[1][2] Prior to Father Rale's War, the Mi'kmaq responded to the establishment of a British fort at Canso, Nova Scotia by raiding the settlement's fishing station in 1720.

Phillips sent a company of the 40th, under the command of Major Lawrence Armstrong, to take up garrison of a small fort in Canso built by a group of New England fishermen.

[5] From 1717 to 1743, Phillips' Regiment, garrisoning Annapolis, Placentia, and Canso, was successful in protecting settlers from Indian attacks, checking French influence in the area, and preserving the British foothold in Atlantic Canada.

[5] Governor Shirley was having difficulty raising troops requested by Mascarene and therefore he ordered the ex-Canso garrison to Annapolis Royal.

The prize was named the St. Philip, and was manned by eighty men of the Kinsale's crew, and commanded by one of her lieutenants,[8] and accompanied by three 10-gun colonial privateers.

The five vessels, which had on board 18,000 quintals of fish and eighty tons of oil, mounted together sixty-six guns, and carried 342 men.

[10] In July 1744, three hundred Indians under command of a French priest named Le Loutre attacked Annapolis, the only British garrison in Nova Scotia.

Only eighty men of Phillips' Regiment were available to meet this threat, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Paul Mascarene.

It was at this time that Captain John Winslow first took command of a Philipp's regiment at Annapolis Royal, after being transferred from Newfoundland.

[11] In September the enemy, this time three hundred regulars and militia with Indian support, reappeared outside the dilapidated earthworks of Annapolis Royal.

A detachment from the garrison at St. John's, Newfoundland volunteered to serve on a captured twenty-gun ship for an expedition with three privateers to Fishotte Bay.

The lagging privateers entered the harbour and assisted in the destruction of French fishing stages and the removal of enemy ships and prisoners.

[5] By the end of the war Phillips' Regiment, after defending Britain's foothold in Nova Scotia with a skeleton complement, had its establishment raised to seventy men for each company.

In July 1749, the grenadier company under Captain Handfield were sent to garrison the new settlement of Halifax founded the month earlier by the new Governor of Nova Scotia, Edward Cornwallis.

A surprise attack by local Mi'kmaq in the Siege of Grand Pré resulted in the capture of a detachment of the company including Lieutenant Hamilton and Handfield's son.

After his appointment, Lawrence lead an expedition to the Missaguash River in August 1750 where he routed in the Battle at Chignecto a superior number of Indians under Le Loutre.

The English force, including members of the 40th Regiment, was met by a large body of regulars and militia as they crossed the Missaquash river.

Even the commander of the garrison, Major Handfield, had to deport his wife's "sister-in-law, nephews and nieces, uncles, aunts, and cousins."

Handfield wrote to another officer performing the same task: "I heartily join with you in wishing that we were both of us got over this most disagreeable and troublesome part of the Service.

[41] The regiment returned to the West Indies in summer 1795 and took part in an attack on the French troops on Saint Vincent in September 1795.

[53] In July 1808 the regiment embarked for Portugal, as part of Sir Arthur Wellesley's army, for service in the Peninsular War.

[56] The regiment also took part in the Battle of Bussaco in September 1810 and then fell back to the Lines of Torres Vedras in October 1810.

[69] They held firm all day and helped drive off Napoleon's final massed infantry attack, ultimately losing 170 killed or wounded, including their commanding officer Major Arthur Rowley Heyland.

[71] In 1823 the regiment was dispatched in small detachments in convict ships to New South Wales[72] where it served at both Sydney, and Van Diemen's Land, where they participated in the Black War.

[80] It arrived in Kandahar in October 1841[81] and then fought under General William Nott at the Battle of Kabul in August 1842 during the First Anglo-Afghan War.