Union Jack(ed)

London Metropolitan Archives' FLickr photostream has some interesting images (mostly 19th and 20th cent.). Dirck Stoop's "The Manner how her Maties. D. Catherine imbarketh from Lisbon for England," (which they title, The Marriage of Catherine of Braganza to King Charles II, 1662) has the English Fleet flying the Union Jack, which must be one of the earliest portrayals of said flag.  The OED, has the following early reference - London Gazette, 924 (1674), "[t]hat from henceforth [subjects] do not presume to wear His Majesties Jack (commonly called, The Union Jack) in any of their Ships or Vessels, without particular Warrant" - although the practice dates from the early Stuarts.

Get Thee To...The Continent

"Painted Life," Mary Ward and Companions

An interesting database is now available - Who were the Nuns? A Prosopographical study of the English Convents in exile 1600-1800.  It is interests me, not only because it is fun to say the word "prosopographical," but because one can locate Catholic county communities.  Thus, selecting region Monmouthshire and searching for surname with wildcards (A*, B*, C*, etc.), turns up some 32 nuns with links to that "Welsh Lancashire," including an Antwerp Carmelite, known as Anne of the Angels, born in Monmouth in 1613 to the Hon. Anne Russell, and fathered by Henry Somerset 1st marquess of Worcester (Philip Jenkins, "'A Welsh Lancashire?' Monmouthshire Catholics in the Eighteenth Century," Recusant History 15, 3 (1980): 176-88; Newton E. Key and Joseph P. Ward, “‘Divided into Parties’: Exclusion Crisis Origins in Monmouth,” English Historical Review 115, 464 (2000): 1159-83).