Note 23 — THE HONOUR OF THE FLAG.
Reading edition
In the last century the Union flag, as it was called, bore these words:— “For the Protestant Religion and for the Liberty of England.” The flags of that time are thus described: The Jack.—Blue, charged with a saltire argent and a cross gules, bordered argent. Mercantile Flag: Red, with a franc-quarter argent, charged with a cross gules. There seems to have been two royal standards, the colour unsettled, some saying that it ought to be yellow, others white. One was charged with a quartered escutcheon of England, Scotland, France and Ireland.
The other royal flag is described as “quarterly, the first and fourth quarter counter-quartered, in which the first and fourth azure, three fleurs-de-lis or the royal arms of France, quartered with the imperial ensigns of England, which are in the second and third gules, eight lions passant; gardant in pale.” The rest of this description, so far as I can make out the heraldic jargon, seems to represent the Royal Standard of to-day.
Formerly, if a council of war was to be held at sea, the Admiral hung his flag in the main-shrouds, that is, in the lower rigging; the vice-admiral in the fore-shrouds; and the rear-admiral in the mizzen-shrouds.