"welsh archers colour ?" Topic

Last year I did some WOTR and painted tudor's archers white and green ( white to the left as you look at them). I'm now looking at doing some Agincourt/HYW archers and for welsh was going to do the same, but some pictures have Green and White ( Green to the left).

So 2 questions, which way round should Tudor archers be ? (the banner is white to the left).
Given that's a Henry Tudor colour and Agincourt is earlier, should they even be White/Green ? It was Owen Tudor at that time, whose COA was red with a white helmet. Sorry if this is a silly question, but the pictures are inconsistent.

This may help

Martin Stephenson
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Great so I was right, and nearly everyone else was wrong. Good to know. 'Cos it looks better white/green too. That means even the Perry website is wrong.

Owen Tudor was about fifteen years old at the time of Agincourt, so even if he did fight there (and I don't think there is any hard evidence for that) he is unlikely to be commanding anybody. He was commanding a garrison including 15 archers in 1445 – link – but the archers are described as "foreign", whatever that may mean, and few of the names look Welsh. Whether they were his personal retainers or, as garrison soldiers, in direct royal pay I am not sure.

The heyday of the Welsh archers was the 14th century, when Welsh and Cheshire men recruited in 1346 wore coats and hoods of green (on their right) and white. IIRC, very few Welsh can be identified at Agincourt.

Hang on Green to their Right ?, NO White. That's what the @TheWavingFlag website Link says. Dexter = White. So if you stand and look at a figure, they are white on your left. (So White on Their Right)

I didnt mean to imply Owen was at Agincourt, only that Henry Tudor Livery wouldnt be used, so was White/Green HENRY Tudor Only ? Not Owen, and therefore Not at Agincourt? (Or is white/green just Welsh)

Green-and-white seems originally to have been associated with the Black Prince, as Prince of Wales or Earl of Chester – it may originally have been for Cheshire rather than Wales? See link – p.105 red and white for Welsh troops in 1342, for instance.

The Justiciars in a letter dated 14 September 1346 were instructed to provide each man with a short coat and a hat (une courtepy et un chaperon partiez de meme le drap) of these colours with green on the right (le verte a destre).

From A J Chapman's thesis "The Welsh Soldier: 1283-1422" – though I think "chaperon" is better rendered "hood" than "hat".

So white and green = Henry Tudor. Green and white earlier welsh/Cheshire. Ok. Presumably for agincourt could have been either, as the switch could have been anytime ? Unless Henry just had a really poor imagination when he invented his livery/ banner.

I don't believe for a second that most bowmen wore livery colours in the field.

I just wanna make my toy soldiers look pwetty. I usually do half in a livery and half not. I think if I was a lowly archer and someone offered me free clothes I'd snap their hand off. I reckon they would be handed down too, so I'm using archers with St George cross in WOTR too, cos I reckon they got 'em from their Dad who was there on St Crispin's day and is want to strip his sleeve and show his scars.