Contact
English Companions
Old English Order
King Harold Day
English Flag Society
|
Identity?
The English today are unaware of the significance behind the symbols they identify with and also the masked history that had iconised them. It is because the English have been discredited over their nationality; being told it’s just a language, how we are a mongrel race (made up of Romans, Celts, Germanics, Danes and later Normans) that we desperately embrace anything that might symbolise our people. It’s also because of this derision alongside our present government’s oversight towards anything English that we now have a defensive display of St George’s flags on windows, t-shirts, car bumpers and just about everywhere. During the 2006 World Cup a journalist had commented on the birth of an empty patriotism from people who seem to have no interest in anything. Although these symbols have a different significance to what they did hundreds of years ago, it seems sad how the modern working classes drape themselves in imagery that once represented an elitism that would have oppressed them.
Aside from the origins of our national flag it is also worth noting that an additional lion was added to William the Conqueror’s personal crest of 2 lions giving us the 3 lions emblem that we use today. These were the images that symbolised the post 1066 conquest where the original English were slaughtered or enslaved as the new Norman inhabitants lived in castles handing down their estates to the generations of landowners of England’s nobility. These went on to become the knights and archers invading and subjugating other nations which is why England had this historical reputation of elitism and conquest known today. Nearly a millennium later we still wave their ‘unintended’ flag with pride with “3 lions on our shirt”! Dare we tell our football fans they are sporting hand-me-downs of a French ruling class that once tried to eradicate England? Or is it time to embrace a SAINT and FLAG that represents our true yet hidden identity?
|
