Other ranks’ glengarry badge, 31st (Huntingdonshire) Regiment of Foot, c1877.
NAM. 1970-12-187Introduction
This unit was one of six regiments of marines formed in 1702. Raised by George Villier in the West Country, it helped capture Spanish galleons at Vigo Bay in 1702, served at Gibraltar, Nice and Antibes and besieged Toulon in 1707.
It was finally disbanded in 1714 but instantly re-raised as a line infantry regiment, 31st in the order of precedence. The following year it was deployed to Scotland against the First Jacobite Rebellion, before remaining on garrison duty in Ireland and England until being sent to fight at Dettingen in 1743, early in the War of the Austrian Succession (1740-48). It suffered heavy losses at Fontenoy in 1745 before being sent back to Britain.
Short of men, it was unable to participate in the suppression of the Second Jacobite Rebellion. It was sent to Glasgow in 1756, where it raised a second battalion, but two years later that battalion split off to become the 70th Regiment.
The Seven Years War (1756-63) ended in the Treaty of Paris in 1763, which ceded Pensacola in West Florida and St Vincent in the Caribbean to Britain. The 31st garrisoned both, in 1765 and 1772 respectively. After two years back in Britain, it was sent to garrison Canada from 1776 to 1787. During this period, in 1782, it was first given its ‘Huntingdonshire’ designation.
Lockart, a soldier of the 31st Regiment of Foot during the Crimean War.
NAM. 1964-12-154-6-26, The regiment’s flank companies were captured at Saratoga during the American Revolutionary War, though new ones formed in time to be sent to the West Indies in 1794. The regiment’s battalion companies joined them there in 1795 after a year in the Netherlands, but the regiment had lost all but 85 men to yellow fever by 1797 and returned home to re-recruit. It then re-deployed to the Low Countries in 1799 and Minorca in 1801.
In 1805 a 2nd Battalion was again raised. In 1810 this new battalion was sent to fight in the Peninsula at Talavera, Albuhera, Vittoria and Nive before being disbanded in 1814. The 1st Battalion was stationed in the Mediterranean from 1806 to 1818, suffering heavy losses in the attempt to capture Alexandria (1807). It then briefly returned home before being shipped to India in 1824.
The regiment took part in the First Afghan War (1839-42) and First Sikh War (1845-46) and then fought in the Crimea (1854-56). After garrisoning various points in the Mediterranean it was sent back to India in 1858 and from there to China in 1860. There it fought in the Second China War (1856-60) and against the Taiping Rebellion (1850-64) before returning to Britain. Garrison duties in England, Ireland and the Mediterranean followed until 1881, when the 31st was reunited with the 70th Foot to form the East Surrey Regiment.
Key facts
Nickname:
- Young Buffs (the regiment had buff facings, like the much older 3rd Regiment of Foot, so when George II mistook the 31st for the 3rd at Dettingen he shouted, “Then bravo the Young Buffs,” after being corrected)
Titles to date:
- George Villiers’s Regiment of Marines
- 31st Regiment of Foot
- 31st (the Huntingdonshire) Regiment of Foot
- 1st Battalion, East Surrey Regiment
- The Queen’s Royal Surrey Regiment
- 1st Battalion, The Queen’s Regiment (Queen’s Surreys)
- The Princess of Wales’s Royal Regiment
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