Rowley Fisher-Drake

Rowley Fisher-Drake is one of the Members of Parliament for Hampshire. In 1816 Sir Walter Pole tells Jonathan Strange that Mr. Fisher-Drake has proposed a Bill to forbid anyone in the north of England to display the Raven-in-Flight, the flag of John Uskglass. Mr. Fisher-Drake has presumably done this because he is alarmed by the way in which revolutionaries in the north have seized upon the ancient flag as a symbol of their detestation of the Parliament in Westminster. Nevertheless, as Sir Walter points out, the proposal is an absurd one: the Raven-in-Flight is the emblem of the king of Northern England, and it is a nonsense to offer to penalize a subject who flies the flag of his lawful king[48]. Unfortunately the fact that something is a nonsense has never been a bar to its being proposed in Parliament.