Sir John Neville - Captain of the Border Horse

Here we have Sir John Neville, third Baron Latymer and captain of the border horse during the 1513 campaign in France. 

I had been looking for a candidate to lead my troop of northern scurrers for quite a while when I read about this chap. The first notes about him appear in the chronicles documenting him as a 20 year old captain of the border horse in the duke of Northumberland's sizeable contingent (which provided all of the border horse for this campaign).

He was knighted at the siege of Tournai and either then or very soon after became one of the King's spears.

Armed with a suitable captain in mind it was then a laborious case of trying to find an illustrative or descriptive record of either his standard or his arms, I had to opt for the latter in the end and no mean task it was finding them - the Neville's were probably not the easiest family to elect to root through as there are so  many of them!

My search led me to Raby Castle as mentioned in a previous post to which I soon found that whilst being the seat of the house of Neville it was another branch that I needed (a very good day nonetheless).

In later life John married Catherine Parr and it was when I found this that I was able to do a bit of heraldic detective work.

Such is the nature of collecting this army, and an addictive one at that.

I wanted to have him in keeping with the drab palette of my existing border horse so I elected to have him wearing black / blued armour to which I hope has shown up OK in these photographs as i'm really pleased with it.

I started with  black undercoat as usual, then dry-brushed with Foundry 'chainmail' followed by a wash of 'deep blue', I then dry brushed again very lightly with 'metal' and then picked out individual edges with 'spearpoint'.

As with my existing horse the standard bearer has had cavalry boots sculpted up to his knees using green stuff. I also added a shield and suitable lightly armoured head .

I'm currently working on a couple more border horse to complete this unit and will photograph them en- masse when they're completed.

sorry some of these photographs are a bit dark - it's bin a bit grey in South Wales of late!

Stuart