The flags of 1066: standards, banners and the Battle of Hastings

Few dates in British history are as instantly recognisable as 1066. On 14 October that year, the armies of Harold Godwinson and William, Duke of Normandy, met near Hastings in a battle that would change England forever.

We know the familiar story: Harold on the ridge, the Norman cavalry attacking uphill, the English shield wall and, eventually, William's victory.

But look closely at one of our greatest visual records of the period – the Bayeux Tapestry – and another feature repeatedly appears above the crowds of warriors, horses, spears and shields and flags - or more accurately, a fascinating assortment of banners, standards and pennons.

They were not simply decoration. On a medieval battlefield filled with dust, noise and hundreds or thousands of similarly equipped men, a flag could identify a leader, provide a rallying point and show soldiers where their commander – and sometimes their king – could be found.

*William reveals his face to his troops after a rumour spreads that he has been killed. In the noise and confusion of an eleventh-century battle, visible signs of leadership – including standards – were critically important.

So what flags might actually have flown at the Battle of Hastings?

Before heraldry as we know it

One difficulty in discussing the flags of 1066 is that the battle predates the fully developed system of medieval heraldry.

We naturally associate the Middle Ages with knights carrying brightly coloured shields and banners displaying family coats of arms. But in 1066 that system had not yet developed into the formal hereditary heraldry familiar from later centuries.

This means we should be cautious about assuming that every design shown at Hastings represented a particular family or individual in the way a later heraldic banner would.

Nevertheless, standards were clearly important.

The Bayeux Tapestry depicts numerous flags and pennons, particularly among the Norman forces. Their designs include crosses, stripes, borders and other simple geometric forms. Some are long and narrow; others are broader and almost square, while several end in multiple tails or streamers.

They would have been highly visible objects – exactly what was needed in the confusion of battle.

William's Papal banner

Perhaps the most famous flag associated with the Norman invasion is the banner said to have been sent to William by Pope Alexander II.

Contemporary and near-contemporary accounts tell us that William received papal support for his expedition to England. The gift of a banner from Rome was enormously significant.

It transformed the flag into something more than a military marker.

It represented papal approval of William's cause.

*William with a standard traditionally associated with the papal banner. Pope Alexander II supported William's expedition, although the precise appearance of the banner sent to him cannot now be established with certainty.

Precisely what the banner looked like is much less certain. Modern illustrations sometimes present highly elaborate reconstructions, but there is no surviving flag and no sufficiently detailed contemporary description from which we can reproduce it with confidence.

The Bayeux Tapestry shows several prominent standards around William and his forces, but identifying one particular image conclusively as the papal banner is difficult.

Its importance, however, is clear. Carrying a banner blessed or supplied by the Pope gave William's campaign a powerful religious dimension and helped present his invasion as a legitimate undertaking rather than simply a seizure of England by force.

Harold and the fighting man

On the English side we encounter one of the most intriguing standards associated with Hastings.

The Carmen de Hastingae Proelio, an early account of the battle, describes a remarkable standard belonging to Harold.

It depicts a fighting man or armed warrior, worked in gold and precious stones.

This was evidently no ordinary piece of battlefield equipment. It appears to have been an object of considerable craftsmanship and value and was sufficiently important to be specifically mentioned after the battle.

Its precise appearance is unknown.

Was the warrior embroidered onto fabric? Was part of the figure formed from applied metalwork? Were the jewels sewn directly onto the material? We simply cannot say.

But the description gives us an extraordinary glimpse of how magnificent an eleventh-century royal standard could be.

For Harold's army, such a standard would have represented considerably more than decoration. It marked the position of the king and therefore the centre of English command and resistance.

The Dragon standard

Another image traditionally associated with Anglo-Saxon warfare is the dragon standard.

Dragon and serpent imagery had a long history in northern European military culture, and standards of this kind are mentioned in accounts relating to Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian armies.

The exact construction of such standards remains debated. Some may have been fabric streamers designed to move dramatically in the wind, perhaps attached to a framework or pole. The concept has sometimes been compared with later windsock-like dragon standards.

Whether Harold's army at Hastings carried precisely the type of three-dimensional dragon standard often depicted in modern reconstructions is uncertain.

What is clear is that animal imagery – particularly dragons, serpents and birds – had powerful associations with warfare, kingship and martial identity long before the familiar heraldic lions and eagles of later medieval Europe became standardised.

Norman pennons

The Bayeux Tapestry provides particularly useful evidence for Norman flags.

Many Norman knights are shown carrying small flags attached to their lances. These are generally described as pennons.

Some are triangular. Others have two or more pointed tails.

Their designs are strikingly simple: crosses, blocks of contrasting colour, stripes and geometric divisions.

This simplicity makes sense.

A battlefield flag needs to be recognised at a distance. Fine detail is of little value when the person looking at it may be dozens or hundreds of yards away, surrounded by moving horses and fighting men.

Bold areas of contrasting colour would have been considerably more effective.

The pennons may have identified individual commanders or groups of warriors, although we should resist assigning specific later coats of arms to them without evidence.

They belong to a period in which personal military insignia was developing towards heraldry but had not yet become the regulated system that emerged during the twelfth century.

Who carried the flags?

The larger and more important standards would not normally have been carried casually by whichever soldier happened to be available.

Being entrusted with a ruler's standard was a position of considerable responsibility.

The standard-bearer needed to remain close to his commander and, critically, keep the flag visible.

This could also make him a conspicuous target.

A standard told friendly troops where their leader was – but it could tell the enemy exactly the same thing.

Some smaller pennons appear to have been carried directly on the lances of mounted Norman warriors. Larger command standards, however, required dedicated bearers.

Larger command standards would have required trusted bearers who remained close to their lord. The role was an important and potentially dangerous one: a standard needed to remain visible to friendly troops, but its visibility could also reveal a commander's position to the enemy.

On the English side, Harold's great standard would have stood close to the king's position on the ridge. As the battle reached its final stages, the fighting around Harold and his standards would therefore have been particularly significant.

To capture an enemy's principal standard was both a practical and symbolic victory.

What were the flags made from?

No battle flag that can be securely identified as having been carried at Hastings survives.

We therefore have to combine documentary evidence, surviving textiles from the wider period and what we know about eleventh-century textile production.

Wool and linen are the most obvious possibilities for ordinary military flags.

Wool was widely available, could be woven strongly and could be dyed in vivid colours. Linen provided another strong and relatively lightweight textile.

For prestigious royal or religious standards, however, much richer materials could be used.

Silk was enormously valuable in eleventh-century Europe and would have immediately signified wealth and status. High-status standards might also incorporate embroidery using silk thread, gold thread or metal-wrapped thread.

The description of Harold's standard being decorated with gold and precious stones suggests something far removed from the simple printed flags we recognise today.

It may have been closer to a magnificent piece of textile art – part flag, part royal treasure.

How were the designs produced?

Printing was not an option.

The designs would have been created through combinations of weaving, dyeing, embroidery and appliqué.

A simple cross, for example, could be created by sewing contrasting pieces of cloth together. More elaborate imagery could be embroidered onto the surface.

The Bayeux Tapestry itself demonstrates the sophistication available to eleventh-century textile workers. Despite its familiar name, the Tapestry is actually an embroidery: coloured wool yarn stitched onto linen.

It provides compelling evidence that skilled craftspeople were perfectly capable of producing complex narrative images and decorative motifs in textile.

A prestigious standard could therefore have required many hours – perhaps considerably longer – of highly skilled work.

The colours of Hastings

The Bayeux Tapestry depicts flags in combinations including reds, blues, yellows and greens.

We should be careful, however, about treating these colours as a photographic record of the actual battlefield. The embroidery was an artistic representation, and the colours available to its makers influenced the finished work.

Nevertheless, medieval dyers could produce a surprisingly wide range of strong colours from natural materials. Plants such as woad could provide blue, while madder produced reds. Yellow could be obtained from several plant sources, and combinations of dyes allowed further shades to be created.

Colour itself could communicate wealth. Achieving strong, consistent and durable colours required skill, materials and labour.

Flags as battlefield communication

Perhaps the most important thing to remember is that a flag at Hastings had a job to do.

There were no radios, maps distributed to every soldier or modern command systems.

Once battle began, shouted instructions could disappear beneath the noise of men, horses and weapons.

A raised standard provided something everyone could see.

Here is your lord.

Here is your unit.

This is where you rally.

This position still holds.

And perhaps most importantly:

Your leader is still alive.

One famous episode in accounts of Hastings illustrates exactly why this mattered. At one stage a rumour spread through the Norman army that William had been killed. William reportedly raised or removed his helmet so that his men could see his face and know that he was alive.

In that environment, visible symbols of command were crucial.

More than pieces of cloth

The flags of Hastings occupied a curious position between practical equipment, works of art and symbols of political authority.

A knight's pennon might help his followers identify him.

A king's standard could represent the king himself.

A papal banner could proclaim that an invasion carried the blessing of Rome.

And an elaborately embroidered standard decorated with gold and precious stones could embody the wealth, authority and prestige of a ruler.

That is perhaps why flags appear so prominently in the visual story of 1066.

Nearly a thousand years later we cannot reconstruct every banner at Hastings with certainty. The original textiles have disappeared and contemporary descriptions leave tantalising gaps.

But the evidence that remains tells us something important.

*The Bayeux tapestry, commemorating the Norman conquest of England, contains abundant representations of the flags of the period borne upon the lances of the knights of William’s army. They appear small in size, and pointed, frequently indented into three points and bearing pales, crosses and roundels. One, a Saxon pennon, is triangular, and roundly indented into four points; one banner is of segmental shape and rayed, and bears the figure of a bird, which has been supposed to represent the raven of the war-flag of the Scandinavian Vikings (fig. 4). In all, thirty-seven pennons borne on lances by various knights are represented in the Bayeux tapestry, and of these twenty-eight have triple points, whilst others have two, four or five. The devices on these pennons are very varied and distinctive, although the date is prior to the period in which heraldry became definitely established. In fact, the flags and their charges are probably not really significant of the people bearing them; for, even admitting that personal devices were used at the time, the figures may have been placed without studied intention, and so give the general figure only of such flags as happened to have come under the observation of the artists. The figures are probably rather ornamental and symbolic than strictly heraldic,—that is, personal devices, for the same insignia do not appear on the shields of the several bearers. The dragon standard which he is known to have borne is placed near Harold; but similar figures appear on the shields of Norman warriors, which fact has induced a writer in the Journal of the Archaeological Association (vol. xiii. p. 113) to suppose that on the spears of the Saxons they represent only trophies torn from the shields of the Normans, and that they are not ensigns at all. Standards in form much resembling these dragons appear on the Arch of Titus and the Trajan column as the standards of barbarians.

At the battle of the Standard in 1138 the English standard was formed of the mast of a ship, having a silver pyx at the top and bearing three sacred banners, dedicated severally to St Peter, St John of Beverley and St Wilfrid of Ripon, the whole being fastened to a wheeled vehicle. Representations of three-pointed, cross-bearing pennons are found on seals of as early date as the Norman era, and the warriors in the first crusade bore three-pointed pennons. It is possible that the three points with the three roundels and cross, which so often appear on these banners, have some reference to the faith of the bearers in the Trinity and in the Crucifixion, for in contemporary representations of Christ’s resurrection and descent into hell he bears a three-pointed banner with cross above. The triple indentation so common on the flags of this period has been supposed to be the origin of one of the honourable ordinaries—the pile. The “pile,” it may be explained, is in the form of a wedge, and unless otherwise specified in the blazon, occupies the central portion of the escutcheon, issuing from the middle chief. It may, however, issue from any other extremity of the shield, and there may be more than one. More secular characters were, however, not uncommon. In 1244 Henry III. gave order for a “dragon to be made in fashion of a standard of red silk sparkling all over with fine gold, the tongue of which should be made to resemble burning fire and appear to be continually moving, and the eyes of sapphires or other suitable stones.” The Siege of Carlaverock, an Anglo-Norman poem of the 14th century, describes the heraldic bearings on the banners of the knights at the siege of that fortress. Of the king himself the writer says:—

“En sa bannière trois luparte De or fin estoient mis en rouge;”

and he goes on to describe the kingly characteristics these may be supposed to symbolize. A MS. in the British Museum (one of Sir Christopher Barker’s heraldic collection, Harl. 4632) gives drawings of the standards of English kings from Edward III. to Henry VIII., which are roughly but artistically coloured.

The principal varieties of flags borne during the middle ages were the pennon, the banner and the standard. The “guydhommes” or “guidons,” “banderolls,” “pennoncells,” “streamers” or pendants, may be considered as minor varieties. The pennon (fig. 5, B) was a purely personal ensign, sometimes pointed, but more generally forked or swallow-tailed at the end. It was essentially the flag of the knight simple, as apart from the knight banneret, borne by him on his lance, charged with his personal armorial bearings so displayed that they stood in true position when he couched his lance for action. A MS. of the 16th century (Harl. 2358) in the British Museum, which gives minute particulars as to the size, shape and bearings of the standards, banners, pennons, guydhommes, pennoncells, &c., says “a pennon must be two yards and a half long, made round at the end, and conteyneth the armes of the owner,” and warns that “from a standard or streamer a man may flee but not from his banner or pennon bearing his arms.”

Labarum from medallion of Constantine; B, Medieval Pennon; C. Medieval Banner; D., Standard of Henry V.

A pennoncell (or penselle) was a diminutive pennon carried by the esquires. Flags of this character were largely used on any special occasion of ceremony, and more particularly at state funerals. For instance, we find “XII. doz. penselles” amongst the items that figured at the funeral of the duke of Norfolk in 1554, and in the description of the lord mayor’s procession in the following year we read of “ij goodly pennes (state barges) deckt with flages and stremers, and a m (1000) penselles.”

When Harold and William fought for the English crown, they did so beneath their standards.

Among the shields, spears, arrows and horses of the Bayeux Tapestry, those small pieces of coloured textile represent something much larger: identity, loyalty, authority and the simple human need to know where you belong.

And that is a role flags have continued to perform for almost a thousand years.