As mentioned up above, I’m currently expanding my long-established WOTR retinues to form larger units for 'Never Mind The Billhooks'.
My very first Perry WOTR retinue (all those years ago!) was for the DeBrassey’s of Tandridge – a local ‘big’ family of the time.
I decided on an orange and blue livery (or
tawney et azure for the cognoscenti) on the strength of a small plaque on the wall of a local church. I’ve picked a lot of my wargames heraldry this way
I recently noticed however, that a banner included in one of the Perry medieval sets was the very same tawney and blue - for the Duke of Norfolk.
I was surprised because I always thought the Mowbray crest was a white lion rampant on a red field (‘Kingmaker’ again, see). However, it turns out that was John Mowbray, 3rd Duke of Norfolk (d. 1461, shortly after – although not because of - the Battle of Towton).
Not to be confused with his son, also John Mowbray, but the
4th Duke of Norfolk, who retained the white lion, but on tawney and blue field.
Quite why junior didn’t just stick with the established family livery of red, I don’t know. (Nor indeed, why another banner in one of the other Perry plastic sets - also a white lion rampant on a tawney and blue field - is given as the Earl of Derby. Because the Earls of Derby throughout the late medieval period were Stanleys, not Mowbrays… And this bears no resemblance to the livery of the Stanleys…)
Sigh. It’s all very confusing, and this is why I originally left the major houses of the WOTR alone, and focused on building retinues for small, local magnates instead…
However, since Michael was kind enough to include that standard in one of his kits, it seems rude not to use it. So for the purposes of NMTBH, I’m going to reconstitute my DeBrasseys as Mowbrays (they'll still serve as DeBrasseys for my smaller local skirmish games). This involves adding half a dozen more billmen, and half a dozen more longbowmen. Plus the banners.
First up, here’s John Mowbray, 4th Duke of Norfolk, on foot (a Steel Fist figure) along with his standard bearer, and a couple of Perry plastic hard nuts – his personal bodyguard perhaps.
I have a few more of these to do, to bring me up to a unit of 12 veteran billmen.
The banner is the Perry paper one, with a little retouching here and there.
Also shown, another disarray marker I knocked up at the same time...
01 June 2012, 02:52:46 PM
