The regiment was first raised by Colonel Sir John Gibson, who had served as the Lieutenant-Governor of Portsmouth, as Sir John Gibson's Regiment of Foot on 16 February 1694. It was posted to Newfoundland to protect the colony there, losing many of its men to the extreme cold. The regiment was disbanded in 1697, but reformed under the same colonel in 1702. The regiment took part in the Battle of Louisburg in June 1758 and the Battle of the Plains of Abraham at Quebec in September 1759 during the Seven Years' War. The regiment was sent back in North America in May 1776 and took part in the Battle of White Plains in October 1776 during the American War of Independence. It also fought in the West Indies and helped take Saint Lucia in 1778, but was captured by the French on Saint Kitts in 1782 and interned until the end of the war. In 1782, renamed the 28th (North Gloucestershire) Regiment of Foot as part of the reforms to create a territorial association for each regiment, it returned to Flanders following the outbreak of war with revolutionary France in 1793 and moved to the West Indies in 1795.