A Doomed Pretenders Project - (03/01, Finished Irish Cavalry Unit)

[HappyChappy439]

Hi everyone! (Almost) New Year, New Project!

With 2022 fast approaching, I've decided to embark on something I'd been kind of considering on-and-off for a couple of years that I hadn't ever quite committed to.

I've always been slightly hesitant with starting a directly WotR project (despite the excellent ranges of miniatures and example projects to draw inspiration from), partly because I'm never quite sure where to begin with one! I tend to get a bit indecisive over which factions, liveries and time periods to choose. I kept finding myself gravitating towards the pretenders and rebellions in the early Tudor period instead. The potential narrative tropes that can be applied there, like hidden princes and secret conspiracies which lend themselves really well to alternate-history scenarios and definitely captured the imagination!

So using that idea as a base, I've decided to split this into three different periods (to correspond to three different pretenders):

• Lambert Simnel, as Edward VI, with the Stoke Field rebellion in 1487
• Perkin Warbeck as Richard IV with his assorted attempts on the throne through the 1490s
• Richard de La Pole, also as Richard IV, with his planned invasions of England under Louis XII and Francis I

This would let me have a fairly wide set of options for figures and conversions to cover the early Tudor period, and a range of different factions I could use to represent the actual (or hypothetical in alternate history scenarios) support given to each of the pretenders over the roughly 40 year period until Pavia!

For a start, I decided to refurb the miniature I painted up to represent Perkin Warbeck, the middlest pretender, back in 2019 as part of my Burgundian project. I wasn't too happy with his old head, so I swapped that out for a new one for the new project!



I've based Perkin Warbeck on this (near) contemporary sketch of him, combined with the portraits we have of Edward IV, Richard III and Henry VII:


I added little white rose patterns onto his outfit to imply his Yorkist claims, where I thought that if Warbeck was insecure about people believing his claimed identity he would try to compensate by putting Yorkist symbolism all over himself to help convince people.

Another part of starting this project was to have an excuse to paint up some of the Perry WotR Irish range! I really like the figures but didn't really have anywhere to slot them in before, so this seemed like a nice justification! All three pretenders had at least some connection to the Fitzgeralds of either Kildare or Desmond, and even if only Lambert Simnel had any substantial support, it's not too outlandish for either Perkin Warbeck or the de la Pole brothers to field an Irish contingent in an alternate history scenario!

So with that in mind I've painted up a few test Kern as a start:



Stuart's recent thread (and blog post) were a big inspiration behind making a start on the Kern, and the research there has been a huge help!
https://leadadventureforum.com/index.php?topic=133295.0
https://stuartsworkbench.blogspot.com/2021/11/irish-kern.html

Hopefully the figures have turned out ok! I'm hoping to have some more substantial updates soon!

(Eventually I'm planning on setting up a blog to host the posts about the project, so I'll put the link here once I've gotten round to that!)

[Stuart]

I shall follow this with great interest ! There’s also the Cornish rebellion in 1497.

I’ve got a generic non-liveried unit of bow and bill which sees great service as English shire, Scots and rebels so the figures you propose will always be useful for a variety of guises.

[fred]

Cracking start - and lots of options for alternate history around these pretenders

[SJWi]

Happy Chappy, great post and idea! If you didn't know Stoke Field is only a few hundred yards from Wargames Foundry's address  near Newark. Buy figures and visit the battlefield in an afternoon.  I have had a similar idea and actually have some of the Perry Kerns in my unpainted stash for just this battle. It actually seems slightly more interesting than some more "traditional" WoTR battles as you can have the Irish, German pike and arquebus armed mercenaries on the Yorkist side vs a more "standard" Lancastrian army.

You may have inspired me to dig the Kerns out as part of my Christmas painting project.

Thanks.   

[AKULA]

A great idea HC, looking forward to watching your progress 

[Atheling]

I think you've captured the look of Perkin very well mate 

[HappyChappy439]

Thanks everyone!

I shall follow this with great interest ! There’s also the Cornish rebellion in 1497.

I’ve got a generic non-liveried unit of bow and bill which sees great service as English shire, Scots and rebels so the figures you propose will always be useful for a variety of guises.

Ah! Thanks for the heads up! I'd wondered about the Cornish rebellion(s) and how to factor them in, considering the overlap with the Warbeck rebellions. Having some generic bow/bill units is a great idea to cover the entire time period too!

To continue the momentum a little bit, I decided to finish off the unit of Kern with two-handed weapons. Unfortunately there's only six of them in the Perry range (so far), so to avoid duplicates I've given four of them headswaps (and weapon-head swaps) to change things up.



The inspiration there, including many of the headswaps, came from Stuart's recent blog post here, which has an excellent writeup of the historical context and terminology around the clothing: https://stuartsworkbench.blogspot.com/2021/11/irish-kern.html

I've also used the idea of mixing different shades of yellow from the blog post to indicate different levels of quality of dye (and to avoid having everyone be wearing the same shade of yellow). So roughly half the unit have the brighter, bolder yellow, and a lot of the rear rank, and most of the duplicates, have a more faded mustard/ochre colour being used





The ionar (jackets) were a pretty fun opportunity to include some additional colours in the unit, on top of the yellow. I've taken some inspiration from this site (which sells reproduction clothing) in terms of the colours and patterning: http://www.gaelicattire.com/ionar.htm



Let me know how they've turned out!

[bigredbat]

Really super painting!

[Stuart]

A great looking unit, really colourful and I like the tonal variety. Excellent link re the ionar too, that’s a great source !

[Captain Blood]

Nice idea, and I like the look of your Perkin - oooer 

[Charlie_]

Really nice, I love the look of those Kern as a finished unit.

I'm  not very knowledgeable (at all) on Irish warfare - do we know if Kern equipped with melee like this would have fought separately from those with missile weapons, or would they all have fought together as mixed light infantry? Or would these guys have been supporting the gallowglass?
And what is the definition of a 'bonnaught'?

I'd really like to have a go at these Perry Irish myself someday, but don't really have an appropriate setting for them - perhaps some day in the far future I could do a small skirmish project set in Ireland.... Handy that these guys could be used for quite a wide range of periods. I have often wondered about how I'd group them together into units....

[HappyChappy439]

Nice idea, and I like the look of your Perkin - oooer 

Ooerr 

Really nice, I love the look of those Kern as a finished unit.
I'm  not very knowledgeable (at all) on Irish warfare - do we know if Kern equipped with melee like this would have fought separately from those with missile weapons, or would they all have fought together as mixed light infantry? Or would these guys have been supporting the gallowglass?

Thanks! I'm going into this one definitely a bit of a novice, so it's been pretty fun reading up on something I didn't really have any information on before!

I've not been able to find much written down (or in illustrations) specifically about how melee-armed Kern would've been deployed, the closest I've found was them being described as being hired alongside the Gallowglass, but I'm not sure if that would mean they fought in a similar way (i.e deployed to the rear, while the dart/bow armed Kern were deployed up front and at the flanks), or if they would be mixed with the other Kern.

And what is the definition of a 'bonnaught'?

From what I can tell 'Bonnaught' is the Anglicization of the Irish buannacht/buannadha, and looks like it refers to a professional 'billeted soldier' (according to what I could Google), as opposed to an ad-hoc mustered clan levy. My understanding is that they were mercenaries, but specifically Irish ones (to differentiate from Gallowglass who were generally foreign). The Household Kern or "ceithearn tigh" seem to be a similar situation where they were professional soldiers, but closer to feudal retainers rather than mercenaries.

[Metternich]

Lovely unit.

[OB]

That's a very nice looking unit.

Buannacht are just the professional paid soldiers of a Lordship.  Horsemen, Gallowglass and Kern could all be buannacht.

Kern were mostly all purpose soldiers capable of skirmish and melee tactics depending upon circumstances.  We do get the occasional reference to a company of archers who as you'd expect fought as archers.

A company of Gallowglass came with its own Kern, two for every armoured man.

[HappyChappy439]

That's a very nice looking unit.

Buannacht are just the professional paid soldiers of a Lordship.  Horsemen, Gallowglass and Kern could all be buannacht.

Kern were mostly all purpose soldiers capable of skirmish and melee tactics depending upon circumstances.  We do get the occasional reference to a company of archers who as you'd expect fought as archers.

A company of Gallowglass came with its own Kern, two for every armoured man.

Thanks for clarifying! That helps a lot!

Rookie question but would the two Kern accompanying each Gallowglass be the 'Horseboys' I've seen mentioned in other places?

Thanks again, really appreciate it!