"HYW archers" Topic

I'm struggling a bit with livery, my thinking is that archers would wear the colours of the knight who raised them, for instance the standard white coat with red cross fighting for the king of England, but if they were raised by a different knight whose heraldry was blue and white could you paint the archers in blue and white coats?
As an aside would this also go for men at arms?

Thanks in advance

That depends IMHO on whether the captain that raised the troops wanted to pony up his own cash and invest in livery coats for the troops in his company. Also it is my impression that the idea of specific livery is a bit early for the HYW. While Blancecotes did exist, and Edward PoW IIRC once equipped troops with particolored green & white livery, it wasn't a hard and fast rule at this time.

IIRC if a man-at-arms was already entitled to arms, he would wear those rather than the captain that recruited him.

Damon.

For early HYW it might be best to differentiate archers, I assume you mean English, by levels of armor. Richer Barons could afford to equip their men better or you could use the level of armor to denote experience as more seasoned soldiers had picked-up/looted better stuff over the years.

The use of livery was well established during the 100 Years' War – Ian Heath "Armies of the Middle Ages v1" lists a couple of dozen – but apart from the "Black Prince"'s Welsh and Cheshire men in green and white, it's not clear how widely it was issued to archers.

The 16th-century historian Polydore Vergil is widely quoted as saying that Edward III "appoynted his souldiers to wear white Coats or Jackets, with a red Crosse before and behind over their Armoure" but I haven't seen a contemporary source for this nor an exact date.

Geoffrey le Baker says that the Prince of Wales ordered that "everyone … of our party shall bear a large sign of the arms of St George before, and another behind, upon peril that if he be hurt or slain in default thereof, he who shall hurt or slay him shall suffer no penalty for it" – whether this means a red cross on a patch of white cloth or just the red cross is not clear.