Lord Fielding’s Regiment of Horse..

The man himself.. picture courtesy Wiki..

The first cavalry joins the ranks...  while sorting through the Marlburian lead pile for officers suitable to be used for the English Civil War project, I happened to notice that I had a couple of bags of cuirassiers left over - my reader may remember I was using Peter Pig cavalry as the source for the pot helmeted cuirassiers used by Bavaria and Austria..  aha! Quoth I, "waste not, want not", and so they were out together under-coated, and have become my first cavalry in the project..

For no other reason than that they were in the OOB list near the top, these have been designated as Lord Fielding's Regiment, a Parliamentary cavalry unit at Edgehill.

Not a lot of detail on the regiment, but a certain amount on their colonel (picture of him top left).

As ever my first point of call was the BCW wiki page for the regiment [clicky] that reveals there was no known coat colour for the regiment, or a known standard, except for one carried by a single troop under Sir Samuel Luke who served with the regiment until 1643. Given that the figures I had did not include command this isn't an issue - the lack of coat colour is an opportunity, and given I had done red's, blue's, tawny's, and white's already, I went with a particularly lovely green (it's a Vallejo colour and really pops out)

Fielding was educated at Emmanuel College, Cambridge (same as his father who by the by fought on the other side at Edgehill - this war divided families very painfully...)

He served in the House of Lords as Baron Fielding in March 1629, and after military service in the Netherlands, Charles sent him to Venice as ambassador 1634 - he ended up being there for 5 years.

When the English Civil War broke out Fielding declared for Parliament - the only one of his family to do so (I'd love to know why - given his presence in the House of Lords and the role Charles gave him in Venice you would have thought he might be inclined to join the King??)

He became Earl of Denbigh in April 1643, and was made commander-in-chief of the Parliamentary army in Warwickshire and the neighbouring counties, and lord-lieutenant of Warwickshire.

According to Scott, Turton and von Arni ("Edgehill: The Battle Reinterpreted") the regiment fielded 360 men in six troops on the day - they served on the right wing of the Parliamentary army (so on the wing not facing Rupert), in the second row - behind Balfour's and the Lord General's. It was not an optimal flank for cavalry (poor terrain..  hedges and marshy ground) and Parliament had massed most of theirs on the other wing facing Rupert - these were the only three regiments of cavalry on the right wing..

Their position in reserve was not to save them - while Balfour's and the Lord General's were withdrawn behind the Parliamentary foot, Fielding's were left in place and then swept away by Wilmot's Royalist horse in the opening moves of the battle..

8 figures - Peter Pig - painted March 2019..  next up sir Henry Cholmley's Regiment of Foot, and I think an army review of progress so far