The Story of Canada's Flag
There is no evidence to suggest that there was any distinctively national English Flag prior to the Crusades. This was because the idea of nationality was not fully developed in Europe until the fifteenth century.
However, when a man was encased in armour it was necessary for him to identify himself in battle. Some kind of recognizable symbol had to be devised for the men in arms of various warring kings and nobles. In consequence, the gonfalon or war flag became common. The Bayeux tapestry, which portrays the conquest of England by William of Normandy in 1066, shows twenty-five gonfalons. Some appear at the mastheads of ships; others on poles and spears. William's gonfalon was a gold cross between four roundels on a white ground. This was the banner consecrated by Pope Alexander and given to the Duke of Normandy before he set out to enforce his claim to the English throne. The banner of his Saxon opponent, Harold, was the red dragon standard.
The Crusades, which occupied the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, gave an impetus to the national idea and to development and use of flags.
During the early Crusades, kings, barons and the various religious-military orders carried their own banners. In the First Crusade there were many different gonfalons. In the Second Crusade, the rectangular banner appeared. Bohemond's banner was red in colour and that of Robert of Normandy was yellow. Baldwin's banner was white. Crosses were superimposed on some of these banners.
At the time of the Third Crusade, in 1189, the first method of distinguishing nationalities was adopted when the English under Henry II received white crosses, the French, red, and the Flemings, green. The cross was the outward symbol of their common Christian faith; the various colours were indicative of national origin. The standard under which the English fought was, oddly enough, the pagan red dragon. This same standard was still in use at Cr6cy in 1346 and at Bosworth Field in 1485. The red dragon remains today on the flag of Wales and in the title of one of the Officers of Arms-Rouge Dragon.
The cross of St. George, which subsequently became the flag of England, was preceded by that of St. Edward. The cult of St. George, the warrior saint from Cappadocia, began in eastern Europe and spread to the west. During the tenth and eleventh centuries, St. George was the patron saint of Genoa. He became popular among the crusaders
when he appeared in white armour, bearing a red cross, to assist the besiegers of Jerusalem in 1099. The adoption of the cross of St. George by the English appears to date from the thirteenth century. His feast appears among the minor church festivals in England in 1222. However, by 1277 historical evidence points clearly to the use of the red cross of St. George as an English national emblem. After this time the cross of St. Edward appeared only rarely.
The flags worn by English ships at sea varied considerably. Historical records from the reign of Edward III show that ships carried streamers and standards bearing the royal Arms (the three leopards of England), banners of St. George, and gonfalons of many colours (including one of blue and white, powdered with golden fleurs-de-lis with a shield of the royal Arms surrounded by a garter.) Henry VIII's great ship, Henri Grace ez Dieu, carried the banners of England, Castile, Guienne, Wales and Cornwall, the cross of St. Edward, the cross of St. George and dragon streamers. Drake and Hawkins, in 1549, were furnished with four flags bearing St. George's cross, and with some eighty streamers. By the end of the sixteenth century, however, the flag of St. George, with its red cross on a white field, was the most familiar flag appearing on English ships, both men-of-war and merchantmen.
From the inadequate evidence available, one is forced to the conclusion that the white St. Andrew's cross did not become popular as a Scottish flag until the fourteenth century. At first there was no fixed colour on the field, or background. In 1512, in the Accounts of the Lord High Treasurer of Scotland, there is record of a payment for a roll of blue serge-like cloth for a ship's banner "with Sanct Androis cors in the myddis." During the midsixteenth century the ground colour seems generally to have been red. Finally blue asserted itself and became the familiar field colour of the Scottish flag.
The Royal Standard of Scotland was the personal heraldic flag of the sovereign. It carried a red lion rampant on a field of gold. The lion first appeared on a seal of King Alexander II, in 1222. With the exception of the period when Mary Queen of Scots impaled her arms with those of the Dauphin of France, the red lion on the gold field has been the royal flag of Scotland ever since the thirteenth century.
In the early seventeenth century, following the union of the English and Scottish crowns on the death of Queen Elizabeth, King James I of England and VI of Scotland, issued a proclamation to the effect that ships of both countries should henceforth wear "the Red Cross, commonly called St. George's Cross, and the white cross, commonly called St. Andrew's Cross, joined together . . ." This proclamation was dated April 12, 1606. This was the first Union Flag. It was flown by all British vessels. In 1634, Charles I issued instructions that only royal vessels were to use the Union Flag: English merchant ships were to carry the cross of St. George, and Scottish merchantmen were to fly the cross of St. Andrew.
With the triumph of Oliver Cromwell, the execution of King Charles I and the establishment of the Commonwealth, the union between England and Scotland was dissolved, and the Union Flag disappeared. But Cromwell's republic was only shortlived, and with the return of the Stuart kings in the person of Charles II, there was a return to the Union Flag of James I. At the same time the laws against the use of "the King's Jack" were revived. These laws were not always obeyed. Their constant reappearance on the statute books suggests that merchant ships frequently made use of the Union Flag instead of the cross of St. George. William III renewed the prohibition against the use of the Union Flag, authorizing merchant vessels (privateers excepted) to carry only a red ensign with the cross of St. George in the canton.
In 1707 came the parliamentary union of England and Scotland. For the first time the use of the Union Flag on land was sanctioned. At the same time it was introduced into the canton of the red ensign in place of the cross of St. George. This seemed to satisfy the skippers of merchant vessels who used the new ensign and no longer attempted to fly the Union Jack. As far as the Union Flag itself was concerned, there was no change in its composition in 1707. It remained substantially as it had been since the days of James I-the red cross of St. George imposed on the white saltire of St. Andrew upon a blue field.
Thus, in 1763, when Canada was ceded to Great Britain by France at the end of the Seven Years' War, the official British flags were the Union Flag of 1707 and the red ensign. Both flags were worn by the king's ships of war, but merchant-men carried only the ensign.
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