before Constantine and his successors resembled the cavalry Vexillum.^[2] It was of purple silk, richly embroidered with gold, and though ordinarily

suspended from a horizontal cross-bar, was occasionally displayed in accordance with our modern usage by attachment by one of its sides to the staff.

The Roman standards were guarded with religious veneration in the temples of the metropolis and of the chief cities of the Empire, and modern practice has followed herein the ancient precedent. As in classic days the protection of Jove was invoked, so in later days the blessing of Jehovah, the Lord of Hosts, has been sought. At the presentation of colours to a regiment a solemn service of prayer and praise is held, and when these colours return in honour, shot-rent from victorious conflict, they are reverently placed in stately abbey, venerable cathedral, or parish church, never more to issue from the peace and rest of the home of God until by lapse of years they crumble into indistinguishable dust.

The Israelites carried the sacred standard of the Maccabees, with the initial letters of the Hebrew text, "Who is like unto Thee, O God, amongst the gods?" The Emperor Constantine caused the sacred monogram of Christ to be placed on the Labarum, and when the armies of Christendom went forth to rescue the Holy Land from the infidel they received their cross-embroidered standards from the foot of the altar. Pope Alexander II. sent a consecrated white banner to Duke William previous to his expedition against Harold, and we read in the "Beehive of the Romish Church," published in 1580, how "the Spaniardes christen, conjure, and hallow their Ensignes, naming one Barbara, another Katherine," after the names of saints whose aid they invoked in the stress of battle. We may see this invocation again very well in Figs. 147, 148: flags borne by the colonists of Massachusetts when they arrayed themselves against the mercenaries of King George, and appealed to the God of Battles in behalf of the freedom and justice denied by those who bore rule over them.

This recognition of the King of kings has led also to the captured banners of the enemy being solemnly suspended in gratitude and thanksgiving in the house of God. Thus Speed tells us that on the dispersal and defeat of the Armada, Queen Elizabeth commanded solemn thanksgiving to be celebrated at the Cathedral Church of St. Paul's, in her chief city of London, which accordingly was done upon Sunday, the 8th of September, when eleven of the Spanish ensigns were hung, to the great joy of the beholders, as "psalmes of praise" for England's deliverance from sore peril. Very appropriately, too, in the Chapel of the Royal College at Chelsea, the home of the old soldiers who helped to win them, hang the flags taken at Barrosa, Martinique, Bhurtpore, Seringapatam, Salamanca, Waterloo, and many another hard-fought struggle;

and thus, in like manner, is the tomb of Napoleon I., in Paris, surrounded by trophies of captured flags. On March 30th, 1814, the evening before the entry of the Allies into Paris, about 1,500 flags—the victorious trophies of Napoleon—were burnt in the Court of the Eglise des Invalides, to prevent their falling into the hands of the enemy.

Early flags were almost purely of a religious character.^[3] The first notice of banners in England is in Bede's description of the interview between the heathen King Ethelbert and Augustine, the missionary from Rome, where the followers of the latter are described as bearing banners on which were displayed silver crosses; and we need scarcely pause to point out that in Roman Catholic countries, where the ritual is emotional and sensuous, banners of this type are still largely employed to add to the pomp of religious processions. Heraldic and political devices upon flags are of later date, and even when these came freely into use their presence did not supplant the ecclesiastical symbols. The national banner of England for centuries—the ruddy cross of her patron Saint George (Fig. 91)—was a religious one, and, whatever other banners were carried, this was ever foremost in the field. The Royal banner of Great Britain and Ireland that we see in Fig. 44, in its rich blazonry of the lions of England and Scotland and the Irish harp, is a good example of the heraldic flag, while our Union flag (Fig. 90), equally symbolizes the three nations of the United Kingdom, but this time by the allied crosses of the three patron saints, St. George, St. Andrew, and St. Patrick, and it is therefore a lineal descendant and exemplar of the religious influence that was once all-powerful.

The ecclesiastical flags were often purely pictorial in character, being actual representations of the Persons of the Trinity, of the Virgin Mother, or of divers saints. At other times the monasteries and other religious houses bore banners of heraldic character; as the leading ecclesiastics were both lords temporal and lords spiritual, taking their places in the ranks of fighting men and leading on the field the body of dependants and retainers that they were required to maintain in aid of the national defence. In such case

the distinguishing banner of the contingent conformed in character to the heraldic cognisances of the other nobles in the host. Fig. 77, for instance, was the banner of St. Alban's Abbey. In a poem on the capture of Rouen by the English, in the year 1418, written by an eye-witness of the scenes described, we read how the English commander—

and not until this recognition of Divine and saintly aid was made did

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