For Love of Regiment: A History of British Infantry, Volume One, 1660–1914

By Charles Messenger

The author explains how the tradition of loyalty to the regiment has served the British Army so well over the past 350 years and, in his vivid description of some of the major campaigns in which it has fought, shows what it was like at various times to have been an officer or a soldier in the British Army.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Sep 13, 1993
• ISBN: 9781473814387

Charles Messenger

Charles Messenger served for twenty years in the Royal Tank Regiment before retiring to become a military historian and defense analyst. He is the author of some forty books, mainly on twentieth century warfare. Some have been published in several languages and have been widely acclaimed. He has also written and helped to direct several TV documentary series and carried out a large number of historical studies for the Ministry of Defence.

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CHAPTER ONE

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‘In Good King Charles’s Golden Days’

1660–1688

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BY the end of 1659 the British people had grown tired of the Commonwealth, as their ten-year-old republic was called. The death of Oliver Cromwell the previous year had resulted in his title of Lord Protector being passed to his son Richard, who was but a shadow of his father. Power was in the hands of the Major-Generals and they merely increased it by trebling the size of the Army, which now began to overshadow Parliament as the main instrument of government. One officer, however, was not happy about the state of the country. George Monck was an experienced soldier who had served for ten years in Flanders prior to the Civil War and had then been sacked from command of a regiment in Ireland on grounds of suspected disloyalty. Nonetheless, he had joined the Royalist ranks as a pikeman and fought until captured in 1645. He transferred his allegiance to Parliament and campaigned in Scotland, raising his own regiment there in 1650, remaining in the country after the victory at Dunbar in the same year. Displaying surprising versatility, he was called upon to command the English fleet in war against the Dutch in the mid-1650s. Thereafter, he was appointed Lord Protector of Scotland, with his own regiment remaining as part of his command.

Monck saw the increasing power of Major-Generals as contrary to the spirit of the revolution and considered it his duty to restore to Parliament the power that it had recently lost. Thus, he opened negotiations with Westminster and then set off from Coldstream, which lies just across the Scottish border from Northumberland, on New Year’s Eve, 1660. In spite of thick snow and freezing weather, he and his men reached York on 11 January. Here one of the leading Roundhead commanders of the Civil War, Fairfax, had come out of retirement and dissolved a force led by one of the Major-Generals, Lambert, who had intended to bar Monck’s way. He himself now sent a third of his force back to Scotland and continued with four regiments of foot, including his own, and three of horse. Word of his intentions swept ahead of him, and peals of church bells and cries of ‘A Free Parliament!’ greeted him in every town and village that he passed through. On 3 February he entered London on horseback and was met by the Speaker and the rump of Parliament at Somerset House. Thereafter he quartered his own regiment in St James’s Palace, where his men were viewed by Londoners as heroes. One admirer wrote of them: ‘These Coldstreamers were like the nobles of Israel with whom Deborah was so much in love, and of whom she sings in the Book of Judges, because they offered themselves willingly among the people, and jeoparded their lives unto death in the high places of the field.’

Watching these events with increasing interest from across the English Channel at Bruges was Charles Stuart, in exile since his final defeat at Worcester nine years before. News eventually came to him from Monck that Parliament might be prepared to invite him back to England, but with conditions. They included a promise to give the troops arrears of pay due to them and to comply with all Parliamentary resolutions, one of which would certainly be the removal of the hated standing army. These he was prepared to accept and, as a first step, he and Lord Wentworth, commanding his loyal King’s Regiment of Guards, formed of fellow exiles in 1656, moved to occupy Dunkirk, which had been in English hands since Oliver Cromwell’s victory in conjunction with the French over the Spanish there in 1658. Charles now travelled to The Hague, where the English regiments in the Dutch service swore loyalty to him. On 25 May, 1660, he boarded a ship sent from England to collect him, the name of the vessel having been hastily changed from Naseby, after Cromwell’s resounding victory against Charles’s father in 1645, to Royal Charles.

Greeted by Monck with gunfire, trumpet clarions and cheering from the large crowd which had gathered, Charles stepped ashore at Dover to claim his throne. He travelled to Blackheath, where on 29 May, the ninth anniversary to the day of his flight from the battlefield at Worcester, he found drawn up on parade 20,000 Ironsides, as the New Model Army was nicknamed, the foot in scarlet, and the horse in dark gleaming breastplates. John Evelyn, the noted diarist of the day, watched them greet the monarch ‘brandishing their swords and shouting with inexpressible joy’. This rapturous demonstration of loyalty, however, did not prevent their disbandment, which Charles was duty-bound to order. Largely thanks to Monck, this was carried out with little difficulty during the next few months until, by January, 1661, only Monck’s Coldstreamers were left. They had been allowed to remain until the end as a reward for their services during the Restoration. In the meantime, Charles himself had been organizing his Household troops. He had brought one troop of Life Guards with him, and in the autumn of 1660 had raised Wentworth’s Regiment of Guards at Dunkirk to a strength of 1,200 men, 700 of whom were red-coated musketeers and the remainder pikemen in buff. Then, on 23 November, feeling the need to have a Royalist regiment with him in London, he commissioned Colonel John Russell to raise one. Now he was in a position to disband Monck’s Regiment, the last residue of Cromwell’s New Model Army. At this moment, though, Charles was confronted by serious unrest in London. This was caused by the so-called Fifth Monarchy Men, largely discharged soldiery and religious fanatics who wanted to re-establish a republic. Only the Life Guards and Monck’s Regiment were immediately available to contain them, along with the Trained Bands, London’s traditional part-time militia, which had to be called out. After a shaky start, the latter redeemed themselves and completed the crushing of the insurrection, although not without some bloody clashes.

The Coldstreamers’ performance during this unrest convinced both King and Parliament that they should not be disbanded. Consequently, on 14 February, 1661, they paraded at Tower Hill and formed a circle around four parliamentary commissioners. On the order of Monck, recently ennobled as the Duke of Albemarle, they shouted ‘God Save the King!’, waved their hats and laid down their arms. This symbolized their disbandment as troops of Parliament. Next, they retrieved their weapons and became, in the words of one of the commissioners, ‘an Extraordinary Guard to His Majesty’s person’ with the title The Lord General’s Regiment of Foot Guards. Nine years later, and in recognition of its epic march from Coldstream, Monck’s regiment would be retitled The Coldsteam Regiment of Foot Guards. Three weeks before this ceremony on Tower Hill Russell’s muster was complete, and so the King now had three regiments of Foot Guards, two at home and one abroad. Within a few months, however, they were joined by a fourth regiment. Although he had decreed that all troops should be withdrawn from Scotland, Charles wished Edinburgh Castle to be garrisoned and a company of Guards was raised for this purpose, soon to grow into a regiment. This took its traditions from an old regiment which had been raised by the Marquis of Argyll in the Western Highlands in 1639, and which Charles I had sent to Ireland three years later. It become known as the Scotch Guards. Returning to England in 1645, it had been annihilated at Worcester and disbanded. Now it was revived under the same title.

In 1662, Charles, short of money, sold Dunkirk to the French, and Wentworth’s Regiment was brought back to England. This provoked a jealous rivalry with Russell’s Regiment, which lasted until Wentworth’s death in 1665. Charles then immediately combined the two into one large regiment of 24 companies, titling it The King’s Royal Regiment of Guards. He declared that it was to be senior to The Lord General’s Regiment, which retorted by adopting the motto ‘Nulli Secundus’. The Scotch Guards, even though they could claim that they were the oldest, found themselves the junior of the three Guards regiments and resented the nickname ‘The Kiddies’ conferred on them by the other two.

In October, 1661, another new regiment held its first muster parade, on Putney Heath, which lay on the south-western outskirts of London. This marked the beginning of what were to become known as the Regiments of the Line, as opposed to the Sovereign’s Household troops. Earlier in the year Charles had married Catherine of Braganza, ‘the daughter of Portugal’. Not only did she bring in her dowry a very welcome £800,000 in cash, but also the ports of Tangier and Bombay. Disinclined to provide the money to garrison the latter, Charles handed it over to the Honourable East India Company, formed in 1600 to trade in spices with the sub-continent. Tangier, being closer to home and strategically placed on the African side of the Straits of Gibraltar, was a different matter. He appointed the Earl of Peterborough as governor and the Tangier Regiment, nine companies strong, was raised to provide the garrison.

At this time there was no officially laid-down uniform for the Army. Indeed, it would not be standardized until 1708, and even then the colour of the coat was not specified, although most regiments selected red. Where the Colonel of the Regiment did display his individuality was in the colour of the coat lining, and this was revealed in the cuffs and the collar, what were termed the facings. The infantryman’s dress otherwise included a white shirt, a pair of kersey breeches, stockings and shoes. He obtained a new coat each year and the lining of the old was used to make him a new waistcoat. Responsibility soon fell upon the Colonel for clothing his regiment. Consequently, in order, at the very least, to avoid being out of pocket, he deducted a sum from his men’s pay. Thus, a private soldier received eightpence per day’s pay in 1685, but sixpence of this was deducted by his regiment in order to pay for his uniform and for his food and lodging, which continued to be in private houses, as it had been in Cromwell’s day. The soldier would be lucky to see the whole of the meagre balance due to him, since the Colonel would often make inroads into this in order to cover such items as auditors’ and agents’ bills. Another means of raising money was to enter false names on the muster roll, on which the pay due to a regiment was calculated. Thus, names like ‘John Doe’, ‘Richard Roe’, and ‘Thomas Atkins’, on which the British soldier’s nickname is based,* would appear. The soldier himself was given a twenty shilling bounty on enlistment, doubled to forty shillings in 1690, but often a good proportion of this found its way into the pocket of his company commander on the justification of defraying of expenses. Some unscrupulous recruits would enlist, and then desert with their bounties and re-enlist under false names in other regiments. This reached such a peak that in 1692 a Royal Warrant had to be issued making it a penal offence to re-enlist without having formally been discharged.

The soldier himself enlisted for life, gauged at 20 years, a practice that would remain in force until 1806, and served until he was too old or crippled to be of any further use. During the first part of King Charles’s reign the majority of enlistments were former members of the Cromwellian army, and hence regiments such as the Tangier Regiment needed little training before they were ready for duty. One good deed that King Charles did do for his old soldiers was the setting up of the Royal Hospital at Chelsea as a home for those unfit to fend for themselves. His inspiration was a similar establishment, the Royal Kilmainham Hospital, which had been set up in Ireland, which came under a different establishment to the rest of the army, by the Duke of Ormonde in 1679. Three years later Charles set in train the building of the Royal Hospital, commissioning the renowned architect, Sir Christopher Wren, to design it. The cost of its building was borne to an extent by the soldiers themselves, and meant yet another deduction from their pay.

Charles’s infantry regiments each consisted of nine to twelve companies. The much larger King’s Royal Regiment of Foot Guards, with its 24 companies, was, however, split into two battalions for ease of control. While the Colonel acted as the figurehead, the day-to-day running of the regiment was vested in the Lieutenant Colonel, one for each battalion in the case of The King’s Royal Regiment. He had the Major as second-in-command, and also an adjutant, quartermaster, chaplain, surgeon, and a martial. The last-named carried out the duties of what later became the Regimental Sergeant Major. Each company was commanded, at least in theory, by a captain, and also had two lieutenants, one ensign, two sergeants, three corporals, two drummers and one hundred private soldiers. In practice, for reasons of financial gain, the Colonel, Lieutenant Colonel and Major held the captaincies of three of the companies, with a captain-lieutenant commanding the Colonel’s and senior subalterns the other two. For much of the time, though, companies were significantly below establishment.

The officers themselves were of three types. First there were hard-bitten veterans who had served with foreign armies and tended to man the regiments overseas. Then there were the ex-Royalist Civil War officers, now getting on in years, who served with the static garrisons and generally officered the Militia, which was maintained as a part-time force which could be called out in time of civil unrest or if invasion threatened. Finally there was a new breed, which increasingly made its presence felt at home, especially in the Guards. They regarded their commissions as status symbols and usually obtained them through having an interest at court, but the practice of paying for commissions seems to have spread very quickly. Thus, the unscrupulous Lieutenant Edward Picks of The King’s Royal Regiment of Guards wrote to Sir Joseph Williamson, under-secretary to the Earl of Arlington, the Secretary of State for War, in 1672 complaining that he had been passed over for promotion too many times, but that Captain Tongue of his regiment ‘is dangerously sick of a cancer in his mouth, and a consumption, accompanied by the black jaundice and other diseases, so that he is given over to the physicians’. Picks continued: ‘If you will oblige me with your kindness to get me the company after his death, I will present you with 400 guineas when I receive my commission.’ Charles II began by decrying the practice, but had come to accept it by the end of his reign, even going to the extent of levying five per cent on the sale of a commission from both the vendor and purchaser in order to help fund the Royal Hospital. Soon it became almost the only way of obtaining a commission in the Horse or Foot, and agents made a comfortable living from negotiating deals. In time, there were attempts to regulate prices, but, as we shall see, these often did not work. For those officers who lacked the means to obtain promotion in this way, their only hope was framed in the long-lasting and popular toast to ‘a bloody war or a sickly pestilence’ in which casualties to their seniors would enable them to gain the next step without purchase. In spite of its obvious disadvantages, the purchase system was to serve the British Army for 200 years. One rule which was enforced, though, was that through the Test Act of 1673 no man was allowed to hold the King’s Commission unless he was a practising Anglican.

The Tangier Regiment duly set off for the Mediterranean, accompanied by the Tangier Horse, later to become the 1st Royal Dragoons. On arrival they relieved the Portuguese garrison and for the next twenty years held Tangier against the Moors. At home, though, friction was growing with the newly liberated and now independent Netherlands over trade. In order to strengthen his forces, Charles, with Parliament’s consent, raised a new regiment in 1664. This was Our Most Dear and Most Entirely Beloved Brother James Duke of York’s Regiment, but otherwise known as The Lord Admiral’s Regiment. Clothed in yellow coats with red facings, the musketeers of this new regiment were to be sea soldiers, serving in His Majesty’s Fleet and, as such, were the forerunners of today’s Royal Marines. Four English and three Scottish regiments were in the Dutch service at the time, but Charles obstinately declined to recall them, even though he was repeatedly warned that the Dutch would demand an oath of allegiance from them. War did break out and those who refused to declare their loyalty to the Dutch were confronted with discharge and ruin. It was only thanks to the British envoy at The Hague, Sir George Downing, that 34 officers and some 600 men were able to get back to England. Charles could now no longer ignore them, and on 31 May, 1665, incorporated them into the army as The Holland Regiment. This could, however, trace its history back to 1572, when it had been raised in London under Queen Elizabeth’s policy of giving aid to the Dutch in their struggle to throw off the Spanish yoke. The men of The Holland Regiment wore red coats lined in buff similar in colour to that worn by the pikemen of London’s Trained Bands. It was the colour of its facings that would eventually give the regiment its unique title.

One reason why Charles may have been so dilatory in recalling his loyal soldiers from the Continent was that the Colonel of The Holland Regiment, Robert Sidney, bore a remarkable resemblance to the king’s most favoured bastard, the Duke of Monmouth. The fact, too, that Sidney had allowed Charles possession of his mistress, Lucy Waters, mother of Monmouth, when both were at The Hague in 1649, served to fan the flames of gossip.

Given that the Dutch strength lay in their fleet, it was inevitable that the war should be a naval one. All four infantry regiments in England took part, sending detachments to serve on board the ships. As such they tasted victory off Lowestoft in June, 1665, but defeat as well after the heavy pounding of the Battle of the Four Days a year later, when De Ruyter drove the British fleet back from Ostend to the mouth of the Thames. France eventually sided with the Dutch, and this caused Charles to order home another regiment which had been in foreign service, Douglas’s.

In March, 1633, Charles I had granted Sir John Hepburn, who had served in command of the Green Brigade of Scottish soldiers under Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden during the Thirty Years War, a charter to raise a regiment of Scots to fight under the banner of Louis XIII of France. Sir John Hepburn’s Regiment fought during the latter half of the Thirty Years War and eventually absorbed the survivors of the Green Brigade when that was broken up. In 1661 the regiment, now under command of Lord George Douglas, returned briefly to England to assist in putting down the Fifth Monarchy Men. Since this was prior to the formation of the Tangier Regiment, Douglas’s Regiment was given precedence over it and was used as a model in the formation of the Tangier Regiment. Now, in 1666, it was recalled once more, and sent to defend Chatham and the fort of Sheerness on the Isle of Sheppey.

On 19 June, 1667, Dutch warships bombarded Sheerness and landed a force on the island. A company of Douglas’s Regiment deployed there withdrew to the mainland, leaving it in Dutch hands. This probably did little for the Regiment’s already low standing among the local population. According to Samuel Pepys, who, in his capacity of Secretary to the Admiralty, had travelled to the Medway, Douglas’s Scots were ‘far more terrible to these people of the country towns than the Dutch themselves’. The Dutch ships were, however, prevented from reaching the dockyard at Chatham and eventually withdrew, taking with them the Royal Charles as one of their prizes. Shortly afterwards peace was made, and an additional twelve regiments hastily raised by the King, with Parliament’s permission, were disbanded.

In 1672 Charles once more went to war with the Dutch, this time acquiring the money to do so through a secret treaty with Louis XIV of France. The regiments again found themselves serving as maritime soldiers, with three new ones being raised specifically for this purpose and others for land service. Douglas’s Regiment, on the other hand, returned to the Continent to fight under the French. The war, however, proved unpopular at home and Charles felt forced to make peace with the Dutch in 1674, disbanding the additional wartime regiments. Four years later, improved relations were cemented through the marriage of Charles’s niece Mary to William of Orange. Charles now withdrew his troops from the French service once more, and Douglas and his Scots came home again. He himself had in 1675 been made the Earl of Dumbarton, and hence it was now Dumbarton’s Regiment. Up until this time the Regiment had used a tune called ‘The Scots March’. Indeed, Pepys noted during his visit to the Medway during June, 1667: ‘Here in the streets I did hear The Scots March beat by the drums before the soldiers, which is very odd.’ Shortly after the regiment’s return to England, an unknown lyricist wrote some words to a tune known variously as ‘I Serve a Worthy Ladie’, ‘New Scotch Hornpipe’ or simply ‘A Scotch Tune’, which had originated during the period 1615–30. The first line of the lyric is ‘Dumbarton drums beat bonnie, O’, and hence the tune became known as ‘Dumbarton’s Drums’, and, as such, the regimental march. No evidence exists that Dumbarton’s Regiment changed its march at this time, and the supposition is that ‘Dumbarton’s Drums’ and ‘The Scots March’ are one and the same. In any event, not only did Dumbarton’s become established as the oldest regiment in the British Army, but also had, and still (1993) have, as The Royal Scots, the oldest march.

Charles further cemented his relationship with the Dutch by sending troops under Monmouth to help oppose the French in Flanders. They formed an Anglo-Dutch Brigade, and the 1st and 2nd English Regiments of this, otherwise known as the Irish and Vane’s Regiments, would eventually be established as part of the British Army. Monmouth, however, achieved little.

In 1678 the establishment of the infantry regiment was altered to reflect the introduction of a new infantry weapon, the grenade. This had proved its value in siege operations during the Thirty Years War, and it began to be introduced in the British Army in 1677, when Captain Lloyd of The King’s Guards ran a course in it for two men of each company in his regiment. It was decided that these specialists should employed in grenadier companies on a scale of one per battalion. John Evelyn wrote in his diary on 29 June, 1678:

‘Now were brought into service a new sort of soldier called grenadiers, who were dexterous in flinging hand grenades. Everyone had a pouch full. They had furred hats with coped crowns like Janizaries which made them look very fierce and some had long hoods hanging down as we picture fools. The clothing being likewise piebald and yellow and red [red faced with yellow].’

The caps were designed as such to avoid them interfering, as the normal brimmed headwear did, with the throwing arm. The grenades themselves were iron spheres filled with powder with fuze attached. Since they weighed up to four pounds, the largest men were selected to be grenadiers, which helps to explain Evelyn’s view of them as being so formidable. They also carried a light musket, called a fuzee, with a broad leather strap so that it could be slung when they were throwing their grenades, which were carried in a pouch on a shoulder belt. They also had hammer-hatchets to assist in tearing down obstacles during the assault. The normal musket itself was by now changing from the matchlock to the more efficient flintlock, and the introduction of the bayonet, which was initially plugged into the muzzle of the musket, saw the pikeman begin to fade from the ranks. Another new weapon, introduced in 1682, was the infantry gun. Two light brass 3-pounder field pieces, manned by the infantrymen themselves, were allotted to each regiment.

Meanwhile, the Tangier commitment continued. The Moors, who were able to overlook the town, were skilled in siege warfare, especially in isolating defence works by digging trenches round and behind them, in raiding operations, and in luring British troops into ambushes. Two of the governors were killed in action, and, as Lord Dartmouth observed, the men who formed the garrison ‘truly were soldiers who sought their bread where finer gentlemen would not vouchsafe to come’. Casualties, however, were not all inflicted by the Moors. Pepys, on an inspection visit, made note of a girl named Joyce, a ‘mighty pretty creature’, who was reputed to have transmitted venereal disease to no fewer than four hundred soldiers. In 1680 reinforcements were sent out. These comprised Dumbarton’s Regiment and, newly raised from London and West Country, the Earl of Plymouth’s Regiment, otherwise known as the 2nd Tangier Regiment, and later, in 1715, to become the King’s Own. The cost of Tangier weighed increasingly heavily on the King’s purse, however, and in March, 1684, the garrison, after a final successful sally, was withdrawn. The last governor, who was also Colonel of the Tangier Regiment, was the rumbustious Percy Kirke, an officer of the old school. Once, when jostled by one of his drunken men in the street one morning, his reaction was merely to exclaim; ‘God damn me, the fellow has a good morning’s draught already!’ Before leaving Tangier, the tradesmen there pressed him for payment of £1,500, to which he retorted: ‘God damn me, why did you trust me?’ Pepys saw him as a lecherous knave, but his men would follow him anywhere.

Charles honoured the ‘Tangerines’ on their return home by conferring new titles on them. Kirke’s was made The Queen’s Own, in honour of her dowry, and given precedence immediately below Dumbarton’s, which was made The Royal Regiment of Foot. This angered the Holland Regiment, whose Colonel resigned in protest, but their title remained the same, with their position of seniority being directly below the Queen’s Own. As for the 2nd Tangier Regiment, this became The Duchess of York and Albany’s Regiment in honour of Charles’s sister-in-law. Another honour for the Tangerines would eventually come in 1909, when The Royal Scots and Queen’s, together with the Royal Dragoons, were granted the battle honour ‘Tangier’, the oldest in the British Army.

Charles himself died on 6 February, 1685. Although he had pledged to Parliament at the beginning of his reign that he would never have a standing army, there was now one in being. It consisted of his own Household troops – four troops of Life Guards, a regiment of Horse (later the Royal Horse Guards), three regiments of Foot Guards – two regiments of Horse, and four of Foot. Besides these, there was the Irish Army of 7,000 men and a number of independent companies which had been raised, beginning in 1667, for policing the Highlands of Scotland. In addition, four other Scots regiments had been raised during his reign, but only as wartime exigencies, and all had been disbanded by 1680. His brother James, who now succeeded him, was about to have much need of the army that had now been created.

Charles, while publicly a High Church Anglican, had always managed to conceal that at heart he was a Roman Catholic. This was in contrast to James, who wore his religion on his sleeve and came to the throne determined to bring the country back to what he considered to be the true faith. Within three months of his accession he faced a serious threat as the Duke of Monmouth landed in Lyme Bay on the Dorset coast, with three shiploads of followers, determined to claim the crown for himself. Monmouth marched on Taunton, which had a strong Puritan tradition from the Civil War, and met with a rapturous welcome as he travelled. James’s reaction was to send 35-year-old Lord John Churchill, veteran of Tangier and the Dutch Wars and now Colonel of The Royal Dragoons, galloping down to intercept Monmouth. He halted at Chard in Somerset and was joined by Colonel Kirke with half of his own regiment, now known as The Queen Dowager’s Regiment, and half of The Queen’s Regiment, formerly The Duchess of York’s.

James appointed the Earl of Feversham as overall commander, and he marched to Bristol with three battalions of Foot Guards and a regiment of Horse. This stopped Monmouth’s advance in that direction and he withdrew. Feversham now linked up with Churchill and Kirke at Bath. They followed Monmouth, whose force was largely made up of country people armed for the most part with agricultural implements, to Sedgemoor, just outside Bridgwater in Somerset. Here, in the early hours of 5 July, Monmouth attacked, only to be decisively repulsed and defeated by both firepower and discipline. Monmouth fled, but was quickly apprehended and messily beheaded on Tower Hill. His followers were rounded up by Kirke and his men, with such eagerness that his own regiment was given the cynical nickname ‘Kirke’s Lambs’, after the Paschal Lamb, the badge of Catherine of Braganza, which they displayed on their Colours. It was, though, The Queen’s, otherwise known as Trelawny’s, who became the main instrument of persecution, as they were left to do duty at Judge Jeffreys’ Bloody Assizes. Such was the odium which they incurred that it became an accepted principle that in future troops should be kept away from any such proceedings.

In the meantime James had asked his son-in-law, William of Orange, for the temporary return of the troops in the Dutch service. These now comprised six regiments – three Scots and one English, which had declared for the Dutch in 1665, and the 1st and 2nd English Regiments of the Anglo-Dutch Brigade. These arrived in England in June, 1685, but marched no further west than Hounslow, where they made a fine impression on parade, before returning to the Continent in August. James, however, did transfer the 1st and 2nd English Regiments to the English establishment as Monck’s (later 5th Foot) and Belasyse’s (6th Foot).

Monmouth’s rebellion gave James a nasty jolt, especially since the Militia, which still provided the backbone of his kingdom’s defences, had performed miserably. He therefore took immediate steps to increase the size of his standing army. He ordered the raising of eight regiments of Horse and nine of Foot. He also decreed, in line with the practice in France, that the Horse should take precedence over the Foot. This angered the Foot Guards, and in order to placate them, James laid down that their officers should enjoy a rank two steps higher in the Army than that they held in their regiments. Thus a Captain of Foot Guards now equated to a Lieutenant Colonel in the Army. This brightened their prospects for promotion to the highest ranks and also vastly inflated the value of their commissions, thus making the officers of Foot Guards more than content. It was a custom which would endure for nearly two hundred years.

The first of the new infantry regiments to be raised was Our Royal Regiment of Fuziliers, also Our Ordnance Regiment. This was modelled on a French regiment raised in 1671 and was equipped with the Fusil (Fuzee) and bayonet, with no pikemen on establishment. It subsidiary title reflected its original role, that of guarding the Army’s one store of ordnance, at the Tower of London, and providing escorts for the artillery train. It is the one regiment raised at this time whose original title survives to this day and it has always enjoyed a close connection with the City of London. The regiments themselves were raised by companies. Here is the order given to Henry Duke of Norfolk to raise a company which would become part of his own regiment, later the 12th Foot (Suffolk Regiment):

‘To Our Right Trusty and Right Entirely Beloved Cousin and Councillor, Henry, Duke of Norfolk, Captain of a Company of Foot in the Regiment, whereof he is Colonell.

These are to authorise you, by beat of Drumm, or otherwise, to raise Voluntiers to serve for Soldiers in your own Company of Our Regiment, whereof you are Colonell, which is to consist of one hundred private Soldiers, Three Sargeants, Three Corporalls, and two Drummers in each Company. And, as the said Soldiers shall be respectively raised in the said Company, they are to be produced to muster, to the intent that they may enter into Our Pay and entertainment, and when that Number shall be fully or near completed, they are to march to the then General Rendezvous of their Regiment, where they are also to be mustered. And you are to appoint such Person or Persons as you shall think fit, to receive Armes for the said Soldiers, and Halberds for the said Sargeants out of the Store of Our Ordnance.

And Wee do hereby require all Magistrates, Justices of the Peace, Constables, and other Our Officers whom it may concern, at the places where you shall raise, march, or rendezvous Our said Company to be assisting therein as there shall be occasion.’

James personally selected the Colonels themselves, five of whom were Roman Catholic and thus legally ineligible under the Test Act.

The King used Hounslow Heath as a training area and brought all his regiments here, the young and the old, to sharpen their competitive spirit through forming battle array in six ranks or three, and practising drills for siege and storm, with cavalry in their variegated uniforms adding magnificence to the scene. The First Guards now had three battalions, the Second and Third two each. Of the Line, only The Royal Regiment had two. Thus James had 22 battalions of infantry, but could only accommodate half at Hounslow at any one time. Even so, they and the cavalry made an imposing sight and became a tourist attraction. Some did initially view the concentration at Hounslow as the sinister image of military tyranny, but the King’s clear control over his soldiers, the colourful parades, accompanied by the music of the bands, a recent innovation, and the atmosphere of carnival won them over. Only Parliament was unhappy, and since it refused to grant the King more than half the money he needed to maintain his army, he promptly prorogued it, never to summon it again during his reign.

Underneath the gaiety, however, many in the Army brooded. An increasing number of Roman Catholic officers, largely Irish, began to appear, and intermingled with the populace on Hounslow Heath were Irish monks, clearly bent on proselytizing their religion. The Army could see itself being drawn into a politico-religious struggle and did not like it. Some captains put their companies up for sale in protest, but the Colonel and five captains of The Princess Anne of Denmark’s Regiment (later the 8th King’s), then stationed at Portsmouth, went even further. They simply refused to admit Roman Catholic officers and were cashiered by the King, becoming known as The Portsmouth Captains’. Matters came to a head in June, 1688, when James put seven bishops on trial for seditious libel, after they had objected to the King’s order for the suspension of the Test Act and for Roman Catholicism to be openly practised to be read out in every Anglican church. They were thrown into the Tower, where the officers of The Royal Regiment of Fuziliers asked for their blessing and insisted on drinking their health in spite of continual threats. In desperation James sent the regiment to Hounslow. Shortly afterwards he was dining there when he heard a great cheer outside, but was told that it was not for him but for the acquittal of the bishops. In a fury, he dispersed the regiments from Hounslow and decided to make an example. He picked on The Earl of Lichfield’s Regiment (formerly Norfolk’s) at Blackheath. Parading the regiment, he ordered its members to either sign a pledge of indulgence towards Catholics or be discharged. All but two officers and a handful of men promptly laid down their arms. Unable to accept this mass resignation, James sullenly ordered them to retrieve their weapons. He had been caught in his own trap.

In desperation, the King now turned to Ireland, where the Earl of Tyrconnell, the commander-in-chief, had carried out a rigorous purge of Protestant officers. Three Irish regiments were brought across to England, and a further three came down from Scotland. In March James had raised a further three regiments, using officers returned from Holland as their cadres, and that autumn formed a further six. It was the inflammatory effect of bringing Irish Catholic troops, who in Protestant eyes were capable only of massacre, across to England which did most to deprive James of his throne. A popular song of the day was the derisively-worded, but lilting ‘Lillibulero’, which is said to have ‘whistled’ James out of three kingdoms, and this became one of the British Army’s most famous marches, although not affiliated to any particular regiment. It is also well known today as the signature tune of the BBC World Service.

By now overtures had been made to William of Orange to come over and save England from Roman Catholicism. Both on account of his wife Mary and fears that the Netherlands could find herself isolated if a Catholic England allied itself to Catholic France, he agreed. On 5 November, 1688, his fleet appeared off Torbay on the South Devon coast. He had with him some 12,000 troops, including the six English regiments in his service, which James had requested back, but which William had declined to return, apart from some of their officers.

James, in the meantime, had concentrated his troops in the