Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Atlantic Essays

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[130] manners, were as yet common to both sides. On the battle-field, spies could pass undetected from one army to the other. At Edgehill, Chalgrove, and even Naseby, men and standards were captured and rescued, through the impossibility of distinguishing between the forces. An orange scarf, or a piece of white paper, was the most reliable designation. True, there was nothing in the Parliamentary army so gorgeous as Sir John Suckling's troop in Scotland, with their white doublets and scarlet hats and plumes; though that bright company substituted the white feather for the red one, in 1639, and rallied no more. Yet even the Puritans came to battle in attire which would have seemed preposterously gaudy to the plain men of our own Revolution. The London regiment of Hollis wore red, in imitation of the royal colors, adopted to make wounds less conspicuous. Lord Say's regiment wore blue, in imitation of the Covenanters, who took it from Numbers XV. 38; Hampden's men wore green, Lord Brooke's purple, Colonel Ballard's gray. Even the hair afforded far less distinction than we imagine, since there is scarcely a. portrait of a leading Parliamentarian which has not a display of tresses such as would now appear the extreme of foppery; and when the remains of Hampden himself were disinterred, within half a century, the body was at first taken for a woman's, from the exceeding length and beauty of the hair.

But every year of warfare brought a change. On the King's side, the raiment grew more gorgeous amid misfortunes; on the Parliament's, it became sadder with every success. The Royalists took up feathers and oaths in proportion as the Puritans laid them down; and as the tresses of the Cavaliers waved more luxuriantly, the hair of the Roundheads was more scrupulously shorn.