Miscellaneous references (all comments the Colonel's, references to grey coats faced black/grey &c. are to surtouts, this also applies to the post below)
Lord George Hamilton's Regiment; Hats, with broad silver lace for Officers; hatband (evidently ribbon only from price) buttons and loops. 1691
The coat was of much the same make for both cavalry and infantry, except that the skirts of the former were more full than those of the latter. Horse soldiers used to be furnished with a doublet of stout buff to wear under the coat until this was superseded by the cloth waistcoat, a change which took place in 1686. It would seem, however, that even as late as 1696 it was customary for Horse soldiers on active service to wear buff coats. In Rochester Cathedral are preserved Dragoon buff coats of James II's reign.
Sandford, 1685, says that the Life Guards had buff coats besides their scarlet coats.
Schedule of clothing to 3rd Dragoon Guards. 14 January 1691/2 (Treasury State Papers) "Grey waistcoats."
The coats of Drummers of regiments other than Royal regiments, were of the colour of the regimental facing and with red facings. Hautbois, who were later subject to a similar rule, had their coats at this time of the same colour as those of the men.
Sandford, 1685; Horse Grenadiers; scarlet coats, loops blue, edged and tufted black and white
Schedule of clothing to 3rd Dragoon Guards 14 January 1691/2; (Treasury State Papers) "coats crimson lined with green," and "cloaks red faced with green."
Particulars of Clothing for a regt. of Horse, Dragoons and Foot; (1696) for Horse "coats of crimson cloth," but "cloaks of red cloth";
Dragoons, cloaks for all ranks ; but for the Foot no cloaks or surtouts are mentioned.
In 1692 the 5th Dragoon Guards wore breeches of red shag striped. Dragoons wore cloth breeches.
Dragoons wore neither jacked-boots like the Horse, nor shoes like the Foot, but a sort of short boot (termed in French bottines).
Trumpeters and drummers of Horse and of Dragoons wore shoes with spurs instead of boots.
The Life Guards, for instance, wore gold and silver lace in the ranks, and the carbine belts of the privates were covered with velvet and lace. The Blues again were distinguished by gold lace, and by a red edging on their carbine belts.
In 1683 the corporals in the Foot-Guards carried pole-axes, but generally corporals assumed the ordinary arms of the privates, and were distinguished from them by nothing beyond the narrow lace binding on their coats.
5/9 December 1689, Hautboy of Lisbume's Foot, in a "blue cloth coat, laced with "narrow gold lace."
7/1 1 August 1690, Hautlboy of 10th Foot, in a "blue coat lined with red with a "narrow silver edging down the seams."
27/30 March 1692, Drummer of 13th Foot, with a "yellow laced coat on lined with red (being the regimental colours reversed).
17/20 September 1694, Serjeant in Northcote's Dragoons " with a crimson (instead of red) coat, faced with green, had silver lace down the seams, and brass buttons.
About the year 1686 a general undress or fatigue coat was authorised for all arms, of grey cloth or frieze and made close-bodied; and generally these coats had facings of some such suitable colour as black or some shade of grey.
The cavalry, whether Horse or Dragoons, always had loose cloaks with small capes to them ; with scarcely an excep- tion these were. of scarlet or red cloth (even though the coats might be of crimson), and were often faced with the regimental colour, but equally often were only turned up with cloth of the same colour as the cloak itself The most notable exceptions were the Earl of Macclesfield's Horse, who had their cloaks of grey the colour of the regimental facing, and the Blues whose cloaks were blue as well as their coats.
At what period precisely company Colours were abandoned I have not yet been able to determine to my own satisfaction: it was certainly not earlier than 1689, and the change appears to have been effected in 1690, the Guards remaining an exception to the rule.
Hamilton ; Actions of the Inniskilling men, London, 1690: - 1689, Battle of Newtown-Butler, "we took what colours they (the Irish) had they having but about three colours to every regiment ": thus it appears that it was customaiy to have more.
Thus also the Fourth Foot obtained, in a less glorious manner, the honour of the title of the "King's Own " Regiment, and the privilege of wearing on its colours and accoutrements the Lion of England, because it was the earliest to join William of Orange on his landing in England in 1688.
...Thus the regiments of the Duke of York as well as of Prince George of Denmark wore the Stuart colours of red and yellow. Thus, also, the facings of the Eleventh Foot were tawny, being the distinguishing colour of their first Colonel the Duke of Beaufort. In 1667 Lord Chesterfield raised a regiment of Foot in ten days, and he tells us that he gave the soldiers red coats lined with black and
"black flags with a red cross in a black field, which I then did, because I was at thtat time in mourning for my mother."
