Upgrading my ECW Cavalry

[DHautpol]

Earlier this year I finally decided to bite the bullet and increase the number of flags carried by my ECW Horse units.  Each unit originally comprised 1 Officer, 1 Standard, 1 Musician and 13 Troopers.

This gave me regiments of two squadrons a piece under the Victory Without Quarter rules (and probably other rules sets too).  The VWQ rules allow for the individual squadrons to operate separately from each other on occasions and I thought that the second squadron looked a bit bare in these circumstances.

Consequently, I decided to re-organise the regiments so that they were formed of 2 squadrons, each comprising 1 Officer, 1 Standard, 1 Musician and 5 Troopers.  It took quite an effort to prise the trooper figures from their stands to make way for the new command figures, but it did mean that I gained a new regiment of Horse for each side from the recycled troopers.

The photo shows Sir Horatio Cary's Regiment before being upgraded (left) alongside the Marquess of Winchester's after its upgrade (right).  I imagine that Cary's Horse, along with Hesilrige's Cuirassiers and Prince Rupert's Foot are represented in a great many ECW armies. As my armies are broadly drawn from the West Country  campaigns, they certainly feature in mine.

2026-06-30 Cary & Winchester 2 by David Hockey, on Flickr

[Radar]

They do look nice with the 2nd flagged squadron.

Good luck finding 2 cornets for the same RoH (after about 4 RoH you are probably heading the conjectural route).

There does seem to be a thing of colonel's cornet being one colour, the rest sharing a common colour. Of course this is not in the least bit 'hard and fast'. But it's the Wars of the 3 Kingdoms - you should be used to the 'let's do whatever we want' attitude

[Techno 3]

Damn fine work, that man !

[DHautpol]

Good luck finding 2 cornets for the same RoH (after about 4 RoH you are probably heading the conjectural route).

Thanks for the kind comments.

I've come across some instances of 2 cornets for the same regiment; although they might simply be conjecture by someone else.

With relatively little "hard" information around, I'm happy to take the conjectural approach.  If you follow the general rules of the period then I think it's difficult for people to find too many issues.

[Radar]

There's a handful, but spread across both persuasions. I'm probably more excited than I should be for the opening of the new London Museum in November.

They have 2 fireside panels in their collection, each made up of 6 cornet sides (each cornet, bar one, had different images on each side, the cornets have been split making 12 panels), which haven't been on display for many many years. All 6 cornets believed to have come from Col Robert Hatton's RoH that fought in the Kentish Rebellion (just before siege of Colchester).

Was conversing with the curator for a while about them - they intend to restore them back to being 6 cornets and have them on display when the new site opens. Along with one of the shirts worn by C1 at his execution.


If you get stuck on cornets, let me know what you want and I will have a look through my big expensive books and photos of Turmile (NP7373), to see if I can find anything.

[pierre the shy]

Nice work DHautpol, they look magnificant.

Before the BCW page was rejigged there used to be a downloadable copy of a series of articles that appeared in Military Modelling many years ago about flags of the ECW, including quite a lot of information on both Parliamentary and Royalist Horse cornets....

https://www.pendrakenforum.co.uk/index.php?topic=16141.0

Unfortunately the download doesn't appear to have made it into the new page yet (from a quick look I just had) but if you're wanting a copy send me a PM. 
   

[Radar]

Pierre - link to the article is working. Just checked it  (Your comment had me scratching my head initially as the bcw site is set up to automatically check links every couple of months, the latest report flagged one broken link and it wasn't that one.)

The MM articles do have errors though, so beware! Which have been replicated so many times now they have become Wargamer factory™

[pierre the shy]

Sorry Radar didn't see it 

"Must have used your man eyes" as my other half tells me fairly frequently these days   

I've used the Scots information as the basis for a lot of Covenanter and Scots Royalist unit flags myself over the years.

Thanks for maintaining the BCW site, its been a very useful resource for all the War of the Three Kingdoms stuff we have done.

[Radar]

Sorry Radar didn't see it 

"Must have used your man eyes" as my other half tells me fairly frequently these days   

I've used the Scots information as the basis for a lot of Covenanter and Scots Royalist unit flags myself over the years.

Thanks for maintaining the BCW site, its been a very useful resource for all the War of the Three Kingdoms stuff we have done.

Did wonder if you were using the link on the old thread which is the old URL (before GoDaddy parked it and were effectively holding it to ransom for big money when we tried to get it back).
Then I had a little panic that the script that checks links was broken and I would have to do it all manually (only about 2.5k links).

Glad to have played a small part in saving the wonderful resource that it is, and bringing it all up to date in a unified, hopefully future proof state.

(If I can ever help out with flags just ping me a note and I will see what I can do - an offer that goes for everyone)