Duke of York's regiment of Foote

Another Regiment of the Oxford Army was that of the Duke of York (Charles eldest Son James) though being only nine at the outbreak of the Civil Wars he was just a figurehead and never commanded the regiment. In fact the Regiment did not start life as a Royalist Regiment but was raised by Parliament and sent to Ireland to quell the revolts there. Somewhat ironic then that it would be shipped back to England to fight against the Parliament that raised it. Not ironic however was Parliaments propaganda that insisted that these were Irish Regiments, that is native Irish. Many of these men had taken Irish women as wives or simply camp followers who were Irish. Many of the fighting men of the regiments that had been called Irish were refused quarter as were the women camp followers. Many English and Welsh were killed under the suspicion of being Irish including such as Cornish troops who's accent was so far removed from normal English that all to often they were killed by mistake. Indeed not a small amount of real Irish troops killed were in fact Protestant and not the feared and loathed Catholic. 

The Regiment was raised in 1642 but was returned to England in 1643 via Bristol. Later it would have been brought south and incorporated into the Oxford Army where I suspect it was fleshed out with new recruits and as the regiment is known to have had red jackets had been re-clothed whilst in Oxford. Also stated is that the Regiment wore grey trousers though I suspect this would not have been throughout the whole regiment as replacing a whole regiment from head to foot would have been very costly and they would have required replacement footwear at least once since returning to England.

Originally the regiment was in Prince Maurice's force fighting in Herefordshire but on joining the King's army the regiment was given the name Duke of York's Foote though Lt. Col. William St Leger retained full control of the regiment. The regiment was thought to have been at Cropredy Bridge (which is why I painted them) as well as the Lostwithiel campaign. It was also at second Newbury where St Leger was killed and probably replaced as commander by Theodore Kyrton who's impressively named brother Posthumous had been killed at Marston Moor leading a Regiment of Whitecoats. 

In 1645 the regiment was part of the force that stormed Leicester where the regiment did well enough to capture Ireton and beating off his regiment before finally being overwhelmed and if not destroyed certainly reduced to a shadow of itself. It certainly did not survive the aftermath of the battle. So a colourful regiment that saw long and active service.

I have painted up the regiment both in 6mm and 15mm, today I will show off the 6mm and tomorrow will be the turn of the 15mm boys (allowing Matt to ignore the post if he wants to see them in the flesh first).

Only one decent shot of the brave lads, figures and flag by Baccus though the flag was not lined up well on printing so lots of white between the black and red sections so I ended up repainting most of it so you can't see where the original colour runs into my clean up. I always paint the edges anyway to get rid of the white edges and get well rewarded with a crisper finish. 

My ECW force is steadily growing and once I have all Matt's figures painted (yes the Zulu's) I will be starting work on the Army of Essex for Lee which I am rather looking forward to. This should mean that before the end of the year we will be seeing our first ECW battle in 6mm. I plan to rework my Napoleonic rules (actually only a form of the combat tables will be used) and write a pure ECW set of rules that should bring the special flavour of the period across. The ECW really suffers (like the ACW) from too few troop types and if you use normal rules can get boring quickly. Rules that give a feel of the ECW I hope will have longer legs. But that my friends is another day.