Flag of Jersey

The origins of the association to Jersey of the red saltire are unknown.

A 1906 letter by the Bailiff of Jersey, describing the flag as "the red St Andrew's cross on white ground", states it was used to signal the neutrality of the Channel Islands during wars between England and France.[1] A 1483 papal bull guaranteed the islands' neutrality during the Hundred Years' War.[1] The saltire may have been a variation of the St George's Cross.[1]

Links to the St Patrick's Cross have been proposed. The St Patrick's Cross is commonly identified with the arms of the FitzGeralds, a Cambro-Norman family which became powerful in Ireland, and who also owned land in Jersey. N. V. L. Rybot in 1951 suggested that Jersey's flag originated from a mistake in a 1783 flag book by Carington Bowles, which was copied by later authors. Rybot's theory is that Bowles misinterpreted Ierse (Dutch for "Irish") as meaning "Jersey" in a Dutch flag-book he used as a source.[4] However, French Admiralty charts show that Jersey was using the red saltire before 1783.[5] In his History of Jersey, Balleine suggests that the saltire had in fact referred to Jersey, and that some had interpreted the flag to mean Ireland. At that date, Ireland would have been written Iersche, and the book contains a different entry for Irlandois. The flag was attributed to Iersé in 1757 by French charts.[6]

The use of the red saltire became more common during the German Occupation of World War II, as the local population were not allowed to display the Union Flag in occupied territory. Although the heraldic symbols of Jersey were used by the Island's government during this time, all public buildings and landmarks (such as Fort Regent and Mont Orgueil) flew the Flag of Nazi Germany.

The move to a new flag was begun in 1977 with Queen Elizabeth's Silver Jubilee.[7] It was felt by many in Jersey that the flag was insufficiently distinctive to represent the island,[7] that there was too much confusion with the cross of St. Patrick as an Irish symbol, and that the red saltire had been taken as one of the international maritime signal flags.

Others, though, wanted to keep the traditional red saltire that had been used since time immemorial.[8] A third influential body of opinion campaigned for the adoption of a banner of the three leopards (leopard being the heraldic term for a lion passant guardant), the island's heraldic device. The current flag can, therefore, be seen as a compromise between the various strands of opinion. Although the flag is flown in Jersey, the three leopards are much more widely used as a national symbol by the authorities and civil population alike.