As in previous wars of defence or of adventure, the separate colonial forces were again brought together into one army. On their assembling at Cambridge, in July, 1775, they were mustered into one service under General Washington. As was recorded in a local paper, "None of the men who have been raised by this (Massachusetts) and several other colonies are in future to be distinguished as the troops of any particular colony, but as the forces of 'The United Colonies of North America,' into whose joint service they have been taken by the Continental Congress."[105]

As early as October, Washington found the necessity of having some "continental flag" which should identify the whole of the forces of "The United Colonies of North America" thus assembled together under his command, instead of having the military detachment from each colony continuing to use its own individual flag.

An existing ensign used by the Colony of Pennsylvania was at first proposed by him for this purpose, having a white ground with a tree in the middle, and the motto, "Appeal to Heaven."[106]

This was succeeded by a new design, devised for the Continental Union flag (39), which, to the accompanying salute of thirteen guns, was raised by Washington over the camp of his army at Cambridge, Massachusetts, on the 1st January, 1776, being the occasion of its first appearance.

This flag was called "The Grand Union" (Pl. VI., fig. 1). It was composed of thirteen stripes of alternate white and red—one for each colony—and in the upper corner was the British Union Jack of that period, displaying the two crosses of St. George and St. Andrew, as introduced in 1707.

There existed at the time a flag which had been carried by the English East India Company over their British possessions in India since 1704. This was composed of thirteen stripes, red and white alternately, and had the single red cross of St. George upon a white ground (the old English Jack) in the upper corner. This flag might have been seen on the vessels trading to America and exchanging products between the English East Indian and the American colonies, and thus being recognized as a "colonial flag" it may, with the change of form of the Union Jack, have suggested the new ensign.

PLATE VI.

There is no direct evidence as to the flag which had been raised by General Putnam at the outbreak of hostilities at Bunker Hill, June 17th, 1775, but tradition reports[107] that it was the ensign of the colony of New England (37), which, like the East India ensign, had the St. George's cross on a white ground in the upper corner; but the whole fly of the flag was red.

In the selection of a new flag for the combined forces of the united colonies, what design could be more reasonable or more appropriate than the selection of that Union Jack under which their united armies had so often fought, together with the addition of thirteen stripes to indicate the number of colonies then assembled together?

This retention of the Union Jack in the new flag was designedly intended to signify that the American colonies retained their allegiance to their Motherland of Great Britain, although they were contesting the methods of taxation promulgated by its Government.

By this flag the thirteen colonies testified that, though in arms, they still claimed to be Britons, and were demanding for themselves all the rights of citizenship which such relation conferred.

It was, as one of their orators has well said, "the flag of the British colonies in arms to secure the rights and liberties of British subjects."[108]

The first Union flag raised by Washington over the armies of the united colonies thus displayed the British Union Jack.

Another flag (40) bearing the Union Jack is still extant.[109] It is a crimson red flag, having a rattlesnake painted upon it, and in the upper corner is the Union Jack of 1707. This was carried by a regiment of the colony of Pennsylvania, and was used at the Battle of Trenton, December 26th, 1776, and in subsequent engagements with the British regular forces.

The intention to cure the troubles by constitutional means had become unhappily merged in the appeal to arms.[110] As the hostilities proceeded rancour grew, and then a new flag was sought for, which should typify the changed conditions. The source from which arose the idea of this final design we shall presently see.

On July 4th, 1776, the Declaration of Independence followed,[111] but the "Grand Union" still continued to be used by the thirteen colonies, which had now become thirteen States. It was not until June 14th, 1777, or almost a year after the Declaration, that a new national flag was fully developed.

The Congress of the United States, then in session at Philadelphia, approved of a report made by a committee[112] which had been appointed to consider the selection of a Union flag, and enacted,

The new enactment was not at once put in force and a still further delay ensued, but at length, on September 3rd, 1777, this flag was officially proclaimed as the Union Ensign of the United States (Pl. VI., fig. 2), and was the first national flag which was officially adopted by the authority of Congress.

As Washington himself suggested the first design, and had introduced the second, it is not improbable, and, indeed, it is recorded that he actually had somewhat to do with the designing of the final one.[113] However this last report may be, his friends and admirers most certainly had, and the similarity between the design of the final flag and the coat-of-arms of the Washington family points to the source from which they deduced the completed design.

Upon the tombstones of the family in Sulgrave Church, Northamptonshire, England, and upon the old manor house occupied by them in the time of Henry VIII., is to be seen the shield (41) of the Weshyntons,[114] or Washingtons, an old English county family, who traced their lineage back into the fifteenth century.

John Washington, a descendant of this family, had been a loyal cavalier, standing staunchly by his King, Charles I. When Cromwell and the Roundheads came into power, the Royalist Washington emigrated, in 1657, to Virginia, bringing out his family, and with them his family shield, on which are shown three stars, above alternate stripes of red and white. Having settled upon considerable estates, he and his descendants kept up the old ways, and maintained the style and country standards of their English forefathers.

George Washington, the subsequent President, was the great-grandson of the old loyalist colonist. He, too, served in the forces of his sovereign, King George III., and maintained the old family traditions and habits in the same way as did all the "first families" of Virginia.

On the panels of his carriage were painted his family coat-of-arms. It appeared on the book-plate (42) of the books in his library, and the first commissions which, as commander-in-chief, he issued to the officers of the Continental army were sealed with his family seal (43).

Thus the suggestion for the further alteration was ready to hand. The similarity of one portion of the design already existing could not fail to have been noticed, for the stripes on the Washington coat-of-arms were alternately red and white, as were also those on the Grand Union.

It had been suggested that the idea of the "new" constellation was derived from the analogy of the "old" constellation of Orion containing thirteen stars, and that the form of the stars was taken from a seal said to have belonged to John Adams, one of the committee for designing the flag.[115]

Reference to the details of this seal shows an eagle bearing in its claws the lyre of Orion, both being surrounded by a circle of thirteen stars; but the stars on the seal are all shown as sidereal six-pointed stars, and not five-pointed as are the Washington stars.

The stars which were inserted in the flag when the Union Jack was withdrawn were not the six-pointed stars which would be used heraldically if representing a "sidereal constellation," but are the five-pointed stars of the Washington armorial bearings.

So it happened that the stars and stripes of the coat-of-arms of the old loyalist English family, to which the successful Revolutionary general belonged, and of the seal with which he had attested the commissions which his officers had received from him, formed the basis for the design of the new American flag, and through them the memory of the great leader and first President of the United States is indissolubly connected with the Stars and Stripes, the national ensign (Pl. III., fig. 3) of the nation which he brought into existence.

The American had good right to be proud of that Jack, in whose glories he had so valiantly borne his part, and when as Englishmen battling for the rights of Englishmen the united colonies formed their colonial ensign they had rightly placed the Union Jack in its upper canton as evidence of those glories and of that claim.

Afterwards, when their new nation had been framed, and the Washington stars had marked the new allegiance, the thirteen stripes of the old thirteen English colonies still remained to attest to himself and to the world the Americans' share in the preceding centuries of Anglo-Saxon adventure and their heritage in all the liberties and literature of the English tongue. The rights won by the Barons from John, the works of Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, are still theirs by hereditary right, and the thirteen Anglo-Saxon stripes in his national emblem proclaim this to the American of to-day as they did to his forefathers in the thirteen colonies who first placed them in his union ensign.

The bitternesses arising out of a fratricidal contest fanned by the misrepresentations of fervid orators have for long decades misread the events and obscured the history of that dividing strife, but British law and the English tongue still speak in the flag of the old English colonies which continues to form part of the national ensign of the United States.

CHAPTER XVII.

THE JACK AND PARLIAMENTARY UNION IN BRITAIN.

The history of the flag, so far as we now have followed it, has been the story of martial or naval prowess and of the extension of its power and command around the world; but there is another story told in its combinations which is even greater in power, and has still deeper meaning in the welfare of the peoples who have come beneath its sway.

The kingdom of England for centuries had its own St. George's Jack, and the kingdom of Scotland its cross of St. Andrew. These red and white crosses had been the accepted symbols of their respective nationalities. Each of the kingdoms had its own separate Parliament, differing, it is true, from that of the other in methods and in many details, but representing the constitutional machinery adopted in each community for consultation between the King and his subjects, who, through their representatives, were advised upon matters connected with the government of their country, whether in its internal laws or in its relations with foreign powers. In course of time the same sovereign, in the person of James I., had by virtue of his birth succeeded to the throne of England, as well as to that of Scotland. The kingly office in both the kingdoms had thus been merged in the person of one and the same King. A new flag had been created representing the allegiance which had then been joined in the one sovereign. In this the crosses of the two kingdoms had been joined together in one design, but the separate national Jacks of each had been still retained and their use continued in force.

These separate national Jacks were certainly intended to evidence the continued separate national existence of each kingdom, while the new personal Jack or banner of the King would appear to have evidenced the union of the thrones in one person, and to represent the united fealty offered to the one King. Yet it is fairly open to question whether this Union Jack of James I. was at first created to mean as much as this, or whether it was not, after all, introduced more for the purpose of avoiding trouble between the sailors of the two nations, and only intended at first to be a local convenience for the preventing of dissensions.

The new Union Jack certainly did not represent a union of the nations, else why did the two national Jacks still remain? If it had been intended to represent the fealty of his subjects to their King, why was it not introduced immediately upon his accession, and why was not the red cross of the Irish included as well as the crosses of the English and Scots, for the Irish were equally at the time subjects of James I.?

The Irish had, in fact, been subjects of his predecessors for many centuries. In 1171, after the conquest of the island had been effected by Henry II. of England, the native princes of Ireland had declared fealty to the prince—not in his capacity as king, but in acknowledgment of his position as having become by conquest the "Lord of Ireland." The country had from very early days been governed by its own Parliaments, whose meetings are recorded as having taken place as early as 1295; but it was not until 1522 that Ireland was raised to the rank and designation of a kingdom. In this year an Act was passed by the Parliament of Ireland declaring Henry VIII., the King of England, to be also the King of Ireland, and it was by virtue of this Act that the King of England first assumed the additional title of King of Ireland. The flag of England was at this same time the single St. George Jack; yet, although the crowns were thus formally united, the cross of St. Patrick was not added to the red cross of St. George as a Union Jack in sign of fealty to the one sovereign.

After this, the Kingdom of Ireland owned fealty to three more sovereigns of England in succession;[116] yet under none of them were the crosses of the two national flags joined together. It was not until a Scotch king, the great-grandson of Henry VIII., became King of England, that any of the three national crosses were combined. In 1603, James I. became King of Ireland and England, as well as of Scotland; yet notwithstanding that the three sister kingdoms were thus united in allegiance under his united crown, the three separate crosses of the national Jacks of each were not united in one flag. James I. on his accession had at once added the Irish harp to the quarterings of his Royal Standard (15), but three more years passed before he entered the red cross of St. George in the "additional" two-crossed Union Jack which he then created. All these incidents point, evidently, to the view that the union of the crosses of St. George and St. Andrew in the new flag of 1606 did not arise as an emblem of the union of thrones, but was mainly devised, as the King's proclamation distinctly stated, for the special and local purpose of keeping the sailors of the two nations most interested in shipping at peace, and thus to prevent their crews from quarrelling with one another as they sailed their ships around the shores of Great Britain.

It required, in fact, something more than a mere union of allegiance to create a real Union Jack, and to entitle the national crosses of the kingdoms to be entered upon its folds; and what this requirement was the history of the entry of the St. Patrick cross into the Union flag enables us to see even yet more clearly.

It will be remembered that a change in the "additional" Jack of James was made in the sixth year of the reign of Queen Anne, and that the occasion of this change was coincident with the union of the separate Parliaments of England and Scotland into one British Parliament.

It was so soon as this occurred, but not until then, that the flag in which the two national crosses were blended was made the sole national ensign.

It was in 1707 that this first Union Jack was created. Queen Anne was at the time Queen of Ireland as well as Queen of England and Scotland. She had quartered the harp of Ireland in her Royal Standard five years previously, at the time when she had commenced her reign; yet the Queen, when forming the new flag, did not join the cross of St. Patrick in her Union Jack any more than had King James when forming his.

For ninety-four years longer the red cross Irish Jack continued in its separate existence. The reign of Queen Anne had come to its close; three more sovereigns[117] in succession had ascended the united throne of Great Britain and Ireland, and successive changes had been made in the emblazonings on the Royal Standard, yet in all these reigns the Union Jack, which had been declared to be the only flag of the realm to be worn by their subjects, and which was raised over the new dependencies which the united valour of all three nationalities won for the crown, contained only the crosses of St. George and St. Andrew, representing but two of the kingdoms included under its rule (44).

At last, in 1801, during the forty-first year of the reign of George III., the Irish Parliament was united with the Union Parliament of England and Scotland, and then, and not till then, was the red cross of St. Patrick blended with the other two national crosses.

The emblem of Scotland had not been blended with that of England in one Union Jack until their Parliaments had been united; so the emblem of Ireland was not added to the other two until her Parliament had also been joined with theirs. So soon, then, as the three kingdoms were joined in union under one Parliament, for the first time the three crosses of the three national Jacks were united in one three-crossed Union Jack.

We thus have learned what was the necessary qualification to entitle a national cross to be entered in the union ensign.

It needed a union of Parliaments to create a real Union Jack—a flag in which the national crosses should each continue to retain their national significance, and, when joined together in union, be still accorded the same precedence which had previously attached to each when separately displayed.

The history of these successive blendings shows most plainly that the triune flag arose, not from union under one sovereign, but from legislative union under one Parliament. The Union Jack, therefore, has become the emblem of the British Constitution and the British race. It is now the signal of loyalty to one Sovereign and the existence of Government under British parliamentary union, and, therefore, wherever displayed, it indicates the presence of British liberties and British law.

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE JACK AND PARLIAMENTARY UNION IN CANADA.

In addition to its harmony with the story of the union and the growth of the Constitution in the Motherland, the Union Jack has also an interesting connection with the extension of the powers and advantages of the British Constitution in Canada, and particularly with the establishment of responsible parliamentary government among its people.

In 1759, the seeds of the new nationality had been sown upon the Plains of Abraham, where the blood of Wolfe and Montcalm had mingled to enrich the soil, and the power of European France in Canada became merged in the power of England.

The French forefathers of the new subjects of King George II. had come largely from those very portions of old France, whose people had crossed over to England with William the Conqueror, and given the British their King.

As says one of our French Canadian historians:

Thus the new French-speaking subjects in Canada were only returning in allegiance to the sovereignty of a king whose ancestors had been placed upon the English throne by their own Norman forefathers; upon whose royal arms (45) were displayed the three fleurs-de-lis as sign of his claim, through his ancestors, to the throne of France (14); upon whose crown was the motto in their own French language, "Dieu et Mon Droit,"[119] and who by the retention of old customs still gave his consent to the laws enacted in his British Parliament in the same old Norman phrase, "Le Roi le veult" ("The King wills it"), which had been used by his Norman forefathers.[120]

The French habitant felt how easy was the renewal of the old relationship, and accepted the change in the way so well expressed in his Canadian voyageur patois:

There now commenced in Canada an evolution of internal government of the people similar to that which had taken place in the old land of England, but under reversed conditions, beginning here with the incoming of English rule, while there it had commenced with the Norman conquest of England. An eminent French authority[122] has stated his belief that England owed her liberties to her having been conquered by the Normans, and to this we may add the statement of a no less important English author,[123] that "assuredly England was gainer by the conquest." As the advent of Norman rule to England had resulted in such privileges to the English people, so assuredly the cession of Quebec and the introduction of English government into Canada brought equal blessings to the descendants of those selfsame Normans.

The French Canadian found that under his new Union Jack his property was secure. Under the old régime the French Canadian had practically no voice in the government of his country. There was no system of elective municipal government, no freedom for public meetings, all the legislative and executive power, even to its extremest details, being centralized through the Governor and Intendant in the person of the King of France, who was two thousand miles away. Finding his religious faith untrammelled, his freedom unimpaired, his language preserved, the habitant soon settled down without objection to his new sovereignty.

In 1774, the British Parliament passed the Act known as the "Quebec Act," which granted an increased share of local government to the people of the great province comprising all Canada which was then set apart, and the greater portion of which is now within the present Dominion. This measure of self-government still further assured the French-descended Canadians of the protection of their liberties, so that when the English-descended colonists of the thirteen English state colonies to the south of them revolted from their British allegiance in 1775, French Canada stood firm by the British crown. The descendants of the Normans in Canada were true to the government which their forefathers had helped to create in England.

The march of events now brought an additional set of new subjects to the British Constitution as it had then been established in Canada.

The granting of separation to the thirteen United States, in 1783, was followed by the immigration to Canada of those loyal souls whose hearts revolted at the action of their old colonies in taking down the Union Jack, and who refused to separate themselves from the United Empire, in whose ultimate justice they had unwavering faith.

These "United Empire Loyalists" settled mainly in the parts now known as Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Ontario. Of the quarter of a million souls who then formed the total population of Canada, about a hundred and forty thousand were of French language and descent, living in the counties adjacent to the St. Lawrence River; and of the forty to fifty thousand Loyalists who, it is estimated, reached the northern colonies during or immediately after the rebellion of 1775, over twenty-five thousand had, by 1786, settled along the western lakes.

Government in Canada had hitherto been conducted by a Governor and a Legislative Council appointed by the Crown, there being no elected representative. A further advance in constitutional self-government was now considered desirable, and the "Constitutional Act of 1791" was passed by the parent Parliament in Great Britain. The ancient Province of Quebec was divided into two provinces, called Lower Canada and Upper Canada, very fairly representing the localities occupied, the one by the older or French-speaking subjects of His Majesty, and the other by the newcoming English-speaking Loyalists, who had followed their old flag into the forests of the northland.

This Act of 1791 gave the right of Parliamentary government to the people of Canada. A Legislative Council and a House of Assembly were created for each Province, the members of the latter house being elected by the votes of people in the counties and towns of each.

The Legislature of Upper Canada held its first session at Newark (now Niagara-on-the-Lake) in 1792, summoned, as said Lieutenant-Governor Simcoe in his opening speech, "Under the authority of an Act of Parliament of Great Britain, passed in the last year, which has established the British Constitution in this distant country." To this he added:

"The wisdom and beneficence of our Most Gracious Sovereign and the British Parliament have been eminently proved not only in imparting to us the same form of government, but in securing the benefit of the many provisions which guard this memorable Act, so that the blessings of our invulnerable constitution, we hope, will be extended to the remotest posterity."

As a sign of this self-government under the British Crown, the King issued his warrant from the Court of St. James on March 4th, 1792, authorizing a "Great Seal for the Province of Upper Canada," to be used in sealing all public instruments. The engraving (46), which is a photo reproduction of the seal attached to the Crown Patent of a grant of one hundred acres of land near Port Hope, Upper Canada, made to a U. E. Loyalist, shows the details of the design, being, as described in the royal warrant, "an anchor and sword crossed on a calumet of peace, encircled by a wreath of olives, surmounted by an imperial crown and the Union of Great Britain."

This "Union," which will be seen in the upper right-hand corner of the seal, was the Union Jack of Queen Anne.

The United Empire Loyalists sought their loved two-crossed Union Jack in Canada. They found it not only flying on the flagstaff, but also impressed on the seals of the Grants of land which were made to them in recognition of their loyalty. On these it came to them as a sign of the surety of their legal rights under British law and their full protection under the administration of British justice.

The introduction of this Union Jack had been the result of an Act passed by the British Parliament, that "mother of parliaments," which continues to this day to have vested in it the ultimate political sovereignty of every local Parliament which it has created.

This Union Jack on the Great Seal is in this way the emblem of parliamentary union between Great Britain and Canada, and the sign of the spread of British constitutional government to the continent of America.

But the French Canadian has also an interest in this same Great Seal, for on its reverse side it bore the royal coat-of-arms of the reigning sovereign, and in this were still shown the three lilies of France, in the same way as in the arms of his predecessor, George II. (45). What the Union Jack on the one side was to the English-speaking Canadian, the "fleurs-de-lis" on the other was to the French-Canadian—a visible sign of his own personal connection with the glories of his forefathers, and the evidence of his glad allegiance to the Sovereign whose connection with the ancient realm of France was represented by these emblems, and with whose realm he was now reunited.

In drawings of the arms of the Province of Ontario (the new name given to the Province of Upper Canada at the time of Confederation, in 1867), the Jack has frequently been shown as containing three crosses. A reference to the impressions made by the seal itself upon the great pieces of white wax, four and a half inches broad by three-quarters of an inch in thickness, which were attached by bands of parchment or of tape to the official documents, shows, as is seen in the photograph, that the "Union" contained two crosses only, namely, the cross of St. George and the cross of St. Andrew.

This Union Jack of 1707 was also shown in the arms of the Department of Education of Upper Canada, from 1844 to 1876, during the régime of Dr. Ryerson as Superintendent. In these the design was the same as on the Great Seal, but the Union Jack was removed from the upper corner and placed upon a shield in the centre, upon which the two crosses of Queen Anne are plainly shown.

In earlier stained glass windows placed in the Normal School, Toronto, the head offices of the Department of Education of Ontario, the three-crossed flag had been shown, but this, on the suggestion of the writer, has been corrected in the new windows placed in the library in 1896.

A further adoption of the national emblem is shown in the design on the early currency, which was coined for use in the Province. The "penny" of the Bank of Upper Canada (47) shows on the one side St. George and the dragon, and on the other the arms of the Great Seal, having on it the Union Jack,[124] which good national emblem, no doubt, made the money that the Canadian Loyalist earned more acceptable to him. These must have been happy reminders to the patriot, for on the coins which passed current among his people, and on the seal of the deed of the grant of land which his Loyalist father or himself had received for his new home, was the imprint of the old Union Jack, placed there by an Act of the Union Parliament of Great Britain, as the sign of his parliamentary union with that United Empire which ever commanded his allegiance.

CHAPTER XIX.

THE UNION JACK OF GEORGE III., 1801.

THE PRESENT UNION JACK.

We come now to the formation of the first, and present, three-crossed Jack, the "Red, White and Blue," of story and of song, being the third Union Jack.

For forty years King George III. had reigned as King of Great Britain and Ireland. The Union Parliament, created under Queen Anne, had administered the affairs of England and of Scotland, but the Parliament of Ireland had continued meeting separately, and the two-crossed Union Jack of 1707 had been the only Union Jack authorized to be raised in the British realm. In the forty-first year of the King's reign an Act was passed in the Parliament of Ireland, whereby it became, as had the Parliaments of the two other kingdoms, incorporated in the one Union Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. As previously, so now again the Parliamentary and completed union of the kingdoms having been arrived at, the Irish Jack was directed to be joined with the Jacks of England and Scotland.

The same deliberate procedure for making an alteration in the Union flag was followed as under Queen Anne: First, an Act of Parliament creating a further union, the call of the Sovereign as the supreme head of the nations, the appointment of a Committee of the Privy Council to consider the drafts of the changes to be made, then an Order in Council, and, finally, the issue of a proclamation by the King.

The record[125] states: "On the 5th November, 1800, the King in Council was pleased to approve the report of a Committee of the Privy Council, that the Union Flag should be altered according to the draft marked 'C,' in which the cross of St. George is conjoined with the crosses of St. Andrew and St. Patrick."

This draft "C" (48) was duly transmitted to the College of Arms, London, and an exact tracing of it as recorded in the books of the college has been made.[126]

The designers of this new Union Jack of 1801 had this time to join three flags together, instead of, as in 1707, only joining two; the problem set before them being the union of the three national Jacks of the sister nations into one grand Union Jack (Pl. V., fig. 3).

The three flags now to be formed into one Union flag were the incoming Irish Jack, having a red diagonal saltire cross and white ground, to be joined with the "white crosse, commonly called St. Andrew's crosse,"[127] of Scotland, with its blue ground, and the "Jack white with a red cross, commonly called St. George's cross"[128] of England, with its white ground.

The latter two had already been joined in the Union Jack of 1707. The draft "C" (48) gives the method in which the designers proposed the three flags should be combined, and the proportions to be given to each in the new flag, which then received the approval of the King in Council.

Thereafter, on January 1st, 1801, King George III. issued his Royal proclamation from St. James' Palace, declaring His Majesty's pleasure concerning the Royal style and titles appertaining to the Imperial crown of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and its dependencies, and also the ensigns armorial, flags and banners thereof.

The clause respecting the Royal coat-of-arms states:

The result of this clause was that the lilies of France, which had been quartered in the Royal arms since Edward III., 1327, were altogether removed, and the whole four quarters were appropriated—two quarters to the three golden lions of England, and one quarter each to the red lion of Scotland and the golden harp of Ireland—and upon a shield on the centre was to be placed the arms and white horse of Hanover, to indicate the other countries over which the King also reigned (49).

The next clause refers to the Royal Standard or flag of the sovereign: