Feb 09 – Freedom Of The City To Be Bestowed Upon The Royal Anglians
The Government is today giving notice of its intention to move a motion which would bestow the Freedom of the City upon the Royal Anglian Regiment. The Speaker of the House and the Leader of the Opposition have both been advised of this intention.
Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, regiments from the Royal Anglian counties of Essex, Northamptonshire, Cambridgeshire, Suffolk, Lincolnshire and Norfolk were posted to Gibraltar to defend the Rock and its people. Indeed, both the XII Regiment, the forerunner of the Suffolk Regiment, and the 56th Foot, the forerunner of the Essex Regiment, defended Gibraltar during the Great Siege of 1779-1783. The XII Regiment formed the main body of the Grand Sortie of November 1781.
In recognition of the efforts of the XII Regiment, the “Castle and Key” and the name “Gibraltar” were taken as its crest and the ‘Castle and Key’ remain there to this day in the Royal Anglian regimental cap badge. The Regiment’s home is ‘Gibraltar Barracks’ in Bury St Edmunds and the Regimental magazine is named ‘The Castle.’
In May 1969, a formal affiliation was announced between the Royal Anglian Regiment and the then Gibraltar Regiment and there have been many instances of RG soldiers serving with the Royal Anglians on deployments to Northern Ireland, Germany, Cyprus, Belize, Bosnia, Iraq, Canada and Afghanistan.
In the light of these historic and close connections, it is the intention of Her Majesty’s Government of Gibraltar to confer the Freedom of the City of Gibraltar on the Royal Anglian Regiment.
