From this last date (1274) onward the St. George's cross and the legend of "St. George and the Dragon" in England are, at all events, in plain evidence. An early instance is that found in the borough of Lyme Regis, in Dorset, to which Edward I., in 1284, granted its first charter of incorporation and its official seal. A photo reproduction of a wax impression of this borough seal (9), taken from an old "Toll lease" is here given. The flag of St. George is seen at the mast-head, and below it the Royal Standard of Richard I., with its three lions for England, carried by Edward in Palestine during the lifetime of his father. At the bow of the ship is the figure of the Saint represented in the act of slaying the dragon, and having on his shield the St. George's cross.

The religious and Christian attributes of St. George are commemorated on the seal by the representation of the Crucifixion and by the Saint, the head of whose spear is a St. George's cross, being shown as in angel form. The sea tradition of his adoption is also sustained by the characteristic introduction of the "galley" into the design.

Around the edge of the seal is the rude lettering of the inscription in Latin: "Sigillum: Comune: De: Lim" ("The common seal of Lyme"). Near the top may be seen the "star and crescent" badge of Richard I., adopted by him as a record of his naval victory, and which is still used as an "admiralty badge" upon the epaulettes of admirals of the British navy.

This seal of Lyme Regis is said to be the earliest representation of St. George and the dragon known in England.

The same form of cross was placed by Edward I., in 1294, upon the monumental crosses which he raised at Cheapside, Charing Cross and other places, in memory of his loved Queen Eleanor, to mark the spots at which her body rested during the funeral procession when her remains were carried from Lincoln through Northampton to London.

Another instance of a later date is found on a "sepulchral brass" (10), placed to the memory of Sir Hugh Hastings in Elsing Church, Norfolk, and dated 1347.

These plates of engraved brass, inserted in the stone coverings of so many graves in the interior of the churches in England, are most interesting examples of early memorial art. The figure of the deceased is usually drawn in full length upon them in lines cut deeply into the metal, and is accompanied by an inscription setting forth his deeds and his name.

In the upper part of the architectural tracery surrounding the figure on the brass in question is a circle 8-1/4 inches in diameter, in which the figure of St. George is as shown. The Saint here appears as a knight, clad in full armour and mounted upon horseback, representing him in his character as the leader of chivalry and knightly manhood. A further development of the attribute of manly vigour will be noted in that, instead of being shown as piercing, as previously, the fiery dragon of the ancient legend, he is now represented as slaying the equally typical two-legged demon of vice. This representation still further exemplifies the teaching and allegory of the emblem of "St. George and the Dragon."

St. George represents the Principle of Good, the Dragon the Principle of Evil. It is the contest between virtue and vice, in which the knight by his virtues prevails—a splendid emblem for a Christian people.

This photo reproduction is from a "rubbing" in black lead recently taken from the brass, and shows, so far as the reduced scale will permit, the St. George's crosses upon the surcoat and shield of the knight and the trappings of his horse.

In 1350, on St. George's Day, the "most noble Order of the Garter" was instituted by Edward III., with magnificent ceremony in the St. George's Chapel, Windsor Castle. This is the highest order of knighthood in the kingdom. Its jewel, called "The George," is a representation of St. George and the Dragon, and in the centre of the "Star" of the Order is the red cross of St. George.

So onward through all the centuries, and now St. George is the acclaimed patron saint of England and all Englishmen.

It was under this red cross banner of St. George that Richard I., the Lion-hearted, after proving their seamanship in victory and giving his men their battle-cry, "Saint George—forward!"[24] showed the mettle of his English Crusaders in the battles of the Holy Land, and led them to the walls of Jerusalem. With it the fleets of Edward I. claimed and maintained the "lordship of the Narrow Seas." Under this single red cross flag the ships of England won the epochal naval victory of Sluys, where the English bowman shot his feathered shafts from shipboard as blithely as when afterwards on land the French battlefields resounded to the cry of "England and St. George," when the undying glories of Cressy and Poictiers were achieved, and again at Agincourt when Henry V. led on his men to victory. Under it, too, Cabot discovered Cape Breton, Drake sailed around the world, Frobisher sought the Northwest passage, Raleigh founded Virginia, and the navy of Elizabeth carried confusion into the ill-fated Spanish Armada.

This is a "glory roll" which justifies the name of England as "Mistress of the Seas." Her patron saint was won as a record of naval victory. With this red cross flag of St. George flying above them, her English sailors swept the seas around their white-cliffed coasts, and made the ships of all other nations do obeisance to it. With it they penetrated distant oceans, and planted it on previously unknown lands as signs of the sovereignty of their king, making the power of England and England's flag known throughout the circle of the world.

All this was done before the time when the sister-nations had joined their flags with hers, and it is a just tribute to the seafaring prowess of the English people, and to the victories won by the English Jack, that the single St. George's cross is in the British fleets the Admiral's Flag, and flies as his badge of rank; that it is in the Command Pennant of all captains and officers in command of ships, and that the English red cross flag is the groundwork of the White Ensign of the British navy (Pl. VIII., fig. 2). This is the "distinction flag" of the British navy, allowed to be carried only by His Majesty's ships-of-war, and restricted, except by special grant, solely to those bearing the Royal commission.[25]

Thus has the memory of Richard I. and his men been preserved, and all honour done to the "Mariners of England," the sons of St. George, whose single red cross flag, the English Jack, has worthily won the poet's praise:

CHAPTER V.

THE SUPREMACY OF THE ENGLISH JACK.

A.D. 871-1606.

While it is true that flags and banners had grown up on land from the necessity of having some means of identifying the knights and nobles, whose faces were encased and hidden from sight within their helmets, yet it was at sea that they attained to their greatest estimation. There the flag upon the mast became the ensign of the nation to which the vessel belonged, and formed the very embodiment of its power. To fly the flag was an act of defiance, to lower it an evidence of submission, and thus the motions of these little coloured cloths at sea became of highest importance.

The supremacy of one nation over another was measured most readily by the precedence which its flag received from the ships of other nationalities. National pride, therefore, became involved in the question of the supremacy of the flag at sea, and in this contest the English were not behindhand in taking their share, for the supremacy of the sea meant to England something more than the mere precedence of her flag. It meant that no other power should be allowed to surpass her as a naval power; not that she desired to carry strife against their countries, but esteemed it more for the protection of her own shores at home, and the preservation of peace along the confines of her island seas.

This faith in the maintenance of the Supremacy of the Seas remains potent to this present day, as is shown by the demand of the British people that their navy shall be maintained at a two-power standard, and so be equal in strength to the navies of any other two of the nations which sail the oceans. It is no new ardour, nor the outcome of any modern development or exigency, but is the outgrowth of the determination of the nation from its earliest days to maintain the supremacy of its flag, and is strengthened by the lessons learned in those centuries.

Alfred the Great of England (871-901) was the first to establish any supremacy for the English flag, and to him is attributed the first gathering together of a Royal navy, the creation of an efficient force at sea being a portion of that sea-policy which he so early declared, and which has ever since been the ruling guide of the English people. The true defence of England lay, Alfred considered, in maintaining a fleet at sea of sufficient power to stretch out afar, rather than in trusting to fortifications for effective land resistance when the enemy had reached her shores; that it was better to beat the enemy at sea before he has a chance to land, and thus to forestall invasion before it came too near—a policy which in these days of steam is simply being reproduced by the creation of "Dreadnoughts," swift and strong, to hit hard on distant seas. The bulwarks of England were considered in his time, as they are still considered, to be her ships at sea rather than the parapets of her forts on land.

Introducing galleys longer and faster than those of the Danes,[28] Alfred kept his enemies at a respectful distance, and, dwelling secure under the protection of his fleet, was thus enabled to devote himself with untrammelled energy to the establishment of the internal government of his kingdom.

His successors followed up his ideas, and under Athelstane (901) the creation of an English merchant navy was also developed. Every inducement was offered to merchants who should engage in maritime ventures. Among other decrees then made was one that, "if a merchant so thrives that he pass thrice over the wide seas in his own craft he was henceforth a Thane righte worthie."[29] Thus honours were to be won as well as wealth, and in pursuit of both the merchants of England extended their energies to wider traffic on the seas.

King Edgar (973-75), by virtue of his navy, won and assumed the title of "Supreme Lord and Governor of the Ocean lying around about Britain." Thus did the English flag, carried by its navies, sail the seas. But Harold, the last of the Saxon kings, instead of maintaining his ships in equipment and fitness to protect his shores, allowed them, for want of adequate provisions, to be dispersed from their station behind the Isle of Wight, and so, forgetting the teachings of Alfred, left his southern coasts unguarded and let the Norman invader have opportunity to land, an opportunity which was promptly seized.

The Norman monarchs of England held in their turn to the supremacy which the early Saxon kings had claimed for her flag at sea.

When the conquest of England, in 1066, had been completely effected by the Norman forces, the shores on each side of the "narrow seas" between England and Normandy were combined under the rule of William the Conqueror, communication by water increased between the two portions of his realm, and the maritime interests of the people were greatly extended and established.

Richard I. showed England to the other nations, during the Crusades, as a strong maritime power. King John followed in his footsteps, and in 1200, the second year of his reign, issued his declaration directing that ships of all other nations must honour his Royal flag:

The supremacy which King John thus claimed, his successors afterwards maintained and extended, so that under Edward I., Spain, Germany, Holland, Denmark, and Norway, being all the other nations, except France, which bordered on the adjacent seas, joined in according to England "possession of the sovereignty of the English seas and the Isles therein,"[30] together with admission of the right which the English had of maintaining sovereign guard over these seas, and over all the ships of other Dominions, as well as their own, which might be passing through them.

Edward II. was given, in 1320, the title of "Lord of the Seas."[31]

Edward III., himself a sailor-king and commander of his fleets, was fully imbued with the force of the Alfred maxim, so that when invasion threatened England he said, "he deemed it better with a strong hand to go seek the enemy in his own country than wait ignobly at home for the threatened danger."[32] Putting his maxim into action he led his fleet across the Channel, and his victory over the French fleet at Sluys, off Flanders, on the 24th June, 1340, was the Trafalgar of its day, and the resulting supremacy of the English Jack on the narrow seas enabled him to land his forces on the foreign shores, when he subsequently invaded France to establish his claim to the French throne.

The prowess of himself and of his seamen in their victory over the French and Spanish fleets won for Edward the proud title of "King of the Seas," in token of which he was represented upon his gold coinage standing in a ship "full royally apparelled."[33]

During the Wars of the Roses less attention was given by the nation to maritime matters, and while the English were so busily engaged in fighting amongst themselves, the Dutch of the Netherlands, under the Duke of Burgundy, developed a large carrying trade, and so increased their fleets that, in 1485, at the accession of Henry VII., they had become a formidable shipping rival of England, and were a thorn in the side of France. Over the ships of the French the Dutch so lorded it on the narrow seas that, to quote Philip de Commines, their

Two flags, the striped standard of the Dutch and the red cross Jack of the English, were now rivalling each other on the adjacent seas and on the Atlantic. The contest for the supremacy which had begun was continued for nearly two hundred years thereafter.

In the time of Henry VII. more attention was given to merchant shipping and foreign adventure. Cabot carried the English flag across the Atlantic under the license which he and his associates received from Henry VII., empowering them

With this authority for its exploits the red cross of St. George was planted, in 1497, on the shores of Newfoundland and Florida, and the English Jack thus first carried into America formed the foundation for the subsequent British claim to sovereignty over all the intervening coasts along the Atlantic.

Under Henry VIII. England began to bestir herself in making provision for a regular navy. A drawing in the Pepysian Library gives the details of the Henri Grace à Dieu (11), built in 1515 by order of Henry VIII., which was the greatest warship up to that time built in England, and has been termed the "parent of the British Navy." At the four mastheads fly St. George's ensigns, and from the bowsprit end and from each of the round tops upon the lower masts are long streamers with the St. George's cross, very similar in form to the naval pennants of the present day. The castellated building at the bow, and the hooks with which the yards are armed, tell of the derivation of the nautical terms "forecastle" and "yard arm" still in use.

With such improved armament the cross of St. George continued to ruffle its way on the narrow seas, and widened the scope of its domain.

The supremacy claimed for the English Jack never lost anything at the hands of its bearers, and an event which occurred in the reign of Queen Mary gives a vivid picture of the boldness of the sea-dogs by whom it was carried, and of how they held their own over any rival craft:

The Spanish fleet, of one hundred and sixty sail, was escorting Philip II., of Spain, when coming to his marriage with the English Queen, in 1554. It was met off Southampton by the English fleet, of twenty-eight sail, under Lord William Howard, who was then "Lord High Admiral in the narrow seas." The Spanish fleet, with their King on board, was flying the Royal flag of Spain, and was proceeding to pass the English ships without paying the customary honours. The English admiral promptly fired a shot into the Spanish admiral's ship, and the whole fleet was obliged to strike their colours and lower their topsails in homage to the English flag. Not until this salute had been properly done would Howard permit his own squadron to salute the Spanish King.[34]

Under Elizabeth seamanship mightily increased. Her merchant fleets, from being mere coasters, extended their ventures to far distant voyages, in some of which the Queen herself was said to have had an interest; and while before her time soldiers had exceeded seamen in numbers, the positions were now reversed.

The defeat of the Spanish Armada, in 1588, was one of the crowning achievements of the supremacy of the English Jack, yet it would almost seem as though the glorious flag had, in the never-to-be-forgotten action of the undaunted Revenge, kept for the closing years of its single cross period the grandest of all the many strifes in which it had been engaged.

England and Spain were then at open war. The English fleet, consisting of six Queen's ships, six victuallers of London, and two or three pinnaces, was riding at anchor near the island of Flores, in the Azores, waiting for the coming of the Spanish fleet, which was expected to pass on its way from the West Indies, where it had wintered the preceding year. On the 1st September, 1591, the enemy came in sight, numbering fifty-three sail, "the first time since the great Armada that the King of Spain had shown himself so strong at sea."[35]

The English had been refitting their equipment, the sick had all been sent on shore, and their ships were not in readiness to meet so overwhelming an armament. On the approach of the Spaniards, and to save the fleet from being penned in by them along the coast, five of the English ships slipped their cables, and together with the consorts sailed out to sea. Sir Richard Grenville, in the Revenge, was left behind to collect the men on shore and bring off the sick, and so, after having done this duty, came out alone to meet the enemy, which was marshalled in long extended line outside the port. He might have sailed around their wing, but this would have been an admission of inferiority, and, bold to recklessness, he thrust his little ship right through the centre of their line. Rather than strike his flag, he withstood the onset of all the Spanish fleet, which closed in succession around him, and thus this century of the red cross Jack closed with a sea-fight worthy of its story, and one which has been preserved by a Poet Laureate in undying verse, whose lines ought to be known by every British boy:

In such way, audacious in victory and unconquered in defeat, the English sailors, beneath their English Jack, held for the mastery of the oceans from Alfred to Elizabeth, and laid the foundations of that maritime spirit which still holds for Great Britain the proud supremacy of the seas.

CHAPTER VI.

THE SCOTTISH JACK.

From a very early period St. Andrew has been esteemed as the patron saint of Scotland, and held in veneration quite as strong as that entertained in England for St. George. The "saltire," or diagonal cross of St. Andrew (12), shaped like the letter X is attributed to the tradition that the saint, considering himself unworthy to be crucified on a cross of the same shape as that on which his Saviour had suffered, had, by his own choice, been crucified with legs and arms extended upon a cross of this shape, and, therefore, it has been accepted as the emblem of his martyrdom.

The "Scottish Jack" (Pl I., fig. 2) is a white oblong cross upon a blue ground. This is the banner of St. Andrew (12), and in heraldic language is described as "Azure, a saltire argent" (on azure blue, a silver-white saltire).

How St. Andrew came to be adopted as the patron saint of Scotland is a subject of much varying conjecture. It is said that in the early centuries, about A.D. 370, some relics of the apostle St. Andrew were being brought to Scotland by some Greek monks, and although the vessel carrying them was wrecked and became a total loss, the sacred bones were brought safe to shore at the port in the County of Fife, still called St. Andrews, where a church was erected to his memory.

The most favoured tradition as to the date of his authorized adoption as a patron saint is that it occurred in A.D. 987, when Hungus, king of the Picts, was being attacked by Athelstane, the king of the West Saxons,[37] Achaius, king of the Scots, with 10,000 of his Scottish subjects, came to the relief of Hungus, and the two kings joined their forces to repel the Southern invaders. The Scottish leaders, face to face with so formidable a foe, were passing the night in prayer to God and St. Andrew, when upon the background of the blue sky there appeared, formed in white clouds, the figure of the white cross of the martyr saint. Reanimated by this answering sign, the Scottish soldiers entered the fray with enthusiastic valour, and beset the English with such ardour as to drive them in confusion from the field, leaving their king, Athelstane, behind them dead among the slain. Since that time the white saltire cross, upon a blue ground, the banner of St. Andrew, has been carried by the Scots as their national ensign.

This was the flag carried by the great Scottish national hero, Robert-the-Bruce, whose valour won for him the crown of Scotland, and whose descendants, the earls of Elgin, still bear his banner on their coatof-arms. At Bannockburn, in 1314, this emblem of Bruce rose victorious over Edward II. and his stolid Englishmen. Its use was continued in 1385, when the Scots, stirred up and aided by Charles VI. of France, invaded and despoiled the border counties of England, in which expeditions both they and their French auxiliaries wore a white St. Andrew's cross upon their jacques, both before and behind, in order that they might distinguish the soldiers of their combined companies from the forces of the foe.[38]

But St. Andrew's flag was not always victorious. At Chevy Chase and Flodden Field it suffered defeat, but only in such wise as to prove the truth of the warning motto of the prickly Scotch thistle, "Nemo me impune lacessit"—(No one may touch me with impunity).

The Scottish Jack in all these early centuries, unlike its English compeer, does not appear to have been carried by Scotsmen far afield, nor in expeditions across the seas. On land, the Scots used it mainly as a sign of recognition during the forays which they kept up with unceasing vigour on the neighbouring kingdoms of England and Ireland; and at sea its scene of action was kept measurably near to their own shores.

Scotland, being so far removed from the fleets of the southern nations of Europe, did not need a regular navy, and never had one of any size,[39] but her far northern coasts, indented with deep bays and bordered by wild fastnesses, adapted themselves admirably to the use to which they were mainly put, of being the lair from which hardy, venturesome freebooters, in those times called "sea rovers," sailed forth in their "talle shippes" (13), and pounced down upon the vessels of the passersby. The exploits of some of these sailors, under the St. Andrew's Jack, crop out from time to time with splendid audacity in the history of the centuries. One "Mercer, a Scottish rover," during the reign of Richard II. of England, so harried the merchant shipping of England that, in 1378, Alderman John Philpot, "a worshipful citizen of London," equipped an expedition at his own expense to cramp the energies of the marauder, and meeting Mercer and fifteen Spanish ships, which were acting with him, brought the whole fleet, "besides great riches which were found on board," in triumph into port at Scarborough in Yorkshire. Philpot was haled before the English royal authorities for having dared "to set forth a navy of men-of-war without the advice of the King's Council," but the end was considered to have justified the means, and the bold citizen, who by his own action had put down the annoyance with which the officers of the realm should have dealt, was, after having himself stoutly berated the Council for their sluggishness, let go free.

Sir Andrew Wood, of Leith, who for a long time pillaged the English ships and set the navy of Henry VII. at defiance, was another doughty champion of the St. Andrew's cross.

Growing bolder in his defiance, he challenged the English Royal Navy to a contest. The challenge was accepted, and three chosen ships were sent to meet him. These he overmastered, and carried off his prizes and their crews to Dundee, from where, after the wounded had been cared for, and the damages of the vessels repaired, James IV. of Scotland returned the ships and their men to Henry, saying, "the contest had been for honour, not for booty."[40]

But the greatest hero of them all, the one whose deeds have woven themselves into the folklore of the Scottish race, was Sir Andrew Barton, who in the time of Henry VIII. not only plundered his English neighbours, but also took toll of the ships of all other nations without regard to their flag, making himself the terror of the North Seas. An old ballad tells in quaint style what an English merchant of Newcastle, whose ships had fallen into the hands of Barton, is said to have reported to the English Admiral, who was in charge of the "Narrow Seas":

Sir Andrew was the last of the freebooters, as the rise of the navy of Henry VIII., and the union of the two kingdoms of England and Scotland by James I. under one crown, put an end to these reprisals by the subjects of the one nation on the other; yet, as we shall see, it was the remnants of these very rivalries thus engendered between the single cross flags of St. Andrew and St. George which led to these national Jacks of the two nations being afterwards joined together to form one flag.

St. Andrew is also venerated by the Russians as a national saint, their tradition being that it was through the Apostle St. Andrew that the gospel of Christianity had been brought to their people. Their highest order of knighthood, created by Peter the Great, in 1698, is the Order of St. Andrew, and the national flag of Russia, borne by all their people and on their imperial navy, is the St. Andrew's cross. It is also used on the masthead of their war vessels to indicate the rank of an admiral.

It will be remembered that the Russians have transposed the colours of the banner of St. George from a red cross on a white ground, as on the English Jack, to be on theirs a white cross on a red ground. So also they have transposed the colours on their St. Andrew's flag to be a blue cross on a white ground instead of a white cross on a blue ground as on the Scottish flag.

CHAPTER VII.

THE "ADDITIONAL" UNION JACK OF JAMES I.

A.D. 1606-1648.

The kingdoms of England and Scotland had passed through their centuries of dissension and conflict when at length, in March, 1603, upon the death of his second cousin, Elizabeth, Queen of England, James VI., King of Scotland, succeeded to her throne, and became also King James I. of England. Before entering upon the subject of the joining of the two national Jacks in one flag, it may be well to consider the changes then made in the Royal Standard in consequence of this union of the crowns. The Royal Standard is the special personal flag of the Sovereign, and wears upon it his Royal arms emblazoned with "devise" or insignia of the kingdoms over which he rules. James, upon ascending the throne of England, immediately issued a proclamation instructing a change to be made in its then existing form (14). Richard I., Cœur de Lion, had displayed on his Royal Standard the three golden lions on a red ground, the sign of England. To these Henry V. had added three golden fleur-de-lis on a blue ground, typifying his right to the throne of France. This standard was used thereafter by all his successors, the sovereigns of England, and by Elizabeth. A change was now made by James to represent his additional sovereignties. To the standard of Elizabeth he added the lion rampant of Scotland and also the harp of Ireland, which had not previously been included in the Royal Arms (15), thus placing the three lions for England and three fleurs-de-lis for France in the first and fourth quarters; the lion rampant for Scotland in the second, and the harp for Ireland in the third quarter.

While he changed the English Royal Standard, no change was instructed to be made, nor was evidently considered to be necessary, in the English national flag of St. George, which continued to be used as previously on the English ships by his new subjects. Thus in the early years of the reign of James, the English and Scotch ships continued to use their respective "red crosse" and "white crosse" Jacks, exactly as they had done prior to his accession to the English throne.

The nations had now been brought into closer contact, and the movement of shipping along their shores much increased as each was relieved from any fear of attack by the other.

Each nation, no doubt, retained a predilection for its own national flag—a preference which its adherents expressed each in their own way, and most probably in terms not untinged by caustic references to controversies and contentions of previous days.

When James had ascended the throne of England, it was his great desire to be styled King of "Great Britain," as well as of "France and Ireland." He had caused himself at the outset to be so proclaimed, and afterwards used the phrase in his proclamations, but without due authority. During the first year of his reign opinions on the point were asked of the Judges of the courts, and also of the Lords and Commons of England, but the replies of all were unanimously against his right to the assumption of any such title, as being one which might seem to indicate a fusion of the two kingdoms.

The fact was, that although the two kingdoms of Scotland and England had been joined in allegiance to the same sovereign, who was equally king of each, yet as each kingdom still retained its own separate parliament, their union had not been made adequately complete. The King had particularly desired to complete this union. In a proclamation he issued, he states he had found among the "better disposed" of his subjects

He says he will himself use every diligence to have it perfected,

But charm he never so wisely, the King could not get his subjects to see matters in the same light as himself, nor was he able to get their Parliaments to unite.

Thus it occurred that in 1606, in the fourth year after the joining of the two thrones, the King, finding that difficulties kept arising about their flags between the subjects of his two adjacent kingdoms, considered it advisable to issue a proclamation declaring the manner in which they were in future to display their national Jacks, and also authorizing a new flag, which was to be used by each in addition to their own national flag. This flag was the "additional" Jack of James I. (16).

It is probable that the English sailor had objected to seeing the Scottish cross raised on the mast above his English flag, and the Scotsman, on his part, too, did not like to see St. Andrew below St. George. The additional flag was designed for the purpose of meeting this difficulty, and was ordered to be raised by itself upon the mainmast. It is evident that some ships had been flying both the national flags, for, as a further precaution, particular instruction was given that each ship should fly only one national cross, and this was to be only the cross of its own nationality. All controversy as to the precedence of the respective Jacks was thus intended to be brought to an end.

This proclamation of 1606, as copied from an original issue in the British Museum, reads as follows:

This King's Jack, which subsequently came to be commonly known as the "Union Flagge," was, it will be noted, not intended to supersede the existing national Jacks, for it was directed to be displayed in addition to, and at the same time with, the Jack of each nation. The new flag of the King was to be raised by itself on the mainmast, and the old national flag on the foremast, so that each of these flags should be kept separate from one another.

The reason for this separate use of two flags is evident, one which is fully confirmed in the creation of the Union Jacks which succeeded one another in subsequent reigns.

The reason was that the two Parliaments of the nations had not been united in one, and, therefore, it was that each nation continued to retain its own distinctive national cross, which it flew on the flagstaff as the sign of its own particular nationality, and which was, therefore, not displaced by the King's newly created flag.

PLATE III.