Keep Your Powder Dry

Trained Bands were a militia of part time soldiers; they were formally founded in 1571 under Elizabeth I, although their history dates back much further. Each County had a trained band, but in London there were a number of regiments. Initially there were north, south, east and west regiments; by 1638 four had become six regiments (now called red, white, blue, green, yellow and orange regiments), by the time of the First Civil War there were these six regiments and three suburban regiments (Southwark, Tower Hamlets and Westminster). Each regiment drew it's men from a particular district of the city. In 1643 they were expanded again by the formation of the auxiliaries, giving a total of eighteen regiments.


We know quite a lot about the London Trained Bands (henceforth LTB) thanks to the Royalist spy William Levett


The Red Regiment mustered it's men from Aldgate, Tower and Billingsgate. The red regiment was the senior regiment of the LTB. 'Red Regiment' refers to their fl…

Updated: Seven more cornets located!

Part two of the KeepYourPowderDry guide to Civil War flags and colours looks at evidence - surviving flags, and contemporary records.

Surviving Flags

There is a watchett (blue green) piles wavy ensign in the collection at the National Army Museum  (not on display), which very little is known about. One source claims it predates the Civil Wars (early 1630s), whereas NAM currently believe it dates from 1688 and belonged to Prince William of Orange (before he became King William III)


Picture courtesy of the National Army Museum
Of course, the ensign belonging to Sir John Gell's Regiment of Foot takes pride of place in the refurbished NAM. 
I have read that when the museum was conserving Gell's flag, and the museum was undergoing major refurbishment, that it was planned to alternate display of the two flags in the NAM collection. 
Antony House in Plymouth, have a yellow ensign on display with black lion devices (possibly belonging to Alexander Car…

The Earl of Stamford's Regiment of Horse was a short lived regiment that existed in 1643 and served in Gloucester.

They may have had a skirmish at Burford, but definitely fought at the siege of Siege of Sudeley Castle and the battle of Highnam.


Their cornet is interesting; an old Military Modelling article from the 70s, on ECW flags, gave the cornet as blue with white horizontal stripes (from the Earl's coat of arms); however, the rather succinctly titled 'BL MS Additional [Sloanee] 5247' gives the field colour as solid blue. As BL MS Additional [Sloanee] 5247 was a contemporaneous pattern book of cavalry cornets I have plumped for the solid blue field.



Just a couple of headswaps in this unit, and one of the mounted casualties.

What can I say about the Portland Collection at the Harley Gallery, on the Welbeck Abbey estate, near Worksop?


Firstly, I must point out that photography is not allowed. At all.  Not even sneaky ones without flash, so you'll just have to take my word for what's there.

The Harley Gallery is located in what has to be one of the nicest gallery buildings I have been to.

A large airy gallery space houses portraits of Charles II as a boy, and William Cavendish first Duke of Newcastle by van Dyck.  Other Civil War era portraits include Sir William Farmor by  William Dobson; 'Mad Madge' the Duchess of Newcastle, and Sir Edward Harley both by Sir Peter Lely.

Elsewhere there is a Newark siege coin, a number of Charles I medallions and Charles's toothpick and case. Highlight of the entire gallery has to be a drop pearl earring  worn by Charles in pretty much every one of his portraits (from the age of sixteen). A close second is the chalice that he drank from on the day of hi…

Sir John Meldrum's Regiment of Horse does not have spectacular or even notable battle honours, so why does it get it's own blog post? Regular readers will know that I have been having a bit of an existentialist crisis with the makeup of my two main armies. We know that generally armies had equal numbers of horse and foot, but rather than having 200 horse and 200 foot I prefer to field equal numbers of units. This karmic balance was shattered for a variety of reasons and my regiments of foot became rather top heavy.


So here are the first of twelve regiments of 'death by brown paint' horse - six each for Parliament and the King.

Meldrum's horse were formed in 1643 and served in the midlands and the north. Battle honours include Gainsborough, possibly the relief of Gloucester, First Newbury, and were besieged in Hull. After 1643 they fought at Nottingham, Ormskirk and possibly the siege of Scarborough.

Pretty much straight out of the box Piggies, just a couple of head…

Updated: added Bank House, Blackburn and details of a skirmish in Burnley

Whilst writing the Prince Rupert travelogue I became aware of a number of houses which had some link to the Civil Wars, but were not tied to Rupert's advance north. Nor could they claim a close connection to a particular battle, such as Bolling House's role in Adwalton Moor.

In this series you'll find houses that didn't fit the Rupert narrative very well; were closed to the public at the time of writing Rupert; or, I hadn't known about a Civil Wars connection. I propose to write one entry per county*, and will update each entry as I expand my visits. I will change the date stamps of updated entries so subscribers (hello both of you) will be informed of updates. Initially I will look at the counties most local to Château KeepYourPowderDry - Derbyshire, Cheshire, Lancashire and Yorkshire.

And so we turn to Lancashire...

One such house is Hoghton (pronounced Horton) Tower an Elizabethan fortifie…

Who'd have thunk it? I have managed another year of awful painting and dreadful prose.

Blog continues to go from strength to strength. In the first year it managed 15,600 hits, this year it's nudging 27,600. Must be doing something right, or there has been nothing on the telly globally for the last twelve months.


The KeepYourPowderDry blogiversary party: regular readers will note that the Saturday Boy
has not been invited, after he embarrassed himself last year
Most successful blog post of this year is 'Sealed Knot - ECWS: re-enactors on 450 hits: and the most successful of all time is "What Colours To Use" with over 800 hits. Most popular search term that ends up with a visit here is, not unsurprisingly 'Peter Pig' although 'ECW travelogue' is fast catching up. Strangely 'podiatrist Tyldesley' has secured rather a lot of blog visitors too.

A number of older posts have been updated; for example the London galleries post now has details of th…

Once I had discovered that a relative was a captain in the Parliamentarian Holland's regiment, I had to represent it. This of course had the knock on effect of causing imbalance in my armies. So the King required a new regiment of foot to level this imbalance. So I give you Sir Bernard Astley's Regiment of Foot.



Originally raised as the Marquis of Hertford's regiment, Sir Bernard joined the regiment as lieutenant-colonel in 1643. Sir Bernard was the son of Sir Jacob Astley, sergeant-major general of the King's foot. After the storm of Bristol the Marquis stepped down from the military, Sir Bernard taking command of the regiment.


As the Marquis of Hereford's their highlights include Lansdown and Bristol; under Astley they fought at First Newbury(possibly), Cheriton, Cropredy Bridge, Second Newbury, Leicester and Naseby.


Peachey & Prince have  identified the regiment’s coat colour as white (by a process of elimination), however this relies on some unconfirmed ass…