While lying at anchor in the Downs, waiting for the high officials who were to accompany the fleet, Pepys records how the "General of the fleet" went from ship to ship in a small boat, telling them to "alter their Arms and flagges."
20. The "Naseby." Charles II.
(From a painting by Vandervelt.)
On 13th May, 1660, being on board the London, one of the ships of this squadron, he makes the following entries of his day's doings, and tells of the making of these changes: "To their quarterdeck, at which the taylers and painters were at work, cutting out some pieces of yellow cloth in the fashion of a crown and 'C.R.' to be put up instead of the State's arms." He also records that meetings of the officers were held, and that he had attended "in the afternoon a council of war only to acquaint them that the harp must be taken out of all their flags, it being very offensive to the King."
When, therefore, the harp had been removed from their flags, there remained the simple "Ensign Red," having the St. George cross in the upper white canton.
The Naseby (20)—afterwards re-named the Royal Charles—was one of the ships of the squadron which crossed to The Hague, and the actual ship on which Charles II. came over to England. The drawing shows the Ensign Red flying at the stern. There had not been sufficient opportunity for the obtaining of new flags, and, therefore, those which they had in use were altered on board the ships, as Pepys has told, and this flag is a Commonwealth "Ensign Red," with the Irish harp cut out (Pl. [IV.], fig. 3).
A very great deal of dependence cannot, as a rule, be placed on the form of the flags introduced into their pictures by artists even of the highest rank. When painting flags more attention is frequently given by them to the colour effect desired to be produced than to the accurate drawing of the details.
Some instances of unworthy errors in the drawing of national flags may be mentioned. In a painting by Leutze, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, a representation is shown of "Washington crossing the Delaware, on December 25th, 1776." In this a flag with the stars and stripes is prominently shown, although no such flag had any existence until a year and a half afterwards,[47] an error which has been perpetuated by a copy of this painting on a series of the national bank-notes issued by the United States Government. In the Capitol of the United States at Washington there is a picture of the "Battle of Lake Erie," fought in 1814, in which the flag on Commodore Perry's boat has only thirteen stars and thirteen stripes, although the United States ensign had been changed twenty years before, in 1794, to have fifteen stars and fifteen stripes. On the walls of the Commons Corridor in the British Houses of Parliament at Westminster is a fresco representing the landing of Charles II., in 1660, in which the Union Jack is depicted as having three crosses, the red cross of St. Patrick being included, although it was not entered in the flag until 1801, or 140 years afterwards.
In each of these instances the artist was painting from his imagination, but Vandervelt, who painted the picture from which our illustration of the Naseby is taken, was himself present on the occasion he recorded, and, seeing that he was the most celebrated marine artist of his day, the details of the flags can be taken to be correct.