Although the Fifth Dragoon Guards were only placed at Manchester as a temporary quarter, I should be wanting in what is due from me to that distinguished corps, did I withhold from you the expression of my admiration of it as a regiment, or from the officers, non-commissioned officers, and privates, my unqualified approbation of their conduct, and my satisfaction at the readiness and good-will with which they performed all the duties required of them whilst under my orders. I request you will do me the honour to make known these my sentiments to them, with the assurance that it will be ever gratifying to me to hear of their continued welfare and prosperity.
_Major Irwin, commanding Fifth Dragoon Guards._
FIFTH, OR PRINCESS CHARLOTTE OF WALES'S REGIMENT OF DRAGOON GUARDS.
CHARLES TALBOT succeeded, when in the seventh year of his age, to the title of EARL OF SHREWSBURY, on the decease of his father who died on the 16th of March, 1667, of a wound received in a duel with the Duke of Buckingham. In 1681 he was appointed lord-lieutenant of the county of Stafford; and having previously devoted much time to the consideration of the doctrines of Christianity, on the discovery of the Popish plot he abjured the tenets of the church of Rome. He, however, continued steadfast in his loyalty even to a Popish sovereign, and on the breaking out of the rebellion of the Duke of Monmouth in June, 1685, he raised a troop of horse for the service of King James II, and in the following month he was appointed colonel of the regiment which now bears the title of FIFTH DRAGOON GUARDS. He soon afterwards discovered that the arbitrary measures of the court were directed to the subversion of the Protestant religion, of which he was become a determined supporter; and having resigned his commission and mortgaged his estate for forty thousand pounds, he proceeded to Holland and made an offer of his sword and purse to the Prince of Orange, provided His Highness would attempt to deliver England from the power of the papists. From this period, until the revolution in 1688, his active mind was engaged in the glorious and patriotic labour of devising plans for the good of his native country, and he was one of the nobles in whom the Prince of Orange placed the greatest confidence, and by whose advice he was principally guided.