as the enemy yield or drawn back as they press on.

It is to a machine similar to this, and bearing aloft a pyx and three banners, that the battle near Northallerton in 1138 owes its name of Battle of the Standard.

The use of this form of standard was not confined to the English; indeed it seems to have been in general use in the armies of western Europe in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and the transference of the name from the support to the royal, ducal, or state flag that it bore was a natural consequence. This transference evidently began to take place about the end of the thirteenth century, for in 1282 the State gonfanon of Genoa, hitherto called the "vexillum" of St George, in the Annales Genoenses, becomes the "Stantarium B. Georgii." In England the change seems to have taken place a little later. I have not met with it before the year 1323, when the Exchequer Accounts contain references to Standards (Estandartz, estandardes) bearing the royal arms and made of worsted of Aylesham.

But the name was not given in England to every form of flag bearing the royal arms or cross of St George. It was confined to a particular type intermediate in length between the streamer and the banner[6]. This type was evidently the direct descendant of the "gonfanon," which is the only form of flag represented on such of the great seals of our early kings as show flags at all[7]. From the fact that it is this form which is depicted at the masthead of the ships in early seals, as for instance those of Hastings and Lyme Regis (thirteenth century) and of Dover (1305) reproduced in Plate III, we may infer that it was the type most convenient for use at the head of the "standard," and therefore the type to which the name gradually became applied. During the fourteenth century the tails were reduced in number to two and the flag made to taper gradually throughout its length. Finally, the heralds established a form in which the tails were short, blunt and rounded off at the end, which they decided should contain the cross of St George in chief with the motto and badges of the owner, but not his arms, in the fly. This change seems to have taken place about the end of the fifteenth century. By the restriction of the royal arms to flags of banner form the name "standard," when qualified by the adjective "royal" (but only in this connection), became transferred to the royal banner of arms, not only in popular speech which makes no account of such technical niceties, but also in official usage from Tudor times to this day.

Streamer. A long and relatively narrow flag flown at sea from the masthead, top or yardarm, often reaching down to the water. The earlier name of the modern "pendant." The term is also applied to any ribbon-like flag or decoration.

Pennon. Originally a small pointed flag worn at the lance-head by knights; but the word was used at sea in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries to denote a short streamer.

Pennoncel. A small pennon.

Pennant (in modern official language written "pendant," but pronounced "pennant"). A synonym for "streamer," a name which it has gradually replaced.

Geton, gytton, guidon. A small swallow-tailed flag.

Ensign (corruptly written "ancient" during the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries). This word was borrowed from the land service in the sixteenth century to denote the striped flag then introduced on the poop of ships. In explaining the meaning of this word in the Army, Barret[8] remarks: "We Englishmen do call them (Ensigns) of late Colours, by reason of the variety of colours they be made of, whereby they be the better noted and known to the companie."

Colours. Originally applied to an ensign; afterwards extended to mean the flags commonly flown by a ship. At the end of the seventeenth century a "suit of colours" included ensign, jack and pendant.

Jack. A small flag flown on the bowsprit.

Upon the water, as upon the land, the Standard (taking the word in its earliest meaning) seems to have preceded the Flag by many centuries. The earliest knowledge we have of its existence is derived from the pottery of the pre-dynastic Egyptians, to whom, on the most moderate estimate of Egyptologists, a date not later than 4000 b.c. has been assigned. Among the primitive decorations of the earthenware vases and boxes of that period the representation of a boat[9] frequently appears. In these boats, which seem to have been in use only on the Nile, the two cabins amidships are a prominent feature. At the end of the aftermost cabin rises a tall pole with an emblem at the top, which is believed to represent the district or town to which the owner of the boat belonged. There are at least eighteen different forms of this emblem[10], but these standards all agree in having in their upper part two pendent objects which appear to be long ribbons or streamers attached to the pole. These standards were developed into the nome-standards of the Egyptian armies, but they never again appear in Egypt in connection with boats, which from the time of the First Dynasty onwards are invariably represented without standard or flag of any kind, although in rare instances the top of the steering oar is decorated with two long ribbons.

PLATE II — Coins

Standards appear to have been in use at a later date among all the Semitic nations, but evidence of their use upon the sea before the fifth century b.c. is not forthcoming. From about the end of that century onwards Sidon and Aradus (Arvad), the two great seaports of Phoenicia, referred to by the prophet Ezekiel in his lamentation for Tyre[11] as supplying the mariners for that city, placed upon their coinage[12] a representation of a war galley. At the stern of this galley, supported against a curved ornament similar to that to which the Greeks gave the name "Aphlaston," is placed a tall staff having at its top a globe within the arms of a crescent, representing the sun and moon. In the earlier examples this is too indistinct for successful photographic representation but it is clearly visible in the coins of the fourth century shown in