Fig. 145. Part of King Henry VIII's garden at Hampton Court, from a contemporary picture.
Before finally leaving the subject of banners, a few remarks may be offered touching our beautiful national banner which we call the Union Jack.
This charming and interesting composition is not only, in a large number of cases when it is flown, displayed upside down, but in a still greater number of instances it is made quite incorrectly.
The first Union Jack, that in use from 1606 to 1801, combining as it did only the cross of St. George for England and the saltire of St. Andrew for Scotland, presented little difficulty, since there was practically no excuse for not drawing the St. Andrew's cross straight through from corner to corner. But the present Union Jack is a much more difficult banner to draw, as well as to understand, and the prevailing ignorance of its history even among so-called 'educated' people is extraordinary.
The Union Jack consists actually of (i) the banner of St. George with its white field reduced to a narrow edging on all sides of the red cross, to enable it to be superposed, without breaking the heraldic rule of colour upon colour, upon (ii) the blue banner of St. Andrew with his white cross; but since the Union with Ireland there has been combined with these (iii) the banner of St. Patrick, which has a red saltire upon a white field. This combination, in order to meet Scottish susceptibilities, has been effected in a very peculiar but ingenious way, first by treating the Irish banner like that of England, and reducing its white field to a narrow edging about the saltire, and then by slitting this down the middle of each arm, and joining the pieces to the opposite sides of St. Andrew's saltire similarly treated, yet so that the Scottish pieces are uppermost next the staff. It thus comes about that whatever be the shape of the flag, whether square or oblong, two straight lines drawn across it diagonally from corner to corner should always equally divide the Scottish and Irish crosses, and if this cannot be done the flag is not correctly built up (pl. [XXXI]).
