FOOTNOTES:
[38] James Hamilton, Lord Viscount Limerick, a great friend of Lord Bath, who had obtained the reversion of King’s Remembrancer for him and his son on the change of the Ministry in 1742. He was created Earl of Clanbrazil in 1756.
[39] In 1742.
[40] Vide the [Appendix, C.]
[41] Soon after Mr. Winnington deserted the Tories, and had made a strong speech on the other side, Sir John Cotton was abusing him to Sir Robert Walpole, and said, “That young dog promised that he would always stand by us.” Sir Robert replied, “I advise my young men never to use always.” “Yet,” said Cotton, stammering, “you yourself are very apt to make use of all—ways.”
[42] Feb. 1752.—On Tuesday night last, died at his house in Park-place, Sir John Hinde Cotton, Bart. He was a Commissioner of Trade and Plantations in the reign of Queen Anne; also member in several Parliaments in that reign for the town of Cambridge; and in the last Parliament of his late Majesty was one of the Knights of the Shire for the county of Cambridge; and in the two first Parliaments called by his present Majesty served again for the town of Cambridge; in the last and present Parliaments for Marlborough. He was also Treasurer of the Chamber to his Majesty in 1742. He married first a daughter of Sir Ambrose Crawley, Knt., and has issue one son, now Sir John Hinde Cotton, and one daughter, married to Jacob Houblon, of Hallingbury, in Essex, Esq. He married to his second lady, the daughter of the late James Craggs, Esq., one of the Commissioners of the Post-office, and relict of Samuel Trefusis, Esq., who died August 23, 1724, by whom he had only one daughter, who died young.
[From a printed paper annexed as a note by the author of the Memoirs.]
[43] Mr. Murray’s very first step to preferment was by presenting himself and being received into a commission in the Army, which had been made out for another Alexander Murray.
[44] John Perceval, the second Earl of Egmont of that name. He was scarce a man before he had a scheme of assembling the Jews, and making himself their King.
[45] One of the principal Independents was Blakiston, a grocer in the Strand, detected in smuggling, and forgiven by Sir R. Walpole; detected again and fined largely, on which he turned patriot, and has since risen to be an alderman of London, on the merit of that succedaneum to money—Jacobitism.
[46] It was called the “History of the House of Yvory,” in two large volumes. The collecting and consulting records and genealogies, and engraving and publishing, cost him (as the Heralds affirm) near £3000. He endeavoured afterwards to recall it, and did suppress a great many copies.
[47] Ethelreda Harrison, wife of Charles, Lord Viscount Townshend.
[48] Mr. Townshend had quitted the Army at the end of the last year, had connected himself with the Prince, and took all opportunities of opposing any of the Duke’s measures, and ridiculing him, and drawing caricatures of him and his Court, which he did with much humour. A bon mot of his was much repeated. Soon after he had quitted the Army, he was met at a review on the parade by Colonel Fitzwilliam, one of the Duke’s military spies, who said to him, “How came you, Mr. Townshend, to do us this honour?—but I suppose you only come as a spectator!” Mr. Townshend replied, “And why may not one come hither as a Spectator, Sir, as well as a Tatler?” Lord Robert Sutton was second son to the Duke of Rutland, and had been preferred to the command of a favourite regiment which the Duke had nearly instituted, before Lord Robert was of any rank in the Army; yet he deserted him, and accepted the place of Lord of the Bedchamber to the Prince.
[49] Honourable Henry Seymour Conway, second son of Lord Conway, and brother of the first Earl of Hertford. Commander-in-Chief in 1782; Field-Marshal in 1793.—E.
[50] This is surely a slip of the pen; should we not read unfashionable virtue?—E.
[51] This went by the name of the Robin Hood Society, and met every Monday. Questions were proposed, and any persons might speak on them for seven minutes; after which, the baker, who presided with a hammer in his hand, summed up the arguments.
[52] Robert Nugent, bred a Roman Catholic, had turned Protestant, and not long after married Mrs. Knight, sister and daughter to the two Craggs’s.
[53] It was addressed to Lord Bath upon the author’s change of his religion; but was universally believed to be written by Mallet, who was tutor to Newsham, Mrs. Nugent’s son, and improved by Mr. Pulteney himself and Lord Chesterfield.
[54] Had this ode been really his own, he would resemble the poet Tynnichus in Plato’s Io, “who never composed any other poem worth the mention or remembrance, besides that poem which every body sings.”—See Sydenham’s Translat. p. 49.
[55] The Duke of Newcastle included in the word “Pelhams.”—E.
[56] Yet it was remarkable that Dr. Gally, the Minister of his parish, could never get admitted to Murray, when he was collecting subscriptions against the Rebellion, though he went several times to his house at all hours.
[57] Melusina Schulemburgh, Countess of Walsingham.
[58] She left £20,000 to Lord Chesterfield, and £10,000 to William Pitt.
[CHAPTER III.]
General Anstruther’s Government of Minorca—Petition from a Minorchese—Speeches on the subject—State of parties—Affairs of Nova Scotia—Sir Henry Erskine’s charge against General Anstruther—Character of Bishop Secker—Dangerous illness of the Prince of Wales—Council held at Bedford House—Death of the Prince—His conduct and character—Sensation produced by his death—Changes in Prince George’s family—Addresses of condolence—Meeting at Lord Egmont’s—A council—German politics—Character of Lord Albemarle.
March 4.—George Townshend moved to have all papers relating to Courts Martial during General Anstruther’s government of Minorca laid before the House, and complained of his still keeping his regiment, though he had been found guilty by the Privy Council. Sir Harry Erskine again disclaimed revenge, but, with heaping new aggravations, said he had still more in reserve to urge against him; defied any retaliation on his uncle St. Clair, and affirmed that partialities had lately been exercised towards the Scotch—not favourable ones. Mr. Pelham replied to this; said he knew little of military promotions, but could observe from the Newspapers, that there were at least as many Erskines and Dalrymples preferred as of any English name; that he disliked proceeding parliamentarily in this business, but would engage to have Anstruther tried by a Court Martial. Mr. Pitt gave strongly into a Parliamentary Inquiry. Mr. Fox was as warm against it, and said that if Sir Harry Erskine had not openly disclaimed revenge, he should have much suspected him of harbouring the bitterest, especially as Sir Harry had too much parts to have accused out of ignorance. He urged the impropriety of trying a man after an Act of Grace had passed, which that he did not mention from prejudice would appear from his having voted at Council for condemning Anstruther. The Attorney and Solicitor Generals spoke to the same point of Law. Fazakerely endeavoured to show that pardons from the Crown were not pleadable against impeachments, which were now threatened by Lord Egmont and others. The Attorney in answer showed that the Act of Grace was the act, not of the Crown singly, but of the whole Legislature. Colonel Haldane, who had been one of the warmest against Murray, talked high for inquiries, more necessary, he now said, than prosecutions on elections. Mr. Conway temporized, proposed a middle way; the House was going to divide, when Mr. Fox moved for some fewer papers that would serve the purpose, and that Sir Harry Erskine might have two days to prepare a charge in form; but desired it might be delivered in before the papers in question were brought, that they might not be assisting to the composition. The House sat till past nine without dividing.
5th.—George Townshend presented a vehement petition from one Don Juan Compagni, a Minorchese, who had been barbarously treated by Anstruther; had had his sentences reversed by the Council here; but having run in debt while he attended the event of his suit, had applied without success to the Treasury for money to carry on the prosecution: this was the scope too of the petition, though Mr. Townshend said it was only presented to be in the eye of the House when the other trial should come on, and moved to have it lie upon the table. Mr. Pelham owned he had refused money from the Treasury, and observed upon the impropriety of suffering such petitions, as it would encourage the like from all our Governments and Plantations: that for his part he would not oppose it, unless somebody else did, and then he should be for rejecting it. Lord Duplin and Harding spoke against the want of order in it, as the accused was a member, as the petition would appear at length in the votes, a heavy accusation! and as the money must be granted without hearing either the cause or the defendant; or if heard, you might find a crime, and could not find a punishment.
Mr. Pitt spoke warmly for the petition, on the fitness of granting two or three thousand pounds to a poor man oppressed by military law, and of so good a family as the Compagnis, (so deeply was Mr. Pitt versed in Minorchese genealogies!) and declared he would support such a cause to the last drop of his blood. Mr. Fox ridiculed this warmth; observed how little foundation there was for believing the allegations of the petition, and then said he discovered much persecution in this affair; that good men would join in the persecution if they thought Anstruther guilty; others would, because he had been guilty of what he did not think bad (the vote on Porteous’s case); and that it was Anstruther-guilt, as much as the guilt of the Governor, that had blown up this vengeance; and then he moved for rejecting the petition, or for the Orders of the Day. Pitt disclaimed warmth, but with so much coolness and endeavours to be cool, that it only proved him more angry. Colonel Haldane defended the Scotch; Oswald still more, and called on Fox to charge them. Mr. Fox said he scorned prudence when it was honesty to speak out; urged the notoriety of the national inveteracy to the General, to a degree, that a petition on a contested election having been presented against him soon after his vote of offence, all the Scotch members had to a man voted against him; and said, that as he himself had been warm on the affair of Porteous’s murder, a Scotch General Officer had told him at the time, “young man, this will never be forgiven you.”
This pique created a constant opposition between Fox and Oswald, a man who was master of a quickness and strength of argument, not inferior to Fox, or any speaker in the House. The rapidity of his eloquence was astonishing; not adorned, but confined to business. He had come into Parliament about the time of Sir Robert Walpole’s fall, and had consulted a friend, whether the Minister or the Opposition were likely to prevail. His friend recommended him to the former; his own sagacity conducted him to the latter, which being soon after victorious, he reproached his friend with the scrape into which he had near drawn him. On the change he was made a Commissioner of the Navy, which he resigned on the New Place Bill, to keep his seat; but wavering in his connexions, had no new preferment. Mr. Conway spoke for the Orders of the Day; but asking if the intention was to hear the cause, and Pitt telling him it was, he then spoke and voted for the petition. Lord Egmont made a very fine and inflammatory speech for it, and said the nation would so much resent its being rejected, that no man who voted for the rejection would dare to show his face. Mr. Pelham took this up, said he would serve the King and his line faithfully, in place and out of place too, without opposing from resentment, and then should always dare to show his face any where. Pitt then endeavoured to prevent a division, but was disregarded; and towards seven o’clock it was carried by 97 to 58 for reading the Orders of the Day. Lord Ankram, Carneguy, Hope Weir, and M’Cleod, voting in the majority, and no English Whigs but Pitt, Conway, and the three Grenvilles in the minority. When the House was up, Pitt, in a dispute with Mr. Pelham, defended parliamentary inquiries, and said, “he would never consent to lop the bough on which he stood.”
The King asked Mr. Fox “with whom it was that Pitt meant to ingratiate himself? was it with Lord Egmont?” and he told the Duke of Bedford that he would not, even if addressed by the House, take away Anstruther’s regiment, who had got his favour by the vote that had so much offended his countrymen. The General, after that vote, had been obliged on his return to Scotland, to pass in disguise to his own estate, and crossing a firth, he said to the waterman, “This is a pretty boat; I fancy you sometimes smuggle with it.” The fellow replied, “I never smuggled a Brigadier before.”
Pitt’s behaviour, who at this time had the chief influence with the Duke of Newcastle, had extremely offended both the King and the Whigs. The tide of popularity was running with the Duke of Bedford and Mr. Fox; and without the great event[59] that soon after happened, possibly the charm might have been broken, that held a whole nation enchanted to such phantoms, either of honesty or abilities as the two Pelhams.
The 7th was appointed for the Naturalization Bill, but the House adjourned to attend at Drury-lane, where Othello was acted by a Mr. Delaval and his family, who had hired the theatre on purpose. The crowd of people of fashion was so great, that the Footman’s Gallery was hung with blue ribbands.
8th.—The Bill was read in the Committee. Mr. Fox spoke against it, but said he was open to conviction. Mr. Pelham mentioned the forfeited estates in Scotland, which might be improved by a colony of Foreigners. Mr. Fox declared himself convinced by this argument. Pitt ridiculed Fox’s conviction, and did it well. The Bill was carried in the Committee by 123 to 52. While Pitt was speaking, Fox said to one who sat next to him, “He is a better speaker than I am; but, thank God, I have more judgment!”
Lord Halifax had been soliciting to have a fifty and a sixty gun ship sent to Nova-Scotia, upon a report that the French were sending a fleet thither: the Admiralty had refused, for fear of drawing on a new war. The Board of Trade presented a long Memorial to promote their demand, which the Duke of Bedford carried to the King; the Duke of Newcastle was present, but said not a word. The Duke of Bedford said to the King, “Sir, this paper is too long for your Majesty to read, but I will tell you the purport of it: it is a project of the same faction, who have endeavoured to increase the Navy this year: I have desired your Majesty’s servants to meet at my House next Wednesday; I believe they will not think it proper to come into this proposal.” “No,” replied the King, “they are the most troublesome, impracticable fellows I ever met with; there is no carrying on the measures of Government with them.” Mr. Pelham wrote the Duke of Bedford word, on his summons, that he would wait upon him, but did not believe[60] he should think Lord Halifax’s proposal fit to be complied with.
11th.—A proposal came from the South Sea Company for lowering their interest after a term of seven years. Mr. Pelham moved to accept it, provided they gave up all demands on the King of Spain. Belchier desired time till the next General Court; but the resolution passed.
Lord Duplin[61], who, considering how fond he was of forms and trifles and being busy, was not absolutely a bad speaker, opened in a long deduction the affairs of Nova-Scotia, and moved for a sum of money for carrying on that new Colony, the establishment of which had been eagerly revived by Lord Halifax on his coming to the head of the Board of Trade, and his friend Colonel Cornwallis[62], sent thither as Governor, who was a brave, sensible young man, and of great temper and good-nature. Vyner alone opposed the Motion; the Opposition favoured it, and Th. Pitt spoke much against ever giving up that Colony to France.
Sir Henry Erskine then presented his charge against General Anstruther, which he called only a state of his own case. It was very trifling in comparison of what had been expected from the parade of his first accusation; his grievances barely comprized in a confinement of six weeks before and during his trial, and of a few days after it. George Townshend moved to address for the proceedings of that Court-Martial. Mr. Pitt desired there might be no Motion till the House came to some determination how to proceed. Mr. Fox read a letter from Anstruther, to say that he was laid up with the rheumatism, but would attend as soon as possible, and would send in an answer to the charge. It was agreed to send him a copy of what they were in doubt whether to call a charge, or a complaint, or simply a paper. Mr. Fox called upon Erskine to prove the accusation, which he said he was ready to do. Fox then said, that General Anstruther desired to inform the House that he had the copy of the Court-Martial in his own possession, and would send it whenever they pleased; though it was not necessary to preserve sentences of acquittals, nor were they ever sent to the War-office. Notwithstanding this voluntary offer, the House sat debating for two hours on the method of coming at this copy, and whether they should address the King, or order Anstruther to send it by their own authority. Joddrell, the Prince’s Solicitor, flamed, and Lord Egmont still more, on this notice of records of Courts-Martial not being preserved. The House sat till eight, but came to no division.
10th.—The King would not go to Chapel, because Secker, Bishop of Oxford, was to preach before him. The Ministers did not insist upon his hearing the sermon, as they had lately upon his making him Dean of St. Paul’s. Character and popularity do not always depend upon the circumstances that ought to compose either. This Bishop, who had been bred a Presbyterian and Man-midwife, which sect and profession he had dropt for a season, while he was President of a very free thinking club,[63] had been converted by Bishop Talbot,[64] whose relation he married, and his faith settled in a Prebend of Durham: from thence he was transplanted, at the recommendation of Dr. Bland,[65] by the Queen, and advanced by her [who had no aversion to a medley of religions, which she always compounded into a scheme of heresy of her own], to the living of St. James’s, vacant by the death of her favourite Arian, Dr. Clarke, and afterwards to the Bishoprics of Bristol and Oxford.[66] It is incredible how popular he grew in his parish, and how much some of his former qualifications contributed to heighten his present doctrines. His discourses from the pulpit, which, by a fashion that he introduced, were a kind of moral essays, were as clear from quotations of Scripture, as when he presided in a less Christian society; but what they wanted of Gospel, was made up by a tone of fanaticism that he still retained. He had made a match between a daughter of the late Duke of Kent[67] and a Doctor Gregory, whose talents would have been extremely thrown away in any priesthood, where celibacy was one of the injunctions. He had been presented with a noble service of plate for procuring a marriage between the heiress[68] of the same Duke of Kent and the Chancellor’s son, and was now forced upon the King[69] by the gratitude of the same Minister, though he had long been in disgrace for having laid his plan for Canterbury in the interest he had cultivated at the Prince’s Court. But even the Church had its renegades in politics, and the King was obliged to fling open his asylum to all kind of deserters; content with not speaking to them at his levee, or listening to them in the pulpit!
12th.—Potter produced several Physicians and Masters of Workhouses to prove the fatal consequences of spirituous liquors, which laid waste the meaner parts of the town, and were now spreading into the country. Sir Joseph Jekyll had formerly carried through a Bill against Gin, but with such danger from the populace, that the Act had been established merely by military force, and with little success, as informers against the retailers of it had seldom escaped the vengeance of the mob. Mr. Sandys,[70] on succeeding Sir Robert Walpole, had repealed this Act to increase the Revenue; but being one of the acts of his short reign, to which he had risen by deserting his party, he was as ill-treated by the faction as the prohibition had been by the lower people. Lord Hervey,[71] who had turned patriot at that season on being turned out of place, had made three remarkably fine orations against the repeal; and Sir Charles Williams had made a couple of ballads[72] with much wit, to ridicule both Sandys and Lord Hervey. Mr. Pelham spoke now against the appearance of the Physicians, &c. as he believed no remedy could be found for the evil, and yet imposing new duties would greatly diminish the Revenue: but they were examined.
18th.—Mr. Fox acquainted the House that Mr. Moncrief attended without, who was called in, and delivered the original copy of the Court-Martial from General Anstruther; and (as he was not able to come in person, being above seventy, and laid up with a rheumatism and pain in his bowels) an answer to Sir Henry Erskine’s complaint, in which he acknowledged the facts, but denied the aggravating circumstances. That day se’nnight was appointed to consider the charge and answer, and the Minutes of the Council; after Sir Harry Erskine had declared he would say no more, though if he chanced to prove more, it would be but the more conspicuous: to which Mr. Fox replied, that it would be fairer to acquaint Anstruther with that more. Mr. Fox then moved, at Anstruther’s desire, for a copy of a Resolution of Council against Colonel Pinfold, a former Governor of Minorca, who had been condemned to make satisfaction to the oppressed parties, and had. Anstruther would have done the like, but was prevented.
The Prince was dangerously ill.
19th.—The Council, which had been postponed, was held at Bedford-house, whither the Duke of Newcastle would have carried Lord Halifax and Lord Anson, but the Duke of Bedford refused to admit them. It was proposed to hear the whole Board of Trade upon their Memorial; but the Duke of Bedford said, that this proposal of stationing two men of war at Nova Scotia, upon the notion of a French fleet going thither, had not been mentioned in a long letter that he had received from that Board in January last, since which period there had been no letters from Governor Cornwallis. Nobody agreed with the Duke but Lord Sandwich, not even his father-in-law, Lord Gower, who had been with him an hour before the rest arrived, and said to him, “Now we have caught Lord Halifax in a trap;” (but he himself was intangled in Mr. Pelham’s snares, and did not know it!) nor the Duke of Marlborough, though his friend and brother-in-law, and though his connexion with Mr. Fox had made the Duke of Bedford flatter himself with his support: but both the Duke and Lord Sandwich were too sanguine about Mr. Fox, who had declared to them, that if it came to a rupture, he must adhere to Mr. Pelham. He had repeated this to Lord Sandwich in the summer, when commissioned by him to carry a reconciling message to Mr. Pelham. Mr. Fox had made the same declaration of his unavoidable connexion with Mr. Pelham to the Duke of Cumberland: but the Duke of Bedford was not only apt to forget what he did not care to hear, and even to forget his own change of opinion, but would and did often believe the very reverse. He told the two brothers that this was designed as a hostile measure against him, which they then denied.
20th.—Potter[73] opened in an able manner his scheme for an additional duty of two shillings on spirits, to be collected by way of Excise. He was a young man of the greatest goodnature, though he had set out with two of the severest speeches[74] that ever were made against the Ministry and the Grenvilles, and with the greatest applause; but his goodnature had kept up to its character much more than his parts. He was not bashful nor void of vanity, and had now flattered himself that he should figure like Sir Robert Walpole by attempting to re-establish the defeated Excise Scheme; not reflecting that the opposition to that project was levelled at the Minister, not occasioned by the pretended inconveniences and dangers of it. Mr. Pelham spoke greatly against it, and for suppressing unlicensed houses, and for a visitation by parish officers. He was seconded by the Solicitor General. Alderman Baker, a man rather busy and confident than very able, fluctuated between both schemes: but Mr. Pelham desiring a respite till the morrow se’nnight for further deliberation, it was agreed to.
The Prince of Wales had been ill of a pleurisy, but was so well recovered as to attend the King to the House of Lords on the 12th, where he was very hot. He went to Carlton-house to unrobe, put on only a light frock, and went to Kew, where he walked some time, and returning to Carlton-house, laid down upon a couch for three hours in a ground room next to the garden, caught a fresh cold, and relapsed that night. He had had a blow upon his stomach in the summer by a fall, from which he had often felt great pains. Dr. Wilmot, Taylor, and Leigh attended him, and Hawkins the Surgeon. On Monday, 18th, a thrush appeared; however, he was thought better. On Wednesday night, between nine and ten o’clock, Wilmot and Hawkins were with him; he had a fit of coughing. Wilmot said, “Sir, you have brought up all the phlegm; I hope this will be over in a quarter of an hour, and that your Royal Highness will have a good night.” Hawkins went out of the room, and said, “Here is something I don’t like.” The cough continued; the Prince laid his hand upon his stomach, and said, “Je sens la mort.” Pavonarius, his favourite German valet-de-chambre, who was holding him up, felt him shiver, and cried, “Good God! the Prince is going!” The Princess, who was at the feet of the bed, snatched up a candle, but before she got to him, he was dead! An imposthume had broken, which, on his body being opened, the Physicians were of opinion had not been occasioned by the fall, but from a blow of a tennis-ball three years before.
Thus died Frederick Prince of Wales! having resembled his pattern the Black Prince in nothing but in dying before his father. Indeed it was not his fault if he had not distinguished himself by any warlike achievements. He had solicited the command of the Army in Scotland during the last Rebellion; though that ambition was ascribed rather to his jealousy of his brother than to his courage. A hard judgment! for what he could he did! When the Royal Army lay before Carlisle, the Prince, at a great supper that he gave to his Court and his favourites, as was his custom when the Princess laid in, had ordered for the dessert the representation of the citadel of Carlisle in paste, which he in person, and the Maids of Honour, bombarded with sugar plums! He had disagreed with the King and Queen early after his coming to England; not entirely by his own fault. The King had refused to pay what debts he had left at Hanover; and it ran a little in the blood of the family to hate the eldest son: the Prince himself had so far not degenerated, though a better natured man, and a much better father, as to be fondest of his second son, Prince Edward. The Queen had exerted more authority, joined to a narrow prying into his conduct, than he liked; and Princess Emily, who had been admitted into his greatest confidence, had not forfeited her duty to the Queen by concealing any of his secrets that might do him prejudice.
Lord Bolingbroke, who had sowed a division in the Pretender’s Court, by the scheme for the father’s resigning his claim to the eldest boy, repeated the same plan of discord here, on the first notice of the Prince’s disgusts; and the whole Opposition was instructed to offer their services to the Heir Apparent against the Crown and the Minister. The Prince was sensible to flattery, and had a sort of parts that made him relish the sort of parts of Lord Chesterfield, Doddington, and Lyttelton, the latter of whom being introduced by Doddington, had wrought the disgrace of his protector. Whoever was unwelcome at St. James’s was sure of countenance at the Prince’s apartments there. He was in vain reprimanded for this want of respect. At last, having hurried the Princess from Hampton Court, when she was in actual labour, to the imminent danger of hers and the child’s life,[75] without acquainting either King or Queen, the formal breach ensued; he having added to this insult, a total silence to his mother on her arriving immediately to visit the Princess, and while he led her to her coach; but as soon as he came in sight of the populace, he knelt down in the dirt and kissed her hand with the most respectful show of duty. He immediately went all lengths of opposition and popularity till the fall of Sir Robert Walpole, when he was reconciled to, though never after spoken to, by the King.
On Lord Granville’s disgrace, he again grew out of humour; but after having been betrayed and deserted by all he had obliged, he did not erect a new standard of opposition, till the Pelhams had bought off every man of any genius that might have promoted his views. Indeed, his attachment to his followers was not stronger than theirs to him. Being angry with Lord Doneraile[76] for not speaking oftener in the House of Commons, he said, “Does he think I will support him, unless he does as I would have him? Does not he consider that whoever are my Ministers, I must be King?” His chief passion was women, but like the rest of his race, beauty was not a necessary ingredient. Miss ****, whom he had debauched without loving, and who had been debauched without loving him so well as either Lord Harrington or Lord Hervey, who both pretended to her first favours, had no other charms than of being a Maid of Honour, who was willing to cease to be so upon the first opportunity.
One of his favourites, Lady Archibald Hamilton[77] had been neither young nor handsome within his memory. Lady Middlesex[78] was very short, very plain, and very yellow: a vain girl, full of Greek and Latin, and music, and painting, but neither mischievous nor political. Lady Archibald was very agreeable and artful, but had lost his heart, by giving him William Pitt for a rival. But though these mistresses were pretty much declared, he was a good husband, and the quiet inoffensive good sense of the Princess (who had never said a foolish thing, or done a disobliging one since her arrival, though in very difficult situations, young, uninstructed, and besieged by the Queen, Princess Emily, and Lady Archibald’s creatures, and very jarring interests), was likely to have always preserved a chief ascendant over him.
Gaming was another of his passions, but his style of play did him less honour than the amusement. He carried this dexterity[79] into practice in more essential commerce, and was vain of it! One day at Kensington that he had just borrowed five thousand pounds of Doddington, seeing him pass under his window, he said to Hedges[80] his Secretary, “That man is reckoned one of the most sensible men in England, yet with all his parts, I have just nicked him out of five thousand pounds.” He was really childish, affectedly a protector of arts and sciences, fond of displaying what he knew: a mimic, the Lord knows what a mimic!—of the celebrated Duke of Orleans, in imitation of whom he wrote two or three silly French songs.[81] His best quality was generosity; his worst, insincerity, and indifference to truth, which appeared so early, that Earl Stanhope wrote to Lord Sunderland from Hanover, what I shall conclude his character with, “He has his father’s head, and his mother’s heart.”
The Princess staid four hours in the room after he was dead, before she could be quite convinced of it. At six in the morning they put her to bed; but she rose again at eight, and sent for Dr. Lee, and burnt, or said she burnt, all the Prince’s papers. As soon as he was dead, Lord North was sent to notify it to the King, who was playing at cards. He immediately went down to Lady Yarmouth, looking extremely pale and shocked, and only said, “Il est mort!” He sent a very kind message to the Princess, and another the next morning in writing by the Lord in Waiting, Lord Lincoln. She received him alone, sitting with her eyes fixed; thanked the King much, and said she would write as soon as she was able; in the meantime, recommended her miserable self and children to him.
The King and she both took their parts at once; she, of flinging herself entirely into his hands, and studying nothing but his pleasure, but with winding what interest she got with him to the advantage of her own and the Prince’s friends: the King of acting the tender grandfather; which he, who had never acted the tender father, grew so pleased with representing, that he soon became it in earnest. When he was called the morning after the Prince’s death, they found him drest, walking about his room, and extremely silent. Princess Emily, who had no great reason to flatter herself with much favour if her brother had lived to be King, sent immediately for the Duke from Windsor, who, on receiving the news, said to Lord Sandwich with a sneer, “It is a great blow to this country, but I hope it will recover it in time!” He little thought that himself was to receive the greatest shock from it! He sent a compliment by Lord Cathcart to Prince George, who cried extremely. As soon as the Prince’s death was published, elegies were cried about the streets, to which they added, “Oh, that it was but his brother!”[82] and upon Change and in the city, “Oh, that it was but the butcher!”[83] In short, the consternation that spread on the apprehensions that the Duke would at least be Regent on the King’s death, and have the sole power in the mean time, was near as strong as what was occasioned by the notice of the Rebels being at Derby.
The Houses met the next morning, but adjourned without doing any thing.
The Duke of Bedford proposed to the King to remove Dr. Ayscough from the young Princes, which he much approved, and nobody but the Cobham cousins[84] disliked, who had just patched up their peace with the Prince by his intervention. Lyttelton, whose sister he had married, solicited Mr. Pelham to save him. Mr. Pelham answered, “I know nothing of Dr. Ayscough—oh, yes, I recollect, a very worthy man told me in this room two years ago that he was a great rogue!” It was Lyttelton himself who had quarrelled with him about an election business. Ayscough, who was an insolent man, unwelcome to the Clergy on suspicions of heterodoxy, and of no fair reputation for integrity, had been placed by Lyttelton and Pitt with the Prince, into whose favour he had worked himself, chiefly by partialities to Prince Edward; and managed his Privy Purse and his election affairs. The Princess, finding that Prince George, at eleven years old, could not read English, though Ayscough, to make amends, assured her he could make Latin verses, had already introduced a new Preceptor, one Scot, recommended by Lord Bolingbroke, who had lately seen the Prince two or three times in private.
22d.—The King sent a Commission to pass the Mutiny Bill. Lord Egremont in the House of Lords, and Lord Hilsborough in the Commons, moved the Address of Condolence; and then the Lords adjourned to Wednesday, and the Commons till Monday. Lord Egremont, who was son to the great Sir William Windham, and grandson to the old Duke of Somerset, whose prodigious pride he inherited, more than his father’s abilities, though he had a great deal of humour, had formerly been a personal favourite with the Prince, but had slighted that intimacy when Lord Granville his patron would not co-operate in the Prince’s last Opposition.
Lord Hilsborough was a young man of great honour and merit, remarkably nice in weighing whatever cause he was to vote in, and excellent at setting off his reasons, if the affair was at all tragic, by a solemnity in his voice and manner that made much impression on his hearers.
At seven o’clock of the very morning after the Prince expired, Lord Egmont sent cards to several of the Opposition, desiring them to meet at his house, to consult on the measures proper for them to take on the present conjuncture. Many of them came. He did not make any formal oration, but whispered most of them something about taking upon themselves the protection of the Princess and her children. The meeting passed in a sort of dumb confusion and uncertainty, and broke up without taking any measures at all.
An Order of Council was made to omit the name of the Prince of Wales in the prayers. As no rank was yet given to Prince George, it created murmurs. Though the House sat, nothing was done but private business. On the 26th, Colonel Haldane moved, as the Prince’s servants did not yet attend the House, that Anstruther’s affair might be postponed till after Easter, which was agreed to, though the General was present, and earnest to have it heard sooner.
28th.—A Council was held at the Cockpit, on the Nova-Scotia affair. They divided: the Chancellor, Mr. Pelham, the Dukes of Newcastle, Grafton, Dorset, and Argyle, were for complying with the request of the Board of Trade; the Duke of Bedford and Lord Sandwich, who had now got the Duke of Marlborough and Lord Gower on their side, against it.
The German politics went ill. What Allies we had there wanted more money. The Elector of Cologne, who had signed a treaty with the King, refused to execute it, and united with France. That Court used continual evasions with us, on the evacuation of Tobago, and the contested islands in the West Indies, and gave great disturbance to our Colony of Nova-Scotia. In the east, they were driving us out of our Settlements; and upon the coast of Africa seizing our forts, raising others, inveigling away our Allies, and working us out of our whole Negro and Gold-Coast trade. The British Minister at Paris, Lord Albemarle,[85] was not a man to offend the haughtiness of that Court, or the pusillanimity of his own, by mixing more sturdiness with his Memorials than he was commissioned to do. It was convenient to him to be anywhere but in England: his debts were excessive, though he was Embassador, Groom of the Stole, Governor of Virginia, and Colonel of a regiment of Guards. His figure was genteel, his manner noble and agreeable: the rest of his merit, for he had not even an estate, was the interest my Lady Albemarle had with the King through Lady Yarmouth, and his son, Lord Bury, being the Duke’s chief favourite. He had all his life imitated the French manners, till he came to Paris, where he never conversed with a Frenchman; not from partiality to his own countrymen, for he conversed as little with them, living entirely with a Flemish Columbine, that he had brought from the Army. If good breeding is not different from good sense, Lord Albemarle, who might have disputed even that maxim, at least knew how to distinguish it from good nature. He would bow to his postilion, while he was ruining his tailor.
31st.—The King went to see the Princess. A chair of state was placed for him, but he refused it, and sat by her on the couch, embraced, and wept with her. He would not suffer the Lady Augusta to kiss his hand, but embraced her, and gave it to her brothers, and told them, “They must be brave boys, obedient to their mother, and deserve the fortune to which they were born.”