Early in the year 1767 a system of honorary distinctions for long-continued good behaviour was introduced into this regiment, which was found to stimulate the indifferent to good conduct, and those already worthy, to perseverance in well-doing, and it produced such a body of non-commissioned officers as few corps could boast of. These distinctions consisted of three classes of medals[29] to be worn, suspended by a ribbon, at a button-hole of the left lappel; the first, or lowest class, which was bestowed on such as had served irreproachably for seven years, was of gilt metal, bearing on one side the badge of the regiment, _St. George and the Dragon_[30], with the motto "_Quo fata vocant_;" and on the reverse, "Vth Foot, MERIT." The second was of silver, bearing on one side the badge and motto, and on the other, "Reward of fourteen years' military merit." The third was similar to the second, but was inscribed with the name of the individual whose conduct had earned it: "A. B., for twenty-one years' good and faithful service as a soldier, had received from his commanding officers this honourable testimony of his merit." These medals were bestowed only upon soldiers who, for the respective periods of seven, fourteen, or twenty-one years, had never incurred the censure of a court-martial: they were given by the commanding officer at the head of the assembled battalion; and if, which rarely happened, the owner of a medal subsequently forfeited his pretensions to enrolment among the men of merit, his medal was cut from his breast by the drum-major as publicly as he had been invested with it. Those who obtained the third, or twenty-one years' medal, had also an oval badge of the colour of the facings on the right breast, embroidered round with gold and silver wreaths, and inscribed in the centre with the word "MERIT" in letters of gold. [Sidenote: 1768] On the 7th of November, 1768, Lieutenant-General Hodgson was succeeded in the Colonelcy of the FIFTH by Hugh, Earl Percy, afterwards Duke of Northumberland. Earl Percy, when Colonel, duly estimating the good effects produced by this Regimental "Order of Merit," kept it up with all the liberality and dignity it deserved; and the following order, issued by him on the subject, is referred to in Adye's Essay on Rewards and Punishments, viz.: "Earl Percy having perceived, with great pleasure, the happy effects of the regimental Medals of Merit, influencing the non-commissioned officers and soldiers of the FIFTH to deserve the favour of their officers, and being anxious, as far as may be in his power, to encourage them to persevere in such sentiments of honour, is determined, for the future, to give them out every year, a short time before the review, instead of the usual day, as it often has happened that the regiment has been separated, which prevented the men, who were entitled to that mark of honour, from receiving it in so public a manner as his Lordship could wish." [Sidenote: 1771]