ECW Units

[Correus]

Can anyone direct me to a web site that provides a listing on units, Royalists and Parliamentarians, what their uniforms looked like and their flags?

[grant]

Can anyone direct me to a web site that provides a listing on units, Royalists and Parliamentarians, what their uniforms looked like and their flags?

I was going to say a great place to start is The Sealed Knot but their website doesn't actually contain the old units and small uniforms it used to. Hm. The small pictures were like the ones at the back of the WHH ECW rulebook section.

Edit: they do have a list of units under JOIN and then ARMIES

Will keep looking ...

mikeland, help!

[mikeland]

mikeland, help!

To be honest this is quite a difficult one.

THis is a good staring place:

https://www.baccus6mm.com/includes/howt ... xt.inc.php

Though they only list the two main field armies.

There is quite a good list in: Osprey Elite #25: Soldiers of the ECW 1 (Infantry)

But I haven't yet seen anywhere with a comprehensive list.

I would suggest PM'ing Steve morgan
memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=479
He is the guy writing the P&S rules for Warlord, he seems pretty knowledgable, and he sent me an excellent xl sheet of coat colours etc a few months back.

I would send you the document but it is his work and so don't feel it right for me to start distributing it.

[Chesh]

There is quite a good list in: Osprey Elite #25: Soldiers of the ECW 1 (Infantry)

That's on my list for next Sunday....then the next week off it could be a busy one!

[Invisible officer]

There is no comprehensive list. Many many years ago I started collecting informations about ECW units, putting them on cards. I never put them in electronic form, for some things I still prefer the old style.

The problem is that the informations about units are scattered wild through the literature. Only if you do your own research youn can check the credibility of each information.
Many gamer fell victims to some modern reconstructions that had been based on no sources. Copied again and again at last the peoples believed that they are based on facts. Everybody showed that dress, everybody painted his miniatures like that, so it must be true.

Uniform dress was only achieved in those units that got dress for all men at a certain date. But campaign wear and later recruiting would sooon give the unit a very different appearence. Only the introduction of central buying of equipment and dress produced a stock to draw identical items from. But even in this case distance from depot could force the men to use what they got.

[smolders]

My good fellow:

I agree with what others here have said there really is no absolute "this is it no questions asked" document about ECW uniforms so oyu could simply paint what you want and call it a trayned band of [insert town name] or Sir [insert name here] regiment of foote and there would be little issue with gamers and history HOWEVER if your like most of us you want some meat, potatos and gravy to your historical portrayal of a unit. I'm not sure what the referneces for this document/web site were but its appear informed and the stuff I've checked into matches my reference library so I don' thin you'll go far wrong. Heres the link:

https://www.baccus6mm.com/includes/howt ... xt.inc.php

It gives all sorts of coat colours and flag info as well.

Let us know how things go

[Chesh]

Edit: they do have a list of units under JOIN and then ARMIES

I take it the units mentioned as the different groups of Sealed Knots are true to history?

Kind of off topic - I first heard of them about 4 years ago taking the kids to Weston-Super-Mare for the day and they were out in force was very impressed

[HobbitMiles]

The ECW is an absolute minefield. I was in the Sealed Knot for about 20 years, in general the coat colours are right, but I wouldn't take your average re-enactor as a good source of reliable info on what the individual soldier looked like.

Although in some ways quite dated Philip Haythornthwaite's book "The English Civil War" is not a bad source and the colour plates give a very good overall impression. The two key things that it gets wrong though (but a vast amount of research has been done since it was originally published) are showing ordinary foot soldiers in buff coats and showing snap sacks as being side bag/satchel shaped. Most current serious research suggests that buff coats were vastly too expensive for the common soldier and there is no contemporary evidence that ordinary foot soldiers had them (London Trained Bands being an exception - they were rich) - (This isn't the only point of view - if there are any other ECW re-enactors out there who disagree, can we politely agree to disagree and then move on ). Soldier's snapsacks all appear in contemporary European illustrations to be much more like a duffle bag/sausage bag shape. Oh, the other problem is that there is no evidence that powder flasks/horns were still being used by footsoldiers in mid-c17th, all of the exisiting records show bandoliers (often erroniously refered to as "apostles"), paper cartridges or powder bags being issued out.

The Osprey Elite titles aren't bad, and their NMA book is ok (from memory), the illustrations in the very old Osprey by Peter Young though are really very badly dated. Brassey's book on ECW uniform is also reasonably good, but I believe quite expensive even if you can find it.

Although lacking illustrations and over 100 years old now CH Firth's "Cromwell's Army" is an absolutely superb source of contemporary quotes and evidence for armies on either side.

If you want to get into campaign specifics then a chap called Stuart Peachy publishes a huge range of little paphlets on some really quite obscure battles - these are generally well researched by local specialists and rely heavily on original accounts - they often contain what limited uniform info there is. These papmphlets can be obtained from Paul Meekins or Caliver Books (both will come up on google). There are also a couple of small books on infantry colours (flags) - can't recall either title off the top of my head, but they are something imaginative like "Infantry Colours of the English Civil Wars".

If you want to know anything specific I'm very glad to dig through my collection to try and find it.

I very strongly agree with Invisible Officer, so many books contain badly researched images that have been reproduced without question for decades or even centuries.

And finally, glad you liked Weston-S-M.

[brownpants]

I copied all of the old unit details off the old sealed knot website and saved them as image files. Oh how I love Windows 7 snip tool.

Message me your email addresses and I will email them to you.

[grant]

I copied all of the old unit details off the old sealed knot website and saved them as image files. Oh how I love Windows 7 snip tool.

Message me your email addresses and I will email them to you.

sent! Thanks!