Sir Robert Rich, 4th Baronet

Sir Robert Rich's life is a portrait of an 18th-century English gentleman's dual career: army and Parliament. He entered the military as a young man, seeing fierce action in the War of the Spanish Succession at the battles of Schellenberg and Blenheim, where the Duke of Marlborough's forces crushed the French. This early combat forged his reputation. When the Jacobite rising of 1715 threatened the Hanoverian succession, Rich was tasked with raising a new regiment of dragoons, a sign of trust in his leadership. He later returned to continental battlefields, fighting at Dettingen in 1743, one of the last times a British monarch led troops in the field. Parallel to this, he sat in the House of Commons for various constituencies for nearly forty years. Despite his military stature and political longevity, he remained a backbencher, a capable but perhaps not cunning political operator, whose ultimate honor was a field marshal's baton awarded in his old age.