The Hertfordshire Militia was an auxiliary military force in Hertfordshire in South East England. From their formal organisation as Trained Bands in 1558 and their service in the English Civil War, the Militia of Hertfordshire served during times of international tension and all of Britain's major wars. They provided internal security and home defence but sometimes operated further afield, including Ireland, relieving regular troops from routine garrison duties, and acted as a source of trained officers and men for the Regular Army. Under the Cardwell Reforms they were linked with the neighbouring Bedfordshire Regiment and went on active service during the Second Boer War. The Militia were converted into the Special Reserve under the Haldane Reforms of 1908 intended to supply reinforcements to the Regulars. However, the Hertfordshire battalion saw considerable action on the Western Front during World War I, when its commanding officer won a Victoria Cross and it led the final pursuit in the days before the Armistice. After 1921 the militia had only a shadowy existence until its final abolition in 1953.
Early history The English militia was descended from the Anglo-Saxon Fyrd, the military force raised from the freemen of the shires under command of their Sheriff. It continued under the Norman kings, notably at the Battle of the Standard (1138). The force was reorganised under the Assizes of Arms of 1181 and 1252, and again by King Edward I's Statute of Winchester of 1285.Fortescue, Vol I, p. 12.Fissell, pp. 178–80.Grierson, pp. 6–7.Hay, pp. 60–1.Holmes, pp. 90–1.Maitland, pp. 162, 276.Oman, pp. 110, 359–60. Under this statute 'Commissioners of Array' would levy the required number of men from each shire, divided into companies of 100 commanded by ductores, and subdivided into platoons of 20 led by vintenars. The custom was to requisition men for service from the shires closest to the scene of action, and Hertfordshire was too distant from the Welsh and Scottish borders for most of the campaigns under the Plantagenet kings.Morris, pp. 92–7. However Edward III called out a small contingent of Hertfordshire levies for his Scottish campaign in 1335. It comprised one ductor, two vintenars and 53 foot archers, serving from 23 June to 22 August.Nicholson, Appendix VI, p. 252. By now the infantry were mainly equipped with the English longbow.
This system remained in place under the early Tudors and the shire levies were occasionally mustered by Hundreds for inspection of the men and arms. Henry VIII ordered a Great Muster in 1539, when Hertford Town and Hertford Hundred mustered the following:Hay, pp. 286–9.Hay, p. 67.
Hertford: 6 mounted men in 'harness' (armour) + 80 archers and billmen Hertingfordbury: 34 Bayford: 1 + 21 Berkhamsted Parva: 12 Essendon: 20 Broxbourne: 2 + 25 Amwell hamlet in Hoddesdon: 12 Cheshunt Street: 93
Waltham Cross: 74 (two of them 'Dutchmen') Wormley: 22 Brickendon: 28 Amwell: 32 Stanstead Thele: 1 + 10 Stapleford: 14 Bengeo: 29 Tewin: 21
Hertfordshire Trained Bands
The legal basis of the militia was updated by two acts of 1557 covering musters (4 & 5 Ph. & M. c. 3) and the maintenance of horses and armour (4 & 5 Ph. & M. c. 2). The county militia was now under the lord lieutenant, assisted by the deputy lieutenants and justices of the peace (JPs). The entry into force of these Acts in 1558 is seen as the starting date for the organised county militia in England.Beckett, Amateur Tradition, p. 20.Boynton, Chapter II.Cruickshank, p. 17.Fissell, pp. 184–5.Fortescue, Vol I, p. 125.Hay, p. 88.Maitland, pp. 234–5, 278.
Hertfordshire was one of the southern counties called upon to send troops to suppress the Rising of the North in 1569. Although the militia obligation was universal, this assembly confirmed that it was clearly impractical to train and equip every able-bodied man. After 1572 the practice was to select a proportion of men for the Trained Bands (TBs), who were mustered for regular training, though Hertfordshire was short of experienced captains to train them. Although the trained bands were exempt from foreign service, they and their armouries were frequently drawn upon to supply and arm levies (usually untrained substitutes) employed overseas.Boynton, pp. 13–7, 91–2, 96, Appendix I.Cruickshank, pp. 24–5.Fissell, pp. 183–90.
Armada Campaign In 1584 Hertfordshire mustered its full quota of 400 'shot' (armed with calivers or arquebuses), 500 bowmen, and 100 'corslets' (armoured pikemen).Boynton, Appendix I. The Armada Crisis in 1588 led to the mobilisation of the trained bands, when Hertfordshire furnished 1500 trained men, organised into companies under captains, and 1500 untrained men (often employed as pioneers).Beckett, Amateur, pp. 24–5.Hay, pp. 91–3 The Hertfordshire Trained Bands were on duty in London in 1601 to guard against disorder during the Earl of Essex's trial and subsequent execution.Davis, pp. 61–2. They were also among the trained bands camped in the London suburbs to ensure a peaceful transition on the death of Elizabeth I in 1603.Beckett, Wanton Troopers, p. 25.
Bishops' Wars With the passing of the threat of invasion, the trained bands declined in the early 17th Century. Later, King Charles I attempted to reform them into a national force or 'Perfect Militia' answering to the king rather than local control. By 1638 the Hertfordshire Trained Bands mustered 750 muskets and 750 pikemen, with 27 lancers and 53 light horsemen. The trained bands including the Hertfordshire contingent were called out in 1639 and 1640 for the Bishops' Wars, though many of the men who actually went were untrained hired substitutes. In March 1640 Hertfordshire was ordered to provide 650 selected men for the force to rendezvous on 20 May to sail to Newcastle upon Tyne from Harwich on 31 May.Fissell, pp. 43–4, 174–8, 206–8, 246–63.Hertfordshire TB at BCW Project Regimental Wiki. However, under the leadership of Edmund Aylee the largely Puritan Hertfordshire trained bandsmen took the opportunity to carry out acts of iconoclasm against churches in their own county, tearing down and burning communion rails, which they considered to be 'Popish'.Fissell, pp. 264–70.
Civil War Control of the trained bands was one of the major points of dispute between Charles I and Parliament that led to the English Civil War. In 1641 the moderate Earl of Salisbury of Hatfield House was named as a suitable person to command the men of Hertfordshire. Once open war broke out in 1642 neither side made much use of the trained bands beyond securing the county armouries for their own full-time troops.Cruickshank, p. 326. Hertfordshire's TBs saw more service than most. In May radicals in Hertford had begun drilling as a volunteer company; when this was banned by the King, they sought permission from Parliament which was given in July, when Watford also raised a volunteer company, and St Albans followed under the leadership of Alban Cox. Counties soon began raising auxiliary TB regiments from younger men, apprentices and servants who were not normally members of the TBs, which would serve short tours of duty as garrisons or reinforcing the field armies. The three volunteer town guard companies in Hertfordshire became the nucleus of the Orange Auxiliary Regiment (so-called from the colour of its company flags), commanded by Sir John Wittewrong, with Colonel Alban Cox commanding the regiment's horse. It was followed by the Green Regiment under Sir John Garrard, and the Black Regiment commanded by Col Adam Washington. Each regiment had at least a troop of horse, the Orange also had dragoons and light horse scouts, and the Black had two Drake field guns.
The county was included in Parliament's Eastern Association to supply troops, supplies and finance. After Parliament's army seized Newport Pagnell in Buckinghamshire on 27 October 1643, it was garrisoned by two regiments of the London Trained Bands (LTBs) and Garrard's Green Hertfordshire Auxiliaries until a permanent garrison could be recruited from the Eastern Association.Beckett, Wanton Troopers pp. 59, 105–7.Nagel, pp. 138, 153–8. The Orange Regiment garrisoned Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire, and the Black Regiment went into garrison at Uxbridge in Middlesex in December 1643.
In 1644 Parliament commissioned Colonel Richard Browne of the LTBs as Major-General of Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire and Berkshire and gave him the task of reducing the Royalist garrisons in those counties. However, in June 1644 the King broke out of Oxford and after feinting west, moved eastwards with his force. Browne was directed towards Hertford to protect the Eastern Association counties. He reached Leighton Buzzard on 1 July with three regiments of LTBs, where he was joined by the Green and Black Hertfordshire Auxiliaries and the Essex TBs. Browne was too late to intervene in the Battle of Cropredy Bridge and when he joined the beaten Parliamentary force under Sir William Waller near Towcester on 2 July the King was already away. By now Waller's original LTB brigade was deserting for home, and the Essex TBs began to join them, while the Hertfordshire men complained bitterly of their poor quarters. On 6 July Browne was wounded in the face when he confronted his mutinous troops. Waller's army was dispersed, and under his original orders Browne was sent with his brigade to capture Greenland House on the River Thames near Henley. This had been garrisoned and fortified by the Royalists in December 1643 to block Parliamentary supplies travelling down the Thames. One of the Hertfordshire TB regiments commanded by Colonel Mitchell saw service at the short Siege of Greenland House. After Browne captured the place on 11 July he went to garrison Reading, Berkshire, with his three London regiments and the rest of the TBs went home, though the Green Hertfordshire Auxiliaries were serving with Browne again in early 1645.Beckett, Wanton Troopers p. 107.Nagel, pp. 192–4, 197–203.Toynbee & Young, pp. 105–8.
In September 1645 the Hertfordshire Trained Band Horse, apparently numbering 500, served in a force under Col Richard Graves of the New Model Army marching from Thame towards Cheshire, but may have gone home before the Battle of Rowton Heath.
Once Parliament had established full control in 1648 it passed new Militia Acts that replaced lords lieutenant with county commissioners appointed by Parliament or the Council of State. At the same time the term 'Trained Band' began to disappear in most counties. Under the Commonwealth and Protectorate the militia received pay when called out, and operated alongside the New Model Army to control the country.Beckett, Wanton Troopers pp. 151–3.Hay, pp. 99–104.
Hertfordshire Militia
After the Restoration of the Monarchy, the English Militia was re-established by the Militia Act 1661 under the control of the king's lords-lieutenant, the men to be selected by ballot. This was popularly seen as the 'Constitutional Force' to counterbalance a 'Standing Army' tainted by association with the New Model Army that had supported Cromwell's military dictatorship.Fortescue, Vol I, pp. 294–5.Hay, pp. 104–6.Maitland, p. 326.
The Hertfordshire Militia were called out on anti-invasion duties in 1666 during the Second Anglo-Dutch War, and on 4 September the same year 200 Hertfordshire militiamen were sent to help fight the Great Fire of London, equipped with pickaxes, ropes and buckets. For the gentry service in the militia was both an honour and a burden. For the 1666 embodiment the acting Lord Lieutenant of Hertfordshire, Viscount Fanshawe only selected those of the Hertfordshire Cavalry Militia who had voted the 'wrong' way in the previous election.Western, p. 64.Fanshawe at History of Parliament.