"Many a beautiful pennon fixed to a lance,
And many a banner displayed;"
and of the knight in Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales," we hear that
"By hys bannere borne is hys pennon
Of golde full riche."
The pennon bore the arms of the knight, and they were in the earlier days of chivalry so emblazoned upon it as to appear in their proper position not when the lance was held erect but when held horizontally for the charge. The earliest brass now extant, that of Sir John Daubernoun, at Stoke d'Abernon Church, in Surrey, represents the knight as bearing a lance with pennon. Its date is 1277, and the device is a golden chevron on a field of azure. In
this example the pennon, instead of being forked, comes to a single point.
The pennon was the ensign of those knights who were not bannerets, and the bearers of it were therefore sometimes called pennonciers; the term is derived from the Latin word for a feather, penna, from the narrow, elongated form. The pennons of our lancer regiments (Fig. [30]) give one a good idea of the form, size, and general effect of the ancient knightly pennon, though they do not bear distinctive charges upon them, and thus fail in one notable essential to recall to our minds the brilliant blazonry and variety of device that must have been so marked and effective a feature when the knights of old took the field. In a drawing of the year 1813, of the Royal Horse Artillery, we find the men armed with lances, and these with pennons of blue and white, as we see in Fig. [31].[[11]]
Of the thirty-seven pennons borne on lances by various knights represented in the Bayeux tapestry, twenty-eight have triple points, while others have two, four, or five. The devices upon these pennons are very various and distinctive, though the date is before the period of the definite establishment of heraldry. Examples of these may be seen in Figs. [39], [40], [41], [42].
The pennoncelle, or pencel, is a diminutive of the pennon, small as that itself is. Such flags were often supplied in large quantities at any special time of rejoicing or of mourning. At the burial in the year 1554 of "the nobull Duke of Norffok," we note amongst other items "a dosen of banerolles of ys progene," a standard, a "baner of damaske, and xij dosen penselles." At the burial of Sir William Goring we find "ther was viij dosen of penselles," while at the Lord Mayor's procession in 1555 we read that there were "ij goodly pennes [State barges] deckt with flages and stremers and a m penselles." This "m," or thousand, we can perhaps scarcely take literally, though in another instance we find "the cordes were hanged with innumerable pencelles."[[12]]