RED COATS AND REBELS

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 147, 23 June 1937, Page 7

RED COATS AND REBELS

Perhaps the most interesting thing about the soldier's scarlet uniform for dress occasions, which is now to be abandoned for blue, is the fact that it was first worn by a rebel army, says the "Manchester Guardian." , Henry VIII's bodyguard was uniformed in red and yellow, but the real colour of the Tudors was white, and the 15,000 able-bodied men of the London trained bands on parade just 400 years ago were uniformed (except the officers) in white even to their shoes. The New Model Parliamentary Army trained by Shippon and Fairfax was the first British Army to be clothed uniformly in red coats. "Thus," says Fortescue, "the Royal colours as we now call them were first seen at the head of a rebel army," and the place where that rebel army was first trained was —of all places—Windsor Great Park. "Every day the scene grew brighter as corps after corps received its new clothing, for the whole army for the first time in English history was clad in the familiar scarlet. Facings of the colonel's colours distinguished regiment from regiment, and the senior corps of Foot, being the General's own, wore his facings of blue." Red and blue were used for cavalry, too,