The article did seem interesting. I have a lot of time for Breihan as a historian. I am indeed familiar with Cookson -- my PhD was on the politics of national defence 1794-1812 and pretty much revolved around arguing against his point that defence was thoroughly decentralised and rooted in the locality. Cookson's book is excellent, even if I disagree with it on a fair few points (not to mention the fact he credited a memorandum on defence to Pitt the Younger, when it was actually written by William Morton Pitt...!). I have not read Linch's book (I should), but believe I consulted his unpublished PhD thesis for "The Late Lord", as the name certainly rings a bell. I don't think I used it in the writing, though.

As for "bottom up", I'm afraid I have always looked at the militia from a very "top down" perspective... there's definitely a gap in the literature there.

Jacqueline