On 5 Jan. 1748–9 he obtained a majority in the 20th foot (Lord George Sackville's), and joined it at Stirling early in February. The lieutenant-colonel, Cornwallis, went to Nova Scotia soon afterwards as governor, and Wolfe had command of the regiment except when the colonel was present. This had its drawbacks: ‘My stay must be everlasting; and thou know'st, Hal, how I hate compulsion’ (2 April 1749). The regiment was sent to Glasgow in March, and to Perth in November. Lord Bury became colonel of it there, and on 20 March 1749–50 Wolfe was given the lieutenant-colonelcy. He felt his responsibility as ‘a military parent’ not yet twenty-three, and was at great pains to set a good example. But the monotony soon fretted him: ‘The care of a regiment of foot is very heavy, exceeding troublesome, and not at all the thing I delight in’ (6 Nov. 1751). The climate tried him, for he needed sunshine for health; and ‘the change of conversation, the fear of becoming a mere ruffian … proud, insolent, and intolerable,’ made him wish to get away from the regiment from time to time.
Besides this, he had a strong desire to make good the deficiencies of his education. He took lessons in mathematics and Latin while he was at Glasgow, and he wanted to go abroad for a year or two to perfect himself in French, and at the same time study artillery and engineering. But the Duke of Cumberland refused him leave, saying, not unreasonably, that a lieutenant-colonel ought not to be absent from his regiment for any considerable time. ‘This is a dreadful mistake,’ Wolfe wrote, ‘and, if obstinately pursued, will disgust a number of good intentions, and preserve that prevailing ignorance of military affairs that has been so fatal to us in all our undertakings’ (9 June 1751). Baulked of his purpose, he spent the winter of 1750–1 in London dissipations, which injured his health. He rejoined his regiment at Banff in April. In September they went to Inverness, and in May 1752 to Fort Augustus. He formed a friendship with Mrs. Forbes of Culloden, danced with the daughter of Macdonald of Keppoch, and tried to capture Macpherson of Cluny, who was still hiding in his own country (Wright, p. 310). He made the best of his ‘exile,’ taking plenty of exercise, for he was a keen sportsman, and reading much. He recommended ‘L'Esprit des Lois’ to his friend Rickson, and found ‘Thucydides’ (in a French version) ‘a most incomparable book.’
Rickson was then in Nova Scotia, and Wolfe took great interest in his accounts of that country, foreseeing that much would happen there in the next war with France. For the desultory frontier warfare which was going on, he said: ‘I should imagine that two or three independent highland companies might be of use; they are hardy, intrepid, accustomed to a rough country, and no great mischief if they fall’ (9 June 1751).
In June 1752 he got leave of absence, and after paying a visit to his uncle, Major Walter Wolfe, in Dublin, he was allowed to go to Paris in October. He remained there till March 1753, taking daily lessons in French, riding, fencing, and dancing, but seeing a good deal of the court and society. He asked leave to attend a French camp of exercise in the summer, and hoped to see something of the Prussians and Austrians; but he was recalled to the regiment owing to the sudden death of the major.
The summer was spent in road-making on Loch Lomond. In September the regiment left Scotland for Dover, and for the next four years it was quartered in the south of England. In the winter of 1754–5 it was at Exeter, and Wolfe wrote: ‘I have danced the officers into the good graces of the Jacobite women hereabouts.’ A year later it was at Canterbury, preparing to take the field in case of invasion, and Wolfe issued his admirable ‘instructions for the 20th regiment (in case the French land)’ on 15 Dec. 1755. He was often severe both on officers and men, but at this time he wrote: ‘We have … some incomparable battalions, the like of which cannot, I'll venture to say, be found in any army,’ and his own was one of them. Men of rank who wished to learn soldiering elected to serve in it. Wolfe had introduced a system of manœuvres which continued in use long after his death (see p. 18 of Manœuvres for a Battalion of Infantry, published in 1766), and had a wide reputation as a regimental officer. It seems to have been in reply to some mention of this by his mother that he wrote to her: ‘I reckon it a very great misfortune to this country that I, your son, who have, I know, but a very moderate capacity, and some degree of diligence a little above the ordinary run, should be thought, as I generally am, one of the best officers of my rank in the service’ (8 Nov. 1755). But he did not strike others as diffident: ‘the world could not expect more from him than he thought himself capable of performing’ (Walpole, George II, ii. 240).
He had hopes of the colonelcy of the 20th when it became vacant in April 1755, but it was given to Philip Honeywood, and, when again vacant in May 1756, to William Kingsley. It was as ‘Kingsley's’ that the regiment fought at Minden. In February
