Organisation
The Royal Company of Archers has its base in Edinburgh at Archers' Hall commenced on 15 August 1776, and completed by Alexander Laing in 1777, now in Buccleuch Street, Edinburgh. The Hall was extended in 1900 by A.F. Balfour Paul, and recently refurbished. The Hall consists of a hall, forty feet by twenty-four, and eighteen feet high; two rooms of eighteen by nineteen, besides kitchen, cellars, lobby, and other apartments. The ground behind the house is laid out into a bowling-green, known as The Meadows or Hope Park, a spot deriving its name from Sir Thomas Hope, who drained and converted it into an archery ground, maintained by the Edinburgh Bowling Club. The Hall serves as a venue for various dinners and meetings of the company.
The affairs of this company are managed by a President and six counsellors, who are chosen annually by the whole membership. The Council is vested with the power of receiving or rejecting candidates for admission, and of appointing the company's officers, civil and military.
The structure of the organisation is divided between officers (including a Secretary, currently David Younger) and members. By seniority, the officers comprise one Captain-General, four Captains, four Lieutenants, four Ensigns and twelve Brigadiers.
From the starting membership of 50 the number of the corps numbered about 1,000 in late 18th century, but only exceeded five hundred by 1930s. The Captain-General is the Gold Stick for Scotland. In effect the size of the membership is more than that of a cadre light infantry battalion in low (reduced) establishment of thee companies than a company, and would equate more to the British Army regiment.
Every officer of the Archers is of the rank of a general, and the privates of the corps rank at Court as colonels.
Members of the Royal Company must be Scots or have strong Scottish connections. Membership is by election; the present membership totals around 530, with an active list of some 400 who pay an annual subscription of £25.
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“It is because the body is a machine that education is possible. Education is the formation of habits, a superinducing of an artificial organisation upon the natural organisation of the body.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895)