esquires. Pennons were also used for any special ceremonial occasion, and more particularly at state funerals. For instance, there were "XII doz. penselles" among the items that figured at the funeral of the Duke of Norfolk in 1554, and in the description of the lord mayor's procession in 1555, it reads "two goodly pennes (state barges) decked with flags and streamers, and a 1000 penselles." Among the items that ran the total cost of the funeral of Oliver Cromwell up to an enormous sum of money, there is the mention of 30 dozen of pennoncells a foot long and costing 20 shillings a dozen, and 20 dozen of the same kind of flags at 12 shillings a dozen. Sports Pennons were also used in various sports. Variant types The streamer, so called in Tudor days but now better known as the pennant or pendant, was a long, tapering flag, which it was directed "shall stand in the top of a ship or in the forecastle, and therein be put no arms, but the man's cognisance or device, and may be of length 20, 30, 40 or , and is slit as well as a guidon or standard". Among the fittings of the ship that took Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, to France in the reign of Henry VII was a "great streamer for the ship in length [and] in breadth". Besides the white ensign, ships commissioned in the Royal Navy fly a long streamer from the maintopgallant masthead. This, which is called a pennant, is the sign of command, and is first hoisted when a captain commissions his ship. The pennant, which was really the old "pennoncell", was of three colours for the whole of its length, and towards the end left separate in two or three tails, and so continued until the end of the Napoleonic Wars. Now, however the pennant is a long white streamer with the St George's cross in the inner portion close to the mast. Pennants have been carried by men-of-war from the earliest times, prior to 1653 at the yard-arm, but since that date at the maintopgallant masthead. There are other navies that also fly pennant in a similar manner (see commissioning pennant). The commissioning pennant in ships may end in a point, but they can also be forked, in which case it is also called a banderole. Pennants are also associated with American sports