Doubts as to the respective rank of regiments fighting in the Spanish Netherlands led William III to command a Board of General Officers meeting on 10 June 1694 to establish the order of precedence of the various units.
[3] Similarly, the Coldstream Guards is the oldest continuously serving regular regiment in the British Army.
While regiments were known by the name of their colonel, or by their royal title, the number of their rank was increasingly used.
Thus, in the Cloathing Book of 1742, which illustrated the patterns of uniforms worn by the King's forces, the regiments of foot are designated simply by numbers.
[5] The substitution of numbers for names was completed by a clothing regulation of 1747 and a royal warrant of 1751.
[6] The warrant, dated 1 July 1751, repeated the instructions of the 1747 regulation and provided that regiments should in future be known by their numbers only.
[7] As the size of the army expanded and contracted during the various conflicts of the 18th and 19th centuries, junior regiments were raised and disbanded.
[8] With modifications the numbers existed until 1881, when the Childers Reforms introduced "territorialisation".
[7] In later years, other regiments were allowed to bear the names of the monarch or other members of the Royal family.
[10] On 21 August 1782, the Commander-in-Chief of the Forces, Henry Seymour Conway, issued a regulation giving an English county designation to each regiment of foot other than those with a royal title or highland regiments.
The intention was to improve recruitment during the unpopular American War of Independence, and the Home Secretary, Thomas Townshend issued a circular letter to the lieutenants of each county in England in the following terms: My Lord, The very great deficiency of men in the regiments of infantry being so very detrimental to the public service, the king has thought proper to give the names of the different counties to the old corps, in hopes that, by the zeal and activity of the principal nobility and gentry in the several counties, some considerable assistance may be given towards recruiting these regiments".