an ensign, or standard, used by armies or caravans on their journeys in the eastern countries. The original דגל, is rendered by lexicographers and translators under this word, as a noun, in which form it often occurs, _a standard_, _banner_; as a verb, once, _to set up a banner_; Psalm xx, 5; as a participle pahul, _vexillatus_, one distinguished by a banner, the chief; as a participle niphal, bannered, or with banners. The meaning of the root is illustrated by the very ingenious and sensible author of “Observations on Divers Passages of Scripture,” who shows, from Pitts and Pococke, that, “as in Arabia and the neighbouring countries, on account of the intense heat of the sun by day, people generally choose to travel in the night; so, to prevent confusion in their large caravans, particularly in the annual one to Mecca, each company, of which the caravan consists, has its distinct portable beacon, which is carried on the top of a pole, and consists of several lights, which are somewhat like iron stoves, into which they put short dry wood, with which some of the camels are loaded. Every company has one of these poles belonging to it; some of which have ten, some twelve, of these lights on their tops, more or less; and they are likewise of different figures, as well as numbers; one, perhaps, in an oval shape; another, triangular, or in the form of an M, or N, &c, so that by these every one knows his respective company. They are carried in the front, and set up in the place where the caravan is to pitch, before that comes up, at some distance from one another. As travelling then in the night must be, generally speaking, more agreeable to a great multitude in that desert, we may believe a compassionate God, for the most part, directed Israel to move in the night. ...

BANNERETS. In the early ages of chivalry there w r ere two kinds of knights, called respectively Bachelors and Bannerets. The former carried pennons terminating in a point or points; the latter, banners,—that is to say, pennons rendered square by having the points cut off. This process of converting the pennon into the banner was done by the sovereign himself on the field of battle, standing beneath his own royal standard displayed. The distinction, awarded for peculiar gallantry, was a very high one: and those who enjoyed it ranked above all other knights except those of the Garter. The banner bore the coat armour of the banneret himself, and served as an ensign for the followers and retainers whom he took with him into the camp or court. The king himself and the greatest nobles were members of the order; and we have in the Roll of Caerlaverock the blazon of nearly one hundred bannerets (including the king, eleven earls, and the bishop of Durham) who were present with Edward I. in his campaign against Scotland in 1300. The etymology of the word is clear; and Selden, after expressing his opinion that baro is equivalent to vir, remarks that “the Germans have also the name of banner-heer or panner-heer, as if you would say dominus vexillifer, or the like, or as the title of banneret” (Titles of Honour, part ii. 1, 52). Nevertheless the term banneret, either from simple misapprehension or in order to mark the relative rank of the knight, has been translated baronettus (quasi baro minor) in some old statutes; and the historian Walsingham, in describing the prisoners at the battle of Stirling, speaks of Barones et Baronetti viginti duo, Ac. Indeed, in a patent granted to Sir Ralph Vane so late as 4 Edward VI., his grade of banneret is Latinized by Baronettus. In ...