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John Bull, that stout yeoman of distilled Englishness was, it might surprise you to know, created by a Scot called John Arbuthnot. A contemporary and friend of Jonathan Swift, Arbuthnot satirised the inter-union relationship between England and Scotland around the turn of the 18th century, personifying the two countries as siblings John and Peg.
For whatever reasons Peg slowly faded into obscurity, while Bull was embellished and reused by other later authors and cartoonists. The excerpt below, taken from Arbutnot's THE HISTORY OF JOHN BULL describes the awkward sororal/fraternal relations:
John had a sister, a poor girl that had been starved at nurse. Anybody would have guessed Miss to have been bred up under the influence of a cruel stepdame, and John to be the fondling of a tender mother. John looked ruddy and plump, with a pair of cheeks like a trumpeter; Miss looked pale and wan, as if she had the green sickness; and no wonder, for John was the darling: he had all the good bits, was crammed with good pullet, chicken, pig, goose, and capon; while Miss had only a little oatmeal and water, or a dry crust without butter. John had his golden pippins, peaches, and nectarines; poor Miss, a crab-apple, sloe, or a blackberry. Master lay in the best apartment, with his bedchamber towards the south sun. Miss lodged in a garret exposed to the north wind, which shrivelled her countenance. However, this usage, though it stunted the girl in her growth, gave her a hardy constitution; she had life and spirit in abundance, and knew when she was ill-used. Now and then she would seize upon John's commons, snatch a leg of a pullet, or a bit of good beef, for which they were sure to go to fisticuffs. Master was indeed too strong for her, but Miss would not yield in the least point; but even when Master had got her down, she would scratch and bite like a tiger; when he gave her a cuff on the ear, she would prick him with her knitting-needle. John brought a great chain one day to tie her to the bedpost, for which affront Miss aimed a penknife at his heart