it, and usually refer to it in such a way as to indicate that the word was not in familiar use[3]. According to Albert of Aix[4] this standard was borne in front of the army of the "King of Babylon" and was the centre around which the flower of the army gathered and to which stragglers returned. A few years later Fulcher of Chartres notes the capture of three more "standards," but does not describe them.

The second form of standard (which was apparently imitated from the Italian carrocio presently to be described) makes its appearance nearly a hundred years later. In an engagement with the Saracens near Acre at the end of August, 1191, the banner of Richard I was borne aloft on a machine of which the unknown but contemporary author of the Itinerarium Regis Ricardi gives the following description:

The Normans formed a rampart around the Standard, which in order that it may be better known we have not thought it out of the way to describe. It consists, then, of a very long beam, like the mast of a ship, placed upon four wheels in a frame very solidly fastened together and bound with iron, so that it seems incapable of yielding either to sword, axe or fire. Affixed to the very top of this, the royal flag, commonly called banner, flies in the wind. For the protection of this machine, especially in battle in the open, a selected band of soldiers is appointed, so that it may not be broken down by onrush of the enemy or overthrown by any injury, for if by any chance it should be overthrown the army would be dispersed and confounded, because it would not know in what part of the field to rally. Moreover, the hearts of the soldiers would be filled with the fear that their leader had been overcome if they did not see his banner borne aloft. Nor would they in the rear readily come forward to resist the enemy if, from the withdrawal of his banner, they feared that some ill fortune had happened to their king. But while that standard remained erect the people had a sure place of refuge. Hither the sick were brought to be cured, hither were brought the wounded, and even famous or illustrious men tired out in the fighting. Whence, because it stands fast as a sign to all the people, it is called the "Standard."[5] It is placed upon four wheels, not without reason, in order that, according to the state of the battle, it may be either brought forward as the enemy yield or drawn back as they press on.

It is to a machine similar to this, and bearing aloft a pyx and three banners, that the battle near Northallerton in 1138 owes its name of Battle of the Standard.

The use of this form of standard was not confined to the English; indeed it seems to have been in general use in the armies of western Europe in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and the transference of the name from the support to the royal, ducal, or state flag that it bore was a natural consequence. This transference evidently began to take place about the end of the thirteenth century, for in 1282 the State gonfanon of Genoa, hitherto called the "vexillum" of St George, in the Annales Genoenses, becomes the "Stantarium B. Georgii." In England the change seems to have taken place a little later. I have not met with it before the year 1323, when the Exchequer Accounts contain references to Standards (Estandartz, estandardes) bearing the royal arms and made of worsted of Aylesham.

But the name was not given in England to every form of flag bearing the royal arms or cross of St George. It was confined to a particular type intermediate in length between the streamer and the banner[6]. This type was evidently the direct descendant of the "gonfanon," which is the only form of flag represented on such of the great seals of our early kings as show flags at all[7]. From the fact that it is this form which is depicted at the masthead of the ships in early seals, as for instance those of Hastings and Lyme Regis (thirteenth century) and of Dover (1305) reproduced in Plate III, we may infer that it was the type most convenient for use at the head of the "standard," and therefore the type to which the name gradually became applied. During the fourteenth century the tails were reduced in number to two and the flag made to taper gradually throughout its length. Finally, the heralds established a form in which the tails were short, blunt and rounded off at the end, which they decided should contain the cross of St George in chief with the motto and badges of the owner, but not his arms, in the fly. This change seems to have taken place about the end of the fifteenth century. By the restriction of the royal arms to flags of banner form the name "standard," when qualified by the adjective "royal" (but only in this connection), became transferred to the royal banner of arms, not only in popular speech which makes no account of such technical niceties, but also in official usage from Tudor times to this day.

Streamer. A long and relatively narrow flag flown at sea from the masthead, top or yardarm, often reaching down to the water. The earlier name of the modern "pendant." The term is also applied to any ribbon-like flag or decoration.

Pennon. Originally a small pointed flag worn at the lance-head by knights; but the word was used at sea in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries to denote a short streamer.

Pennoncel. A small pennon.

Pennant (in modern official language written "pendant," but pronounced "pennant"). A synonym for "streamer," a name which it has gradually replaced.

Geton, gytton, guidon. A small swallow-tailed flag.

Ensign (corruptly written "ancient" during the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries). This word was borrowed from the land service in the sixteenth century to denote the striped flag then introduced on the poop of ships. In explaining the meaning of this word in the Army, Barret[8] remarks: "We Englishmen do call them (Ensigns) of late Colours, by reason of the variety of colours they be made of, whereby they be the better noted and known to the companie."

Colours. Originally applied to an ensign; afterwards extended to mean the flags commonly flown by a ship. At the end of the seventeenth century a "suit of colours" included ensign, jack and pendant.

Jack. A small flag flown on the bowsprit.

Upon the water, as upon the land, the Standard (taking the word in its earliest meaning) seems to have preceded the Flag by many centuries. The earliest knowledge we have of its existence is derived from the pottery of the pre-dynastic Egyptians, to whom, on the most moderate estimate of Egyptologists, a date not later than 4000 b.c. has been assigned. Among the primitive decorations of the earthenware vases and boxes of that period the representation of a boat[9] frequently appears. In these boats, which seem to have been in use only on the Nile, the two cabins amidships are a prominent feature. At the end of the aftermost cabin rises a tall pole with an emblem at the top, which is believed to represent the district or town to which the owner of the boat belonged. There are at least eighteen different forms of this emblem[10], but these standards all agree in having in their upper part two pendent objects which appear to be long ribbons or streamers attached to the pole. These standards were developed into the nome-standards of the Egyptian armies, but they never again appear in Egypt in connection with boats, which from the time of the First Dynasty onwards are invariably represented without standard or flag of any kind, although in rare instances the top of the steering oar is decorated with two long ribbons.

PLATE II - Coins

Standards appear to have been in use at a later date among all the Semitic nations, but evidence of their use upon the sea before the fifth century b.c. is not forthcoming. From about the end of that century onwards Sidon and Aradus (Arvad), the two great seaports of Phoenicia, referred to by the prophet Ezekiel in his lamentation for Tyre[11] as supplying the mariners for that city, placed upon their coinage[12] a representation of a war galley. At the stern of this galley, supported against a curved ornament similar to that to which the Greeks gave the name "Aphlaston," is placed a tall staff having at its top a globe within the arms of a crescent, representing the sun and moon. In the earlier examples this is too indistinct for successful photographic representation but it is clearly visible in the coins of the fourth century shown in Plate II[13].

After the submission of those cities to Alexander the Great in 333 b.c. the globe and crescent seems to have been exchanged for a cruciform standard similar to that shown in the left hand of the goddess Astarte in the coin of 87 b.c. depicted in Plate II, fig. 4. This cruciform standard was probably adopted by Alexander from the Athenians, the most prominent naval power of Greece, among whom it seems to have been an object of great significance[14]. On two great amphorae awarded to the victors in the Panathenaic games of 336-5 b.c., now in the British Museum, it is represented in a manner which can leave no doubt as to its symbolic importance. On one of them Athene holds in her hand a long cruciform staff, the head of which is expanded in ovoid form. On the other amphora the goddess has by her side a short column which is surmounted by a winged Victory (Nike) holding in her left hand a similar standard, and in her right the aphlaston of a galley. Unfortunately for our purpose, the Athenians did not represent ships upon their coinage, but similar standards are seen in the hand of the nymph Histiaea upon the coins of the Euboean town of that name, dated circa 313-265 b.c., two of which are represented in Plate II, figs. 7 and 8. Many other instances, too numerous to detail, will be found upon later Greek coins. In these the crosses are not all of the same design, and Prof. Babelon has collected examples of thirty-six forms, all more or less different, from the plain cross to a more elaborate form in which the head terminates in a ball and two small winged figures of Victory kneel at the ends of the arms. Some of these forms are decorated with narrow streamers; in many of them the cross-piece is not at right angles to the staff, but it is possible that this may be due to an attempt at perspective. One other instance deserves mention: the excavations on the site of the important city of Pergamum in Asia Minor, once the capital of the kingdom of Pergamus, and afterwards that of the Roman province of Asia, have brought to light the bas-reliefs which decorated the balustrade of the Portico of Athene Polias. On this bas-relief, which, in the opinion of M. Collignon[15], alludes to naval victories under Attalus (241-197 b.c.) or Eumenes II (197-159), the cruciform standard is twice represented in highly ornate forms terminating in pine cones at the head; in each case it is accompanied with the aphlasta and beaks of galleys.

A careful study of all the examples leads to the conclusion that this globe and crescent, or cruciform, standard was the symbol of naval authority, the prototype in fact of the Admiral's flag. The name of this standard is not specifically stated, but there can be no doubt that it is the semeion (σημε?ον) frequently referred to by Greek authors in describing naval actions. That the semeion was a solid object we know from the fact that it was raised aloft in giving signals[16]. There is evidence that semeia were of various forms and that these forms were distinctive of the nationality of the ship. Of Artemisia, queen of Halicarnassus, who accompanied Xerxes in his expedition against Greece and fought on the Persian side at the Battle of Salamis (480 b.c.), Polyaenus, in his Strategemata, relates that she had two semeia, one of "barbarian" form, the other Greek. When she was pursuing a Greek ship she raised aloft the barbarian standard[17], but when fleeing before a Greek ship she raised the Greek standard, so that her pursuer took her ship for Greek and kept off from it. The "barbarian" standard used by Artemisia was probably the globe and crescent above referred to, for Sidon supplied Xerxes with the best of his ships, and it was in Sidonian ships that Xerxes himself was wont to embark[18]. It seems, on the other hand, probable that a cruciform standard was in common use by all the Greek states at an early period, for Polyaenus relates that Chabrias, the Athenian general, just before his action off Naxos in 376 with the Lacedaemonian fleet under Pollis, ordered his subordinate commanders to remove the semeia from their ships and to keep in mind, in the ensuing conflict, that all ships bearing such signs were enemies[19].

The flag was evidently unknown to the early Greeks; it is never mentioned by Homer, and indeed there is no equivalent word in the language of the classical period, yet at the time when we first meet with the standard on the Phoenician coins flags were in common use by the Chinese. The Chinese classics on the art of war known as the Sun Tzu and Wu Tzu, written in the fifth century b.c., make frequent reference to them. They played a very important part in marshalling the army and inspiriting the soldiers, and the correct moment to strike the enemy was judged by the disorder of their flags. According to Wu, the Chinese flags contained various animal emblems.

The origin of the flag in European waters may however be dated from the end of the fifth century b.c., when a primitive form was, if later writers[20] are a safe guide, in use in the Athenian navy. This was the "purple garment" or "Phoinikis[21]," used as a signal for combat or as the sign of the Admiral's ship. Possibly the use of this emblem may have been imitated from the Phoenicians. It may, on the other hand, have originated independently, from a necessity of rendering the cruciform standard more conspicuous in action. There is not sufficient evidence to decide this point, but it is significant that the vexillum in use among the Romans at a somewhat later date shows traces of a similar origin.

The military standard or signum of the Romans consisted of a lance with silver-plated shaft with a cross-piece at the top, from which in some instances a small vexillum was suspended. From the ends of this cross-piece, whether it held a vexillum or not, hung ribbons with silver ivy leaves at the ends. Below were a number of discs, which are believed to represent the honours conferred upon the Legion to which the signum belonged[22]. Below these again was a crescent, as a charm against ill-fortune. In the signa of the Praetorian guard the discs were replaced by crowns alternating with medallion portraits of the imperial house. These signa were used as company ensigns to facilitate the tactical movements of the Legion. The principal standard of the Legion, answering to the Regimental Colours, was the aquila or eagle. Pliny the Elder[23] informs us that

Caius Marius in his second consulship (b.c. 103) assigned the eagle exclusively to the Roman Legions. Before that period it had only held the first rank, there being four others as well, the wolf, the minotaur, the horse and the wild boar, each of which preceded a single division. Some few years before his time it had begun to be the custom to carry the eagle only into battle, the other standards being left behind in camp. Marius however abolished the rest of them entirely.

The vexillum consisted of a square piece of material, usually red or purple but sometimes white or blue, hung by the top edge (or sometimes its two top corners only) from a cross-piece at the head of a lance and heavily fringed along its bottom edge. The peculiar method of attachment at the corners, which caused it to hang in heavy folds instead of straight down, would seem to indicate an origin similar to that of the Greek "Phoinikis." This was the standard appropriated to the cavalry and to the special detachments of infantry, and it is said to be the oldest of the Roman military standards. It hung before the General's tent and was used in giving the signal to prepare for battle[24]. From its use in this connection it naturally became the sign of a commander of a fleet of ships[25] and was used in giving the signal for fleet actions.

Flavius Vegetius[26], writing at the close of the fourth century a.d., distinguishes six kinds of military insignia, viz.: aquila, draco, vexillum, flammula, tufa and pinna. The Draco or dragon had been borrowed from the Parthians after the death of Trajan. It took the form of a dragon fixed upon a lance with gaping jaws of silver. The body was of coloured silk, and when the wind blew down the open jaws the body was inflated. The Flammula (little flame) was an elongated flag attached to the staff at the side, split throughout its length so as to form two narrow streamers. The Tufa seems, from the name, to have been some form of tuft[27] or helmet-crest, but the exact form is not known. It is of interest as having been adopted in Britain under the name Tuuf[28]. Pinnae was the name given to the side wings of the soldiers' helmets, apparently formed of feathers. The precise form of the pinna standard is not known, but it is probable that the fan-shaped feather standards which are displayed at the coronation of the pope are a survival of this, or the preceding form.

Until the end of the Roman Empire the standard was used at sea only for signalling purposes or to mark the ship in which the leader was embarked. Thus in the action off Marseilles in b.c. 49, in which Caesar's fleet under the command of Brutus engaged the Massilian fleet which was fighting on the side of Pompey, the ship in which Brutus was embarked was quickly recognised by the leader's standard, and narrowly escaped being rammed by two triremes from opposite sides[29].

There are frequent references to this standard in classical writers and it is often depicted in reliefs or on coins. From these it is clear that its position was on the starboard quarter of the ship, at the leader's right hand; it was raised there in going into action, and its removal was a sign of disaster or retreat. It would seem that it was also removed if the fleet was about to be engaged by superior forces, presumably in order that the enemy might not concentrate against the leader's ship. Thus in b.c. 36 Octavian, when expecting an attack at sea by Pompey, embarked in a liburnian and sailed round the fleet exhorting his men to have courage. When he had done this he lowered his standard "as is the custom in times of very great danger[30]."

Pompey, whose success at sea had already induced him to exchange the customary purple cloak of the Roman commander for a dark blue one, "as the adopted son of Neptune," inflicted on Octavian the defeat that the latter had anticipated, but was shortly afterwards himself defeated at Naulochus by Agrippa, whom Octavian, a few years later, after the battle of Actium, honoured with a special dark blue flag[31] as a symbol of his naval superiority. From the account given by Appian of the action off Naulochus it is clear that there was no distinguishing flag in the private ships, as he expressly states that the only difference in the ships of Octavian and Pompey lay in the colours of the towers erected on them. From another passage in Appian[32] it appears that it was the rule for the inferior commander to lower his standard on approaching a superior. It is evident that these standards were not "national" in the sense that our modern flags are national.

It is difficult to understand why an invention so apparently simple as the laterally-attached flag should have been so late in making its appearance in Europe (except in the form of small ribbon-like streamers), but the fact remains that it is not until the close of the eighth century a.d. that we meet with evidence of its existence. About the year 800 Pope Leo III caused a mosaic to be placed on the apse of the Triclinium of the Lateran Palace, in which on the right Christ was represented as handing the keys of the Church to Pope Sylvester and a flag to Constantine, while on the left St Peter was handing a pallium to Leo and a similar flag to Charlemagne. Except for some fragments in the Vatican this mosaic has disappeared, but engravings showing it before and after restoration are to be found in a description of the Lateran published at Rome in 1625[33]. In these the flags are depicted as attached by one side to a staff, whilst the fly is cut into three pointed tails. The field in both flags is charged with six roses, but the reproduction made from early drawings by Benedict XIV in 1743, which is still in existence at Rome in the Tribune against the Santa Scala, shows the flag on the right, which is of a green colour, sprinkled with golden stars, not roses. In the year 800 Charlemagne was crowned emperor at Rome, and received from the Patriarch of Jerusalem the keys of that city together with a flag the form of which is not stated. Evidently these flags were symbols of authority, as we have seen the vexillum to have been centuries before.

There are several instances during the succeeding centuries of this ceremonial presentation of a flag by high ecclesiastical authorities to the leaders of expeditions whose aims received the approval of the Church, the most important, from our point of view, being the presentation made to William the Conqueror before his expedition to England. Beside these there appear to have been other flags in use which symbolised the patronage and protection of some especial saint, as for instance the vexillum of St Maurice borne in the Spanish campaigns of Charlemagne.

It seems probable that the laterally-attached form of flag had its origin in the East, for Ximenes de Rada, Archbishop of Toledo, who died in 1247, mentions this form as one of the special characteristics of the Arabs who overcame Roderic in 711 a.d. and conquered Spain[34].

It is true that, as will be seen in the next chapter, the Danes were using this form in the ninth century, but it is more probable that they had adopted it from the Franks than that they had invented it; certainly the only standards of the Germanic tribes known to the Romans were animal emblems, which were kept in the sacred groves until required in battle[35].

The form of flag that first comes into evidence in the Lateran mosaic, that in which the flag is attached laterally to the staff while the fly is cut into three pointed tails, appears again upon two Carlovingian book-covers of carved ivory, one of the ninth and one of the tenth century, now preserved in South Kensington Museum. Neither of these bears any device upon it, but in another book-cover of the twelfth century in the same collection a small cross saltire appears in the body of the flag, and the tails are proportionately of much greater length. This form, to which the term "gonfanon" became applied, was the principal form in use until the twelfth century, when it began to be replaced by the rectangular banner, which offered a more suitable field for the display of the personal devices that afterwards developed into heraldic charges.

The most important historical monument that has survived to illustrate the use of the gonfanon is the celebrated piece of embroidery known as the Bayeux Tapestry. We need not here enter into the controversy that has so long raged over the question of the exact date to be assigned to this unique work. The weight of evidence inclines strongly toward a date within the last two decades of the eleventh century, but if we admit a date as late as 1150 a.d. it will not materially affect the conclusions we shall draw. In addition to five rather rudimentary forms at the mastheads of the ships, twenty-five gonfanons in all are depicted, two with five tails, one with four, and the remainder with three. Only a small proportion of the hundreds of armed men who appear in the various scenes of military activity portrayed bear gonfanons on their spears. These are the greater leaders-the barons, as the Normans called them. The variation in the number of tails is probably merely an incidental caprice of the designer or embroiderers, but there is one gonfanon which greatly exceeds the rest in size and in the length of its tails, which in this case alone are shown of such length as to curl in the wind[36]. It appears in the representation of that crucial moment in the battle at which the Normans, taken with a sudden panic, and believing that their Duke had fallen, were about to quit the fight, when William, lifting his helmet from his face, turned towards them and called out that he was still alive and by God's help would yet conquer. At the same time, a companion figure, which from the mutilated superscription in the tapestry appears to be Eustace of Boulogne, lifts this gonfanon high in the air with his left hand while with the right he points to the Duke's face; a significant action, calling attention in a twofold manner to William's presence. This gonfanon is probably the one consecrated and sent by Pope Alexander; the principal flag of the Norman army on the day of battle[37]. It cannot be supposed that the most elaborate flag in the whole tapestry is merely the personal gonfanon of Eustace, and indeed the assertion of M. Marignan that the device shown in this gonfanon represents the arms of the Counts of Boulogne has been sufficiently refuted by Dr Round[38]. As a matter of fact this device (which may be described as a cross formy between four roundels) was not an uncommon one at that period. It will be found upon the reverse of many of the coins of the Holy Roman Emperors from Charlemagne onwards and upon those of some of the English monarchs before the Conquest. On the other hand, the gonfanons which appear in earlier scenes in the tapestry either in William's hand or in the hand of the gonfanoner in attendance on him, display only a plain Greek cross. It is therefore not unreasonable to assume that this particular device was associated with sovereign power and would consequently be suitable for a banner that was intended to be an outward sign of the Pope's claim to transfer the sovereignty of England from Harold to William. Moreover, according to Wace, William formally adopted the consecrated gonfanon as his own before the battle:

Li Dus apela un servant

Son gonfanon fist traire avant

Ke li Pape li enveia,

E cil le trait, cil le despleia:

Li Dus le prist, suz le dre?a

Raol de Conches apela

Portez dist-il mon gonfanon

The Duke called a servant

Caused his gonfanon to be brought forward

Which the Pope sent him

And the man brought it, he unfolded it

The Duke took it, raised it erect

Called to him Raol de Conches

Bear, said he, my gonfanon.

Roman de Rou, v, 12713-9.

Thus it appears that William's original gonfanon was not borne in the battle, but was replaced by the consecrated flag, which would thereby become the rallying point for the army and the special sign of the Duke's location in the field.

Raol, who was the hereditary gonfanoner of the Duke of Normandy, asked permission to decline the honour of bearing the consecrated flag on the ground that he wished to take part in the fighting, as did Gautier Giffard, to whom it was subsequently offered, and it was finally handed to Toustain.

Before we deal with the remaining flags we must first examine the square object shown at the masthead of William's ship the 'Mora.' This has been commonly supposed to be the "consecrated banner" in question, but, as pointed out by Freeman[39], it is really a great lantern. The Norman army embarked at St Valery in the estuary of the Somme late in the afternoon of the 27th Sept., and before William had got on board the 'Mora' the sun had set. As he did not wish the fleet to make the English coast before daybreak, he gave orders that on reaching the open sea the ships were to anchor near him until he gave a signal by lighting the lantern at the masthead and sounding the trumpet, when they were to follow him across[40]. The object above the lantern, which resembles a cross, may be intended to represent the weather-vane spoken of by Wace:

Une lanterne fist le Dus

Metre en sa nef el mast de sus

Ke les altres nès le veissent

Et empres li lor cors tenissent

Une wire-wire dorée

Out de cuivre en somet levée.

The Duke caused a lantern

To be placed in his ship at the masthead

So that the other ships might see it

And hold their course near him.

A gilded weather-vane

Of copper it had raised on top.

Roman de Rou, v, 11592-7.

The remaining flag of the Norman army is an enigma. In form, the segment of a circle fringed along the circumference, it contains a representation of a bird with closed wings and outstretched claws, placed with its back to the staff, so that when the spear is held inclined forward, as in the Tapestry, it appears to be standing on the ground. The suggestion of Meyrick that this represents an ancestral flag of the men of the Cotentin, the descendants of the Danes of Harold Blaatand, is more ingenious than satisfying, for the Danish raven was never depicted in this tame position. Its attitude resembles that of the hawks seen perched on Guy's hand in the two early scenes in which he leads Harold to William, and indeed in the lower border, which throughout the tapestry contains frequent allusions to the events depicted above it, there appears immediately below this flag a hawk chasing a rabbit. From its unusual-not to say unique-form it would seem to belong to a people of different race from that of the bulk of the army, and the only body of men present in William's army fulfilling this condition were the Celts of Brittany, whose leader Alan had command of the third division of the army, and whose flag therefore must have been one of the most important of those in the field.

On the English side, the most important object is the Dragon Standard (Plate I, fig. 2) which is symbolically shown in two positions: upright in the hand of the standard-bearer, and fallen to the ground with its bearer lying dead across its staff. Immediately behind it Harold himself is likewise represented twice, first upright and drawing the arrow from his eye, and then prone, receiving his final wound. A little before this, in the scene which portrays the death of Harold's brothers Gyrth and Leofwine, there lies on the ground a triangular flag, with fringed tails hanging from the lower edge, a form similar to that found on the tenth century Northumbrian coins[41]. This is the only flag which, like the standard, is lying on the ground; its overthrow must therefore have had a great symbolic importance in the mind of the designer of the tapestry, and the only flag that we know of which would fulfil this condition is that one against which the brothers took their stand (see p. 32). This was the flag upon which the figure of a fighting man was worked in gold, and although the tapestry does not show this figure (probably because there is not room for it), there can be little doubt that the representation of that flag is intended.

L'estendart unt à terre mis

E li Reis Heraut unt occis

E li meillor de ses amis;

Li gonfanon à or unt pris.

They have overthrown the standard

And slain King Harold

And the best of his friends;

They have taken the gold-worked

gonfanon.

Roman de Rou, v, 13956-9.

We have, in the preceding pages, traced the development of the flag up to the closing years of the eleventh century without finding any evidence of the existence of a national flag, that is, of a flag flown, not to denote the presence of some particular leader at sea or on the field of battle, or that some especial religious sanction or blessing had been conferred or expected, but to indicate that the ship, town or other strong place upon which it was placed owned allegiance to some particular state or sovereign authority: a flag that might, on suitable occasion, be flown by any subjects of that state, not as their personal ensign but as a symbol of the collective body of which they were members.

While the Roman Empire stood at the height of its power, with the whole civilised world under its dominion, there was no need of any such device; and long after it had in fact passed away the theory of its nominal existence survived and hindered the development of any national consciousness. It is clear that this feeling must have been strong since we find it shared by such a man as Theodoric the Ostrogoth, who, although de facto ruler of Italy from 493 to his death in 526, professed his allegiance to the Eastern Empire and showed anxiety to get his position recognised by the Emperor at Constantinople. The history of the next five hundred years is that of a continuous succession of struggles for power and possession of territory between kings, nobles and ecclesiastics, and although the crowning of Charlemagne by the Pope in 800 was a formal repudiation by Rome of the authority of the Eastern Emperor there is no indication that the idea of nationality had yet arisen in the minds of men. The flag which Leo III presented to him was not in any way a national emblem; it was the symbol of his supreme authority and no more. In the ninth and tenth centuries there existed a certain number of religious flags of greater or less reputation for their wonder-working powers, of which the Oriflamme of Saint Denis may be taken as the type, but these were never national in the sense in which we have defined this word above.

The great movement known as the Crusades, which commenced at the end of the eleventh century, and after two hundred years of failure, relieved by a few transient successes, finally exhausted the enthusiasm of western Europe at the end of the thirteenth century, has been claimed as one of the main causes of the growth of national sentiment. In a sense this is no doubt correct, though it is equally true that its failure was primarily due to the national antagonisms of the peoples who took part in the expeditions to the Holy Land, and the partisan jealousies and individual self-seeking of their leaders. But there is no doubt as to the effect it had in widening the mental horizon of all the peoples of western Europe, and it is therefore not surprising to find indications of a development of flag design during the course of the struggle. Nevertheless, if we expect to find traces of any national or popular flags among the early crusaders we shall be disappointed. The kings, nobles, and military orders of the Temple and Hospital had each their own special banner, but the common people had none, and it was not until the year 1188, one hundred years after the first crusaders had entered Syria, that a means was provided for distinguishing the rank and file of different nationalities by a variation in the colour of the crosses upon their shoulders. From the beginning, the cross set upon the clothing of rich and poor alike had been the outward symbol of a common religion and, in theory, of a common aim among all who took part in the conflicts with the followers of Mahomet, but the flags which led the armies into action and crowned the towers of captured castles or the gates of towns were those of the individual leaders. Squabbles over the precedence of such flags were not infrequent. The well-known instance of Richard I and Philip of France at Messina in 1190 was perhaps the most important in its after effects, but it was by no means the first or last of such occurrences. In 1098 the Emir in command of one of the castles in the neighbourhood of Antioch, seeing that the Saracens had been dispersed, and fearful for the result if the Christians assaulted the castle, offered to surrender, and asked for a Christian flag, which he placed on the highest point of the walls. He took that nearest to hand, which happened to be that of Raymond of Toulouse. The followers of Bohemond were very angry at this, and in the end the Emir gave back Raymond's banner and erected that of Bohemond in its place. In August of the following year the Emir of Ascalon, frightened by the fall of Jerusalem, made a similar offer of surrender to Raymond and hoisted his flag over the gate of the city. Godfrey of Bouillon, who had just been elected ruler of Jerusalem, claimed possession for himself, whereupon the Emir sent back Raymond's flag and refused to surrender to either of them.

The placing of the flag of one of the crusading leaders upon castle or town was usually sufficient to protect that place from further assault, but it was not always respected. On the capture of Jerusalem in July, 1099, a remnant of the wretched inhabitants who had escaped torture and massacre at the hands of the Christians, had taken refuge on the roof of the mosque which occupied the site of Solomon's Temple. Tancred, moved by pity, wished to spare them, and he and Gaston de Bearn gave them their gonfanons as a protection. This served them for a few hours, but the Crusaders had not tasted enough blood, and early next morning, ignoring the protection thus formally granted, they shot them down with arrows or put them to the sword-men and women alike. Raymond and Tancred had in a like manner given protection to the defenders of the Tower of David, who received their flags "as a sign of protection and life." Raymond was more successful, perhaps because the Tower of David was not so easily entered, and he succeeded in getting the prisoners away safely, thereby giving rise to the scandalous imputation that he had neglected his duty and sold his protection for gold.

Our last instance of the use of the flag during this (the first) Crusade will concern its employment at sea. In May, 1102, Jaffa was being threatened by the Saracens, and Baldwin, then King of Jerusalem, was anxious to encourage the inhabitants to hold out. The Saracen forces prevented him from getting there by land; he therefore embarked at Arsuf in a buss, together with one Goderic, who is described by Albert of Aix as an English pirate. On approaching Jaffa the flag of Baldwin was fastened to a spear and raised high in the sun, so that the Christians in Jaffa, on seeing it, might be sure that Baldwin was still living. The Saracens also recognised it, and hastily collecting a force of twenty galleys and thirteen other craft, attempted to sink the buss. The king, however, got through in safety.

We have, unfortunately, no exact description of the various flags mentioned, for the contemporary writers do not condescend to give such details, though they occasionally allude to some characteristic feature. Thus the flag of Bohemond is stated to have been of a red colour (rubicundum, sanguineum) while that of Robert of Normandy was yellow (aureum). That of Baldwin is referred to several times as being white. On one occasion it was torn from his lance through being driven into the body of an Arab whom he slew. The flags[42] borne on lances in battle were evidently of gonfanon form, as there are several references to the tails flying in the faces or over the heads of the enemy, but it seems that there were also a number of larger flags, for several of the greater leaders, including Bishop Adhemar the Papal Legate, had a special flag-bearer (vexillifer). These were probably also of gonfanon form during the First Crusade, for the deep rectangular banner does not appear to have been introduced until the Second Crusade.

It seems that crosses were borne in some of the flags, but there is no mention of any personal device, though some flags are stated to have been resplendent with purple and precious stones. It is commonly supposed that the introduction to western Europe of the cross of St George (the red cross on white ground) dates from this first crusade, yet it does not appear at that time to have been associated with him. On the 28th June, 1098, the crusaders besieged in Antioch by Corbogha, finding themselves within measurable distance of destruction by famine, determined to risk all upon a pitched battle. In this forlorn hope they were completely successful. Unable to account for this by any earthly cause, they imagined that they had seen a great army on white horses, clothed in white and bearing white banners in their hands, issue from the neighbouring mountains and come to their assistance. The leaders of this ghostly army, recognised by their names written on their banners, were St George, St Demetrius, and St Mercurius[43]. If at this time the red cross had become the distinctive sign of St George one or other of these writers would surely have mentioned it, but all agree that the banners were white.

We may gather a few more details regarding the flags of the crusading period from some of the earlier chansons de geste. The gonfanon, the use of which was confined to the nobility, was fastened to the shaft of the spear before going into action by three or five nails[44], and it must have needed a strong fastening if it was to remain on the spear throughout the battle. Indeed, the poets give a realistic touch to their descriptions of the various combats by narrating how their heroes drove the cloth of the gonfanon into the body of the foe. As they sat upright upon their horses the tails of the gonfanon reached down to their hands or even to their feet.

Dunc met sa main en sa vermeille chalce

Si traist tut fors une enseigne de palie

A treis clous d'or en sa lance la lacet

Ot le braz destre brandist l'espié en haste

Des i qu'as poinz les lengues d'or li'n batent.

Then thrust his hand into his scarlet hose

And drew forth an ensign of rich silk

With three golden nails fastened it to his lance

In his right hand brandished the spear with vigor

Down to his fist the golden tongues beat down.

Guillaume d'Orange, v. 317.

The designs are simple in colour-red, white, yellow-and there is no mention of any charge upon them, though in one instance a red gonfanon is marked by a golden cross:

L'espié trait en sa main au vermel gonfanon

Une Crois i ot d'or. Conquête de Jerusalem, v. 425.

The pennons were carried by knights; they appear to have been of similar colours to the gonfanons, but were much smaller.

Tos chevaliers, n'i a cel n'ait penon.

(All knights, there was not one but had a pennon.)

Ogier l'Ardenois, v. 4440.

We have already noticed that the name "Standard" appears first applied to a Saracen ensign. Further corroboration of this is supplied by the Chanson d'Antioche and Le Conquête de Jerusalem. In the latter poem the author (Richard the Pilgrim) has imagined a wonderful standard carried on an iron chariot and made of ivory and various precious woods, and of an enormous height:

L. toises longes i puet on brachoier

Onques nus homs de char ne vit si haut clochier.

The custom of marking the flag with some distinctive heraldic device appears to have been introduced about the middle of the twelfth century, for the seal of Philip of Flanders (A.D. 1161) shows the Flemish lion on his banner. During the Third Crusade, which followed upon the re-capture of Jerusalem by Saladin (October, 1187), the banner[45] of Richard I of England, which flew from the top of the "Standard" already described, contained a single lion, while that of his great rival, Philip Augustus of France, was blue powdered with gold fleurs-de-lis. The Knights of the Temple, who first come into view in 1128, adopted a banner half black and half white (drear and black to their foes but fair and favourable to their friends) to which they gave the name bau?an[46]. Their rivals, the Knights of the Hospital of St John in Jerusalem, who first enter into military activity in 1136, had a red banner with a white cross upon it. The representation in Plate I (fig. 5) is taken from an early manuscript of Matthew Paris and shows a Latin cross; the eight-pointed cross[47], associated with this order, was rarely used except on the vestments of the order, though it occasionally appears on the banner of the commander-in-chief.

Mention has already been made of the consecrated flags which it was customary for the Pope to present to the leaders of expeditions which had the approbation of the Church. The flag entrusted to the Bishop of Puy, the Papal Legate present at the First Crusade, was of this nature. It is referred to in 1098 as the signum magni papae. In 1104 when Paschal sent Bohemond into France to gather support for him against the Emperor, he entrusted him with another of these flags, to which the name vexillum Sancti Petri is applied. This change of name would appear to indicate a difference in the device on the flag. That difference was probably the introduction of the two Keys of St Peter beside the cross, a point of some interest to us as it might affect the question of the identity of the gonfanon on the Bayeux Tapestry already discussed, and incidentally the date of that work. We have, however, no certain knowledge of the presence of these keys before the year 1203. In March of that year Innocent III sent to Calojohannes, King of the Bulgars and Wends, one of these flags, together with a letter in which he explained its symbolism at some length. This flag contained a cross and the two keys symbolic of the powers entrusted to Peter according to the tradition of the Church[48]. From the tenor of this letter it may be inferred that the device was not a new one in 1203, so that this was no doubt the device upon the vexillum S. Petri met with during the Third Crusade in 1199 and 1201. An interesting instance of the use of a flag to convey authority occurs in 1216, when Rupen, nephew of Leo of Armenia, was formally seised of the lordship of Antioch by the patriarch of that city handing him a flag in the church of St Peter.

Thus far we are still without evidence of the existence of any flag that could be described as "national," and we shall therefore turn our attention to the birthplace of so much that was great in art and literature, the Italian city-states, and since we are primarily seeking evidence as to the early use of the flag at sea (though hitherto without much success) we shall turn first to the maritime states of Genoa and Pisa.

Of these two, Pisa was the first to rise as an important maritime city, and in 980 she was supplying vessels to transport the troops of the Emperor Otho II. By the end of the eleventh century a system of government by Consuls had been firmly established, and the city can be looked upon as an independent state. Shortly after this (in 1114) the Pisans proceeded to capture the Balearic Isles from the Saracens. A contemporary metrical account[49] of this struggle gives an indication of the flags then in use in the following words:

Tunc vexilla gerens Pisanae signifer urbis

Valandus cuneos in campum ducit apertum.

Hinc Ildebrandus sanctae vexilla Mariae

Consul habens dextra saevos incurrit in hostes,

Sedis Apostolicae vexillum detulit Atho.

Here we have evidence of at least three different flags in the Pisan host: the Standard-bearer of the city carries the communal flag, the nature of which is not indicated (in 1242 and 1350 it was a plain red flag); Hildebrand the Consul carries a flag[50] of the B. V. Mary; and Atho carries the papal flag[51], which had no doubt been presented by the Pope when sending his benediction to the expedition through the Archbishop of Pisa. These flags were fastened to spears (hastis vexilla micabant) which were used in the conflict without regard to the sanctity of the emblems borne on them:

Tunc Ildebrandus consul dirum Niceronta

Transfodiens ferro per pectus dirigit hastam

Vexillumque trahit madefactum sanguine Mauri.

This matter-of-fact method of utilising the flag of the B. V. Mary by thrusting its staff through the breast of an enemy and withdrawing it stained with his blood does not accord with modern notions of the sanctity of the flag.

The first important step in the rise of Genoa occurred in 958, when Berengarius and Adalbert guaranteed its communal rights. Some thirty years after this the Cathedral was founded, and as it was dedicated to St Lawrence it is evident that at this early date St George had not yet become the patron saint of the city.

The original manuscript of the Annales Genuenses, which narrate (not without partisan bias) the principal events affecting the state and its relations with Pisa and other rivals during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, was at one time in the Archives of Genoa, but it is now in the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris. Commenced by Caffaro in 1154 on the basis of a diary of events, which he had kept since early youth, and continued from time to time by later writers under the instructions of the municipal authorities, it presents a contemporary record from the year 1099 to 1293, and, what is even more important for our purpose, it contains in its margin a number of illustrations in which flags appear both ashore and afloat.

Evidently, at some date after 958 the Genoese transferred their spiritual allegiance from St Lawrence to St George in much the same way that the Venetians had transferred their allegiance from St Theodore to St Mark when the supposed relics of that saint were translated from Alexandria to Venice, or as the English, in the fourteenth century, replaced Edward the Confessor by St George, but it is not until the year 1198 that we meet with a distinct reference by name to the flag of St George as being that of the State. From that year onward it is frequently referred to in terms which leave no doubt that it had been the outward symbol of Genoese power from a much earlier period. Indeed, in an illustration, against the year 1113, of the castle of Porto Venere, then newly built by the Genoese, there flies above the castle a large three-tailed gonfanon bearing a cross that extends to the three sides and to the commencement of the tails. This is a pen-and-ink sketch, so that the colour of the cross is not shown, but there can be little doubt that this was a flag of St George. I say a flag of St George because, although the red cross on white was ultimately adopted as the State ensign, the State flag of St George in the thirteenth century was not a cross at all; it was an actual representation of St George himself on horseback in the familiar attitude of slaying the dragon with a spear. This is shown clearly in a coloured miniature which accompanies the events of 1227. In that year, at the commencement of the struggle between the papacy and the Emperor, the Genoese laid siege to Savona and the neighbouring town of Albizzola, which were attempting to withdraw from their allegiance to their great neighbour and to take sides with the Emperor Frederick. The artist depicts the siege operations against these two towns, and shows the principal citizens of Savona on their knees before the Podesta of Genoa in his tent, humbly offering their submission[52]. Before the tent floats a large red gonfanon, rectangular in form, and with four square-ended tails, having the above-mentioned device in a light yellow colour, and the word "vexillum" written under it to call attention to the fact that it was the State flag.

The record of the events in 1242 provides a typical example of the use of this flag of St George by the Genoese. Having heard on the 10th July that the Emperor Frederick had sent sixty galleys and two great ships under the command of Ansaldus de Mari to Pisa, and that the Pisans were themselves fitting out fifty-eight galleys and other vessels under Buscarius Pisanus, the Genoese immediately fitted out eighty-three galleys, with thirteen tarids[53] and four great ships, at Genoa. These were all painted white with red crosses in lieu of the sea-green colour in which they had hitherto been accustomed to paint their vessels[54]. Instructions were then sent throughout all the districts owning allegiance to the city that all men should prepare to embark, armed and supplied with victuals. The Podesta[55] then collected the people in the Square of St Lawrence, and after delivering an oration encouraging them for the coming conflict, he, amid general rejoicing, solemnly took possession of the state flag of St George, "to the honour of God and of Holy Church and the confusion of their enemies," and constituted himself Admiral of the fleet. His next step was to superintend the election of eight Protentini and ninety-six Comiti according to districts[56]. He then handed to each Protentinus, who became the Squadron Commander of one of the eight squadrons into which the fleet was divided, a splendidly worked flag embodying the device of his district (vexillum unum juxta formam cuiuslibet compagnae mirabiliter designatum) and to each Comitus two flags; one of the State device (vexillum ad signum communis), evidently the red cross of St George, which he was to place on the starboard quarter of his ship, and the other containing the lion of St Mark (vexillum ad signum Venetorum Sancti Marchi), which was to be placed on the port quarter. This is an extraordinary instance of the use of dual national flags in a fleet, and was the consequence of a treaty made between Genoa and Venice in 1238 whereby the two great rival sea powers agreed that their war vessels should bear the flags of both States as a token of amity and alliance between them. The Admiral's flag was then erected in one of the best galleys, and the Protentini (Squadron Commanders) and Comiti (Captains) proceeded to hoist theirs in the galleys and tarids assigned to them, which were then apportioned off to the various squadrons. No officers were appointed to the four great ships (naves magnae), which were evidently victualling and store ships, relying almost entirely upon sail power for propulsion and therefore of little use in fighting at that period. As there were 96 comiti and 96 fighting ships, it is clear that the galleys of the Admiral and of the eight Protentini had each three flags, the State flag and the district flags being probably placed in the bows. This appears to be the first recorded instance of the division of a fleet into squadrons by means of flags. The most striking detail of the interesting events in 1227 and 1242-one that has hitherto escaped attention-is the fact that in the Republic of Genoa, one of the earliest States to adopt a national flag, two forms of that flag existed side by side; one containing a representation of the patron saint (vexillum Beati Georgii) flown only in the presence of the chief of the State or the Commander-in-chief, the other containing merely the red cross emblematic of that saint, the general device of the community (signum communis), in other words the flag of the common people. Thus the supreme power and the common source of that power are represented distinctly, and in such a way as to indicate that fundamentally they were one and the same thing.

There are other instances in these Annals from which it is clear that the flag of St George was erected only in the galley of the Admiral. Indeed in 1282 it was expressly ordained by the Sapientes Credentiae (Council of XV) that no leader should have the title of Admiral, but only of Captain, unless he had at least ten galleys under his command, and that the flag of St George should not be borne at sea unless the fleet comprised ten or more galleys.

On the farther side of Italy another great maritime power had sprung into existence at Venice. Owing to its remoteness from the lines of military communication and the protection of its surrounding lagoons, Venice enjoyed a comparative immunity from outside interference that enabled her to form a settled government at a much earlier date than had been possible at Genoa or Pisa, although the city was of much later origin. In such circumstances one might suppose that the Venetians would choose a national symbol at an early period, and that the famous Lion of St Mark was adopted for this purpose shortly after the translation of the relics of that saint to Venice in 828 a.d.[57] I have, however, not met with any reference to this celebrated flag earlier than the passage in which Villehardouin describes the attack of the Crusaders on Constantinople in July, 1203. As the fleet approached the walls of the city the aged and blind Doge Dandolo stood at the prow of his galley with the Gonfanon of St Mark displayed before him. When he landed the Gonfanon was carried before him,

And when the Venetians saw the Gonfanon of St Mark on land and the galley of their leader which had been beached in front of them, then each man felt himself shamed, and all approached the land, and those in the huissiers (horse transports) leapt out and went on shore, and those in the great ships got into barges and got to the shore as quickly as each one could.

It will be noted that there was but one gonfanon of St Mark, that borne before the leader, although there were evidently many other flags, for in describing the preparation of the fleet for action a little earlier Villehardouin states that banners and gonfanons were erected on the castles of the ships, and that shields were placed along the sides[58].

Here we have evidently an arrangement of flags somewhat similar to that already described as prevailing in the Genoese fleet. The State flag is confided to the commander-in-chief, while other ships display the banners of the subordinate leaders.

But it is doubtful whether the idea of a national ensign originated in the maritime states. The first of the Italian cities to adopt a democratic form of government was Milan, where the people, under the leadership of their Archbishop, Aribert, successfully resisted the Emperor Conrad himself. In the course of the struggle, about the year 1038, Aribert introduced as a rallying point for his people in battle a movable standard, which is described by Arnulf as a lofty beam, like the mast of a ship, fixed on a strong wagon and bearing a golden apple at the summit, from which hung two white streamers (pendentibus duobus candissimi veli limbis). Midway on this pole was placed a crucifix, to which the eyes of the citizens might turn for comfort whatever the fortunes of the fight might be. This device was afterwards adopted by most of the city-states of Italy, and under the name of carroccio (chariot) will be met with frequently in their annals. In its later development an altar was placed at the base of the mast, while the wagon, drawn by white oxen, was hung with scarlet cloth and the city flag floated at the masthead.

Among the cities that adopted this form of standard were Cremona, where it was named "Berta," Brescia, Bologna, Florence and Parma. In the case of Parma, where the standard was called "Blancardo," an interesting instance of its symbolic importance other than in battle is recorded. In 1303, when Ghiberto of Correggio obtained possession of that city, he got himself confirmed as "lord, defender, and protector of that city, and was invested by the resignation into his hands of the standard of the Virgin and the flag of the Carroccio[59]."

This investiture by flag, already illustrated in the case of Charlemagne and Rupen, is worthy of two further illustrations. In 1329 Padua recognised Alberto della Scala as its lord by presenting him with the flag of the people (vexillum populi) in public assembly, and in 1406 acknowledged its overthrow by Venice by presenting the same symbol to the Doge Steno. In this year also Verona acknowledged its defeat by surrendering to the Venetians its communal flag (a white cross on red ground) and its vexillum populi (a golden cross on azure field).

As a final example of the use of flags in the mediaeval Italian republics we may take the case of Florence. In October, 1250, in the course of a sanguinary struggle between the Guelphs and Ghibellines, the popular party (then Guelph)

marched in military array to San Lorenzo, and there elected thirty leaders, annulled a portion of the functions of the Podestà, and appointed as guardian of the new government a captain of the people, Messer Uberto da Lucca, with whom were to be associated twelve elders (two for each division of the town) as councillors for him and advisers of the people.

The captain was to be a foreigner; but the elders were to be Florentines.

The fighting population was divided into twenty companies each with a standard of its own, and the force thus created was intended, under the leadership of the captain, to defend the liberties of the people within the town. Outside Florence the army was still to be commanded by the Podestà. The captain's standard showed a red cross on a white field: to this day the ensign of the town of Florence. The nobles and the powerful burghers (popolani) formed a separate force-that of the knights. Each sesto or division of the town had a separate ensign for its troop of cavalry, and these banners, with many others, were given solemnly by the Podestà on every Whitsunday.

The contado was also divided into companies under respective standards, and when called into the town, fell naturally into line with the city bands.

All these changes were intended to check the power of the Ghibellines, who soon came to be so hated by the majority of Florentines that a common banner even was felt as an intolerable evil, and the Guelph party adopted a red lily on a white field, leaving the white lily on a red field (the old arms of the commune) to the opposite faction[60].

Here again we have two national flags as at Genoa, but with a marked difference in the underlying meaning. One, the red flag with white lily, the ensign of the aristocratic classes: the other, the red cross, that of the common people.

From the facts set forth in the preceding pages (and they are supported by a number of less important details with which we shall not weary the readers' attention) it may be inferred that national flags came into being during the course of the twelfth century and had a twofold origin. In the case of the smaller states organised on a popular basis under continually changing Consuls or magistrates, they arose from the necessity of having some clearly recognisable rallying point in action that was not personal and therefore subject to frequent change. This was supplied either by a common devotion to a particular saint, as at Genoa and Venice, or by the adoption of one particular colour, as at Pisa, or in the solitary case of Rome, the greatest of all in wealth of historic memories, by the re-adoption of an ancient classic device, the S.P.Q.R. of the Senatus Populusque Romanus. In the larger states, which from their very size were at that period necessarily organised on a feudal basis, the banner of the sovereign lord became the national flag. This was what happened in France and (as will appear in the next chapter) also happened in England.

In this, the most memorable advance in the use of flags, it was the city-states of Italy that led the way; and it was the great development during the Crusades of the activity of the maritime states of Genoa, Venice and Pisa that spread the example throughout Europe.

By the end of the thirteenth century the maritime city-states of northern Europe, which had arisen to prominence in consequence of the development of their shipping under the influence of the Crusades, had begun to make regulations governing the use of their flags at sea. Thus the maritime laws of Hamburg, to which Pardessus[61] assigns a date prior to 1270, contained a provision to the effect that every burgher of that town should fly at sea a red flag[62], under penalty of three silver marks, unless the flag had been lowered in time of danger, and a like penalty was to be inflicted on any stranger who flew this flag, on plaint being made against him. A similar provision appears in the Maritime Law of Riga of the same date, with the difference that the flag is to bear a white cross, the colour of the field not being stated, though at a later date it is given as black. The Laws of Lubeck contain a like provision in 1299, the "Lubeschen Vloghel[63]" being presumably the flag, white and red in two horizontal bands, flown by that town until its absorption into the German Empire.

Two years earlier, in 1297, appeared the first recorded provision for the bearing of an English flag at sea, and we may therefore, with the close of the thirteenth century, quit the wide field of research that we have been attempting to survey for a more detailed investigation of the history of British national flags.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] I.e. Flag (Danish and Norse), Flagg (Swedish), Flagge (German), Vlag (Dutch).

[2] See Plate II, fig. 10.

[3] E.g. Albert of Aix: longissima hasta quod vocant standart. Baldric of Dol: admiravisi stantarum. Peter Tudebode: Quod stantarum apud nos dicitur vexillum. Robert the Monk: vexillum admiravissi quod standarum vocant.

[4] Historia, lib. vi: this with the other authorities quoted will be found in the Recueil des Historiens des Croisades.

[5] Unde quia stat fortissime compaginatum in signum populorum a stando standardum vocitatur.

[6] In 1337 streamers were from 14 to 32 ells long and 3 to 5 cloths wide; standards were 9 ells long and 3 cloths wide; while banners were 1? ells long and 2 cloths wide.

[7] E.g. those of William II, Henry I, Stephen and Alexander I of Scotland.

[8] The Theorike and Practike of moderne warres, 1598.

[9] The fact that the object represented is really a boat has been disputed, but there seem to be no good grounds for the objections made. The question is discussed by Dr Wallis Budge in his Egypt in the Neolithic and Archaic Periods (Books on Egypt and Chaldea, vol. ix), pp. 71 et seq.

[10] They are represented in de Morgan's Recherches sur les Origines de l'Egypte, in Dr Wallis Budge's work just cited, p. 78, and in Capart's Primitive Art in Egypt, p. 210.

[11] Ezekiel, chap. xxvii.

[12] See the British Museum Catalogue of Greek coins (Phoenicia), edited by Mr G. F. Hill, and Mr Hill's remarks in his introduction, p. xxii.

[13] In Figs. 1, 2, 3 and 5.

[14] For a more detailed discussion of these standards see papers by Dr Assmann and Mr Hill in the Zeitschrift für Numismatik, vol. xxv, and by Prof. E. Babelon in the Revue Numismatique for 1907. Prof. Babelon holds that this cruciform staff is the object which the Greeks called στυλι?, a word whose meaning has never been satisfactorily determined, and that its primary object was to support the "aphlaston." The other writers do not concur. His theory that the boards which formed the aphlaston were movable and, supported by the "stylis," served to aid the navigation of the ship will not, I think, command many adherents.

[15] Pontremoli et Collignon: Pergame, Restauration et description des Monuments de l'Acropole, Paris, 1900.

[16] See the instances quoted in the chapter on signals, p. 140.

[17] τ? βαρβαρικ?ν ?ν?τεινε σημε?ον. Strategemata, viii, 53 (iii). Polyaenus flourished circa 150 a.d. and was therefore writing long after the event he relates, but he appears to have had access to earlier authors whose works have now perished.

[18] Herodotus, vii, 100, 128.

[19] Strategemata, iii, 11 (xi).

[20] E.g. Diodorus Siculi, xiii, 46, 77; Polyaenus, i, 48 (ii); Polybius, ii, 66 (ii).

[21] Φοινικι? said to be derived from Φο?νιξ dark red or purple. Φο?νιξ which also denotes a Phoenician is of doubtful etymology and may have been derived from the name of the date palm.

[22] Vide Stuart Jones, Companion to Roman History.

[23] Natural History, Book x, 5 (4).

[24] Caesar, B.G. ii, 20: vexillum proponendum, quod erat insigne, quum ad arma concurri oporteret.

[25] Tacitus, Hist. v, 22: Namque praetoriam navem vexillo insignem, illic ducem rati, abripiunt.

[26] De Re Militari, iii, 5: "Muta signa sunt aquilae, dracones, vexilla, flammulae, tufae, pinnae. Quocunque enim haec ferri iusserit ductor, eo necesse est signum suum comitantes milites pergant." He is here using the word signum in the sense of signal, and divides these signals into vocalia or orders given by word of mouth, semi-vocalia or those given by trumpet, and muta or those denoted by the movement of the standards.

[27] Du Cange, Glossarium: Tufa genus vexilli apud Romanos ex confertis plumarum globis.

[28] See p. 30.

[29] De Bello Civili, ii, 6: Conspirataeque naves triremes duae navem D. Brut quae ex insigni facile agnosci poterant, duabus ex partibus sese in eam incitaverant.

[30] Appian, v, 111: ?π? δ? τ? παρακλ?σει τ? στρατηγικ? σημε?α, ?? ?ν κινδ?ν? μ?λιστα ?ν, ?π?θετο.

[31] Dio, li, 21: σημε?? κυανοειδε? ναυκρατητικ?. Suetonius ii: caeruleo vexillo donavit.

[32] Civil Wars, v, 55.

[33] Alemannus, De Lateranensibus parietinis.

[34] De Rebus Hispaniae, iii, 18: Arabum ... qui sua capita tegunt vittis, ... habentes vestis diversis coloribus variegatas, tenentes gladios et ballistas, et vexilla in altum tensa.

[35] Germania, vii: effigiesque et signa quaedam detracta lucis in praelium ferunt.

[36] See Plate I, fig. 3.

[37] "There in the midst of all, the guiding star of the whole army, floated the consecrated banner, the gift of Rome and of Hildebrand.... There rode the chief of all, the immediate leader of that choicest and central division, the mighty Duke himself." Freeman, Norman Conquest, 2nd edition, iii, 463. It is true that (p. 465) Freeman says "I cannot see the banner in the tapestry," but if he was looking for a "banner" he certainly would not find one at this early date, and Wace (v, 11451) expressly says that it was a "gonfanon": "L'Apostoile...un gonfanon li enveia." Freeman supposes (p. 768) that at this point Eustace is giving advice to which William will not listen, but surely this is a misconception of a striking incident spiritedly portrayed by the designer.

[38] "The Bayeux Tapestry" in Monthly Review, Dec. 1904.

[39] Op. cit. p. 400: "the lantern on the Duke's mast is shown plainly in the Tapestry."

[40] William of Poitiers (his chaplain) says: "Verum ne prius luce littus, quo intendunt, attingentes, iniqua et minus nota statione periclitentur; dat praeconis voce edictum, ut cum in altum sint deductae, paululum noctis conquiescant non longe a sua rates cunctae in anchoris fluitantes, donec in ejus mali summo lampade conspecta, extemplo buccinae clangorem cursus accipiant signum."

[41] See Plate II, fig. 10 and p. 31.

[42] The chroniclers adopt no technical terms for the flags, but use vexillum or signum indiscriminately, the former word being no longer restricted to hanging flags, and being occasionally used for a standard or even for a cross.

[43] Thus Albert of Aix; Tudebode substitutes Theodore for Mercurius, and Robert the Monk, Maurice.

[44] Ogier l'Ardenois, v. 1744: A trois claus d'or son gonfanon lacié. Ibid. v. 9910: A cinq claus d'or.

[45] Itin. Regis Ricardi: regium cum leone vexillum.

[46] Plate I, fig. 4. Vexillum balzanum, so named from "balzan," a piebald horse; the word was subsequently corrupted to "beauseant."

[47] Known as the Maltese Cross-Malta having been handed over to the Knights after their ejection from Rhodes by the Turks in 1522.

[48] Baluzius, Epistolarum Innocentii III Pontificis lib. undecim. 1682: Praetendit autem non sine mysterio crucem et claves; quia beatus Petrus Apostolus et crucem in Christo sustinuit et claves a Christo suscepit. Repraesentat itaque signum crucis, etc.

[49] Laurentius Veronensis, De Bello majoricano.

[50] The plural form vexilla seems to have been necessitated by the scansion of the verse.

[51] Michael de Vico in his Breviarium Pisanae Historiae, written in 1371, says this was red (vexillum vermileum) and that thereafter the Pisans always flew a red flag.

[52] Reproduced in colour in the Monumenta Germaniae Historica. Scriptores, vol. 18. The ms. itself has also been reproduced in photographic facsimile.

[53] The tarid at this date was shorter and broader than the galley, and therefore able to carry a heavier burden, but it was on this account less mobile, and therefore defensive rather than offensive in action. These tarids were fitted out with fighting castles (hediffitia (aedificia) mirabilia ad proelium) to increase their defensive qualities.

[54] Depictae colore albo cum crucibus per totum, dimisso tunc glauco colore quo depingi solebant.

[55] Chief Magistrate or "President" of the Republic.

[56] The term "Protentinus" was adopted from the Normans then ruling in Sicily, who had acquired it from the Byzantines. As in Sicily, the Protentinus appears to have been primarily the chief magistrate of one of the districts (compagnae) into which the state territory was divided for administrative purposes, the "comitus" being one of his subordinate officers. Thus the fleet was organised on a territorial basis. The term "comitus" was afterwards applied to the officer occupying the position of boatswain in a galley, but it has not that meaning at this date.

[57] A medal of Doge Pietro Candiano, 887 a.d., has on the reverse a war vessel with a flag at the mast, too small to show any distinctive marks.

[58] lxvi: furent drecies les banieres et li gonfanon es chastiaus des nés, et les houces ostées des escuz et portendu li bort des nés.

[59] Sismondi, History of the Italian Republics in the Middle Ages, ed. by Wm. Boulting, p. 252.

[60] Bella Duffy, The Tuscan Republics, pp. 78-80.

[61] Collection de Lois Maritimes, ii, 337.

[62] In the seventeenth century this red flag was charged with a white castle.

[63] Pardessus, ii, 411.

* * *

Chapter II

Early English, Scottish, and Irish Flags

(i) ENGLAND

So far as may be judged from the scanty records that remain, the ancient inhabitants of these islands do not seem to have known the use of flags until the Romans made them acquainted with their military signa. Adopted by the Saxons either directly from the Romans before they left their homes on the continent or from the Britons whom they subdued, flags formed, from the seventh century onwards, an important part of the regalia. Speaking of Eadwin King of Northumbria, under date 628 a.d., the Venerable Bede says:

his dignity was so great throughout his dominions that banners (vexilla) were not only borne before him in battle, but even in time of peace when he rode about his cities and towns or provinces the standard bearer was wont to go before him. And when he walked about the streets that sort of standard which the Romans call Tufa, and the English Tuuf, was borne before him[64].

A few years later, on the translation of the bones of King Oswald, the royal vexillum of purple and gold (auro et purpura compositum) was placed above the tomb, a practice that was followed through many centuries.

The Saxons of Wessex adopted as their principal war standard the dragon, which in various forms was destined to appear at many crucial moments in English history. At the battle of Burford in 752, according to Henry of Huntingdon, the Wessex standard was a golden dragon, while the Mercians used the vexillum[65].

The Danish vikings, who commenced their descents upon the southern coasts of England in the middle of the ninth century, had as their ensign a raven embroidered in a flag, which appears to have been used for divination. In the year 878 Hubba

the brother of Hingwar and Halfdene, with 23 ships ... sailed to Devon, where with 1200 others he met with a miserable death, being slain before the castle of Cynuit[66]. There (the Christians[67]) gained a very large booty, and amongst other things the flag called Raven [68], for they say that the three sisters of Hingwar and Hubba, daughters of Lodobroch, wove that flag and got it ready in one day. They say moreover that in every battle wherever that flag went before them, if they were to gain the victory a live raven would appear flying in the middle of the flag, but if they were doomed to be defeated it would hang down motionless, and this often proved to be so[69].

From this description it is clear that the raven flag was attached by one side to a staff, instead of by the top to a crosspiece like the Roman vexillum. We meet with it next at the beginning of the eleventh century, when the Danish hordes again invaded England under Sweyn and Cnut and conquered it. The anonymous author of the Encomium of Queen Emma, the wife of Cnut, gives a description of the flag and attributes to it magical properties, in which he is good enough not to expect his readers to believe. He says:

For they had a flag of wondrous portent, which, though I may well believe this to be incredible to the reader, yet because it is true I will mention it in this truthful account. Of a truth, although it was woven of quite plain white silk and there was no image of any kind in it, yet in time of war there always appeared in it a raven, as though it were woven thereon, which when its own party was victorious appeared with open beak, shaking its wings and moving its legs, but when that party was defeated, very quiet and with its whole body hanging down (toto corpore demissus)[70].

Possibly this flag was triangular, for in the early years of the tenth century the viking kings of Northumbria introduced into the reverse of their coins a triangular flag affixed laterally to a staff[71]. The top edge of this was horizontal and the lower, which was inclined upward from the staff, was heavily fringed. In the field was a small cross, which had-possibly under the influence of a nominal christianity-replaced the raven, although that bird is found on the obverse of some of the later coins[72]. These coins are of especial interest to us as they contain the earliest representation of a flag of any of the northern nations. This triangular flag appears first in a coin of Sihtric, who, after being driven from Dublin by the Irish in 920, reigned at York and died about 927, and later in a coin of Regnald (King of Northumbria in 943) and upon coins of Anlaf (949-952)[73].

It is about this period that flags first become associated with particular saints. Among the treasures sent by Hugh the Great, Duke of the Franks, to King ?thelstan in 927 was a banner of St Maurice, which is said to have been of especial assistance to Charlemagne in his Spanish wars[74]. We do not know what form this banner took, presumably it was a representation of the saint, but it is of especial significance to us that this saint had been a soldier, for it enables us in some measure to understand why St George had such an extraordinary vogue a few centuries later.

At the battle of Assandune (1016) in which the English under Eadmund Ironside were defeated by the Danes under Sweyn and Cnut, the Raven was opposed to the Dragon and to another ensign described as a "Standard." This is the first occasion on which an English king appears in the field with two different "standards," and it is of interest to note that his place in battle was between them[75].

It is to be regretted that Henry of Huntingdon did not explain what this royal "Standard," for which he has no exact Latin equivalent, was like. He tells us that Harold also had a "Standard" (signum regium quod vocatur Standard) at the Battle of Hastings, and that a band of Norman knights bound themselves by oath to seize it: an effort in which they were successful, although many were slain. This Standard was apparently the "Dragon" seen in the Bayeux Tapestry in the hands of Harold's standard-bearer[76]. According to William of Malmesbury[77], Harold, who was fighting on foot, placed himself with his brothers near his vexillum, which was in the likeness of a man fighting, and was sumptuously adorned with gold and precious stones. After the battle William presented it to the Pope. Probably this fighting man was the emblem of the South-Saxons, for on the Sussex Downs above Wilmington-once the home of Earl Godwin, Harold's father-may be seen the outline of a gigantic figure armed with a staff or lance in either hand[78]. Evidently Harold's position was between the Dragon standard, and his personal ensign, a position similar to that occupied "according to custom" by Eadmund fifty years before.

Of these two the "signum regium," or principal "standard" appears to have been fixed in a central position or rallying point, while the other, the Dragon, was carried in the hands of a standard-bearer chosen for his personal strength and prowess. In September of the year 1191 when Richard was fighting in the Holy Land in company with the French under the Duke of Burgundy, and the crusading army was drawn up for battle, Richard fixed his standard in the midst of the forces and handed the Dragon to Peter des Preaux to carry, despite the claim of Robert Trussebut to bear it by hereditary right[79]. By this time the royal "standard" supported an heraldic banner that displayed the lion which Richard placed upon his first great seal and which on his return to England he multiplied by three; but why did a symbol so obviously pagan as the Dragon survive the Conquest and that greater attention to religion-or at any rate to its outward observance-that the Conquest had brought in its train? William of Normandy had conquered England beneath the aegis of the gonfanon with golden cross that the Pope had blessed for him, yet we hear no more of it. The battle of the Standard in 1138 was fought around a ship's mast bearing aloft the banners of St Peter, St John of Beverley and St Wilfred of Ripon. The very crusade in which Richard was engaged had been inaugurated with the solemn assumption of coloured crosses by the combatants at the hands of the Archbishop of Tyre, white for the English, red for the French, and green for the men of Flanders[80]. Yet the standard under which the English crusaders were led to the attack was none of these, but the same Dragon under which the Parthians had fought the Romans and the men of Wessex had beaten the men of Mercia. And the chronicler who records this fact was an eye-witness.

When, in the twenty-eighth year of his reign, Henry III was about to visit the Abbey at Westminster, which he was rebuilding,

he commanded Edward FitzOdo to make a Dragon in the manner of a Standard or Ensign of red Samit, to be embroidered with gold, and his tongue to appear as though continually moving and his eyes of Saphires or other stones agreeable to him[81]

which was to be placed in the Abbey Church against the King's coming thither. What then was its religious significance?

But we must leave this question to the student of folklore[82]. Suffice it to say that the Dragon was borne in the English army at Lewes in 1216, at Cre?y in 1346, and finally at Bosworth Field in 1485, whence, in company with two banners, one containing the image of St George and the other a Dun Cow, it was carried in state to St Paul's Cathedral. Under all the Tudor sovereigns the Dragon formed one of the supporters of the Royal Arms, it appeared on the streamers of the Henri Grace à Dieu, and to this day it supports the Arms of the City of London and gives a name to one of the Officers of Arms-Rouge Dragon.

Before we turn aside to retrace the steps by which St George became the patron saint of England and the red cross on white ground England's national flag, we must first briefly notice the other saintly banners with which, for a time, it contested the pre-eminence. Mention has already been made of the "Standard" from which the battle of 1138 took its name. This standard consisted of the mast of a ship fixed on a four-wheeled frame. At the top was placed a silver pyx containing a consecrated wafer, and beneath this were suspended the banners of St Peter (of York), St John (of Beverley), and St Wilfred (of Ripon). The entirely religious nature of this standard is no doubt due to the fact that the English levies had been gathered under the direction of Thurstan, the aged Archbishop of York[83].

The banner of St John of Beverley was again in evidence during the Scottish wars of Edward I, and during these same wars there appears for the first time the banner of another north of England saint, St Cuthbert of Durham. Both these banners were carried by ecclesiastics, who were paid by the king for their services. In addition to these, which seem to have been carried only in the Northern wars, there were in use, as appears from the Wardrobe Accounts for 1299-1300[84], five other banners: two of the Arms of England, one of the arms of St George, one of the arms of St Edmund, and one of the arms of St Edward.

A description of the banner of St Cuthbert has been preserved for us in a MS. of the sixteenth century[85]:

There was also a Baner ... called Sanct Cuthbertes Baner which was five yards in length. All the pippes of it were of sylver to be sleaven on a long speire staffe, and on the overmost pype on the hight of yt was a ffyne lytle silver crosse, and a goodly Banner cloth perteyned to yt. And in the mydes of the banner cloth was all of white velvett, halfe a yerd squayre every way, and a faire crose of Read velvett over yt, and within ye said white velvett was ye holy Relique, ye Corporax that ye holy man Sancte Cuthbert did cover the chalyce withall when he sayd mess. And the Resydewe of ye Banner clothe was all of Read velvett, imbrodered all with grene sylke and goulde most sumtuousle.

The arms of England were at this period the three leopards (or lions): those of St George the well-known red cross. St Edmund's arms are believed to have been three golden crowns on a blue field[86], those of St Edward (Edward the Confessor) were, also on a blue field, a cross flory between five martlets, gold[87]. Some of Edward's coins show on the reverse a cross between four small birds that may be taken to be martlets, the heraldic swallow without feet or beak. These alone of all the saintly "arms" appear to have had any direct connection with the man with whose name they are associated.

Under Henry V there was added to these a banner emblematic of the Holy Trinity[88], which was carried at Agincourt. In addition to these we hear of a banner of St William, carried in the Earl of Surrey's army in the north in 1513.

It will have been noticed that, with the exception of the two apostles, only one of these saints, St George, is of foreign extraction. How did it come to pass that this foreign saint completely eclipsed those who, in the literal sense of the word, were strictly national?

Few saints have been so universally honoured as St George, and yet there is not a saint in the calendar about whose life so little that is authentic is known. He was a soldier who attained the crown of martyrdom during the reign of Diocletian. That is the extent of our knowledge, and on this meagre foundation the wildest, the most incredible legends have been embroidered. Even the date of his death is not certain[89], yet from an early age he was one of the most popular of saints, especially in the East, where he was revered by Mahometan and Christian alike. And here it is to be noted that he is not the George of Cappadocia, the Arian Bishop of Alexandria who met with the death his acts had amply merited at the hands of the populace in the year 361, although so eminent an authority as Gibbon[90] has declared them one and the same.

The cult of St George spread from East to West. In the fifth century he was honoured in Gaul. The monastery at Thetford, founded in the reign of Canute, was dedicated to him[91], and the churches of St George at Fordington (now a part of Dorchester) and Southwark were founded before the Norman Conquest. But although his feast day (23rd April) had been included by the Venerable Bede in his Martyrologium it does not appear to have been generally observed in England till a later date. One of the payments in the Misae roll of 14 John (1213)[92] is dated as the day before the feast of St George, and this feast was included among the minor festivals by the Council at Oxford in 1222[93], yet it is not mentioned in the Constitutions of the Bishop of Worcester in 1240[94]. It is included in the list of saints' days drawn up by the Synod of Exeter in 1287, but it is not included in lists drawn up by Archbishops of Canterbury in 1332 and 1400, nor in one drawn up by the Bishop of Bath and Wells in 1342[95].

The explanation of this lies in the fact that St George was not a churchman's but a soldier's saint. It is to our crusading kings, Richard and Edward I, and to their followers that he owes a popularity that extends to numbers that do not reverence saints and would be hard put to it to name offhand half a dozen others.

St George became especially popular among the crusaders, and his miraculous intervention was believed to have decided victory in their favour on several occasions. The early sculptured tympanum over the south door of St George's Church at Fordington is supposed to represent the saint intervening in behalf of the Christians at the battle of Antioch in 1098. The same subject occurs in a mural painting in the church at Hardham in Sussex[96]. Both painting and sculpture are assigned to the twelfth century. In both instances the saint is on horseback and carries a lance; with the butt end he strikes down the foe. Near the head of the lance is a gonfanon the fly of which is split into long tails. No sign of the cross now remains in the painting, but in the sculpture it is plainly visible at the head of this gonfanon. As the earliest representation in England of St George's flag, this sculpture is of especial interest.

As already remarked in the previous chapter, the date at which the red cross on a white field first became associated with St George is not known. Jacobus de Voragine, the thirteenth century author of the Legenda Aurea, quotes an earlier history of Antioch as his authority for the statement that at the Siege of Jerusalem (1099) the Christians hesitated to ascend the scaling ladders until St George, clad in white armour marked with the red cross, appeared and beckoned them on.

The date at which St George's cross became accepted as the English national flag has also yet to be ascertained. It does not appear to have been used as such at the time of the Third Crusade. In January, 1188, when Henry II and his followers enrolled themselves in response to the preaching of William of Tyre, they received white crosses, while the French took red and the Flemings green ones[97]. At first sight it may seem that there is some error in this statement. We know that at a later period the English had adopted the red cross on white ground while the French made use of a white one on a blue ground. Cleirac[98], writing in 1661 and knowing of no other authority for the statement than Matthew Paris, attempted to solve this difficulty by "restoring" the text and interchanging "red" and "white," but this simple expedient is not allowed to the modern student. The statement occurs not only in Matthew Paris, who had probably taken it from the Abbot Benedict's Gesta Regis Henrici Secundi, but also in the works of John de Oxenedes, Bartholomew de Cotton, Roger de Wendover and Ralph de Diceto. It is not probable that so many contemporary, or nearly contemporary, writers would make or repeat such a statement if it were erroneous.

Time and circumstances have not permitted of an absolutely exhaustive examination of the public records, but after a lengthy search in all likely places the author has not been able to find any mention of the "arms" or flag of St George in English earlier than the year 1277. In the roll of accounts[99] relating to the Welsh War of that year (the fifth of Edward I) occur payments to Admetus, the king's tailor, for the purchase of white and coloured cloth, buckram, etc., for the manufacture of pennoncels and bracers "of the arms of St George." In the original these entries have all been struck through, probably because they were accounted for elsewhere in some roll now perished. While this account only mentions three streamers of the king's arms, it includes the comparatively large number of 340 pennoncels of St George's arms. It is probable that banners of the king's arms and of the arms of St Edward and St Edmund were also in use, together with banners of the feudal lords taking the field, just as we find them in use twenty-three years later at the siege of Carlaverock[100], but it is evident from the entries above referred to that the arms of St George were in great, if not exclusive, demand for the smaller flags, which in some cases are expressly stated to be for the king's foot soldiers (pro peditibus regis).

We have, therefore, in determining the probable date of the introduction of St George's cross as an English national flag to take into account the following facts.

In the year 1188 the red cross was not a mark of English nationality, although it was certainly in use in the East and by the Genoese as a religious emblem associated with St George.

In 1213 the feast of St George was recognised by the Court officials and used in dating payments, but was not yet generally observed by the people.

In 1222 this feast was included among the minor festivals to be observed in the English Church, but its omission in later lists shows that it was not universally observed and that no special importance was attached to it.

The cross of St George is definitely referred to in 1277 in circumstances that leave no doubt that it was then in use in England as a national emblem.

We must now briefly recall the state of affairs in England during those ninety years. After Henry II assumed the cross in 1188 his quarrel with Philip of France and with his own son prevented him from proceeding to the Holy Land. Richard, who succeeded him in 1189, spent only six months of his ten years' reign in England. On his return in 1194 after his long absence at the Crusades and in captivity, he spent only two months in this country and then went to France, where the remainder of his life was spent. The whole of John's reign was spent in quarrels with his subjects. Henry III, throughout his long reign of fifty-six years, took up an attitude which was decidedly un-English. On the other hand, Edward I is generally recognised by historians as the first king of "English" nationality. At the date of his succession to the throne he was absent at the Crusades, and as the country was enjoying peace at the hands of those entrusted with the administration of the government he did not return to England until 1274. This peace was not broken until the attempt of Llewellyn to secure the absolute independence of Wales brought on the Welsh War of 1277.

Having all these circumstances in view, it seems on the whole probable that the cross of St George, although more or less familiar to the English, was first erected by Edward I into a national symbol for a people that, by the incorporation of the foreign elements introduced at the Norman Conquest (assisted by the loss of the greater part of the continental possessions of its kings) had at length become a homogeneous nation. From the entries in the roll above referred to and from similar entries in later rolls of Edward I it appears that the cross of St George was almost entirely confined to the pennoncels on the spears of the foot-soldiers and to the "bracers" which the archers bore on their left forearms. Why the bracer should be singled out for this distinction is not clear, but it will be remembered that little over a hundred years later the bracer of Chaucer's "Yeoman" was a conspicuous part of his dress.

And in his hond he bar a mighty bowe

* * * * *

Upon his arme he bar a gay bracer

And by his side a swerd and a bokeler[101].

We may suppose that the cross of St George, the simplest and most conspicuous of all the saintly devices, was chosen as the distinctive badge of all those not entitled to armorial bearings and not clothed in the livery of the feudal lords. Indeed, from the expression "for the King's footsoldiers" (pro peditibus regis), which occurs in more than one of the rolls, it would seem that the St George's cross was used instead of the royal arms for the soldiery raised directly by the king and not brought into the field under the banner of any of the nobles. It is not until the reign of Richard II that we meet with an order for the whole of the army to be ensigned with the St George's cross.

Among the greater banners that of St George was not as yet supreme; it was indeed only one of four, for when the Castle of Carlaverock was taken in the year 1300:

Puis fist le roy porter amont

Sa baniere et la Seint Eymont

La Seint George et la Seint Edwart

Et o celes par droit eswart

La Segrave et la Herefort

Et cele au Seignour de Clifford

A ki li chasteaus fut donnes [102].

Then the king caused his banner

and that of St Edmund, St George,

and St Edward to be displayed on

high, and with them, by established

right, those of Segrave and Hereford

and that of the Lord of Clifford

to whom the castle was entrusted.

The first step towards the promotion of St George to a position of predominance seems to be due to Edward III, who in gratitude for his supposed help at the Battle of Cre?y founded the Chapel of St George at Windsor in 1348. It is from this time that we may date the actual dethronement of Edward the Confessor from the position of "patron saint" of England and the definite substitution of St George in his place. This process was completed under Henry V after the Battle of Agincourt. A Convocation of the province of Canterbury held at St Paul's towards the end of 1415 raised the festival of St George to the position of a "double major feast" and ordered it to be observed throughout the province (which includes England and Wales south of Cheshire and Yorkshire) with as much solemnity as Christmas Day. The Archbishop[103], in his formal communication to the Bishop of London of the decision arrived at, refers to St George as being "as it were the patron and special protector" of the nation, "For by his intervention, as we unhesitatingly believe, not only is the armed force of the English people directed in time of war against hostile incursions, but by the help of such a patron the struggles of the unarmed clergy[104] in time of peace are frequently strengthened[105]."

When the Prayer Book was revised under Edward VI, the festival of St George was abolished, with many others. Under the influence of the Reformation the banners of his former rivals, St Edward and St Edmund, together with all other religious flags in public use, except that of St George, entirely disappeared, and their place was taken by banners containing the royal badges.

We have seen that the appearance of the red cross on the clothing of the soldiery can be traced back to the "bracer" of the archers of 1277. The Ordinances of War made by Richard II at Durham in 1385, when on his way to repel a threatened invasion from Scotland, required every man in the king's army to bear a large cross of St George on his clothing before and behind. Richard appears to have adopted this expedient from the Scots, though they were of course not the first people to make use of it. On the 1st of July in that year orders had been issued for the soldiers of the Scottish army to be marked with a white St Andrew's cross (see p. 47). At that date Richard was at Westminster; he left there about the 4th of July, was at Leicester on the 7th, and at York from the 17th to 22nd. On the 26th he had reached Durham; he remained there till the 28th, and arrived at Morpeth by the 31st. The ordinances which he issued at Durham must therefore be dated at the end of July[106], and as there is no evidence that the English were at this time in the habit of marking their coats with the red cross before and behind, we may reasonably infer that it was then done for the first time in direct imitation of the Scots. This provision is also found in the similar ordinances made by Henry V at Mantes in 1419, the only difference between them being that while under the older orders no prisoner was allowed to wear this cross, under the later ones prisoners in the custody of their captors might do so.

Ordinances of War made by King Richard II at Durham Ao 1385. Cott. MS. Nero D. vi, f. 89.

Item que chescun, de quel estat condicion on nacion qil soit, issint qil soit de nostre partie, porte un signe des armes de Seint George large devant et autre aderer, sur peril qe sil soit naufre ou mort en defaute dycel, cely qe le naufra ou tue, ne portera nul juesse pur li, et que nul enemy ne porte le dit signe de Seint George, coment qil soit prisoner ou autrement sur peyne destre mort[107].

Ordinances of War made by Henry V at Mawnt (Mantes, prob. July, 1419). Lansdowne MS. 285.

Also, that every man of what estate, condicion or nacion that he be, of oure partie, bere a band of Seint George suffisant large, upon the perile, if he be wounded or dede in the fawte thereof, he that hym wounded or sleeth shall bere no peyn for hym: and that none enemy bere the said signe of Seint George, but if he be prisoner & in the warde of his maister, upon peyn of deth therefore[108].

There is no record of the flags flown on English ships earlier than the thirteenth century, but there can be little doubt that in the eleventh and twelfth centuries they were of the rudimentary form (little more than wind vanes) depicted on the ships of the Bayeux Tapestry. The invention of the banner of arms about the middle of the thirteenth century provided a ready means of distinguishing the nationality, port of origin, or ownership of a ship at sea, and its use for that purpose is indicated in a number of seals of seaport towns which may be dated from the latter half of that century. Thus the seal of Lyme Regis (Plate III, fig. 1), incorporated in the reign of Edward I, shows in addition to the early type of gonfanon simply charged with a cross, displayed from the masthead, banners of arms on spears amidships, the arms being those of England and of Castile and Leon, the latter in compliment to Eleanor of Castile, Queen of Edward I. The seal of Sandwich (Plate III, fig. 4), somewhat earlier in design if not in actual date, shows in addition to a small pendant at the masthead, a banner on the forecastle and two banners on the aftercastle. The ship in the seal of Faversham (Plate III, fig. 5) displays a pendant at the masthead, the banner of St George on the forecastle, and a banner charged with three chevronels on the aftercastle, while the ship of Hastings (Plate III, fig. 6) displays the banner of the Cinque Ports (Plate I, fig. 13) at the bow and the banner of England on the aftercastle, in addition to a gonfanon at the masthead. From the closing years of this century onwards a number of documents have survived in the Public Records which give indications of the nature of the flags displayed at sea. Thus the accounts[109] of the ship sent from Yarmouth to fetch the "Maid of Norway" in 1290 show that this ship was provided with banners of the Royal Arms and silken streamers, and in the year 1294 sum of 5s. 6d. was expended in the purchase of a streamer, and 20d. for a banner containing the figure of St George, for a galley building at York, while for one building at Southampton in the same year no less than 40s. (relatively a large sum) was expended in purchasing two streamers and twenty-five banners of the Royal Arms. The most interesting documents of that period are, however, first an ordinance made at Bruges on 8th March, 1297, between Edward I and the Count of Flanders[110] which provided that all ships of England, Bayonne and other places under the English crown going to Flanders should display a banner of the Royal Arms (le signal des armes du Roy d'Engleterre) and that the ships of Flanders should display the arms of the Count and be provided with letters patent sealed with the seal of their port of origin confirming their right to do so-probably the earliest instance of the existence of "ships' papers" upon record. The second document[111] is a long recital of disputes at sea between the mariners of England and Bayonne on the one side and the Normans on the other, during the years from 1292 to 1298. From this it appears that in a pitched battle which took place off the coast of Brittany the Normans had flown at the mastheads streamers of red sendal 30 yards long and 2 yards broad called "baucans," and "signifying death without quarter and mortal war in all parts where mariners are to be found."

When we enter upon the fourteenth century the sources of information become more ample and the flags show greater diversity of device. The ship in the seal of Dover of 1305 (Plate III, fig. 3) displays the banner of the Cinque Ports on the stern castle and a gonfanon at the masthead. The accounts of the king's armourer in 1322 contain entries of eighty penoncels for galleys with the royal arms in chief, a large number of banners of the arms of St Edmund (Plate I, fig. 7) and of the arms of St Edward (Plate I, fig. 6), standards of the royal arms, penoncels of St George for lances, and three banners of St George, but it is not clear whether any of the above, except the 80 penoncels, were for the king's ships. The material used, in addition to sendal, was worsted, sindon and cloth of Aylsham.

A roll of the expenses of John de Bukyngham, clerk of the great wardrobe, shows the following flags to have been manufactured under his directions for the king's ships in 1350:

2 penoncels of sindon, 7? yards long and 2 cloths wide, red with a white pale charged with 3 blue garters,

2 penoncels 3? yards long and 3 cloths wide, charged with a shield of the royal arms surrounded by a blue garter,

2 streamers for the "Jerusalem," one 32 yards long and 5 cloths wide with the royal arms in chief and striped red and white fly; the other 30 yards long, of red worsted, charged with white dragons, green lozenges and leopards' heads,

2 standards for the same ship, 8 yards square,

A streamer for the "Marye," 32 yards long with figure of St Mary in chief, and the royal arms quarterly in the fly,

A streamer for the "Edward" 33 yards long with an "E" in chief and the royal arms in the fly,

Streamers for the "John," "Edmund" and several other ships with figures of the saint appropriate to the name painted upon linen cloth in chief,

3 streamers 5, 10, and 30 yards long with the royal arms in chief and fly chequered green and white powdered with green and red roses,

A streamer 24 yards long and 4 cloths wide for the ship assigned to the King's Wardrobe, charged with the royal arms, with a black key in chief, and 6 standards for the same ship with a leopard at the head followed by a black key and the royal arms.

A few years later we have an indenture dated in the forty-third year of Edward III whereby John de Haytfeld, clerk of the armour and artillery of the king's ships, acknowledges the receipt from Thomas de Carleton, the king's armourer[112], of a number of flags of the following types:

Streamers with the royal arms in chief varying in length from 8 to 38 yards

Standards with the royal arms in chief varying in length from 7 to 12 yards

Banners of the royal arms

Banners of St George

A Gonfanon of council of red tartaryn worked with nine golden angels supporting a shield of the royal arms, each angel having on his head a chaplet of the Order of the Garter (Un gonfanon de conseil de tartaryn rouge batuz od ix angelis dor tenantz un escu des armes du Roy eiant suz les testes chapeles de garetters des conflarie de saint George)

A gonfanon blue and white with a shield of the royal arms surrounded by a garter powdered with a golden fleurs de lis.

A similar indenture made with John of Sleaford, Clerk of the Privy Wardrobe, mentions 18 standards of worsted of the royal arms, and 234 standards of linen of the arms of St George with leopards of worsted in chief.

The flags of the fifteenth century were of similar type. A roll of the tenth year of Henry V[113], containing a long list of articles supplied for the royal ships, mentions the following flags:

For the "Trinity Royal"

A banner of council of the royal arms and St George,

Gittons of the Holy Trinity, St Mary, St Edward, royal arms,

St George, the ostrich feather, and swan,

Standards of St Mary, St George, the ostrich feather and royal

arms.

For the "Holy Ghost"

A streamer of the "Holy Ghost,"

Gittons of the Holy Ghost, antelope, royal arms, swan and

St Edward,

Standards of the Holy Ghost, St George, antelope and swan.

For the "Gabriel"

A streamer of St Katherine,

A gitton of St Edward.

For the "Nicholas"

A streamer of St Nicholas,

Gittons of St Edward, royal arms and ostrich feather,

Standards of St Edward and St George.

For the "Grace Dieu"

A streamer of St Nicholas,

A gitton of St Edward.

This exuberance of design persisted until the Reformation in England put the saints out of favour. While in the early years of Henry VIII the 'Henri Grace à Dieu' was provided with banners of England, England and Spain, Castile, Guienne, Wales, Cornwall, the pomegranate and rose, the rose of white and green, and St Edward streamers "with a dragon" 45 and 42 yards long, one with a lion 36 yards long, one with a greyhound 18 yards long and two "litell streamers with crosse of saint George" 15 and 12 yards in length respectively, and other ships had banners of St Peter, St Katherine, St Edward, St Anne, the dragon, greyhound, portcullis and red lion, towards the end of his reign the saintly flags had disappeared for ever, except for the red cross of St George, and the royal arms and royal badges alone remain. Thus the ship reproduced in the frontispiece from a plan of Calais harbour[114] made about the year 1545 displays, in addition to the huge streamer of St George, only the royal arms and the royal badges of the fleur-de-lis and crown, ostrich feather, portcullis and crown, and rose and crown.

The rolls of Anthony Anthony, prepared in the last year of Henry VIII, show streamers party green and white (the Tudor colours) with St George's cross in chief; banners of St George and of the Tudor colours in horizontal stripes, and a few banners of the royal arms, and of the fleur-de-lis badge.

The accounts for the year 1574, when ensigns appear for the first time among sea stores, give the following details as to their construction. There were twenty-four of them made "for her Mats newe shippes," the material being "bolonia sarcenett of diverse coulors." Staves were provided, one with a gilt and the others with steel heads, with a pair of tassels to each. The flags were provided with canvas sockets. For the banners red and blue say was provided, with buckram for the socket, and "mockadoe fringe." Streamers and banners were primed, painted and coloured in oil colours by Wm Herne, the queen's serjeant painter, and the streamers were of the following lengths:

84 feet long and 9 feet broad at the head

60 " " 7 " " "

54 " " 8 " " "

45 " " 6 " " "

36 " " 6 " " "

There were besides four banners of fine linen cloth, fringed, and quartered with the royal arms, each being 15 feet long and 13 feet 6 inches deep. "And more twoe banners of damask thone of crymson with a lyon of gold, thother of purple with affaulcon of silver fringed with silke."

When Drake and Hawkins set out for their last voyage in 1594 they were provided with

4 flags gilt with her Majesty's arms costing 60s. each

30 flags of St George costing 16s. and 8d. a piece

3 streamers with the Queen's badges in silver and gold that cost ￡8 each.

80 other streamers costing 25s. each, and

26 ensigns;

the total cost of these flags reaching the large amount (for those days) of ￡221.

Very little record remains of the flags flown by British merchant ships during this period. It has been already remarked that those going to Flanders at the end of the thirteenth century were ordered to fly the royal arms, and banners of these arms appear on the ships in the early seals of Lyme Regis, Hastings and Bristol. The fifteenth century seal of Yarmouth (Plate III, fig. 2) shows the banner of St George on the forecastle, a pendant with cross of St George in chief at the masthead, and a banner of the arms of Yarmouth[115] (closely resembling the Cinque Ports flag but with herrings' tails substituted for the dimidiated hulks) upon the stern castle. In the seal of Tenterden (Plate III, fig. 7) and of Rye, also of the fifteenth century, the banner of St George is prominent. It seems probable that from the fourteenth century onwards ships not belonging to the king or the nobility flew the flag of St George when they flew any flag at all. In ships belonging to the greater nobles the custom appears to have been to display a streamer of the owner's badges; thus the ships in the "Warwick Pageant[116]," drawn circa 1490, display streamers containing the badges of the bear and ragged staff with St George's cross in chief. Ships of lesser owners, belonging to an important seaport such as the Cinque Ports or Yarmouth, appear to have flown the recognised flag of that port in addition to a flag or streamer of St George.

By the end of the sixteenth century the use of the royal arms had become confined to the Admiral of the Fleet; the royal badges had nearly disappeared from the sea, though they are occasionally to be met with during the next century, and the flag of St George had taken the lead as the distinguishing characteristic of English ships, both men-of-war and merchantmen.

PLATE III - Seals

(ii) SCOTLAND

The history of the national flags of Scotland is much less complicated than that of the flags of England, for the northern nation had decided upon their patron saint at a much earlier date than their neighbours south of the Tweed. There was a similar struggle for supremacy among competing saints, but the issue was decided in the eighth century and appears to have remained unchallenged ever since. In the words of Wm Forbes Skene, the Scottish historian,

With the departure of the Columban Clergy, the veneration of St Columba as the apostle of the northern Picts seems to have been given up, at least by the southern portion of that people, and St Peter now became the patron saint of the kingdom and continued to be so till the year 736, when Angus the son of Fergus established his power by the defeat of Nectan himself, and the other competitors for the throne. As the king rapidly brought the territories of the other Pictish families under his sway, and even added Dalriada to his kingdom, he seemed desirous to connect a new ecclesiastical influence with his reign, for in the same year that he completed the conquest of Dalriada he founded a church at St Andrews, in which he placed a new body of clergy, who had brought the relics of St Andrew with them, and this apostle soon became the more popular patron saint of the kingdom, while the previous patronage of St Peter disappeared from the annals[117].

It is probable that the cross-saltire was adopted by the Scots as a national ensign at a very early period, but there seems no direct evidence of this before the fourteenth century. The earliest Scottish records were unfortunately lost at sea in the ship that was sent to return them to that country, whence they had been carried off, with the Stone of Destiny, by Edward I.

In the summer of the year 1385 the Scots planned a raid into England, in which they were assisted by a considerable contingent of French. The Ordinances for the allied army drawn up by the Council for this occasion and promulgated on the 1st July contained the following proviso:

Item every man French and Scots shall have a sign before and behind, namely a white St Andrew's Cross, and if his jack is white or his coat white he shall bear the said white cross in a piece of black cloth round or square[118].

It will be noted that the field on which the cross-saltire was to be placed was immaterial, but if the coat happened to be white the field was to be black. There is other evidence that the ground colour was not an essential part of the design, although the prevailing colour at a later date seems to have been blue. In the Accounts of the Lord High Treasurer of Scotland[119] for the year 1512 there is recorded a payment for a roll of blue say for the banner of a ship "with Sanct Androis cors in the myddis." In 1513 the ground colour was also blue. In 1523, however, when orders were again issued for each man to bear the white saltire before and behind, no ground was mentioned, while in 1540 and 1542 the ground colour of the ensigns was yellow and red (the Stuart livery colours) or red, as the following entries show: