Note 26 — INTRODUCTION
Reading edition
De Lancey was at this time a lieutenant-colonel and permanent assistant in the quartermaster-general's department (Army List, 1809, p. 323).
His first commission as a cornet in the 16th Light Dragoons bore the date 7th July 1792 (Army List, 1793, p. 50), when he was only eleven years old.
He was gazetted lieutenant in the same regiment on the 26th February 1793, and was subsequently transferred to the 80th Foot.
On the 20th October 1796 he was gazetted captain in the 17th Light Dragoons, of which regiment his uncle, General Oliver De Lancey, was then colonel.
He obtained a majority in the 45th (or Nottinghamshire) Regiment of Foot on the 17th October 1799. He was by this time eighteen years of age, and up to this date had probably no connection with the army at all beyond drawing his pay and figuring in the Army List. Even now he does not appear to have joined his regiment until its return from the West Indies, a year or two afterwards (Dict. Nat. Biog., vol. xiv., p. 305). His first uniform was probably that of the 45th Foot, and the portrait, forming the frontispiece of this volume, was in all likelihood painted on his first joining the regiment as a major in 1800 or 1801.
In the Army List of 1804 he is shown on page 31 as an assistant quartermaster-general. His actual regimental service can therefore hardly have exceeded two or three years. Until his death in 1815, he was continuously on the staff of the army in the quartermaster-general's department.