And the chronicler who records this fact was an eye-witness. When, in the twenty-eighth year of his reign, Henry III was about to visit the Abbey at Westminster, which he was rebuilding, he commanded Edward FitzOdo to make a Dragon in the manner of a Standard or Ensign of red Samit, to be embroidered with gold, and his tongue to appear as though continually moving and his eyes of Saphires or other stones agreeable to him[81] which was to be placed in the Abbey Church against the King's coming thither. What then was its religious significance? But we must leave this question to the student of folklore[82]. Suffice it to say that the Dragon was borne in the English army at Lewes in 1216, at Creçy in 1346, and finally at Bosworth Field in 1485, whence, in company with two banners, one containing the image of St George and the other a Dun Cow, it was carried in state to St Paul's Cathedral. Under all the Tudor sovereigns the Dragon formed one of the supporters of the Royal Arms, it appeared on the streamers of the _Henri Grace à Dieu_, and to this day it supports the Arms of the City of London and gives a name to one of the Officers of Arms--Rouge Dragon. Before we turn aside to retrace the steps by which St George became the patron saint of England and the red cross on white ground England's national flag, we must first briefly notice the other saintly banners with which, for a time, it contested the pre-eminence. Mention has already been made of the "Standard" from which the battle of 1138 took its name. This standard consisted of the mast of a ship fixed on a four-wheeled frame. At the top was placed a silver pyx containing a consecrated wafer, and beneath this were suspended the banners of St Peter (of York), St John (of Beverley), and St Wilfred (of Ripon). The entirely religious nature of this standard is no doubt due to the fact that the English levies had been gathered under the direction of Thurstan, the aged Archbishop of York[83]. The banner of St John of Beverley was again in evidence during the Scottish wars of Edward I, and during these same wars there appears for the first time the banner of another north of England saint, St Cuthbert of Durham. Both these banners were carried by ecclesiastics, who were paid by the king for their services. In addition to these, which seem to have been carried only in the Northern wars, there were in use, as appears from the Wardrobe Accounts for 1299-1300[84], five other banners: two of the Arms of England, one of the arms of St George, one of the arms of St Edmund, and one of the arms of St Edward. A description of the banner of St Cuthbert has been preserved for us in a MS. of the sixteenth century[85]: