Joshua Guest

Joshua Guest (1660–1747) was an English lieutenant-general.

Guest was a Yorkshireman of obscure origin. His mother was Mary Guest, afterwards Smith, and he was a son by a former marriage, or before she was married at all. His epitaph in Westminster Abbey shows that he was born in 1660, and began his military service in 1685. The first entry of his name in existing War Office records is 24 February 1704, when he was appointed cornet in Captain Henry Hunt's troop of Colonel George Carpenter's dragoons.

The whole of Guest's service as a commissioned regimental officer was passed in Carpenter's, afterwards Honeywood's, afterwards Bland's dragoons (later the 3rd Hussars). The regiment was raised in 1685, and was in the camp on Hounslow Heath. It fought with distinction under King William III in the Irish and Flanders campaigns; part of it was in the Cadiz expedition in 1702; and it also served in Spain in 1707-8, and suffered heavily at the battle of Almanza, after which it was sent home to be reformed. Guest appears to have commanded Carpenter's dragoons in England and Scotland for many years.

He was in Scotland in 1715-16, and commanded a party of dragoons which pursued and overthrew Jacobite fugitives at Perth 21 January 1716. The Lockhart Papers give a story, claimed to be direct from Guest, relating to the period of the Spanish invasion of Scotland in 1719. At the time Guest was with two or three troops of dragoons quartered in Staffordshire or Warwickshire. There he is said to have received letters, signed by George I, directing him in case of disorder ‘to burn, shoot, or destroy without asking questions, for which and all that he should do contrary to the law in execution of these orders he thereby previously indemnified him.’ The temper of the district was Jacobite, and that Guest communicated the orders to leading gentry with an appeal to them to keep the peace. The district remained undisturbed.

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