trainband

plural trainbands

1. historicalA company of trained civilian militia operating in England and North America between the 16th and the 18th centuries.

   A train-band captain eke was he / Of famous London town.

   1782, William Cowper, The Diverting History of John Gilpen

   1 more example

   Another said that he should be glad to know how the Devonshire trainbands, who had fled in confusion before Monmouth's scythemen, would have faced the household troops of Lewis

   1849–1861, Thomas Babington Macaulay, The History of England from the Accession of James the Second, volume (please specify |volume=I to V), London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, →OCLC