John Endecott Defaces the King’s Colors

In 1634, Charles I, the King of England, tried to force the Puritans in Massachusetts to celebrate the ceremonies of the Church of England. John, being a staunch Puritan, opposed the Church of England because he thought it was too much like the Catholic Church. Furthermore, since mixing religion, soldiering, and politics, as was common at that time, John may have been inflamed by the fiery eloquence of the Puritan preacher Roger Williams, to the point that John ordered that the Cross of St. George in the colonial banner be defaced because, as he put it, it “savored Popery.”

Even though Governor Winthrop was a good friend of John Endecott’s, Winthrop explained why something had to be done to punish John: “Much matter was made of this, as fearing it would be taken as an act of rebellion, or of like high nature, in defacing the king's colors; though the truth were, it was done upon this opinion, that the red cross was given to the king of England by the Pope, as an ensign of victory, and so a superstitious thing, and a relic of Antichrist." In other words, Winthrop sympathized with his friend’s actions, but he knew he had to do something official to punish John, lest the King do something drastic, such as revoking the colony’s charter. It must be remembered that this was a period of religious turmoil in England, with Charles having married a Catholic and supporting the Catholic-like Church of England in one camp, and the Puritans who opposed the Catholic Church in another other camp.

So, a committee of four magistrates was convened to consider John’s act, and they found "his offence to be great, namely rash and without discretion, taking upon him more authority than he had. . ." and John was barred from holding any public office for one year, thus showing the King that it was not the colony’s intent to revolt. After this one year, however, John was elected to high office again and again. Furthermore, following John’s actions, Massachusetts standard bearers were given permission to devise any kind of flag they wanted, and, without exception, they removed the red cross of St. George from their flags and for the next 50 years, the flag of Massachusetts Bay was a red rectangle with an unadorned white square in the upper left-hand corner.

Since this flag has become known as the “Endicott Flag,” and is one of the oldest personal ensigns in America today, it is worth explaining in more detail what the flag looked like because there have been several misconceptions. Unfortunately, however, there is no definitive contemporary statement as to exactly what the colonial flag in question looked like either before or after defacement and one can only guess. The traditional guess – but not the only guess -- is that it was the red British naval ensign with the red cross of St. George in a white square in the upper left-hand corner. So, tradition is that when John cut out the cross, what was left was a blank white square on a red banner, which has become known as the “Endicott flag.”

The problem, however, is that we don’t know with certainty what the background color of the flag in question was, and we know from a contemporary account that only “a piece” of the cross was removed, not the whole cross. So it may be that the immediate result of John’s handiwork did not entirely resemble what has come to be known as the Endicott flag. However, it is known with certainty that what John did expressed a commonly held feeling at the time that the red cross of St. George smacked of popery and thus should be removed from the Massachusetts flag, which it was. This act of defacing the flag became a legend in the early history of the United States, especially since the noted author Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864), who was from Salem, Massachusetts., wrote a story about it in 1837, called “John Endecott and the Red Cross. ” Hawthorne had been deeply influenced by Salem historian Joseph B. Felt’s “Annals of Salem.” Hawthorne’s story ends like this:

With a cry of triumph, the people gave their sanction to one of the boldest exploits which our history records. And, for ever honored be the name of Endicott! We look back through the mist of ages, and recognize, in the rending of the Red Cross from New England's banner, the first omen of that deliverance which our fathers consummated, after the bones of the stern Puritan had lain more than a century in the dust. There is one more story associated with the defacing of the King’s colors, one having to do with the sword that John supposedly used to do it.

In 1935 William Crowninshield Endecott willed both the sword and the Original Portrait of John Endecott to the State of Massachusetts, who finally got the items in 1941 and for many years, they publicly displayed the sword (but not the portrait). In his 1924 “Memoir of Samuel Endicott,” William C. Jr. says this about the sword : “The portrait has been handed down from the oldest son to the oldest son through nine generations as well as the sword with which the Governor cut the cross out of the King’s colors.”

In 1991, however, thinking it might be interesting to make copies of the sword for himself and a few relatives, William T. Endicott asked Massachusetts about the authenticity of the sword. But he abandoned the project after Massachusetts informed him that a noted expert, Walter J. Karcheski, Jr (died 2006)., said the sword had been made sometime in the 1700s and thus could not possibly have been used by John Endecott. In other words, the vaunted sword was a fake. Today, Massachusetts still has the sword, but it has been removed from public display and banished to a storeroom out of sight. It is noted that the sword clearly resembles the German “Hirschfänger” design, a short sword used to dispatch wounded deers and which first appeared in the mid-17th century. @JEFA - May not be used, reproduced or copied without specific permission from the author and the JEFA.