Thomas de Berkeley

Yey! So I finally got some sunshine here in the rainy Netherlands. Time to take some pictures of my second noble, Thomas de Berkeley. The real Thomas de Berkeley (his grandson) had 10 white crosses on his heraldry, but since that would look very messy at this scale I've decided to only add 6. Since it is not known until 1250 what heraldry the de Berkeley's were wearing (Thomas appears on the Falkirk Roll of 1298) I've come up with the solution that 4 more crosses were added since his forebears went on crusade. Of course this is fictional, but thats the fun in coming up with your own characters.



Since heraldry was much experimental round the year 1200 I've not added any to the barding of his horse or his surcoat. Sources mention that displaying heraldry on the surcoat was not yet very much in vogue and even the color of the barding or surcoat would often not even match the heraldry of the knight. I've taken the liberty of repeating the coat of arms of Thomas on the shields of his squires (and his sergeants) because as mentioned there were not yet any strict rules on displaying a coat of arms. This is also for practical reasons, since I need to be able to distinguish the different forces on the table, which would become a bit difficult if all squires and sergeants would look the same :)

The model of Thomas is from the Fireforge teutonics set and the squires carrying his extra equipment are a mix of Conquest Games normans with some Games Workshop bits and heads from the Bretonnian men-at-arms and archer sets.