On 27 September 1688 a commission was issued to Colonel Solomon Richards to raise a regiment of foot in the London area.

[2] The regiment embarked for Flanders in 1693 for service in the Nine Years' War[3] and took part in the attack of Fort Knokke in June 1695 and the siege of Namur in summer 1695[4] before returning home in 1697.

[14] The regiment embarked for Nova Scotia in 1757 for service in the French and Indian War;[14] it fought at the siege of Louisbourg in June 1758,[15] at the Battle of Toconderoga in July 1759.

[b]The regiment set sail from Halifax with the army on June 29 for the invasion of New York, landing unopposed on Staten Island in July.

At the same time, Captain William Scott of the 17th Regiment, with just 40 men, successfully defended the 4th Brigade's baggage train against superior numbers of rebel attackers.

"Performance in the battle was mentioned in dispatches,[c] Later, the regiment was lauded as "The Heroes of Prince-town" in British recruiting adverts.

In September 1778, the regiment took part in Grey's raid at New Bedford and Martha's Vineyard, destroying rebel stores and making off with forage and plunder.

[31] Several companies and the regimental colours were captured[d] at the Battle of Stony Point in July 1779[33][34] by a daring night-time bayonet charge by "Mad" Anthony Wayne.

[e] The reformed regiment was in action again at the Battle of Guilford Court House in March 1781 and surrendered with the rest of Cornwallis's army at the siege of Yorktown in September 1781.

[36] The 17th Company, still in South Carolina during the events of Yorktown, fought in the last major action of the war at the Battle of the Combahee River, where the famous rebel Colonel John Laurens lost his life.

[42] During the early years of the Moreton Bay penal colony, in the area of Australia now known as South East Queensland, the 17th Regiment was involved in two documented incidents of Aboriginal massacre.

On 1 July 1831, the then Commandant of the colony, Captain Clunie with a detachment of the 17th Regiment surrounded a Ngugi camp at dawn on the edge of the freshwater lagoon close to the island's southern extremity, killing up to twenty of them.

My informant, a young boy at the time, escaped with a few others by hiding in a clump of bushes’[44][43] The second documented massacre was the following year in late December 1832, on the neighbouring island of Minjerribah.

[45][46][43] In the mid 1830s, the Gringai people who lived in the valleys and hills to the north of Newcastle, were at war with the European colonists.

In 1835, in response to the murder of two shepherds, New South Wales governor Sir Richard Bourke ordered 50 soldiers from the 17th Regiment to proceed to the scene of the disturbance.

[47] This military operation was commanded by Major William Croker,[48] and his directive from Bourke was to vigorously suppress the resistance.

[68][69] In the First World War, the regiment increased from five to nineteen battalions which served in France and Flanders, Mesopotamia and Palestine.

[71] The 2nd Battalion, commanded by Charles Blackader, landed at Marseille as part of the Garhwal Brigade in the 7th (Meerut) Division in September 1914 also for service on the Western Front.

[70] The Battalion saw action at the Battle of Neuve Chapelle in March 1915[71] when Private William Buckingham was awarded the Victoria Cross.

[72] It then moved to Basra in Mesopotamia in December 1915[70] and took part in the action of Shaikh Saad in January 1916, the siege of Kut in Spring 1916, the capture of Sannaiyat in February 1917 and the fall of Baghdad in March 1917.

[71] Lieutenant John Barrett was awarded the Victoria Cross for his actions while serving with the 1/5th Battalion at Pontruet in September 1918 in the closing stages of the war.

[74] Lieutenant Colonel Philip Bent was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross for his actions while in command of the 9th (Service) Battalion at the Battle of Polygon Wood in September 1917.

The 1st Battalion was involved in the Irish War of Independence from 1920 to 1922, before moving to various overseas garrisons including Cyprus, Egypt and India.

[74] After resting for the next three months the battalion's next action was in the Allied invasion of Italy, where, holding off against numerous German counterattacks, heavy casualties were sustained.

[74] The battalion was withdrawn from the Italian Front in March 1944, sent to the Middle East to rest and retrain and absorb replacements after nearly six months of continuous action.

[74] Returning to Italy in July, the battalion fought on the Gothic Line until December when the 2/5th, now commanded by Lieutenant Colonel John Cubbon, was transported by air to Athens, Greece, to help calm the Greek Civil War, later returning to Italy in April 1945 but too late for participation in the final offensive.

In 1942 it changed role again, becoming 121st Light Anti-Aircraft Regiment, Royal Artillery, which served in North West Europe from Operation Overlord to Germany.

[54][80][81][82] The 7th Battalion, Leicestershire Regiment was created in July 1940 in Nottingham in the aftermath of Dunkirk, when the BEF had been evacuated from France and a German invasion of England seemed likely.

The 7th Leicesters, composed largely of conscripts, and originally unbrigaded, was, in October 1940, assigned to the 205th Independent Infantry Brigade (Home).

The reformed 1st Battalion, replacing the disbanded 1/6th Duke of Wellington's Regiment in the 147th Brigade, remained with this formation until the end of the war.