JANUARY 41 



Royal Standard would have been termed in chivalrous 

 times a banner of arms — the Sovereign's arms. Most 

 people have come to associate banners with Oddfellows' 

 fetes and trade demonstrations, where they fulfil the 

 function of what used to be technically called standards, 

 bearing devices not strictly heraldic, and painted with 

 mottoes, ' Death to Tyrants ! ' ' Peace and Plenty ! ' 

 ' Votes for Women ! ' and so on, according to the nature 

 and temper of the occasion. ' Standards,' says Boutell, 

 ' appear to have been used solely for the purpose of 

 display, and to add to the splendour of military 

 gatherings and royal pageants.' But the banner of a 

 sovereign, a prelate, or a noble was of much more 

 serious purpose. It bore only the recognised arms of 

 its owner, marking his exact position in the field or in 

 column of march. It served the same end in battle as 

 was done by the colours of a modern regiment under a 

 system of tactics now obsolete. A trace of the ancient 

 practice survives in our Highland regiments ; the piper 

 of each company displaying the arms of his captain on 

 the banner of his pipes. 



The standard became fashionable in the reign of 

 Edward in., but it never displaced the banner. It 

 seems at first to have been a voluntary emblem of 

 knighthood, consisting of a long narrow flag, tapering 

 either to a point or a swallowtail, usually having the 

 cross of the national saint next the hoist, with heraldic 

 badges and other devices, with mottoes, on the fly. In 

 Henry viil.'s reign the length of the standard was 

 regulated according to the owner's degree, eight to nine 

 yards being prescribed for the Sovereign, graduated 



