[285] _Admiralty_ 1/3546. [286] _Admiralty_ 1/3456. [287] _Admiralty_ 2/1. [288] _Catalogue of Pepysian MSS._ (N. R. S.), III, 210. [289] _Admiralty_ 2/9. [290] In 1710 Captain Warwick was refused permission to use the "Bugee Pendant"; _Admiralty_ 2/453. Millan's Signal Book (1746) contains an illustration of the "Budgee Broad Pendant." [291] _Admiralty_ 2/171. [292] _Admiralty_ 2/11. Orders of 31st March and 1st May, 1693. [293] _Admiralty_ 2/23, 15th March, 1697. [294] _Pepys MS._ 2867. [295] _Pepys MSS._ Miscellanea, IX. [296] _Admiralty_ 2/9. Chapter V _Colours of Distinction_ Boteler, in his _Dialogues_, reminds us that "Flaggs (to speake properly) are only those which are borne out in the Topps of Shyps, and they serve as Badges, and that as well for the distinguishing of Nations as Commanders ... the others are named the Colours or Ensigns and Pendants." To these was added in 1633, while he was writing these Dialogues, the jack, or small Union flag flown at the bowsprit, which, with the ensign and pendant, completed the "suit of colours" for a ship of war. The differentiation by this means of the various classes of public and private ships reached its culminating point by the middle of the nineteenth century. At that period British ships were divided into five categories, each with its own special flags of distinction, according to their employment, as: 1 Public ships of war. 2 Private men-of-war. 3 Public ships for uses other than war. 4 Merchant ships. 5 Pleasure craft. Since that date the "colours" of the first of these five classes (and incidentally those of the third and fourth classes) have been simplified by the abandonment of the squadronal colours in 1864, while the second class has disappeared in consequence of the abolition of privateering by the Declaration of Paris in 1856. (i) PUBLIC SHIPS OF WAR The Distinction Colours proper to a British ship of war are the Pendant, Ensign and Jack. Of these three flags the pendant (or streamer, as it was originally named) is by far the most ancient, dating back to the days when there was no rigid distinction between public and private men-of-war, when every ship owned by an Englishman was, in the eyes of the law, the king's ship, and might be requisitioned for his use at a moment's notice and, with the aid of a few planks and balks of timber, be converted into an efficient ship-of-war, with fore and after castle and fighting-top complete. Besides such "castles" a ship, devoted for the time being to warlike purposes, whether in a national or semi-private quarrel, had as a distinctive mark, from the end of the thirteenth century onwards (and probably from an even earlier date) a huge streamer displayed from the masthead, or hung from the fighting-top, and often reaching down to the water.