About the same time intelligence reached England that the Spaniards at St. Augustine had ordered the English merchants to depart, and were setting up barracks for troops that were daily expected; that an embarkation was preparing at Havana, in which two thousand five hundred soldiers were to be shipped in three large men-of-war, and eight transports; and that great quantities of provisions had been laid in for them. Upon this, and other hostile indications, of which the Trustees were apprised, they petitioned his Majesty that a regiment might be raised for the defence and protection of the Colony. This was granted. Oglethorpe was appointed General and Commander-in-Chief of his Majesty's forces in Carolina and Georgia; and commissioned to raise a regiment for the service and defence of those two Colonies, to consist of six companies of one hundred men each, exclusive of non-commissioned officers and drums; to which a company of grenadiers was afterwards added. "This regiment he raised in a very short time, as he disdained to make a market of the service of his country, by selling commissions, but got such officers appointed as were gentlemen of family and character in their respective counties; and, as he was sensible what an advantage it was to the troops of any nation to have in every company a certain number of such soldiers as had been bred up in the character of gentlemen, he engaged about twenty young gentlemen of no fortune, to serve as cadets in his regiment, all of whom he afterwards advanced by degrees to be officers, as vacancies happened; and was so far from taking any money for the favor, that to some of them, he gave, upon their advancement, what was necessary to pay the fees of their commissions, and to provide themselves for appearing as officers."[1] [Footnote 1: _London Magazine_, for 1757, p. 546.] "He carried with him, also," says a writer of that day, "forty supernumeraries, at his own expense; a circumstance very extraordinary in our armies, especially in our plantations." With a view to create in the troops a personal interest in the Colony which they had enlisted to defend, and to induce them eventually to become actual settlers, every man was allowed to take with him a wife; for the support of whom some additional pay and rations, were offered.[1] In reference to this, Governor Belcher, of Massachusetts, in writing to Lord Egmont, respecting the settlement of Georgia, has these remarks; "Plantations labor with great difficulties; and must expect to creep before they can go. I see great numbers of people who would be welcome in that settlement; and have, therefore, the honor to think, with Mr. Oglethorpe, that the soldiers sent thither should all be married men[2]." [Footnote 1: _Gentleman's Magazine_, Vol. VIII. p. 164.] [Footnote 2: Manuscript Letter Book of Governor Belcher, in the archives of the Massachusetts Historical Society.]