There was little to do in Britain other than garrison duties, escorting and guarding prisoners as happened at Edinburgh Castle and some police actions.
[1] In Ireland there was a French supported insurrection in 1798 and British fencible regiments were engaged in some minor pitched battles.
Several fencible regiments were raised in the early 1800s in Britain for the defence of Canada, some of these saw active service during the Anglo-American War of 1812 (see the section (Further information).
[b] The British cavalry and light dragoon regiments were raised to serve in any part of Great Britain and consisted of a force of between 14,000 and 15,000 men.
[201] Five were to have been raised in Scotland and two in England, with a strength of ten companies each:[202] The total number of fencible infantry corps embodied 1793–1802 was thus 61 battalions of which 29 were Scottish, 15 were English, 4 Irish, 1 Welsh and 2 Manx.
"Most of the Fencible Corps," writes Sir John Fortescue "were created either in 1794 or 1798, and to judge by the old Monthly Army Lists of 1799, the greatest number of them in existence at one time in Great Britain was 31 regiments of cavalry and 45 battalions of infantry.
But by March 1800 the greater part of the cavalry had been disembodied, so that it would not be wise to reckon the Fencibles as exceeding, at their highest figure, twenty to twenty-five thousand men".
[205] The disbandment of the fencibles in 1802, and "the establishment in that year of a permanent Scots Militia, rendered unnecessary any further organisation on a large scale of this more ancient but partial system of national defence".
All high-spirited Young Men, who are able and willing to serve their King and Country, in support of their most excellent and happy Constitution, the Envy of the World, have now a glorious opportunity of shewing their Zeal in the Warwickshire Regiment of Cavalry, to serve only during the present War, and within the Kingdom of Great Britain, to be commanded by the Right Hon.
In a rare work, consisting of four quarto pages, compiled by Colonel Sir John Sinclair, and entitled, Account of the Rothesay and Caithness Fencibles, there is an excellent frontispiece illustrating the uniform of the regiment, which is exactly as General Stewart describes it (Scobie 1914, p. 360).