Thursday 25 June 2009

A Bit More On The Maritime Regiment

A bit more on the Standards and Colours of the Lord High Admiral's Maritime Regiment. I should have "dug" a little deeper into Lawson earlier. This plate depicts the "official" Colours of the Regiment at the time of its founding in 1664, when many of the multi-flag conventions of the pre-Restoration period were still in practice. Each of the Regiment's six companies would have carried a single standard, the Colonel's, the Lieutenant-Colonel's, the Major's, and three companies would have carried the Captain's, or "ordinary", standard of the Regiment. It is significant to note however, that by the Review at Putney Heath in 1684, only the Captain's Colours were displayed by the Maritime Regiment (the single Regimental standard having become the de-facto norm for many regiments). Whether this standard ever saw the Continent (except from the deck of a ship) is a matter for conjecture, per my earlier post.

By 1685 the Lord High Admiral's Maritime Regiment had passed from history and it became the Prince George of Denmark's Regiment and reversed their previous (and famous) uniform colors. By 1689 that regiment also passed into history and former members of the Regiment were drafted into the 2nd Foot Guards Regiment. (Lawson, p54)

Bill