The Cross of St. George was worn as a badge,[27] over the armour, by every English soldier in the fourteenth and subsequent centuries, even if the custom did not prevail at a much earlier period. The following extract from the ordinances made for the government of the army with which Richard II. invaded Scotland in 1386, is a good illustration of this, wherein it is ordered "that everi man of what estate, condicion, or nation thei be of, so that he be of owre partie, here a signe of the armes of Saint George, large, bothe before and behynde, upon parell that yf he be slayne or wounded to deth, he that hath so doon to hym shall not be putte to deth for defaulte of the cross that he lacketh. And that non enemy do bere the same token or crosse of Saint George, notwithstandyng if he be prisoner, upon payne of deth." It was the flag of battle, and we see it represented in the old prints and illuminations that deal with military operations both on land and sea. Ordinarily it is the Cross of St. George, pure and simple, as shown in Fig. 91, while at { 40} other times, as in Figs. 66, 67, 68, it forms a portion only of the flag. The red cross on the white field was the flag under which the great seamen of Elizabeth's reign traded, explored, or fought; the flag that Drake bore round the world--that Frobisher unfolded amidst the Arctic solitudes--that gallant Englishmen, the wide world over, bore at the call of duty and died beneath, if need be, for the honour of the old home land; and to this day the flag of the English Admiral is the same simple and beautiful device, and the white ensign of the British Navy, Fig. 95, is similar, except that it bears, in addition, the Union; while the Union flag itself, Fig. 90, bears conspicuously the ruddy cross of the warrior Saint.
Figs. 26, 27, 74 and 140 are all sea-pennants bearing the Cross of St. George. The first of these is from a painting of H.M.S. _Tiger_, painted by Van de Velde, while Fig. 27 is flying from one of the ships represented in the picture by Volpe of the embarkation of Henry VIII. from Dover on his way to the Field of the Cloth of Gold. Fig. 74 is from a picture of H.M.S. _Lion_, engaging the French ship _Elisabethe_, on July 9th, 1745, the latter being fitted out to escort the Young Pretender to Scotland. Though the red, white, and blue stripes suggest the French tricolor, their employment in the pennant has, of course, no reference to France. The _Lion_ had at the foremast the plain red streamer seen at Fig. 25. Fig. 140 is the pennant flown at the present day by all Colonial armed vessels, while the pennant of the Royal Navy is purely white, with the exception of the Cross of St. George. In a picture by Van de Velde, the property of the Queen, representing a sea fight on August 11th, 1673, between the English, French, and Dutch, we see some of the vessels with streamers similar to Fig. 140, thus ante-dating the Colonial flag by over two hundred years.