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NOTES AND QUERIES, [ii-s. vm. SEPT. 20, 1913.

REDCOATS.

IT is generally thought that the red coats of the English soldiery have a modern origin. I have read and believed (as I suppose many others have done) that the military adoption of that colour in this country begins with the reign of William III., and derives from the wars in the Low Coun- tries. Now, without ever having made any systematic research on the subject, I find among my notes the following references. It will be seen that they carry back by more than half a century the commonly received date alluded to above.

1. " Anno Domini 163-, when the expedition was into Scotland, Sir John Suckling, at his owne hardge, raysed a troope of 100 very handsome young proper men, whom he clad in white doub- letts and Scarlett breeches & Scarlett coates, hatts and. .. .feathers, well-horsed and armed. They say 'twas one of the finest sights in those dayes." Aubrey, ' Brief Laves,' ed. Clark, ii. 241-2.

Suckling's luckless bravura expedition oc- curred in early June, 1639.

2. King Charles I.'s bodyguard, the "Red Regiment," drawn up around the Banner Royal held by Sir Edmund Verney, was practically cut to pieces at Edgehill, October, 1642. They had no connexion with Suckling's " proper men," yet may have consciously copied their striking accou- trements.

The prevailing colour in the Royalist ranks was white. Could this most un- practical choice have been made out of compliment to the White King ? The Parliamentarians stuck to buff or russet, which seems to have been the conventional military wear so much so, indeed, that " buff," in common parlance, had become the equivalent for soldiers' leather. Thus the sixteenth-century ballad of Mary Ambree, who

Clothed her selfe from the toppe to the toe

In buffe of the bravest, most seemlye to showe.

And that good Royalist James Howell, in an ' Epistle Dedicatory ' to the Prince of Wales, " the growing glory of Great Britain," uses the word in its j general application, rather unexpectedly, as late as 1646.

"This victorious king [Louis XIII.]," he says, 41 began to beare Armes and weare Buff about the same yeares that yo r Highness did."

3. Did the Parliamentarians ever adopt real red ? or was " red " simply a word loosely applied to their tawny, stained, weather-worn garb ? Charles II. uses it, intone application or the other, in the delightful detailed account of his escape after

the Battle of Worcester, in September, 1651, when he makes mention of the presence of obstructive Roundheads in Bridport. " The streets," he says, " were full of Redcoats, being a Regiment of 1500 men going to imbark to take Jersey."

4. Then comes Cowley, gravely bearing witness against Oliver Protector, between 1653 and 1658 :

That bloody conscience, too, of his (For Oh, a rebel redcoat 'tis !) Does here his early hell begin : He sees his slaves without, his tyrant feels within.

5. Anthony Wood's Diary, in an entry of March, 1678, has this :

" All this month and part of April have many red coats been quartered in Oxford, and .... Dragoons, in order to be sent far away beyond the Seas."

6. The same descriptive phrase occurs in the epitaph of Peter Gemmel. " shot to death by Nisbet and his party for bearing his faithful testimony to the cause of Christ," and buried at Fenwick in 1685 :

This man, like holy anchorites of old,

For conscience sake was thrust from house and

hold;

Bloodthirsty redcoats cut his prayers short, And even his dying groans were made their sport. Ah, Scotland ! breach of solemn vows repent, For blood, thy crime, will be thy punishment.

7. Wood's Diary again, for this year 1685, records that in July, at Oxford,

" five companies of schpllers . . . . joyned altogether, and were for some time trayned by the E. of Abendon. They all went afterwards over Carfax . . . .the prime officers, viz., captaines, lieutenants and ensignes, in scarlet coats, scarfes about their waste, and white feathers in their hats."

And the invaluable observer tells us also how ill-dressed King James, on 3 Sept., 1687, was acclaimed in the University town, and responded in kind :

" Afterwards, the King (with a scarlet coat on, his blew ribband & George, and a starr on his left papp, with an old French coarse hat on, edged with a little peem of lace, all not worth a groat, as some of the people said) shouted."

These random citations, such as they are, seem quite enough to explode the myth that William of Orange first devised, or adopted, red as the British warrior's official hue. Perhaps even the poet of Out upon it ! I have loved Three whole days together ! was not quite the pioneer and only be- getter of " the thin red line " famous on so many fields. Its birth may have ante- dated 1639 A.D. Documentary evidence shows its continuance, at any rate, from 1639 to 1689, and on to our own day.

L. I. GUINEY.

Oxford.