History of the Union Jack and Flags of the Empire. Barlow Cumberland
by his virtues prevails—a splendid emblem for a Christian people.
This photo reproduction is from a "rubbing" in black lead recently taken from the brass, and shows, so far as the reduced scale will permit, the St. George's crosses upon the surcoat and shield of the knight and the trappings of his horse.
In 1350, on St. George's Day, the "most noble Order of the Garter" was instituted by Edward III., with magnificent ceremony in the St. George's Chapel, Windsor Castle. This is the highest order of knighthood in the kingdom. Its jewel, called "The George," is a representation of St. George and the Dragon, and in the centre of the "Star" of the Order is the red cross of St. George.
So onward through all the centuries, and now St. George is the acclaimed patron saint of England and all Englishmen.
It was under this red cross banner of St. George that Richard I., the Lion-hearted, after proving their seamanship in victory and giving his men their battle-cry, "Saint George—forward!"[24] showed the mettle of his English Crusaders in the battles of the Holy Land, and led them to the walls of Jerusalem. With it the fleets of Edward I. claimed and maintained the "lordship of the Narrow Seas." Under this single red cross flag the ships of England won the epochal naval victory of Sluys, where the English bowman shot his feathered shafts from shipboard as blithely as when afterwards on land the French battlefields resounded to the cry of "England and St. George," when the undying glories of Cressy and Poictiers were achieved, and again at Agincourt when Henry V. led on his men to victory. Under it, too, Cabot discovered Cape Breton, Drake sailed around the world, Frobisher sought the Northwest passage, Raleigh founded Virginia, and the navy of Elizabeth carried confusion into the ill-fated Spanish Armada.
This is a "glory roll" which justifies the name of England as "Mistress of the Seas." Her patron saint was won as a record of naval victory. With this red cross flag of St. George flying above them, her English sailors swept the seas around their white-cliffed coasts, and made the ships of all other nations do obeisance to it. With it they penetrated distant oceans, and planted it on previously unknown lands as signs of the sovereignty of their king, making the power of England and England's flag known throughout the circle of the world.
All this was done before the time when the sister-nations had joined their flags with hers, and it is a just tribute to the seafaring prowess of the English people, and to the victories won by the English Jack, that the single St. George's cross is in the British fleets the Admiral's Flag, and flies as his badge of rank; that it is in the Command Pennant of all captains and officers in command of ships, and that the English red cross flag is the groundwork of the White Ensign of the British navy (Pl. VIII., fig. 2). This is the "distinction flag" of the British navy, allowed to be carried only by His Majesty's ships-of-war, and restricted, except by special grant, solely to those bearing the Royal commission.[25]
Thus has the memory of Richard I. and his men been preserved, and all honour done to the "Mariners of England," the sons of St. George, whose single red cross flag, the English Jack, has worthily won the poet's praise:
"Ye mariners of England! That guard our native seas, Whose flag has braved a thousand years The battle and the breeze.
"The meteor flag of England Shall yet terrific burn, Till danger's troubled night depart, And the star of Peace return."[26]
CHAPTER V.
THE SUPREMACY OF THE ENGLISH JACK.
A.D. 871–1606.
While it is true that flags and banners had grown up on land from the necessity of having some means of identifying the knights and nobles, whose faces were encased and hidden from sight within their helmets, yet it was at sea that they attained to their greatest estimation. There the flag upon the mast became the ensign of the nation to which the vessel belonged, and formed the very embodiment of its power. To fly the flag was an act of defiance, to lower it an evidence of submission, and thus the motions of these little coloured cloths at sea became of highest importance.
The supremacy of one nation over another was measured most readily by the precedence which its flag received from the ships of other nationalities. National pride, therefore, became involved in the question of the supremacy of the flag at sea, and in this contest the English were not behindhand in taking their share, for the supremacy of the sea meant to England something more than the mere precedence of her flag. It meant that no other power should be allowed to surpass her as a naval power; not that she desired to carry strife against their countries, but esteemed it more for the protection of her own shores at home, and the preservation of peace along the confines of her island seas.
This faith in the maintenance of the Supremacy of the Seas remains potent to this present day, as is shown by the demand of the British people that their navy shall be maintained at a two-power standard, and so be equal in strength to the navies of any other two of the nations which sail the oceans. It is no new ardour, nor the outcome of any modern development or exigency, but is the outgrowth of the determination of the nation from its earliest days to maintain the supremacy of its flag, and is strengthened by the lessons learned in those centuries.
Alfred the Great of England (871–901) was the first to establish any supremacy for the English flag, and to him is attributed the first gathering together of a Royal navy, the creation of an efficient force at sea being a portion of that sea-policy which he so early declared, and which has ever since been the ruling guide of the English people. The true defence of England lay, Alfred considered, in maintaining a fleet at sea of sufficient power to stretch out afar, rather than in trusting to fortifications for effective land resistance when the enemy had reached her shores; that it was better to beat the enemy at sea before he has a chance to land, and thus to forestall invasion before it came too near—a policy which in these days of steam is simply being reproduced by the creation of "Dreadnoughts," swift and strong, to hit hard on distant seas. The bulwarks of England were considered in his time, as they are still considered, to be her ships at sea rather than the parapets of her forts on land.
"Britannia needs no bulwarks, No towers along the steep; Her march is o'er the mountain waves, Her home is on the deep."[27]
Introducing galleys longer and faster than those of the Danes,[28] Alfred kept his enemies at a respectful distance, and, dwelling secure under the protection of his fleet, was thus enabled to devote himself with untrammelled energy to the establishment of the internal government of his kingdom.
His successors followed up his ideas, and under Athelstane (901) the creation of an English merchant navy was also developed. Every inducement was offered to merchants who should engage in maritime ventures. Among other decrees then made was one that, "if a merchant so thrives that he pass thrice over the wide seas in his own craft he was henceforth a Thane righte worthie."[29] Thus honours were to be won as well as wealth, and in pursuit of both the merchants of England extended their energies to wider traffic on the seas.
King Edgar (973–75), by virtue of his navy, won and assumed the title of "Supreme Lord and Governor of the Ocean lying around about Britain." Thus did the English flag, carried by its navies, sail the seas. But Harold, the last of the Saxon kings, instead of maintaining his ships in equipment and fitness to protect his shores, allowed them, for want of adequate provisions, to be dispersed from their station behind the Isle of Wight, and so, forgetting the teachings of Alfred, left his southern coasts unguarded and let the Norman invader have opportunity to land, an opportunity which was promptly seized.
The Norman monarchs of England held in their turn to the supremacy which the early Saxon kings had claimed for her flag at sea.
When the conquest of England, in 1066, had been completely effected by the Norman forces, the shores on each side of the "narrow seas" between England and Normandy were combined under the rule of William the Conqueror, communication by water increased between the two portions of his realm, and the maritime interests of the people were greatly extended and established.