Meet The Modern Day Civil War Era Soldiers

Don’t let the old-fashioned uniforms fool you, the Honourable Artillery Company’s Company of Pikemen & Musketeers are real soldiers. 

They are the ceremonial unit of the HAC and one of only six royally warranted bodies in the UK.

In 1955, Her Majesty The Queen granted the company a Royal Warrant authorising it to parade and tasked it to provide a ceremonial bodyguard for the Lord Mayor of the City of London.  

It allows the Company to parade a maximum of 63 members, including six officers, at any one time – that being the size of a company in the 17th century.  

The uniform members wear is identical to that worn by the HAC in the reign of Charles I.

It comprises Venetian red tunics with white linen collars and cuffs and knee-length breeches.

The seniority of officers and non-commissioned officers is signified by the amount of lace worn on collars and cuffs; the more lace the more senior the rank. Officers wear thigh boots and spurs.

Pikemen wear steel half-armour of back and breast plates with tassets and a morion (steel helmet). The weight is about 18 lbs. They are armed with swords and pikes. The latter would originally have been 18-feet long but for reasons of practicality, 12-foot pikes are used today. Musketeers wear a buff surcoat and wide-brimmed black felt hat.

They are armed with a match-lock musket and rest and wear a leather cross belt, from which are suspended 12 wooden powder flasks known as apostles.

The duties the unit carries out for the Lord Mayor of London are primarily at Guildhall and Mansion House but also at livery halls and other events, such as the opening of the Rolls Building at the Royal Courts of Justice by HM The Queen.

The Pikemen & Musketeers are also increasingly in demand to provide period displays of 17th-century drill and music to show how the army of Charles I moved and defended itself.

The form of drill used is taken from a manual entitled Militaire Discipline first published in 1638 by Colonel William Bariffe, a member of the Honourable Artillery Company. Although many of the orders are similar to those used in the Army today you still hear some delightfully original orders such as ‘Have a care’, ‘Assume a lazy posture’ and ‘Charge for horse and draw your sword’.

Seventeenth-century marches and music are provided by the Company’s own drums and fifes.