An interesting snippet which (as always) I came across when I was looking for something else:

"First there came half-a-dozen of carbines in their leathern coats and starved weather-beaten jades, just like so many brewers in their jerkins made of old boots, riding to fetch in old casks; and after them as many light horsemen with great saddles and old broken pistols, and scarce a sword among them, just like so many fiddlers with their fiddles in cases by their horses sides.

In the works at Bristol was a company of footmen with knapsacks and halfpikes, like so many tinkers with budgets at their backs, and some musketeers with bandoliers about their necks like a company of sow-gelders."

(Newspaper - ref, unfortunately lost: quoted in Fortescue, History of the British Army (Vol 1, Book III, p 282)

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