REPLY TO JOHN TINCEY

I would like to reply briefly (and tardilly) to John Tincey's letter [ECW N&Q 4].

Most of his points with respect to re-enactment societies and historical knowledge are well take. However, in his final paragraph he betrays a naive faith in our collective ability to seperate 'fact' from 'opinion'. Unfortunately, that which is taken as 'fact' at any one time is little more than the product of a 'consensus among experts'. This is true of all attempts to increase knowledge, in physics (the scientist's science) as much as in anything else. Historical research (which on the Continent is considered a scientific endeavour), is thus doubly cursed; its material is nearly always secondary inasmuch as the primary focus of interest is remote in time, and therefore has to be reconstructed indirectly. Historical fact is, therefore, the product of opinion based on what evidence is available. The re-enactors are in one sense doing nothing that is in principle different in kind from the professional historians; they articulate their opinions on the basis of the available evidence, in this case their own direct experience. Naturally, however, one would not want to use such evidence alone to mount a strong attack on well founded historical theories, but I do believe that the 'opinions' of the re-enactors do deserve to be taken seriously.

Les Prince

FARNDON CHURCH WINDOWS

This stained glass window depicting 4 Pikemen, 4 musketeers and 8 officers and musicians is often used to illustrate books on the ECW, though it is probably Post Restoration. Stuart Peachey [ECW N&Q 2] mentions that the figures are from French originals. It is apparent that the unknown artist was working from a variety of sources (though the officers may have been taken from life) for the collection of weapons and equipment which also appear in the window is very clearly taken from an early C17th German print (reproduced, for example, in the introduction to the McGraw-Hill facsimile of the De Gheyn book of arms drill).

In THE ENGLISH CIVIL WAR [Haythornthwaite: Blandford Press, 1983] a figure based on the Farndon paintings is depicted as being dressed in yellow. However, examination of the window itself reveals that the members of Gamul's Regiment thus preserved for posterity were actually dressed in red. The yellow seen today is merely the base to which some small traces of red paint may still be seen to adhere.

Stuart Reid

SOFTWARE

As a subscriber to ECW N&Q and partner in a Computer Software company I should like to to combine the two interests.

We currently produce Utilities and arcade game software but hope to diversify into true wargames. If anyone has actually written any ECW software we would certainly like to see it with a view to marketing and distribution (paying the writer royalties on the usual basis).

Software for the Spectrum 48K machine is the most viable but we will consider material for any of the popular machines. We can be contacted via the editors of ECW N&Q.

Andrew Elliott

MUSKET LOCKS

While I am aware of left-handed locks and have seen some belonging to our period, mostly in private collections, it may be that in this case it is a question of illustration and reproduction.

A well known illustration of a left handed lock is to be found in a C16th woodcut of a landsknecht loading. Alternatively attributed to Sebald Beham or Nicholas Meldeman, the essential point is that it is a woodcut. Carved from wood and inked to produce an inverted image on paper, a simple slip by the artist would explain the sort of conundrum which Denzil requires us to explain.

It is worth mentioning that this happens in modern forms of reproduction. F Wilkinson's THE WORLD'S GREAT GUNS has a splendid collection of left handed flintlocks which are nothing of the kind, merely the art-editor's idea of a tidier double page produced by reversing the negative!!

Jonathan Taylor

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