USE OF FLAGS BY PRIVATE PERSONS.
In regard to the use of the national flag by private persons, there is a positive rule as to marine flags, but none, so far as I am aware, as to its use on shore. I have occasionally seen it flown on shore with a white border, under an impression, apparently, that this difference was necessary, but it is unmeaning, and there is no authority for it. In numberless instances we see one or other of the marine Ensigns hoisted on shore over gentlemen's houses, or used in street decoration on the occasion of public rejoicings; but nothing could be more absurd, as the ensign is exclusively a ship flag.
Any private individual entitled to armorial bearings may carry them on a flag. In such cases the arms should not be on a shield, but filling the entire flag.
The flags and banners represented in works on heraldry have almost invariably a fringe; but this is optional. If a fringe is used it should be composed of the livery colours, each tincture of the arms giving its colour to the portion of the fringe which adjoins it. In the British army the colours of the different regiments are fringed.
FOREIGN FLAGS: FRANCE.
My notice of foreign flags must be short. Those of France and America have naturally most interest for us.
Previous to the Revolution the French can hardly be said to have had a national flag. The colours of the reigning families—changing as they did with each fresh dynasty, as was the case in our own early history—were accepted in the place of national standards, while each regiment in the army followed colours of its own. The celebrated Chape de Saint Martin de Tours and the Oriflamme of the Abbey of Saint Denis, were, like the labarum of Constantine, ecclesiastical banners, symbolic of the two patrons of Christian France watching over her in her battles. The Chape de Saint Martin was a banner imitating in form a cape or cloak, and was of blue. The Oriflamme was red with a green fringe. By the end of the tenth century this had become the royal standard. In one of the windows of the Cathedral of Chartres (of the thirteenth century) there is a representation of Henri Sieur de Argentin et du Mez, Marshall of France under St. Louis, receiving from the hands of St. Denis a banner which is supposed to be the Oriflamme. Fig. 30 is a copy of this interesting old work of art. The banner, it will be observed, has five points; but in other examples it has only three, each having attached to it a tassel of green silk.
The royal banner of St. Louis was blue powdered with fleurs-de-lis in gold, and these fleurs-de-lis have remained since the eleventh or twelfth century a peculiarly French and royal device. It is indeed one of extreme antiquity, the emblem of a long-forgotten worship—older by many ages than any record of the doctrine of the Trinity, of which some have supposed this flower to be an emblem.[44]
[ [44] Laughton's Heraldry of the Sea.