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] 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.

Under the Act, militia units could be embodied by Royal Proclamation for full-time home defence service in three circumstances:[33][34][35][36] A new 3rd Royal Surrey Militia (3rd RSM) was formed at Kingston upon Thames on 26 March 1853 under the command of Thomas-Chaloner Bisse-Challoner, a Surrey landowner and former officer in the 1st Dragoon Guards.

[7][13][15][21][30][37][38] War having broken out with Russia in 1854 and an expeditionary force sent to the Crimea, the militia began to be called out for home defence.

In 1871 the militia training was combined with that year's extensive Autumn Manoeuvres, and all three Surrey regiments were involved.

[39] The Militia Reserve introduced in 1867 consisted of present and former militiamen who undertook to serve overseas in case of war.

[9][42][43][44][45][46] 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.

[34][42][40][41] 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.

[7][15][30][43][50] The battalion embarked for South Africa with a strength of 21 officers and 637 other ranks, under the command of Lt-Col Ernest Sulivan, a retired regular major.

On arrival in South Africa on 10 April half the battalion went to the Sterkstroom district for blockhouse duty, while the remainder sailed up the coast to land at Port Nolloth.

Here it joined the Namaqualand Field Force, which was dealing with an incursion of Boers into the copper mining district.

Together with a company of Cape Volunteers the 4th East Surreys made a forced march through an enemy-held district to secure an important railway viaduct at Klipfontein, where it arrived on 20 April.

Next day the Boers had gone, and the column pushed on to relieve Okiep, where a garrison including a detachment of the 3rd Queen's (Royal West Surrey Regiment) (the former 2nd RSM) and a large number of miners, both white and Coloured, had been besieged for a month.

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.

As well as its defence responsibilities, the battalion's role was to train and form drafts of reservists, special reservists, recruits and returning wounded for the regular battalions: the 1st Bn served with the BEF on the Western Front for the whole war; the 2nd Bn also went to the Western Front after its arrival from India, but it spent most of the war at Salonika.

At the end of September 1917 it moved to Felixstowe in Suffolk, where it was distributed across a wide area of the Harwich Garrison.

Accordingly, the 4th (ER) Bn formed the 11th (Service) Battalion of the East Surreys at Devonport in the Plymouth defences on 1 November 1914.

About 15 September the brigade moved to Shoreham-by-Sea, where 11th (R) Bn carried on producing drafts for the East Surreys battalions overseas.

After the war it was converted into a service battalion on 8 February 1919 and sent to join the British Army of the Rhine, where it was disbanded on 4 March 1920.

The officers had 'a very handsome Garter Star' as the silver embroidered ornament on the skirts of the short-lived coatee.

There is a marble memorial plaque in All Saints Church, Kingston upon Thames, to the 22 men of the battalion who died during the Second Boer War.

[71] The East Surrey Regiment's 1914-18 memorial gates into All Saint's Churchyard from Kingston Market Place were donated by the 4th Battalion.