Early flags were almost purely of a religious character.[[3]] The first notice of banners in England is in Bede's description of the interview between the heathen King Ethelbert and Augustine, the missionary from Rome, where the followers of the latter are described as bearing banners on which were displayed silver crosses; and we need scarcely pause to point out that in Roman Catholic countries, where the ritual is emotional and sensuous, banners of this type are still largely employed to add to the pomp of religious processions. Heraldic and political devices upon flags are of later date, and even when these came freely into use their presence did not supplant the ecclesiastical symbols. The national banner of England for centuries—the ruddy cross of her patron Saint George (Fig. [91])—was a religious one, and, whatever other banners were carried, this was ever foremost in the field. The Royal banner of Great Britain and Ireland that we see in Fig. [44], in its rich blazonry of the lions of England and Scotland and the Irish harp, is a good example of the heraldic flag, while our Union flag (Fig. [90]), equally symbolizes the three nations of the United Kingdom, but this time by the allied crosses of the three patron saints, St. George, St. Andrew, and St. Patrick, and it is therefore a lineal descendant and exemplar of the religious influence that was once all-powerful.

The ecclesiastical flags were often purely pictorial in character, being actual representations of the Persons of the Trinity, of the Virgin Mother, or of divers saints. At other times the monasteries and other religious houses bore banners of heraldic character; as the leading ecclesiastics were both lords temporal and lords spiritual, taking their places in the ranks of fighting men and leading on the field the body of dependants and retainers that they were required to maintain in aid of the national defence. In such case

the distinguishing banner of the contingent conformed in character to the heraldic cognisances of the other nobles in the host. Fig. [77], for instance, was the banner of St. Alban's Abbey. In a poem on the capture of Rouen by the English, in the year 1418, written by an eye-witness of the scenes described, we read how the English commander—

"To the Castelle firste he rode

And sythen the citie all abrode,

Lengthe and brede he it mette

And riche baneres up he sette

Upon the Porte Seint Hillare

A Baner of the Trynyte;

And at Porte Kaux he sette evene