At this date, in the year 1777, Burgoyne was fifty-five years of age, having been born in 1722, two years before Carleton was born. He was clearly a man of ability, and unusually versatile. He was also, as times went, an honourable man. In his relations to Carleton, at any rate, he seems to have been open to no reproach. But he tried too many things to be first-rate in anything; he was not adequate to a great crisis and to heavy responsibility: and because he was not of the first class, and also because he had much dramatic instinct, he seems to have had more eye for present effect than for the root of matters. He was educated at Westminster School, and, when he died in 1792, he was buried in the northern cloister of Westminster Abbey. He was a soldier, a politician, a dramatist, and a man of society. He entered the army in 1740, again two years before Carleton’s military service began. He became so involved in debt that he had to sell his commission. He rejoined the army in 1756, and in 1762 he distinguished himself in Portugal, where the English supported the Portuguese against Spain and France. A few years later, however, in 1769, Junius referred to him as ‘not very conspicuous in his profession’.[132] He went into the House of Commons in 1761 as member for Midhurst. In 1768, through the influence of his father-in-law, Lord Derby, he became member for Preston, and, in connexion with his election, was attacked by Junius for corruption and also for his gambling propensities. As a politician he was, before he went to America, more or less of a free-lance. He spoke on foreign and Indian questions, and in 1773 made a speech in the House of Commons, attacking Clive. After the catastrophe at Saratoga, and his return to England, he threw in his lot with the Whigs, having been befriended by Fox and his followers; he became Commander-in-Chief in Ireland under Rockingham; and in 1787 he managed the impeachment of Warren Hastings. Before the American war broke out, he produced in 1774 a play called _The Maid of the Oaks_, of which Horace Walpole wrote: ‘There is a new puppet show at Drury Lane as fine as scenes can make it, called _The Maid of the Oaks_, and as dull as the author could not help making it.’[133] At a later date, however, Walpole had to confess that ‘General Burgoyne has written the best modern comedy’.[134] This was _The Heiress_, which was brought out in the beginning of 1786, and achieved a great success. Walpole had no love for Burgoyne, at any rate at the time when the latter served in America. ‘You ask the history of Burgoyne the pompous,’ he wrote in October, 1777,[135] the month in which the surrender at Saratoga took place; and after describing him as ‘a fortunate gamester’, he continued, ‘I have heard him speak in Parliament, just as he writes: for all his speeches were written and laboured, and yet neither in them nor in his conversation did he ever impress me with an idea of his having parts.’ Burgoyne’s affectation and