Pontius Pilate's Body-guard
Preserved but no longer current.
The 1st Foot Regiment, now called the Royal Scots, the oldest regiment in the British Army. The fable is that when in the French service as Le Regi- ment de Douglas they had a dispute with the Picardy regiment about the antiquity of their respective corps. The Picardy officers declared they were on duty on the night of the Cruci- fixion, when the colonel of the 1st Foot replied, If we had been on guard, we should not have slept at our posts.
Era: ca. 1898 (Victorian)
Sources & notes
Reproduced from Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (1898 edition, public domain; archive.org, retrieved 2026-07-31; OCR text, minor errors possible). Reflects the scholarship and attitudes of its era.
Common questions
What does “Pontius Pilate's Body-guard” mean?
The 1st Foot Regiment, now called the Royal Scots, the oldest regiment in the British Army. The fable is that when in the French service as Le Regi- ment de Douglas they had a dispute with the Picardy regiment about the antiquity of their respective corps. The Picardy officers declared they were on duty on the night of the Cruci- fixion, when the colonel of the 1st Foot replied, If we had been on guard, we should not have slept at our posts.
Is “Pontius Pilate's Body-guard” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.