16th (The Queen's) Lancers

 

 

Other Ranks, 16th (The Queen's) Lancers

 Chapska, c. 1912

The regiment was raised in 1759 by Colonel John Burgoyne as the 16th Regiment of (Light) Dragoons, being the second of the new regiments of light dragoons; it was also known as Burgoyne's Light Horse. In 1766 the regiment was renamed after Queen Charlotte as the 2nd (or The Queen's) Regiment of (Light) Dragoons, the number being an attempt to create a new numbering system for the light dragoon regiments. However, the old system was quickly re-established, with the regiment returning as the 16th (The Queen's) Regiment of (Light) Dragoons in 1769. The regiment arrived in New York in October 1776 for service in the American rebellion.

The regiment was dispatched to Ireland in March 1816 where it was re-designated as a lancer regiment in September 1816, becoming the 16th (The Queen's) Regiment of (Light) Dragoons (Lancers). The regiment was sent to India in 1822 and saw action, using lances, against the Marathas at the siege of Bharatpur in January 1826. The regiment's title was simplified to the 16th (The Queen's) Lancers in 1861. It served in India between 1865 and 1876 and again between 1890 and 1899.

The regiment landed at Cape Colony in January 1900 for service in the Second Boer War and took part in the relief of Kimberley in February 1900. The regiment, which had been based at The Curragh at the start of the First World War, landed in France as part of the 3rd Cavalry Brigade in the 1st Cavalry Division in August 1914 for service on the Western Front. The regiment was retitled as the 16th The Queen's Lancers in 1921 and amalgamated with the 5th Royal Irish Lancers to form the 16th/5th Lancers in 1922.

 

Corporal, 16th Lancers, in full dress uniform, 1900
By Percy William Reynolds

George Townshend, 7th Marquess Townshend of Raynham

 

 

George Townshend, 7th Marquess Townshend of Raynham

 1916–2010

 Dress Tunic, c. 1936

 

Born George John Patrick Dominic Townshend, Lord Townshend was the only son of John Townshend, 6th Marquess Townshend. Lord Townshend studied at Harrow School and was gazetted to the Suffolk and Norfolk Yeomanry on May 23, 1936. The Norfolk Yeomanry was originally a cavalry regiment, but in 1920 the regiment was converted to artillery and in 1924 was constituted as the 108th (Suffolk and Norfolk Yeomanry) Field Brigade, Royal Artillery of the Territorial Army. Lord Townshend reached his majority in 1937, taking his seat in the House of Lords. Though he had previously been serving extra duty since 1937 as an aide-de-camp to Sir W. Edmund Ironside, the General Officer Commanding-in-Chief for the Eastern Command of the Territorial Army, Lord Townshend was officially appointed to that role in April of 1938. He was advanced to lieutenant in May of 1939. When General Ironside was made Chief of the Imperial General Staff in September of 1939, Lord Townshend accompanied him as his personal assistant and was made an acting captain in December. General Ironside’s tenure as Chief of the Imperial General Staff ended in May of 1940 and Lord Townshend relinquished his commission in the Territorial Army on June 3 to accept an emergency commission as a second lieutenant in the Scots Guards. He had volunteered for the 5th (Special Reserve) Battalion (the ski battalion), which was formed to fight the Russians in Finland; but neutral Sweden refused permission for British troops to cross its territory, and the unit was swiftly disbanded. Lord Townshend remained with the Scots Guards until the war’s end; he was made a war substantiative lieutenant in 1941 and temporary captain in 1942. Lord Townshend returned to Raynham after the war, devoting himself to the estate and the Hall. He became the founding chairman of Anglia Television in 1959 and maintained his seat in the House of Lords until the hereditaries were expelled in 1999. Lord Townshend was a member of the United Grand Lodge of England throughout his life.

 

---

Departed the collection in 2024.

Royal Gloucestershire Hussars

 

 

Other Ranks, Royal Gloucestershire Hussars

 Review Order, c. 1911

In 1794, fearing insurrection and faced with the threat of invasion during the French Revolutionary Wars, British Prime Minister William Pitt made the first ever recorded mention of yeoman cavalry when he called for an augmentation of the cavalry for internal defence. The first yeomanry troop raised in Gloucestershire was the 60-strong First or Cheltenham Troop of Gloucestershire Gentlemen and Yeomanry, formed in 1795 by Powell Snell. In total, eight troops had been raised by 1798. All except the Cheltenham Troop were disbanded in 1802 following the Peace of Amiens, and it too was disbanded in 1827.

New troops of yeomanry were raised in the 1830s in response to the Swing Riots. The first such troop established in Gloucestershire was the Marshfield and Dodington Troop, raised in 1830 by William Codrington. Six further troops – officered by nobility and gentry, and recruited largely from among landholders and tenant farmers – were subsequently raised in Gloucestershire, and in 1834 they came together to form the Gloucestershire Yeomanry Cavalry.

In 1847, the regiment adopted a hussar uniform and the name Royal Gloucestershire Hussars. The yeomanry's first deployments were ceremonial and as mounted police during times of civil unrest. The Royal Gloucestershire Hussars' first battle honour was won in South Africa during the Second Boer War, when a contingent of Gloucestershire yeomanry served as mounted infantry in the Imperial Yeomanry.

 

 

Sergeant Major, Royal Gloucestershire Hussars, 1895

By Colonel Philip Henry Smitherman