4cm (1.6in) x 9cm (3.6in) x 11.5cm (4.5in)
Silver gilt Crescent shaped with rim rolled around a wire frame, the body engraved with the full achievement of Arms for the Honourable East India Company and Latin motto, 'Auspicio Regis et Senatus Angliae' (By command of the King and Parliament of England). The arms pierced with suspension holes and engraved with trophies of arms. Maker’s mark of IR possibly for perhaps John Reily (registered 20th February 1801) or John Robertson (registered 14th September 1802). Silver weight: 53g (1.7ozt). Hallmarked London 1801.
Two regiments of Royal East India Volunteers were raised in London in September 1796 and were joined by a third in 1798. The field officers were elected from the Company’s directors, and commissioned officers were recruited from officials at East India House. The NCOs were drawn from the HEIC warehouse supervisors and the ranks filled by labourers serving as privates, which prompted ‘The Times’ to remark: ‘The union of civil and military dependence is … highly conducive to subordination and punctuality.’ They were trained in manoeuvring by platoon and ‘street firing’ with principal role of defending the Company's docks, shipping and other assets; each regiment had two battalions, each with a strength of at least six companies. By 1799 there were three regiments with about 1,500 men in each.
The formation of the Royal East India Volunteer regiments was not the first time that East India Company employees had been used for military and political rather than purely commercial ends. In the autumn of 1779, with unrest caused by the war against the American colonies and agitation by radical politicians, the Duke of Northumberland proposed that all able bodied men employed in the Company warehouses should be properly trained in the use of firearms. Justification for the Company's decision to ensure that the labourers had basic military skills came in the following year when the Gordon Riots broke out in London, resulting in hundreds of deaths and thousands of pounds worth of damage to property. Rioters held out against the civil and military authorities for almost a week in June 1780.