English Army

The English Army was the army of the Kingdom of England from 1661 to 1707. It was raised by King Charles II after the Stuart Restoration of 1660 saw him ascend to the English throne, and consisted partly of personnel who were veterans of either the Royalist units Charles II maintained while exiled in France or the New Model Army. The English army was the second standing army of the English state after the New Model Army, and was raised at the same time as the Irish and Scottish armies.

It consisted of a number of infantry, cavalry and artillery units, and fought in numerous conflicts in both Great Britain and abroad, including the Second and Third Anglo-Dutch wars, Nine Years' War and War of the Spanish Succession. The first English marines, which later became the Royal Marines, were formed as part of the English Army in 1664. In 1707, England was merged with the Kingdom of Scotland under the Acts of Union 1707 to form the Kingdom of Great Britain, and the English Army was merged with its Scottish counterpart to form the British Army.

Primitive steps towards standing armed forces began in the Middle Ages, the Assize of Arms of 1252 issued by King Henry III provided that small landholders should be armed and trained with a bow, and those of more wealth would be required to possess and be trained with sword, dagger and longbow. That Assize referred to a class of Forty shilling freeholders, who became identified with 'yeomanry', and states "Those with land worth annual 40s–100s will be armed/trained with bow and arrow, sword, buckler and dagger".

Prior to the English Civil War in 1642 the English Tudor and Stuart monarchs maintained a personal bodyguard of Yeomen of the Guard (created by Henry VII) and the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen at Arms or "gentlemen pensioners" (created by Henry VIII), and a few locally raised companies to garrison important places such as Berwick on Tweed, Portsmouth, and Calais (before it was recaptured by France in 1558). Troops for foreign expeditions were raised on an ad hoc basis in either country by its King, when required. This was a development of the feudal concept of fief (in which a lord was obliged to raise a certain quota of knights, men-at-arms and yeomanry, in return for his right to occupy land).

In practice, noblemen and professional regular soldiers were commissioned by the monarch to supply troops, raising their quotas by indenture from a variety of sources. A Commission of Array would be used to raise troops for a foreign expedition, while various Militia Acts directed that (in theory) the entire male population who owned property over a certain amount in value, was required to keep arms at home and periodically train or report to musters. The musters were usually chaotic affairs, used mainly by the Lord Lieutenants and other officers to draw their pay and allowances, and by the troops as an excuse for a drink after perfunctory drill.

In 1642, at the start of the English Civil War both the Royalists (Cavaliers) and Parliament (Roundheads) raised men when and where they could, and both claimed legal justification. Parliament claimed to be justified by its own recent "Militia Ordinance", while the king claimed the old-fashioned "Commissions of Array". For example, in Cornwall the Royalist leader Sir Ralph Hopton indicted the enemy before the grand jury of the county for disturbing the peace, and expelled them by using the posse comitatus. In effect, both sides assembled local forces wherever they could do so by valid written authority.

After two years of ruinous but indecisive military campaigning, Parliament passed the Self-denying Ordinance (by which members of both Houses of Parliament were deprived of military office, a measure originally introduced to replace some high-ranking officers who were suspected of disloyalty or defeatism), and created the New Model Army, the first professional standing army in Modern English history. An experienced soldier, Sir Thomas Fairfax, was appointed its Lord General.

The New Model Army proved supreme in field, no more so than in the Second English Civil War which was succinctly described by Sir Winston Churchill: