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WHAT is a yeoman? He is jemand, anybody, answer the old etymologists, or it may be gemein, a common man ; in any case, an individual of every day. But, adds Doctor Johnson, the word seems to have been used as a ceremonious title for soldiers, whence the phrase Yeoman of the Guard. ceremonious title ! Then is the prefix private a ceremonious title, and can every soldier boast that he has a handle to his name? With all deference to the great lexicographer, we imagine not; and indeed we can trace from the chronicles of the old wars that soldiers were of two kinds, gentlemen soldiers and yeomen soldiers, which gives rather more than a ceremonious significance to the title chosen in 1485 for the bodyguard of King Henry the Seventh. The distinction is accentuated by the fact that his more extravagant son, Henry the Eighth, instituted a bodyguard of gentlemen, which, as might have been expected under the best-dressed sovereign in Europe, soon perished under the cost of its clothes and equipment. Nevertheless Henry's experiment was renewed by Edward the Sixth, and the new guard created by him still survives as the Corps of Gentlemen-at-Arms. Nor has the

navy been behindhand in preserving the old hierarchy, for it still boasts of signal-men, yeomen of the signals, and officers of the signals.

These, however, are refinements.
No. 444.-VOL. LXXIV.

The word yeoman, despite the humility of its Teutonic origin, still signifies somebody, at any rate in the more primitive parts of England, namely a freeholder or, as he is generally designated by a curious contradiction in terms, a farmer who farms his own land. This, of course, is the class, small enough now, but still in possession of social precedence wherever it exists, which gave to England her famous archers in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and which still enjoys the credit of having gained our early victories over the French.

You good yeomen Whose limbs were made in England, show us here

The mettle of your pasture.

The ascription of all the glory of these actions to the yeomen is decidedly unfair to the gentlemen, for the archers could no more have won Crecy and Agincourt without the men-at-arms than the men-at-arms could have won them without the archers; but the two classes fought side by side without jealousy then, and there is no object in setting their ghosts at loggerheads now. Each did its best, each understood the value of the other both worked together heart and soul; and this was the secret of their success.

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On the next occasion when we encounter the yeoman prominent on the battle-field we find him promoted

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to the mounted service. In the midst of the confusion wrought by the substitution of pike and caliver for the old-fashioned bow there emerged a body of irregular cavalry, drawn from the small freeholders of the extreme north of England, which was known as the Northern Light Horse. It is too little that we know of this force. By intense study of ancient Acts of Parliament we have discovered that they rode ponies of from twelve to thirteen hands in height; and from abundant evidence it is plain that they were the very best light horsemen in Europe. The Emperor Charles the Fifth himself cried out with honest delight when he saw them at work; and Charles was not only a good judge of a soldier, but had peculiar knowledge of the Hungarian lighthorse which was just beginning to spread the name of hussar from the Danube to the Thames.

The Northern Light Horse died out, and the yeomen had to wait till the Civil War for another chance of a step upward. They had begun as foot-men, and advanced themselves to be mounted infantry, and now the time came when they should appear as regular horse. The cavalry of the Parliament was confronted with the problem of beating royalist gentlemen who had courage, honour, and resolution in them, and for the time completely failed to solve it. A country gentleman, Oliver Cromwell, offered to his kinsman, John Hampden, a new and original solution. "We must enlist," he said, "a better class of man than we have taken hitherto. We must get men who make some conscience of what they do, and teach them discipline." Hampden shook his head. "A good idea," he said, but impracticable," and he went his way, to be killed in a skirmish of cavalry. Cromwell likewise went his way, formed two regiments of yeomen, trained them, disciplined them,

and made them, and the other regiments of the New Model after them, into the finest horse in Europe. This was the finishing touch. The old feudal organisation which had reserved the mounted service for gentlemen only received its final deathblow, and the principle was established that the English yeoman's place as a fighting man is among the horse.

The famous army of the Commonwealth was disbanded, and our present standing army came silently and stealthily into being. The gentlemen of the Life Guards took the first place in the cavalry, and the yeoman dropped out. The status of the English soldier sank steadily lower and lower. He was crushed between the hammer of the Parliament and the anvil of the Monarchy. He was good enough to be shot in time of war, and good enough to be insulted in time of peace, good enough to be starved and swindled at all times, good enough to be cheered and encouraged at none. The country deliberately threw the military profession into the kennel, and then comforted itself by saying that the worst men made the best soldiers. Recently the nation has awakened to the fact that it is desirable to attract a better class of recruit to the army. It has discovered that the army is not popular, and its innocent heart is wrung with injured amazement; for it is a logical nation, and can think of nothing better fitted to popularise a calling than two centuries of deliberate degradation and neglect.

But our present business is not with the army but with the yeomen, who have cast off all connection with it. As a class yeomen, properly so called, are so few as to be, for practical purposes, extinct, and the title of Yeomanry is applied to the men who now fill their places, farmers, and the sons of farmers. By Englishmen the name of the Yeomanry as signifying a mili

tary force is generally received with not unreasonable amusement. There is a vast store of venerable jests at the expense of the force, and these are the antiquities which the English people does not willingly let die. Moreover, the rustic is always fair game for the witticisms of the townsman; and it must be confessed that so excellent a butt as the old-fashioned yeoman does not often present himself.

The oldest of the eight-and-thirty regiments of Yeomanry dates its birthday two centuries back, but the majority, unless we are mistaken, were raised for defence against invasion in the course of the last great war with France. The process was probably much the same as it was at the time of the Civil War. The great landowners undertook to raise regiments, the squires around them to raise troops, and the lesser gentry and the squires' sons became subalterns. The only drawback was that as each squire naturally enlisted his own neighbours and tenants, the regiment resembled rather a congeries of troops than a homogeneous corps.

The war over, the Yeomanry survived as an ornamental force, ornamental, that is to say, in respect of the dress of the officers, for as much can hardly be said of the men. the wealthy Midlands during the palmy days of agriculture, the Yeomanry were so well mounted that the horses alone would have redeemed their appearance, while the gentlemen whom they met in the hunting-field gave the young farmers a standing pattern of smartness; but in the more primitive and bucolic districts, which are those with which we are best acquainted, matters were very different. There are still wonderful stories of the annual training of old times. The day's work began by a perambulation of the billets by certain old yeomen, who held the rank of serjeant-major, a solemn function which they executed

in an easy undress of stable jacket, overalls, and carpet slippers. By this means the men were got on parade, and marched away to the drill-ground some three miles' distant. Arrived there the word was given, "Prepare to dismount ! " "Dismount !

"Milk your mares! " And this homely but necessary duty fulfilled, the regiment remounted and proceeded to the execution of the prescribed field-movements.

These again were performed with considerable deliberation. Each officer had been furnished beforehand with a card,1 on which were printed the various items in the programme, together with the word to be given by the squadron and troop-leaders; but as even this precaution was deemed insufficient, the colonel before each evolution sounded the officers' call, expounded the nature of the coming manœuvre, instructed leaders of squadrons and troops anew in their words of command, and dismissed them to their several places. Then came the word "March"; the regiment shuffled leisurely through the movement amid a babel of tongues and contradictory orders, and halted. Then the call for the officers sounded again, and away they galloped to the colonel, saluting as they reached him; the last evolution was mildly criticised, the next carefully rehearsed, and back they galloped to their troops for the performance. Five such field-days, interrupted by Sunday and a great churchparade, brought the training to a close; and on the sixth day the inspecting officer came down and told the yeomen that they were the finest fellows that ever were seen. On the seventh (or rather the eighth, for the first was taken up by the business of assembling), the men were paid, the troop

1 These cards were not unknown in the regular cavalry in the reign of King William the Fourth, at any rate, and probably both before and after him.

horses were put into the shafts of the market-carts, and the regiment dispersed, fully convinced that the inspecting officer had spoken his real conviction, and that he was an extremely sensible gentleman.

We are old enough to remember this ancient stamp of yeoman, and the curious appearance that he presented on parade. His figure was, as a rule, a great deal too full for a stable-jacket, and miserably adapted for a hussar's tunic; his overalls strained themselves in vain to meet his boots, and those boots were not always his best. He wore a great deal of hair on his face, and as much as possible on his head, and by some extraordinary fatality his busby could never be induced to sit straight or kindly on that head. His sword-belt always hung four or five inches below his stable-jacket, and the weapon consequently dangled dangerously close to the ground, while the empty scabbard danced merrily under the horse's belly in a way that drove a ticklish animal mad. It was useless to suggest that the belt should be tightened, for men of a certain girth object to such restraint; and if a shoulder-sling were provided it was generally let out to such a length that the sword hung as low as before. Moreover, the yeomen of that day were men of mature age and of respectable station, churchwardens and guardians of the poor, and not to be cavalierly treated.

The horses again were curiously assorted. The older men (and we remember old fellows of more than forty years' service) naturally preferred some quiet confidential animal of an easy height for purposes of mounting and dismounting, which, according to the standard of the primitive West, would be a trifle over fourteen hands. Some of the few young men would bring weedy thoroughbreds of sixteen hands (we remember one of seventeen), which they had picked up for a few

sovereigns in the hope of winning some miserable country race. A certain number brought cart-colts pure and simple, generally three or four years old; many more rode animals but one degree removed from cart-colts; while about half produced the best that they had in their stable, equal and often much superior to the best stamp of troop-horse.

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Few men, however, took the trouble ever to train their horses in the slightest degree, even to the extent of accustoming them to carry a sword. great double bridle prescribed by regulation was also a sore trial to many of the troopers, and the crupper (now abolished) a terrible provocation to kicking. The confusion on the first day of drill with a mob of raw horses was, and still is, appalling, though it is surprising to see how quickly improvement comes. One great stumbling block in the West is the local habit of always riding with a loose rein; the people cannot bear to catch hold of a horse's head. This is all very well for riding after hounds over the moor, but it will not do in the ranks. Moreover, they are never very comfortable in a military saddle. It is not that they are bad horsemen, for they will cheerfully ride on a barebacked horse, or, what is more remarkable, on a hunting - saddle without girths; but they feel (and we confess to a genuine sympathy with them) that with a military saddle there is too much leather between them and their horse.

The result is that they have not their horses under such control as is desirable, more particularly when one hand is fully occupied with a drawn sword. The movements of Yeomanry, as of all half-trained men, are spasmodic, normally very slow, but subject to sudden and abrupt bursts of speed. These moments of energy are always more or less critical. The men receive the order, say, to trot, and after some

little delay in getting under way advance gently and leisurely, till suddenly roused by an angry voice ordering an increase of speed. Then every spur, and a much sharper spur than the horses are accustomed to, strikes in, every tail gives a whisk, a certain number of impatient noses bound into the air in front, a certain number of indignant heels fly up viciously in the rear, the whole mass surges impetuously forward, and the troop-leader had better be awake or his troop will be on the top of him. For our own part we found, after many experiments, that we could lead our troop best when mounted on a mare which, though quiet and handy to ride, was singularly active and ready with her heels. The men were duly warned of her proclivities, and kept a sharp eye on the said heels, which was the next best thing to keeping a sharp eye on their troop-leader.

We remember once heading a column of troops at the trot down a grassy hill-side, which was soaked with rain and consequently presented somewhat treacherous foothold. Our own attention was wholly occupied by the endeavour to lead the column straight, and the troop, finding itself comfortable in the front with plenty of room, at once checked its speed and began to lag behind. They were twenty or thirty yards in rear when they were bidden to move up to their leader, and then, as usual, they plunged forward with precipitation. In the slippery In the slippery state of the ground they could not easily pull up, and presently a halfbred, boring brute took the bit into his teeth and bolted out of the ranks at the top of his speed, slipped up, recovered himself, plunged and slid for another twenty yards, and finally came down with a thud that sent his rider flying several yards over his head. The rest of the troop followed hard after him, and then our mare, whose ears had for some seconds been glued back on her head, lashed out both heels

with a vicious energy such as we never felt before nor since. No harm was done, and our attention was presently claimed by the unhorsed man, who, flustered, as well he might be, by the violence of his fall, jumped up, and seizing our stirrup, ran alongside for some yards, with his busby trailing on the ground behind him, uttering abject apologies for his mishap. We had hardly persuaded him to leave us when the order came for the head of the column to change direction, and as we wheeled we caught sight of the fragments of the troop. The greater part were still in full career down the hill; three were turning back to look after the fallen man; three more were galloping madly after the loose horse; one or two were going at top speed wherever their horses chose to take them; and the leading troop was reduced to its leader only. But presently our mare's ears were flat on her head again; the whole troop, fallen man and all, came galloping up from all sides, and before the next halt they had sorted themselves into their places and were smiling with the keenest enjoyment of the fun.

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In these later days, however, a great change has come over the Yeomanry. In the first place, owing to the continual aggregation of the people into the towns they have in many districts almost lost their rustic character. troopers are not countrymen but townsmen, and their horses are not their own, but simply hired for the occasion. Moreover this practice of hiring horses is on the increase. There is always a certain risk in putting horse into the ranks of the Yeomanry, and the Government, not altogether unreasonably in the light of past history, is not complaisant in the

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1 It was a common trick among the old men-at-arms to take a worthless horse to a campaign and to claim the price of a good one in compensation when he perished. Edward the Third made special regulations to meet