Defending and Disputing the Rival Kings, 1714–50

This chapter examines the early Georgian army’s political allegiances and analyses how the soldier-kings George I and George II and their ministers set about creating loyalism within the army. There was little support for the ’15 Rebellion among the king’s troops. Nonetheless, Jacobites still hoped that the army would intervene to restore the Stuart claimant to the throne, as it had in 1660, and this belief was a central component of Jacobite plotting in the early 1720s. But while George I and George II’s army remained loyal to them, it was beset with national resentments, particularly during the War of the Austrian Succession, when George II favoured his Hanoverian army.