if you will take my tent, and field bed on the same terms, that I bought them. My trunk containing two suits of regimental clothes, linen, etc. are at your service.
A regiment’s field officers – its colonel, lieutenant colonel, and major – all commanded companies, and the colonel had an officer, called the captain lieutenant, to do the work for him. Here Cotes offers to sell his company and his lieutenant colonelcy, and takes care to specify that the profit he made from the non-existent soldiers in his company whose pay he drew (‘the non effective account’) should be made up on the day the transaction took place. Bagshawe borrowed £1,000 from his uncle, got the regimental agent to advance him the rest of the money, and duly became a lieutenant colonel. His friend Lieutenant Archie Grant wrote at once to ‘most sincerely congratulate not only you but the whole Corps upon your affairs being at last done’. Apparently, Sewell had doubted if the commissions would be signed, and ‘seemed very much surprised and disappointed when he heard they were’.26
Having become a lieutenant colonel at last, Bagshawe could expect promotion by seniority. His health was ruined by service in India, he fell out with his colonel, and on his return to England he found himself on half-pay, living the life of a country gentleman, but he was still anxious for advancement. In 1758 he told Lord Barrington, Secretary at War, that he believed that he had been unfairly passed over when new regiments were being raised:
I have done my duty punctually, I have been as ready to serve and I have run as great hazards and I have suffered as much as any lieutenant colonel in the service … I think there are only eight lieutenant colonels who are seniors and there has been eleven junior officers … promoted to the rank of colonel …27
Barrington replied that he had indeed considered Bagshawe when ‘the regiments were disposed of,’ and ‘I do not see that any one here has been put over your head, except the Duke of Richmond’s and the King’s aides de camp, whom his Majesty has always chose without a strict regard for rank.’28 In 1759, with more troops being enlisted, Bagshawe wrote to the Duke of Bedford, lord lieutenant of Ireland, offering ‘to raise a regiment of infantry at his own expense.’ By this procedure, known as ‘raising for rank’, Bagshawe would recruit the regiment and furnish its swords and accoutrements at his own expense, although if the regiment was disbanded in less than three years the public purse would refund the cost of these items. The government accepted the offer, and his commission as colonel was dated 17 January 1760.
No sooner had Colonel Bagshawe set about raising his regiment, the 93rd Foot, than he found himself the target of just the sort of pleas that powerful men had once made on his behalf. Lieutenant Francis Flood was the nephew of Warden Flood, attorney general for Ireland, and Bagshawe thought that part of the agreement for Flood’s commission was that his uncle would provide sufficient money for Flood to raise ten men. The attorney general loudly denied that any such agreement existed, and young Flood was soon in financial difficulties, for he could not balance his recruiting account. ‘My family is in distress,’ he lamented, ‘being concerned with a contested election’, so no money was to be had there.29
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