THE BUCKINGHAMSHIRE POSSE COMITATUS 1798 The Posse Comitatus, p. 632 THE BUCKINGHAMSHIRE POSSE COMITATUS 1798 IAN F. W. BECKETT BUCKINGHAMSHIRE RECORD SOCIETY No. 22 MCMLXXXV Copyright ~,' 1985 by the Buckinghamshire Record Society ISBN 0 801198 18 8 This volume is dedicated to Professor A. C. Chibnall TYPESET BY QUADRASET LIMITED, MIDSOMER NORTON, BATH, AVON PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY ANTONY ROWE LIMITED, CHIPPENHAM, WILTSHIRE FOR THE BUCKINGHAMSHIRE RECORD SOCIETY CONTENTS Acknowledgments p,'lge vi Abbreviations vi Introduction vii Tables 1 Variations in the Totals for the Buckinghamshire Posse Comitatus xxi 2 Totals for Each Hundred xxi 3-26 List of Occupations or Status xxii 27 Occupational Totals xxvi 28 The 1801 Census xxvii Note on Editorial Method xxviii Glossary xxviii THE POSSE COMITATUS 1 Appendixes 1 Surviving Partial Returns for Other Counties 363 2 A Note on Local Military Records 365 Index of Names 369 Index of Places 435 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The editor gratefully acknowledges the considerable assistance of Mr Hugh Hanley and his staff at the Buckinghamshire County Record Office in the preparation of this edition of the Posse Comitatus for publication. Mr Hanley was also kind enough to make a number of valuable suggestions on the first draft of the introduction which also benefited from the ideas (albeit on their part unknowingly) of Dr J. Broad of the North East London Polytechnic and Dr D. R. Mills of the Open University whose lectures on Bucks village society at Stowe School in April 1982 proved immensely illuminating. None of the above, of course, bear any responsibility for any errors of interpretation on my part. A great debt is also owed to Miss G. M. de Fraine who undertook the formidable task of compiling the index of over 23,500 names and without whose labours this edition would have been even longer in preparation than it has been already. Thanks are also due to the other county archivists of England and Wales who so kindly answered enquiries on similar returns in their possession and to Miss Joan Cooper of the University of Salford and Mrs A. P. Beckett who typed portions of the manuscript. Lastly, I would like to thank the two general editors of the Buckinghamshire Record Society--Mr G. R. Elvey and his successor, Dr Eileen Scarf f--for their help and especially their patience over a number of years. The Council of the Buckinghamshire Record Society wish to express their gratitude to the Trustees of the Marc Fitch Fund for their generous grant in aid of the printing costs. ABBREVIATIONS Agric HR Agricultural History Review BL Add MSS British Library, Additional MSS Bodleian Library Bodleian Library, Oxford BRO Buckinghamshire Record Office Econ HR Economic History Review EHR English Historical Review HMC Historical Manuscripts Commission Huntington Library Huntington Library, San Marino, California PRO Public Record Office vi INTRODUCTION Complete returns for the Posse Comitatus of 1798 survive for no county in England and Wales other than Buckinghamshire. Summaries or partial lists exist for some counties, while for others there is merely an allusion in the lieutenancy papers to the returns being made, or else no record at all (appendix 1). The Posse Comitatus for Buckinghamshire survives in two manuscript copies. One is in the British Library (Stowe MSS 805 and 806) and the other is in the Buckinghamshire Record Office (L/P 15 and 16). Each consists of two bound volumes of approximately 1100 pages excluding attached tables and circulars. The copy in the British Library is altogether the neater of the two with, for example, all Christian names written out in full, whereas the copy in the Buckinghamshire Record Office appears to be the work of several different hands, is generally more untidily written and usually abbreviates Christian names. It also lacks some of the summary tables included in the copy in the British Library. From this circumstantial evidence it might be assumed that the Buckinghamshire Record Office manuscript was the original working compilation from individual parish returns and the British Library copy a subsequent presentation version to the lord lieutenant, the Marquess of Buckingham. There is, however, no substantial difference in the text of either copy, the Buckinghamshire Record Office version being the text reproduced here. The Posse Comitatus as a Military Document By February 1798 Britain had been at war with revolutionary France for five years. In that time each of her allies in the First Coalition had fallen to or made accommodation with the French. Holland had been overrun in May 1795 and Piedmont in March 1796. Prussia had accepted terms with France in April 1795, Spain in July 1795 and Austria in October 1797. With the fall of Holland and the expulsion of the British forces from the continent the French had been able to seize the Dutch Fleet. Spain's subsequent entry into the war against Britain in October 1796 further enhanced French naval power and increased the dangers of invasion of Britain itself. The Convention had entertained some plans for landings in Cornwall or Wales in the spring of 1793 but its own domestic crises had interfered with such plans. These were, however, revived in the summer of 1796. The first opportunity that presented itself was intervention in Ireland, and in December 1796 General Hoche attempted to land with 15,000 troops in Bantry Bay. Bad weather prevented the landing and Hoche and the Directory's war minister, Carnot, then planned raids on Bristol vii and Newcastle. The Newcastle expedition of the L~gion Franche was frustrated by bad weather and mutiny in the expeditionary force while the Bristol expedition of William Tate's L~gion Noire was equally beset by gales in the Bristol Channel which necessitated an eventual landing at Fishguard in Cardigan Bay on 24 February 1797. Tate's force was forced to surrender after two days but it caused considerable panic and took the government by surprise since military advisers had anticipated the south coast as the area of greatest risk. Some of the immediate danger was averted by the naval victories over the Spanish Fleet at Cape St. Vincent in February 1797 and by the formerly mutinous crews of Duncan's Fleet over the Dutch at Camperdown in October 1797, which forestalled a renewed project for an Irish landing. On 26 October 1797, however, the Directory established the Army of England, under the command of the young Bonaparte, which was to amount to 56,424 troops by May 1798. It was against this background that the military preparations for the defence of Britain were formulated. The most pressing problem when war began in January 1793 had been the need to repair the deficiencies resulting from the demobilization of the army and navy at the conclusion of the American war ten years before. As far as the army was concerned, there was a reversion to the traditional expedient of offering commissions to those able to raise independent companies or complete fencible regiments (for home service) as well as reliance upon recruiting parties raising men by beat of drum. In Buckinghamshire, for example, the 1st Marquess of Buckingham (lord lieutenant 1782-1813), was able to use his influence to enable his wife's half-brother's illegitimate son, Sir George Nugent, to raise a new regiment (the 85th Foot) by beat of drum in the county between October 1793 and February 1794(1). An additional source of manpower immediately available was the militia which was embodied in December 1792. Under the 'New Militia' system in operation from 1757 onwards each county was required to submit to the Privy Council an annual return of men between the ages of eighteen and forty-five eligible to serve in the militia and to organize a compulsory ballot to fill the quota determined by the latter. It was, however, within the means of large numbers of those balloted to escape service and in practice the burden of undertaking five years' service in the militia and a peacetime obligation of twenty-eight days' training per annum fell on those members of society willing to accept, or, through destitution, unable to avoid service(z). The quotas had rarely been changed since 1757 with the result that in the case of Buckinghamshire the quota had remained at 560 men despite considerable variations in the number of able-bodied males returned. Once embodied, however, the militia was generally not available for local county defence and, in the case of the Royal Bucks King's Own Militia, it served successively at Winchester, Weymouth, Southsea, Portsea, Bristol and Chelmsford between April 1793 and February 1798(3) . Another source of increasing the possible manpower available for viii home defence was to exploit that loyalist upsurge evident in the association movement of 1792 and in the first offers of voluntary service in early 1793. Whether the threat of invasion or that of insurrection was a more important factor in the creation of the infantry volunteers and their mounted yeomanry equivalent is a matter of some disputeC4). In the case of Buckinghamshire it can be said that, although far from the sea, the county did have an important strategic position. In May 1798, for example, the Marquess of Buckingham reminded the Duke of Portland of the importance of Newport Pagnell in commanding the 'great roads' from London to Coventry, Chester, Northampton and Lancashire. He similarly wrote of the county's position in March 1799 and in both January 1804 and August 180515). Nevertheless, those units raised in the county in 1794 and 1797 were clearly also intended for use against internal threats and, indeed, were used as such in both the food disturbances of 1795 and the anti-militia disturbances of 1796.