Sir John Rushout, 4th Baronet

He resigned his army commission in January 1712 which he later claimed was to pre-empt his dismissal under the Duke of Ormond's policy of weeding out Whig officers in order to defeat the Hanoverian succession.

He voted against the expulsion of Richard Steele on 18 March 1714 and acted as a teller for the Whig side on the Harwich election petition on 16 July 1714.

He initiated the House of Commons inquiry into the Atterbury plot, and in 1725 sponsored the complaint leading to Lord Macclesfield's impeachment.

He spoke against a vote of credit on 25 March 1726, and introduced a bill against election bribery on 27 April which was lost in the House of Lords after being passed in the Commons.

He was returned as MP for Evesham at the 1727 British general election and was a lieutenant to Pulteney, playing a leading role in the Whig opposition.

During the excise bill crisis in 1733 he was put down as secretary at war in the list of a new ministry prepared by the opposition leaders.

[3] On the fall of Walpole in 1742, Rushout, with Samuel Sandys, and Phillips Gybbon became Pulteney's representatives on the new Treasury board, where they combined to outvote the first lord, Wilmington.

He was elected to the secret committee of enquiry into Walpole's Administration, but defended John Scrope, the secretary of the Treasury, for refusing to give evidence.

When Pelham replaced Wilmington, under a compromise, Rushout was appointed Treasurer of the Navy in 1743 and was made a Privy Counsellor in 1744.

In the debates on Wilkes's privilege in November 1763, he spoke against Grenville's Administration, and voted against them in the division on general warrants in February 1764.