English Army
army of the Kingdom of England (and Commonwealth of England), until 1707
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.
Origins
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".
Tudor and Stuart organisation
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.
“English Army” enters the record as army of the Kingdom of England (and Commonwealth of England), until 1707. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what English, Army and army can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “English Army” 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.