P1..\TJ•: I
King GEORGE and
Old England .
.
EiglJ.t gy.teas
And One Guinea to the Bringer of a Recruit.
His Majcfly having been pleafed to augment the
New Romney
Light Dragoons,
c oTL 01 F-ti'tL0 bii°fitl N o,
All High Spirited YOUNG MEN,
Who arc delirous of /hewing their Attachment to their KING and COUNTRY,
are invited to ferve in this rdpcclable Regiment, where every poffible Attention is
paid to the Cc,mfort and Happinefs of the Dragoons, and where they will be hand.
fomely clothed and mounted upon excellent Horfes.
ThcGencrnl Order-. commjefiy's O«lcrs, enry SolJ,cr w,11 rccei,·c • Loaf of good llread, weighing
1,-.. Pounll, for Fl\·e•pcocc. whcrca thc:y hil.VC. hitherto Jt the prc(cnt lark.d. Price, paid Eight•pcnce
for,\ LoI wt:ighing only four Poun in. :?1 in.)
lfa,,· p. 11
THE NEW ROMNEY FENCIBLE CAVALRY
(DUKE OF YORK'S OWN)
1794 to 1800
By CoLONEL E. A. c. FAZAN, M.C., T.D., D.L.
The New Romney Fencible Cavalry served their six years of embodiment
against the background of the war of the French Revolution and of
the Irish Rebellion in 1798, the threat of which became the occasion
for their serving in Ireland from 1797 to September, 1800. On
April 24th, 1794, a general deputation of the Cinque Ports and their
members met the Lord Warden (Pitt) at Dover Castle as a result of
which £6,500 was secured to form units within the Ports.1 Pitt himself
subscribed one thousand pounds and of the various sums furnished by
the Towns and Ports, the Port of Romney raised £104 17s. 6d.2
Early in 1794 a threat of invasion drove the British Government to
various expedients to raise men. Letters of service were issued for
the raising of thirty-one corps of Fencible Infantry and twenty-one
units of Fencible Cavalry in Great Britain. To these latter the Cinque
Ports contributed two units, The Cinque Ports Fencible Cavalry and
The New Romney Fencible Cavalry. Troops of Yeomanry and
companies of Volunteers were also raised within the Ports, but no
Fencible Infantry.
It seems strange that the Portsmen recruited for wholetime service
should have been for cavalry units only, since barely ten years before
there had been in existence during the War of American Independence
a Cinque POi/ls Battalion of Fencible Infantry. It was commanded by
Lieut.-Col. the Hon. George Augustus North, son of Lord North, then
Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, who was Honorary Colonel. The
writer has collected considerable detail about the service of this unit
which was a most interesting one because it formed one of eight only
of such units which were then raised throughout Great Britain. It
was often referred to as North's Cinque Poi·ts. 8
1 Wal1ner Oastle and us Loi·dB Warden, by the l\forquoss of Curzon (1927),
pp. 47, 48.
1 Records of Walrner, by Charles Elvin (1800), pp. 246, 247.
3 This unit appears in the Army List 1780, p. 82, under Fen<'ible and Pro•
vincial Regiment.a in Great Britain as The Cinque Port.s BaJt
