Clare Militia
military unit
The Clare Militia was an Irish Militia regiment from 1798 to 1909. It was based in County Clare (now in the Republic of Ireland). At first an infantry unit, it was converted to artillery in 1882, making it the last artillery militia unit raised in the British forces. It was disbanded in 1909.
Background
Although there are scattered references to town guards in 1584, no organised militia existed in Ireland before 1660. After that date, some militia forces were organised in the reign of King Charles II but it was not until 1715 that the Irish Militia came under statutory authority. During the 18th Century there were various Volunteer Associations and unofficial militia units controlled by the landowners, concerned mainly with internal security. During the War of American Independence, the threat of invasion by the Americans' allies, France and Spain, appeared to be serious. While most of the Regular Army was fighting overseas, the coasts of England and Wales were defended by the embodied Militia, but Ireland had no equivalent force. The Parliament of Ireland passed a Militia Act, but this failed to create an effective force.
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The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as military unit. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 31, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q96375084. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1798, 1909, 1882 and 1584.
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This entry incorporates text from “Clare 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.