Three highland regiments; the 42nd (two battalions), 77th Montgomerie's Highlanders and 78th Fraser's Highlanders, served in, the Americas during the Seven Years War and the purpose of this article is to describe their clothing, equipment and arms.

The starting point for any discussion of this must be David Morier's excellent study of a grenadier of the 42nd, painted in 1751, since this illustrates very clearly the regulation dress and equipment worn at the start of the war. Morier's grenadier wears a furred cap - at this time unique to the regiment - a short red coat and waistcoat belted plaid and stockings with buckled shoes. His accoutrements comprise a black leather sword-belt and a, black leather cartouche box and bayonet frog on a waistbelt. Both his purse or sporran and musket sling are of brown leather. He is armed with a long land pattern musket and bayonet and a broadsword but has neither dirk nor pistol.

Headdress

The furred grenadier cap appears to have been pretty much the same as those later introduced for grenadiers and fusiliers throughout the army under the 1768 Warrant with the obvious difference that the 42nd had a rather large cloth flap faced or embroidered in white and bearing the Royal cypher and crown. It is not known whether such a pattern of grenadier cap was worn by the 77th and 78th although it is not unlikely.

Battalion Company men wore the Soots blue bonnet. This generally speaking was a heavily knitted and felted cap with the ends of the yarn twisted into a small button or tourie in the centre of the crown. The appearance of the head-band is a little obscure although one may confidently say that it was not yet the broad red and white chequered band introduced with the Hummel Bonnet in 1768. Some contemporary prints appear to depict a plain blue band although red ones are visible in officers' portraits.

Attached to the bonnet on the left side was a black cockade, made from satin ribbon, a strip one yard and a quarter long and an inch wide being required. Seemingly peculiar to those regiments serving in the Americas was the wearing of a bearskin tuft on the bonnet. Those worn by the 42nd at least were ordered to be of the "blackest bearskin that can be procured" and not to exceed 5" in length "fixed inclining towards the crown of the bonnet". These orders were not given until the 31st of May 1761, at which time it was also laid down that officers were to provide themselves with black feathers instead, but it is likely that they merely confirmed or regularised existing practice rather than introduced it.

Bearskin tufts of this description are well illustrated in William Delacour's painting 'The Pinch of Snuff' which depicts an officer and soldiers of the 78th.

Bonnets at this period were generally worn squarely on the head and raked forward although the cockade and bearskin tuft appear to have been encouraging a tendency to wear the bonnet "inclining towards the right eye".

Bonnets supplied to the 42nd in 1760 cost 2s apiece.

Coats

The coats worn by highland regiments were markedly different to those worn by other units, being much shorter, lacking lapels and with a smaller and neater cuff. It was in fact emminently suitable for service in the Americas and soon other regiments, regular and provincial, imitated them by shortening their own coats. Another unusual feature of the coat was a cape or turned down collar in the facing colour. It, the front edge of the coat at both sides, the cuffs and pocket flaps are edged with regimental lace in Morier's painting. The 42nd at this time had white lace with two parallel red stripes (reduced to one in 1768). This was also used to edge the buttonholes, folded to a point at the outer edge, and balanced by a row of false buttonholes on the right side. Eleven sets of buttonholes are visible in Morier's painting but a twelfth is probably hidden by-the turn-down collar. In addition three sets of buttons appear on the cuff and pocket flaps, similarly laced. The buttons themselves were quite plain.

The 78th to judge from Delacour's painting, had red coats of similar cut though the collar appears to be slightly smaller and squarer, the most obvious difference being a lack of regimental lace and rather flatter buttons than the 42nd. Again they are quite plain and of a uniform size on coat,,cuffs and pockets (indeed the earliest reference which 1. can find to numbered buttons is in an inspection report on the 42nd in 1768.

As with the 42nd the coats worn by the 78th had three buttons on each cuff and pocket flap but only nine - or perhaps ten if one is hidden by the collar - on the coat front.

In both units a small red strap was sewn on to the right shoulder to prevent the sword belt from slipping off, and although unseen a button will have been sewn on to the rear of the left shoulder to secure the end of the belted plaid and two more at the top of the rear pleats on the coat.

The 42nd originally had yellow buff facings but in 1758 they became The Royal Highland Regiment (and as a further mark of favour letters of service were granted for the raising of a second battalion). However news of this honour did not reach the regiment until after Ticonderoga and it is likely that the change to blue facings was not effected until the next issue of clothing in 1759 although the 2nd battalion will have worn them from the outset.

The 77th had red facings and the 78th white ones.

Coats were worn in most orders of dress but sometimes discarded in hot weather and for working parties. In 1761 the 42nd reversed this practice and coats were worn without waistcoats in hot weather for guards, picquets and drill, perhaps because the waistcoats were becoming too shabby.

Waistcoats

Waistcoats were made from the previous year's coats, costing the 42nd a total of £ 48 19s in March 1759. This appears to have worked out at around 1s 9d for each waistcoat.

The conversion, to judge from paintings, appears to have entailed turning the material to provide a fresh clean appearance, the removal of the turn down collar and the cuff turnbacks, and in the case of the 42nd at least a re-arrangement of the regimental lace. The loops edging the buttonholes were removed and a fresh strip of lace added along the bottom edge of the garment. The 78th's waistcoats of course remained unlaced.

Waistcoats were worn without coats as a hot weather dress (and North American summers can indeed be hot) and for working parties. Those men chosen to serve in the regimental Light Infantry Company, and perhaps the battalion company men as well, had two leather pockets sewn on the breast of the waistcoat for flints and musket balls. With the waistcoat thus so heavily used it is hardly surprising that it may soon have become too shabby for parades and picquets.

42nd Royal Highlanders 1762

Five years later the highlander looks very different. The coat in discarded and the soldier would be Identified as a member of the 42nd only by the sett of his tartan - with its distinctive red overstripe, and by the regimental lace on his waistcoat.

The plaid has been replaced by the much handier philabeg and his logo are covered to mid-thigh by a pair of blue wool mitasses.

Broadsword and pistol have both been left in store but otherwise he is in full marching order with the now knapsack.

The musket is a 42" barrel carbine for highlanders with wooden ramrod.

Part 2: Highland Regiments in America During the Seven Years War