"Flags for Covenanter Dragoons" Topic

Hi all,

I'm new to the ECW period and am assembling a 25mm Covenanter army. Trying to find a good source for a flag for my dragoons. Any help is appreciated

Stuart Reid has produced a series of books on Scottish armies from 1639 up to the Union in 1707; volume 1 describes the army of the Covenant (1639-51) and volume 2 is dedicated to flags. From memory, none of the three ECW books (volume 3 covers Montrose's army) has much on dragoons and I can't think of any illustrations of flags for them; volume 4 has an illustration of a dragoon guidon and suggests they were similar shapes to those in the ECW.

His Osprey MAA "Scots Armies of the Civil Wars" is similarly barren (again from memory).

Sorry not to be more helpful – hopefully someone more knowledgeable will chip in (there was a chap who did a series of posts about his Strathearn armies a while back).

Any of these helpful? link

Hi FuriousT

as far as I'm aware no descriptions or illustrations of Covenanter dragoon flags have survived. Here are the regiments on the BCW regimental wiki link . Fraser's dragoons was by far the most active, the others were either odd troops attached to horse regiments, temporarily-mounted foot, or quite ephemeral units of the 3rd Civil War or lurking in Scottish garrisons. From memory there were no Dragoon flags mentioned in Reid's books.

Presumably they'd have carried 'rounded swallow tailed' guidons like English dragoons rather than rectangular cornets but I'm not even sure if that is certain. To speculate I'd imagine a system like the foot with a white colonel's guidon with some motto and heraldic device, then several troop guidons with a saltire and 'Covenant For Religion, King and Kingdoms' or similar inscription, commonly a white saltire on blue field but could be other colours eg red on white etc.

SuperMax – any info on the guidon in vol 4? That's the one book I don't have as its post-Civil Wars iirc.

I'd really like to hear if anyone has any concrete information on ECW Covenanter dragoon guidons!

SuperMax – any info on the guidon in vol 4? That's the one book I don't have as its post-Civil Wars iirc.

Page 65 has a b/w illustration of a (presumably) modern colour rendition of a swallow-tailed guidon of Cardross's Dragoons c.1689 (red with gold fringe, motto and boar's head, over a sword rising vertically out of a crown; blue canton with gold thistle). However, this post-dates the Privy Council edict of 1676, which forbade the copying of Civil War era styles and proscribed the white saltire on a blue field for all colours except the colonel's which was to be white.

Having quickly flicked through all of Reid's books, I think you are correct about there being no dragoon details, and all of the dragoon units seem to have been 1 or 2 troops and no more. Reid does suggest that captains of mounted units were given more latitude in adorning their cornets, and so personal badges were larger (in relation to overall size of the field) than was the case in infantry colours. I also seem to recall that there was a ruling that Scottish cavalry had a regimental flag, in the form of a full-field saltire, that accompanied the colonel's flag (which, as with the foot, seem to have followed western European practice in being white).

Interesting, thanks for checking that. So i guess we have nothing strictly ECW contemporary for Covenanter dragoons, but our speculation hangs together reasonably well as far as it goes!

Aye, ye cannae beet a gud speculate!