User:Lozleader/cav

This is a list of Cavalry Regiments of the British Army from the mid-18th century until the 1930s, when the last regiment was mechanised and transferred to the Royal Armoured Corps.

Establishment of precedence
The rank of regiments of the British Army was first fixed during the Nine Years' War. Doubts as to the respective rank of regiments fighting in the Spanish Netherlands led William III to command a Board of General Officers meeting on 10 June 1694 to establish the order of precedence of the various units. Further boards were convened by Queen Anne and George I in 1713 and 1715 to decide the rank of regiments raised after 1694.

The rank or precedence of regiments was fixed by the following criteria:
 * English regiments, raised in England, should rank from their date of raising.
 * English, Scots and Irish regiments, raised for service of a foreign power, should rank from the date that they came onto the English establishment.

This led to anomalies, such as the Royal Irish Regiment, raised in 1684, being ranked as the 18th of the line, junior to eleven regiments raised between 1685 and 1688.

Numbering
While regiments were known by the name of their colonel, or by their royal title, the number of their rank was increasingly used. Thus, in the Cloathing Book of 1742, which illustrated the patterns of uniforms worn by the King's forces, the regiments of horse and dragoons are designated simply by numbers.

The substitution of numbers for names was completed by a royal warrant of 1751. The document, which used numbers for the regiments throughout, decreed that no colonel was "to put his Arms, Crest, Device or Livery on any part of the Appointments of the Regiment under his command." Furthermore, in the centre of the regiment's standard or guidon was to be "painted or embroidered in gold Roman characters the number of the Rank of the Regiment".

As the size of the army expanded and contracted during the various conflicts of the 18th and 19th centuries, junior regiments were raised and disbanded. Accordingly, there were often a number of different regiments that bore the same number of different periods. Additionally, there were occasional partial renumberings.

Royal and subsidiary titles
The 1751 warrant confirmed the royal titles or other special designations of the

In later years, other regiments were allowed to bear the names of the monarch or other members of the royal family.

List of regiments
Following the restoration of the monarchy in 1660 an English and a Scottish Army were formed, later combined to form the British Army in 1707. Initially the cavalry arm consisted of three types of regiments:
 * Life Guards, technically part of the royal household;
 * Regiments of Horse
 * Dragoons, originally a form of mounted infantry.

Over time dragoons became heavy cavalry virtually indistinguishable from regiments of horse.

In 1746 there was a reorganisation: the 1st Horse joined the Life Guards as part of the Household Cavalry. The remaining regiments of horse were either converted to dragoons (but with the new title of "dragoon guards" marking their seniority to the existing regiments of dragoons) or transferred to the Irish Establishment. Both of the latter measures were largely on financial grounds as... The four regiments of horse on the Irish Establishment were subsequently converted to dragoon guards in 1788.

Household Cavalry
On 26 January 1661 Charles II designated three existing troops of Horse Guards as his "Household Cavalry". The number and designation of troops varied over time, and there was a reorganisation in 1746. In 1687 the grenadiers who had formed part of the troops of Horse Guards were formed into separate troops of Horse Grenadier Guards. On 24 June 1788 the troops of Horse Guards and Horse Grenadier Guards were reorganised as the 1st and 2nd Regiments of Life Guards.