The following year Sir R. Bingley was instructed to put his lieutenant, with the king's standard, in a ship to transport the Spanish Ambassador across the Channel[230]. This was a somewhat extraordinary use of the standard, for, with the disuse of flags placed along the bulwarks, it had ceased to be generally flown on ships-of-war. The standard was, however, flown on special occasions by high officers other than the Lord High Admiral when in command of fleets. Wimbledon wore it in the Cadiz Expedition of 1625, and no less than £36 (equivalent to about £400 to-day) was spent on "the great silke fflagg w^{ th} his Ma^{ ts} Armes guilded w^{ th} fyne gould and wrought w^{ th} oyle Coll^{ rs}," and it was worn by the Earl of Denbigh in 1628: but when the Earl of Lindsey, who had been appointed one of the Commissioners for the Admiralty after the murder of Buckingham, moved heaven and earth for permission to wear it while in command of the fleet in 1635, alleging among other reasons that it had been flown by the Earls of Arundel and Rutland and by Sir Robert Mansell, and that he himself had had the honour previously, his repeated applications were in vain; and so "a little maimed" he had to content himself with the Union flag at the mainmasthead.
During the Civil War the Lord High Admiral's standard held a very anomalous position. In 1642 the Parliament had appointed the Earl of Warwick to the office in defiance of the king's wishes, and, although in active opposition to the king, he flew the royal standard. In the summer of 1648 the fleet he commanded lay off the Dutch coast, watching the royalist fleet under the command of Prince Charles. When the Prince summoned Warwick to take down his standard the Earl replied: "I am appointed by both Houses of the Parliament of England to be Lord High Admiral of England, by which right I bear the Standard[231]." The fleets never came to blows or the two standards might have got a little mixed. Warwick had, however, provided against this eventuality just before leaving England by supplying his fleet with pendants of his personal colours[232].
Shortly after this, the command of the royalist ships was handed over to Prince Rupert, and in order that the Parliamentary Naval forces might not have the monopoly of the standard he was given permission to fly one when he thought fit.