John Burgoyne, in a measure a soldier of fortune, was the younger son of an impoverished baronet, but he had married the daughter of the powerful Earl of Derby and was well known in London society as a man of fashion and also as a man of letters, whose plays had a certain vogue. His will, in which he describes himself as a humble Christian, who, in spite of many faults, had never forgotten God, shows that he was serious minded. He sat in the House of Commons for Preston and, though he used the language of a courtier and spoke of himself as lying at the King's feet to await his commands, he was a Whig, the friend of Fox and others whom the King regarded as his enemies. One of his plays describes the difficulties of getting the English to join the army of George III. We have the smartly dressed recruit as a decoy to suggest an easy life in the army. Victory and glory are so certain that a tailor stands with his feet on the neck of the King of France. The decks of captured ships swim with punch and are clotted with gold dust, and happy soldiers play with diamonds as if they were marbles. The senators of England, says Burgoyne, care chiefly to make sure of good game laws for their own pleasure. The worthless son of one of them, who sets out on the long drive to his father's seat in the country, spends an hour in "yawning, picking his teeth and damning his journey" and when once on the way drives with such fury that the route is marked by "yelping dogs, broken-backed pigs and dismembered geese." It was under this playwright and satirist, who had some skill as a soldier, that the British cause now received a blow from which it never recovered. Burgoyne had taken part in driving the Americans from Canada in 1776 and had spent the following winter in England using his influence to secure an independent command. To his later undoing he succeeded. It was he, and not, as had been expected, General Carleton, who was appointed to lead the expedition of 1777 from Canada to the Hudson. Burgoyne was given instructions so rigid as to be an insult to his intelligence. He was to do one thing and only one thing, to press forward to the Hudson and meet Howe. At the same time Lord George Germain, the minister responsible, failed to instruct Howe to advance up the Hudson to meet Burgoyne. Burgoyne had a genuine belief in the wisdom of this strategy but he had no power to vary it, to meet changing circumstances, and this was one chief factor in his failure.