Bedfordshire Muster Lists

This volume contains lists of Bedfordshire soldiers, or at least those men liable for military service, over a period of three hundred years from 1539 to 1831. The use of the term “muster lists” in this context is, strictly speaking, inaccurate. Originally, a muster was a display and inspection of men, horses and equipment, but has since become a synonym for the men themselves, and by extension to any records recording their names. Some of the records published here are not lists at all, but service certificates. For convenience they all come under the title of this volume.

Sources of the lists

The lists come from two sources. The musters raised by Henry VIII in 1539 and by Elizabeth I between 1591 and 1602 are in the records of the Exchequer accounts at the Public Record Office, Chancery Lane, London. The remaining lists are held by Bedfordshire County Record Office and occur in lieutenancy records, solicitors’ papers, parish archives and private papers. There are three seventeenth century lists, of 1645, cl683 and 1699, but then nothing until Pitt's Militia Act was passed in 1757. The quantity of surviving records rises appreciably during the major wars of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries; the Seven Years’ War, 1756-1763, the American War of Independence, 1775-1783, and the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, 1793- 1815.

The lists: Rate of survival and geographical coverage

Undoubtedly many lists have been lost; being of short term administrative value many were casually destroyed soon after they were created. Other lists were destroyed during militia riots and the loss of these is comparatively well documented. In 1757 rioters at Biggleswade forced Sir Roger Burgoyne to hand over the militia lists, fearing that if they were enrolled they would be compelled to serve overseas. There was also trouble at Wootton “which mutinied took the list from the Constable and tore it”. The desire to destroy the evidence of service obligations was a powerful motive.

The geographical coverage of the lists is uneven. Apart from the County militia enrolment lists of cl683 and 1763, some of the records cover only the three northern hundreds of Barford, Stodden and Willey. This is largely due to the influence of the Orlebar family of Hinwick House, Podington on the Bedfordshire-Northamptonshire border.