may be very well seen in the illuminations, seals, etc., of that period. As early as the year 1247 we find Otho, Count of Gueldres, represented as bearing on his seal a square banner charged with his arms, a lion rampant; and in a window in the Cathedral of Our Lady, at Chartres, is a figure of Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester from 1236 to 1265. He is depicted as bearing in his right hand a banner of red and white, as shown in Fig. 18.

References in the old writers to the banner are very numerous. Thus in the "Story of Thebes" we read of "the fell beastes," that were "wrought and bete upon their bannres displaied brode" when men went forth to war. Lydgate, in the "Battle of Agincourt," writes:—