Queen’s (Royal West Surrey) Regiment

Cap badge of the Queen’s (Royal West Surrey) Regiment, c1912. NAM. 1966-05-3-19

Introduction

In 1661 the newly-restored Charles II agreed to marry the Portuguese princess Catherine of Braganza, gaining Portuguese possessions in Bombay (now Mumbai) and Tangier (now part of Morocco) in return. To garrison the latter, the Earl of Peterborough raised a regiment of foot at Putney, now a suburb of London but then part of Surrey. This was the origin of the Queen’s (Royal West Surrey Regiment), making it the oldest English line infantry regiment in the British Army and the second oldest overall, after the Royal Scots, which was raised in 1633.

The garrison pulled out of Tangiers only 23 years later. By then Catherine had been widowed and the regiment was renamed the Queen Dowager’s Regiment of Foot after her. The regimental crest of the Paschal Lamb may also originate with her. It fought for James II in suppressing the 1685 Monmouth Rebellion then against him in Ireland four years later and became the Queen’s Regiment again in 1727, this time in honour of Caroline, queen-consort to George II.

A senior non-commissioned officer of the 2nd Regiment of Foot, c1806. NAM. 1962-08-77

It helped put down the anti-Catholic Gordon Riots in London in 1780 and detachments from it fought as marines in the naval battle of the Glorious First of June in 1794. It served against Revolutionary and Napoleonic France in the West Indies, Guernsey, Ireland, the Netherlands, Egypt and Spain, leaving the regiment so short of manpower that from 1812 to 1814 it only survived as part of a joint ‘Provisional Battalion’ with the 53rd Regiment.

In 1852, a detachment of 52 of its men originated the practice ‘women and children first’ when they went down with HMS ‘Birkenhead’ when she was shipwrecked off South Africa. In 1881 it became West Surrey’s county regiment. It fought on the North West Frontier in 1839, 1897 and 1919, in Burma in 1886 and in various theatres of World War One, including the Western Front and Mesopotamia.

During the Second World War it served with distinction in the hard-fought Burma campaign from 1942 to 1945. It later saw action in the Malayan Emergency of the 1950s. After three amalgamations in 1959, 1966 and 1992, it is now part of the Princess of Wales’s Royal Regiment.

Key facts

Mottos:

• 'Pristinae Virtutis Memor' (meaning 'Mindful of Former Valour')
• 'Vel Exuviae Triumphans' (meaning 'Triumphant Even in Defeat')

Nicknames:

• The Mutton Lancers
• Kirke’s Lambs

Titles to date:

• Earl of Peterborough’s Regiment of Foot
• Tangier Regiment
• Queen Dowager’s Regiment of Foot
• The Queen’s Regiment of Foot
• The Princess of Wales’s Regiment of Foot
• The Queen’s Own Regiment of Foot
• The Queen’s Own Royal Regiment of Foot
• 2nd (The Queen’s Royal) Regiment of Foot
• The Queen’s (Royal West Surrey Regiment)
• Queen’s Royal Surrey Regiment
• 1st Battalion Queen’s Regiment (Queen’s Surreys)
• The Princess of Wales’s Royal Regiment (Queen’s and Royal Hampshires)

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