page_title: History of the British Army
section_title: Origins
hierarchical_section_title: History of the British Army / Origins
caption_attribution_description: King Charles II, by John Riley (died 1691). See source website for additional information. This set of images was gathered by User:Dcoetzee from the National Portrait Gallery, London website using a special tool. All images in this batch have been confirmed as author died before 1939 according to the official death date listed by the NPG.
context_page_description: The history of the British Army spans over three and a half centuries since its founding in 1660 and involves numerous European wars, colonial wars and world wars. From the late 17th century until the mid-20th century, the United Kingdom was the greatest economic and imperial power in the world, and although this dominance was principally achieved through the strength of the Royal Navy, the British Army played a significant role.
  As of 2015, there were 92,000 professionals in the regular army and 20,480 Volunteer Reserves. Britain has generally maintained only a small regular army during peacetime, expanding this as required in time of war, due to Britain's traditional role as a sea power. Since the suppression of Jacobitism in 1745, the British Army has played little role in British domestic politics, and, apart from Ireland, has seldom been deployed against internal threats to authority.
  The British Army has been involved in many international conflicts, including the Napoleonic Wars, the Crimean War and both World War I and World War II. Historically, it contributed to the expansion and retention of the British Empire.
context_section_description: The English Army was first established as a standing military force in 1660. In 1707 many regiments of the English and Scottish armies were already combined under one operational command and stationed in the Netherlands fighting in the War of Spanish Succession. Consequently, although the regiments were now part of the new British military establishment, they remained under the same operational command, and so not only were the regiments of the old armies transferred in situ to the new army so too was the institutional ethos, customs, and traditions, of the old standing armies that had been created shortly after the restoration of the monarchy 47 years earlier.
  Stuart Asquith argues for roots before 1660:
  Many authorities quote the Restoration of 1660 as the birth date of our modern British Army. While this may be true as far as continuity of unit identity is concerned, it is untrue in a far more fundamental sense. The evidence of history shows that the creation of an efficient military machine [, The New Model Army,] and its proving on the battlefield, predates the Restoration by 15 years. It was on the fields of Naseby, Dunbar and Dunes that the foundations of the British professional army were laid.
  The New Model Army was the first full-time professional army raised within the three kingdoms of England, Ireland and Scotland. It was created in 1645 by the English Long Parliament and it proved supreme in field. At the end of the First Civil War the New Model Army survived attempts by Parliament to disband it. Winston Churchill described its prowess thus:
  The Story of the Second English Civil War is short and simple. King, Lords and Commons, landlords, merchants, the City and the countryside, bishops and presbyters, the Scottish army, the Welsh people, and the English Fleet, all now turned against the New Model Army. The Army beat the lot!
  Having survived Parliament's attempts to disband it, the New Model Army prospered as an institution during the Interregnum. It was disbanded in 1660 with the restoration of the monarchy under Charles II.
  At his restoration Charles II sought to create a small standing army made up of some former Royalist and New Model Army regiments. On 26 January 1661, Charles II issued the Royal Warrant that created the first regiments of what would become the British Army, although Scotland and England maintained separate military establishments until the Acts of Union 1707.
  King Charles put into these regiments those cavaliers who had attached themselves to him during his exile on the European continent and had fought for him at the Battle of the Dunes against the Roundheads of the Protectorate and their French allies. For political expediency he also included some elements of the New Model Army. The whole force consisted of two corps of horse and five or six of infantry. It is, however, on this narrow and solid basis that the structure of the English army was gradually erected. The horse consisted of two regiments the Life Guards (formed from exiled cavaliers) ; and The Blues (or The Oxford Blues), formed by Lord Oxford, out of some of the best New Model Army horse regiments. The foot regiments were Grenadier Guards (initially two regiments Lord Wentworth's Regiment and John Russell's Regiment of Guards which amalgamated in 1665), the Coldstream Guards (the New Model Army regiment of General Monck), the Royal Scots (formed from the Scotch guard in France), and the Second Queen's Royals.
  Many of Charles' subjects were uneasy at his creation of this small army. Pamphleteers wrote tracts voicing the fear of a people who within living memory had experienced the Rule of the Major-Generals and had liked neither the imposition of military rule, or the costs of keeping an army in being when the country was not at war with itself or others. People also remembered the "Eleven Years' Tyranny" of Charles I  and feared that a standing army under royal command would allow monarchs in the future to ignore the wishes of Parliament.
  The English were not fully reconciled to the need for a standing army until the rei
caption: Charles II (c. 1680–1685) by John Riley.
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