Royal Brecknockshire Militia
military unit
The Brecknockshire Militia, later the Royal Brecknockshire Rifles, was an auxiliary regiment reorganised from earlier precursor units in the Welsh county of Brecknockshire during the 17th Century. Primarily intended for home defence, it served in Britain and Ireland through all Britain's major wars. After a series of shortlived mergers it was finally amalgamated into the Royal South Wales Borderers Militia in 1876. This regiment's title and headquarters at Brecon were adopted in 1881 when the South Wales Borderers (SWB) was formed as the local regiment of the Regular Army. The battalion saw active service during the Second Boer War. It became at Special Reserve battalion of the SWB and trained thousands of recruits for the fighting battalions of the regiment during World War I. After 1921 the militia had only a shadowy existence until its final abolition in 1953.
Brecknockshire Trained Bands
The universal obligation to military service in the Shire levy was long established in England and was extended to Wales. King Henry VIII called a 'Great Muster' in 1539, which showed 2015 men available for service in the Lordship of Brecknock (including the town of Brecon and the Lordship of Crickhowell).
The legal basis of the militia was updated by two acts of 1557 covering musters (4 & 5 Ph. & M. c.
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This entry incorporates text from “Royal Brecknockshire Militia” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.