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St Edmund's flag
St Edmund PDF Print E-mail
History

There is a campaign to make St Edmund the patron saint of England.

 

The campaign which hails from Suffolk has little support save for a few mentions on local radio. St Edmund was the first patron Saint of England and therefore deserves a mention here.

 

Bury StEdmunds in Suffolk is not surprisingly where the saint is interred. He was killed after his army was defeated fighting the invading Danes. The Danes had already occupied Northumbria and Mercia, they moved on to the flatlands of East Anglia where Edmund made a stand.

 

Defeated he refused to concede and sticking stubbornly to his devout Christian beliefs was martyred rather horrbily by the Danes.

 

The struggle then fell to Alfred King of Wessex who defeated the Danes and negotiated a truce with them guaranteeing Saxon rights under the Danes who then occupied East Anglia in what became known as the Danelaw.

 

St George was made patron saint much later in history after the Norman invasion.  St Edmund's claim to the title rests on two issues, firstly he was English and secondly he was Patron Saint first.

 

He is also very popular with Angloi Saxon purists who appear not to have quite recovered from the Norman conquest.

 

Against St Edmund though is nearly 1,000 years of St George which appear to me a good enough reason to keep him. 

 

St Edmunds  crest shows three crownswith a lion or leapoard. Shown below is the crest of the Diocese of Ipswich.

St Edmund's crest

The flags which is touted as a StEdmunds flag is a modern invention featuring his crest super imposed on a cross of St George which strikes as ironic.

 

 

 

 To add to the confusion there is also an East Anglia flag

 East Anglia Flag

 

This flags is truer to St Edmunds three crowns but is commonly used to represent East Anglia.

 

St Edmunds day is the 20th November.

 

 
Last Updated on Sunday, 15 March 2009 11:05
 
The White Dragon PDF Print E-mail
History

There are actually two White dragon designs on the market, both are modern interpretations of an ancient heraldic symbol.

The ancient one probably looking rather like this

The first of the modern Dragons is the better, propogated by the White Dragon site. The site is well written but is based on several dubious leaps of logic.

For starters I seriously doubt St Edmund who the site champions would have approved of such a pagan symbol. Edmund who was King of East Anglia was exceptionally pious, he was killed or martyred by invading Vikings, who sezied his Kingdom which then fell under the Danelaw. He was in short a bit of a loser.

King Alfred may have been a better choice as he actually saved the country from extinction and his Royal Banner was the Wyvern, not far in design from the Dragon. Although Alfred himself was a devoted and pious Chrstian and would probably approve of the cross in preference.

The argument then goes that Kings Harold is shown flying a dragon banner on the Bayeux tapestry, but then the Normans are also shown with Dragons on their shields. Tostig whom Harold had defeated only days before flew the Northumbrian Lion as his banner.

Heraldic symbols held by aristocratic dynasties persisted  long into into the middles ages even after the Cross of St George had become the national banner.  In fact they still persist today, many feature lions, unicorn and dragons whereas the Cross of StGeorge represents us all.

Therefore there is no proof that many if any English thought of the Dragon as a national symbol. But it does make a nice flag.

 

The other white dragon design  is simply a white version of the Welsh dragon.

 

Not terribly imaginative but probably just as representative of any heraldic dragons.

 

 

 
Last Updated on Sunday, 15 March 2009 15:50