Saint Patrick's Saltire
Saint Patrick's Saltire or Saint Patrick's Cross is a red saltire on a white field. In heraldic language, it may be blazoned argent, a saltire gules. Saint Patrick's Flag is a flag composed of Saint Patrick's Saltire. The origin of the saltire is disputed. Its association with Saint Patrick dates from the 1780s, when the Anglo-Irish Order of Saint Patrick adopted it as an emblem. This was a British chivalric order established in 1783 by George III. It has been suggested that it derives from the arms of the powerful Geraldine or FitzGerald dynasty. Some Irish nationalists opposed the usage of the flag to represent Ireland, as they considered it to be a British invention.
After its adoption by the Order of Saint Patrick, it began to be used by other institutions. When the Acts of Union 1800 joined the Kingdom of Ireland with the Kingdom of Great Britain, the saltire was added to the British flag to form the Union Flag still used by the United Kingdom. The saltire has occasionally served unofficially to represent Northern Ireland and also appears in some royal events.
Origins
An early possible mention of a Saint Patrick's flag is from the journal of John Glanville, writing about the Anglo-Dutch fleet that sailed to Cádiz, Spain, in 1625. Lord Delaware deposed in writing to the Lieutenant General about his simple foretop precedence flags to be flown:The Order of Saint Patrick, an Anglo-Irish chivalric order, was created in 1783. The order was a means of rewarding those in high office who supported the Anglo-Irish government of Ireland. On its badge was a red saltire on a white background, which it called the "Cross of St Patrick":
The use of a saltire in association with St Patrick was controversial because it differed from the usual crosses by custom worn on St Patrick's Day. In particular, the previous crosses associated with Saint Patrick were not X-shaped. Some contemporary responses to the badge of the order complained that an X-shaped cross was the Cross of St Andrew, patron of Scotland. A February 1783 newspaper complained that "the breasts of Irishmen were to be decorated by the bloody Cross of St Andrew, and not that of the tutelar Saint of their natural isle". Another article claimed that "the Cross of St Andrew the Scotch saint is to honour the Irish order of St Patrick, by being inserted within the star of the order ... a manifest insult to common sense and to national propriety".
An open letter to Lord Temple, to whom the design of the Order of St Patrick's badges were entrusted, echoes this and elaborates:
Many subsequent commentators believed that the saltire was simply taken from the arms of the FitzGeralds, who were Dukes of Leinster. The Dukes of Leinster dominated the political and social scene of 18th-century Dublin, from their ducal palace of Leinster House. William FitzGerald, 2nd Duke of Leinster was the premier peer in the Irish House of Lords and a founder member of the Order of Saint Patrick. On the other hand, Michael Casey suggests that Lord Temple, pressed for time, had based the Order's insignia on those of the Order of the Garter, and simply rotated its St George's Cross 45 degrees.
Henry Gough in 1893 doubted the antiquity of Patrick's Cross on the basis that, if a cross had been an established symbol of Ireland during the Protectorate, then flags of the era would have used that instead of the gold Irish harp.
Earlier use of saltires in an Irish context
A variety of sources show saltires in use earlier than 1783 in Ireland and in an Irish context, although there is no suggestion that they are linked to St Patrick. The Flag Institute states that arms derive from those of the powerful FitzGerald dynasty, who were Earls of Kildare. Gearóid Mór FitzGerald and his son Gearóid Óg were also Lord Deputies of Ireland in the late 15th and early 16th centuries.The design on the reverse of some Irish coins minted includes two shields with saltires. At this time, Gearóid Mór FitzGerald was Lord Deputy of Ireland, and the shields are considered to be his arms.
A 1576 map of Ireland by John Goghe shows the FitzGerald arms over their spheres of influence. It also shows a red saltire flag flying at the masthead of a ship, possibly an Irish pirate, which is engaged in action in the Saint George's Channel with another ship flying the Saint George's cross. The red saltire is placed on the Mulls of Galloway and Kintyre in Scotland. This is either a defect of the print or as it was confused with Scotland's Saint Andrew's saltire.
English and German picture maps of the Battle of Kinsale of 1601-02 show the combined Irish–Spanish forces under a red saltire. This is presumed to be the Cross of Burgundy, the war flag of Spain, rather than an Irish flag.
A 1612 seal of Trinity College Dublin shows uncoloured cross and saltire flags. These have been taken to represent England and Ireland respectively.
Contemporary reports of the ensigns of the Irish Catholic Confederation during the Eleven Years' War say that each had a canton with a red saltire on a gold field. A 1645 picture map of the Siege of Duncannon shows Preston's Irish Confederates under a saltire.
The flag used by the King's Own Regiment in the Kingdom of Ireland, established in 1653, was a red saltire on a "taffey" yellow field. Its origin remains a mystery, however. At the funeral of Oliver Cromwell in 1658, Ireland was represented by a red cross on a yellow field. Cromwell's Protectorate of the 1650s briefly used a flag containing the St George's cross to represent England, St Andrew's cross to represent Scotland, and a red saltire on white to represent Ireland, though Ireland was more commonly represented with a harp in Protectorate flags. Several drawings of Union flags, including one of HMS Henry made by Willem van de Velde, the elder, include a red saltire as in the post-1800 Union; but there is no evidence for such a design. The Graydon MS. Flag Book of 1686, which belonged to Samuel Pepys, gives the flag of Ireland as the harp and St George's cross on a green field.
A red saltire on green appears on the flag of Berwick's regiment in the Irish Brigade of the French army. This was a brigade made up of Irish Jacobite exiles that formed in 1690. The Irish Brigade served as part of the French Army until 1792.
The cross of Burgundy appears on the flag of the Spanish Regiment of Hibernia. It was formed in 1710 by Irishmen who fled their own country in the wake of the Flight of the Earls and the penal laws. It is possible that the design of the flag was influenced by the red saltire.
Several atlases and flag books in the late 17th and 18th centuries show a red-saltire–on–white flag for Ireland, including Paulus van der Dussen's and Le Neptune françois, a marine atlas published in Amsterdam in 1693, where it is depicted with the legends Ierse above and Irlandois below, which are Dutch and French for "Irish". Jan Blaeu's 1650s atlas has a saltire on white for Ireland, which is hand-coloured red in some copies.
According to a newspaper report from Waterford in 1785, two years after the Order of St Patrick had been founded:
Other St Patrick's crosses
Other crosses besides the red saltire have been associated with Saint Patrick. Crosses in various shapes and colours were worn as badges on St Patrick's Day from the 17th to the early 20th century. The cross pattée has also been used, including by the Friendly Brothers of Saint Patrick, a fraternal organisation whose symbols influenced those of the Order of Saint Patrick.Modern use of the flag
The most widespread use of St Patrick's Saltire today is in the Flag of the United Kingdom. With the 1800 Act of Union that merged the kingdoms of Great Britain and Ireland, the red saltire was incorporated into the Flag of the United Kingdom as representing Ireland.The red saltire is counterchanged with the saltire of St Andrew, such that the white always follows the red clockwise. The arrangement accounts for the discontinuous look of the red diagonal lines, and has introduced a requirement to display the flag "the right way up", with the white line of St Andrew above the red of St Patrick in the upper lefthand quarter next to the flagpole. As with the red cross, so too the red saltire is separated by a white fimbriation from the blue field. This fimbriation is repeated for symmetry on the white portion of the saltire, which thereby appears wider than the red portion. The fimbriation of the cross of St George separates its red from the red of the saltire.
Flags in Northern Ireland are controversial, their symbolism reflecting underlying sectarian and political differences. Saint Patrick's Saltire is sometimes used as a cross-community symbol with less political baggage than either the Union Flag or the Ulster Banner, seen as pro-Unionist, or the Irish tricolour used by Irish nationalists.
It is one of two flags authorised to be flown on church grounds by the Church of Ireland, the other being the Compass Rose Flag of the Anglican Communion. This was the recommendation of a 1999 synod committee on sectarianism.
It is one of the flags approved by the Orange Institution for display during Orange walks.
The St Patrick's flag is the flag of St Patrick's College, Maynooth, and is flown on Degree days and other important occasions. Its use is not affected by the creation of a separate National University of Ireland, Maynooth in 1997. The Royal Dublin Society's flag, dating from, has a red saltire, but its significance is unknown. The Irish Free State Girl Guides, descended from the Unionist British Girl Guides, had a Saint Patrick's Saltire on the flag it used from its establishment in 1929 until the 1937 Constitution. The saltire appeared on the house flag of Irish Shipping, founded 1941, and that used by Irish Continental Line in 1973–1978. It replaced the St George's Cross in 1970 on the flag of the Commissioners of Irish Lights. The badge of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, designed by John Vinycomb, incorporates the saltire and the arms of the four provinces.