The Portsmouth Captains

The Duke of Berwick, presumably at the behest of his staunchly Catholic father, gave orders that 40 Irish soldiers were to be drafted into the regiment, distributed evenly among the 12 companies. The order said that if the company was at full strength then the worst men were to be dismissed and replaced by Irishmen. The Duke knew that the commanding officer would object to this shenanigans so instructed a major, who happened to be a Catholic, to transmit the order to the company sergeants. But the sergeants were not going to allow this without the consent of their captains. At that time the officers commanding each company were referred to as captains whatever their actual rank, so the 1st Company was always commanded by the CO, in this case, Lieutenant-Colonel the Hon John Beaumont. The other five companies quartered at Portsmouth were under the command of Captains Simon Packe, the Hon Thomas Paston, Thomas Orme, William Cooke and John Port.

On 6 Sep 1688 the six captains met with their Colonel, the Duke of Berwick, and made it clear that they would not comply with his order. These captains were well connected men and not easily brushed aside. Beaumont and Paston were younger brothers of peers, Paston’s brother being Treasurer of the King’s Household. Beaumont had been an MP and was the Lieutenant Governor of Dover. Orme had held court office. They also wrote an official letter to Major Slingsby the Lieutenant Governor of Portsmouth:

‘Sir

We are very desirous that our actions may be Favourably Construed; wherefore we have Addressed this to you, with the Sense of the Discourse we had, with His Grace the Duke of Berwicke; which we hope will neither appear Mutinous nor Disrespectful; unto which we humbly put our Hands, and desire you to impart it to his Grace.

It was signed by all six captains, and Colonel Beaumont also wrote to the Duke complaining that ‘Forreigners’ were being imposed on the regiment. This was disingenuous as it had been reported that some Catholic privates had been dismissed to make way for two French Huguenots.

The six captains were arrested and disarmed, and sent to Windsor for court martial. They arrived at Windsor on the evening of 8 Sep and were all resolved to ‘stand it out’. The court martial sat on Monday 10 Sep in the Princess of Denmark’s Presence Chamber. The President was the Earl of Faversham, Commander-in-Chief, accompanied by 14 Generals including John Churchill. A civilian judge advocate was also present. The charge of refusing to obey the orders of a superior officer, was brought under the 15th Article of the Rules and Articles then governing military discipline. The text of the Article reads: ‘If any Inferiour Officer or Soldier shall refuse to obey his Superior Officer…he shall be Cashiered, or suffer such Punishment as a Court Martial shall think fit.’

The officers pleaded that the method of introducing the ‘Papists’ into the regiment was underhand and against normal practice, and that the companies were up to full strength so that the Irishmen would have been supernumeraries, costing the captains 10 shillings a week. After hearing the evidence the officers were brought in one by one and offered a deal. They would be pardoned if they now agreed to accept the recruits. Each officer refused and was cashiered. Ten days later the King conceded that the officers should be compensated financially for the loss of their commissions. But within that time 7 junior officers of the regiment also refused the Irish recruits and offered to resign their commissions. A decision was made that another court martial would stir up trouble in the army, so on 22 Sep the 7 junior officers were quietly dismissed from the army.

The treatment of the officers had a detrimental effect on the rank and file of the Regiment. A riot was reported and many desertions. An exaggerated report reached Holland that the whole regiment had deserted. This boosted the morale of the army preparing to bring William of Orange to England. In October there was a fight between men of the regiment and those of an Irish regiment. The whole incident had far-reaching effects, and rumours of the captains being mistreated while in custody increased the ill-feeling towards the King. It was increasingly clear to him that the army could not be relied upon to maintain loyalty to a staunchly Catholic monarch.

Meanwhile, the turnover of officers in the Regiment was higher than normal; 31 officers either joining or leaving in September and October. The new commanding office was Robert Ramsey, a Catholic. Twelve subalterns were promoted although two of those left. But the fortunes of the dismissed officers were soon to change, after William landed at Torbay. Beaumont was welcomed into his army, while the new CO, Ramsey was obliged, like many Catholic officers, to join James and his son, the Duke of Berwick, on a ship bound for France. The men who had deserted the Regiment were urged to return, in fact a notice in the London Gazette, referring only to the Regiment, gave them until 26 Jan 1689 to report to their winter quarters in Southampton.

The fortunes of the Portsmouth Captains were that John Beaumont was promoted to Colonel and had his former jobs restored; CO of the Regiment and Lieutenant Governor of Dover. Simon Packe was CO of the regiment after Beaumont retired in 1695. The Hon Thomas Paston became CO of another regiment but was drowned a few years later. William Cooke returned to the regiment but was later promoted to lieutenant-colonel and placed in another regiment. Thomas Orme’s position was restored but he soon left the army. John Port remained a civilian.

1689 King William’s Irish Campaign
1690 Battle of the Boyne
1691 Siege of Limerick

1696 Flanders
1701 Holland
1702 Liege

The battles and sieges of the Marlborough Wars attended by the King’s Regiment (Queen’s as it was then) were numerous. The four major battles are well known but some of the sieges are less well known and did not earn battle honours. An article ‘Marlborough’s Sieges’ by C T Atkinson in the Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research Vol XIII no. 52, Winter 1934, lists all the sieges that involved the British army and the units that attended. It is generally accepted that the 8th Regiment was at the siege of Lille but they are not one of the five listed battalions (16th 18th 21st 23rd and 24th). The sieges attended by the 8th are in the list below together with the four big battles.

War of the Spanish Succession 1701 - 1714
1702 Siege of Venloo
1702 Siege of Ruremonde
1702 Siege of Liege
1703 Siege of Huy
1704 Schellenberg
1704 Blenheim
1706 Siege of Menin
1706 Ramillies
1708 Oudenarde
1709 Malplaquet
1709 Siege of Tournai
1710 Siege of Aire

First Jacobite Rebellion 1715
1715 Battle of Dunblane, where the regiment was practically wiped out.

War of the Austrian Succession 1740 - 1748
1743 Dettingen
1745 Fontenoy

Second Jacobite Rebellion 1745-46
1746 Battle of Falkirk
1746 Battle of Culloden

Return to the War in Flanders
1746 Battle of Roucoux
1747 Battle of Lauffeld

1748 Gibraltar until 1751

Seven Years War 1756 - 63
1756 Raised a second battalion (later became the 63rd Foot)
1757 Expedition to the Isle of Aix
1760 Battle of Warburg
1760 Zierenburg
1760 Kloster-Campen
1761 Vellinghusen
1762 Wilhelmsthal

War in North America
1768 Canada
1775 American War of Independence
1785 Departed from North America

The Regiment arrived at Quebec in May 1768. They served across the New York-Canadian Frontier in detachments. They were part of the defence of Canada, in action at Cedars in May 1776, and Vaudreuil. Detachments of the regiment were at Michilimackinac, Fort Niagara, Fort Stanwix, Oriskany, Detroit, Vincennes and Fort Mackinac. They were involved in many small engagements and skirmishes, often fighting alongside native north Americans and Loyalist allies.

French Revolutionary War 1793 - 1802
1794 Martinique (Flank Companies)
1794 Guadeloupe (Flank Companies)
1792 - 1795 Duke of York’s Campaign in Flanders
1794/5 Winter retreat to Bremen

West Indies (some companies)
1796 St Lucia
1796 Grenada

1798 Germany

1799 Minorca
1800 Cadiz
1800 Malta

Egypt 1801
1801 Ghizah
1801 Cairo
1801 Alexandria

1801 Gibraltar

1804 Second battalion raised in Yorkshire and Lancashire

1805 Hanover (1st Battalion)
1807 Copenhagen (1st Bn)
1808 Nova Scotia
1809 West Indies
1809 Martinique
1809 Canada
1810 Nova Scotia and New Brunswick (2nd Bn)

Walcheren 1809
1809 Holland (two companies 2nd Bn)

American War 1812 -14
1813 Six companies of the 2nd Battalion, together with sailors, performed a memorable march on snow-shoes through the backwoods from New Brunswick to Quebec.
1814 Battle of Niagara
Took part in nearly all battles on the Canadian frontier

1814 Second Battalion disbanded

1819 Ionian Islands, until 1825

1830 Nova Scotia, until 1833

1833 Jamaica, until 1839

1839 Nova Scotia, until 1841

1846 August. Embarked for India Scinde

Indian Mutiny 1857 - 58

(Extract from Records and Badges of the British Army by Chichester and Burges-Short 1900)

At the outbreak of the Sepoy Mutiny the regiment had not long removed from Agra to Jellundur in the Punjaub. Three days after the outbreak at Meerut, a detachment of the regiment performed an important service in securing the fort and magazines of Phillour. On 14th June 1857 the regiment received orders to march from Jellundur to Delhi; it accomplished the distance in fourteen days, and during the three succeeding months bore an active part in the siege. [Casualties in the King’s: 3 officers killed and 7 wounded. 41 Other Ranks killed and 129 wounded]

When the fall of the city struck the first blow at the rebel cause, the King’s formed part of a flying column under Brigadier-General Greathed, sent to re-open communications with Agra and Cawnpore. At Bulandshuhur and Alighur, Brigadier Greathed attacked and dispersed large bodies of rebels, and at Agra, on 10th October 1857, after a forced march of forty-four miles, he signally repulsed an unexpected attack on his camp by 7,000 mutinous Sepoys, 500 of the mutineers being slain and all their guns captured. The regiment was with Sir Colin Campbell at the relief of Lucknow, in the actions at Cawnpore, 2nd and 6th December 1857, and in the operations in Oude in 1858-9. The battalion returned home from India in 1860.

1858 Second battalion raised at Buttevant, County Cork

1859 Gibraltar and Malta (2nd Bn)

1866 Malta, until 1868 (1st Bn)

1868 India (1st Bn)

1868 Returned from Malta (2nd Bn)

1877 India (2nd Bn)

Second Afghan War 1878 - 80
1878 Afghanistan under Sir Frederick Roberts (2nd Bn), until 1780
1878 Peiwar Kotal

Third Burmah War 1885 - 87
Burmah Expeditionary Force under General Sir Harry Prendergast

1879 Aden (1st Bn)

1879 Home service

1891 Bermuda (1st Bn)

1891 Halifax (1st Bn)

1892 Aden then returned to UK (2nd Bn)

1893 South Africa (1st Bn)

Second Anglo-Boer War 1899 - 1902
1899 -1901 Defence of Ladysmith

When Princess Anne ascended to the throne in 1702 the Regiment became the Queen's Regiment of Foot.  A Jacobite rebellion followed in 1715 when Queen Anne died.  The Jacobite supporters hoped to install James Stuart (the legitimate son of James II of England) to the throne instead of the Hanoverian King George I.  As unrest escalated in Britain, the Queen's Regiment fought against the numerically superior Jacobite army at the Battle of Sheriffmuir and succeeded in suppressing the rebellion.  To honour the Regiment's service to King George I, the Queen's became the King's Regiment of Foot with the White Horse of Hanover as its badge.  The Regiment then remained on garrison duties in Scotland and England until 1739.  

The Regiment went on to serve during the War of the Austrian Succession (1740–48) fighting at the Battle of Fontenoy (1743) and the Battle of Dettingen. Until 1745 when the Regiment returned to Britain in a hurry in order to fight in the second Jacobite Rebellion, when Bonnie Prince Charlie (the grandson of James II) landed in Scotland, again attempting to regain the lost crown to the Stuart family.  The Regiment fought at the Battles of Falkirk and Culloden.  

 It went on to serve during the American Revolutionary War (1768-1785), and during the Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815) seized the Island of Martinique in the West Indies.  It suffered 1,700 casualties in the first 9 months of 5 year deployment in the West Indies, largely due to disease.

 The War of 1812 was a 32-month military conflict between the United States and the British Empire resolving many of the remaining issues of the American War of Independence, fighting at the attack at Ogdensburg, the Battle of Chippewa, the Battle of Lundy's Lane, action at Snake Hill and the siege of Fort Erie.  The Regiment then went on to served during the Indian Mutiny of 1857 where it was stationed at Jullundur. A detachment of the regiment performed an important service by securing the fort and magazine at Phillour. They marched from Jullundur to Delhi, in fourteen days, and with bayonet and rifle helped to clear the city of the mutineers. They took part in the relief of Agra, where they defeated 8,000 mutineers and captured all their guns. They then proceeded to the relief of Lucknow and took part in other operations.

They were active in the Second Afghan War (1878–1880) and then went on to serve during the Third Burmese War (1885), Second Boer War (1899-1902), and the two World Wars.  

 In 1958 after 273 years of continuous existence, the Regiment was amalgamated with the Manchester Regiment, and became The King's Regiment (Manchester and Liverpool).  In 2004 the British infantry was restructured once again and the King's Regiment was merged with King's Own Royal Border Regiment and The Queen's Lancashire Regiment to form The Duke of Lancaster's Regiment (King's, Lancashire and Border).