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Rh land, although, doubtless from its younger sons, the class furnished retainers for the great lords, men-at-arms and archers for the wars, and also tradesmen for the towns. Stubbs (Const. Hist. vol. iii.) refers to them as "a body which in antiquity of possession and purity of extraction was probably superior to the classes that looked down upon it as ignoble," and Medley (Eng. Const. Hist.) describes the yeomen as in the 15th century representing on the whole "the small freeholders of the feudal manor." Holinshed, in his Chronicle, following Sir T. Smyth (De republica Anglorum), and W. Harrison (Description of England), describes them as having free land worth £6 annually, and in times past 40s., and as not entitled to bear arms, being for the most part farmers to gentlemen, and this description may be accepted as the popular idea of the yeoman in the 16th century. He formed the intermediate class between the gentry and the labourers and artisans, the line of demarcation, however, being not drawn very distinctly.

The yeomen were the smaller landholders, and in the 15th century were practically identical with the forty-shilling freeholders who exercised the franchise under the act of 1430. Occasionally they found their way into parliament, for in 1446 the sheriffs were forbidden to return valletti (i.e. yeomen) as members, but this prohibition had very little result. Soon, however, the name appears to have included tenant farmers as well as small freeholders. Thus Latimer, in his famous sermon before Edward VI., says: "My father was a yeoman, but had no land of his own"; the bishop represents the yeoman as an exceedingly prosperous person, and the same opinion had been expressed about a century before by Sir John Fortescue in his Governance of England. The decay of the class began with the formation of large sheep farms in the 16th century, but its decline was very slow, and the yeomen furnished many sturdy recruits to the parliamentary party during the Civil War. Their decay was accelerated during the 18th century, when many of them were bought out by the large landowners, while they received another blow when the factory system destroyed the country's domestic industries. Many writers lament the decay of the yeoman in the 18th and 19th centuries, but this is partly accounted for by the fact that they exclude all tenant farmers from the class, which they confine to men cultivating their own land. Thus the wheel has come full circle and the word means to-day much the same as it meant in the early part of the 15th century. YEOMANRY, the name given to the volunteer mounted troops of the home defence army of Great Britain, ever since their original formation; it indicated that recruiting, organization and command were upon a county basis, the county gentlemen office ring the force, the farmers and yeomen serving in its ranks, and all alike providing their own horses. Although the yeomanry was created in 1761, it was not organized until 1794. Under the stimulus of the French War recruiting was easy, and 5000 men were quickly enrolled. A little later, when more cavalry was needed, the Provisional Cavalry Act was passed, whereby a sort of revived knight-service was established, every owner of ten horses having to find and equip a horseman, and all who owned fewer than ten, grouped by tens of horses, similarly finding one. But an amending act was soon passed, by which yeomanry cavalry could be substituted for provisional cavalry in the county quota. This gave a great stimulus to yeomanry recruiting, as similar enactments had done in the case of the infantry volunteers. But even so the provisional cavalry, which was embodied only in counties that did not supply the quota in yeomanry, was stronger than the yeomanry at the peace of Amiens. At that peace, partly with a view to preserving internal order, partly because of the probable renewal of the war, the yeomanry was retained, although the provisional cavalry was disbanded. There was thus a nucleus for expansion when Napoleon's threatened invasion (1803–5) called out the defensive powers of the country, and as early as December 1803 there were in England, Scotland and Ireland 44,000 yeomen. At the same time the limitations as to place, of service (some undertaking to serve in any part of Great Britain, some within a specified military district, most only in their own county) were abolished. The unit of organization was the troop of 80–100, but most of the force was grouped in regiments of five or more troops, or in "corps" of three or four troops. Permanent paid adjutants and staff sergeants were allowed to corps and regiments, but no assistance was given in the shape of officers on the active list and serving non-commissioned officers of the army and militia. Equipment, supply and mobilization arrangements were purely regimental, and through all the war years most of the troops and squadrons were ready to take the field, with equipment, food and forage, complete at a day's notice. They were trained as light cavalry, and armed with sabre and pistol. But a few town corps had mounted riflemen, and several corps, both in town and country, had one or more dismounted troops, who were carried on vehicles similar to the "Expedition or Military Fly" pictured by Rowlandson.

From the extinction of Chartism to the South African War the history of the yeomanry is uneventful. The strength of the force gradually sank to 10,000. But when it became apparent that mounted troops would play a decisive part in the war against the Boers, the yeomanry again came to the front. Of its 10,000 serving officers and men, 3000 went to South Africa in newly formed battalions of "Imperial Yeomanry," armed arid organized purely as mounted rifles, and to these were added over 32,000 fresh men, for whom the yeomanry organization at home and at the seat of war provided the cadres and training, while the home yeomanry not only filled up its gaps but expanded. In 1901 the yeomanry, now all styled "Imperial," was remodelled; and the strength of regiments was equalized on a four-squadron basis. In the prevailing conditions practically all regiments were able to recruit up to the increased establishment, and the strength of the force was more than trebled. Fresh regiments were formed, some in the towns, others on the nucleus of special corps disbanded at the close of the South African War. In 1907 the yeomanry became part of the new Territorial Force (see, § ). YEOMEN OF THE GUARD, originally "Yeomen of the Guard of (the body of) our Lord the King," or in the 15th-century Latin, "Valecti garde (corporis) domini Regis," the title (maintained with but a slight variation since their institution in 1485, the official wording under Edward VII. being "The King's Body Guard of the Yeomen of the Guard") of a permanent military corps in attendance on the sovereign of England, as part of the royal household, whose duties, now purely ceremonial, were originally that of the sovereign's personal bodyguard. They are the oldest existing body of the kind, having an unbroken record from 1485, as well as the oldest military body in England. Before that time there had been forms of royal guard, but no permanent institution. Under Edward I. we find in England the "crossbowmen of the household," and under Edward II. an "Archer guard of the King's body"; but the "Archers of the King," "of the crown" or "of the household," who appear in the records up to 1454, seem to have had no continuous establishments. Apparently each sovereign, on coming to the throne, established a new Guard of his own particular followers. It was not till Henry VII. created the "Yeomen of the Guard" that the royal bodyguard came into regular existence. The first warrants to individual "Yeomen of the Guard" date from September 16, 1485, and it is a fair inference that the Guard was created by the king on the battlefield of Bosworth (August 22, 1485), its first members being men who had shared Henry's exile in Brittany, followed him on his return, and fought as his private Guard in that action. The warrant of September 18, 1485, now in the Record Office, "to William Brown, Yeoman of the King's Guard," corroborates this view—"in consideration of the good service that oure humble and faithful subject William Browne Yeoman of oure Garde hath heretofore doon unto us as well beyonde the see as at our victorieux journeye." It is argued by Sir Reginald Hennell that the title of "Yeomen of the Guard" signified Henry VII.'s intention to choose the special protectors of his person not from the ranks of the nobility, but from the class just below them (see ), who had 