tinues, "Because the court could not agree about the thing, whether the ensigns should be laid by in that regard that many refused to follow them, the whole case was referred to the next general court, and the commissioners for military affairs gave orders in the mean. time that all ensigns should be laid aside." the In the interim, a new flag, having for an emblem the red and white roses in place of the cross, was proposed, and letters in relation to the matter were written to England, for the purpose of obtaining judgment of the most wise and godly there." This project seems not to have met the approval of the wise and godly in England, for in December, 1635, it is recorded that the military commissioners "appointed colors for every company," leaving out the cross in all of them, and appointing that the king's arms should be put into them and in the colors of Castle Island, Boston. All ships, in passing the fort at Castle Island, were bound to observe certain regulations; but after these occurrences, the fort, wearing for a time no flag to signify its real character, presented the appearance of a captured or deserted fortress. Under these circumstances, in the spring of 1636, the ship St. Patrick, Captain Palmer, was brought to by Lieutenant Morris, the officer in command of the fort, and made to strike her colors. Captain Palmer complained to the authorities of the conduct of the commander of the fort as a flagrant insult both to his flag and country. They therefore ordered the commander of the fort before them, and, in the presence of the master of the ship, informed him that he had no authority to do as he had done; and he was ordered to make such. atonement as Captain Palmer should demand. The captain was very lenient, only requiring an acknowledgment from the lieutenant of his error on board of his ship, "that so all the ship's company might receive satisfaction." This Lieutenant Morris submitted to, and all parties became quieted; but within a few days another circumstance occurred respecting the fort, with a different result. The mate of a ship, called the Hector, pronounced all the people traitors and rebels, because they had discarded the king's colors, and was brought before the court and made to acknowledge his offence, and sign a paper to that effect. These occurrences troubled the authorities lest reports should be carried to England that they had rebelled,' and that their contempt of the English flag was proof of the allegation. To counteract such representations, Mr. Vane, the governor, called together the captains 1 A seafaring man, approaching in his ship, having noticed that the flag displayed was destitute of a cross, "spoke to some one on board the ship that we had not the king's colors, but were all traitors and rebels." — Smith's Hist. Newburyport. of the ten ships then remaining in harbor, and desired to know if they were offended at what had happened, and, if so, what they required in satisfaction. They frankly told him that if questioned on their return to England "what colors they saw here," a statement of the bare facts in relation to it might result to their disadvantage. Therefore they would recommend that the king's colors might be set up in the fort. The governor and his advisers arrived at the same conclusion, and directed to give warrant to spread the king's colors at Castle Island, when ships passed by. There being no king's colors to be found to display at the fort, the difficulty was met by two of the shipmasters offering to present a set; but so fearful were the authorities of tolerating a symbol of idolatry, they declined receiving the colors thus offered until they had taken the advice of Mr. Cotton in regard to them. It was finally concluded that, although they were of the decided opinion that the cross in the ensign was idolatrous, and therefore ought not to be had in it, nevertheless, as the fort was the king's, and maintained in his name, his colors might be used there. In accordance with this opinion, the governor accepted the colors of Captain Palmer, sending him, in requital, three beaver-skins, and directed Mr. Dudley to give warrant to Lieutenant Morris, the commander of the fort, to spread the king's colors whenever ships were passing.1 This tempest in a tea-pot having been satisfactorily adjusted, the king's colors were continued at the castle, but were excluded from use elsewhere in the colony, through the religious prejudices of the people, and the flag bearing the king's arms continued in use until the establishment of the Commonwealth. In 1638, the subject of forming a confederacy of the New England colonies was discussed; but, owing to divers differences, the matter was delayed. Twenty-three years after the planting of Plymouth, in 1643, the colonies of Plymouth, Massachusetts, and Connecticut were united in a league called "THE UNITED COLONIES OF NEW ENGLAND." The declared object was defence against the French, Dutch, and Swedes, and in all relations with foreigners the confederation acted, each colony managing its domestic affairs. This was the first union on this continent. The union was declared to be perpetual, and the will of six of the eight commissioners chosen (two for each colony) was to be binding on all. We do not, however, learn that any common flag was adopted until several years later (1686), when Governor Andros received one from the king. In 1645, the people of Massachusetts, 1 See Winthrop's Journal, vol. i. pp. 141, 154, 156; vol. ii. p. 344. through its legislature, demanded that a negro brought from Africa should be surrendered and sent to his native country. County In 1651, the English Parliament revived and adopted the old standard of the cross of St. George as the colors of England, and the General Court of Massachusetts ordered, "as the Court conceive the old English colors now used by the Parliament to be a necessary badge of distinction betwixt the English and other nations in all places of the world, till the state of England alter the same, which we very much desire, we, being of the same nation, have therefore ordered that the captain of the Castle shall advance the aforesaid colors of England upon all necessary occasions." THRE TROM its cost, is from an entry in a herald painter's book of the time of Charles I., preserved in the British Museum. Worke don for New England For painting in oyle on both sides a Cornett one rich crimson damask, with a hand and sword, and invelloped with a scarfe about the arms of gold, black and sillver . For a plaine cornett Staffe, with belte, boote and swible at first penny For silke of crimson and sillver fring and for a Cornett String [£2. 0.6] 1. 0.0 1.11. 0 11. 0 £5. 2. 6 (NOTE. The first item, '£2. 0. 6,' is not given, but is deduced from the adding. The term 'at first penny' may be the same as 'at first cost.') The existence of this troop is clearly shown by the Massachusetts records of 1659-77, and there can be no doubt the drawing represents its standard. We may imagine it ordered from England before King Philip's war, and that under its folds the best soldiers of the three counties took part in the contest. Two copies from the drawing agree in representing the inscription on the flag as "thre county trom," which is supposed to be a mistake, and that the flag really bore the words "Three County Troop," the name of the company for which it was ordered. The Hon. Nathaniel Saltonstall, "late of Haverhill," one of the council for the colonies, on the 31st of May, 1684, wrote to Captain Thomas Noyes, of Newbury, Mass., concerning the colors of a company of foot commanded by the latter, as follows: "In ye Major General's letter, I have ordered also to require you, which I herein do, with all convenient speed, to provide a flight of colors for your foot company, ye ground field or flight (fly) whereof is to be green, with a red cross with a white field in y° angle, according to the antient customs of our own English nation, and the English plantations in America, and our own practise in our ships and other vessels. The number of bullets to be put into your colors for distinction may be left out at present without damage in the making of them. Colors of Captain Noyes's Company, 1684. "So faile not, "Your friend and servant, "N. SALTONSTALL." 1 The flag of New England, in 1686, under the administration of Sir Edmund Andros, as appears by a drawing of it in the British State Paper Office, was the cross of St. George, the king's colors of the time, borne on a white field occupying the whole flag, the centre of the cross emblazoned with a yellow or gilt crown over the cipher of the sovereign, King James I. The early colonial documents of New York have several mentions of flags in use in that colony in the latter half of the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth century. Augustin Herman, Sept. 10, 1650, brought with him from Holland a flag for the burgher's corps of New Amsterdam; but Stuyvesant, 1 Coffin's History of Newbury, credited to Robert Adams's Manuscript. who, he wrote, was doing as he pleased, "would not allow it to be carried." The patroon and his codirectors of the "colonie of Rensselaerswyck " complained, Jan. 17, 1653, that "their flag had been hauled down. in opposition to the will and protest of their officers." What that obnoxious flag was we have now no means of ascertaining; but the directors of the chamber of Amsterdam reply, "they are ignorant where the flag was down." An English flag was displayed with considerable bravado, Jan. 11, 1664, by one John Schott, in sight of the astonished burghers of New Amsterdam. "Captain John Schott," says the record, " came to the ferry in the town of Breucklin [Brooklyn] with a troop of Englishmen mounted on horseback, with great noise, marching with sounding trumpets," &c., and hoisted the English flag; and, as soon as John Schott arrived, they uncovered their heads and spoke in English. Secretary Van Ruyven asked the captain to cross over, to which John Schott answered, "No! Let Stuyvesant come over with a hundred soldiers. I shall wait for him here." In September of that year the red cross of St. George floated in triumph over the fort, and the name of 'New Amsterdam' was changed to 'New York.' Early in October, 1664, New Netherland was acknowledged a part of the British realm, and Colonel Richard Nicolls, its conqueror, became governor. The journal of a voyage to New York in 1679-80, by Jasper Dankers and Peter Sluyter, translated from the original Dutch manuscript and published by the Long Island Historical Society in 1867, has several fac-simile engravings One of these, a curi1679, has the union Fort at New York in 1679. from the original drawings. The same writers, under date Boston, Thursday, The King's Colors on the July 23, 1680, give us a precise description of the flag then in use in that colony, by which it seems those colonists' objection to the cross as an idolatrous symbol, nearly half a century earlier, still existed. Our voyagers say: "New England is now described as extending from the Fresh [Connecticut] River to Cape Cod and thence to Kennebec, comprising three provinces |