In the mean time the measures adopted by King James II. to establish Papacy and arbitrary government had filled the country with alarm. Among other proceedings the King claimed the power of dispensing with the oaths, required by law, on appointment to office; the colonel of the Fourteenth Regiment, Sir Edward Hales, had espoused the Roman Catholic religion; he, therefore, could not take the oaths, and was not eligible for his commission; he was prosecuted and convicted at Rochester assizes; but he moved the case into the Court of the King's Bench, and had judgment in his behalf; eleven of the twelve judges taking part with the King against the law. Many of the nobility solicited the Prince of Orange to aid them in opposing the measures of the court, and when the Prince arrived with a Dutch army, the King assembled his forces at Salisbury. The result may be told in a few words:—the English army refused to fight in the cause of Papacy and arbitrary government; the King, accompanied by Colonel Sir Edward Hales, and Quarter-Master Edward Syng, of this regiment, attempted to escape to France in disguise; but they were apprehended on board of a Custom-house vessel at Feversham, and Sir Edward Hales was afterwards confined in the Tower of London. The King made a second attempt, and arrived in France in safety. The Prince of Orange issued orders for the regiment to occupy quarters at Waltham, in Hampshire, and conferred the colonelcy on William Beveridge, an officer of the English brigade in the Dutch service, by commission dated the 31st of December, 1688.
1689
The accession of William Prince of Orange and his consort to the throne was opposed in Scotland, and in the spring of 1689 the regiment was ordered to march towards the north; it was stationed a short time at Berwick, where it was inspected on the 14th of June by the commissioners for re-modelling the army: in August it received orders to march to Edinburgh.
1690
1691
The regiment was employed in various services in Scotland and the north of England until the insurgent clans had lost all hope of success, and in 1691 they tendered their submission to the government of King William III.
1692
In the spring of 1692, the regiment embarked for Flanders, to take part in the war in which the British monarch was engaged, to preserve the liberties of Europe against the ambitious projects of the court of France. Scarcely had it arrived at the seat of war, and taken post in one of the fortified towns of West Flanders, when the French monarch assembled his army near La Hogue, and prepared a fleet to convey the troops to England, for the purpose of replacing King James on the throne. The regiment was immediately ordered to return, and having landed at Greenwich in the early part of May, it was held in readiness to repel the invaders, should they venture to land on the British shores; but while the menace of invasion was producing considerable alarm in England, the French fleet sustained a decisive defeat off La Hogue, and the danger instantly vanished: the hopes of the Jacobites were frustrated, and the ascendancy of Protestant principles insured. The regiment was afterwards encamped near Portsmouth, and it formed part of an expedition under the Duke of Leinster, afterwards Duke Schomberg, against the coast of France; but the French naval force having been nearly annihilated at the sea-fight off La Hogue, Louis XIV. expected a descent, and had drawn so many troops from the interior to the coast, that the Duke of Leinster did not venture to land. After menacing the French shores at several points, to produce a diversion in favour of the confederate army in the Netherlands, the fleet sailed to the Downs, from whence it proceeded to Ostend, where the troops landed: they took possession of and fortified the towns of Furnes and Dixmude, and several regiments afterwards returned to England.
On the 14th of November Colonel William Beveridge was killed in a duel with one of the captains; and King William afterwards conferred the colonelcy of the regiment on Lieutenant-Colonel John Tidcomb, from the Thirteenth Foot.
1693
The Fourteenth was one of the regiments which remained in Flanders, and it took the field in May, 1693, to serve the campaign of that year with the confederate army, commanded by King William in person, who took possession of the camp at Parck, near Louvain, to prevent the designs of Louis XIV. on Brabant.