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A fyrd was a type of early Anglo-Saxon army that was mobilised from freemen or paid men to defend their Shire's lords estate, or from selected representatives to join a royal expedition. Service in the fyrd was usually of short duration and participants were expected to provide their own arms and provisions.
Militia units were repeatedly raised in England from the Anglo-Saxon period onwards for internal security duties and to defend against external invasions. One of the first militia units in England were the fyrd , which were raised from freemen to defend the estate of their local Shire 's lord or accompany the housecarls on offensive expeditions.
Around a thousand years ago, it was important as a unit for gathering taxes and raising men for the citizen army of the time, known as the Fyrd. The idea of the hundred goes back at least to the time of the Roman emperor Tacitus, but the version called the wapentake belongs to the Danish-influenced part of England. It therefore dates in that ...
Service in the fyrd was usually of short duration and participants were expected to provide their own arms and provisions. The origins of the fyrd can be traced back to at least the seventh century, and it is likely that the obligation of Englishmen to serve in the fyrd dates from before its earliest appearance in written records. [11]
The fyrd was composed of men who owned their own land, and were equipped by their community to fulfil the king's demands for military forces. For every five hides, [24] or units of land nominally capable of supporting one household, [25] one man was supposed to serve. [24] It appears that the hundred was the main organising unit for the fyrd. [26]
Subjects of an Anglo-Saxon king were required to yield three services: bridge-bote (repairing bridges and roads), burgh-bote (building and maintaining fortifications), and fyrd-bote (serving in the militia, known as the fyrd).
The Suffolk Trained Bands were a part-time auxiliary military force in the county of Suffolk on the East Coast of England from 1558 until they were reconstituted as the Suffolk Militia in 1662. They were periodically embodied for home defence, for example in the army mustered at Tilbury during the Armada Campaign of 1588.
Holders of bookland were obligated to provide a certain number of men based on the number of hides they owned, and all free men were obligated to perform military service in the fyrd. [122] When called on by the king, shires would supply a certain number of men to the fyrd.