After occupying quarters successively at Montreal, Quebec, and on the upper lakes, until the summer of 1768, the regiment embarked for England, and landed at Portsmouth in July.
Occurrences of a political character having induced Sir Jeffery Amherst to resign the colonelcy of the regiment, he was succeeded, on the 21st of September, 1768, by Colonel Charles Hotham (afterwards Sir Charles Thompson, Baronet) from the sixty-third regiment.
1769
1770
1771
The regiment occupied various quarters in the southern and midland counties of England, until the summer of 1770, when it was reviewed at Chatham by King George III. and in the spring of 1771 marched into Yorkshire.
1772
1773
1774
In 1772 the regiment marched to Scotland, where it was stationed during the following year, and in the spring of 1774 it embarked at Port Patrick for Ireland.
1775
Major-General Sir Charles Thompson was succeeded in the colonelcy of the regiment, in September, 1775, by Major-General Richard Earl of Cavan, from the fifty-fifth regiment of foot.
1776
In the meantime, the determined spirit evinced by the British colonists in North America to resist the acts of parliament passed in England for raising a revenue in their country, had been followed by hostilities, and the Fifteenth regiment was one of the corps selected to proceed across the Atlantic, to aid in the attempt to reduce the refractory provincials to submission. The regiment embarked from Ireland early in 1776, and proceeded to Cape Fear, in North Carolina, with four other corps, under Major-General the Earl Cornwallis. These troops arrived on the coast of North Carolina early in April, and Lieut.-General Clinton assumed the command. The men landed at Cape Fear to refresh themselves after the voyage, and returning on board the transports, sailed, on the 1st of June, with the expedition against Charleston. After passing Charleston bar, the troops landed on one of the islands, but the armament proved of insufficient strength for the capture of the capital of South Carolina, and the five regiments re-embarked and proceeded to Staten Island, where the main body of the British forces was assembled under General Sir William Howe. The Fifteenth, commanded by Lieut.-Colonel John Bird, were formed in brigade with the fourth, twenty-seventh, and forty-fifth regiments, under Major-General Pigot.