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38 MILITARY MUSIC AND ITS STORY.
good positions, having warrants of appointment signed by the king, and paid like princes at five shillings a day ! Doubtless they were good musicians at the price, but from a glance at their names in the official records, they do not all appear to have been cradled in Albion. On all occasions of state, the trumpets and kettledrums of the Life Guards were in attendance, and when their services were in demand for dismounted purposes, we meet with the extraordinary spectacle of the kettledrums carried on the back of a man, and the drummer walking behind him. It is believed to have been one of these trumpeter bands of the Life Guards, which Cambert, the great French composer, became bandmaster of, when he took refuge in England in 1672. These musicians of the Guards played on handsome silver trumpets, and were clothed in the royal livery, of velvet coats, trimmed with silk and silver lace, embroidered with the royal cypher on the breast and back. The drums and trumpets were also gaily decked with elaborate banners, in fact the whole was much the same as the state dress of the Household Cavalry bands to-day.
When ordinary regiments of " horse " were permitted to have kettledrums, one pair was allowed for the colonel's troop with two trumpeters, each of the other troops having to content itself with a couple of trumpeters only. These when massed formed a band of twelve to fourteen men, who played on the regula- |
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