Hobbitry-in-arms

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The Hobbitry-in-arms was the militia of the Shire. The captain of the Hobbitry-in-arms was the Thain, who summoned it at a Shire-muster in times of emergency.[1]

By the end of the Third Age the existence of an armed hobbitry was largely a relic of harder times. Hobbits did not fight amongst themselves, and for many centuries they had been sheltered from the dangers of the outside world by the efforts of the Rangers, of which they were largely unaware. The last battle to take place within the borders of the Shire before the War of the Ring, and so presumably the last time the Hobbitry-in-arms was mobilised, was the Battle of Greenfields in T.A. 2747 (S.R. 1147). What store of weapons remained in the Shire were trophies hanging on walls or displayed in the Mathom-house at Michel Delving.[2]

In T.A. 3019 a hastily-assembled hobbitry under the command of Meriadoc Brandybuck ejected the Ruffians from the Shire in the Battle of Bywater. It is not clear whether this constituted an official mobilisation of the Hobbitry-in-arms, although the contingent from Tookland was raised by Thain Paladin Took II and led by his son and heir Peregrin Took.[3]

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