IMPRESSMENT, the name given in English to the exercise of the authority of the State to "press" or compel the service of the subject for the defence of the realm. Every sovereign State must claim and at times exercise this power. All the monarchical, or republican Governments of Europe have employed the press at one time or another. All forms of conscription, including the English ballot for the militia, are based on this sovereign right. In England impressment may be looked upon as an erratic, and often oppressive, way of enforcing the common obligation to serve in "the host" or in the posse comitatus (power of the coun ty). In Scotland, where the feudal organization was very com plete in the Lowlands, and the tribal organization no less com plete in the Highlands, and where the State was weak, impress ment was originally little known. After the union of the two parliaments in 1707, no distinction was made between the two divisions of Great Britain. In England the kings of the Plantag enet dynasty caused Welshmen to be pressed by the lords march ers, and Irish kerns to be pressed by the lords deputy, for their wars in France. Complaints were made by parliament of the oppressive use of this power as early as the reign of Edward III., but it continued to be exercised. A small sum called imprest money, or coat and conduct money, was given to the men when pressed to enable them to reach the appointed rendezvous. Soldiers were secured in this way by Queen Elizabeth, by Charles I. and by the parliament itself in the Civil War. The famous New Model Army of Cromwell was largely raised by impressment. Parliament ordered the various county committees to select re cruits of "years meet for their employment and well clothed." After the revolution of 1688 parliament occasionally made use of this resource. In 1779 a general press of all rogues and vaga bonds in London to be drafted into the regiments was ordered. It is said that all who were not too lame to run away or too desti tute to bribe the parish constable were swept into the net. As they were encouraged to desert by the undisguised connivance of the officers and men who were disgusted with their company, no further attempt to use the press for the army was made.
The impressment of sailors was regarded as a prerogative of the Crown. From an act of Philip and Mary (1556) it appears that the watermen of the Thames claimed exemption from the press as a privileged body. They were declared liable, and the liability was clearly meant to extend to service as a soldier on shore. In the fifth year of Elizabeth (1563) an act was passed to define the liability of the sailors. It is known as "an act touching poli tick considerations for the maintenance of the navy." By its term all fishermen and mariners were protected from being com pelled "to serve as any soldiers upon the land or upon the sea, otherwise than as a mariner, except it shall be to serve under any captain of some ship or vessel, for landing to do some special exploit which mariners have been used to do." The operation of the act way limited to ten years, but it was renewed repeatedly, and was at last indefinitely prolonged in the r6th year of the reign of Charles I. (1631) . The justices of the peace in the coast districts, who were often themselves concerned in the ship ping trade, were not always zealous in enforcing the press. The pressed sailors often deserted with the "imprest money" given them. Loud complaints were made by the naval officers of the bad quality of the men sent up to serve in the king's ships. On the other hand, the press gangs were accused of extorting money, and of making illegal arrests. In the reign of Queen Anne (I 7o3 ) an act gave parish authorities power to apprentice boys to the sea, and exempted such apprentices from the press for three years, and until the age of 18. It especially reaffirmed the part of the Vagrancy Act of 1597 which left rogues and vagabonds subject to be pressed for the sea service. By the act of 174o, all men over 55 were exempted from the press, together with lads under 18, foreigners serving in British ships (always numerous in war time), and landsmen who had gone to sea during their first two years. The act for "the better supplying of the cities of London and Westminster with fish" gave exemption to all masters of fishing-boats, to four apprentices and one mariner to each boat, and all landsmen for two years, except in case of actual invasion.
Subject to such limitations as these, all seafaring men, and watermen on rivers, were liable to be pressed between the ages of 18 and 55, and might be pressed repeatedly for so long as their liability lasted. The rogue and vagabond element were at the mercy of the justices of the peace. The frightful epidemics of fever which desolated the navy till late in the i8th century were largely due to the infection brought by the prisoners drafted from the ill-kept jails of the time. Even merchant ships were stopped at sea and the sailors taken out. On one occasion, in 1802, an East Indiaman on her way home was deprived of so many of her crew by a man of war in the Bay of Biscay that she was unable to resist a small French privateer, and was carried off as a prize with a valuable cargo. In 1795 it was found necessary to impose on the counties the obligation to provide "a quota" of men, at their own expense. The local authorities provided the recruits by offering high bounties, often to debtors confined in the prisons. These desperate men were a very bad element in the navy. In 1797 they combined with the United Irishmen, of whom large numbers had been drafted into the fleet as vagabonds, to give a very dangerous political character to the mutinies at the Nore and in the south of Ireland. The pressing of sailors alleged to be British from American vessels was one of the causes of the war between Great Britain and the United States in 1812. After the conclusion of the great Napoleonic wars in 1815 the power of the press was not again exercised. In 1835 an act was passed during Sir James Graham's tenure of office as first lord of the admiralty, by which men who had once been pressed and had served for a period of five years were to be exempt from im pressment in future. Sir James, however, emphatically reaffirmed the right of the Crown to impress seamen. The introduction of engagements for a term of five years in 1853, and then of long service produced so large a body of voluntary recruits, and service in the navy became so popular, that the question had no longer any interest save an historical one. But in the World War com pulsory service, both in the navy and army, once more became necessary and was enforced under the Military Service Acts of 1915 and 1916.