Moved by the indications of hostility on the part of the Spaniards, and yielding to the entreaties of the Trustees[61] that additional troops be provided for the protection of the Colony, his Majesty, in June, 1737, appointed Oglethorpe General of all forces in Carolina as well as in Georgia, and authorized him to raise a regiment. In October of that year, and before his regiment had been fully recruited, he was commissioned as Colonel. The relief of Georgia being regarded as important, a body of troops was sent thither from Gibraltar, which reached Savannah early in May, 1738, and was transferred from that point to the South for the defense of the frontiers. The famous clergyman George Whitefield, detailed to take Mr. Wesley’s place in the Colony, was a passenger on board the ship in which these soldiers were transported. About the same time two or three companies of the General’s own regiment, under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel James Cochrane, arrived in Charleston, and were marched southward by the road which ran from Port Royal to Darien.[62] Oglethorpe’s regiment was limited to six companies of one hundred men each, exclusive of non-commissioned officers and drummers. To it a grenadier company was subsequently attached. Disdaining to “make a market of the service of his country” by selling commissions, the General secured the appointment, as officers, only of such persons as were gentlemen of family and character in their respective counties. He also engaged about twenty young gentlemen of no fortune to serve as cadets. These he subsequently promoted as vacancies occurred. So far from deriving any pecuniary benefit from these appointments, the General, in some cases, from his private fortune advanced the fees requisite to procure commissions, and provided moneys for the purchase of uniforms and clothing. At his own expense he engaged the services of forty supernumeraries,—“a circumstance,” says a contemporaneous writer, “very extraordinary in our armies, especially in our plantations.” In order to engender in the hearts of the enlisted men an interest in and an attachment for the Colony they were designed to defend, and with a view to induce them eventually to become settlers, permission was granted to each to take a wife with him. For the support of the wife, additional pay and rations were provided.[63] So carefully was this regiment recruited and officered, that it constituted one of the best military organizations in the service of the King.