POLITICAL HISTORY 



Colt's Hall in Cavendish, Sir John Jernyngham, and Richard Cavendish of 

 Grimstone, thirty. 



In 1524 Suffolk furnished a muster 1 of 2,999 archers and 7,763 

 billmen. But the service was by no means voluntary, and the usual method 

 when it came to foreign service was simply to press the men in the 

 market-towns and ship them off. At other times, the whole contingent being 

 assembled at Ipswich or Beccles, the captains appointed by the king, 

 beginning with the colonel, picked their men. 



The old system of the militia broke down in the wars of the seven- 

 teenth century. An Act was, however, passed in 1662 for there-organization 

 of the militia, the obligations to provide horsemen or footmen being allotted 

 according to a scale of property, while the lord-lieutenant was granted full 

 powers of raising the force, appointing officers, and levying rates for the 

 supply of equipment. According to the muster roll of 1692, 2 the Suffolk 

 militia then consisted of four regiments of infantry with two additional 

 companies at Ipswich and four troops of horse : the Red Regiment, under 

 Colonel Anthony Crofts, included six companies with a total complement of 

 460 officers and men ; Colonel Sir Philip Parker's White Regiment com- 

 prised seven companies, with 509 of all ranks ; the Blue Regiment, late 

 commanded by Sir Philip Skipton, mustered eight companies 657 strong ; 

 while the Yellow Regiment of Sir Thomas Bernardiston showed the same 

 number of companies with a complement of 660. The two Ipswich 

 companies with their 181 men and the four troops of horse 208 strong, 

 under the personal command of the lord-lieutenant, Lord Cornwallis, brought 

 up the total of the county forces to 2,675 or " a ^ ranks. In 1697 !t was 

 remarked that the Suffolk militia had not been mustered since 1692, while 

 the sixty years that followed witnessed the general decay of any efficient 

 militia force outside the city of London. 



The Militia Bill of 1757 introduced the ballot, and all men from 

 eighteen to forty-five were with a few exceptions liable to its operation. 

 During the Napoleonic wars the regular or ' marching ' militia supplied 

 volunteers, attracted by bounties, to fill the waste of the line, while 

 under special Acts of Parliament supplementary and local militia were 

 further raised, the latter being largely recruited from disbanded volunteers. 

 After Waterloo the regular militia was nominally retained, but by a policy 

 of systematic neglect reduced to a mere skeleton of officers and sergeants. 

 The middle of the century witnessed a revival, and in 1871 the old 

 constitutional force was removed from the special jurisdiction of the lords- 

 lieutenant to the more direct control of the War Office. Some ten years 

 after, on the territorial re-organization of the infantry of the line, the West 

 Suffolk Militia became the 3rd battalion of the Suffolk Regiment, and was 

 embodied on two occasions during the last Boer War. Besides the infantry 

 there are also now artillery militia with head quarters at Ipswich. 



The regular battalions of the present Suffolk regiment are furnished by 

 the old 1 2th Foot, which owes its origin to an independent company raised 

 shortly after the Restoration to garrison Windsor Castle. 3 At the time of 



1 L. and P. Hen. fill, iv (i), No. 972. 



' From a return of 169-. Egerton MS. 1626 (B.M.). 



' Rudolf, Short Hist, of Terr. Regiments, I 2 I . 



2 l6l 21 



