Sir Richard Wingfield

Sir Richard Wingfield KG 1456-1525

After a somewhat prolonged Landsknecht theme I'm back in the Tudor saddle with the latest nobleman and demilancer to join the ranks, Sir Richard Wingfield. 

He was uncle by marriage to Henry VII and began his career in his court, this carried on into that of Henry VIII and he developed as a diplomat. He was made Marshal in 1511 and Lord Deputy of Calais in 1513 (though I'm not sure whether this was pre or post invasion), a role which essentially made him the King's representative and head of the Calais council - also, effectively the King's ear of developments on the continent, a lot of correspondence survives from his tenancy.

Militarily he was the Knight Marshall of the King's, or middle ward during the 1513 campaign,  leading the 40 Spears (heavy cavalry) of the Calais garrison as well as 300 demilancers and 200 archers on horseback (cue reason to buy forthcoming boxed set!).

He's a tantalising character for me as given the troops under his command he appears to be an accomplished horseman with apparent / supposed experience of different types of cavalry but unfortunately there's no mention of how he performed during the campaign. One of his brothers, Anthony, another horseman, was knighted after his exploits in the Battle of the Spurs.

Given the information above I decided to include him within the demilancers, though with a half armoured horse so that he could also comfortably join the King's Spears.

Both horse and rider have undergone a fair bit of conversion work; Wingfield's face first had a beard added to help Tudor-ise the figure a little, I then wanted to give the rider's armour a feel of the early Greenwich armoury so I used some green stuff to raise the shoulder defences and apply a roped / comb effect on the ridges. I also made the breastplate more globular and removed the leather strap from the centre. The sword is also more ornate with added 'S' quillons on the hilt.

I haven't found any paintings of Wingfield but his son had red hair so I took a 50/50 chance and followed suit here.

As for the horse, I followed what has now become my standard approach to converting the Perry Plastic horse armour from 1480's to the early 1500's, you can read more about this here.

For the decoration on the horse armour and trappings I took most of my inspiration and colour scheme from Wingfield's heraldry and crest, both of which feature on his garter stall;

Next up, Wingfield's faithful standard bearer.

Stuart