From its formal organisation as Trained Bands in 1558 until its final service in the Special Reserve, the Militia regiment of the county carried out internal security and home defence duties in all of Britain's major wars.

[6][7][8][9][10] With invasion threatened in 1539 King Henry VIII held a Great Muster of all the counties, recording the number of armed men available in each hundred or wapentake.

[17] In April 1588, as the threat from the Spanish Armada grew, Nottinghamshire reported 2800 able-bodied men available, and during the crisis that summer actually furnished 1,000 footmen, of whom 400 were trained, together with 100 pioneers, 20 lancers, 60 light horse and 20 'petronels' (the petronel was an early cavalry firearm).

[20] Before the First Bishops' War of 1639, Sir Jacob Astley was charged with organising and reviewing the TBs of a number of North Midland counties, including Nottinghamshire, ahead of a planned invasion of Scotland.

)[29][30] The townspeople and TBs, with a few regular troops, fortified the town and withstood a succession of sieges from May 1643 under the command of Sir Robert Byron and later John, Lord Belasyse.

[8][29] As Parliament tightened its grip on the country after winning the First Civil War it passed new Militia Acts in 1648 and 1650 that replaced lords lieutenant with county commissioners.

The establishment of The Protectorate saw Oliver Cromwell take control of the militia as a paid force under politically selected officers to support his Rule by Major-Generals.

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.

[31][41][42][43][44] Nottinghamshire was given a quota of 480 men to raise,[45] but failed to do so, partly because the Lord Lieutenant, Thomas Pelham-Holles, 1st Duke of Newcastle, was opposed to the militia, and his Pelham family members were powerful in the county.

There was also widespread anti-militia feeling in the county, with intimidation of parish constables, many of whose ballot lists were seized by rioters before they reached the lieutenancy meeting at Mansfield on 5 September 1757.

While the regiment was stationed at Hull it practised musketry to good effect and gained the unofficial nickname 'Nottinghamshire Marksmen', which it used on recruiting advertisements for substitutes.

Lieutenant-Col Lord John Pelham-Clinton died later in the year and was succeeded by Edward Thoroton Gould of Mansfield Woodhouse, who had been a junior officer in the 4th Foot at the first action of the American war at Concord, where he had been wounded and captured.

The following summer it was concentrated and camped on Brompton Common in Kent, where the principal duty was to mount guard over the stores and batteries of the Chatham Dockyard defences.

From 1784 to 1792 the militia were supposed to assemble for 28 days' annual training, even though to save money only two-thirds of the men were actually called out each year.

He was a Radical Whig – he supported both the American and French revolutionaries, incorporating the 'cap of liberty' in the regimental badge he designed (he saw the militia as the constitutional force and a safeguard against tyranny).

He was finally removed on 23 October 1791 after he had celebrated the Storming of the Bastille, the method used being a misapplication of a requirement in the Militia Act that a proportion of officers should retire every five years.

[8][51][65] 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.

The quarters of the regiment were so dispersed that it received permission to give the men cash to buy food locally rather than attempt to supply them through a central contractor.

The following month a recruitment drive for the regular army encouraged about 300 men from the Nottinghamshire Militia to accept the offered bounty and transfer to various regiments of the line.

With the signing of the Treaty of Amiens the war ended and in late April 1802 the detachments concentrated at Newark to be disembodied, the other ranks (ORs) being paid off with a month's pay as a gratuity.

[8][51][74] During the invasion crisis of 1805, while Napoleon assembled the 'Army of England' across the English Channel at Boulogne, the Nottinghamshire Militia were stationed in the Southern District (Sussex), the most vulnerable sector.

It appears that the government was happy to send the Nottinghamshires (and other Midlands militia regiments) to Ireland in case they developed sympathies with the Luddites, who had begun their machine-breaking in Nottingham.

[8][83][84] On 26 August the regiment under the command of Col Gould embarked at Plymouth on board the transports Margaret, Nestor, Wadstay and Fame, which sailed for Dublin, where it was housed at Palatine Square Barracks.

[8][51][53][54][85] After duty at the Tower, the Royal Sherwood Foresters wintered at Deal and Margate in Kent, supplying a guard of honour for the Prince Regent and King Louis XVIII when the latter sailed from Dover in April 1814 to assume the throne of France following Napoleon's abdication.

The Lord Lieutenant continued to commission officers in the regiment, Lt-Col Gilbert-Cooper-Gardiner succeeding Col Coape on his resignation in 1825, and after his death in 1833 Lancelot Rolleston, MP for South Nottinghamshire, was appointed to the colonelcy.

In April a serious riot broke out amongst the English and Irish coalminers at Shotley Bridge in County Durham, and Lt-Col Mellish led a strong detachment of the Royal Sherwood Foresters to aid the civil power.

The 4th Bn Sherwood Foresters was embodied on 11 December 1899 [8][51] It then volunteered for overseas service and embarked for South Africa with a strength of 32 officers and 657 ORs under the command of Col Napier Pearse.

De Wet himself had attacked Roodewal with a small force, but made little headway against the garrison entrenched behind the railway embankment and piles of stores until he was reinforced by the main body and guns after the surrender at the bridge.

Having secured both positions the Boers looted or burned the stores, destroyed the bridge again, and tore up several miles of railway track, cutting off the main British army at Pretoria for several days.

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.