Reading provided a Troop of 24 horsemen on 12 September 1542 for King Henry VIII's campaign in Scotland that culminated in the Battle of Solway Moss on 24 November.

On the death of King Edward VI Reading supplied a detachment of 10 men to support Queen Mary I against the rebellion of the Duke of Northumberland, and later to attend the coronation.

[24] With the passing of the threat of invasion, the trained bands declined in the early 17th Century, though there was a great muster in 1614 and the Berkshire TBs continued to carry out annual exercises.

Captain William Lower led his Berkshire company through Brackley in Northamptonshire, where they met several mutineers from Daventry who told them tales of being sold into slavery.

After the inconclusive Battle of Edgehill Prince Rupert led the advance guard of the Royalist army through Berkshire, when the Parliamentarians evacuated Reading on 4 November.

[21][39][40][41][42] Berkshire was fought over continually in the subsequent campaigns in the Thames Valley – Reading changed hands several times – and effectively each side drew a regiment of TBs from the county for garrison duty.

In April 1644 Colonel Sir Richard Neville, the Royalist High Sheriff of Berkshire, was commissioned to raise an Auxiliary TB regiment, apparently of 3 companies, to garrison Reading.

At the Second Battle of Newbury on 27 October 1644, Major John Blagrave of Reading commanded the 300-strong Berkshire detachment of horse under Col Dalbier in the Parliamentarian army.

During the latter stages of the First Civil War, Col John Barkstead was appointed Parliamentary Governor of Reading 12 August 1645, and the town had to support the cost of his regiment.

The British victory at the St. James's Day Battle on 25–26 July removed the threat and the militia were sent home, However, when the Dutch raided the Medway the following year, Berkshire sent three companies and a troop of horse under Lt-Col Saunders to the Isle of Wight once more.

[21][77][78] The militia were embodied in response to the Jacobite rising of 1715: on 25 October the Lord Lieutenant of Berkshire, the 2nd Duke of St Albans, was ordered to bring the county regiment, including the troop of horse, up to full strength and efficiency.

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.

[57][82][55][83][84] Berkshire was given a quota of 560 men to fill, and by the end of 1758 the Lord Lieutenant, the 3rd Duke of St Albans, had appointed Sir Willoughby Aston, 5th Baronet of Wadley, as colonel, Arthur Vansittart as lieutenant-colonel, and the Reading MP John Dodd as major.

[6][30][31][28][34][85][86][87][88][89] In June 1760 the regiment left barracks to join an encampment outside Winchester where they were brigaded with the 34th Foot and the Gloucestershire, Bedfordshire, Dorsetshire and Wiltshire Militia, all under the command of Lieutenant-General the Earl of Effingham.

[28][90] On 18 March 1761 Col Aston was ordered to send two of his companies by the fastest route from Reading to Witney in Oxfordshire in support of the civil magistrates in suppressing riots.

Here the completely raw militia were exercised as part of a division alongside regular troops while providing a reserve in case of French invasion of South East England.

Two thirds of the Berkshires were assembled at the Forbury, Reading, on 18 December, and a week later orders were issued to call out the remainder and to hold a ballot to fill vacancies.

[102][103] 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.

On 6 March, while commanding a detachment escorting French prisoners from Rye to Dover, Lieutenant the Earl of Barrymore died when the fusil he was carrying went off as he boarded his carriage.

In July the regiment joined a large encampment at Broadwater Common, Waterdown Forest, outside Tunbridge Wells, one of several established in the invasion-threatened South East of England.

In February 1798 the Berkshire Supplementary Militia was called out for training, and in May half of them (374 men) were drafted into the main body at Bristol, bringing it up to a strength of 12 companies.

When the Supplementary Militia were stood down another 150 men left the regiment, so that ballots had to be held to maintain its strength: by July 1800, while at Netley Camp outside Southampton, it was only 500 strong, half the numbers in 1798.

During the summer of 1805, when Napoleon was massing his 'Army of England' at Boulogne for a projected invasion, the regiment, with 611 men in 10 companies under the command of Lt-Col Thomas William Ravenshaw, was still stationed at Ipswich as part of Maj-Gen John Robinson's brigade.

Luddite riots began around Nottingham in November 1811, and the RBM was sent to the city from Weeley Barracks in Essex to reinforce the Local Militia and Volunteer Cavalry.

A number of the Berkshire Local Militia also volunteered for overseas service in December 1813, but they were too late to be accepted as a formed regiment, though many transferred to the Regular Army.

Although officers continued to be commissioned into the militia and ballots were still held, the regiments were rarely assembled for training and the permanent staffs of sergeants and drummers were progressively reduced.

[28][151] 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 called out to replace them for home defence.

From 1855 the shako plate had a stag beneath a branch of an oak tree, surrounded by a garter inscribed Pro aris et focis ('For hearth and home').

[168] The stag and oak tree was later adopted by the whole of Princess Charlotte's (Royal Berkshire Regiment) for their Home Service helmet plates and Glengarry caps.

[148][169] In 1792 Col the Earl of Radnor commissioned Zerubbabel Wyvill, a harpsichord and music master of Bray, near Maidenhead, to compose a Berkshire Militia March.