MILITARY HISTORY 



to Scotland, after the battle of Dunbar/ In the next year, when 

 Charles was marching into England from Scotland, a new regiment of 

 foot was hurriedly raised in Surrey under Sir Richard Onslow as colonel 

 and Mr. George Buncombe as lieutenant-colonel,^ no doubt partly or 

 chiefly by volunteers from the embodied militia. The Militia Commis- 

 sioners were ordered to sit at Kingston daily to prepare for the war and 

 to guard the town, and on i September Major Fenwick was commanded 

 to raise a force to defend the county.' In July Sir Richard Onslow and 

 Mr. George Buncombe were ordered to raise troops for the militia in the 

 west of the county.* There seems to have been great difficulty in 

 collecting the troops, for letters were sent by the Council of State in 

 August complaining of the delay and ordering the forces first to Bun- 

 stable and then to Oxford to join Major-General Fleetwood's army 

 formed to meet the Scotch army at Worcester." They were too late to 

 share in the victory of Worcester, and Sir Richard Onslow, after the 

 accession of Charles II., took credit to himself, probably falsely, for this 

 delay. One lasting trace remained of the constant association at this 

 time between the militia and the New Model Army. The latter wore 

 red uniforms, and red seems to have been adopted for the militia as well, 

 for at a muster of a company under Captain Covert at Godalming in 

 1684 the men were instructed to come with arms and ammunition and 

 furnished with redcoats.* Previous to this the only indication of uniform 

 which we find is in a pamphlet called The Marching of the "Train Bands, 

 written by an officer of the Tower Hamlets company, describing Waller's 

 campaign in October and November 1643, whence it appears that the 

 Surrey militia, which was then at Farnham, wore green coats. 



There was a muster of the Surrey militia once more at least in the 

 seventeenth century. In 1697, when the negotiations for the treaty of 

 Ryswick were in slow progress, a general review of the militia of the 

 country was held. The Surrey force, under the Buke of Norfolk as 

 Lord Lieutenant, numbered 1,209 men from the country districts and 

 910 from South wark, with 132 horsemen.'' The array however was 

 more remarkable for its numbers than for its efficiency. Little more is 

 heard of the militia for many years.^ 



The ' Constitutional Force,' upon which the defence of the country 

 and the maintenance of order were supposed to depend, was in fact 

 absolutely useless soon after the end of the civil wars of the seventeenth 

 century. Parishes and landowners were required to furnish and to equip 

 men, according to an assessment of value ; and for a few years after 1660 

 there were among them some who had served in a regular force, or who 

 had been associated with the regular army under Cromwell's major- 

 generals, but as these died out all chance of efficiency died out with 

 them. The nearest loafer and poacher was the handiest man to send to 



1 Cal. ofS. P. Dom. (1650), 352. 2 Ibid. (1651), 531. ^ Ibid. 382, 394. 



4 Ibid. 285. 5 Ibid. 358, 360, 373. » Loseley MS. 16 May 1684. 



' Egerton MS. 1626 et seqq. 



8 The supposition of Colonel Davis {History of the Second Regiment of the Royal West Surrey Militia, 

 p. 70) that the Surrey Militia took part in the campaign of Sedgemoor, is erroneous. 



