We have in Plate VI. some few examples of these vagaries from sketches that we made at the time. Fig. [45], if it had not got the Union in the canton, would nearly be the Danish flag, Fig. [225], but the addition of the canton makes it sheer foolishness. Fig. [46] is a good example of the notion that anything will do if it be only bright enough: it is a mere piece of patchwork, not by any means the only one in evidence. Figs. [47] and [50] explain themselves; it is evident that in one case the decorator started with a white ensign and in the other with a blue one, and then, feeling that they were a little small and insignificant looking, tacked on a goodly amount of red material to bring them up to their notion of what would be sufficiently conspicuous in size. Fig. [48] is very quaint: there is a notion of the white ensign hovering about it, but the Royal Standard employed as a canton in one quarter is outside all the proprieties, and in any case all the arm of the cross that one would expect to see below the canton is absorbed by it. The addition of the two red tails to the Royal Standard in Fig. [49] is not by any means legitimate, while in Fig. [51] the Royal Standard is made the canton of a red ensign, and, as if this were not bad enough in itself, the whole thing is flown upside down. Many of the so-called flags had no semblance to anything, some were strange and abnormal tricolors; others, chequers: one, we remember, was deep crimson, with a broad bordering round three of its edges of light blue. Whatever opportunity of going wrong seemed to be at all feasible appeared to be eagerly seized by some well-meaning burgess, so that the result was a perfect museum of examples of how not to do it, and therefore of immense interest.
CHAPTER III.
Army Flags—the Queen's Colour—the Regimental Colour—the Honours and Devices—the Flag of the 24th Regiment—Facings—Flag of the King's Own Borderers—What the Flag Symbolises—Colours of the Guards—the Assaye Flag—Cavalry Flags—Presentation of Colours—Chelsea College Chapel—Flags of the Buffs in Canterbury Cathedral—Flags of the Scottish Regiments in St. Giles's Cathedral—Burning of Rebel Flags by the Hangman—Special Flags for various Official Personages—Special Flags for different Government Departments—The Lord High Admiral—The Mail Flag—White Ensign of the Royal Yacht Squadron—Yacht Ensigns and Burgees—House or Company Flags—How to express Colours with Lines—the Allan Tricolor—Port Flags—the British Empire—the Colonial Blue Ensign and Pendant—the Colonial Defence Act—Colonial Mercantile Flag—Admiralty Warrant—Flag of the Governor of a Colony—the Green Garland—the Arms of the Dominion of Canada—Badges of the various Colonies—Daniel Webster on the Might of England—Bacon on the Command of the Ocean.
Having now dealt with the Union Flag and the Red and Blue Ensigns, we proceed to see how these are modified by the addition of various devices upon them.
The flags of the army claim the first place in our regard. Each infantry regiment has two "colours," one being called the "Queen's Colour," and the other the "Regimental Colour." On turning to Barret's "Theorike and Practike of Modern Warres," a book published in the year 1598, we find the following passage:—"We Englishmen do call them of late colours, by reason of the variety of colours they be made of, whereby they be the better noted and known." This we may doubtless accept as a sufficient explanation of the word, and the passage is interesting, too, as approximately fixing a date for the introduction of the term, and showing that it has been in use for at least three hundred years.
The Queen's Colour in every regiment of the line is the flag of the Union, Fig. [90], bearing in its centre the Imperial crown and the number of the regiment beneath it in Roman figures worked in gold, and its territorial designation.
The regimental Colour is of the colour of the facings of the regiment, except when these are white, in which case the body of the flag is not plain white all over, but bears upon it the Cross of St. George. Whatever the colour, it bears in its upper corner the Union, and in the centre of the flag the crown and title of
the regiment, and around it whatever devices, or badges, or other distinctions have been specially conferred upon it, together with the names of the actions in which the regiment has taken part, the records of its gallant service in many a hard-fought struggle in the Peninsula, on the sultry plains of India, beneath the burning sun of Africa, or wherever else the call of honour and of duty has added to its laurels. Thus the regimental flag of the 1st regiment of the line bears the proud record—St. Lucia, Egmont-op-Zee, Egypt, Corunna, Busaco, Salamanca, Vittoria, St. Sebastian, Nive, Peninsula, Niagara, Waterloo, Nagpore, Maheidpore, Ava, Alma, Inkermann, Sebastopol, and several other records of struggles in which they bore gallant share; and many another regiment could show as fine a record of service.