The universal obligation to military service in the Shire levy was long established in England and its legal basis was updated by two acts of 1557 (4 & 5 Ph.

[1][2][3][4][5] The Surrey Trained Bands formed part of the army at Tilbury during the Armada campaign of 1588, and some elements saw active service during the English Civil War.

An adjutant and drill sergeants were provided to each regiment from the Regular Army, and arms and accoutrements were supplied when the county had secured 60 per cent of its quota of recruits.

The Peace of Fontainebleau was signed on 3 November 1762, ending the war, and the regiment was quartered at Lewes in Sussex when on 3 December it was ordered to march back to Surrey to be disembodied.

The Surrey regiment was embodied on 26 March 1778,[8][10][22][24][25][26] and that summer was at Coxheath Camp near Maidstone, which was the army's largest training camp, where the Militia were exercised as part of a division alongside Regular troops while providing a reserve in case of French invasion of South East England.

Each battalion had two small field-pieces or 'battalion guns' attached to it, manned by men of the regiment instructed by a Royal Artillery sergeant and two gunners.

[10][31][32] In view of the worsening international situation in late 1792 the militia was called out, even though Revolutionary France did not declare war on Britain until 1 February 1793.

[8][10][22][24][31] The French Revolutionary Wars saw a new phase for the English militia: they were embodied for a whole generation, and became regiments of full-time professional soldiers (though restricted to service within the British Isles), which the regular army increasingly saw as a prime source of recruits.

[19][33] The militia order of precedence balloted for in 1793 (Surrey was 18th) remained in force throughout the French Revolutionary War.

At the end of 1797 it was stationed at Sunderland in the North East and York District, brigaded with other militia regiments.

On 1 September 1805, with 608 men in eight companies under the command of Lt-Col John Waterhouse, was at the Western Heights as part of Maj-Gen Lord Forbes's militia brigade.

[8][10][22][48] At the beginning of the campaign several regular regiments including the Scots Guards were hurriedly brought up to strength with militia volunteers before embarking for Belgium.

[8][22] Although officers continued to be commissioned into the militia and ballots were still held during the long peace after the Battle of Waterloo, the regiments were rarely assembled for training and the permanent staffs of sergeants and drummers were progressively reduced.

In that year the King drew the lots for individual regiments and the resulting list remained in force with minor amendments until the end of the militia.

[10] War having broken out with Russia in 1854 and an expeditionary force sent to the Crimea, the Militia were called out for home defence.

[56] Under the 'Localisation of the Forces' scheme introduced by the Cardwell Reforms of 1872, Militia regiments were brigaded with their local regular and Volunteer battalions – for the 1st RSM this was with the 31st (Huntingdonshire) and 70th (Surrey) Regiments of Foot and the 3rd RSM in Sub-District No 47 (County of Surrey) with a shared depot at Kingston.

[10][56][57][58][59][60] Although often referred to as brigades, the sub-districts were purely administrative organisations, but in a continuation of the Cardwell Reforms a mobilisation scheme began to appear in the Army List from December 1875.

The Militia Reserve consisted of present and former militiamen who undertook to serve overseas in case of war.

[8][24][67] After the disasters of Black Week at the start of the Second Boer War in December 1899, most of the Regular Army was sent to South Africa, and many militia units were embodied to replace them for home defence and to garrison certain overseas stations.

[8][10][22][24][57][68] The battalion embarked on 5 June 1901 at Southampton Docks aboard the hired transport Idaho and disembarked at Port Elizabeth in South Africa on 1 July with a strength of 23 officers and 617 other ranks (ORs) under its commanding officer, Lt-Col Sir George Douglas Clerk, 8th Baronet of Penicuik.

It occupied various posts along the line of communications from Port Elizabeth to the Orange River bridge at Norvalspont, with battalion headquarters established at Colesberg and a detachment at Stormberg.

The Treaty of Vereeniging was signed on 31 May 1902, and in June the 3rd East Surreys concentrated at Green Point to embark for home.

There were moves to reform the Auxiliary Forces (Militia, Yeomanry and Volunteers) to take their place in the six Army Corps proposed by the Secretary of State for War, St John Brodrick.

On the outbreak of war the 3rd East Surreys claimed to be the only SR battalion with a full complement of officers, of whom all the juniors had been trained by the 1st Bn.

Number 8 Company was formed in late March 1915 from a nucleus of the battalion machine gun and signal sections.

On 19 November 1918, just after the Armistice, the 3rd Bn moved from Dover to Bridge of Allan in Scotland, and then in February 1919 to Glasgow, where there was industrial unrest.

10th East Surreys was initially camped on the Glacis at Dover until mid-November when it moved into Old Mills Barracks, training for overseas service.

[22][24][57] The following officers commanded the regiment as Colonel or (after the 1852 reforms) as Lieutenant-Colonel commandant:[10][15][57][83][84] The uniform of the regiment in 1759 was red with white facings, the drummers' coats decorated with red and white lace and the words 'SURREY MILITIA' embroidered on the flap of their caps.

[89][90] When the regiment was granted its 'Royal' title in 1804 the facings changed to blue, appropriate for a royal regiment[41][23] About 1810 the officers wore an oval gilt shoulder-belt plate bearing a crown within a garter bearing the words 'FIRST ROYAL SURREY REGT', the whole superimposed on a crowned star.

In the 1870s officers' and ORs' cap badges showed the Roman numeral 'XX' within a crowned circle bearing the inscription 'FIRST ROYAL SURREY' – despite the fact that militia regiments had been ordered not to use their 1833 numbers.