4th Troop of Horse Guards The 4th Troop of Horse Guards was the Scottish unit within the Horse Guards Regiment . It was part of the United Kingdom military establishment from 1709 to 1746 , but before the Union of the Parliaments , it had been an independent unit in Scotland , sometimes referred to in modern works as the Scots Troop of Horse . The unit ' s establishment is usually dated to 1661 , although its antecedents extend back to the fifteenth century . The mounted Guard before 1650 . The recorded history of the royal guard in Scotland dates from the 1440s , when Sir Patrick Gray is recorded as captain of the guard under King James II . A regular succession of captains is recorded from then on , but the size and organization of the unit changed several times : in 1584 it was a small mounted escort of forty veteran troopers , its lowest recorded strength , but in 1594 it reached what was probably its largest size , mustering four cavalry troops plus 400 infantry . Although the guard was retained in Scotland after the Union of the Crowns , the unit was downsized to just ten men in 1609 , and it seems to have been disbanded in 1628 . After 1628 , there seems to have been no separate Guard in Scotland , although when Charles I raised a Life Guard to fight in the English Civil War , it incorporated a sizable Scottish contingent , including the commanding officer , Lord Bernard Stewart . The Life Guard , 1650 - 1709 . In 1650 , when Charles II landed in Scotland , a mounted regiment of Life Guards was formed , with the Earl of Eglinton as Colonel or Captain - General , and Viscount Newburgh as lieutenant - colonel and as captain of the bodyguard troop . Eglinton was captured early in 1651 , but the Life Guard appears to have fought at the Battle of Worcester , after which Newburgh escaped into exile . After the Restoration , Newburgh mustered a revived bodyguard troop in Edinburgh in March 1661 , numbering four officers , five NCOs , and 120 troopers , plus a surgeon and clerk , three trumpeters and a drummer . This was a prestige unit , in which the lowest - ranking NCOs held captains ' commissions from the Civil War , and the lowliest troopers were gentlemen ' s sons . It ranked as the senior unit of Scotland ' s new standing army . At the same time , a second troop of guards was raised , commanded directly by the Lord High Commissioner , effectively the Scottish viceroy for the absent king in London , who was also Captain - General of the army . When the Earl of Rothes fell from office in 1667 , he retained command of his troop along with the ceremonial dignity of Lord Chancellor , but the unit was disbanded in 1676 due to military cost - cutting and replaced in its ceremonial role by the volunteer Company of Archers . Two years later , the officers of the disbanded troop formed a new unit separate from the life guard , the first of several Independent Troops of Horse which were combined into a regiment in 1682 . From 1676 onwards , the Scottish life guard consisted effectively of a single troop , usually identified as the " Troop of Life Guard " or " Life Guard of Horse " , but it could be described as a nominal " Royal Regiment of Horse Guards " in the reign of James VII and II , and its officers were now explicitly regarded as the equivalent of regimental field officer s , led by the " Colonel and Captain " . In 1688 , during the Glorious Revolution , all but one of the officers remained loyal to King James , or at the very least , resigned their commissions ; but William of Orange quickly appointed the Earl of Drumlanrig to command a reconstituted Scots Troop . From 1690 , they were based in England , initially as a bodyguard for Queen Mary while the English Life Guards were with William in Ireland . They did not deploy to Scotland until 1697 . In 1709 , due to the full merger of the separate English and Scottish armies , the unit was transferred to the British establishment , where it was designated as the 4th Troop of Horse Guards . Before 1709 , two other troops on the English establishment had been designated 4th Horse Guards . The 4th ( Lord Dover ' s ) Troop of Horse Guards was formed in 1686 and disbanded in 1689 upon the deposition of James II . A Dutch troop of horse designated " Garde du Corps van Zijne Majesteit " ( His Majesty ' s Life Guards ) was placed on the English establishment in 1689 , ranked as the 4th Troop of Life Guards , and returned to Dutch service in 1699 . On its transfer to the British Establishment , the Scots Troop moved back to London in 1709 . The unit still remained distinctively Scottish , but it became a unit reserved for the rich , with even a trooper ' s appointment costing 100 guineas , and the men being expected to supply their own horses . Nonetheless , the troopers distinguished themselves at the Battle of Dettingen and Battle of Fontenoy , but in 1746 , the Horse Guards were reorganized . The Scots Troop , along with the Duke of York ' s Troop , ceased to exist as a unit , although the continuity of the 4th Troop was later vested in the 2nd Troop of Horse Guards . References . Archive of regiments . org page History at Electric Scotland " The Scots Army , 1661 - 1688 " at archive . org Early history by James Grant at Google Books