Fig. 131. Knights with banners, from an illumination in Royal MS. 19 B XV in the British Museum.
Every one is familiar with the banner of the royal arms that betokens the presence of the King, and with our splendid national banner known as the Union Jack. The banner with the arms of the city that is flown above the Mansion House when the lord mayor is in residence is familiar to Londoners, and the citizens of Rochester are equally accustomed to see the banner of their city flying on Sundays and holidays from the great tower of their castle. Let a banner once be regarded in the light of a rectangular shield and its fitness to contain armorial bearings immediately becomes apparent. The King's banner is now always miscalled 'the royal standard,' even in official language, though heraldically it is not a standard at all, but simply a banner.
Medieval banners at first were oblong in shape, and set upright with a longer side next the staff. In the late thirteenth century pictures formerly in the painted chamber in the palace of Westminster the banners borne by the knights were more than twice as tall as they were broad. The same proportion survives even in the famous pictorial pageant of Richard Beauchamp earl of Warwick, drawn about 1493;[9] but the majority of the banners therein shown have a height one and three-quarter times the width, which is better for the display of heraldry. This is also the proportion of the banners on William lord Hungerford's seal (fig. [132]), but the banners with impaled arms on lady Hungerford's seal are nearly square (fig. [133]). On the monument in Westminster abbey church of Lewis lord Bourchier (ob. 1431) the large quartered banners at the ends, upheld by lions and eagles, are slightly less than a square and a half in area, and admirably proportioned for displaying arms (fig. [134]). The banner of King Edward IV, 'which also hung over his grave' in St. George's chapel in Windsor castle, is described as of 'Taffaty, and thereon painted quarterly France and England; it had in breadth three foot four inches, besides a Fringe of about an inch broad, and in depth five foot and four inches, besides the Fringe.'[10] Ashmole, in his description of the banners hung above the stalls of the Knights of the Garter, states (in 1672) that 'the fashion of the Soveraign's and all the Knight-Companions Banners are square; but it doth no where appear to us, of what size their Banners anciently were; yet in Queen Elizabeth's Reign, we find them two yards and a quarter long, and a yard and three quarters broad, beside the Fringe (which is made of Gold or Silver and Silk, of the colours in the Wreath) and thereon are wrought or beaten upon Taffaty-Sarcenet, double-Sarcenet, or rich Taffaty, with fine Gold and Colours, on both sides, the paternal Coat of the Knights Companion, together with his Quarterings, or so many of them as he please to make use of, wherein Garter is to take care that they be warrantly marshalled.... These Banners of Arms are fixed to the end of long Staves, painted in Oyl, formerly with the Colours of the Wreath, but now Red.'[11]
Fig. 132. Seal of Walter lord Hungerford with banners.