Free The Lady In Red: An Eighteenth-Century Tale Of Sex, Scandal, And Divorce by Hallie Rubenhold Page A

tenement, the baronet offered George Bisset a captain’s commission in the South Hampshire Militia, when a vacancy arose. As commander, Worsley may have been given an indication that Captain Charles Abbott was about to resign his place in the New Year. This he did on the 3rd of March 1781, and the deeds replacing him with Captain George Bisset were sealed on the 23rd.
    Sir Richard’s grant of a commission was not merely a gesture of gratitude but was designed to pull Bisset more deeply into his life. In 1780 the country was in a state of high alert. It was anticipated that the war with France currently being waged in America would transfer itself to the coastlines of Britain. In response, the government had raised further funds to expand the militias. For the baronet the coming year would present another cycle of troop movements and dull encampments in muddy fields. The prospect of having a friend at his side would have cheered Worsley considerably. Undoubtedly, Bisset too had reason to welcome these developments. Where Sir Richard would be, there his wife was likely to follow. This was a useful arrangement for a couple who had illicitly fallen in love. Particularly now that Lady Worsley was carrying his child.

5
    A Coxheath Summer
    In April 1775, five months before Sir Richard and Lady Worsley stood before the altar at Harewood, settlers in the American colony of Massachusetts had gathered on the village green at Lexington and raised their rifles to a troop of British soldiers. This first volley of bullets was the opening round of the American War of Independence, a conflict which was to have enormous repercussions on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. For the next three years, King George’s armies would be engaged in a struggle to put down a colonial rebellion. The intention had never been to trounce their cousins overseas but rather to give the misguided minutemen a bloodied nose and a warning to step back into line. However, by 1778 what seemed to be a manageable family dispute between a mother country and her impertinent daughter assumed the shape of an international war when Britain’s neighbour, France, stepped into the quarrel. In February of that year, ships filled with ammunition, cannons and blue-coated French soldiers set sail in aid of the American colonies. Like storm clouds, rumours quickly gathered that Louis XVI’s forces also had their spyglasses fixed on the shores of England and were mustering in Normandy and Brittany for an invasion. Suddenly a nation that once had only a passing concern about the distant events of Bunker Hill and Saratoga, sprang to attention at the possibility of a French attack at home. Parliament ordered immediate fortification of the south coast of England and re-embodied the local militias which had been disbanded since 1762.
    That summer of 1778, from June until the beginning of November, a
network of Kentish fields outside Maidstone became the site of one of the eighteenth century’s most impressive military spectacles: 15,000 militia troops had pitched their tents in an encampment that spread for nearly three miles along the pasture grounds of Coxheath. Sir Richard Worsley’s South Hampshire Militia had been marched from Southampton, via the Earl of Egremont’s estate at Petworth in order to be among them. Their garrison formed part of what was described as ‘a miniature city’, serviced by local tailors, purveyors and merchants who had closed their shops in the nearby towns to peddle their wares beneath the canopied arches. Surrounded by drilling grounds and makeshift stables, the officers erected their marquees in elaborate compounds comprised of ‘sleeping quarters, entertaining rooms, kitchens and servants’ halls’. Like the campaign tents of Roman generals, these lodgings were fully staffed and decorated with rugs, silver and furniture brought from home by their wives, who, breaking with tradition, insisted on accompanying their husbands on this patriotic