POLITICAL HISTORY 



turned northwards and went in pursuit through Lichfield, Uttoxeter, and 

 Cheadle, ' over the most dreadful country.' 83 From Lichfield Cumberland 

 wrote to Newcastle : 



They march at such a rate that I can't flatter myself with the hopes of overtaking 

 them, though I set out this morning in a march of at least thirty measured 

 miles. 331 



It was to be some time before he caught them up. 



The general feeling of the county in this rebellion seems to have been 

 to the Hanoverian dynasty. The country people cheerfully brought 

 their horses to the duke's army, and when he was pursuing the Pretender the 

 country gentlemen did the same, 332 nor does the invading army seem to have 

 attracted any number of Staffordshire recruits worth mentioning. 



Sir Richard Wrottesley, a staunch Whig and Hanoverian, armed his 

 servants and tenantry for George II, and his father-in-law, Lord Gower, was 

 raising forces on the same side in the north of the county, but the rebels 

 retreated before they had a chance of proving their courage. 333 



Jacobites, on the other hand, like the Giffards and Astleys, in the same 

 fashion as their fellows in the rest of England, ' spilt their wine more than 

 their blood ' for the Stuart cause. 33 * 



No doubt their loyalty to the Stuarts was weakened by the fact that the 

 Pretender had called the French to help him ; they were Englishmen first 

 and Jacobites after, but the chief reason was perhaps that Walpole had given 

 the country a long period of peace and prosperity. The estates of the 

 country gentlemen had thereby increased largely in value, 335 and they were 

 not likely to upset a rule which gave them so much benefit. 



The early military history of the county has been set forth in the fore- 

 going pages, and we will complete it by a brief account of the regular and 

 auxiliary forces since the beginning of the eighteenth century. 



In the year 1705 was raised the first regular battalion of infantry 

 connected with Staffordshire, when Parliament, encouraged by the campaign 

 of Blenheim, voted six new regiments, of which the one connected with 

 this county alone, and originally known as Lillingston's Regiment, exists 

 to-day. 336 



It did not partake in the glories of Marlborough's wars, for in 1706 it 

 went to the West Indies, and is said to have remained there for sixty years, 

 during which detachments served at the capture of Guadaloupe in 1759 and 

 of Martinique in iy62. 



In 1745 it was, like the rest of the British forces at home and abroad, 

 in a miserably neglected condition ; at St. Kitts not forty per cent, of the 



330 Contemporary Account of the Rebellion (Bod. Lib.), 63. 



331 Ewald, Life of Prince Charles Stuart, 1 84. *** Contemporary Account as before. 

 833 Coll. (Salt Arch. Soc. New Ser.), vi (2), 347. 



334 The chaplain at Okeover, Jeremiah Kitching, gives an amusing account of the exactions of the 

 Pretender's troops : ' Upon Tuesday night we had five lay with us, and upon Friday night as they returned 

 from Derby four lay with us and about seven o'clock at night came three horsemen and said they wanted 

 armour and plundered the house and stables and barns and the church : and they have taken your best saddle 

 trimmed with gold lace, and your lady's bridle and two other saddles . . . and upon Saturday morning came 

 three ruffians . . . and pick the servants' pockets of their money and my silver tobacco box ' ! Coll. (Salt 

 Arch. Soc. New Ser.), vii, 112. 



335 Morley, Walpole, 133. "* Fortescue, Hist, of Army, \, 450. 

 07 Lawrence Archer, Brit. Army, 3 1 7. 



267 



