[hannay] history of THE QUEEN'S RANGERS 179 



gently trained to rely on each other in times of danger. Sinicoe through- 

 out his work has word's of high praise- for nearly every officer in his 

 corps he happens to mention, but no words of censure for any of them. 

 While there are some officers whose names necessarily came more pro- 

 minently forward in his book, such for instance as the officers of the 

 Hussars, the Grenadier, Light and Highland Companies, who are natur- 

 ally more frequently named than the officers of the battalion companies, 

 there is no reason to believe that there was a weak spot anywhere in the 

 regiment, or that if there had been a weak spot it would have been suf- 

 fered to exist long. Simcoe had so high an opinion of his officers that 

 he considered them fit for any position, and he regarded it as an insult 

 and a stigma upon them when Sir Guy Oarleton, as he says, appointed 

 " a very young officer, who had not seen any service," from another corps 

 to a troop vacant in the Queen's Rangers. The officer referred to was 

 Morris Eobinson who, on the 24th April, 1783, was promoted from the 

 Loyal American Regiment. His appointment was probably due to the 

 influence of Oliver DeLancey, then x^djutant General of the British 

 Army. It was from DeLancey's office that the insulting proposal 

 emanated on the 31st March, 1783, that Lieut.-Col. Thompson, who was 

 then completing a regiment, should be allowed to enlist men belonging 

 to the Queen's Rangers, and Simcoe was actually asked to encourage his 

 men to enlist in this new corps, which he peremptorily refused to do, 

 characterizing the order as " unjust, humiliating and disgraceful." The 

 matter came to nothing, as the peace was very near. The Lieut.-Col. 

 Thompson referred to was the person afterwards known as Count 

 Rumford. 



Having said so much in regard to the character of the officers of 

 the Queen's Rangers as a whole, I propose below to give such an account 

 of them individually as can be collected at this late day, and invite our 

 friends who may be descended from them to supply us with such addi- 

 tional particulars of their worthy ancestors as I have not been able to 

 gather. 



LIEUTENANT-COLONEL SIMCOE. 



John Graves Simcoe, the commander of the Quocirs Hangers from 

 October, 1777, to the close of the war, was a native of England, his 

 father being a captain of the Royal ISTavy, who died on board his ship, 

 the " Pembroke," in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, while the fleet was on the 

 way to the siege of Quebec in 1759. Simcoe was educated at Eton and 

 Oxford, and was a hard student. At the age of nineteen he obtained an 

 ensign's commission in the 35th Regiment and landed at Boston on the 

 very day of the battle of Bunker's Hill. He acted for a time as adjutant 



