"Our will and pleasure therefore is, that one sergeant, one corporal, and fifty private men, be forthwith taken out of the three companies commanded by captains, and ten private men from the three commanded by captain-lieutenants, making one hundred and eighty men, who are to be equally distributed into the four companies hereby to be raised; and the three sergeants and three corporals draughted as aforesaid, to be placed to such of the four companies as you shall judge proper; and the remainder of the non-commissioned officers and private men, wanting to complete them to the above number, to be raised in the Highlands with all possible speed, the men to be natives of the country, and none other to be taken.
"This regiment shall commence and take place according to the establishment thereof. And of these our orders and commands, you and the said three captains and the three captain-lieutenants, commanding at present the six Independent Highland Companies, and all others concerned, are to take notice, and yield obedience thereunto accordingly.
"Given at our Court of St. James's this 7th day of November, 1739, and in the 13th year of our reign. By His Majesty's command.
(Signed) "WM. YONGE.
"To our right-trusty and well-beloved cousin John Earl of Craufurd and Lindsay."
Letters of service usually contain the special conditions under which troops are levied. It is worthy of remark that such are carefully omitted in the foregoing.
II.
HIGHLAND SOLDIERS.
In the war between 1755 and 1762, sixty-five thousand Scotsmen were enlisted, according to the "Scots Magazine" for 1763, and of these a great proportion were Highlanders, whose services were extremely ill-requited.
"Were not the Highlanders put upon every hazardous enterprise where nothing was to be got but broken bones, and are not all these regiments discarded now, but the 42nd?" says a writer in the Edinburgh Advertiser of 6th July, 1764. "The Scots colonel who entered the Moro Castle* is now reduced to half-pay; while an English general, whose avarice was the occasion of the death of many thousands of brave men, is not only on full pay, but in possession of one-fifth of the whole money gained at the Havannah—what proportion does the service of this general, who received £86,000, bear to a private soldier who got about fifty shillings, or an officer who received about £80?**
* Lieutenant-Colonel James Stuart, who afterwards commanded at Cuddalore, in 1789.