Affairs in Scotland were now going so badly that nearly every English soldier was recalled from the Continent to defend England against the Jacobite invasion. The XVIIIth landed at Gravesend early in November, and after various changes of quarters embarked for the seat of war in Scotland in the spring of 1746. On the voyage a vexatious incident occurred by which the regiment was prevented from taking any active part in the Scotch campaign. While off the coast of Yorkshire the transports, containing the 12th, 16th, XVIIIth, and 24th regiments, were warned that three French men-of-war were cruising in the neighbourhood; the ships ran for safety into the Humber, where they remained until the report was proved to have no foundation; and owing to this delay the Royal Irish did not reach Leith until the day after the rebels had been finally crushed at the battle of Culloden. For two years the regiment was stationed in Scotland, in the summer making military roads in the Highlands, in the winter quartered at various towns, and when the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle put an end to the war the XVIIIth was ordered to Ireland, after it had been placed on a peace footing by reductions so sweeping that the establishment of each company was fixed at two sergeants, two corporals, one drummer, and twenty-nine private soldiers. In 1755, our relations with France were again strained to breaking point: in America the French garrison of Canada and the British garrison of the colonies on the Atlantic coast were waging fierce, though unofficial war in the forests south of the river St Lawrence; and as the conflict seemed likely to spread to Europe, troops were withdrawn from Ireland to Great Britain. Among the regiments hurriedly brought across St George’s Channel was the XVIIIth, rapidly recruited up to a strength of seventy-eight men per company. But the “Seven Years’ War” brought no laurels to the Royal Irish, who were condemned to inactivity in the United Kingdom, while other corps were winning fame on the Continent and in the West Indies, in Canada and the Philippine Islands. In 1767, four years after peace was declared, the regiment was ordered to Philadelphia, the capital of Pennsylvania, one of the oldest of our American colonies. The beginning of the lamentable quarrel between the mother-country and her English-speaking over-sea provinces found the Royal Irish still quartered at Philadelphia, but in 1774, Boston, the chief town of the colony of Massachusetts, became such a hotbed of disaffection that General Gage, who commanded the troops in British North America, reinforced its garrison with troops drawn from less disloyal centres of population. Among the regiments ordered to Boston was the XVIIIth, at that time very weak in numbers, for hardly any recruits had arrived from home, and those enlisted at Philadelphia were “bounty-jumpers,” who deserted at every opportunity.