Soldiers

by Richard Holmes

  Matters of disport and things of no moment … after a little careless hurrying over their postures, with which the companies are nothing bettered, they make them charge their muskets, and so prepare to give their captain a brave volley of shot at his entrance into his inn: where after having solaced themselves for a while after this brave service every man repairs home, and that which is not so well-taught then is easily forgotten before the next training.6

  In 1642 the London Trained Bands were commanded by Sergeant Major General Philip Skippon, newly returned from the Dutch service, who led them out to Turnham Green that autumn to take part in ‘the Valmy of the English Civil War’ when they helped face off the victorious royalists and save London. ‘Come my honest brave boys,’ called Skippon, ‘pray heartily and fight heartily, and God will bless us.’ He soon went off to command the infantry in the Earl of Essex’s Parliamentarian army, but the Trained Bands remained a valuable part of Parliament’s order of battle thereafter, though they were never wholly comfortable far from their wards and warrens, with mournful cries of ‘Home, home’ letting commanders know that they had been campaigning too long.

  The Cornish Trained Bands, too, were formidable soldiers, though hugely reluctant to serve in foreign parts, that is, east of the Tamar. However, they formed the nucleus of those remarkable ‘voluntary regiments’ under Sir Bevil Grenville, Sir Nicholas Slanning, Colonel William Godolphin, Colonel John Trevannion, and Lord Mohun that were to form the mainstay of the king’s army in the west. ‘These were the very best foot I ever saw,’ acknowledged the royalist cavalry officer, Captain Richard Atkyns, ‘for marching and fighting … but could not well brook our horse (especially when we were drawn up on corn) but would let fly at us.’ There is more than an echo of Xenophon’s wry suggestion to his Greek infantry (peasant farmers and thus horse-haters to a man) that they should pay no attention to Persian cavalry, for nobody he knew of had been killed by a horse-bite.

  The King’s western colonels were men whose local power underlines the intimate connection between social standing and the ability to raise troops. This stretched far back into a feudal past and was still important in 1914, when the Earl of Derby raised four battalions of Liverpool Pals, presenting their soldiers with a solid silver cap-badge of the Derby crest. Grenville died atop Lansdown Hill outside Bath in June 1643. ‘When I came to the top of the hill,’ remembered Captain Atkyns, ‘I saw Sir Bevil Grenville’s stand of pikes, which certainly preserved our army from a total rout, with the loss of his most precious life.’7 At his master’s side that day, in war as in peace, was the gigantic retainer Anthony Payne. Sir Bevil’s eldest son John was a 15-year-old ensign in the regiment, and when his father slid from the saddle Payne swung the lad up into it, and gave him the dead colonel’s sword. The Cornishmen, in their fury and grief, surged forward to regain the lost ground. Trevannion was killed when Prince Rupert stormed Bristol shortly afterwards and Slanning, mortally wounded in the same assault, lived long enough to quip that ‘he had always despised bullets, having been so well used to them.’ The death of the four men was a great loss: ‘Gone the four wheels of Charles’s wain,’ exulted a Roundhead poet, ‘Grenville, Godolphin, Slanning, Trevannion slain.’ Lest we get too misty-eyed about loyal country-folk and gallant gentlemen, we must remember that social obligation was laced with economic survival. Grenville had already written to his wife, away in their windy house at Stowe in north Cornwall, to tell her that no tenant could stay at home and expect to keep a roof over his head: they were to turn out in his blue and silver livery or pay the price.

  There was an older obligation, for service in the posse comitatus, the armed power of a county, raised and commanded by its sheriff. It was an expedient resorted to by the royalists early on in the Civil War, though with mixed success. An officer commented that one of its gatherings was ‘more like a great fair than a posse’, but Sir Ralph Hopton secured 3,000 sturdy Cornishmen by summoning the county’s posse to Moilesbarrow Down outside Truro in October 1642. Like so much else, the notion crossed the Atlantic, and the ranchers and citizens who ride off with the sheriff to constitute the posse in so many westerns are behaving in a way their English ancestors would have understood.

  After the Civil War the militia was retained by Parliament, both because it was seen as a defender of Protestant liberties against arbitrary royal government and because so many members of parliament were themselves militia officers.8 The Militia Act of 1662 charged property-owners with the provision of men, arms and horses in relation to the value of their property, and was the basis for the militia’s organisation for the next century. But by 1685 it was being argued by the government’s supporters that the militia had performed badly against the Duke of Monmouth. Some, largely, uncritical historians have tended to follow this view, but recent research suggests that accounts of the militia’s incompetence are overdrawn. The argument that its failings justified a significant increase in the regular army says as much about James II’s wish to increase the size of the army for his own purposes, not least the cowing of domestic opposition, as it does about the value of the militia. The countervailing argument, that a regular army would encourage governments to embark upon expensive and risky foreign war, whereas the militia (offering what the 1980s might have termed ‘non-provocative defence’) did not, chimed harmoniously with the mood of the late seventeenth century, and there were to be lasting echoes of it, in both Britain and the United States.

  The Militia Act of 1757 broke new ground by transferring the responsibility for the militia from individuals to the parish, that keystone of social organisation in so many other aspects, and successive legislation continued in a similar vein. Each county was allocated a quota of militiamen – 1,640 apiece for vulnerable Devonshire and sizeable Middlesex; 1,240 for the West Riding of Yorkshire and 240 each for Monmouthshire and Westmoreland, with just 120 for little Rutland. Lord lieutenants and their deputies were responsible for providing the officers and for overseeing the selection of the men. Able-bodied men between the ages of eighteen and forty-five were liable to serve; though peers of the realm, clergymen, articled clerks, apprentices, and parish constables were exempt. So too were poor men with three or more children born in wedlock, a number reduced to one in 1786. This last adjustment was a blessing for local authorities, for the parish was responsible for looking after the families of militiamen who had been called up. Service was for three years, and was determined by ballot, with potential militiamen being selected from nominal rolls drawn up by village constables.

  Constables’ lists are an appetising slice through the layer-cake of time and place. The Northamptonshire lists for 1777 show that 20 per cent of men balloted were servants, 19 per cent were labourers, and 11 per cent farmers. The county’s traditional industries were well represented, with almost 10 per cent engaged in weaving and framework knitting, and 6 per cent in shoemaking. At the other end of the scale, the county had ten whip-makers and three woad-men, last of a dying breed, two of them in the parish of Weston Favell and one at Watford. Well-to-do farmers tend to have ‘Mr’ in front of their names, or ‘Esq’ or ‘gent’ after it. Although the constable of Edgcote duly logged four men as ‘Servants to William Henry Chauncy Esq’ he was far too well-mannered to list Mr Chauncy himself. While some constables sent in simple lists, the two constables of the large town of Daventry (assisted by the town’s thirdboroughs or under-constables) produced helpful annotations, telling us that Mr Bailey, surgeon, had been balloted six years since; the mason William Watts had eight children; and William Rogers the baker was infirm. The seventeen students at the nonconformist academy there were liable for balloting, although when they were eventually ordained they would be exempt, for the Act exonerated nonconformist ministers as well as clergymen of the established Church. The constable of Whilton was precise in noting the ‘poor men with three children’ who were guaranteed exemption, and warned that ‘Jos Emery, farmer and church-warden, [has] lost the thumb of his right hand’ – no mean disabi
lity, for the thumb was used to cock the musket. A balloted man’s obligation was simply to provide military service, and most who could afford it paid a substitute to serve on their behalf. Every parish was obliged to meet its quota. As they were penalised for failure, parish authorities who fell short sought volunteers and paid them a bounty.

  Militiamen had a training obligation of twenty-eight days a year, and were billeted in public houses during this time. They were not always popular visitors, their presence striking a chord with that deep undercurrent of antimilitarism. In 1795 the testy Lord Delaval complained of the West Yorkshire Militia on his estate: ‘disturbance – noise – drums – poultry – intrusions – depredations – profligacy with servants – camp followers – interruptions – marauding – how to be protected – compensation – recompense.’9 They were subject to the Articles of War when called up, and a range of punishments – from fines to the pillory or flogging – were available for men who failed to appear when ordered out. Militia regiments generally had between eight and twelve companies, with three sergeants and three corporals apiece. Militiamen could be promoted to these ranks, but the system relied on its small permanent staff, which included a regular sergeant major and a handful of regular sergeants. When the Worcestershire Militia formed in 1770 it was allocated Sergeant Major Henry Watkins of the 27th Foot, and two sergeants, Robert Harrison of the 3rd Dragoon Guards and Ezekiel Parks of the 58th Foot. The twenty-five other sergeants appointed were militiamen, and we have no way of assessing their previous experience. Sergeants did not have an easy life, as weapon-handling was never wholly safe. The Worcestershire Militia suffered a serious accident during its 1777 annual training. The men were drilling on Powick Ham when the cartridge pouches of three soldiers caught fire. Two men were ‘terribly scorched’ and three others ‘much injured’.

  In time of major emergency the militia was embodied for full-time service. In April 1778, after France had allied itself to the fledgling United States, transforming what had been a family quarrel into a world war, several militia regiments were embodied. The Northamptonshire Militia, led by Henry Yelverton, Earl of Sussex, was ordered to a training camp at Warley Common, near Brentwood in Essex. They marched though its county town with ‘repeated huzzas, and (what is the glory of Britons!) with spirits animated to repulse the designs that may be formed by the enemies to their king and country’.10 The regiment was moved around the southern counties over the next five years, with substitutes and newly balloted men tramping out to join it at Maidstone in 1782. It was disembodied in 1783, and carried out only part-time training till called up again for the French war in 1793. As the Napoleonic wars went on, militia obligations were successively strengthened. By 1815, what with supplementary and local militia and the hybrid ‘Army of Reserve’ of 1803, most adult males found themselves obliged to serve or pay. The issue of Scots militia was extraordinarily contentious, for the Government feared that it might be putting arms into the hands of its opponents: indeed, a major current of the Scottish Enlightenment was a desire to see a Scots militia as a bulwark against English oppression. The seminal 1757 Act did not apply in Scotland or Ireland, and it was not until 1797 that a Scots militia was raised. The last militia ballot took place in 1829, and when the militia was re-raised in 1852 because of the threat posed by Louis Napoleon’s France recruitment was voluntary.

  Militia officers were commissioned by lord lieutenants, using parchment documents very similar to those given to regulars. There was a property qualification, though it was first modified by permitting ex-regular army or naval officers to serve without it, and then, when the militia was revived in 1852, substantially reduced. It was not until 1867 that it disappeared altogether, so that at last ‘the officers ceased to be necessarily connected with the county or with the landed interest.’11 These qualifications had been very substantial. The 1793 Militia Act decreed that a regiment’s colonel had to have £2,000 a year or be heir to £3,000; a lieutenant colonel £1,200 a year or hopes of £1,800; and so on to an ensign who needed to have £20 a year or to be heir to £200 personal property a year. Both the colonel and lieutenant colonel of a county’s regiment had to have half their property in that county. There were sporadic anti-militia riots, notably in 1757 and 1796, largely amongst those who sought to avoid serving. It became evident that the system would only work by bringing ‘the county’ onside: the militia service would be encouraged by those familiar ties of social and economic obligation. A first attempt to raise a Worcestershire Militia failed in 1758, when the lord lieutenant, the Earl of Coventry, and several of his deputies met at the Talbot Inn, Sidbury, only to find that not enough gentlemen were willing to accept commissions. The attempt was postponed, but failed in successive years. By 1770, however, when the process was repeated at Hooper’s Coffee House in Worcester, the outcome was successful, because there were now enough gentlemen prepared to take a lead. The list of officers, headed by the new regiment’s colonel, Nicholas Lechmere, was sent to Lord Weymouth, Secretary of State for the southern department. Sending this to Weymouth emphasised that the militia was a civil and not a military matter. This new proposal was given ‘His Majesty’s Approbation’ in just a week. Lechmere was once captain in 3rd Foot Guards, owner of Lidford Park near Ludlow in Shropshire, and the only son of the high sheriff of Worcestershire, Edmund Lechmere MP. His father-in-law was a landowner in Powick, on the little River Teme just outside the city, and he himself went on to inherit his uncle’s large estates and, in 1774, to become MP for Worcester. His major, Holland Cooksey, of Braces Leigh, was an Oxford-educated barrister, a justice of the peace and deputy lieutenant of the county.

  A lieutenant colonel was appointed shortly afterwards. He was Robert Fettiplace, of Swinbrook Park, just east of Burford in Oxfordshire, happily not too far from the Worcestershire boundary. The son of Thomas Bushell, a substantial landowner of Cleeve Prior in the county, he had adopted the name Fettiplace on marrying Diana, daughter and co-heiress of Sir John Fettiplace Baronet, the previous owner of Swinbrook. In 1775, when Lieutenant Colonel Fettiplace decided to soldier no more, he was replaced by Thomas Dowdeswell of Pull Court near Tewkesbury, eldest son of the Right Hon William Dowdeswell MP and his wife Bridget, youngest daughter of Sir William Codrington Baronet. Lieutenant Colonel Dowdeswell was married to a baronet’s daughter, was a JP and DL for his county, and had been a captain in 1st Foot Guards.12

  A similar pattern extends across Britain, with militia commissions congruent with social standing, and the entire apparatus of raising and administering the militia wholly characteristic of the way the country was run. There was also a very clear Westminster connection. Most regiments of English and Welsh militia were commanded by peers, and the best of them took their responsibilities very seriously. Colonel Lord Riversdale of the South Cork Militia built a barracks for his regiment, on his own land at Rathcormac, at his own expense. When the South Cork was disembodied after the Napoleonic wars and there was little chance of the men finding work, he allowed many of them to join the regular army, although this was officially discouraged. The regiment proved true to its nickname ‘The Long Corks’ when, at its disembodiment parade on St Patrick’s Day 1816, the mens’ average height was found to be 5ft 11in. The radical politician and journalist John Wilkes was a committed patriot, and had travelled home from university at Leiden in 1745 to join a loyal association training to defend the capital against the Jacobites. Two years later he became a substantial landowner by marrying an heiress, thus coming within the qualification for senior militia rank. Although he was frequently at odds with the government, and had a highly coloured private life, he was a serious-minded colonel of the Buckinghamshire Militia, though his practice of using his adjutant as second in his duels was an unwise merging of military and civil.

  Captains and subalterns, with their smaller property qualifications, were more modest figures. The historian and MP Edward Gibbon served as a militia officer between 1759 and 1770, including a period of embodied service during th
e Seven Years War. He always thought that the Hampshire captain had taught the historian something of value. The novelist Jane Austen, living at Chawton on the main road from Guildford to the garrison town of Winchester, was familiar with militia regiments as they marched through, or were quartered in the surrounding villages. George Wickham, the closest Pride and Prejudice comes to a villain, was a militia officer, eventually posted off to the north to hide his disgrace. Jane’s brother Henry served as a captain in the Oxfordshire militia in 1793–1801, and he acted as regimental agent for several militias (the Devonshire, Nottinghamshire, and North Devonshire among them) before his bank failed in 1816 and he resorted to that perennial stand-by of the educated man down on his luck, and became a curate, following in his father’s footsteps. Militia officers, like their regular counterparts, were given to duelling, and the Worcester Militia’s first training session ended with two subalterns falling out at Stourbridge, ‘but fortunately without a fatal termination’.

  In many respects the militia’s social composition resembled that of the regular army, with poor men officered by richer ones. In 1852 the Marquess of Salisbury observed of one applicant for a commission, that employment by the General Screw Steam Navigation Company was an ‘insuperable obstacle’ to military advancement. Property qualifications made it all but impossible for a man to work his way through the ranks to a commission, and so the militia was more socially excusive than the regular army, which always had a significant proportion of ranker officers. In the eighteenth century men were forbidden to shift from the militia into the regular army, for by doing so they left a gap, which the parish then had to fill. During the Napoleonic wars, when there was an ever-increasing appetite for men who could serve abroad, militiamen were offered bonuses to transfer, or sometimes treated so harshly during their embodied service that joining the regulars came almost as a relief: