ABSTRACT

Despite useful service in Ireland between 1689 and 1691, their distinctiveness had been lost by 1699 as the specific political and religious justification for their separate existence dissipated. Thereafter, individual Huguenot soldiers continued to serve in the British army, but the history of the Huguenot regiments was brief. The diaspora of the Huguenots took them principally into the Dutch Republic, Brandenburg, Switzerland and England. Most of those who came to England, apart from the few attached to Feversham's circle, did not seek and would not have been awarded commissions in the army of James II. The four 'new' Huguenot regiments were the first, formed, foreign units to be included within the seventeenth-century British army. The Huguenot regiments were composed of volunteers, not mercenaries, and enjoyed the status of full members of the British establishment and were permanent components of the British army.