ABSTRACT
In January 1729, Colonel Francis Negus MP recounted to John, Viscount Percival, how close Britain had been to a military coup 15 years earlier in the feverish final months of Queen Anne’s reign. According to Negus, Henry St. John – Viscount Bolingbroke, Secretary of State – plotted to bring over the Pretender by military force with the approval of the queen and her Tory confidante, Abigail, Lady Masham. To achieve this, Bolingbroke proposed ‘the modelling the army’. But Bolingbroke’s great rival, Anne’s Lord Treasurer, Robert Harley, first Earl of Oxford:
knew the impossibility of doing that suddenly and opposed it … However, the Duke of Ormond, who was Lord Bollingbroke’s man and general, in pursuance of this scheme began to debauch the officers. He thought himself sure of the Tories and undertook to debauch the Whigs among them, but he found a strong resolution in these last not to serve the Queen her own way, which was the expression used to them, and the touchstone of their inclinations. And many who yielded to keep their posts and military governments, privately gave assurance to those who managed the interest of the House of Hanover that they would never forsake it. Many of them even signed the association to rise and seize upon Oxford and Bollingbroke on a certain day, and by a bold but necessary step preserve the Hanover succession. General Withers was one and told it Negus. 1
