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.

It was an important element in the country's defence at the time of the Spanish Armada in the 1580s, and control of the militia was one of the areas of dispute between King Charles I and Parliament that led to the English Civil War.

The Somerset Trained Bands were active in local skirmishes and sieges during the early part of the civil war, and later in controlling the country under the Commonwealth and Protectorate.

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

The regimental adjutant, Captain Slocombe, having died, Poulett successfully lobbied the Secretary of State to allow Lieutenant William Corfield of the 33rd Foot to take up the post.

Corfield had recently married an heiress, and his friends persuaded him to leave the regular army with its likelihood of overseas service and stay in England to manage the estate.

While balloting was held in Somerset in November 1761 to replace the time-expired men in the ranks, the lieutenancy published advertisements in December seeking candidates for junior officers.

Earl Poulett died in 1764 and Lieutenant-Colonel John Helliar remained in command of the 1st Somerset until his retirement in 1767, when Lt-Col Coplestone Warre Bampfylde was promoted to colonel.

On 15 May it marched to Wells, where it was inspected: although the weapons were well-kept, the old accoutrements were now 'totally unfit for service', and they were replaced at the expense of the regiment rather than waiting for the Board of Ordnance to supply new ones.

Coxheath 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.

A large mob formed and the Somersets armed with bayonets and assisted by the Herefordshire Militia attempted to storm the Brecknocks' lines, despite the efforts of the officers.

The regiment (840 strong) under Lt-Col the Earl of Cork spent the summer as part of the 4th Brigade of the Plymouth Garrison, accommodated in camp on Maker Heights.

[30][33] 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 in the British Isles), which the regular army increasingly saw as a prime source of recruits.

It provided guards and escorts for the prisoners-of-war at Falmouth and in May assisted the civil authorities in putting down riots among the tin miners at Bodmin and Launceston.

On 18 October the camp broke up and the regiment returned for the winter to Canterbury, where a 70-man detachment helped to put out a fire in the town on 29 April 1796.

The men at Yarmouth were drilled on the coast defence guns, and the Grenadier and Light Companies were readied to join composite battalions formed in the district.

In July the militiamen who had been stood down in 1799 were re-embodied: drafts of 190 men were marched from Taunton and Wells respectively, in order to bring the companies back up to an average strength of 80.

On 13 November the regiment began to march back to Somerset, where six companies were stationed at Taunton and the others at Somerton, Langport, Curry Rivel and Wellington.

Both regiments had detachments of selected Sharpshooters, and early in November the district commander, Maj-Gen Thomas Grosvenor, held a competition between them, the best marksmen to be awarded a red feather in their cap.

However, on 23 August it started out for Weymouth where both the 1st and 2nd Somersets were camped with the 1st Staffordshire Militia in a brigade commanded by Maj-Gen Lord Charles FitzRoy, while the King was in residence at Gloucester Lodge.

When the camp at Weymouth broke up, the regiment left on 9 October and marched to join a brigade at Lewes in East Sussex, where it was stationed at Silverhill with the 2nd Somersets.

That summer Lt-Col Bampfylde volunteered the regiment for overseas service, this time to Spain (where the Peninsular War was in progress) or any part of Europe, but this was politely turned down.

The court-martial revealed that Peculation and other abuses were rife within the regiment, which Maj Yea had tried to halt, in conflict with the adjutant, Capt Graves, who allowed them to continue.

On 6 April some of them made a small breach in the barrack wall and the alarm was sounded, calling out the guard (1st Somerset and Derbyshire Militia).

He resigned, and his eldest son Vere, Viscount Hinton, formerly an Ensign in the 68th Foot and Major of the 1st Somerset Militia since 1846, was appointed colonel in his place.

In that year, after preliminary raining for recruits, the 1st Somerset took part in brigade manoeuvres on Dartmoor with the 1st Devon and 2nd Royal Tower Hamlets Militia, though bad weather meant that opposing units often failed to locate each other in the moorland mists.

[12][18][75][81] The 3rd Bn carried out its annual training at: Willsworthy, Dartmoor (1909); Bulford (1910); Tregantle (1911); Kingsdown near Bath (1912); Scraesdon Fort, Plymouth (1913); Perham Down (1914).

On 8 August went to its war station at Devonport Dockyard where it relieved the two TF battalions of the SLI, who had proceeded there direct from their annual training on Salisbury Plain.

[12][81][82][83][84] The 3rd Bn remained at Devonport until 17 November 1917 when it crossed to Northern Ireland, being stationed at Derry until March 1918, then moved to Holywood Barracks, near Belfast until the end of the war.

[15][92] After it became part of the SLI in 1881, the battalion wore the insignia of that regiment, including the cap badge of a light infantry bugle-horn beneath a Mural crown surmounted by a scroll bearing the Battle honour 'JELLALABAD'.