Militia and Volunteer Lists Part One
The Federation of Family History Societies published two guides, Tudor and Stuart Muster Rolls (J. Gibson and A. Dell) and Militia Lists and Musters, 1757-1876 (J. Gibson and M. Medlycott). These volumes, available in our search room, provide useful details of lists available for each county at various repositories and in print. Militia and volunteer lists are of great value to historians and genealogists alike and for this reason it is worth looking at some of the Bedfordshire sources in more detail.
There are no simple definitions of the terms ‘Militia’ and ‘Volunteer’ used to describe the various types of part-time soldier, partly because the conditions of service varied over the years. The militia were conscripts, mustered from able-bodied men aged between fifteen and sixty years in medieval times but by the mid-eighteenth century generally between eighteen and forty-five to fifty years of age. The 1757 Militia Act empowered parish constables to prepare annual lists of men liable to serve who were then balloted to fill the ranks. These ‘drawn men’ could escape service by paying a substitute, often from a distant parish, to serve for them. Occasionally a ‘drawn man’ agreed to serve in which case he is often referred to, confusingly, as a ‘volunteer’. By contrast men serving in the volunteer infantry and cavalry during the Napoleonic Wars were ‘volunteers’ in the true sense, but there was an incentive to join these units as members were exempt from militia service.
There is a striking parallel between foreign wars and domestic unrest and statute law embodying the militia and volunteers. Many lists survive for the turbulent sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and for the Seven Years War (1756-1763), American War of Independence (1775-1783), French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars (1793-1815) and during the Second Empire of Napoleon III of France (1852-1870). By contrast there are few lists for the comparatively peaceful first half of the eighteenth century, except for men raised during the Jacobite rising of 1715.
Militia Lists
Some early Bedfordshire militia lists, 1535-1639 are in the Exchequer papers and State Papers Domestic at the National Archives at Kew. Bedfordshire Archives Service holds two seventeenth century militia lists; one of c1680 (ref: CH1) listing some three hundred militia-men from parishes across the entire county; the other containing the names of approximately ninety men from parishes in Barford, Stodden and Willey hundreds in ‘Major Harvey’s Company Mustered at Bedford the 12th & 13th of September 1699’ (ref: OR995). Both lists specify the number of muskets and ‘costletts’ (body armour) with which the men were equipped.
These lists have been published Bedfordshire muster rolls 1539-1831: a selection of transcripts with commentary, edited by Nigel Lutt. Bedford, BHRS, 1992. xi, 313p. illus. BHRS vol. 71. The cover title is Bedfordshire muster lists 1539-1831. ISBN 0 85155 054 1.
The Bedfordshire militia was raised during the Jacobite rising of 1715 and again in 1727, possibly because the County and Bedford Borough elections were held that year, but no lists are known. Pitt’s Militia Act of 1757, introduced during the Seven Years War with France, changed the basis of militia service by introducing the concept of the militia ballot, outlined previously. Many categories of men were exempt from the ballot including clergy, teachers, medical men and apprentices (a full list is given in Gibson and Medlycott p.7) as well as the infirm, men under five feet four inches tall or with more than three or four children under ten born in wedlock. A later Militia Act of 1759 required that recruits be Protestants by oath, a restriction that was not lifted until 1802. Roman Catholics were thus automatically excluded from service. Quakers were eligible for the ballot but refused to serve or pay for substitutes as a matter of principle. The Moravians were in any case excluded from all military service by an Act of 22 Geo II (1749).
Bedfordshire does not have any lists comparable to those of Northamptonshire for 1777 which contain the names of nearly 14000 men liable to serve, (published in NRS Vol. 25. 1973). Similar lists exist for only two Bedfordshire parishes, Great Barford, 1757 (ref: FN1253 pp 118-119) and Husborne Crawley, 1775 (ref: P49/13/3/1). Other lists were destroyed during the militia riots of 1757 (see BHRS Vol. 61) and it was not until 1760 that the Bedfordshire militia was finally embodied. From this date the records became more plentiful, but they are almost exclusively lists of men actually enrolled, not simply liable to serve. There are enrolment lists for Barford, Stodden and Willey hundreds 1760 (ref: OR 1871) a similar list for the entire county, 1763 (ref: R box 771) and extensive service papers c1780-1815 in the parish records of Potton and Bedford St Paul’s. Overseers’ accounts frequently mention payments to militia men’s wives and this source should not be neglected.
The most complete militia records are those of the 6th (later 4th) Harrold company of the Bedfordshire militia, commanded by Captain Richard Orlebar of Hinwick House, Podington, from 1760 to 1768. The company drew its balloted men from north west Bedfordshire parishes and a large number of serving substitutes from Wellingborough, Northants. Some ages and heights are given as well as names and parishes.
After the end of the Napoleonic Wars militia activity declined but various enrolment lists do survive for Barford, Stodden and Williey hundreds 1816-1831 (ref: GA 2391-2394) and Biggleswade, Clifton and Wixamtree hundreds 1821-22, (ref: ST 1099). After a brief flurry of activity during the agrarian unrest of 1830-31, the annual militia ballot was suspended, and by 1840 whatever value the militia had as a local peace-keeping force was superseded by the new county constabulary.
The fear of a revitalised France under Napoleon III in 1852 led to the formation of the 18th Regiment Light Infantry Militia and rolls of this unit, 1852-1872, are in the lieutenancy records (ref: LCM 3/2-5). An Act of 1871 removed control of the militia which the lieutenancy had enjoyed since the mid-sixteenth century and vested it wholly in the Crown. Thereafter regimental musters of the unit, renamed the 3rd Battalion Bedfordshire Regiment in 1881 are at the National Archives, Kew. In 1908 local militia and volunteer units were transferred to the newly formed Territorial Army; thus the modern units of the T.A. can trace their origins right back to the local defence forces of the distant past.