This regiment was raised at the same time as the 1st Dragoon Guards, and first bore the name of the Earl of Peterborough's "Third Horse".  The rates of pay were high, for the colonel (as colonel) drew daily twelve shillings, and, in addition (as captain), fourteen shillings a day, while the private soldiers received two shillings and sixpence a day.  They saw much hard work and fighting in the Irish Rebellion of the seventeenth century, where they did especially good service at Aughrim, in crossing a most difficult stretch of bog land, and forming beyond it for the charge that turned the fortunes of the day,; and on their return to London had equally unpleasant work in patrolling the roads to Blackheath on the one side and Hounslow on the other, because the roads were infested with highwaymen.  Civil war had unfitted men for more peaceful pursuits.  The sudden disbandment of the large army of the Commonwealth had flooded what labour market there was.  There was literally nothing for many a man save starvation or "the road".

These disagreeable duties were discontinued in 1693 when they were performed by a regiment of Dutch horse, the "Third Horse" being ordered the following year to Flanders, where it was brigaded with Wood's and Wyndham's regiments, afterwards the 3rd and 6th Dragoon Guards, where it saw some service, and was then transferred to Portugal.  There it fought over much of the ground that was made memorable just a hundred years later by the "Peninsular War".  Then, as later, Alcantara was occupied, and Ciudad Rodrigo besieged.  At Almanza in 1707 English troops cut down French infantry, as did their successors on the same terrain a hundred years later.  But success did not always attend its efforts; for in 1710 at Brilhuega the small British contingent was surrounded, and after a brilliant but hopeless defence, at the end of which the ammunition failed, and stones were used as missiles, it was compelled to surrender.  For not quite a year the men were prisoners of war; but, notwithstanding this disaster, the "Queen's Bays" emerged from their prolonged stay in Portugal seasoned and inured to war.  It was in the abortive rebellion of 1715 that the title "The Princess of Wales' Own Royal Regiment of Horse" was won and bestowed as a reward for its determined gallantry at the battle of Preston.  This was, however, changed into "The Queen's Own" on the accession of George II.

It was destined for a second time to meet the adherents of the Stuart cause in battle, for it was employed in the army of General Wade in his advance against the forces of the Young Pretender in 1745.  Its zeal for the de facto sovereign was undiminished.  In the inclement weather of that severe winter it covered more than a hundred miles in three days to head off the retreating army.  It came up with it near Penrith, and fought that brilliant skirmish on Clifton Moor, so vividly described in Sir Walter Scott's "Waverley", where "Mac Ivor" was taken prisoner.  The year after this brief campaign it wasconverted from "Horse" into "Dragoons", with the affix of "Guards", as a compensation for the reduction in pay and "quality".

There were old soldiers in those days, as the epitaph of one of them on his tomb at Coventry shows.  I runs as follows :-

"Here lieth the body of Arthur Manley, late Quartermaster in the Queen's Royal Regiment of Horse, who served the Crown of Great Britain upwards of fifty six years, from the 15th July 1685, to the 24th August 1741.  Hr died June 7th 1746, aged 78.

"The Israelites in desert wandered but two score, 

But I have wandered two score sixteen and more

In dusty campaigns, restless days and nights,

In bloody battles oft-times did I fight,

In Ireland, Flanders, France and Spain.;

At last here lies my poor mortal remains"

I served in the Foot ten years, and in the above Regiment of Horse upwards of forty-six years".

Like the 1st Dragoon Guards, the regiment formed part of General Webb's brigade in the campaign of 1760, and saw more sharp fighting at Corbach and Warburg, and did not return to England until 1763, when it received the thanks of Parliament for its services.  It was not until 1767 that the distinctive name usually given to the regiment, the "Queen's Bays", or "the Bays" arose.  At that time all the cavalry regiments except the Scots Greys were mounted on black horses, but the troop horses purchased at this time were bay, and cost per head twenty two guineas.  It did not see active service again until 1793, when the regiment spent three years on the continent, sharing in the "affairs" at Tournay and elsewhere.  It was at the battle of Fleurus that mention is first made of captive balloons as a means of extending the reconnaissance of the enemy's position and movements, and there, as well as at Liege, a telegraphic code by semaphore was also for the first time used in war.   It arrived on the Continent too late in the autumn of 1815 to share in the glory of Waterloo; but it formed part of the army of occupation of France, being quartered at St Omer's, in the 1st Brigade.

The next campaign of the Bays was in the Indian Mutiny, and they could have had no more glorious work than sharing in the final attack on Lucknow, which resulted in the fall of the chief stronghold of the mutineers.  On the 5th of March, 1858, they severely checked the enemy's sortie on Sir James Outram's force, which had crossed the Goomtee and taken up a position on the Fyzabad road; but Major Piercy Smith, who led them, and who had seen service with the 16th Lancers in Afghanistan, fell, shot to death by a matchlock ball.  The regiment had seen hard fighting before this, and afterwards, for three gallant soldiers won the Cross for Valour during the campaign.  On the 28th of September, 1857, Lieutenant Robert Blair, with a sergeant and twelve men, attacked a party of fifty Sowars, and, heedless of odds, defeated them without losing a man, though nine of the enemy were killed, four by his own hand; he was himself severely wounded in the shoulder by a sword cut.  Nor were Nos 875, Private Charles Anderson, and 1158, Thomas Monaghan, Trumpeter, less distinguished; for on the 8th of October, 1858, near Sundeela, Ondh, they saved their colonel's life in a dense jungle, when some thirty or forty mutineers opened fire on him at a few yards' distance and then charged.  Colonel Seymour was cut down; but the two men interfered, and by sheer hard fighting gave their commanding officer time to rise, and, wounded as he was, they together dispersed their assailants.  

The 2nd Dragoon guards bear as their badge the royal cypher within the garter, with the title "Lucknow", so honourably won.  The facings of the regiment are buff; the rest of the uniform is similar to the other regiments of Dragoon Guards.  They are best known as the "Bays", from the circumstance already referred to, that when the other regiments of horse were mounted on black horses, the 2nd Regiment rode bay horses, as far back as 1767.  The reason for the other nickname of the "Rusty Buckles" is difficult to trace.

Extract from "The British Army and Auxiliary Forces" Colonel C. Cooper King, R.M.A. , 1894

ROBERT BLAIR  (Lieutenant)  2^nd Dragoon Guards            Major-General Sir James Hope Grant, K.C.B., brought this officer’s gallant conduct forward in his despatch of January 10^th 1858.  He states that at Boolundshuhur, on September 28^th 1857, Lieutenant Blair was ordered to take a sergeant and twelve men to bring in a deserted ammunition wagon.  On his nearing the wagon, about sixty of the enemy’s horsemen, who had been unobserved up to that time, swooped down upon them, but Lieutenant Blair, taking no thought of the heavy odds he had to face, led his little party against the oncoming troop and fought his way through them, killing four of them with his own hand.  Not one of his men was killed, and his skilful leadership safely brought all back to camp, although he himself was most severely by a native officer, whom he had run through with his sword.  The natives turned and slashed at Lieutenant Blair, the blow nearly severing the joint of his shoulder.

CHARLES AMDERSON  (Private, afterwards Corporal)  2^nd Dragoons Guards (Queen’s Bays)            At Sundeela October 8^th 1858, Private Anderson behaved with great gallantry when Sepoys attacked his party in the jungle, on which occasion he saved his colonel’s life.  Further details of his brave conduct are given in the record of Trumpeter Monaghan (V.C.).  His Victoria Cross is now in the United Service Institute, London. 

THOMAS MONAGHAN  (Trumpeter)  2^nd Dragoon guards (Queen’s Bays)             Associated with Corporal Charles Anderson in saving the life of Lieut. –Colonel Seymour, C.B. (in command of their regiment), on October 8^th 1858.  Soon after the action fought at Sundeela, in Oude, a sudden attack was made upon our men in a dense jungle of sugar-canes, from which an attempt had been made to dislodge a body of thirty or forty mutineers.  Our party was fired upon a few yards range and then attacked by the enemy with drawn swords.  Colonel Seymour shot one man, fired his pistol into the oncoming mass of Sepoys, and was then cut down by two blows from a sword.  Monaghan, with Anderson, at once rushed to his help, the former shooting one of the enemy who was about to cut him, and by the exertions of these two men, who made a terrific onslaught upon them, they were kept at bay until the colonel could rise, when every one of the enemy was killed.  Monaghan’s Victoria Cross was sold in London on November 5^th 1903 for £43. 

How Major George Harold Absell Ing, Of The 2^nd Dragoon Guards (Queen’s Bays), Won The D.S.O. At The Second Battle Of Ypres

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