On the 27th of November, the light company, mustering one hundred men, marched for the Madawaska settlement, under Lieut.-Colonel Wm. H. Eden, in consequence of the Americans having offered insults to the warden and magistrates there, and intimated a design to take forcible possession of that part of the country. After traversing two hundred miles of bleak country, covered with snow, in cars, sleighs, &c., the thermometer varying from zero to twenty below, the company arrived at its destination without a casualty.
1841
The head-quarters were removed to Chambly, in June, 1841, and in August, the detachments from the disputed territory, having been relieved by the Sixty-eighth light infantry, arrived at head-quarters[8].
1842
The period having arrived for the return of the regiment to the United Kingdom, its strength was reduced to three hundred and thirty-three men, by volunteers to remain in the country and to join other corps. In the beginning of July 1842 it proceeded to Quebec, where it embarked in Her Majesty’s troop-ship Resistance, and after an extraordinarily quick passage of seventeen days, arrived at Cork on the 22nd of July. It was joined by the depôt companies on the 3rd of August. In the autumn the regiment proceeded to Birr, with detachments to Kilkenny, Banagher, Carlow, and Shannon-bridge.
On the 17th of November, Lieut.-General Sir Hudson Lowe was removed to the Fiftieth Regiment, and the colonelcy of the Fifty-sixth was conferred on Lieut.-General the Earl of Westmorland.
1843
In March, 1843, the several detachments were ordered to head quarters at Birr; but the regiment had been collected little more than a week, when it was again found necessary to detach four companies to Cashel, Tipperary, Bansha, and Dungarvon. In April, the head-quarters marched to Fermoy, and from thence to Cork, where the regiment was concentrated, in expectation of being removed to England. The public service, however, required that it should remain in Ireland, and it has since furnished detachments to Ballincollig, Bandon, Buttevant, Mallow, Dummanway, Skibbereen, Millstreet, &c., in order to be in readiness to aid the civil power, if its services should be required, in consequence of meetings of large masses of the people, to agitate the repeal of the union between Great Britain and Ireland.
At the close of 1843, to which this Record is brought, the head-quarters were at Cork, with four companies, under the command of Major Norman, detached to Clonmel, and one company at Millstreet.
1844