The Staffordshire Yeomanry (Queen's Own Royal Regiment) was a unit of the British Army. Raised in 1794 following Prime Minister William Pitt's order to raise volunteer bodies of men to defend Great Britain from foreign invasion, the Staffordshire Yeomanry began as volunteer cavalry regiment. It first served overseas at the time of the Boer War. Following distinguished action in Egypt and Palestine in the First World War, it developed with the deployment of artillery and tanks.