FOOTNOTES:
[204] One of the reasons for reckoning him severe was, his laughing at those who wrote on Phalaris’s bull.
[205] This was written before the last war in the reign of George the Second, in which, he really triumphed over both France and Spain, but it was by the Ministry of Mr. Pitt.
[206] The Duke of Cumberland’s subsequent patience on his father’s unjust ill-treatment of him after the battle of Hastenbeck, and his Royal Highness’s total indifference to money, fully vindicate him from this suspicion.
[207] Particularly by the Author of these Memoirs.
[208] Pitt and the Grenvilles. See the preceding year.
[209] Lord Halifax.
[210] Mr. Murray.
[211] Mr. Pelham.
[212] Very probable that a King of Denmark should have seen a Preamble to a Mutiny Bill!—but there was no hyperbole too extravagant for Lord Granville to use.
[213] Sir Dudley Rider.
[214] He was much hated by the Scotch, since his quarrel with and separation from his wife, Lady Mary, youngest daughter of John, Duke of Argyle.
[215] Earl Gower stuck to the Pelhams: his sons, Lord Trentham and Richard Leveson, acted with their brother-in-law, the Duke of Bedford.
[CHAPTER IX.]
The Scotch Bill—Speeches of the Duke of Bedford and the Lord Chancellor, Lord Bath, the Duke of Argyle, and the Duke of Newcastle—Character of Archibald Duke of Argyle—The King goes to Hanover—History of the Factions in Ireland—Divisions among the Instructors of the Prince of Wales—Account of the Pretender’s Family and Court at Rome—German Alliances unlucky—Dissensions in the Prince of Wales’s Household—Appointment of Lord Waldegrave as Governor, and Dr. Thomas as Preceptor, to his Royal Highness.
March 10.—Lord Bath moved for an account of the produce of the Window-tax in Scotland. It had not, since first laid, brought in one shilling.
The Scotch Bill had hitherto only raised some warmth in particular men, who either did not love that nation from prejudice, or from resentments contracted against them during the late Rebellion. It now took a more serious turn. The Duke, who had conquered the Scotch like an able General, who had punished them like an offended Prince, and whose resentments were not softened by the implacability of their hatred to him, was not a little disgusted at seeing measures of favour to them adopted, and himself totally unconsulted upon those measures. Yet he could not, as they were concerted by the King’s Ministers, openly oppose them. It was almost as difficult for him to blow up any opposition against them underhand. The discontented in the House of Commons were either the refuse of the late Prince’s party, or the Jacobites; and even these latter could not be supposed heartily eager against favours being showered on their never-failing allies, the Scotch. In the other House, the only phantom of opposition consisted in half a dozen Jacobite Lords, and in the person of the Duke of Bedford, between whom and his Royal Highness a coldness had arisen, as has been mentioned. In this dilemma the Duke lighted upon a measure, which had ample effect. Lord Sandwich was too much connected with him, and too much detached from the Duke of Bedford, to make it expedient to offer any overtures directly through him: but the Duke sent him to a person[216] who had private connexions with the Duke of Bedford, and who he knew would not be sorry to traverse Mr. Pelham’s measures, to offer him very extraordinary anecdotes on the Scotch affairs, which he might impart to the Duke of Bedford. It is strange how this train caught! That person persuaded the Duke of Bedford to accept and make use of the information, without knowing from whom it came; and it must appear amazing, that a man who could make so distinguished a figure as his Grace did, by the management of the materials, should have submitted to be put in motion so blindly!—but that was his character; when he shone in public with most energy, he perhaps acted the least upon his own motives—but it is proper to enter into a deduction of the Debate.
17th.—The Bill was read in the House of Lords. The Duke of Bedford began with showing the impracticability of the measure, from the difficulties both of maintaining a colony on the forfeited estates, and of procuring people to settle on them. Troops can be of no service to support them in winter, unless forts are built; an expense that would far exceed the views of this Bill. English would not go thither; Irish cannot be spared, for you must not weaken the Protestant interest in that island; Scotch Highlanders will not remove thither from their own fastnesses; Germans indeed will migrate—but not to worse countries. But, he asked, had the Ministry permitted the disloyal inhabitants to remain upon these estates for six years since the Rebellion, and did they now propose to banish them? Would they engraft cruelty upon their negligence? and that in a case which decides the inhumanity, as it would punish the oppressed, yet not derive any benefit to the public,—the only justifiable pretence for national severities: for what benefit will the public reap from the change of Lords, under whom these Highlanders are to be placed by this Bill? Indeed, he said, he feared such encouragement was given to that country, by this and some other Bills, as would, even in our time, produce a new Rebellion—Glasgow—the great Lords, have received such sums, such means of new commotions, as they could have obtained no other way—and though particular towns and persons are pretended to be relieved, money is, through their channels, circulated over the whole country, and we deprive ourselves of the advantages that might accrue even from treason, when the disaffected have contributed to despoil and impoverish their own country. He feared Rebellion would grow a national malady! Danger is even to be apprehended from the method of putting this Bill in execution: should the Commissioners not act, it is a needless, an useless Bill—if they do, what is to encourage them? power and interest? and into what hands are you going to trust those formidable enemies? Are you not taking the same method you took with Lord Lovat? Will you empower more Lord Lovats to nurse up more Rebellions? He was a single instance, and the subsidy to him a trifle in comparison: this is a plan for the most formidable power ever attempted hitherto to be established in that country.
He then told the House, that he was but too well founded in his apprehensions of new commotions, both from the countenance showed to the disaffected, and the discouragement given to the loyal. He told them that he had in his hands a long and crying catalogue of facts, which would prove both his assertions, and which facts he was ready to prove. As a sample, he mentioned two cases; the first of one John Cummings, who at the time of the late Rebellion, being Collector at Montrose, assisted the Rebels in seizing the Hazard sloop, for which service the titular Duke of Perth appointed him Collector for the Pretender. This Cummings, on the Duke’s arrival in Scotland, was imprisoned by his Royal Highness’s command, and carried into Inverness; from thence he escaped, was again imprisoned, but at the desire of Lord Milton was released by Mr. Bruce, who had a power at that time to continue or to release prisoners. This Mr. Cummings is now Collector of Excise at Aberdeen; a place worth almost double of what he formerly enjoyed at Montrose!
The other was the case of Hume of Munderson, a man engaged in the former Rebellion, or, as the Scotch call it, in the fifteen. His brother was executed for the last Rebellion; but he himself has been made a General Supervisor of Excise. “My Lords,” continued the Duke, “these are among many flagrant instances of the favour, I may truly say, of the rewards conferred on Rebels. I can, if I am called upon, produce many more equally striking, and of what perhaps is still more alarming, of punishments inflicted, or permitted to be inflicted on the well-affected to his Majesty’s government and person. I will not now recapitulate them, nor dwell even on the fate of Mr. Davidson, Minister of Navar, above Brechin in the Braes of Angus, who with sixty of his parishioners was persecuted after the Rebellion, for making bonfires on the Duke’s birth-day, under the pretence of wilful fire-raising!”
After a pause, he said: “My Lords, these, and facts like these, call for inquiry: what I have more to say, strikes directly at the Bill itself, which various circumstances concur to evince, is but a more extensive job. Such is the impropriety of the time, the end of a session, to offer a Bill of this nature, when, so far from having leisure to examine it, we have barely time to pass it; and that this must have been the effect of design is evident, since the Report of the Barons of the Exchequer, who were to examine into the nature and state of these forfeitures, was given in so long ago as December, 1749. The money to be raised is a most unjust burthen upon England: the Commissioners at least, who ought to see this Act put in execution, ought to be English. If they are not, we are grounded to suspect that this money will be as much perverted as other taxes have been fallaciously collected. Let us cast our eyes but on the produce of the coach-tax in that part of the United Kingdom; to what does it amount? for the first year to one thousand pounds!—for the second, to what? to nothing. Must we suppose that this burthen was so heavily felt, that the whole Nobility and Gentry of Scotland at once concurred to lay down their equipages? In those years England paid on the same account 60,000l., 58,000l. If such are their partialities, is it not allowable for Englishmen to have some? Be that as it may, my Lords, let us know what grounds there are for these complaints, for these accusations. I move your Lordships to put off the farther consideration of this Bill, till we have had time to inquire into facts.”
It required more art than the Chancellor possessed, to efface the impression made by this speech. To dispute the facts would be admitting that they ought to be examined. He thought the most prudent method was to admit their authenticity, but to endeavour to show that the previous examination of them was not necessary, either in that place, or before the conclusion of the Bill. This method he followed; it served to palliate the resolutions of a majority of which he was secure; but had that bad effect for the Ministry, that the Duke of Bedford’s assertion of the facts, and the Chancellor’s admission of them, or at least his not disputing them, left the world persuaded of their reality, and of the timidity, indolence, or wickedness of the Administration.
The Chancellor, therefore, in a very long and elaborate speech, said, that if what had been advanced against the Bill was true, it was one of the worst Bills on the best plan that ever was formed. That indeed the Bill was only a part of the plan formerly concerted of buying the jurisdictions of the great Lords into the hands of the Crown; and that it fell in naturally enough to that plan, as these estates must necessarily be sold. That the only blame he should have expected was that this Bill had not been brought in sooner. Formerly the complaint had been that forfeited estates were restored and given back from the Crown. That indeed he did believe many of the claims upon these estates were fictitious: however, they must be determined in Scotland; here is the last place where they must be examined. That this Bill alone can enable you to have fair purchasers; and that if the claims are fraudulent, it is an additional reason for passing such a Bill; otherwise, the original proprietors might re-acquire their estates for nothing. That the great view of the Government was to destroy clanships; his own great wish, to see the King a great Highland landlord: that one of the chief benefits to arise from this scheme, secondarily to the extension of loyalty, is the improvement of the linen manufactures, an establishment at once so useful to our trade, and so inconsistent with arbitrary principles, that there had been but three single men of those manufacturers engaged in the last Rebellion. That with regard to the difficulty of finding colonists, he did not doubt but some English might be prevailed on to settle there, probably some Lowlanders too, nay, some Irish, if they can be spared. He believed, indeed, that the greater part of the old inhabitants must remain at first; but that some of the well-affected clans might be induced to transmigrate to those settlements; and that he did not despair of reclaiming even the present tenants, at least in the next generation of them, if they were once emancipated from dependence on their chiefs. That the danger from distributing money among the disaffected, formerly so impolitic a measure of King William, must not be considered here in that light; this is not money to bribe traitors, but to pay lawful creditors; and that he had rather even fraudulent creditors should enjoy this money than have the estates revert to their old proprietors. That even the position laid down of encouragement given to Rebellions by largesses to that country, was not true; it was the restitution of forfeited estates which had hardened them to attempt new commotions; but that if we were still to see repeated insurrections, every Rebellion cuts off so much strength from the faction. That indeed, as to the article of the Commissioners, he wished those words, without fee or reward, were not in the Bill; that he must own he saw many just grounds of complaint, but could not approve national reflections. That to the honour of that country he must say, the linen manufactures were carried on by Directors who received no salary. If these Commissioners should prove less meritorious, or more blameable, they are not for life; they are removable. That now he must take a little notice of the heavy accusations enforced by the noble Duke; but previously he must observe, that it is not proper in a Debate, to raise objections from particular facts, which people cannot be prepared to answer. That Cummings’s case was so flagrant, that if it was inquired into, he did not doubt but it would be remedied. But what did this and the other instances prove, but the want of the Bill? That another view of the Bill was, to raise towns and villages and stations for troops; not that it would take away the want of troops: that the money, supposing it a large sum, was but little in comparison of the benefits it was calculated to purchase: is it not a little sum, if it prevents only one Rebellion?
If it was true, as the Duke of Bedford had asserted, and as he believed it was, that the Lowland share of the forfeited estates was not mortgaged to the full value, and that therefore they ought to be sold altogether, and the overplus go towards the purchase, for his part he believed nobody would advise his Majesty to sell those estates. That he did not believe the claims would be allowed to the extent given in; that the King, of his grace, may give the overplus towards the purchase, but that he should not advise it: he should rather advise that the distribution should be made to reward loyalty; for instance, could a nobler use be made of it, than in rewarding Sir Harry Monroe, who and whose family had done and had suffered so much for the service of the Crown? That the last thing of which he should take notice, was the insufficient manner in which the taxes had been collected in that northern quarter of the Kingdom: some method, to be sure, should be taken to make Scotland pay her taxes; but could any Ministry ever hit upon that method? it is not vitium temporis that the Ministers have not done the impossible thing. One good effect the very proposal of this will have, if it points out, or leads to a remedy for the nonpayment of these taxes.
The young Marquis of Rockingham entered into a Debate so much above his force, and pertly applied the trite old apologue of Menenius Agrippa, and the sillier old story of the Fellow of a College, who asked why we should do anything for Posterity, who had never done anything for us!
Lord Bath then joined the Duke of Bedford’s opposition, after first reflecting on that Duke himself, who he said had entered his complaint both ways, that the Bill had not been brought in soon enough, and had been brought in too late. That for himself, he could not but think the proposal of examining the claims first very material. Should he, would any man, purchase an estate, before he had examined the nature and validity of the incumbrances? That on the first face of the account, he could descry false claims and misprision. On one little estate of thirty pounds a year he observed a mortgage of four thousand pounds. Who, he asked, had been in possession of these 16,000l. per annum since they had been forfeited? If the Government, where is the receipt? who accounts for it? If the creditors, why is not so much struck off from their claims? What must England say, if Scotland pays nothing towards four million of taxes? What must she say, when the weight of these taxes has been increased by Rebellions raised in Scotland? But who is it, must he ask, who takes upon them to remit taxes? Kings had been driven out for arrogating a dispensing power! where will these partialities end? He concluded with proposing a Bill to be enacted for punishing any frauds relative to forfeitures.
The Chancellor replied, that the Bill had been prepared as soon as possible, and had been brought in soon after Christmas. That the time for sale would lapse, and the estates fall to the mortgagees, if the Bill should now be postponed. That the mortgages, though real, could not extend beyond the value of the estates, which, he said, was a case frequent enough in Chancery.
Then rose a man, on whom all eyes had turned during the Debate—the Duke of Argyle. How was every expectation disappointed! As his power was uncontrolled in Scotland; as partialities could only be exercised under his influence, or connived at by his intrigues; as the Bill was known to be a sacrifice made to his ascendant; as its practicability had been questioned; who but himself was answerable, for favour to Jacobites, for tyranny to the loyal, for the necessity, for the utility, or for the feasibility of the regulation in question? He looked down, seemed abashed, spoke low and but a few words, then contemptuously, and at last said nothing to refute the charge of partialities, or in defence of the Bill. He only said, “What would have happened if any Scotch Lord had spoken against it? it would have been said, they are for keeping up their old barbarity and power. Whereas, the clans are to transfer their allegiance to Commissioners appointed by the King during his pleasure. If any man suspected him to be so low, as to have private views in this, God forgive him! That with regard to taxes, such difficulties there had been on the old tax on houses, that it had never been paid: few counties had even named their Collectors. That the window tax, if paid, would raise but 6000l., and ninety-nine Collectors would have but fifteen shillings a piece. That on the coach tax there was no deficience. For himself, he despised reports.”
Lord Tweedale spoke after him, and with passion; but as nobody expected any great lights from him, so he disappointed nobody.
The Duke of Newcastle, flustered by the Duke of Bedford’s attack, and confounded by the Duke of Argyle’s no defence, seemed to speak only to mark his own confusion, and to enforce what the Duke of Bedford had urged. He said he had taken minutes of the names mentioned by his Grace, and hoped such recommendations would be taken no more. That he had already sent the King’s orders to apprehend some Rebels still resident in Scotland; but as yet they could not be taken.
Thus much effect followed: Cummings and some others in the Duke of Bedford’s list were removed. The Bill passed; but though one great argument for driving it on had been the danger of the estates lapsing, neither English nor Scotch Ministers chose to have it discussed any further in Parliament. The Duke of Cumberland, who was present, did not vote. The Court Lords were fourscore; the minority only twelve: the Dukes of Bedford and Kingston; the Earls of Bath, Chesterfield, Sandwich, and Macclesfield; with six Tory Lords, the Duke of Beaufort, the Earls of Lichfield and Oxford, and the Lords Wentworth, Ward, and Maynard. Mr. Pelham was enraged beyond measure at the Duke of Argyle; the King charmed with the Duke of Bedford; and both these sensations were heightened by the Duke giving his father a list of sixty Jacobites, who had been preferred in Scotland since the Rebellion.
26th.—The King put an end to the session; and the Speaker, in his speech to him, launched out in invectives against the management in Scotland.
I shall conclude the history of this Bill with the character of its patron, not its defender, the Duke of Argyle.
Archibald Campbell, Earl of Isla, was younger brother of the admired John, Duke of Argyle, whom he succeeded in the title, and with whom he had little in common, but the love of command. The elder brother was graceful in his figure, ostentatious in his behaviour, impetuous in his passions; prompt to insult, even where he had wit to wound and eloquence to confound; and what is seldomer seen, a miser as early as a hero. Lord Isla was slovenly in his person, mysterious, not to say with an air of guilt in his deportment, slow, steady where suppleness did not better answer his purpose, revengeful, and if artful, at least not ingratiating. He loved power too well to hazard it by ostentation, and money so little, that he neither spared it to gain friends or to serve them. He attained the sole authority in Scotland, by making himself useful to Sir Robert Walpole, and preserved it by being formidable to the Pelhams. The former had disgusted the zealous Whigs in Scotland by throwing himself into the arms of a man of such equivocal principles: the Earl pretended to return it, by breaking with his brother when that Duke quarrelled with Sir Robert: yet one chief cause of Walpole’s fall was attributed to Lord Isla’s betraying to his brother the Scotch boroughs entrusted to his management in 1741. It must be told, that Sir Robert Walpole always said, he did not accuse him. Lord Isla’s power received a little shock by Lord Tweedale’s and Lord Stair’s return to Court on that Minister’s retreat; but like other of Lord Orford’s chief associates, Lord Isla soon recovered his share of the spoils of that Administration. He had been ill with the Queen (of whom he knew he was sure while he was sure of Sir Robert Walpole) from his attachment to Lady Suffolk: he connected with Lord Granville, while Lord Granville had any sway; and as easily united with the Pelhams, when power was their common pursuit, and the humiliation of the Duke and the Duke of Bedford the object of their common resentment; for common it was, though the very cause that naturally presented them to the Duke of Argyle’s hatred, their zeal and services, ought at least to have endeared them to the brothers.
By a succession of these intrigues, the Duke of Argyle had risen to supreme authority in Scotland: the only instance wherein he declined the full exertion of it was, when it might have been of service to the master who delegated it; in the time of the Rebellion: at that juncture he posted to London: the King was to see that he was not in Rebellion; the Rebels, that he was not in arms. But when this double conduct was too gross not to be censured, he urged a Scotch law in force against taking up arms without legal authority; so scrupulously attached did he pretend to be to the constitution of his country, that he would not arm in defence of the essence of its laws against the letter of them. In his private life, he had more merit, except in the case of his wife, whom having been deluded into marrying without a fortune, he punished by rigorous and unrelaxed confinement in Scotland. He had a great thirst for books; a head admirably turned to mechanics; was a patron of ingenious men, a promoter of discoveries, and one of the first great encouragers of planting in England; most of the curious exotics which have been familiarized to this climate being introduced by him. But perhaps too much has been said on the subject of a man, who, though at the head of his country for several years, had so little great either in himself or in his views, and consequently contributed so little to any great events, that posterity will probably interest themselves very slightly in the history of his fortunes.[217]
31st.—The King set out for Hanover: the Duke of Newcastle, who attended him, would not venture himself in any yacht but the one in which Lord Cardigan had lately escaped a great storm.
While the King was absent, a scene was opened in a remote part of his dominions, which had not been accustomed to figure on the theatre of politics. Ireland had for many years been profoundly obedient to the Government. The Roman Catholics were too much overbalanced by the power of the Protestants to be formidable: the latter were too certain on any change of Government, to meet with no quarter from the professors of a religion, by whose plunder they were enriched, not to be inflexibly attached to the Prince on the Throne. Yet the insolence or wantonness of two men, new to power, contrived in a minute to throw that kingdom into a flame, and to create factions, who soon imbibed all the inveteracy of party, except disaffection. The internal councils of Ireland were chiefly guided by Mr. Boyle, the Speaker of the House of Commons, and Chancellor of the Exchequer, and during the absence of the Lord-Lieutenants, one of the Lords Justices. He was vain and popular, and as the idols of the people and of themselves generally are, a man of moderate capacity. It had been the unvaried practice of the Lord-Lieutenants to court this man, and to govern the House of Commons by his interest: the steadiness of his principles was unquestionable. Lord Harrington, the last Governor, had been much disliked, but conforming himself to this maxim, some discontented persons[218] had in vain attempted to give disturbance to the King’s affairs.
He was succeeded by the Duke of Dorset, who was a man of dignity, caution, and plausibility, and who had formerly ruled Ireland to their universal satisfaction. But he then acted from himself; he was now in the hands of two men most unlike himself, his youngest son, Lord George Sackville, and Dr. George Stone, the Primate of Ireland. The former, a man of very sound parts, of distinguished bravery, and of as honourable eloquence, but hot, haughty, ambitious, obstinate. The Primate, a man of fair appearance, of not inferior parts, more insinuating, but by no means less ambitious, had with no pretensions in the world, but by being attached to the house of Dorset, and by being brother of Mr. Stone, been hurried through two or three Irish Bishopricks up to the very Primacy of the kingdom, not only unwarrantably young, but without even the graver excuses of learning or sanctimony. Instead of attempting to conciliate the affections of a nation offended at his promotion, he thought of nothing but governing by the same influence by which he had been raised. Lord George, as little disposed to be controlled, would not stoop to the usual management for Mr. Boyle; and he was not likely to be persuaded to observe any attentions by the Primate, who had shaken them off himself. The Speaker, who had not lost his taste for power by being accustomed to it, was soon alarmed, and had an opportunity of revenge offered to him almost as soon as the offence.
The Duke of Dorset had recommended to the Parliament to provide more barracks for the soldiers, and to inquire into the late abuses of the money destined to that service. This was obliquely aimed at Lord Harrington, and intended, by casting odium on his Administration, to heighten the popularity of the new Lord-Lieutenant; but it had different and much further consequences than the junto had foreseen. The money was voted; but the Parliament, in prosecution of abuses, fell upon one Neville Jones, a creature of the Primate, and determined to express their aversion to that Prelate, by sacrificing his tool. When it is told that, till the era in question, no Opposition had been able to unite above eight-and-twenty voices in the Irish House of Commons against the Government, it will appear surprising that the contagion of new discontents should in a few weeks have infected even the majority there. Faction is as capricious as Fortune: wrongs, oppression, the zeal of real patriots, or the genius of false ones, may sometimes be employed for years in kindling substantial opposition to authority; in other seasons, the impulse of a moment, a ballad, a nickname, a fashion can throw a city into a tumult, and shake the foundations of a state. Spain, which surely must sometimes produce some heroic, some patriot natures, has groaned for centuries under tyranny and the Inquisition: the poor fisherboy of Naples, Massaniello, could, in the space of two days, set at defiance, overturn, a haughty, an armed, an established Government. It is certain that no innovation, no unwonted exertion of power, had provoked the Irish: but they thought themselves contemned: they saw the channel of power totally diverted from the natives: the indiscretion of the rulers presented a colour to the keenest invectives that a faction could wish to employ.
The Speaker furnished himself as chief to the faction; but they had wiser heads to direct both them and their chief. Of these were, Carter, the Master of the Rolls, Sir Richard Cox, and Malone. Carter had always been a Whig, but had as constantly fomented every discontent against the Lord-Lieutenants, in order to be bought off: an able, intriguing man, of slender reputation for integrity. Sir Richard Cox was a patriot, and the first deviser of the linen manufactures, which have been of such essential service to his country. He and Malone were distinguished orators, and had both been gained by Lord Harrington, but were neglected by the new Court at the Castle. Malone’s family were Popish, and his own conversion suspected. But the Speaker was for some time the only ostensible idol of the party’s adoration: to a confessed integrity and loyalty he united a romantic readiness for single combat, so much to the taste of his countrymen. The Castle were desirous of raising Mr. Ponsonby, a son of Lord Besborough, and son-in-law of the Duke of Devonshire, to the chair. The Parliament of Ireland, unless specially dissolved, sits during a whole reign, and the Speaker’s dignity is of the same duration. Lord George’s measures were apt to be abrupt: he directly offered the Speaker a Peerage and a pension of 1500l. a year. The Speaker replied, “If I had a Peerage, I should not think myself greater than now that I am Mr. Boyle: for t’other thing, I despise it as much as the person who offers it.” This, and some indirect threats equally miscarrying, and the Castle finding that their creature Jones must be the first victim, endeavoured to defer what they could not prevent. The Speaker’s party moved for a call of the House for that day three weeks; Lord George Sackville moved to have it that day six weeks—and was beat! Whoever[219] has seen the tide first turn in favour of an Opposition, may judge of the riotous triumphs occasioned by this victory. The ladies made balls, the mob bonfires, the poets pasquinades—if Pasquin has seen wittier, he himself never saw more severe or less delicate lampoons. The Address that was soon after sent over to the King, applied directly to him, and not as was usual to the Lord-Lieutenant; and they told his Majesty, in plain terms, that it was from apprehension of being misrepresented. This was an unpleasant potion for the Duke of Dorset to swallow—but we must adjourn the further account of these dissensions to their proper place in order of time, and proceed to open a new scene of division at home, in which one of the principal actors was intimately connected with the Court-faction in Ireland.
In the former part of these Memoirs, it has been mentioned, that the young Prince of Wales, on the death of his father, was placed by the King under the care of the Earl of Harcourt, as Governor; of Dr. Hayter, Bishop of Norwich, as Preceptor; and of Mr. Stone and Mr. Scott, as Sub-governor and Sub-preceptor. The two former were favourites of Lord Lincoln, the ministerial nephew: Stone was the bosom-confidant of the Duke of Newcastle: Scott, as well as the Solicitor-General, Murray, and Cresset, the favourite of the Princess, were disciples of Lord Bolingbroke, and his bequest to the late Prince. Stone, in general a cold, mysterious man, of little plausibility, had always confined his arts, his application, and probably his views, to one or two great objects. The Princess could answer to all these lights: with her, he soon ingratiated himself deeply. Lord Harcourt was minute and strict in trifles; and thinking that he discharged his trust conscientiously, if on no account he neglected to make the Prince turn out his toes, he gave himself little trouble to respect the Princess, or to condescend to the Sub-governor. The Bishop, thinking himself already Minister to the future King, expected dependence from, never once thought of depending upon, the inferior Governors. In the education of the two Princes, he was sincerely honest and zealous; and soon grew to thwart the Princess, whenever, as an indulgent, or perhaps a little as an ambitious mother, (and this happened but too frequently), she was willing to relax the application of her sons. These jars appeared soon after the King’s going to Hanover: and by the season of his return, they were ripe for his interposition.
The English Court at Rome was as little free from intestine divisions as the Hanoverian Court at London. The Cardinal of York, whose devotion preserved him from disobedience to his father as little as his Princely character had preserved him from devotion, had entirely abandoned himself to the government of an Abbé, who soon grew displeasing to the old Pretender. Commands, remonstrances, requests, had no effect on the obstinacy of the young Cardinal. The father, whose genius never veered towards compliance, insisted on the dismission of the Abbé. Instead of parting with his favourite, the young Cardinal with his minion left Rome abruptly, and with little regard to the dignity of his Purple. The Holy See, which was sunk to having few more important negotiations to manage, interested itself in the reconciliation, and the haughty young Eminence of York was induced to return to his father, but without being obliged to sacrifice his Abbé. As I shall not often have occasion to mention this imaginary Court, I will here give a cursory picture of it.
The Chevalier de St. George is tall, meagre, melancholy in his aspect. Enthusiasm and disappointment have stamped a solemnity on his person, which rather creates pity than respect: he seems the phantom, which good-nature, divested of reflection, conjures up, when we think on the misfortunes, without the demerits, of Charles the First. Without the particular features of any Stuart, the Chevalier has the strong lines and fatality of air peculiar to them all. From the first moment I saw him, I never doubted the legitimacy of his birth—a belief not likely to occasion any scruples in one whose principles directly tend to approve dethroning the most genuine Prince, whose religion, and whose maxims of government are incompatible with the liberty of his country.
He never gave the world very favourable impressions of him: in Scotland, his behaviour was far from heroic. At Rome, where, to be a good Roman-catholic, it is by no means necessary to be very religious, they have little esteem for him: it is not at home that they are fond of martyrs and confessors. But it was his ill-treatment of the Princess Sobieski, his wife, that originally disgusted the Papal Court. She, who to zeal for Popery, had united all its policy, who was lively, insinuating, agreeable, and enterprising, was fervently supported by that Court, when she could no longer endure the mortifications that were offered to her by Hay and his wife, the titular Counts of Inverness, to whom the Chevalier had entirely resigned himself. The Pretender retired to Bologna, but was obliged to sacrifice his favourites, before he could re-establish himself at Rome. His next Prime Minister was Murray, nominal Earl of Dunbar, brother of the Viscount Stormont, and of the celebrated Solicitor-General. He was a man of artful abilities, graceful in his person and manner, and very attentive to please. He had distinguished himself before he was of age, in the last Parliament of Queen Anne, and chose to attach himself to the unsuccessful party abroad, and for whose re-establishment he had co-operated. He was, when still very young, appointed Governor to the young Princes, but growing suspected by the warm Jacobites of some correspondence with Sir Robert Walpole, and not entering into the favourite project of Prince Charles’s expedition to Scotland, he thought fit to leave that Court, and retire to Avignon, where, while he was regarded as lukewarm to the cause, from his connexion with the Solicitor-General here, the latter was not at all less suspected of devotion to a Court where his brother had so long been First Minister.
The characters of the Pretender’s sons are hitherto imperfectly known; yet both have sufficiently worn the characteristics of the house of Stuart—bigotry and obstinacy and want of judgment. The eldest set out with a resolution of being very resolute, but it soon terminated in his being only wrong-headed.
The most apparent merit of the Chevalier’s Court is the great regularity of his finances, and the economy of his exchequer. His income before the Rebellion was about 23,000l. a year, arising chiefly from pensions from the Pope and from Spain, from contributions from England, and some irregular donations from other Courts. Yet his payments were not only most exact, but he had saved a large sum of money, which was squandered on the unfortunate attempt in Scotland. Besides the loss of a Crown, to which he thought he had a just title, besides a series of disappointments from his birth, besides that mortifying rotation of friends, to which his situation has constantly exposed him, as often as faction and piques and baffled ambition have driven the great men of England to apply to or desert his forlorn hopes, he has, in the latter part of his life, seen his own little Court and his parental affections torn to pieces, and tortured by the seeds of faction, sown by that master-hand of sedition, the famous Bolingbroke, who insinuated into their councils a project for the Chevalier’s resigning his pretensions to his eldest son, as more likely to conciliate the affections of the English to his family. The father, and the ancient Jacobites, never could be induced to relish this scheme. The boy and his adherents embraced it as eagerly as if the father had really a Crown to resign. Slender as their Cabinet was, these parties divided it; and when I was at Rome, Lord Winton was a patriot at that Court, and the ragged type of a minority, which was comprehended in his single person.
In September, the Margrave of Anspach, nephew of the late Queen, and to whom on that relation the King had given the Order of the Garter, wrote a circular letter to the Princes of the Empire, to dissuade them from holding a Diet of Election, till it was declared necessary to have a King of the Romans. The King was unlucky in his German alliances. The Landgrave of Hesse, and the Duke of Saxe Gotha, the one father-in-law of the Princess Mary, the other, brother of the Princess of Wales, declared themselves against the election.
With these disappointments, the King returned to England, and arrived at St. James’s, November 18th. The Princess appeared again in public, and the King gave her the same honours and place as the Queen used to have. He was not in the same gracious mood with others of the Court. The calamity of Lord Holderness, the Secretary of State, was singular; he was for some days in disgrace, for having played at blindman’s-buff in the summer at Tunbridge. To Lord Harcourt, the King said not a word. In the beginning of December, the Chancellor and the Archbishop sent to Lord Harcourt that they would wait on him by the King’s command: he prevented them, and went to the Chancellor, who told him that they had orders to hear his complaints. He replied, “They were not proper to be told but to the King himself,” which did not make it a little suspicious, that even the Princess was included in his disgusts. The first incident that had directly amounted to a quarrel, was, the Bishop of Norwich finding the Prince of Wales reading Père d’Orleans’s Revolutions d’Angleterre; a book professedly written by the direction, and even by the communication, of James the Second, to justify his measures.
Stone at first peremptorily denied having seen that book in thirty years, and offered to rest his whole justification upon the truth or falsehood of that accusation. At last it was confessed that the Prince had the book, but it was qualified with Prince Edward’s borrowing it of his sister Augusta. Stone acted mildness, and professed being willing to continue to act with Lord Harcourt and the Bishop: but the sore had penetrated too deep, and they, who had given the wounds, had aggravated them with harsh provocations. The Bishop was accused of having turned Scott one day out of the Prince’s chamber, by an imposition of hands, that had at least as much of the flesh as the spirit in the force of the action. Cresset, the link of the connexion, had dealt out very ungracious epithets both on the Governor and Preceptor; and Murray, by an officious strain of strange imprudence, had, early in the quarrel, waited on the Bishop, and informed him, that Mr. Stone ought to have more consideration in the Prince’s family: and repeating the visit and opinion, the Bishop said, “He believed that Mr. Stone found all proper regard, but that Lord Harcourt, the chief of the trust, was generally present.”—Murray interrupted him, and cried, “Lord Harcourt! pho! he is a cipher, and must be a cipher, and was put in to be a cipher.” A notification, however understood before by the world, that could not be agreeable to the person destined to a situation so insignificant! Accordingly, December 6th, Lord Harcourt had a private audience in the King’s closet, and resigned. The Archbishop waited on his Majesty, desiring to know if he would see the Bishop of Norwich, or accept his resignation from his (the Archbishop’s) hands. The King chose the latter.
The Junto did not find it so easy to fix new ciphers as to displace the old. Dr. Johnson, the new Bishop of Gloucester, was the object of their wishes for Preceptor; but his education with Murray and Stone, and his principles, which were undoubtedly the same as theirs (whatever theirs were), proved obstacles they could not surmount. The Whigs were violently against his promotion; the Archbishop strongly objected to him. It was still more difficult to accommodate themselves with a Governor: the post was at once too exalted, and they had declared it too unsubstantial, to leave it easy to find a man, who could fill the honour and digest the dishonour of it. Many were named; some refused it. At last, after long waving it, Lord Waldegrave, at the earnest request of the King, accepted it, and after repeated assurances of the submission and tractability of Stone. The Earl was very averse to it; he was a man of pleasure, understood the Court, was firm in the King’s favour, easy in his circumstances, and at once undesirous of rising, and afraid to fall. He said to a friend, “If I dared, I would make this excuse to the King; Sir, I am too young to govern, and too old to be governed.”—But he was forced to submit. A man of stricter honour, or of more reasonable sense, could not have been selected for the employment; yet as the Whig zeal had caught flame, even this choice was severely criticized. Lord Waldegrave’s grandmother was daughter of King James; his family were all Papists, and his father had been but the first convert.
The Preceptor was not fixed till the beginning of the new year, but I shall include his promotion here, not to interrupt the thread of the narration: it was Dr. Thomas, who during the first civil war of Leicester-house, had read prayers to the present King: it was not till within two years of this period that the King had found an opportunity of preferring him, and then made him Bishop of Peterborough. He was a man of a fair character, esteemed rather a Tory in his principles. It may not be unentertaining to mention another instance of the King’s good fortune in being able to promote an old friend. General Legonier one day went and offered his Majesty the nomination to a living in his gift. The King expressed the greatest joy and gratitude, and said, “There is one I have long tried to make a Prebendary, but my Ministers never would give me an opportunity; I am much obliged to you, I will give the living to him.”