Queen's Own Worcestershire Hussars

The Queen's Own Worcestershire Hussars was a Yeomanry regiment of the British Army. First raised in 1794, it participated in the Second Boer War and World War I as horsed cavalry before being converted to an anti-tank regiment of the Royal Artillery for service in World War II. In 1956, it was amalgamated with the Warwickshire Yeomanry to form the Queen's Own Warwickshire and Worcestershire Yeomanry. The lineage is maintained by B (Staffordshire, Warwickshire and Worcestershire Yeomanry) Squadron, part of The Royal Yeomanry.

French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars

The Queen's Own Worcestershire Hussars were formed in 1794, as the Worcestershire Yeomanry, when King George III was on the throne, William Pitt the Younger was the prime minister of Great Britain, and across the English Channel, Britain was faced by a French nation that had recently guillotined its king and possessed a revolutionary army numbering half a million men. The Prime Minister proposed on 14 March 1794 that the counties form a force of Volunteer Yeomanry Cavalry, which could be called on by the king to defend the country against invasion or by the lord lieutenant to subdue any civil disorder within the country.

Worcestershire responded quickly to this call: a meeting held on 29 April at the Guildhall in Worcester voted to raise money to augment the existing militia and to raise a corps of yeomanry cavalry. A further meeting on 15 August resolved to raise two yeomanry troops of 56 men each. This offer of service having been accepted, the Hon. John Somers Cocks was appointed captain and Thomas Spooner as lieutenant of the first troop, the Worcester Troop of Gentlemen and Yeomen, which held its first parade in front of the Unicorn Inn at Worcester on 25 October and began drilling at Powick. The second troop was raised in the summer of 1796 under the command of Spooner, and Capt Somers Cocks was promoted to major to command what was now a squadron.