This hat is in exceptionally clean condition, having seen very little service use and been preserved in its original card box, with separate card containers for the plume. The design was heavily influenced by US uniform. It would have been worn on parade occasions with the full dress uniform, which was dark blue to match.

This is the classic 'Christmas tree' hilt carried principally by British dragoon units in the middle years of the 18th century. Cumberland's Dragoons would have carried these in the harrying of the Highlanders after the Battle of Culloden when they were cut down when fleeing from the battle, without much mercy shown.

This sword (almost identical to one I sold to a Moscow dealer in about 2006) has an unsigned Tula hilt - undercut and pierced steel work of this type is a virtual 'signature', only found on European cast silver hilts and never on the knuckle bow. The influence for this work is probably Brescian or possibly Toledo, with London for the lattice work.

The 2nd, or Scots, troop of HGG was originally raised in 1678, disbanded in 1680, revived in 1684, and finally absorbed into the 2nd Life Guards in 1788. The sword is illustrated in one of the Morier paintings at Buckingham Palace on a soldier of this regiment. The swords may well have been carried by the regiment at Dettingen and Fontenoy.

This extremely rare axe is similar in shape, but much larger in size, to one found on the Kosovo battlefield (1448), photographed in a Serbian catalogue on Kosovo battlefield finds. This type would have been carried by a large person, quite possibly in the Varangian Guard of the emperor of Byzantium.