Wade, George

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Wade, George (1673–1748). One of the best-known soldiers of early Hanoverian Britain, Wade was the grandson of a Cromwellian officer who had settled in FFf beginning of more than twenty years of almost incessant warfare and by the end of the War of the Spanish Succession in 1714 had risen to major-general. In 1715 he was returned to Parliament for Hindon and in 1722 transferred to Bath, where he built up a powerful political base and where his fine house in the abbey courtyard still stands. From 1724 to 1740 he commanded in Scotland, where his programme of military road-building was designed to facilitate troop movements. Promoted to field marshal in 1743 he fought an unremarkable campaign in Flanders the following year. He was given charge of the army at Newcastle upon Tyne during the Jacobite invasion of 1745 though his conduct appears to have been sluggish.

J. A. Cannon

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