Lord Dudley's Banner

After a recent trip to Tewkesbury I have been slightly distracted from one civil war to another, this time it’s the Wars of the Roses (WotR). The figure shown below is carrying the banner (heraldic flag) of John Sutton of Dudley; Lord Dudley to his friends. One of the more influential men in the in the mid/late 15th century Sutton is now largely ignored or forgotten outside of those interested in Dudley’s medieval history but I’ll post a more detailed account of Lord Dudley’s life once I have completed the unit.

I’ve had a long interest in the period (probably dating back to a classic Ladybird book on Warwick the Kingmaker I had as a child) so I was delighted when Perry’s announced their WotR plastic range. I immediately bought three boxes on their release late last year but I hadn’t planned to paint any just yet.

This figure has been standing on my desk for a while, challenging me to paint it. I started by block painting with GW Chainmail, then out of curiosity I used GW Asurmen Blue as the main wash rather than black. I used Badab Black wash for just the mail areas. The figure’s highlights where then picked out with Mithril Silver.

The original arm held a sword but I removed this and replaced it with a warhammer. The weapon is taken from the Warlord Games plastic Civil War cavalry set.

The flag is from ‘WRF 30 Flags, Lancastrian, Lords and Knight Blore Heath’ by Freezywater flags (available from Vexillia Limited) which I purchased from those nice chaps at the Lance and Longbow Society stand at the Alumwell wargames show (WMMS) way back in March (blimey, this year is really flying by!). The flag itself is printed in two plain colours so if you want high/low-lights then you're going to have to paint them yourself.

If you are ever in Warwick then be sure to visit the church of St. Mary’s to see the Beauchamp Chantry, it is probably the finest medieval chapel in England. I only mention this because if you look up at the south wall of the chapel you will notice several flags hanging above the tombs there. Amongst these is the distinctive flag of Lord Dudley – the same two tailed green lion rampant on a yellow background as shown here (Or a lion rampant double queued vert). To me it always appears to be relatively old fashioned for the late 15th century, compared to others, but the livery colours of green and yellow would certainly have been eye catching.