Act of Parliament | |
Long title | An Act for repealing an act, made in the last session of parliament, intituled, An Act for the more easy and better recruiting of his Majesty's land forces and marines; and for substituting other and more effectual provisions in the place thereof. |
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Citation | 19 Geo. 3. c. 10 |
Territorial extent | Great Britain |
Dates | |
Royal assent | 9 February 1779 |
Repealed | 21 August 1871 |
Other legislation | |
Repeals/revokes | Recruiting Act 1778 |
Repealed by | Statute Law Revision Act 1871 |
Status: Repealed | |
Text of statute as originally enacted |
The Recruiting Act 1779 (19 Geo. 3. c. 10) was an Act of the Parliament of Great Britain. It was a press Act for the recruiting of his Majesty's Land Forces. After the losses in the American Revolutionary War and the apprehended hostilities with France, the existing voluntary enlistment measures were judged to be insufficient. It served as a revision of the Recruiting Act 1778.
It raised the bounty £3, 3s. After the expiration of their service, volunteers were exempt from the performance of statue (highway) duty, for service as parish officers, and from service in the army, navy, or militia. They were allowed to set up and exercise any trade in any place in Great Britain.
It enlarged those subject to impressment beyond smugglers and "all able-bodied and disorderly persons" to include those "convicted of running away from and leaving their families chargeable upon the parish". The chief advantage of this Act was in the number of volunteers brought in under the apprehension of impressment.
The Act received royal assent on 9 February 1779. On 26 May 1780 it was repealed with the exception of the parts relating to volunteers. It was wholly repealed by the Statute Law Revision Act 1871.
At the beginning of 1914 the British Army had a reported strength of 710,000 men including reserves, of which around 80,000 were professional soldiers ready for war. By the end of the First World War almost 25 percent of the total male population of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland had joined up, over five million men. Of these, 2.67 million joined as volunteers and 2.77 million as conscripts. Monthly recruiting rates for the army varied dramatically.
The New Army, often referred to as Kitchener's Army or, disparagingly, as Kitchener's Mob, was an (initially) all-volunteer portion of the British Army formed in the United Kingdom from 1914 onwards following the outbreak of hostilities in the First World War in late July 1914. It originated on the recommendation of Herbert Kitchener, then the Secretary of State for War to obtain 500,000 volunteers for the Army. Kitchener's original intention was that these men would be formed into units that would be ready to be put into action in mid-1916, but circumstances dictated the use of these troops before then. The first use in a major action of Kitchener's Army units came at the Battle of Loos.
Impressment, colloquially "the press" or the "press gang", is a type of conscription of men into a military force, especially a naval force, via intimidation and physical coercion, conducted by an organized group. European navies of several nations used impressment by various means. The large size of the British Royal Navy in the Age of Sail meant impressment was most commonly associated with Great Britain and Ireland. It was used by the Royal Navy in wartime, beginning in 1664 and during the 18th and early 19th centuries as a means of crewing warships, although legal sanction for the practice can be traced back to the time of Edward I of England. The Royal Navy impressed many merchant sailors, as well as some sailors from other, mostly European, nations. People liable to impressment were "eligible men of seafaring habits between the ages of 18 and 55 years". Non-seamen were sometimes impressed as well, though rarely. In addition to the Royal Navy's use of impressment, the British Army also experimented with impressment from 1778 to 1780.
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The Territorial and Reserve Forces Act 1907 was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that reformed the auxiliary forces of the British Army by transferring existing Volunteer and Yeomanry units into a new Territorial Force (TF); and disbanding the Militia to form a new Special Reserve of the Regular Army. This reorganisation formed a major part of the Haldane Reforms, named after the creator of the Act, Richard Haldane.
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