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“Of Very Doubtful Military Significance”: the thread about The Loyal Edinburgh Spearmen

Today’s Auction House Artefacts are a pair of silver Georgian merit medals awarded to Fletcher Yetts of the Loyal Edinburgh Spearmen. Mr Yetts (1759-1832) was the keeper of the City Water Works on the Castlehill. Britain was almost continuously at war with France for between 1793 and 1815 and the quaintly named Spearmen were one of the variety of amateur paramilitary formations raised in Edinburgh during this period in anticipation of a French invasion (or a popular revolution in the French style).

The Volunteer Corps Act of 1794 authorised the formation of volunteer paramilitary forces for home defence; the Volunteers. These were an infantry force that generally drew their officers from petty gentry and aspirational middle-class professionals. They were distinct from the volunteer cavalry of the Yeomanry whose members were the country landowners and required to have deep pockets and horses at their disposal – and be competent in their use.

In Scotland a third force was the Militia, established by the Militia Act of 1797 which empowered the Lords Lieutenant of the Counties to raise by ballot a conscript auxiliary force for service within Scotland. Its ranks were generally drawn from the lowest rungs of society and the Act was so thoroughly unpopular that it provoked widespread rioting across the country. This led to the Massacre at Tranent in August 1797 when eleven men, women and children were killed by Dragoons when protesting against it.

In contrast to the Militia, the ranks of the Volunteers were drawn largely from the lower middle and upper working classes; an attraction of joining being it could exempt one from being drafted into the Militia. Apart from a small number of drill sergeants and drummers, the Volunteers were unpaid but received their weapons and allowances for uniforms from the Government.

The Volunteers allowed patriotic and aspirational amateurs to play at being military officers without facing the dangers and hardships of actual military service. There was a steady supply of men keen to sport the over-embellished uniforms – and even finance the units at their own expense – to reap the benefit of the high public status that a uniform conferred in the ballrooms and drawing rooms of the city.

By late 1803, there were some 30,000 Volunteers in Scotland (and over 300,000 in the wider UK) but their efficiency varied widely; from semi-competent to completely hopeless. Georgian satirists mercilessly lampooned them, depicting them as physically unfit; poorly equipped, trained and led; over-enthusiastic and thoroughly incompetent.

In their distinctive blue coats the Royal Edinburgh Volunteers (REV) were one of the first established in the country and were an example of the semi-competent type of unit. A commissioned portrait of them certainly reflected this, Edinburgh caricaturist John Kay took a slightly more humours view of them.

The Spearmen – in contrast to the REV – showed “all the signs of being a force of very doubtful military significance” (W. A. Thorburn, curator of the Scottish United Services Museum, writing on the subject in the Book of the Old Edinburgh Club, vol. 32). They probably formed as a result of the officer corps of the city’s other Volunteer units being fully subscribed to and thus a further unit was required for those left out. Its stated purpose was to “defend the city, liberties and vicinity of Edinburgh, in case it be found necessary to march the other forces to a distance, and to protect the lives and property of the inhabitants from injury and depredation“. This was a coded recognition that the job of the Volunteers wasn’t really to fight the (real or imagined) threat posed by French invaders but to release regular forces to do so by securing the home front. A secondary and more realistic proposition was quelling popular revolt or opportunistic disorder in the absence of the regulars: to the local authorities and certain sections of society, the Mob invoked far more fear than the French did – as evidenced by their actions at Tranent – and the Toun Rats (the Town Guard of Edinburgh) had proved of dubious worth in the past.

The nascent Spearmen offered their services to the Crown, to make sure they were officially recognised and their officers Gazetted, and they were admitted as supernumeraries to the existing Volunteer establishment in the city in a letter dated 7th November 1803.

We are well persuaded that every man who can handle a pike and who is not engaged in any volunteer corps, will chearfully [sic] embrace this opportunity of coming forward for the defence of our families and firesides

Scots Magazine, December 1803

The initial plan was to raise two Battallions, each of six-hundred men in ten companies; in theory over 1,200 men. In practice however only one Battallion was ever constituted and its ranks fluctuated between four to five hundred men. They wore scarlet cutaway jackets, blue breeches and a tall beaver hat decorated with feathers (as per the medal at the top of the page and in contrast to the long blue coats and white breeches of the REV). Initially they were armed with nothing more than short pikes and swords for the officers. Their ranks were drawn largely from those exempt from balloting into the militia; the Incorporated Trades of the City and those too old, too young or with too many dependent children.

Mr John Bennet, surgeon to the garrison of Edinburgh Castle and President of the Royal College of Surgeons, was elected as the honourary Lieutenant Colonel Commandant. He had been the surgeon to the Sutherland Fencibles (an earlier, auxiliary military force in the Highlands) from 1779-83 so was an eminent choice. He was later replaced by William Inglis WS Esq. after being found dead in a field in Fife on October 10th 1805, his gun by his side, having suffered a fatal fall from his horse when hunting.

Other officers included Robert Dundas and John Peat, Writers to the Signet (solicitors); William Ranken, a Town Councillor from the Incorporation of Tailors; the lighthouse engineers Thomas Smith and his step-son Robert Stevenson; Francis Braidwood, an upholsterer and cabinet-maker (and allegedly the first man in Edinburgh to wear shoelaces); John Cameron, Deacon of the Tailors and James Newton, Deacon of the Incorporation of Bakers. Their chaplain was the Reverend Alexander Brunton of New Greyfriars Kirk, later the Professor of Hebrew and Oriental Languages at the University of Edinburgh.

It was all very Dad’s Army, but at this time the fear of invasion was genuinely held as a result of intense newspaper speculation. Matters came to a head on January 31st 1804 when the Volunteers of Hawick and Teviotdale rose to repel an “invasion” after the lighting of the chain of hilltop warning beacons across the Borders counties. This proved to be a false alarm, the result of an inexperienced but enthusiastic watchman at Hume Castle near Kelso who saw a distant glow on the eastern horizon – actually charcoal burning at Shoreswood in Northumberland, 15 miles away – and thought it was the beacon at Dowlaw being lit.

It was not until the Scottish volunteer companies arrived at Berwick-upon-Tweed the following morning after marching excitedly through the night that the mistake was realised, but a celebration was held never-the-less to mark the efficacy of the warning system and the enthusiasm of the response. It was only a sceptical naval watchkeeper at the St. Abb’s Head signal station that prevented the warning being transmitted all the way to the end of the chain at Edinburgh.

Hey, Volunteers are ye wauking yet? Ho, jolly lads, are ye ready yet? Are ye up, are ye drest, will ye all do your best? To fight Bonaparte in the morning!
Now, brave Volunteers, be it day, be it night; When the signal is given that the French are in sight; Ye must haste with your brethren in arms to unite; To fight Bonaparte in the morning!

Marching song of the Dunfermline Volunteers, to the tune of the traditional “Hey, Johnnie Cope”

Despite the Government’s approval, as supernumaries the Spearmen had to finance themselves. In February 1804 a public subscription was raised to cover the expenses of fitting out the unit, the Caledonian Mercury reporting “there can be little doubt that it will soon exceed the sum required“. The Town Council voted fifty Guineas towards the cause as did the Association for the Defence of the Firth of Forth, the Incorporation of Goldsmiths and the United Incorporations of Mary’s Chapel (the Wrights and the Masons). The Incorporation of Tailors and the Bakers provided thirty each, those of The Hammermen twenty-five, The Fleshers twenty and The Hammermen of Canongate five. A number of town councillors and many of the founding officers also contributed, as did some notable local patrons. A Benevolent Society was set up by the officers to provide “mutual aid of each other in the event of sickness or death” in September of that year and which would later be extended to all the Volunteers of the city.

They used as their parade ground the Heriot’s Hospital green, that traditionally used by the other Volunteers in the city and seen in the background of the portrait at the top of the page of Sergeant Patrick Gould. In 1805 they were formally recognised by the Home Secretary, Lord Hawkesbury, as a full member of the Corps of Volunteers. This gave them equal status with the city’s other volunteer units and entitling them to receive Government funding, pay and arms. It is likely at this time they traded in their pikes for Government-issue muskets. To mark the occasion, “this band of citizen warriors had their stand of colours delivered to them on the 12th August 1805″ (the birthday of the Prince Regent, the Prince of Wales). These were provided and presented by the wife of the Lieutenant Colonel Bennet and her daughter Miss Scott of Logie. Chaplain Rev. Brunton consecrated them with “a most impressive prayer” after which the batallion marched out of the city to Duddingston House, the residence of the Earl of Moira, Commander-in-Chief of the Army in Scotland. The Earl inspected the formation after which they returned to the Bennet household on Nicolson Street where “they were regaled by him in a very liberal and handsome style of hospitality“.

In the event of the Spearmen being called out, they were to assemble upon the Mound as their chosen “alarm post in case of invasion or popular tumult“. In March 1804 a battery of artillery was added, armed with two experimental 6-pounder cannons designed and built by Mr Roebuck of the Shotts Iron Company. The guns were commanded by Captain William Braidwood jnr and were provided with two novel ammunition carts, designed to be pulled by domestic draught horses.

The artillery would get the Spearmen into trouble with the law. On Monday 25th September 1805, eager to demonstrate their efficiency and readiness to the city after formally receiving their colours, they marched and drilled through the streets before assembling on the Mound to firing off a number of volleys in salute from the Roebuck Guns. After the third and final blast, Lieutenant Colonel Bennet was apprehended with “violent passion” by John Tait, judge of the City Police Court and superintendent of the newly instituted Police Office. Tait threatened “at your peril remain on this ground a moment and if I ever see you and your Corps on the streets of Edinburgh again, it shall be at your peril“.

Bennet wrote to Sir William Fettes, the Lord Provost and Lord Lieutenant of the City, to complained that he and his men had been prevented by the civilian authorities from carrying out their duties and were treated with “gross and repeated insults from an immense mob“. He threatened that he would have to disband the unit if they could not go about their business unmolested. Tait had only been in his position of authority a few months and was likely trying to publicly demonstrate that it was he, and not any Volunteers, who was responsible for law and order. He wrote back to the Lord Provost standing his ground, but making the clarification that it was only firing off cannons in public that he wished to prevent, and not their marching and drilling. This seemed to placate both sides and thereafter Spearmen got on with tier duties of playing at soldiers.

On September 1807 they changed their name to the Loyal Edinburgh Volunteers to acknowledge their changed status (which causes confusion with the Royal Edinburgh Volunteers, who they remained distinct from) and also that thanks to Moira’s intervention they had retired their spears and were now properly armed with muskets. They marked their promotion by marching to Alloa for ten days on “active duty”. The Caledonian Mercury reported that “their conduct on the march to and from Alloa, and while in quarters, was orderly and regular in the highest degree, and their attendance at drill, for seven hours every day, was unremitting“.

The experience must have been enjoyable as they then applied to be transferred into the Militia, an offer which was rejected. Undeterred, in December that year it was announced that the Prince of Wales had “been graciously pleased to accept an offer… of an extension of their services to any part of Great Britain” and as such they would henceforth be known as the Prince of Wales’ Loyal Edinburgh Volunteers. This was far removed from their founding aim of serving only in the city; things may have gone to their heads as in 1809 the entire Volunteer forces of Edinburgh offered their services to go to Spain and fight alongside the regulars in the bloody Peninsular War. Again the offer which was politely declined.

Lieutenant Colonel Inglis remained in charge of the renamed Spearmen until the volunteer forces were officially disbanded on July 11th 1814. They have been largely forgotten about and even in their own time were in the shadow of the Royal Edinburgh Volunteers and the Yeomanry, but at least one unknown amateur poet penned a verse in their honour, although it is hardly complementary.

It is weel Kend these guy wheen years
I’ve praised our Royal Volunteers
The Spearmen has appeared at last
O’ them we should hope the best.
There’s numbers o’ them without doubt
They are baith souple louns and stout,
But other o’ they I do ken
Dude help them poor auld worn out men
An’ I wad scorn to tell a lee
They’re neither fit to fight nor flee
An’ other some raw mou’d callants
I’ve seen far better selling ballants.
What brings them out in name of wonder
Wer it no to make a gudly number.
O’ them the brethern may think shame
Far better they wad stay at hame.

Poem to the Loyal Edinburgh Spearmen, 1804

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The “most fortunate of the city politicians”: the thread about the life and times of Orlando Hart

Last week’s thread about the bankers Sir James Hunter Blair and Sir William Forbes contained a caricature by the prolific John Kay that satirised the local political scandal of “The Levelling of the High Street” as part of the construction of the South Bridge. On the left is a local politician by the name of Orlando Hart.

Orlando? I didn’t at first believe there was a man in 18th century Edinburgh called Orlando! Lowland Scotland in the 18th and 19th century had a habit of naming their sons from a rather small pool of names – work by Richard Rodger on the 1861 Census has shown that a full 50% of boys in Edinburgh were named either John, James, William or Robert and the top 10 most popular names accounted for 79% of all boys. But it turns out I was totally wrong, and Orlando Hart was one of a population of (probably) just two Orlandos in the whole country at this time. I am informed (thank you Corpyburd on Twitter) that this seed of doubt, on my part, has a name – The Tiffany Problem. This is when people do not believe something historical is true, because it sounds modern, and takes its name from people associating the name Tiffany so strongly with the 1980s and a certain pop star that they cannot believe it was a relatively common medieval name. So I just had to try and find out a bit more about this exotically-named man.

So who was Orlando Hart? When and where he was born, I do not know, I cannot find any birth registration for him, but based on the known facts of his life he was probably born between 1720-30. Hart wasn’t a particularly common surname in Edinburgh at the time, only 12 boys and 8 girls named Hart were registered born in Edinburgh in the 20 years 1715-1735. So unless he was born under a different name as one of those 12, I assume he may not have been born in Edinburgh. In 1751 we get our first solid record of him, when a journeyman1 shoemaker of his name married Elisabeth Henderson of the Water of Leith Village at the West Kirk of St. Cuthberts.

1. A journeyman is a craftsman who had finished their trade apprenticeship but was not their own master, i.e. he worked for another ↩︎

Children followed; (Mac)Duff in 1755 (named after a friend), Archibald in 1760 and Katharine in 1766. A son also named Orlando Hart, was buried in 1772. Like many aspiring and connected men of the time, Orlando was a Freemason; in 1755-57 and again in 1761-62 he was a Grand Steward in the Grand Lodge of Scotland – a man clearly getting somewhere in life. It is evident he was popular amongst his contemporaries, in 1757 he was elected to the Monarchy of the Jolly Sons of St. Crispin – a fraternal organisation for shoemakers and by 1760 he was noted as a “Shoemaker in Lady Yester’s Parish“. Lady Yester’s – or the South East Parish of Edinburgh – served the portion of the city south of the Cowgate and east of College Wynd. The church moved from a 17th century building in the High School Yards to a new one on Infirmary Street in 1805.

But Orlando Hart was moving upwards in life and didn’t stay still long, 3 years later he was a “Shoemaker In the Mint” – the old Royal Mint of Scotland, north of the Cowgate where Coinyie-House Close now stands. He is recorded as being shoemaker to James Boswell in the latter’s correspondence.

Successful and popular as a shoemaker and a freemason, it was natural that local politics should follow and in 1766 he was elected Deacon of his Trade Incorporation, the Cordiners. (Cordwainer was the ancient word for a shoemaker, who made shoes from new leather – Cordoba, from the Spanish city of Córdoba where the best shoe leather traditionally came from. A “cobbler” in contrast was someone who repaired, or re-made, shoes.) The Deacon was the most senior office holder of his Trade, elected by and from amongst his peers. It also conferred him a seat on the town council as a representative of his Trade. Further success followed, in 1771 he was elected Convenor of the Trades, the most senior officer of all the city’s Trade Incorporations.

His rise did not stop there. By 1773 he was a Magistrate – a legal officer of the Town Council in the lowest level of courts – again the Trades had a right to put forward a candidate for one of these positions. The Town Council and its officers at this time was a mixture of elected councillors and also a balance of seats held by the representatives of the Trades and the Merchants. By now, Orlando Hart’s business has moved to the centre of the Old Town, “Opposite the Guard“, meaning the old guard house lodge in the centre of the High Street, between the Tron Kirk and St. Giles. A prestigious address, in a time before the Old Town was yet to be supplanted by the New Town as the place to do business.

Not content to be just a successful Shoemaker, freemason, man of his Trade and local politician, he was also quite a dab hand with his golf clubs. Golf was a pastime that occupied the important men of the city and was as much a place to fraternise and do business as to improve your handicap. When the Royal Burgess Golfing Society reformed in 1773, who should be elected club captain but Orlando Hart?

He represented the City as a Commissioner of the Convention of Royal Burghs, where the representatives of the various Burghs would gather once or twice a year to thrash out the issues of the day, and also at the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland alongside the Lord Provost of Edinburgh (the most powerful local politician in all of Scotland). In 1775 he was once again elected Deacon Convenor of the Trades – for a good 25 years of his life he was constantly in one office of local government or another. These were positions elected from and amongst his peers, a mark of his popularity amongst them. John Kay’s brief biography says he was “Considered one of the most fortunate of the city politicians… He possessed a happy knack of suiting himself to circumstances, and was peculiarly sagacious in keeping steady by the leading men in the magistracy”. What this means was that Hart was always careful to align himself to the most senior men in the council, whomever they may be, without treading on the toes of others. He was awarded the honorific (and profitable) office of Keeper of the Town Water Works.

In 1787, Orlando Hart’s name appears at the back of an important book as subscriber to “Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect” – the Edinburgh reprint of Robert Burns’ sensational début publication, which saw the good and the great of the city clamouring for the author’s favour. A year later, his name pops up in another interesting place; as being called to assize as a Juror in the case of one William Brodie – Deacon Brodie to you and I. Brodie was a man who had once held an equivalent office of local government, Deacon, as Orlando, but the latter was not selected to sit on the jury.

Hart must have been well into his sixties by 1791 when he was once again elected as one of the two Town Councillors representing the Trades. By this time he must also have been exceptionally wealthy, as he bought a feu on Charlotte Square – the newest and most prestigious development in town – to build himself a house. That feu was for number 6, which he bought for £290. He spent probably spent ten times that on completing the house to Robert Adam’s plans (a total c. £490k in 2023). Number 6 Charlotte Square is of course Bute House, residence of the First Minister of Scotland.

It is not clear if Orlando Hart ever lived in the house himself, he died on September 9th 1793, no more than a year after its completion and just months after being elected as one of the managers of the Public Dispensary of Edinburgh . His wife, Elisabeth Henderson, died exactly a week later. Macduff Hart, who was his sole surviving son by this time, inherited Orlando Hart & Sons shoemakers. It was from the estate of Orlando Hart that No. 6 was sold to the Craufurd family in 1796, Mrs Isabella Craufurd being the widow of a banker and owner of a plantation and 600 slaves in Jamaica. She took up residence there with her son.

That was the life and times of Orlando Hart; I have yet to find his registry of death so cannot identify where Hart’s Ground, the family burial plot was. I also suspect he may have been godfather to a number of children as I can find boys born in Edinburgh during his lifetime of his name – Orlando Hart Baillie (son of a Shoemaker) and an Orlando Hart Wilson, who would go on to enjoy a relatively successful naval career.

Note to readers: unfortunately in April 2026, a third-party plug-in more than exceeded its authority and broke many of the image links on this site. No images were lost but I will have to restore them page-by-page, which may take some time. In the meantime please bear with me while I go about rectifying this issue.

If you have found this site useful, informative or amusing then you can help contribute towards its running costs by supporting me on ko-fi. This includes my commitment to keeping it 100% advert and AI free for all time coming, and in helping to find further unusual stories to bring you by acquiring books and paying for research.
Or please do just share this post on social media or amongst friends and like-minded people, sites like this thrive on being shared.

Explore Threadinburgh by map:

These threads © 2017-2026, Andy Arthur.

NO AI TRAINING: Any use of the contents of this website to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. The author reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.