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1715 · WRCAM39768 — London 1715. Small folio broadsheet. 1p. plus printed docket title on verso. Ornamental initial. Dbd. Early folds and early stab holes in left margin. Mild foxing. Very good. A petition to Parliament by the officers of Lieut. Gen. George Hamilton's Regiment of Foot seeking pay due for services abroad in the War of Spanish Succession. Lord George Douglas-Hamilton 1666-1737 was a Scottish Williamite officer during the Glorious Revolution who later married William III's mistress Elizabeth Villiers became a confidant of William was created Earl of Orkney in 1696 was appointed Governor of Virginia in 1714 and in 1736 was the first British general promoted to the rank of Field Marshal. In 1701 at the beginning of the War of the Spanish Succession Hamilton led the First Regiment of Foot the Royal Scots to the Netherlands where the regiment fought for the remainder of the war. Despite their long service and the high position of Hamilton the officers suggest in the present petition that having been so long overseas they had been forgotten by the British government and charge that they had not received their pay even after frequent petitions. The document is an early example of lobbying literature which first began proliferating in the lobby of the House of Commons at the time of the accession of King George I and the British general election of 1715. ESTC records four copies two at the British Library one at Oxford and one at the National Library of Scotland. unknown books