It will also be noted in the drawing of the _Naseby_, and on the medal, that the Royal Standard of Charles II. is shown flying at the main. This was the position at which it had, under previous sovereigns, been displayed by the Lord High Admiral of the Navy to indicate his rank. The Earl of Warwick, who was Lord High Admiral under Charles I., continued to fly it at the main even after the death of the King; but when Warwick was dismissed from his post by the Commonwealth, the Royal Standard was no longer used as the distinction flag of the Royal High Admiral. When the Commonwealth ended and a new King returned, it was again raised to the place where it had been displayed by the last Royalist admiral.
At the present day the Royal Standard, being the personal flag of the Sovereign, is only shown to indicate the royal presence or that of some member of the Royal Family, or raised in recognition of some special royal day. On shipboard it is raised on the mainmast immediately the royal personages come alongside, and is lowered the moment that they leave, the national ensign being still displayed at the stern.
It was the St. George cross which had been placed in the upper corner of the Commonwealth ensign; from here it had passed into the Ensign Red of Charles II., thereafter borne at the stern on both merchantmen and men-of-war. In the paramount ensign of the nation the single-cross English Jack was thus carried from 1648 to 1707, when its place in the national ensign was taken for the first time by a two-crossed Jack, and then only by the first _real_ Union Jack, the Jack of Queen Anne.
In all the series of changes mentioned in this and the previous chapter direct evidence is given that the "commonly called Union Jack" of James was only an "additional" flag; that having been considered the "King's Jack," it had not officially displaced the local national Jacks, and that, although it had superseded them as a single flag on the Royal Navy, it had never been introduced into the paramount and national ensign of the nation.
Such, then, was the origin and evolution of the Ensign Red, the national ensign of the British people, and which formed, with the changes made in the Jack in the subsequent reigns of Queen Anne and George III., the basis of the present "Red Ensign" of the British Empire.