Christian Davies

The author Daniel Defoe met her in old age when she was a Chelsea Pensioner and turned her story into a book entitled The Life and Adventures of Mrs. Christian Davies.

Although her parents were Protestants, they supported King James II during his campaign in Ireland.

Her father served with the Jacobite Army, dying as a result of wounds at the Battle of Aughrim.

[3] Unable to care for her - some accounts have her fleeing her mother - Kit Cavanagh went to live with her aunt who ran a public house in Dublin.

Eventually, one of the letters made it to her, telling Cavanagh that he was in the British Army serving in Holland.

[3] Initially, Cavanagh joined Captain Tichborne's company of foot under the name Christopher Welch.

[6] Still looking for her husband, she would eventually re-enlist with the Scots Greys when the War of Spanish Succession began in 1701.

As Marian Broderick noted, "Amazingly, she managed to do this without being discovered: she ate with them, drank with them, slept with them, played cards with them, even urinated alongside them by using what she describes as a 'silver tube with leather straps'.

[6] Not willing to be sidelined by the musket ball that remained in her upper thigh, she was with the regiment at the Battle of Blenheim.

[6] Having found her husband with another woman, she refused to go back to him, preferring to remain a dragoon in the Scots Greys.

Eventually Lord John Hay, the Scots Greys brigade commander, intervened, having Cavanagh's husband brought from the 1st Regiment of Foot.

After hearing the whole story from Cavanagh, he ordered that her pay be continued while she remained under the care of the army.

[5] Once she was well enough, Cavanagh, now back to being called Mrs Welsh, was formally discharged from the Scots Greys.

As part of her discharge, the officers of the Scots Greys paid for a new wardrobe for Mrs Welsh.

Queen Anne granted her a bounty of £50 and a shilling a day for the rest of her life as a pension.

For many years, they moved about England and Ireland, making a living through a variety of jobs as well as her celebrity status among the military.