The Queen’s Own Oxfordshire Hussars and Blenheim

From the time of the first Duke of Marlborough (1650–1722) each succeeding generation of Spencers, Churchills, and Marlboroughs was active in the military service of Great Britain, and Blenheim Palace has been a part of that tradition. Each duke from the first in the seventeenth century to the eleventh in the twenty-first century held an officer’s commission.

The Spencer-Churchill family began its long and active role in the Oxford Yeomanry in 1803 when Lord Francis Spencer, brother of the fifth duke, raised the Woodstock squadron of cavalry only five years after the regiment was formed.

By the beginning of the twentieth century, the Oxford Yeomanry had reached regimental strength and was one of thirty-eight Imperial Yeomanry cavalry units. It was known as the Queen’s Own Oxfordshire Hussars, a title granted by Queen Adelaide—the wife of King William IV—in 1835. Commonly referred to as the Q.O.O.H., the regiment was organized in four squadrons located at Henley, Oxford, Woodstock, and Banbury, with its headquarters at Oxford.

An account written in 1910 listed the strength of the regiment at twenty-two officers The officers and men provided their own horses, and the regiment was sometimes referred to as “the agricultural cavalry” because most of its ranks came from the farming sector of the county. By 1910 the regiment was part of a cavalry brigade that included yeomanry cavalry units from Berkshire and Buckinghamshire.