1778.
Colonel the Honourable Henry St. John, Lieutenant-Colonel of the Sixty-seventh regiment, was appointed Colonel of the Thirty-sixth on the 27th of November 1778, in succession to Lieut.-General Richard Pierson, removed to the Thirteenth dragoons.
1782.
A letter, dated the 31st of August 1782, conveyed to the regiment His Majesty’s pleasure that county titles should be conferred on the infantry, and the Thirty-sixth was directed to assume the designation of the Herefordshire regiment, in order that a connexion between the corps and that county should be cultivated, which might be useful in promoting the success of the recruiting service.
On the 6th of September 1782, the Thirty-sixth regiment was brought from Ireland, and placed on the British establishment, and occupied Hilsea barracks, near Portsmouth.
The contest with the American colonists had involved Great Britain in war with France, Spain, and Holland; but on the 30th of November 1782, the preliminary articles of peace were signed at Paris between Great Britain and the United States of America, and the treaty was concluded in the ensuing February.
1783.
In the year 1783, peace was concluded between England, France, Spain, and Holland. A new field of service was about to open for the Thirty-sixth, that regiment having been selected to proceed to the East Indies, for which country it embarked at Portsmouth on the 10th of March 1783, and arrived at Madras in July following, while the British were engaged in hostilities against the powerful Sultan of the Mysore, Tippoo Saib, who, on the death of his father, Hyder Ali, in December of the preceding year, had succeeded to the dominions of that soldier of fortune.
The regiment, being thirteen hundred strong, was immediately transferred from the Indiamen into King’s ships, and proceeded, under the command of Brevet-Colonel Allan Campbell, to the relief of Mangalore, on the Malabar coast, which had been invested by Tippoo Saib on the 18th of May 1783, and was gallantly defended by the second battalion of the Forty-second regiment (afterwards numbered the Seventy-third regiment) and some native corps. Meanwhile the general peace, which had been entered into with the European Powers, deprived Tippoo of his French allies, and the Sultan entered into negotiations for terminating the war between Mysore and the British. The troops under Brigadier-General Macleod appeared in sight of Mangalore on the 24th of November 1783, but on the 1st of December, in consequence of the following circumstances, the ships sailed to the southward.