NEGUS, Francis (1670-1732), of Dillinghoo, Suff.

Negus, an army officer, served under Marlborough in the war of the Spanish succession. Succeeding his father-in-law, William Churchill, at Ipswich in 1717, he voted regularly with the Government. He is described by the first Lord Egmont as knowing ‘many modern anecdotes’ and as having ‘a good interest at court’, though he complained that the ministry ‘gave him no assistance at Ipswich’.HMC Egmont Diary, i. 90, 292; iii. 334. He died 9 Sept. 1732, commemorated in the Ipswich Gazette by a poem beginning: ‘Is Negus gone? ah! Ipswich weep and mourn’.Copinger, Suff. Manors, iv. 248.