Regiments in which Douglases have served

     Personal titles are "final" and do not necessarily apply during the time of the colonelcy, but prior titles are included for clarity. Colonels appointed after 1751 are listed on the regimental pages, but not indexed here, except for those whose colonelcies straddled 1751, in which case the complete list of their appointments is presented here. Please rely on the search engine to locate other post-1751 colonels.

Regimental recruiting methods were not always fair, as this record from 1691 shows:

A few days after the above date (21st Jan 1691), as John Brangen, servant to Mr John Sleigh., merchant in Haddington, was going on a message to a writer's chamber in Edinburgh with his master's cloak over his arm, he was seized by Sergeant Douglas, of Douglas of Kelhead's company, carried to the Canongate Tolbooth, and thence hurried like a malefactor on board a ship in the road of Leith bound for Flanders. This man, though called servant, was properly clerk and shopman to his master, who accordingly felt deeply aggrieved by his abduction. At the same time, Christian Wauchope petitioned for the release of her husband, William Murdoch, who had been' innocently seized' and carried off eight days ago by Captain Douglas's men, 'albeit he had never made any paction with them;' 'whereby the petitioner and her poor children will be utterly starved.' Even the town-piper of Musselburgh, James Waugh by name, while playing at the head of the troop, and thinking of no harm, had been carried off for a soldier. 'If it was true,' said his masters the magistrates, 'that he had taken money from the officers, it must have been through the ignorance and inadvertency of the poor man, thinking it was given him for his playing as a piper.' He had, they continued, been' injuriously used in the affair by sinistrous designs and contrail to that liberty and freedom which all peaceable subjects ought to enjoy under the protection of authority.'