Item, the x day of Junii deliverit to Thomas Arthur to be iii anseƷeis[120] to the schippis xvj elnis reid and Ʒallow taffites of cord, price of the elne xviij s.
Summa xiiij li. viij s.
Item, deliverit to him to be the croces thairof iiij elnes half elne quhyte taffites of Janis[121] price the elne xv s.
Summa iij li. vij s. vj d.[122]
1542
Item, the vij day of August, deliverit to Charles Murray to be and ansenƷe, x elnis raid and Ʒallow taffitis of cord, price of the elne xviij s. and twa elnis quhite taffites of Janis to be croces thairto, price of the elne xiiij s.
Summa x li. viij s.[123]
There is a similar entry on the 12th for 8 ells red, and 2½ ells white for the cross.
Cleirac, in his Explication des Termes de Marine, etc.[124], gives for the Scotch flag a ground of red or blue, and also a ground of red, yellow and green, with the saltire in a canton or overall[125]. It is probable, however, that he was relying on obsolete information, for there seems no other evidence of a parti-coloured field so late as 1670[126], though a red ensign for ships, with white saltire in a blue canton[127], was in use until the Legislative Union of 1707.
It remains to say a few words about the royal banner, which may be considered in a sense national although it is the personal heraldic flag of the sovereign and ought not to be used by any subject. The rampant lion with a tressure fleur-de-lisé first appears in a seal of Alexander II appended to a Charter dated 1222[128]. Except for the period during which Mary Queen of Scots, after her marriage with the Dauphin, impaled the French Arms with her own it has remained unaltered, in the form in which we now see it quartered in the Royal Standard, since the thirteenth century.