It is worth noting that the corps, which the Queen has ordered to be embodied in commemoration of the valour of her Irish soldiers, will not be the first regiment of Irish Guards.
Two years after the Restoration, Charles II raised a body of household troops called “Our Regiment of Guards in the Kingdom of Ireland,” which would have ranked as the Fourth Regiment of Foot Guards if it had survived. Though originally raised in England and not initially composed of Irishmen, in the days of James II, it became much too Irish to remain in the British service. The Deputy Tyrconnell cashiered the Protestants in its ranks and filled their places with Irish Catholics, so that at the Revolution, the regiment threw in its lot with the fallen King, fighting on the wrong side in the Irish campaign of the Boyne and Aughrim. After the capitulation of Limerick, it volunteered in the French service, and in the Flemish wars of Dutch William and Marlborough, it fought against British troops on several occasions. At Malplaquet, for example, it crossed bayonets with the regiment which was the only Irish corps raised by the Stuarts that had passed over to King William, and which, long numbered the 18th of the line, is now known as the Royal Irish. In 1704, there was an intention to fill its place with a new and loyal regiment of Irish Foot Guards, but it is only now, after an interval of nearly two centuries, that the scheme, under very different circumstances, is being carried out.
Dundee Evening Post – Wednesday 11 April 1900
