The red cross of St. George was the general badge of England from the Crusades, till the time of Edward IV., and by an act of the Scottish Parliament passed in 1385, during the reign of Robert III., every soldier was ordained "to wear a white St. Andrew's Cross on his back and breast, which, if his surcoat was white, was to be broidered on a circle or square of black cloth." In the time of Henry VIII., a red St. George's cross on a white surcoat was adopted as the distinguishing badge of English troops; and in an order to raise men for the service of Mary I., in the northern counties, she directs, that "they be clothed in whyt, with redde-crosses on ye arme, in ye olde maner." These red crosses were destined to figure soon after, at the battle of Ancrum in 1544, when, as the ballad has it, the stream "Ran red with English blood, For the Douglas true and the bold Buccleugh, 'Gainst keen Lord Evers stood." When the English were routed, 700 Scottish outlaws of broken border clans, who had joined them, threw aside their red crosses, and joining their countrymen, made a merciless slaughter of the fugitives with axe and spear, shouting to each other the while, "Remember Broomhouse!" Love of the sanguinary colour seems to have spread rapidly, and so, as some one has it, "no true Englishman can either fight, or hunt, to his satisfaction, save in a red coat," but badges were speedily added thereto. Stowe records in his Survey of London, that "Robert Neville, Earl of Warwick, with 600 men all in red jackets, embroidered with _ragged staves_ before and behind, was lodged in Warwicke Lane; in whose house there was oftentimes six oxen eaten at a breakfast, and every tavern was full of his meat, for he that had any acquaintance in that house, might have as much of sodden or roasted meat as he could prick and carry away on a long dagger." The proposal that the medical officers of all European armies should wear one great distinguishing badge, by which their profession might be known, is not a new one, for we find Ralph Smith, in the time of Elizabeth, after telling us that military "surgeons should be men of sobrietie, of good conscience, and skillfull in that science, able to heal all scars and wounds, especially to take out a pellet, &c., must wear their Baldricke, whereby they may be known in time of slaughter, as it is their charter in the field." In this reign the Cavalry wore scarlet cloaks; but in the stirring times of Cromwell, with red and blue, a reddish-brown was much used by both horse and foot; hence he says in one of his letters, "I had rather have a plain russet-coated captain, that knoweth what he fights for, and loves what he knowes, than that which you call 'a gentleman,' and is nothing else."