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 disability, 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
