11, Montpelier Square, Brompton, March 28th, 1852. SIR,--Your Correspondent, H. M. will find a very curious history of the origin and formation of the Union Jack in Brayley's "Graphic Illustrator:" it is written by the late Sir Harris Nicolas, and the "absurd arrangement" of the National Flag elucidated by nine heraldic woodcuts. Perhaps you will permit me to embrace this opportunity of saying a few words on the abstraction of Monumental Brasses from churches, which has attracted the attention of some of your Correspondents lately; one of whom throws the blame almost wholly on "the sectarian soldiers of Cromwell's time."[B] I am not desirous of defending these men, but I _am_ desirous that modern Churchwardens should not screen their neglect by such an excuse. A slight research among our topographical works will prove, that a very large abstraction and destruction of such memorials has taken place in comparatively recent times. In the introduction to Cotman's "Brasses of Norfolk and Suffolk," he notes that "in 1800 the chancel of Ingham was completely swept of all its beautiful memorials of the Stapleton family. They were sold as old metal, and it was commonly reported by whom they were bought and sold; but nobody sought to recover them; neither minister nor churchwarden cared for any of these things." The beautiful brass (engraved in this same work) of Robert Attelath, Mayor of Lynn in 1374, was about forty years ago "given out of the church by the Churchwardens to a person who sold it for five shillings to a brass founder." The collection of rubbings from Brasses made about the same time and bequeathed to the British Museum by the late Francis Douce, present several since destroyed. The Journal of the Archæological Association narrates the fact of several removed from a country church because their rivets became loose, and "tripped up the old women who came to the fore seats in the aisle." I remember several instances of Brasses thus loosened, taken up and thrown in vestries or belfries, until they were sufficiently forgotten to be carried out and sold to the metal-founder. Some few Antiquaries have argued that they are better taken care of in their museums than thus exposed to destruction; and churchwardens being willing "to get rid of the ugly old things," many have disappeared this way. Let me, however, record one instance of honourable restitution. The effigy of an armed knight, of the Bacon family, (temp. Edw. I.) in Gorleston Church, Suffolk, engraved by Cotman, "in 1810 was gone, and supposed to be irretrievably lost; but at the sale of Mr. Craven Ord's curiosities, it was purchased by John Gage, Esq., who, with correct feeling and good taste, gave it back to the church, and Dawson Turner, Esq., at his expense, had it replaced in its original position." Surely, the soldiers of Cromwell have sins enough to answer for, without heaping