ABSTRACT
England, Scotland and Ireland each possessed their own standing armies. Each was legally independent although they all owed allegiance to Charles II as their supreme commander, but in practice all three were interdependent and formed part of the same large whole. Soldiers from Scotland and Ireland were raised to serve on the English establishment whenever forces were needed for foreign service: Dumbarton's, Hamilton's, Roscommon's, Lockhart's, the Portuguese Brigade, and Tangier. It was undesirable to have Scots and Irish on peacetime service in England, as Englishmen regarded Scotland and Ireland with the greatest contempt and suspicion. To them, their neighbours were little more than savage barbarians with the added disadvantage that one sort were mostly papists and the others seriously tainted with non-conformity and dissenting opinions. With the standing army already unpopular in England the use of Scots or Irish troops, other than on station abroad, would have courted disaster and risked a public outcry against both the army and the government. However, it was quite in order to waste ‘foreign’ lives on active service on the continent, and to this extent the armies in both countries were valuable and complementary to the main force in England.
