[ [14] Vicissitudes of Families and other Essays, by Sir Bernard Burke, 1st series, p. 387.
It was the custom in early times to have banners suspended from trumpets. At the battle of Agincourt the Duke of Brabant, who arrived on the field towards the close of the conflict, is said, by St. Remy, to have taken one of the banners from his trumpeters, and, cutting a hole in the middle, made a surcoat of arms of it. To this circumstance Shakespeare thus alludes—
"I will a banner from my trumpet take
And use it for my haste."
Chaucer, too, notices banners being suspended from trumpets—
"On every trump hanging a brod banere,
Of fine tartarium full richly bete,
Every trumpet his lorde's armes bere."[15]
[ [15] Flour and the Leafe, 1 211.
At coronations banners were also used; and in the fifteenth century heralds, when despatched on missions, appear to have carried a banner bearing their sovereign's arms. Banners were also for a long time used at funerals. It was not till about the period of the Revolution that the practice fell into comparative desuetude.