"Run away, out of Captain Soames' Company, in his Grace the Duke of Norfolk's regiment of Infantry, quartered at Newport, in Shropshire; Roger Curtis, a barber surgeon, a little man with short black hair, a little curled; round visage, fresh-coloured, in a light coloured coat, with gold and silver buttons, red plush breeches and white hat; he lived formerly at Downham Market, in Norfolk. Whoever will give notice to Francis Baker, agent to the said regiment, in Hatton Garden, so that he may be secured, shall have two guineas reward."*
* "London Gazette," 1689.
A spectator of the Camp of the Household Brigade, on Putney Heath, in October, 1694, describes the three regiments of Guards as wearing scarlet, of course; the 1st, faced with blue; the 2nd, or "Cole-stream," with green; the 3rd Scots, with white; the officers being distinguished by white scarves worn over the left shoulder, and fringed with the colour of the regimental facings. The Holland Regiment (Buffs), are described as wearing red, faced with flesh-colour; the Queen's or Tangier Regiment, red, faced with sea-green; the Lord Admiral's Regiment of Marines, raised in 1664 (and afterwards incorporated by William III., with the 2nd Foot Guards), in doublets and breeches of yellow.
Until the reign of Her present Majesty, red was worn by all the drummers and buglers of the regiment of Artillery; but although, from the earliest period, it was deemed the great national colour of our forces, it is somewhat remarkable that it was not adopted by the English or Irish Militia, until the year 1759, and a song of that period begins:—
"Ye mounseers, give ear, we have nothing to fear,
For the Militia are now clothed in RED, Sirs!
They have hearts that are stout and will never give out,
With Rockingham bold at their head, sirs!
You may brag and may boast, upon your own coast,
And parade it from Dunkirk to Calais;
But have a care now, how you venture too far,
In your flat-bottomed boats to make sallies."
Long denied a militia force, in dread of Jacobite influences, Scotland had none from 1746 till the close of the last century, when, ten years after the death of her "Bonnie Prince Charlie," ten battalions were raised, and their colours and insignia (most of which are now deposited in the Castle of Edinburgh) were designed by the Court of the Lyon King of Arms, then Robert, Earl of Kinnoull, with whom the applications for such were lodged.
In our former chapter, the uniforms of the Irish and Scottish regiments which belonged to the French Line, during the last century, were referred to. These corps (according to the "Liste Historique des Troupes de France," 1758,) were numbered as the 92nd, 93rd, 94th, 98th (Gardes de Jacques II.), 99th, and 109th, all Irish; the 107th Royal Écossais under the Duke of Perth, and the 113th Écossais under Lieutenant-General Lord Ogilvie, who died in Scotland in 1803.
The two Scottish regiments wore coats and vests of blue, and their hats were bound with gold. All their Irish brother exiles wore scarlet, with white vests generally, and carried on their colours black or yellow crosses, with the "Couronne d'Angleterre," which had no braver or more bitter enemies, as the terrible day of Fontenoy attested; and where they seem to have acted true to the spirit of the Fenian song:
"Oh, if the colour we must wear.
Is England's cruel red,
Let it remind us of the blood
That Ireland has shed!"
And when our troops landed at Cancalle Bay in 1758, they were surprised to find themselves stoutly opposed by entire battalions in scarlet; and no wonder was it that they were so, for it was the Irish Brigade, whose ranks were manned and officered by the sons and grandsons of the adherents of King James, the same gallant Irish Brigade which was welcomed to the British Establishment in 1794, and, unfortunately, was soon after reduced.