Royal Militia of the Island of Jersey
military unit
Formed in 1337, the Royal Militia of the Island of Jersey can claim to be the oldest sub-unit of the British Army, although, because it is not a regiment, and was disbanded for decades in the late 20th century, it is not the most senior.
History
A militia force was organised in accordance with the order on 24 July 1203 of King John to provide a "sufficiency of men and money to defend the Island from the enemy". In 1214 Eustace the Monk, a pirate, based in Sark arrived under orders from Philip II of France to harry the Channel Islands. In Guernsey Eustace met a newly raised and locally armed defence force comprising the whole manhood of the Island. This could be considered to be a militia. Jersey would almost certainly have made the same preparations.
In 1336, the exiled King David II of Scotland, from his base in France, raided the island of Jersey. The following year, in response to the threat of a repeat of this incursion, King Edward III ordered Thomas de Ferrers, Warden of the Isles, to levy and equip a militia of "all men capable of bearing arms, and to form them into companies of thousands, hundreds and twenties, and to lead them well-armed and arrayed for the defence of the islands". This created an organised, compulsory, and unpaid militia.
Jersey was invaded by French troops in 1461.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 26, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q16932547. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1337, 1203, 1214 and 1336.
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This entry incorporates text from “Royal Militia of the Island of Jersey” 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.