The Glamorganshire Militia, later the Royal Glamorgan Light Infantry, was an auxiliary regiment reorganised in the county of Glamorganshire in South Wales during the 18th Century from earlier precursor units. Primarily intended for home defence, it served in Britain and Ireland through all Britain's major wars and supported the civil powers in peacetime. It became a battalion of the Welsh Regiment in 1881, and saw active service in the Second Boer War. Transferring to the Special Reserve in 1908 it trained thousands of reinforcements for that regiment during World War I. After a shadowy postwar existence, the militia was disbanded in 1953.
Glamorgan Trained Bands
The universal obligation to military service in the Shire levy was long established in England and was extended to Wales.Fissel, pp. 178–80, 218.Fortescue, Vol I, p. 12.Hay, pp. 60–1.Holmes, pp. 90–1. King Henry VIII called a 'Great Muster' in 1539, which showed 1000 men available for service in Glamorgan, of whom only 29 had 'harness', and there were only seven horsemen,Hay, pp. 85–6.Hay, pp. 357–60.Owen, Glamorgan, Vol 2, pp. 21–3.
The legal basis of the militia was updated by two acts of 1557 covering musters (4 & 5 Ph. & M. c. 3) and the maintenance of horses and armour (4 & 5 Ph. & M. c. 2). The county militia was now under the Lord Lieutenant, assisted by the Deputy Lieutenants and Justices of the Peace (JPs). The entry into force of these Acts in 1558 is seen as the starting date for the organised Militia of England and Wales.Cruickshank, p. 17.Fissel, pp. 184–5.Fortescue, Vol I, pp. 12, 16, 125.Hay, pp. 11–17.Hay, p. 88. Although the militia obligation was universal, it was clearly impractical to train and equip every able-bodied man, so after 1572 the practice was to select a proportion of men for the Trained Bands, who were mustered for regular training.Cruickshank, pp. 24–5.Fissel, pp. 178–87.
In the 16th Century little distinction was made between the militia and the troops levied by the counties for overseas expeditions. However, the counties usually conscripted the unemployed and criminals rather than send the trained bandsmen. Between 1585 and 1602 Glamorgan supplied 970 men for service in Ireland and 30 for the Netherlands. The men were given three days' 'conduct money' to get to Chester, the main port of embarkation for Ireland. Conduct money was recovered from the government, but replacing the weapons issued to the levies from the militia armouries was a heavy cost on the counties.Cruickshank, pp. 25–7, 61–2, 92, 126; Appendix 2.
With the passing of the threat of invasion, the trained bands declined in the early 17th Century. Later, King Charles I attempted to reform them into a national force or 'Perfect Militia' answering to the king rather than local control.Fissel, pp. 174–8, 190–5.Hay, pp. 97–8. The Glamorgan Trained Bands of 1638 consisted of 400 men armed with 200 muskets and 200 Corslets (body armour, signifying pikemen). They also mustered 36 horse.Glamorgan TBs at BCW Project Regimental Wiki. Glamorganshire was ordered to send 200 men overland to Newcastle upon Tyne for the Second Bishops' War of 1640. However, substitution was rife and many of those sent on this unpopular service would have been untrained replacements.Fissel, pp. 208, 262–3.
Civil Wars Control of the militia was one of the areas of dispute between Charles I and Parliament that led to the English Civil War.Fortescue, Vol I, pp. 198–9.Wedgwood, pp. 28, 38, 41, 65–8, 95. When open war broke out between the King and Parliament, neither side made much use of the trained bands beyond securing the county armouries for their own full-time troops.Reid, pp. 1–2. Most of Wales was under Royalist control for much of the war, and was a recruiting ground for the King's armies.Wedgwood, pp. 114, 119–20. In 1642 Sir Anthony Mansel was the Royalist governor of Cardiff with a garrison drawn from the Glamorgan TBs. From August 1643 Mansel and Sir Richard Bassett, each with a regiment of Glamorgan TBs, were engaged in the fruitless Siege of Gloucester, which was relieved by the Earl of Essex on 5 September. The two regiments may then have marched with the Royal Army in pursuit of Essex and been engaged at the First Battle of Newbury, where Mansel was killed. A third regiment recruited from Glamorgan participated in the same campaign: commanded by Richard Donnell, it may have recruited volunteers from the Glamorgan TBs. Bassett's regiment may have been at Cardiff when it was lost to Parliament in 1645. Donnell was governor of Swansea when that was also captured that year. Mansell's regiment may have been taken over by his stepson Bussey Mansell, who in 1645 briefly joined the anti-war Glamorgan 'Clubmen' or 'Neutrals' before defecting to Parliament and being appointed commander of the Parliamentary forces in Glamorgan.Sir Anthony Mansel’s Glamorgan Trained Band Regiment of Foot at BCW Project Regimental Wiki.Sir Richard Bassett’s Glamorgan Trained Band Regiment of Foot at BCW Project Regimental Wiki.Col Richard Donnell's Regiment at BCW Project Regimental Wiki.Bussy Mansel at History of Parliament.Reid, p. 210.Reid, pp. 59–65.
Once Parliament had established full control in 1648 it passed new Militia Acts that replaced lords lieutenant with county commissioners appointed by Parliament or the Council of State. At the same time the term 'Trained Band' began to disappear in most counties. Under the Commonwealth and Protectorate the militia received pay when called out, and operated alongside the New Model Army to control the country.Hay, pp. 99–104.
By 1651 the militias of the South Welsh counties appear to have been combined, with the 'South Wales Militia' being ordered to rendezvous at Gloucester to hold the city during the Worcester campaign.Militia of the Worcester Campaign 1651 at BCW Project. Bussey Mansell was nominated as a colonel of militia in 1655, and to command the whole militia of South Wales in 1659 during Sir George Booth's Cheshire Rising.Williams, p. 99.
Glamorgan Militia After the Restoration of the Monarchy, the Militia was re-established by the Militia Act 1661 under the control of the king's lords lieutenant, the men to be selected by ballot. This was popularly seen as the 'Constitutional Force' to counterbalance a 'Standing Army' tainted by association with the New Model Army that had supported Cromwell's military dictatorship.Fortescue, Vol I, pp. 294–5.Grierson, pp. 6–7.Hay, pp. 104–6. Sir Edward Mansel, 4th Baronet was appointed a commissioner of militia in Glamorgan in 1660, and was a colonel of foot from 1665.Sir Edward Mansel at History of Parliament.
The militia forces in the Welsh counties were small, and were grouped together under the direction of the Lord President of the Council of Wales.Western, pp. 10, 19, 37. As Lord President, the Duke of Beaufort carried out a tour of inspection of the Welsh militia in 1684, when the Glamorganshire contingent consisted of a regiment of foot and one troop of horse under the command of his sons the Marquess of Worcester and Lord Arthur Somerset. In 1697 it consisted of 483 foot in nine companies under the command of Sir Edward Mansel, and a troop of 40 horse under Captain Martin ButtonBritish Library, Egerton MSS 1626, summarised in Hay; Illustrated Naval & Military Magazine, Vol VI, January–June 1887, pp. 317–8; and Camden Miscellany, 1953, Vol 20, pp. 8–10.Hay, p. 134.
Generally the militia declined in the long peace after the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713.Western, pp. 73–4. Jacobites were numerous amongst the Welsh Militia, but they did not show their hands during the Risings of 1715 and 1745, and bloodshed was avoided.Owen, Denbigh & Flint, p. 12.
1757 reforms
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. There was a property qualification for officers, who were commissioned by the lord lieutenant. An adjutant and drill sergeants were to be provided to each regiment from the Regular Army, and arms and accoutrements would be supplied when the county had secured 60 per cent of its quota of recruits.Fortescue, Vol II, pp. 288, 299–302.Hay, pp. 136–44.Holmes, pp. 94–100.Western, pp. 124–57, 251.
Glamorganshire was given a quota of 360 men to raise. The county's arms were issued in January 1760 and the men assembled in two parts at Cardiff and Swansea on or shortly after 19 January. The regiment was organised as seven companies including a Grenadier Company, with Sir Edmond Thomas, 4th Baronet of Wenvoe Castle, appointed as lieutenant-colonel commandant.Frederick, pp. 295–7.Owen, Glamorgan, Vol 2, pp. 25–9.Western, Appendices A & B. Its headquarters (HQ) was established at a house on the corner of St Mary Street and Wharton Street in Cardiff, which became known as The Armoury, and housed the permanent staff and weapons.Owen, Glamorgan, Vol 2, p. 82.
The regiment was embodied for fulltime service on 4 January 1761, now under the command of Earl Talbot.Parkyn. The regiment was marched from Cardiff to be stationed at Bideford, North Devon, but once it reached Bristol its destination was changed, and it went into barracks at Topsham, near Exeter in South Devon, until May. By June 1762 the regiment was back in Glamorgan, with four companies quartered in Swansea and the remainder in Cardiff. The Swansea companies went by sea to Cardiff, and then the whole was shipped across to Bristol. In September a number of the militiamen got into a fight with local butchers and sailors in St Nicholas Street, in which two sailors were killed and others on both sides wounded. Several were imprisoned and one militiamen was tried for murder. Two other privates of the regiment were convicted of taking bribes to let French prisoners of war out of prison in Knowle, Bristol, and one was sentenced to be shot. However, the war was ending, and in December the regiment was marched back to Cardiff. There it was disembodied, the weapons being returned to store and the men paid off and dismissed to their homes, to be called out for periodic training.
American War of Independence The American War of Independence broke out in 1775, and by 1778 Britain was threatened with invasion by the Americans' allies, France and Spain. The militia were called out, and the Glamorgans assembled on 26 March. Shortly afterwards they were marched to Warley Camp in Essex, where a division of Regular and Militia battalions was concentrated and exercised together, the Glamorgans being part of the 'Reserve of the Left'.Owen, Glamorgan, Vol 2, pp. 30–1.Carman.
Because of the differences in culture and language, the Glamorgan men found service in England very disagreeable, and in the autumn of 1778 the men whose enlistments were due to expire the following summer declared that they were not willing to re-engage. `The Lord Lieutenant of Glamorgan, Lord Mount Stuart, who was also the regimental colonel, suggested that they should be allowed two months at home in exchange for re-enlisting, and 150 did eventually rejoin.Western, p. 260. From 1780 Lord Mount Stuart's second-in-command was Lt-Col Sir Herbert Mackworth, 1st Baronet, MP for Cardiff.Owen, Glamorgan, Vol 2, Appendix 4.