The Black Watch Mutiny of 1743: The Capture
of 120 Scottish Highlanders in Ladywood, near Lyveden.
“On the wayside turf that borders the tract of woodland stretching between Brigstock and Oundle is a low green mound called the Soldier’s Grave. The natives of the district do not care to pass it after dark for of course the place is haunted, and a figure is sometimes said to be seen sitting on the mound in the dusk, shrouded in a long dark mantle.” [Extract from The London Standard, 20th May 1875]
“In the early hours of the morning of Saturday 21st May 1743 more than a hundred Highland soldiers of the Black Watch regiment slipped quietly across the road between Sudborough and Lowick and filtered up into the woods beyond. They were only just in time.......”......
Read on.... https://www.brigstockcouncil.org.uk/uploads/the-black-watch-incident.pdf
This is about the Black Watch Mutiny of 1743 in Finchley, London, their eventual capture in Ladywood, nr Lyveden, Oundle, & their forced march back to London via Oundle & Thrapston. Three were condemned to death in the Tower of London. The rest were sent abroad to fight for King George II.
Further references.........
1. “Mutiny: Highland Regiments in Revolt, 1743-1804” by John Prebble (Secker & Warburg, 1975)....
“Throughout that afternoon the roads about Ladywood were full of red horsemen [dragoons], riding from Stamford and Uppingham, from Kettering and Oundle. They deployed on the fields, on the slopes to the Benefield road, in the meadow-grass about Sudborough and Wadenhoe, their pickets standing in close to the wood and just beyond range. The noise was unbroken, voices and the whinny of horses, the sweet music of bridle-chains and again the urgent calling of trumpets.”
“One hundred men and twenty men were involved in the desertion and mutiny, of whom one hundred and seven were brought to trial – the men who surrendered in Ladywood and others whom the dragoons flushed from ditch and field between Northampton and London. Of the others, one lay unnamed in the earth.....”
2. “The Official Records of the Mutiny in the Black Watch, 1743” by H.D. MacWilliam (1910).
https://archive.org/details/officialrecordso00macwuoft/page/lxxix/mode/2up
3. http://www.42ndrhr.org/mutiny.php
4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_Highland_Companies
5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/42nd_Regiment_of_Foot
6. “Highways and Byways in Northamptonshire and Rutland” by Herbert A Evans (1918) https://archive.org/stream/highwaysandbywa00evangoog/highwaysandbywa00evangoog_djvu.txt
7. “A Soldier’s Grave”, London Standard, 20 May 1875 https://www.newspapers.com/clip/76580134/standard-may-20-1875-black-watch-mutin/
8. Papers of Mr T Litchfield (Historian) of Barnwell https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/download/GB0154%20LiB
9. https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/northants/vol3/pp245-248
10. https://electricscotland.com/history/scotreg/bwatch/bw2.htm
11. https://www.northantstelegraph.co.uk/retro/paranormal-northamptonshire-haunted-spots-our-county-revealed-820157 (see 4. Lyveden New Bield)
