The 76th Regiment of Foot was originally raised as Lord Harcourt's Regiment on 17 November 1745 and disbanded in June 1746. Following the loss of Minorca to the French, it was raised again in November 1756 as the 61st Regiment, but renumbered to 76th, by General Order in 1758, and again disbanded in 1763. A second battalion raised by that regiment in October 1758, for service in Africa, was renumbered as the 86th Regiment and also disbanded in 1763. On 25 December 1777 the 76th was again re-raised as the 76th Regiment of Foot (Macdonald's Highlanders) by Colonel John MacDonell of Lochgarry, in the West of Scotland and Western Isles, as a Scottish Light Infantry regiment. It was disbanded at Stirling Castle in March 1784. The regiment was again raised for service in India by the Honorable East India Company in 1787.
In 1881 the 76th Regiment, which shared the same Depot in Halifax as the 33rd (Duke of Wellington's) Regiment, was linked to the 33rd, under the Childers Reforms, to become the regiment's 2nd Battalion. Although retitled as the Halifax Regiment (Duke of Wellington's) this title only lasted six months until it was changed on 30 June 1881, in a revised appendix to General order 41, to: The Duke of Wellington's (West Riding Regiment), or 'W Rid R' for short. In January 1921 it was again retitled The Duke of Wellington's Regiment (West Riding), or 'DWR' for short. On 6 June 2006 the 'Dukes' were amalgamated with the Prince of Wales's Own Regiment of Yorkshire and The Green Howards, all Yorkshire-based regiments in the King's Division, to form the Yorkshire Regiment.
During 1745 13 provincial 'foot regiments and two horse regiments, the 67th to the 79th, were raised by the nobility of England for service in the Jacobite Rebellions in Scotland. Lord Harcourt raised the 76th and as was the custom at that time named it Lord Harcourt's Regiment. Despite initial resistance by senior regular officers he and the other members of the nobility who raised the regiments each received regular commissions as colonels in the army. The 76th, along with 10 others, was disbanded on 10 June 1746, when their services were no longer required. The soldiers were given a bounty of only six days pay, to encourage them to enlist into other regular regiments.
The regiment was raised again in 1756 for service in the Seven Years' War and disbanded in 1763, although little is known about this period in the regiments' history.
The 76th Regiment of Foot (MacDonald's Highlanders), sometimes referred to as 'MacDonnell's Highlanders' after its colonel, John MacDonnell of Lochgarry, was a Scottish Light Infantry regiment raised in the west of Scotland and western isles of Scotland on 25 December 1777, by the Clan MacDonald. It consisted of seven companies of Highlanders: two of Lowlanders and an Irish company.
It was presented with its colours at Inverness in March 1778 and moved into barracks at Fort George. In March 1779 it moved to Perth where, following a dispute over their pay and bounty payment, soldiers from the regiment took part in the Burntisland mutiny of March 1779, whilst under the command of Major John Sinclair, 11th Earl of Caithness (Lord Berridale), after which it was transferred to Jersey in the Channel Islands and embarked for New York in August 1779.
The regiment campaigned from March 1781, under the command of Major Francis Needham, 1st Earl of Kilmorey (who was also the regimental Colonel of the 86th Foot) in the American Revolutionary War at Petersburgh, Portsmouth and Osborne's Hill in the Battle of Brandywine. The regiment was captured in the Siege of Yorktown seven months later in October. It was split up and the troops were interned at various locations throughout Virginia. Following the end of the war, in 1783, it returned to Scotland and was commanded by Sir Robert Stuart. The regiment was finally disbanded at Stirling Castle in March 1784.
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