The 1st Royal Surrey Militia, later the 3rd Battalion, East Surrey Regiment was an auxiliary regiment raised in Surrey in the Home Counties of England. From its formal creation in 1759 the regiment served in home defence in all of Britain's major wars until 1918, seeing active service in the Second Boer War and supplying reinforcements to the East Surreys during World War I.
Background
The universal obligation to military service in the Shire levy was long established in England and its legal basis was updated by two acts of 1557 (4 & 5 Ph. & M. cc. 2 and 3), which placed selected men, the 'trained bands', under the command of Lords Lieutenant appointed by the monarch. This is seen as the starting date for the organised county militia in England.Fortescue, Vol I, pp. 5, 12, 16. The Surrey Trained Bands formed part of the army at Tilbury during the Armada campaign of 1588, and some elements saw active service during the English Civil War. The Militia was re-established in 1661 after the restoration of the monarchy, and was popularly seen as the 'Constitutional Force' in contrast to the 'Standing Army' that was tainted by association with the New Model Army that had supported the military dictatorship of the Protectorate. However, the Militia declined in the years after the Peace of Utrecht in 1713.Fortescue, Vol I, 195–196.Pearse & Sloman, pp. 4–12Surrey TBs at BCW Project Regimental Wiki.Brentford and Turnham Green at BCW Project.Militia of the Worcester Campaign 1651 at BCW Project.
Seven Years' War Under threat of French invasion during the Seven Years' War a series of Militia Acts from 1757 re-established county militia regiments, the men being conscripted by means of parish ballots (paid substitutes were permitted) to serve for three years. An adjutant and drill sergeants were provided to each regiment from the Regular Army, and arms and accoutrements were supplied when the county had secured 60 percent of its quota of recruits. Surrey was given a quota of 800 men to raise under the command of the Lord-Lieutenant of Surrey, Richard Onslow, 3rd Baron Onslow.Fortescue, Vol II, pp. 288, 299, 301–2, 521}.
Arms for the Surrey Militia were authorised on 23 February 1759 and the regiment was formed at Richmond-upon-Thames on 18 April 1759. By now Lord Onslow had resigned the colonelcy (he remained lord lieutenant) and had been replaced by Sir Nicholas Hacket Carew, 2nd Baronet, of Beddington, with the lord lieutenant's kinsman George Onslow as lieutenant-colonel. The 10 companies were distributed as follows:https://www.jstor.org/stable/442196788 Parkyn.
Croydon Southwark Kingston upon Thames Camberwell Reigate
Chertsey Clapham Guildford Putney Godalming
The regiment was embodied for full-time service from 6 July 1759 and marched to Kent, where the companies were distributed. In August they were concentrated again at Frindsbury. On 3 November the regiment was split into two battalions of five companies each, the 1st or Eastern commanded by Carew and the 2nd or Western by Onslow with the writer Francis Grose as his adjutant. They then went into winter quarters in Surrey, the 1st Bn at Kingston, the 2nd at Putney, Fulham and Wandsworth. Thereafter the regiments were frequently moved about the country, one of their duties being to guard French prisoners of war, beginning in May 1760 when the two battalions alternated this duty at Maidstone in Kent. In November the 1st Bn was at Salisbury in Wiltshire and the 2nd had just marched through Essex to Northampton. The Peace of Fontainebleau was signed on 3 November 1762, ending the war, and the regiment was quartered at Lewes in Sussex when on 3 December it was ordered to march back to Surrey to be disembodied. The following year the two battalions were merged into a single regiment again; Sir Nicholas Carew had died in August 1762, so George Onslow was appointed colonel of the amalgamated regiment.
American War of Independence
The Militia was called out after the outbreak of the War of American Independence when the country was threatened with invasion by the Americans' allies, France and Spain. The Surrey regiment was embodied on 26 March 1778,Fortescue, Vol III, pp. 173–174, 295. and that summer was at Coxheath Camp near Maidstone, which was the army's largest training camp, where the Militia were exercised as part of a division alongside Regular troops while providing a reserve in case of French invasion of South East England. The Surreys under Colonel Jeremiah Hodge formed part of the Right Wing under Major-General William Amherst. Each battalion had two small field-pieces or 'battalion guns' attached to it, manned by men of the regiment instructed by a Royal Artillery sergeant and two gunners. In 1779 the regiment was at Gosport guarding 1500 Prisoners of War in a former seamen's hospital when the militiamen foiled an attempt to tunnel out and a plot to overcome the guards, who were increased. In 1780 some of the Surrey companies were stationed at Ringwood in Hampshire, where they were called upon to assist the Revenue officers against smuggling. In June that year the regiment was deployed on the streets of London against the Gordon Riots, clearing the streets and bridges with the bayonet when parties of rioters refused to disperse. From 1 July 1782 the regiment was in summer camp at Chatham, Kent, once again brigaded with regulars and other militia. It was disembodied on 28 February 1783 after the signing of the Peace of Paris.
In September 1759 it had been ordered that militia regiments on service were to take precedence from the date of their arrival in camp. In 1760 this was altered to a system of drawing lots where regiments did duty together. During the War of American Independence the counties were given an order of precedence determined by ballot each year, beginning in 1778. For the Surrey Militia the positions were:Baldry. 16th on 1 June 1778 5th on 12 May 1779 21st on 6 May 1780 16th on 28 April 1781 35th on 7 May 1782
From 1784 to 1792 the militia were assembled for their 28 days' annual peacetime training, but to save money only two-thirds of the men were actually mustered each year.Fortescue, Vol III, pp. 530–531.
French Wars In view of the worsening international situation in late 1792 the militia was called out, even though Revolutionary France did not declare war on Britain until 1 February 1793. The Surrey Militia was embodied on 1 December 1792. The French Revolutionary Wars saw a new phase for the English militia: they were embodied for a whole generation, and became regiments of full-time professional soldiers (though restricted to service within the British Isles), which the regular army increasingly saw as a prime source of recruits. They served in coast defences, manning garrisons, guarding prisoners of war, and for internal security, while their traditional local defence duties were taken over by the Volunteers.Knight, pp. 78–80, 111, 255, 411. The militia order of precedence balloted for in 1793 (Surrey was 18th) remained in force throughout the French Revolutionary War.
In 1797, to release regulars for overseas service, the strength of the Militia was increased by the creation of the Supplementary Militia, also raised by means of the ballot.Fortescue, Vol IV, Pt II, pp. 639–641, 888.Fortescue, Vol VII, pp. 34–35, 334. A third of Surrey's Supplementary Militia quota (820 men) was assigned as reinforcements to the 'Old Surrey Militia', as the original regiment became known. The remainder were to form two supplementary regiments. Surrey has been described as one of the 'black spots' in recruitment for the Supplementary Militia (especially compared to the Volunteers), so although the 1st Surrey Supplementary Militia was successfully raised (and became the permanent 2nd Surrey Militia the following year) the 2nd regiment (intended to be the 3rd Surrey Militia) never reached establishment and was disbanded.
The Old Surrey Militia, which officially became the 1st Surrey Militia on 17 August 1798, now consisted of 12 companies. At the end of 1797 it was stationed at Sunderland in the North East and York District, brigaded with other militia regiments.
A peace treaty having been agreed (the Treaty of Amiens), most of the militia were disembodied in 1802, but the Peace of Amiens broke down in 1803 before the 1st Surreys could be disembodied and the regiment remained in service. On 23 April 1804 both the Surrey militia regiments were granted the title 'Royal', the 1st becoming the 1st Royal Surrey Militia (1st RSM). Another ballot for precedence took place at the start of the Napoleonic War: Surrey was 41st. These 'regular', 'ordinary' or 'permanent' regiments of embodied militia should not be confused with the Local Militia, part-time units formed in 1809 to replace the various Volunteer units in the county; eventually there were five Local Militia regiments in Surrey.Fortescue, Vol VI, pp. 180–181.King.
Militia duties during the Napoleonic War were much as before: home defence and garrisons, prisoners of war, and increasingly internal security in the industrial areas where there was unrest. During the summer of 1805, when Napoleon was massing his 'Army of England' at Boulogne for a projected invasion, the 1st RSM was stationed at Dover. On 1 September 1805, with 608 men in eight companies under the command of Lt-Col John Waterhouse, was at the Western Heights as part of Maj-Gen Lord Forbes's militia brigade. The regiment also served in Ireland for a couple of years, returning in 1811.Fortescue, Vol V, pp. 167–168, 198–203, 210–211, 229.Knight, pp. 238, 437–47. From 1813 the militia were invited to volunteer for limited overseas service, primarily for garrison duties in Europe. The 1st RSM supplied a detachment of one officer and 30 men for the 1st Provisional Battalion in the Militia Brigade. This embarked on 10–11 March 1814 and joined the Earl of Dalhousie's division that had occupied Bordeaux just as the war was ending. The brigade did not form part of the Army of Occupation after the abdication of Napoleon and returned to England in June.
After Napoleon's exile to Elba the 1st RSM was disembodied on 24 June 1814, but it was called out again on 29 June 1815 during the Waterloo campaign. At the beginning of the campaign several regular regiments including the Scots Guards were hurriedly brought up to strength with militia volunteers before embarking for Belgium. There is a story that many of the Guardsmen at Waterloo were still clad in Surrey Militia uniforms.Beckett, p. 113. The 1st RSM was finally disembodied on 30 April 1816.
Long peace Although officers continued to be commissioned into the militia during the long peace after the Battle of Waterloo, and ballots were still held until suspended by the Militia Act 1829, the regiments were rarely assembled for training and the permanent staffs of sergeants and drummers (who were occasionally used to maintain public order) were progressively reduced.
The militia order of precedence balloted for in the Napoleonic War remained in force until 1833. In that year the King drew the lots for individual regiments and the resulting list remained in force with minor amendments until the end of the militia. The regiments raised before the peace of 1763 took the first 47 places: both Surrey regiments were deemed to predate 1763 (even though the 2nd had disappeared until 1797), and the 2nd RSM was allotted 11th place, the 1st RSM only 20th. Formally, the regiment became the 20th, or 1st Royal Surrey Militia: most regiments paid little notice, but the 1st RSM did include the numeral in its badge (see below).
1852 reform