[1] At the time of painting Burgoyne had won distinction during the Seven Years' War in resisting the 1762 Spanish Invasion of Portugal.

Since 1761 he had been Member of Parliament for Midhurst and in 1768 he won a hotly-contested election in Preston, a seat he held for the rest of his life.

Burgoyne would later become known for writing two plays The Maid of the Oaks (1774) and The Heiress (1786), both staged in London's West End.

[2] In 1777 he led a British Army south from Canada to capture Albany in New York but mislaid orders meant he was isolated at the Battle of Saratoga and forced to surrender to Horatio Gates, a former British officer now serving with the Continental Army.

Burgoyne insisted that his troops become a Convention Army and be shipped back to Britain to continue fighting in the war, but the Continental Congress repudiated these terms and imprisoned the soldiers.