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 Cornwallis at once to Ferdinand's headauarters, and arrived there six weeks before the English troops, when he was appointed aide-de-camp to the Marquis of Granby. He served on Granby's staff for more than a year, and was present at Minden. He returned to England in August 1759, on being promoted captain into the 85th regiment. In January 1760 he was elected M.P. for the family borough of Eye in Suffolk, and on 1 May 1761 he obtained the lieutenant-colonelcy of the 12th regiment, and assumed its command in June. His regiment was hotly engaged in the battle of Kirch Donkern, or Vellinghausen, on 15 July, and in many minor actions, and then went into winter quarters. Throughout the campaign of 1762 he was also present, and his regiment was particularly distinguished at the battles of Wilhelmstadt and Lutterberg, and he returned to England in November to take his seat as second earl Cornwallis, to which title he had succeeded on the death of his father on 23 June.

Cornwallis determined to act with the whig peers, and in opposition to Lord Bute, and when Rockingham became prime minister in July 1765, Cornwallis became a lord of the bedchamber. He was also made an aide-de-camp to the king in August 1765, and colonel of the 33rd regiment in March 1766. When Rockingham went out of office in August 1766, Cornwallis, under the influence of his friend Lord Shelburne, consented to serve under the Duke of Grafton, and accepted from him the appointment of chief justice in eyre south of the Trent in December 1766. He took no great part in political debates, but he was one of the four, peers who supported Lord Camden in his opposition to the resolution asserting the right of taxation in America. He refused to remain in office after Shelburne's resignation, and in 1769 threw up both his appointments as lord of the bedchamber and as chief justice in eyre, on which Junius observed, on 5 March 1770, that the 'young man has taken a wise resolution at last, for he is retiring into a voluntary banishment in hopes of recovering the ruins of his reputation.' The voluntary banishment to which Junius alludes was probably due to a different cause, as in 1768 Cornwallis married Jemima Tullikens, daughter of Colonel James Jones of the 3rd guards. The king certainly did not regard Cornwallis with the same detestation as most of the whig leaders, for in 1770 he was made constable of the Tower of London, and in 1775 he was promoted major-general.

George III no doubt felt that he could depend upon the loyalty of Cornwallis, who did not refuse to take a command in the war against the American insurgents, though he had systematically opposed the measures which caused the insurrection. The events of 1775 made it necessary to reinforce the English army in America, and on 10 Feb. 1776 Cornwallis, in spite of the entreaties of his wife, set sail in command of seven regiments of infantry. When he reached Cape Fear, he found that Sir William Howe had evacuated Boston and retired to Halifax. To that place he brought the reinforcements, and when the army was reconstituted he took command of the reserve division, while his seniors. Lieutenant-generals Henry Clinton and Earl Percy, took command of the 1st and 2nd divisions respectively. Under Sir William Howe, Cornwallis co-operated in the operations in Staten Island and Long Island, in the battle of Brooklyn and the capture of New York, and after the battle of White Plains he took Fort Lee on 18 Nov., and rapidly pursued Washington to Brunswick and then to Trenton, thus completely subduing the state of New Jersey. The military ability shown by Cornwallis in these operations was fully recognised by Sir William Howe (Cornwallis Correspondence, i. 25), but, unfortunately, Howe himself was quite unable to seize the advantage which his subordinate's ability gave him. In the following year Cornwallis won the victory of Brandywine on 13 Sept. and safely occupied Philadelphia on the 28th. He then came home on leave and was promoted lieutenant-general, and again sailed on 21 April 1778 to take up the post of second in command to Sir Henry Clinton [q. v.], who had succeeded Sir William Howe as commander-in-chief in America. On joining Clinton at Philadelphia, Cornwallis soon found that that general had no more grasp of the critical situation of affairs than Sir William Howe, and, in utter disgust at his refusal to attempt operations on a large scale, he at once sent in his resignation, which the king refused to accept. Cornwallis understood what a change had been made in the position of affairs by the active intervention of France; he saw the necessity of occupying every port at which French troops could be disembarked; he wished to stop the supplies of money and stores which poured into the southern states by the Chesapeake, and he knew that the English army must win some striking success to counterbalance the evil effects of the surrender of Burgoyne at Saratoga. As a general, he wished to make use of the untried resources of the southern states, to rally the loyalists there, and to act upon the focus of the insurrection from the south. Clinton, however, could not understand these views of Cornwallis, and was quite satisfied with small