General Thomas Gage, commander-in-chief of forces in British North America, and other British officers who had fought in the French and Indian War, had found it hard to persuade colonial assemblies to pay for quartering and provisioning of troops on the march.

Therefore, he has asked Parliament to do something.

Most colonies had supplied provisions during the war, but the issue is disputed in peacetime.

The Province of New York is their headquarters, because the assembly had passed an Act to provide for the quartering of British regulars, but it had expired on January 2, 1764.

The result is the Quartering Act of 1765, which goes far beyond what Gage had requested.

No standing army had been kept in the colonies before the French and Indian War, so the colonies ask why a standing army is needed after the French had been defeated in battle.

This first Quartering Act is given Royal Assent on May 15, 1765, and provides that Great Britain will house its soldiers in American barracks and public houses, as by the Mutiny Act of 1765, but if its soldiers outnumber the housing available, will quarter them in "inns, livery stables, ale houses, victualing houses, and the houses of sellers of wine and houses of persons selling of rum, brandy, strong water, cider or metheglin", and if numbers require in "uninhabited houses, outhouses, barns, or other buildings."

Colonial authorities are required to pay the cost of housing and feeding these troops.