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.
44. Fort George and the Port of New York in 1770.
(From an old print.)
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.