Thus spoke Scottish aristocrat, Member of Parliament, sportsman, and leading light of the rifle volunteer movement Francis Wemyss-Charteris- Douglas, Lord Elcho, later earl of Wemyss and March, as he presided over a public meeting of Scottish residents in London held at the Freemasons’ Tavern in the West End, on 4 July 1859. The meeting had been convened conjunctly by the Highland Society of London and the Caledonian Society of London in order to consider the formation of a Scottish volunteer corps in London. Two months earlier, the British government had accepted and authorised proposals to form a part-time military reserve of volunteer units throughout the country, answering public concerns over the perceived instability of continental politics and the potential for a French threat to the immediate security of the British Isles, with the British regular army heavily committed to imperial garrisons overseas. The countrywide response to the volunteering call, in organising activity, subscriptions raised and men enrolled had been strong. In the view of Lord Elcho,

As it proved, there was no backwardness about volunteering in Scotland, nor among those Scots domiciled south of the border. In England, as part of the countrywide surge in amateur military organisation set off in 1859, recruiting for Scottish volunteer companies began in London, Liverpool and Newcastle. The Scottish volunteers achieved an enduring presence in the capital, one that has lasted into the twenty-first century. In the northern English cities the idea and recruiting effort underwent periodic revival, first as a result of the South African War and then as part of the great national recruiting effort of the first year of the First World War.