There has recently become available at the Help Desk a partial index of those men who served in the Wiltshire Militia during the Napoleonic Wars 1793-1815. A brief description of the creation and function of the Militia will explain how and why this could be of use to researchers, together with the five unique features that set them apart from other military forces of the period.

The Infantry drilling, 1807

The first of these features was that the Militia Act of 1758 introduced the idea of conscription. The Regular Army before this date and up to the First World War was officially a volunteer army, but it was felt that volunteering would not raise enough men to serve the purpose of the new force, which was to defend the country in the face of an invasion threat and replace the Regular Army at home during a time of war. Each county was ordered to raise a certain number of infantry men (800 for Wiltshire); each parish was allotted its quota of this total, which was to be selected by ballot from a list drawn up by the parish constables containing the names of all males between the ages of 18-50 (later reduced to 45) with a number of exceptions, including peers, parish officials, clergymen, teachers, preachers, articled clerks, apprentices and members of the regular army. The term of service was for 3 years (later 5) after which time the whole process began again, although men could re-enlist and were encouraged to do so by means of a bounty.

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Hello, my name is Robert Pearson, and I am an archivist and help desk assistant here at the History Centre. As part of an enquiry I had been asked to find a sergeant in the ‘A’ or Chippenham Troop of the Wiltshire Yeomanry (the cavalry equivalent of the Territorial Army) in c.1882.

We have quite a good collection of muster rolls of the regiment for that period, although there is a gap after 1877. On examining the next roll for 1883-1890 (ref no.1882/17), I found that the first two pages covering ‘A’ Troop were missing, possibly when the hard covers of the book were removed; so I was temporarily frustrated in my search.

Yeomanry, 1863

At that time there was a small permanent staff of non-commissioned officers from the regular army attached to the Yeomanry to instruct in drill, run the administration etc. and I wondered if my man had been among them.

The records of these men are in a separate file (ref no.1882/22) and the first documents I saw on opening this file were the missing pages of the muster roll, with the sergeant listed, and dating from 1882; they had been sent to us by the Yeomanry HQ in those separate bundles, and it was a joy to me to be able to reunite the pages and their register, probably for the first time since they were created. Nature abhorring a vacuum has nothing on an archivist with an incomplete series, so to be able to fill a gap, even only to the extent of one year, is very satisfying. It only remains to try and find the rolls for 1870-1881.

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