Evening Republican, Volume 18, Number 242, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 October 1914 — ARMY AS RESULT OF RIOT [ARTICLE]

ARMY AS RESULT OF RIOT

Comparatively Trivial Incident Led to the Formation of Present British Force. The movement to preserve Ken Wood, the beautiful Hampstead estate, from the clutches of the builders, reminds the student of military history that the little fight which occurred there in 1661 led to the reconstitution of the British regular army. Thomas Venner, a wine cooper, was the leader of a set of fanatics known as “fifth monarchy men," who announced their determination not to sheathe their swords “till Babylon should be a hissing and a curse, and the kings of the earth should be bound in chains and the nobles in fetters of iron.” Fifty of these zealots on Twelfth Night emerged from their meeting-place in Coleman street and overpowered the city trained bands. The assault was repulsed by the lord mayor in person, who, suddenly aroused and scantily clad, at the head of a band of followers, drove the insurgents to Highgate, where, in Caen Wood, a sharp encounter with the life guards took place the following *day, with several casualties to the household cavalry. The rising was put down without further difficulty, but the result was the arrest of the process of the disbandment of troops and the reorganization of the army, of which the existing life guards, blues, grenadier and Coldstream guards were the nucleus. —Montreal Herald.