Drummer 1770

The drummer sits on his drum on the left of the picture. This painting of a regiment of foot resting on the march is dated 1770. The regiment is not identified but the blue facings on their red coats indicate that it is royal (i.e. King's or Queen's). The portrayal of the drummer is unusual in that it is a back view and he is wearing a tricorn hat instead of the mitre cap or fur cap. His coat is liberally laced but we can see that there are no hanging sleeves as were worn by the drummers of Morier’s paintings of 1751. The 1768 regulations replaced the cloth mitre cap with a black bearskin cap with a metal plate front. But this was reserved for formal parades and not worn on the march. Many regiments clothed their drummers in reverse colours up to 1768, but royal regiments had their drummers wear red coats with blue facings.
The lace of royal regiments was called royal lace and could be blue and white, or blue, white and yellow worsted ‘considerably raised above the common lace’. The drummer in this painting has a strap, or drum carriage, over his right shoulder, which is blue with laced edges. There are pockets on the side of his coat with flaps. He has a tricorn hat which appears to be laced with silver. He is the only drummer here, apart from another drummer on the horizon who wears a mitre cap and carries his drum on his shoulder, probably belonging to the grenadier company. Each company had a drummer, and these would come together as a Corps of Drums on certain parades, led by the drum-major.
The Inspection Return of 14 April 1768 states that the King’s Regiment ‘had no music.’ But the Return of 24 May 1787 says, ‘Drums and Fifes dressed showy — a full band,’ In August 1792 the regiment had ’12 Drums and 10 Music.’

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