POPHAM'S DRAGOONS

At last I have finally finished these figures and got round to posting them. Various distractions have been keeping me away from the painting table (chiefly 3 naughty little boys), but I managed to get these chaps photographed tonight. Colonel Alexander Popham of Littlecote House was MP for Bath

and his regiment of Dragoons is recorded as having fought at Lansdown. I have based the coat colours on my old Sealed Knot unit Colonel James Wardlawe's Dragoons and in true Sealed Knot style they seem to have forgotten their horses.  Actually back in 1993 Wardlawes did take the field mounted, and it is jolly difficult riding a nag with matchlock musket and lighted matchcord trying desperately not to let said match touch the side of the steed.

There was always much debate about how different dragoons looked from musketeers, and personally I don't think there would have been a great deal of difference (in the classic Thirty Years War book Simplicissimus, the author/narrator , a dragoon himself is mistaken for a musketeer by some cavalrymen, and goes on to say "when a dragoon falls of his horse a musketeer gets up").

But as my ECW project is fairly "old school" I have given them shorter muskets and big boots. For some reason the black and russety red of the officer dried glossy, but this won't show when I get round to varnishing them.