A HISTORY OF SURREY 



a muster, unencumbered as he was with claims of regular industry, and 

 sometimes able to provide his own gun. Dryden's satire has the rmg of 

 truth in it — 



Stout once a month they march, a blustering band, 



• » * * * 



Of seeming arms to make a brief assay. 

 Then hasten to get drunk, the business of the day. 



In the earHer eighteenth century the only militia that had a chance 

 of doing anything during the Jacobite risings of 17 15 and 1745 mutinied 

 and ran away ; after this it was thought necessary to supersede them by 

 regiments specially raised. Fourteen noblemen each undertook to raise a 

 regiment in his own county, and some succeeded. Lord Onslow, Lord- 

 Lieutenant of Surrey, formed an association to raise a regiment, and on 

 9 October 1745 a meeting was held at Kingston ; the regiment, however, 

 does not appear to have taken the field.^ It was still a fixed principle 

 with all political parties that only a militia force was safe for the country, 

 and that a standing army was a menace to its liberties. The Whigs had 

 protested for three generations that a standing army was a support of 

 royal despotism in the hands of the Stewarts, and they continued to protest 

 even after the danger had passed, when probably a standing army was 

 their chief safeguard against the Restoration. The Tories considered all 

 standing armies to be tainted with the original sin of the New Model ; 

 while patriots out of office thought them to be fields for corrupt influence 

 on the part of ministers ; nor were they very much mistaken. The 

 Seven Years' War broke out, and ministers had seriously to consider the 

 defence of the country. There was a disgraceful panic about invasion. 

 Hessian and Hanoverian troops were hurried over for defence against 

 the French ; the Dutch were begged in vain to lend us 6,000 men. 

 Townshend introduced a new Militia Bill.' Regiments were to be raised 

 by ballot, armed and equipped at public expense, paid, supplied with 

 uniforms, and above all drilled into a state of efficiency. It was in fact 

 a compulsory service for the men drawn by ballot, for the fee of exemp- 

 tion, ^10, was entirely beyond the reach of a poor man. Something 

 very like a rebellion followed.' The cry was raised that the regiments 

 were to be sent abroad ; but the people really had lost all confidence in 

 the Government, and were not prepared for an organization in their own 

 defence under a ministry which they despised and a dynasty to which 

 they were indiff^erent. Pitt came into power and revived the public 

 spirit. In 1758 the militia was not unpopular, and voluntary enlistment 

 became common. Eight hundred rank and file in one regiment were at 

 first fixed as the Surrey force; it was not however till 17 en that the 

 arms and accoutrements were ready for them.* Sir Nicholas Hacket 

 Carew of Beddington became colonel on 3 March 1759, i" the place of 



' Gazette, 3 Dec. 1745. 

 2 Stat. 30 Geo. II. cap. 25. 



\ n^-'^'J""'"'','^."' '."'^ '^^ Gentkmarfs Magazine, xxvii. 4. 

 Dav,s, H,s,oncal Records, ' Second Royal West Surrey Regii^ent of Militia,' p. 77. 



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