The Commander-in-Chief's Guard had been Washington's personal bodyguard for less than three months when Thomas Hickey — an Irish-born Continental transferred to the unit from a Connecticut regiment — was court-martialed in New York for plotting his commander's death. The evidence had come up by accident: a counterfeiter named Isaac Ketchum, picked up on unrelated charges, heard two cellmates from the Guard boast that they were paid agents of New York's Loyalist mayor David Mathews to spike Washington's cannon or kidnap him outright when the British fleet arrived. Hickey was tried for mutiny, sedition, and treasonable correspondence on June 26, 1776; convicted; and hanged on the morning of June 28 before twenty thousand spectators on the Bowery — the first American soldier executed by court-martial in the Revolution. The episode underscored why the Guard's recruiting standards had been tightened almost on the day they began. From then on the unit accepted only married men of "real character," native-born, at least five feet ten inches tall, recommended by their existing officers, and screened personally by Washington's aides. The stand at support arms in this figure is the parade-ground stance the screened recruits had to hold at the entrance of headquarters at all hours.

This W. Britain figure shows a Commander-in-Chief's Guardsman at support arms — musket held vertically against the right shoulder, butt at the right hand, bayonet fixed and pointing up — the formal sentry position kept at Washington's quarters and at the army's strongbox. The order is the Guard's regulation dress in Washington's personal facings: dark blue coat with buff lapels, collar, cuffs, and turnbacks, gilt buttons in pairs, red waistcoat under the coat, buff breeches, white stockings, black shoes with brass buckles, and the distinctive black light-infantry-pattern cap with brass front plate and a small plume rather than the line tricorne. He stands with the Guard's officer carrying a spontoon and the Guard drummer beating the calls — three figures that together form the small permanent detail Washington kept at headquarters wherever the army moved.

Model: 16053 / W. Britain 1/30 (60mm) / matte finish / 1 piece set