In April 1633, Sir John Hepburn was granted a warrant by Charles I to recruit 1200 Scots for service with the French army in the 1618–1648 Thirty Years War.

James died in a skirmish near Douai in 1645 and was replaced by his elder brother Archibald Douglas, Earl of Angus, who remained in Scotland and had little contact with the regiment, other than supplying recruits.

[5] In 1660, Charles II was restored as king; in January 1661, Douglas's was sent to England in response to Venner's Rising, an attempted coup by Fifth Monarchists.

The diarist Pepys met George Douglas in Rochester and recorded that "Here in the streets, I did hear the Scotch march beat by the drums before the soldiers, which is very odde.

"[8] In 1667, the regiment was accused of looting after the Raid on the Medway and ordered back to France; while awaiting transport, over 700 of the 1,500 men deserted.

[11] The 1678 Treaties of Nijmegen required the repatriation of all Scots and English units from France; reluctant to lose veteran troops, this was made as hard as possible.

Dumbarton's was posted to the Dauphiné in Southern France before being disbanded and its men prevented from travelling for 30 days thereafter; many chose to remain, while those who arrived in England did so without money or possessions.

[12] The regiment was listed on the English military establishment as the First Foot or Royal Scots, a temporary measure during the Exclusion Crisis of 1679–1681.

[15] When James II succeeded Charles in 1685, the regiment fought at the decisive Battle of Sedgemoor that ended the June Monmouth Rebellion; a second battalion was raised in March 1686 and posted to Scotland.

[16] It was the only unit where the majority remained loyal to James during the November 1688 Glorious Revolution; Dumbarton followed him into exile and one of William's subordinates, Frederick Schomberg, was appointed Colonel.

[25] On the outbreak of the Seven Years' War in 1756, the 2nd Battalion moved to Nova Scotia in 1757, fighting at Louisburg, Guadeloupe and Havana, then returning home in 1764.

[21] The regiment fought at the Battle of Saint-Denis (1837), but was running low on ammunition as the British officers had underestimated the amount of insurgents, and with the enemy beginning to flank, Colonel Charles Gore gave the order to withdraw.

[21] At the outbreak of the First World War, the 1st was in India, and returned to the UK in November; the 2nd was immediately deployed with the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), arriving in France on 14 August[40] and seeing action on the afternoon of the 23rd.

It saw combat in the action of Saint-Éloi and throughout the Second Battle of Ypres in 1915, before the division was withdrawn and moved to Salonika in November, where it spent the rest of the war It was sent to Georgia in December 1918 for operations against the Bolsheviks, and returned to Edinburgh in May 1919.

A poignant Christmas card was produced by the Edinburgh artist Walter Balmer Hislop who served with 'D' Company of the 5th (QER) Battalion .

It was the only second-line battalion of the regiment to be sent overseas, moving to Archangel in August 1918, and serving in the North Russia Campaign until June 1919, when it returned to Scotland to disband.

However, six saw significant periods of service in Ireland, where they served as garrison units, and were often involved in local security – armed patrols, mobile columns to 'show the flag', and the like.

The BEF were heavily hit by the German Army's breakthrough, however, and fell back towards the coast; the battalion was deployed at Le Paradis, near Béthune, on 25 May to protect the flanks of the Dunkirk evacuation.

[62] The adjacent unit, the 2nd Battalion, Royal Norfolks, had almost one hundred men taken prisoner and later shot by their captors in the Le Paradis massacre.

[66] Most of 1941 passed without active duty for the regiment, and with growing concerns about the stability of the Far East, the 2nd Battalion, still based at Hong Kong, moved into defensive positions around the colony.

On 8 December, the Battle of Hong Kong began a few hours after the attack on Pearl Harbor; after bitter fighting, the garrison surrendered on Christmas Day.

In January 1945 it moved to Palestine with the rest of the 1st Infantry Division, where it was active in security duties in October and November, and was then redeployed to the Suez Canal Zone in December 1945.

They remained in the United Kingdom as part of 44th (Lowland) Infantry Brigade, alongside the 6th Royal Scots Fusiliers and 6th King's Own Scottish Borderers.

By 1971, both companies were in the battalions of the 52nd Lowland Volunteers, and though the Royal Scots name was retained in the title the regiment no longer had a Territorial Army element.

[69] The 1st Battalion briefly saw service in the Korean War in 1953, as part of 29th Infantry Brigade; after a brief spell in Egypt, they deployed to Cyprus from June 1955 to February 1956.

[70] 1970 to 1974 was spent in Britain as part of the Allied Command Europe Mobile Force, with the battalion undertaking two four-month tours of duty in Northern Ireland.

[71] This had put the Regiment on a war footing and they were involved in riots attacking RAF Akrotiri and protection of the Sovereign Area Base of Episkopi.

They were relieved in early 1975 returning unexpectedly to Kirknewton near Edinburgh and did a further four-month tour of Northern Ireland, where three soldiers were lost in a roadside bomb attack.

Operating as an independent museum, the exhibits include dioramas, uniforms, medals, weapons, drums, ceremonial regalia and silver.

[100] Versions of this tradition vary but the story turns on the existence of either one regiment or the other dating back to service under Pontius Pilate at the time of Christ's crucifixion.