A Baner of the Quene of Heven;
And at Porte Martvile he upplyt
Of Seint George a Baner breight."
and not until this recognition of Divine and saintly aid was made did
"He sette upon the Castelle to stonde
The armys of Fraunce and Englond."
Henry V., at Agincourt, in like manner displayed at his headquarters on the field not only his own arms, but, in place of special honour and prominence, the banners of the Trinity, of St. George, and of St. Edward. These banners of religious significance were often borne from the monasteries to the field of battle, while monks and priests in attendance on them invoked the aid of Heaven during the strife. In an old statement of accounts, still existing, we read that Edward I. made a payment of 8½d. a day to a priest of Beverley for carrying throughout one of his campaigns a banner bearing the figure of St. John. St. Wilfred's banner from Ripon, together with this banner of St. John from Beverley, were brought on to the field at Northallerton; the flag of St. Denis was carried in the armies of St. Louis and of Philip le Bel, and the banner of St. Cuthbert of Durham was borrowed by the Earl of Surrey in his expedition against Scotland in the reign of Henry VIII. This banner had the valuable reputation of securing victory to those who fought under it. It was suspended from a horizontal bar below a spear head, and was a yard or so in breadth and a little more than this in depth; the bottom edge had five deep indentations. The banner was of red velvet sumptuously enriched with gold embroidery, and in the centre was a piece of white velvet, half a yard square, having a cross of red velvet upon it. This central portion covered and protected a relic of the saint. The victory of Neville's Cross, October 17th, 1346, was held to be largely
due to the presence of this sacred banner, and the triumph at Flodden was also ascribed to it.
During the prevalence of Roman Catholicism in England, we find that banners of religious type entered largely into the funeral obsequies of persons of distinction: thus at the burial of Arthur, Prince of Wales, the eldest son of Henry VII., we find a banner of the Trinity, another with the cross and instruments of the Passion depicted upon it; another of the Virgin Mary, and yet another with a representation of St. George. Such banners, as in the present instance, were ordinarily four in number, and carried immediately round the body at the four corners of the bier. Thus we read in the diary of an old chronicler, Machyn, who lived in the reigns of Edward VI., Mary, and Elizabeth, that at the burial of the Countess of Arundel, October 27th, 1557, "cam iiij herroldes in ther cotes of armes, and bare iiij baners of emages at the iiij corners." Again, on "Aprell xxix, 1554, was bered my Lady Dudley in Saint Margarett in Westminster, with iiij baners of emages." Another item deals with the funeral of the Duchess of Northumberland, and here again "the iiij baners of ymages" again recur. Anyone having the old records, church inventories, and the like before them, would find it easy enough, as easy as needless, to multiply illustrations of this funeral use of pictured banners. These "emages" or "ymages" of old Machyn are of course not images in the sense of sculptured or carved things, but are painted and embroidered representations of various saints. Machyn, as a greatly interested looker-on at all the spectacles of his day, is most entertaining, but his spelling, according to the severer notions of the present day, is a little weak, as, for instance, in the following words that we have culled at random from his pages:—prossessyon, gaffelyns, fezyssyoun, dysquyet, neckclygens, gorgyusle, berehyng, wypyd, pelere, artelere, and dyssys of spyssys. The context ordinarily makes the meaning clear, but as our readers have not that advantage, we give the same words according to modern orthography—procession, javelins, physician, disquiet, negligence, gorgeously, burying, whipped, pillory, artillery, dishes of spices.
The various companies and guilds of the mediæval period had their special flags that came out, as do those of their successors of the present day, on the various occasions of civic pageantry; and in many cases, as may be seen in the illuminated MSS. in the British Museum and elsewhere, they were carried to battle as the insignia of the companies of men provided at the expense of those corporations. Thus in one example that has come under our notice we see a banner bearing a chevron between hammer, trowels, and builder's square; in another between an axe and two pairs of compasses, while a third on its azure field bears a pair of golden