General A general officer is an Officer (armed forces), officer of high rank in the army, armies, and in some nations' air force, air and space forces, marines or naval infantry. In some usages, the term "general officer" refers to a rank above colone ...

John Leslie, 10th Earl of Rothes KT (169810 December 1767) was a senior

British Army The British Army is the principal Army, land warfare force of the United Kingdom. the British Army comprises 73,847 regular full-time personnel, 4,127 Brigade of Gurkhas, Gurkhas, 25,742 Army Reserve (United Kingdom), volunteer reserve perso ...

officer who became Commander-in-Chief of the Royal Irish Army between 1758 and 1767.

Military career

Born the eldest son of John Hamilton-Leslie, 9th Earl of Rothes and Lady Jean Hay, daughter of John Hay, 2nd Marquess of Tweeddale, Leslie was commissioned into the 9th Regiment of Dragoons in 1715.John Leslie, 10th Earl of Rothes
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography In 1717 he transferred to the 3rd Regiment of Foot Guards. He became

Commanding Officer The commanding officer (CO) or commander, or sometimes, if the incumbent is a general officer, commanding general (CG), is the officer in command of a military unit. The commanding officer has ultimate authority over the unit, and is usually give ...

of the 21st Regiment of Foot in 1721 and inherited his father's title the following year. He became a

Scottish representative peer This is a list of representative peers elected from the Peerage of Scotland to sit in the House of Lords after the Acts of Union 1707 abolished the unicameral Parliament of Scotland, where all Scottish Peers had been entit ...

in 1723. In 1732 he took over command of the 25th Regiment of Foot. He fought at the Battle of Dettingen in 1743 and, having transferred to the

Horse Grenadier Guards The Horse Grenadier Guards, usually referred to as Horse Grenadiers, were a series of cavalry troops in the British Household Cavalry between 1687 and 1788, who used grenades and other explosives in battle. Originally attached to the Troops of ...

, at the Battle of Rocoux in 1744. In 1751 he transferred to the military staff in Ireland and in 1758 he became Commander-in-Chief, Ireland. His home, Leslie House in the village of Leslie, was seriously damaged by fire in 1763. He died at his home in 1767. In 1747, under the Heritable Jurisdictions Act, he sold the office of Sheriff of Fife, which had been a hereditary right of the earldom since 1540.

Family

In 1741 he married Hannah Howard, daughter of Matthew Cole of Thorpe,

Norfolk Norfolk ( ) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in England, located in East Anglia and officially part of the East of England region. It borders Lincolnshire and The Wash to the north-west, the North Sea to the north and eas ...

and his wife Brittania Cole; they went on to have two sons and two daughters, including John Leslie, 11th Earl of Rothes and Jane Elizabeth Leslie, 12th Countess of Rothes, who succeeded to her brother's title, defeating the rival claim of her uncle Andrew. Mary, the youngest daughter, married William Colyear, 3rd Earl of Portmore. In 1763, following the death of his first wife, he married Mary Lloyd, daughter of Gresham Lloyd and Mary Holt, who after Lloyd's death remarried Thomas Hamilton, 7th Earl of Haddington, a close relative of Rothes.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Rothes, John Leslie, 10th Earl Of 1698 births 1767 deaths Nobility from Fife 6th (Inniskilling) Dragoons officers King's Own Scottish Borderers officers Knights of the Thistle British Army generals British Life Guards officers Royal Scots Greys officers Scottish representative peers Commanders-in-Chief, Ireland Members of the Privy Council of Ireland 10