Memoirs of the Reign of King George the Third, Volume 2 (of 4)

by Horace Walpole

FOOTNOTES

[1] This tract is printed in the second volume of Walpole’s works. It is written with temper, and in an agreeable style, though with less spirit than might have been expected from the warmth of the author’s feelings on the occasion.—E.

[2] “Dr. Lloyd was a man of very polite manners, extraordinary composure of mind, and resignation to the Divine will. He died in 1790, aged 64.” Nichols’s Illustrations of Literary History.—E.

[3] The title is, “The Budget; inscribed to the man who thinks himself Minister.

Emendare tuos quamvis Faustine libellos
Non multæ poterunt, mea litura prodest.”

It is a quarto of only twenty-two pages, slovenly written, and with little vivacity of expression.—E.

[4] Mr. Hartley was a frequent writer of pamphlets on the side of the Opposition, chiefly on the Revenue. He was attached both to Lord Rockingham and Mr. Pitt, and was the son of a physician, [who was also the most eminent metaphysician of his day. Mr. Hartley had the honour of negotiating and signing the preliminaries of Peace with America in 1783, and of moving the first resolution in the House of Commons against the Slave Trade. He was much respected by all parties, but his speeches seldom found a willing audience. Tickell has parodied him with most ludicrous effect in the “Anticipation;” and he is thus described by another cotemporary—

“Peace to the rest, for Faction now,
To shield her sons with poppied brow,
Bids Hartley stand before me.
Goddess, the potent charm I own;
My breath is lost, my voice has flown,
And Dulness creeps all o’er me.”

New Foundling Hospital for Wit.

He was a Fellow of Merton College, Oxford, until his death in 1813, at a very advanced age. Flattering obituaries appear of him in the Annual Register and the Gentleman’s Magazine of that year. A clergyman of his College, now deceased, described him to a friend of the Editor “as an honest, high-principled man, but a dull talker, and a prosy speaker.”—E.]

[5] Mr. Grenville was concerned afterwards in several abusive pamphlets against Lord Rockingham and his friends. Some were drawn up by Whately, his secretary; others he penned himself, or gave the materials.

[6] This tract (an octavo of thirty-eight pages) is agreeably and temperately written, and unquestionably deserves to rank among the popular pamphlets of the day. The reply, though preferred by Walpole, is now a far less readable performance.—E.

[7] He was in the Duke of Cumberland’s family, and much attached to him.

[8] In his eighty-third year. His old age was lonely and unattractive, being passed in the society of a few obsequious bishops and blue-stocking ladies, with whom he kept up a sickly commerce of flattery. His zenith had been bright: his decline was not mild. Avarice tormented even his last hours, and it is painful to witness, in his correspondence, how entirely he was subjected to that baleful passion. It degraded his nature, and almost disturbed his reason, for on no other ground can some of his acts be explained. His character as a politician was too severely censured by his cotemporaries, but in private life he was mean, selfish, and sordid, to an extent almost commensurate with his great abilities and attainments.—E.

[9] When the first part of these Memoirs was written there had not transpired the smallest idea of D’Eon being a woman, nor when that secret was first broached did it gain credit. Some years also elapsed before the fact was allowed, and it was some time before the dubious person assumed the female habit, and then only by command of the Court of France. I have not chosen to correct my narrative, not only because the change of sex did not happen till the personage had ceased to figure in an historic light, but because, having no notion of that doubtful gender at the time of her eccentric behaviour, my account will remain more natural, and does paint the general sensation produced by her exploits. The Government here acted as I have written, totally in the dark as to a false assumption of sex. [In 1777 an action was brought by a surgeon named Hayes against Jacques, a baker, who had received fifteen guineas to return one hundred guineas if it should be proved that the Chevalier was a woman; and the evidence of that fact was so strong that the jury decided in favour of Hayes. There were other actions on the same point, but they were disposed of by the Court, very properly, declaring these wagers to be illegal. Da Costa v. Jones, Cowper’s Reports, 729.—The Annual Register, p. 167, evidently copying some newspaper, says, “by this decision no less a sum than 75,000l. will remain in this country, which would otherwise have been transmitted to Paris.” The same authority says, “Aug. 16th, the Chevalier left England, declaring that she had no interest whatever in the policies opened on her sex.” From that time till the death of the Chevalier he was always believed to be a woman, and dressed as such. The post mortem examination, which is stated in the Gent. Mag. vol. lxxx. p. 588, proved him to be a perfect male. He was never employed after his disgrace; but having been long a spy of Louis the Fifteenth, it was not deemed prudent to drive him to despair, and a handsome pension was granted to him, which he enjoyed till the Revolution. He then took refuge in England, and was afterwards reduced to great poverty. He died in London, at a very advanced age, in 1810. There is an interesting note on Chev. d’Eon by Mr. Croker in Walpole’s collected Correspondence, vol. iv. p. 323. See also the article, a very partial one, in the Biographie Universelle.—E.]

[10] The Count d’Estaign had broken his parole in India, and, having been again taken prisoner, was kept in close confinement at Portsmouth—a treatment of which he very unreasonably complained as harsh and unjustifiable. His name often occurs in the history of the American war, in which he commanded the French fleet with some reputation. He claimed a victory over Admiral Byron. During the French Revolution he acted a very vacillating, if not dishonest, part; and, having given offence both to Royalists and Republicans, he was brought to the scaffold in 1794, aged 65.—E.

[11] Mr. Legge did not write the narrative mentioned in the text. It is the composition of the Bishop of Hereford, his intimate friend, to whom he committed on his death-bed “the publication of the papers that explained his case;” or, in other words, his correspondence with Lord Bute respecting the Hampshire election. (Some account of the Life of the Right Hon. Bilson Legge.) His object being, not, as Walpole supposes, to fix on Lord Bute the charge of meddling with elections, but to clear his own character from various insinuations, by showing, from the correspondence, that his refusal to yield to Lord Bute’s dictation in the Hampshire election, was the real cause of his disgrace, and that he might have remained in office if he had chosen to disgrace himself by taking the opposite course. The Bishop’s observations explanatory of the transaction are in the spirit that might be expected from a prelate not indisposed to translation, when treating of the conduct of those who dispense ecclesiastical patronage. To make up, however, for his courtesy towards his patron’s adversaries, he heaps unmeasured eulogy upon his patron’s memory. It is now, indeed, pretty well understood that Mr. Legge had no title to a tithe of the merits ascribed to him by his right reverend biographer. He was a very useful statesman. (See supra, p. 39.) His head, as Sir Robert Walpole said of him, had very little rubbish in it. He was good-natured, and easy in social intercourse. To exalted patriotism he never raised any pretensions; and whatever may be the Bishop’s opinion, the friend and boon companion of Wilkes could be no pattern of religion or morality.—E.

[12] William Howe, brother of Richard Lord Viscount Howe, an Admiral, and one of the Lords of the Admiralty. [Afterwards a Lieutenant-general and K.B. He served in the American war, and was generally unfortunate. On the death of the Admiral he became Viscount Howe. The title expired on his death without issue, in 1814.—E.]

[13] Sir William Boothby, Bart., a Major-general and Colonel of the 6th Regiment of Foot, died, unmarried, in 1797.—E.

[14] Prince Edward, next brother to the King.

[15] The Duke died on the 2nd of October, at the early age of forty-four. The scanty praise awarded him in the text is far below his due. He had been Lord Lieutenant of Ireland in 1755, and First Lord of the Treasury in the following year. “In the ordinary business of his office,” says Lord Waldegrave, “he shewed great punctuality and diligence, and no want of capacity.”—Memoirs, p. 141. A strong sense of responsibility, and a natural diffidence in his own talents, accompanied by a dislike for business, and an indifference to ministerial employments, gave him, at times, an air of indecision rather ungraceful; but he could be firm on great occasions, and his public no less than his private life was distinguished by unsullied uprightness and honour.—E.

[16] Edmund Boyle, Earl of Corke and Orrery, married —— Courteney, daughter of Lady Frances Courteney, only sister of John Earl of Sandwich. [The marriage being afterwards dissolved, he married the Hon. Mary Monckton, who long survived him. He died in 1798.—E.]

[17] William Duke of Devonshire married Lady Charlotte Boyle, second daughter and co-heiress of Richard Boyle, last Earl of Burlington, Lord Treasurer of Ireland.

[18] William Ponsonby, Earl of Besborough, married Lady Caroline Cavendish, eldest daughter of William third Duke of Devonshire. Lord Besborough had been at Constantinople with Lord Sandwich. [He died in 1793, and was the grandfather of the present Earl.—E.]

[19] What authority Walpole had for this assertion does not appear. The Duke was without ambition, and content to live as an English nobleman on his splendid domain. He died in 1729.—E.

[20] Dr. Johnson, a violent political opponent, observed of him, “that he was not a man of superior abilities, but he was a man strictly faithful to his word. If, for instance, he had promised you an acorn, and none had grown that year in his woods, he would not have contented himself with that excuse. He would have sent to Denmark for it. So unconditional was he in keeping his word—so high as to the point of honour.”—Boswell’s Life of Johnson, vol. iii. p. 167. The same lofty feelings characterised his public life, and caused him to be implicitly trusted by the great party of which, without his own seeking, he was the undisputed head. Lord Waldegrave seems to have entertained no mean opinion of his talents.—Memoirs, p. 86. He was Lord Lieutenant of Ireland in 1737, and afterwards remained for a time in the Cabinet; but he accepted office with reluctance, and quitted it with disgust, for he loved his ease and scorned all the arts of intrigue. He died in 1755, aged fifty-seven.—E.

[21] Lord George Cavendish filled the place of Comptroller of the Household in 1762, and for some years represented Derbyshire. He had sufficient sense to speak respectably in Parliament. He died unmarried in 1794.—E.

[22] Lord Frederick Cavendish had frequently distinguished himself during the Seven years’ war as an excellent cavalry officer. In one of the last affairs of the campaign of 1762, he gained great credit by his spirited behaviour on the 6th of July, when, under the command of Lord Granby, he defeated a considerable body of the French stationed at Horn in order to preserve the communication of the main body with Frankfort, the result of which defeat was the evacuation of Gottingen. He attained the rank of Field-Marshal, and died unmarried at an advanced age in 1803.—E.

[23] The sarcastic tone of these remarks on the Cavendish family may be ascribed to a family quarrel, in which the Duke of Devonshire had sided with Horace Walpole the uncle, against Horace Walpole the nephew, the author of these Memoirs.—Mem. i. 170, note by Lord Holland. Lord John Cavendish had also displeased Walpole by often thwarting his plans for the management of the Opposition, and particularly by prevailing on General Conway to act contrary to his advice. On these occasions, however, Lord John was actuated by the purest motives, and no statesman of that day shewed a nicer sense of honour, or more strict notions of public duty. His influence with the Liberal party was considerable, and raised him afterwards to a higher post than his talents could alone justly claim. At the time to which the text refers he was about thirty-two years old.—E.

[24] There was shown about that time, and by that title, a Canary-bird that performed several tricks, by pointing to cards and numbers at command.

[25] The accomplishments of Lord Lyttelton were undeniable. Unfortunately they were overshadowed by an infirmity of judgment, that materially lessened the dignity of his character. He seems to have been the easy dupe of Archibald Bower. There was often much misplaced sentiment in his conversation. His letters teem with foolish conceits, and the extravagant notions he entertained of parental authority made him so severe and injudicious a father as to afford some excuse for the gross misconduct of his son, a young nobleman whose brilliant abilities he was almost the only person unwilling or unable to appreciate. Lord Lyttelton died in 1773, at the age of sixty four. His public and private life had been irreproachable.—E.

[26] Wilkes had attacked me in the North Briton, for a panegyric on the sense of the Scots, in my catalogue of Royal and Noble Authors: a censure I regarded so little, that when Lord Holland was engaged in his bitter persecution of the Whigs under Lord Bute, I sent an anonymous letter to Wilkes, pointing out a very advantageous character of Lord Holland that I had formerly written in the paper called The World, and inciting the North Briton to take notice both of the author and the subject of the character. Wilkes caught at the notice, said but little of me, and fell severely on Lord Holland, as I had foreseen he would.

[27] A similar story is related in Tacitus, of the visit paid by Augustus to his unfortunate grandson Agrippa, in the island of Planasia, having excited suspicions in the mind of Tiberius that caused him to hasten the Emperor’s death.—1 Annal. v.—E.

[28] The account given in the Princess Dashkau’s Memoirs of this transaction, presents strong internal evidence of the guilt of Mirowitz. The Princess otherwise would not have taken such pains to exculpate herself from the charge of having been his accomplice. He appears to have been virtually insane.—E.

[29] Translator of Horace and Demosthenes.

[30] Robert Henley, Earl of Northington.

[31] There was another reason given, and probably a more efficacious one. This was the number of suits commenced against the General Warrants, with which he did not care to meddle.

[32] The patent of precedence could not be over the Solicitor-General, whose official rank necessarily placed him next to the Attorney, and above all other members of the bar. The elevation of Mr. Yorke was of greater advantage to the senior barristers than to himself, for otherwise they could not have held briefs with him; though the Government cared, in those days, too little for the bar to have attached much weight to that consideration, unless they had desired to please Mr. Yorke.—E.

[33] Philip Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield, the famous man of wit.

[34] Mr. Cumberland says elegantly of the Primate, “No man faced difficulties with greater courage, none overcame them with more address: he was formed to hold command over turbulent spirits in tempestuous seasons, for if he could not absolutely rule the passions of men, he could artfully rule men by the medium of their passions. He had great suavity of manners when points were to be carried by insinuation and finesse; but if authority was necessary to be enforced, none could hold it with a higher hand: he was an elegant scholar, a consummate politician, a very fine gentleman, and in every character seen to more advantage than in that, which, according to his sacred function, should have been his chief and only object to sustain.” Cumberland’s Mem. vol. i. p. 229.—E.

[35] Henry Boyle, a grandson of Roger, first Earl of Orrery. His hypocrisy could not be very deep, if the saying ascribed to him be true—“that he would not accept an honour whilst there was a shilling in the Treasury.” He has been described as “a warm, sincere friend, and undisguised enemy.” His peculiar sphere was the House of Commons, not as an orator, but as manager; and few country gentlemen, we are told, would continue a canvass in their respective counties without a certainty of Mr. Boyle’s support, if petitioned against.—Hardy’s Life of Lord Charlemont, vol. i. p. 88. He would have made an admirable Secretary of the Treasury in corrupt or turbulent times.—E.

[36] Sir George Yonge, Bart., was the only surviving son of Sir William Yonge, the eloquent and well-known supporter of Sir Robert Walpole. He was appointed Secretary at War in Lord Shelburne’s Administration, and subsequently became Master of the Mint. His last office was that of Governor of the Cape of Good Hope. He had many of his father’s parts as well as failings, being kind, persuasive, industrious, reckless, scheming, and dissipated. His last years were embittered by the failure of a speculation into which he had entered in the neighbourhood of Honiton, which borough he had long represented in Parliament. He died at an advanced age at the beginning of the present century, and, having no children, the baronetcy became extinct.—E.

[37] The Duke of Newcastle’s letter and Mr. Pitt’s reply are printed in the Chatham Correspondence, vol. ii. p. 293–8.—E.

[38] Dr. John Ewer, of King’s College, Cambridge, Canon of Windsor, and successively Bishop of Llandaff and Bangor. He published some single sermons on public occasions, and died in October, 1774. His library was sold by auction in 1776.—E.

[39] Dr. Carmichael was brother to the Earl of Hyndford. He had not long to wait for preferment, nor did he long enjoy it, for he was appointed Archbishop of Dublin in June, and died in the November following.—E.

[40] Primate Robinson, without being eminent either as a divine or a politician, filled his high office creditably. He had sound sense, and a turn for business, was not ignorant of the world, and his deportment admirably suited a great ecclesiastic. In these respects he bore a strong resemblance to Archbishop Sutton. He exerted himself laudably in building churches and parsonage-houses, and in maintaining the character of the clergy. Like many of the Irish Archbishops of former days, he brought nobility into his family, by obtaining the barony of Rokeby, with remainder to a distant cousin; for although one of many brothers, he had no nearer descendants. He died unmarried in 1794, having survived his brother, Sir Thomas Robinson, whose baronetcy eventually devolved upon him.—E.

[41] “The original contains an imputation against Sir W. Pynsent, which, if true, would induce us to suspect him of a disordered mind.”—Mr. Croker’s note in vol. iv. of Walpole’s Letters, p. 484, to a letter to Lord Hertford, giving more particulars of this bequest.

[42] Frederick Lord North, son of the Earl of Guildford, married Miss Speke, an heiress.

[43] This is very improbable, for Lord North was notoriously indifferent to money, and careless of his personal interests.—E.

[44] Yet a clergyman of the name of Pynsent went to law afterwards with Mr. Pitt for the inheritance, but lost his cause.

[45] An interesting account of this debate is given by Walpole, in a letter to Lord Hertford, of the 27th January, vol. iv. p. 488, of his Correspondence.—E.

[46] Mr. Calvert’s speech is reported in the xvi^th vol. of Parliamentary Debates, p. 44, and is the only portion of the debate that has been preserved. It is erroneously stated to have been made on a motion respecting the dismissal of these officers. See also the note giving an extract from the History of the Minority, p. 291.—E.

[47] Second son of Harry, and brother of Charles, Duke of Bolton, the latter of whom he afterwards succeeded in the title. He was in the sea-service, [and is said to be the “Captain Whiffle” of Smollet’s “Roderick Random.” He attained the rank of Admiral of the White, and died in 1794. He was twice married, but left no male issue, and the dukedom expired with him.—E.]

[48] He had had his regiment taken from him by Sir Robert Walpole.

[49] As on the Bill “for Liberty of Conscience.”—Clarendon’s Life, continuation, p. 248. The noble historian, however, observes, that from that time he never had the same credit with His Majesty he had before.—E.

[50] The trial is reported in vol. xix. of the State Trials, p. 1178: of 123 peers present, 119 voted him guilty of manslaughter; the remaining four voted him not guilty generally.—E.

[51] An abstract of the arguments in this debate is given in the Parliamentary History, vol. xvi. p. 8.—E.

[52] So in the original MS.

[53] George Simon Viscount Nuneham, eldest son of the Earl of Harcourt, was a sincere republican, and retired from Parliament because he could not continue to vote according to his principles without offending his father. [He became wiser afterwards, and accepted the post of Master of the Horse to the Queen, and his wife that of Lady of the Bedchamber. Wraxall describes him as a nobleman of high breeding, well informed, and of a most correct deportment, though of manners somewhat constrained and formal. He died without issue in 1809, aged 63, and was succeeded by his brother, the late Field-Marshal Lord Harcourt, on whose death the title became extinct.—E.]

[54] Lord Sandwich and Lord Halifax.

[55] He was a favourite of the King, who made him Commander-in-chief in Lord Shelburne’s Administration, and he was afterwards a Field-Marshal.—E.

[56] Henry, second Viscount Palmerston, the grandson of the first Viscount. He was a very accomplished nobleman. At this time he was only 26 years old.—E.

[57] Almon was a bookseller and political writer, as well as a printer, in all which capacities he received frequent employment from the extreme section of the Liberal party. He was a bustling, self-important personage, whose zeal and fidelity brought him into a certain degree of intimacy with several of the leading men of his day, and he was thus enabled to collect the information which occasionally presents itself in his works. His life of Lord Chatham, though not to be generally depended upon as an authentic narration, contains some curious anecdotes illustrative of the political disputes of that period, and is in every respect superior to his life and letters of Wilkes—an insipid, tedious, and disgusting book, particularly discreditable to its author, as he was in possession of materials that might have yielded both interest and instruction. Almon, in his latter days, was unfortunate in business, and died very poor at an advanced age in 1805.—E.

[58] Sir Thomas Denison died in the autumn of this year. His memory was honoured by an epitaph from the pen of his friend Lord Mansfield, very long and very dull. It is said of him “that besides being conversant with the different branches of the profession, he was in an eminent degree master of the learning of a special pleader.” Memoirs of Lord Chief Justice Wilmot, p. 13.—E.

[59] This enlightened judge and most amiable man was the second son of Robert Wilmot, of Osmaston, Derbyshire, and brother of Sir Robert Wilmot, for some years the Chief Secretary in Ireland. He subsequently became Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, but with great reluctance, for he says in one of his letters, “The acting junior in the commission is a spectre I started at; but the sustaining the office alone, I must refuse at all events. I will not give up the peace of my mind to any earthly consideration whatever. Bread and water are nectar and ambrosia, compared with the supremacy of a court of justice.” He retired from the Bench in 1771, and died in 1792, aged 82, leaving one of the most spotless characters to be found on the roll of British judges. A selection of his judgments and opinions was published by his son. They are remarkable for elegance and perspicuity, and their learning and acuteness cause them to be still highly prized. The memoir of him already cited is a pleasing tribute to the memory of a good father by a good son.—E.

[60] The resolutions were not 35 in number, but 55.—E.

[61] The late Lord Essex informed the Editor that one of the Under-secretaries of that day had often said to him, “Mr. Grenville lost America because he read the American despatches, which none of his predecessors ever did.” There is no doubt that the business of the colonies was despatched in a very slovenly manner—or, to use Mr. Burke’s words, it was treated “with a salutary neglect;” and the many volumes of Minutes of Colonial Affairs still preserved at the Board of Trade, relate generally to such insignificant transactions as to be almost ludicrous.

[62] Colonel Martin Bladen, M. P. He had in earlier life shown his industry by a translation of Cæsar, which he dedicated to the Duke of Marlborough, under whom he served in the German wars. He was made Sub-comptroller of the Mint in 1714, and one of the Board of Trade in 1717, and might have risen higher if he had chosen. He died at an advanced age in 1746. See more of him in Warton’s notes to the Dunciad.—E.

[63] I say acknowledged, because they thought it prudent, in their quarrel with the Parliament, to shelter themselves under the banner of the Crown, and because they founded themselves on their charters, which were grants from the Crown. At the same time there were some men amongst them of a more democratic spirit. It was much talked of at this era, that a wealthy merchant in one of the provinces had said, “They say King George is a very honest fellow; I should like to smoke a pipe with him,” so little conception had they in that part of the world, of the majesty of an European monarch! The Crown could not take advantage of the Americans throwing themselves into the arms of prerogative, because the Americans did it to shun paying taxes, which the Parliament was inclined to grant.

[64] In January, 1769.

[65] Colonel Barré’s eloquent invective is the only portion of the debate that has been preserved. It is directed chiefly against an observation of Mr. Grenville, that the Americans were “children planted by our care and nourished by our indulgence.” It has been often reprinted. Parliamentary History, vol. xvi. p. 38. Mr. Adolphus, in a note to vol. i. p. 171, throws doubts on the authenticity of the report, and there is nothing in Colonel Barré’s character to make it improbable that he may have been his own reporter, and not a very faithful one.—E.

[66] Barbarossa and Athelstan.

[67] This tract of Dr. Browne’s, entitled “Thoughts on Civil Liberty, Licentiousness, and Faction,” hardly deserves notice except from the success of the author’s other works, of which it has all the faults and none of the merits. Its failure was complete. The author committed suicide in the following year, being then only in his 51st year. His fame rests entirely on his tragedies, which are still favourites with the public; but his treatises display an ingenuity and extent of information, and occasionally a power of expression, at least equally commendable; and it is to be regretted that those qualities were so wasted on ephemeral publications, and directed by a mind always verging on insanity. A long and very dull life of Dr. Browne is to be found in the Biographia Britannica.—E.

[68] The Duchess had inherited the island from the Earls of Derby, from whom she was descended. [Her ancestor John, the first Marquis of Athol, having married Lady Amelia Stanley, daughter of James seventh Earl of Derby and his celebrated Countess. The Duchess was daughter and heiress of James, second Duke of Athol, and had married her cousin John, the third Duke, by whom she left a large family.—E.]

[69] Afterwards Sir Grey Cooper, Baronet, Secretary of the Treasury, and a Privy Councillor. He was generally a dull speaker, but had considerable abilities, and was much esteemed in his department. He died in 1801. His speech is reported in the Parliamentary History, vol. xvi. p. 21.—E.

[70] Mr. Adolphus, in the new edition of his History, says, “The malady with which his Majesty was afflicted, exhibited symptoms similar to those which, in 1788, and during the last years of his life, gave so much unhappiness to the nation. I did not mention the fact in former editions of this work, because I knew that the King and all who loved him were desirous that it should not be brought into notice. So anxious were they on this point, that Smollet having intimated it in his complete History of England, the text was revised in the general impression—a very few copies in the original form were disposed of, and they are now rare.” Adolphus, vol. i. p. 175.—E.

[71] Afterwards Sir William Duncan, Bart., a Scot; he married Lady Mary Tufton, sister of the Earl of Thanet.

[72] Mr. Nicholson Calvert’s speech is given in the Parliamentary History, vol. xvi. p. 42, where it is said that he was very inefficiently supported by Serjeant Hewet.—E.

[73] Bishop of Gloucester. Voltaire always calls him by mistake Bishop of Worcester.

[74] This sermon is noticed by Gray in a letter written at the time.—Works, vol. iv. p. 49. Warburton did not carry his imprudence so far as to print it. He had been a candidate for the see of London in 1761, and was not a little disappointed by the preference given to Bishop Hayter, to which he thus modestly alludes in a letter to Hurd. “You and your poet say true, ‘I will bet at any time on a fool or a knave against the field.’ Though the master of the course be changed, yet the field is the same, where the race is not to the swift.” (Letters from a Late Eminent Prelate, &c., p. 328.) His hopes must have been rekindled by the early death of Bishop Hayter, only to be again dashed by the appointment of Bishop Osbaldiston; and his ambition received a deathblow by the elevation of Terrick. His contempt of his successful competitors appears to have been expressed in every way calculated to be most offensive to them: even at a dinner at Archbishop Secker’s, about this period, he taunted the Bench with leaving the defence of the Church against its various assailants to their chaplains, and not performing the task themselves, as Ridley and Jewel had done of old; and quoted, at the same time, the saying of Jewel: “Why are we distinguished from the rest of our brethren with superior titles and riches, but that we may out-do them in the service of the public, so that when men see our great achievements, they may say these men deserve their superior titles and riches who perform them thus nobly.” The prelates wisely indulged him in this freedom. He never rose beyond the see of Gloucester, which it may be remarked he owed not to his learning and theological reputation, but to Mr. Pitt’s regard for Allen. Perhaps Mr. Pitt was the only statesman who would have had the courage to place him on the Bench. Notwithstanding his friendship with Mr. Yorke, he was neglected by Lord Hardwicke, who, he says, “amidst all his acquaintance, chose the most barren and sapless, on which dry plants to shower down his most refreshing rain.”—Letters, p. 433. The violence of his temper, his overbearing disposition, and the vagueness of his political creed, gave Ministers some excuse, yet it shows an imperfection in the system of ecclesiastical patronage, that a man of his genius and attainments should have been so often set aside for the obscure and now long forgotten individuals whom Court or Ministerial favour continually placed in the higher offices of the Church. He resented this treatment to the last. It embittered a lot which ought to have been happy, for he had wealth, rank, reputation, and domestic prosperity; but his letters breathe an air of discontent unworthy of a great man. He died at an advanced age in 1776.—E.

[75] At the end of 1768. It was triumphantly answered by Burke.—E.

[76] Thomas Gilbert, Esq., M. P. for Newcastle-under-Line, and Controller of the King’s Wardrobe. See Walpole’s Letters, vol. v. p. 15.—E.

[77] The bill proposed to divide every county into large districts, comprising a whole hundred, or at least a great number of parishes, in order to remedy the evils caused by the distresses of the poor, and the misapplication of the money raised for their relief. It has the merit of being one of the earliest efforts made in Parliament for the amendment of the Poor-laws. In 1782 Mr. Gilbert succeeded in carrying a bill containing the main features by his plan for the incorporation of parishes, so well known as the Gilbert Act. An account of these and other bills, prepared by Mr. Gilbert, of the same tendency, is given in Eden’s History of the Poor, vol. i. p. 362.—E.

[78] Humphry Sturt, Esq., M. P. for the county of Dorset, where the family has long enjoyed considerable wealth and parliamentary influence.—E.

[79] Query whether instead of John Pitt, it ought not to be George Pitt, Mr. Sturt’s colleague, and afterwards Lord Rivers, and Minister at Turin. He died in 1801.—E.

[80] This man became much more known about a dozen years after this period. [His character has not yet ceased to be a subject of controversy; and those who wish to know all that can be said for and against him, may consult Mr. Hunt’s recent biographical work, and Mr. Keppel’s Life of Lord Keppel. His generous and constant patronage of Captain Cook has given more interest to his memory than belongs to his political squabbles. The King’s favour, Lord Sandwich’s friendship, and lastly his own merit, raised him among other distinctions to the honourable post of Governor of Greenwich Hospital. He was made a Baronet in 1773, and died unmarried in 1796.—E.]

[81] By the Duke of Newcastle and Mr. Pelham.

[82] Grenville was of Buckinghamshire.

[83] This must be confined to the following period of fluctuations in the Administration. When it became resettled under Lord North, who was a Tory, the Court’s system of prerogative predominated entirely.

[84] The præmunire clauses of the Regency Act (24 George II. c. 24) are in the 4th and 22nd sections. By the 4th section these penalties attach on any person having the custody of the King’s appointment of the Council of Regency, that ventures to open the same without his Majesty’s order, or to neglect or refuse to deliver up the same after his Majesty’s death. The 22nd section is more important, and as it contains the clause to which the text applies, and was the subject of much discussion in the House of Commons, where it met with warm opposition, even from the Speaker, Mr. Onslow, the following transcript of it may not be without interest: “All commissions, letters patent, orders, matters, and things to be made, passed, had, or done by the said Regent, either with or without the consent of the said Council of Regency, in order unlawfully to set aside, change, or vary the order and method of Government, and administration of Government settled by this Act during such minorities as aforesaid, shall be absolutely null and void; and every person advising, concurring, promoting, or assisting therein shall incur the penalties of a præmunire.” An animated report of the debates on this clause is given by Walpole, Mem. Geo. II. vol. i. p. 191.—E.

[85] This is no doubt the truth.—E.

[86] With his brother Henry Pelham, and Lord Chancellor Hardwicke.

[87] Charles Fitzroy, second Duke of Grafton, Lord Chamberlain, and K.G., grandson to Charles the Second, whom he appears to have resembled in some of the better parts of that monarch’s character.—See the account of him in Walpole’s Geo. II. vol. i. p. 157. He died May 6, 1757, aged 78.—E.

[88] Lionel Sackville, first Duke of Dorset, K.G., son of the celebrated Earl. He had gone through most of the great posts, having been successively Lord Steward, Lord President, and Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, besides being employed on several foreign missions. Walpole describes him (Mem. Geo. II. vol. i. p. 244) as a man of dignity, caution, and plausibility, who, when left to himself, as in his first Lord-Lieutenantcy, had ruled Ireland to the universal satisfaction of that people. He was less successful when his son Lord George Germaine and Primate Stone were his advisers. He died on the 10th of October, 1763, aged 75. See more of him in Wraxall’s Hist. Mem. vol. ii. p. 415, and in Collins’s Peerage.—E.

[89] Such a post would certainly not have suited the modest, scrupulous, and pious author of the “Analogy,” and as his character was well known, it is very unlikely to have been destined for him,—though he was highly esteemed at Court. Had his friend Dr. Clarke filled the Archbishopric of Canterbury, which Queen Caroline is said to have so much desired, he would probably have been preferred, and with his parts and decision of character, might have become a very considerable man.—E.

[90] The King had then four brothers living: Edward Duke of York, and the Princes William, Henry, and Frederick.

[91] William Duke of Cumberland.

[92] John third Earl of Waldegrave, brother-in-law of the Duchess of Bedford.

[93] Parliamentary History, vol. xvi. p. 52.—E.

[94] The Address of both Houses.

[95] Edward Duke of York, the Princes William, Henry, and Frederick, and William Duke of Cumberland, son of George the Second.

[96] Henry Howard, Earl of Suffolk and Berkshire, a young lord attached to Mr. Grenville, [afterwards Secretary of State. (See more of him infra.)—E.]

[97] Lord Northington.

[98] Sir Philip Yorke, then Lord Chancellor. His son, Lord Hardwicke, kept away from this bill; Charles Yorke, the second brother, voted for it.

[99] He might have been asked why it was more proper to establish the Council for seventeen years, than the same Regent.

[100] Alluding to Lord Chatham and Alderman Beckford.

[101] Augustus Henry Fitzroy, third Duke of Grafton.

[102] Charles Lennox, third Duke of Richmond.

[103] Mary, fourth daughter of King George II.

[104] Charles Prince of Brunswick, husband of Princess Augusta, the King’s eldest sister.

[105] Frederick King of Prussia, son and grandson of the daughter and sister of King George the First.

[106] Attached to the Princess Dowager.

[107] Lord Bute told him he was in the right, and that a matter of such importance ought to be left under no dubiety.

[108] See Letter from Walpole to Lord Hertford, of 5th May, 1765, in Correspondence, vol. v. p. 23.—E.

[109] I must observe that Lord Holland has since maintained to me, that Lord Halifax alone had gone to the King, which I could never hear but from him: the contrary was the universal belief at the time, and what I learned in the House of Lords, where I arrived within five minutes after the scene I am describing had passed. It is at least evident by the ready concurrence of the Ministers, and by Grenville’s subsequent conduct in the House of Commons, that the measure had been concerted with him and Sandwich; and they both in their speeches afterwards gave indications that it had been so.

[110] Memoirs of George II., vol. i. p. 166.

[111] Charles Fitzroy, afterwards Lord Southampton, younger son of Lord Augustus Fitzroy, and only brother of Augustus Henry Duke of Grafton.

[112] See Walpole’s Letter to Lord Hertford, of May 12, 1765, in Correspondence, vol. v. p. 28.—E.

[113] Mr. Burrell, M. P. for Haslemere, made a Commissioner of Excise in 1774; became a Baronet on the death of his father-in-law, Sir Charles Raymond, and died in 1796. He was the father of Sir Charles Burrell, M. P.—E.

[114] Mr. Morton, Chief Justice of Chester, had been long in the intimate confidence of the Princess. He was in extensive practice, as may be seen in Burrow, and the other reports of the day—the leader on the Oxford Circuit, and Deputy High Steward of the University. He had considerable reputation as an advocate notwithstanding the sneer of a cotemporary satire, that says—

“Bewildered Morton spits and stares,
All petulance and froth.”

In the House of Commons, Mr. Morton seldom spoke except on questions connected with his profession. The following account of a singular scene in which he appears as the rash and unequal assailant of Pitt, has been preserved by Mr. Butler, the great Catholic counsellor, in his interesting and not uninstructive Reminiscences of George the Third.

On one occasion, Mr. Morton happened to say King, Lords, and Commons, or (directing his eye towards Mr. Pitt) as that right honourable Member would call them, Commons, Lords, and King.—The only fault of this sentence is its nonsense. Mr. Pitt arose, as he ever did, with great deliberation, and called to order. “I have,” he said “heard frequently in this House, doctrines which have surprised me, but now my blood runs cold. I desire the words of the honourable Member may be taken down.” The Clerks of the House took down the words. “Bring them to me,” said Mr. Pitt, with a voice of thunder. By this time Mr. Morton was frightened out of his senses. “Sir,” he said, addressing himself to the Speaker, “I am sorry to have given any offence to the right honourable Member, or to the House. I meant nothing—Kings, Lords, and Commons,—Lords, Commons, and King,—Commons, Lords, and King—tria juncta in uno. I meant nothing—indeed I meant nothing.” “I don’t wish to push the matter further,” said Mr. Pitt, in a voice a little above a whisper, then in a higher tone, “the moment a man acknowledges his error he ceases to be guilty. I have a great regard for the honourable Member, and as an instance of that regard, I give him this advice.” A pause of some moments ensued; then assuming a look of unspeakable decision, he said in a kind of colloquial tone, “Whenever that Member means nothing, I recommend him to say nothing.” (Butler’s Reminiscences, vol. i. p. 156.) Mr. Morton’s last speech of any importance was on the Indemnity Bill for sending foreign troops to Minorca, in 1775. He never rose higher than the Chief Justiceship of Chester, though he was very near succeeding Mr. Justice Wilmot, in the King’s Bench; and the memoirs of the latter contain a very pleasing and well-written letter from him on the occasion. He had a house at Tackley, near Oxford, in the church of which place he is buried. He died on the 25th of July, 1780.—E.

[115] Lord Temple, in a letter to Lady Chatham, of the 10th of May, (Chatham Correspondence, vol. ii. p. 308,) notices these speeches very slightingly, and says the whole debate was of the most superlative dulness. Edward Kynaston, of Hardwicke, in the county of Salop, the eldest surviving son of John Kynaston, of the same place, the claimant of the ancient Barony of Powys, was member for Montgomeryshire; he died without issue in 1772.—E.

[116] He said to Onslow, in private, “Whatever you say to me, is fair; but there is one man, Martin, whose words I will never forget or forgive.”

[117] This was so entirely the motive of his conduct, that he wrote to his brother, Lord Hertford, at Paris, that he had voted against the Princess from the fear of being taxed with selfish views.

[118] Mr. White, M. P. for East Retford, an old member, highly respected by the Whig party in the House of Commons.—E.

[119] She was divorced from him by act of Parliament, for his cruel usage, and then married John Sheffield, Duke of Buckingham. She was natural daughter of King James the Second.

[120] William Henry Cavendish, third Duke. He had succeeded to the title on the death of his father in 1762, and was at this time only twenty-seven years of age.—E.

[121] The King’s youngest brother.

[122] The object of the promoters of the bill was to obtain a total prohibition of the importation of foreign silks. This was not the only instance of the Duke of Bedford’s knowledge of political economy. Horace Walpole says elsewhere, that “he spoke readily, and upon trade well.”—E.

[123] Robert Henley, Earl of Northington.

[124] Annual Register for 1765, p. 42.—E.

[125] Gertrude Leveson, daughter of John Lord Gower, and second wife of John Russell, Duke of Bedford.

[126] Bedford House stands on the north side of Bloomsbury Square. It has low walls in front, and a garden backwards, with a fossé to the fields. [It was built from a design by Inigo Jones, and has shared the fate of other great mansions in the same quarter of London.—E.]

[127] Their son was married to one of Lord Bute’s daughters.

[128] A broken wine merchant, brother of Admiral Cotes.

[129] Lord Sandwich was the head of Mr. Wortley Montagu’s family.—E.

[130] Yet the same indiscreet step did the King take again in 1783, when he dismissed the Duke of Portland and Lord North, and what was called the Coalition, before he had made sure of another Administration; and he was for a few days in danger of being obliged to recal those he had just removed; Lord Temple, son of George Grenville, not daring to undertake the Administration after he had consented; and Mr. Pitt, son of Lord Chatham, being almost as timid, and fluctuating backwards and forwards for three or four days, before he at last determined to accept.

[131] In a letter to the Duke of Marlborough, of the 19th of May, the Duke of Bedford states, that he plainly charged the King on this occasion with having “very unfaithfully kept” the conditions on which he (the Duke) had accepted office, and urged on him the necessity of forming an efficient Administration. The only result was, that “I left him,” says the Duke, “as did all the rest, without being able to get an explicit answer.”—(Mem. of the House of Russell, vol. ii. p. 560.)—E.

[132] In setting no bounds to his hostilities, Lord Holland’s fear operated as much as his resentment. He said to me with great earnestness, “If Mr. Pitt should not be content with taking away my place, but should say, I will have a mark set on him!”

[133] This negotiation is not noticed in Lord Chatham’s published Correspondence.—E.

[134] George William Hervey, second Earl of Bristol.

[135] Admiral Augustus John Hervey, brother of the Earl of Bristol, on whose death he succeeded to the title. He was a gallant and able officer, and had distinguished himself at the Havannah; but he was not without some of the peculiarities of disposition that seemed to belong to his family, and his memory subsequently suffered from the trial of his widow, the Duchess of Kingston (the soi-disant Miss Chudleigh.) He died without issue in 1779.—E.

[136] George Grenville was brother of Lady Hester, Mr. Pitt’s wife, lately created Baroness.

[137] It has been said, that Lord Temple’s estate, by a flaw, was in his own power.

[138] James Stuart Mackenzie, only brother of Lord Bute.

[139] Mr. Mackenzie resigned immediately upon learning that his exclusion was an object with the Government and would accommodate the King. He was a very amiable man, and no objection was ever raised to him beyond his relationship to Lord Bute. Letter of Mr. Mackenzie, Mitchell MSS., note to vol. ii. p. 312, of Lord Chatham’s Correspondence.—E.

[140] Rigby swore a great oath that the King should not have power to appoint one of his own footmen.

[141] Yet Lord Holland could never obtain any indemnification, nor attain an earldom, though he often solicited it in the most earnest manner, and by every interest he could employ.

[142] Thomas Thynne, third Viscount Weymouth. His mother had been one of the daughters and co-heiresses of the famous John Earl Granville. He had married a sister of the Duke of Portland, and was at this time about thirty-one years old. He was a man of talents, and of very lively conversation; though it is said that to profit by the latter it was necessary to follow him to White’s, to drink deep of claret, and remain at table to a very late hour of the night, or rather of the morning. His dissipated habits, indeed, were notorious. Junius has alluded to them with bitterness, and indulged in a profane jest at his expense. (Letter xxiii.) His straitened circumstances made his nomination very unpopular in Ireland, and he never went over, (Mr. Croker’s note in Walpole’s Letters, vol. v. p. 42,) which, however, did not prevent, if we are to believe Junius, his obtaining an outfit of £3000. His subsequent career was very prosperous. See Wraxall’s Historical Memoirs.—E.

[143] George Montague, Duke of Manchester.

[144] John Campbell, Marquis of Lorn, eldest son of John Duke of Argyle.

[145] Mr. Thurlow’s nomination to this post has been denied. He had been only seven years at the bar, and was already rising rapidly in the estimation of the profession; within five years he became Solicitor-General.—E.

[146] He was Lord-Lieutenant of Lincolnshire, where he had a great estate. He died in 1778.—E.

[147] The original MS. states the interview to have been on the 20th of June, obviously by a clerical error, for that date would make the narrative unintelligible. In a letter to Sir Horace Mann, of the 26th (Letters, i. p. 237), the day is correctly stated to be the 12th, which is confirmed by a letter of the Duke of Bedford to the Duke of Marlborough, of the 13th, giving the details of the interview.—(Wiffen’s Memoirs of the House of Russell, p. 70.)—I have ventured to correct the text accordingly.—E.

[148] If this narrative be true, Junius is not the libeller that the world has supposed, and the King was unquestionably treated by his Ministers in a manner to which a parallel is only to be found in the reign of Charles the First. George the Third, however, was not, as Lord Brougham justly observes, (Historical Sketches, &c., vol. iii. p. 144,) the monarch to submit to such treatment,—neither was Sandwich or Halifax likely to have sanctioned it. Indeed Walpole must be mistaken in making them parties to the transaction. In a letter written at the time, he intimates that the Duke of Bedford alone waited upon the King (i. 238); he takes no notice of any written paper, nor is there any trace of such a document among the archives at Woburn. The only authentic account of the interview is given in the letter of the Duke to his nephew the Duke of Marlborough, cited in the preceding note, the general tenor of which proves beyond dispute the writer to have been innocent of any design to insult the King, as well as ignorant that he had done so. His Grace says that he reminded the King of the terms on which the Ministers had consented to resume their functions, and asked whether the promise made to them on that occasion had been kept. He complained of the favour shown to the opponents of the Administration, and the very different treatment received by their friends, dwelling especially on the influence of Lord Bute; and, finally, he besought his Majesty “to permit his authority and his favour to go together, and if the last could not be given to his present Ministers to transfer to others that authority which must be useless in their hands unless so strengthened.” Strong words these, no doubt, and an offensive interpretation may have been put upon them by a youthful sovereign with the notions of prerogative inculcated by Lord Bute—a political opponent (like Burke) might not unfairly insinuate them to be “indecent.” They furnish also a colourable foundation for the statement in the text, which is not unlikely to have been derived partially from the King himself. On the other hand, a dispassionate observer must take into consideration the general truth of the Duke’s charges; the feelings of the Ministers at their dismissal on grounds which appeared to them utterly inadequate; and, above all, their sense of the public danger resulting from the unsatisfactory relations of the King with his government. The limits prescribed by the constitution to a remonstrance of this nature are very indistinct, and the Duke will be held to have outstepped them only by the opponent of the political opinions with which the House of Russell have been so long and so honourably identified.—E.

[149] The most plausible explanation of Lord Temple’s conduct on this occasion is, that he acted on grounds purely personal. It appears from Lady Hervey’s Letters—an excellent authority—that as far back as March his connection with Mr. Pitt had in a great measure ceased. His pride may have been gratified by the advances made to him by the leading members of the Government, as unquestionably it was deeply wounded by the proofs he had lately received of his diminished influence over the Opposition. The gratification of his vengeance cost him dear, for the Liberal party never forgave him, and the event showed how entirely his importance with the country had arisen from his relation to Mr. Pitt. The engagements into which he immediately after entered with Mr. Grenville, only served to obstruct his return to power, and, as will be seen hereafter, to involve him in embarrassments still more prejudicial to his reputation.—E.

[150] Lord Villiers was the intimate friend of the Duke of Grafton, whose attachment was to Mr. Pitt.

[151] Charles (not the famous one, but his first-cousin) was the only son of Colonel W. Townshend, third son of Charles Viscount Townshend, Secretary of State. This Charles Townshend was, for distinction, called the Spanish Charles, from having been secretary to Sir Benjamin Keene, Ambassador at Madrid, and was afterwards a Commissioner of the Treasury.

[152] John Earl of Ashburnham, the chief favourite of the Duke of Newcastle, whom he afterwards abandoned, being a very prudent and interested man.

[153] T. Walpole was attached to Mr. Pitt.

[154] It certainly was time that they should enter upon the business of their respective offices, for the country had now been more than seven weeks virtually without a government. The following chronological summary of the negotiations that passed daily at this period will bring them more distinctly before the reader.

18th May. The King announced to Mr. Grenville his intention of changing his Ministers.

19th. The Ministers acquaint the King that they would resign on the following Tuesday.

20th. The Duke of Cumberland applies to Mr. Pitt, at Hayes.

20th. The King, having failed to form a new government, recalls his Ministers.

12th June. The Duke of Bedford remonstrates with the King.

17th. The Duke of Cumberland conveys to Mr. Pitt, at Hayes, fresh overtures from the King.

19th. Mr. Pitt has an audience with the King.

21st. Lord Temple refuses to join Mr. Pitt.

22nd. Mr. Pitt waits on the King and declines office.

23rd. Mr. Pitt has another audience, with the same result.

30th. Meeting of the Opposition at Claremont, under the auspices of the Duke of Cumberland.

1st July. The Duke of Newcastle notifies to the Duke of Cumberland the result of the meeting.

8th. New Ministers sworn in.—E.

[155] William Dowdeswell, formerly a Tory.

[156] Thomas, eldest son of Thomas Townshend, Teller of the Exchequer, and member for the University of Cambridge, and second son of Charles Viscount Townshend, Secretary of State.

[157] Henry Arthur Herbert, Earl of Powis. He died in 1772.

[158] George third Lord Edgcumbe, an admiral.

[159] Richard Lumley Saunderson, Earl of Scarborough; he had married the sister of Sir George Saville.

[160] Thomas, afterwards Lord Pelham.

[161] Next brother to Daniel Earl of Winchelsea, father of the succeeding earl.

[162] Thomas Viscount Gage, attached to the Duke of Newcastle, whom he afterwards abandoned as Lord Ashburnham did, to keep their places.

[163] Sir Fletcher Norton.

[164] Little is now known of Mr. Dowdeswell, beyond the high estimation in which he was held by the Whig party. His epitaph is by no means the happiest of Burke’s compositions; but amidst the cloud of panegyric the rays of truth exhibit a character of genuine English mould which it is very agreeable to contemplate. In a private letter, Burke says, “There never was a soul so remote as his from fraud, duplicity, or fear, so perfectly free from any of that rapacious unevenness of temper which embitters friendship and perplexes business. Of all the men I ever knew, he was the best to act with in public and to live with in private, from the manly decision and firmness of his judgment, and the extreme mildness and pleasantness of his temper.” His speeches, imperfectly as they are reported, prove him to have been a man of plain, sound, vigorous understanding, and not without respectable powers of debate. Burke exalts his knowledge of the revenue. He certainly was one of the leading members of the House, previous to his appointment, and the distinction conferred upon him was generally approved, Charles Townshend being forward to claim the merit of having suggested it. See the interesting Memoirs of Mr. Dowdeswell, in Cavendish’s Parliamentary Debates, i. 575.—E.

[165] The opinion entertained of Lord Rockingham by many of the most eminent men of his time, is alone sufficient to prove him not to have been the feeble-minded and insignificant character described in the text. He had the disadvantage of coming early into the possession of a princely fortune. His youth was wasted in the pursuits too common with his rank, and the only official employment he had as yet filled was that of a Lord of the Bedchamber. From the time, however, that he applied himself seriously to politics, he gradually obtained an ascendancy over his associates such as was possessed by no cotemporary statesman,—even the opinions of Lord Chatham having less weight with the more reflecting and intelligent members of the Liberal party than those of Lord Rockingham. A singular instance of this ascendancy used to be related by the late Lord Spencer, who happened to witness it. At a meeting of the Whigs, in 1782, preparatory to Lord Rockingham’s last Administration, his Lordship read a list of the appointments which he proposed to submit to the King. As soon as he uttered the name of Mr. Sheridan as Under-Secretary of State, the latter, then a young man, justly conscious of great abilities, and expecting a much higher post, exclaimed, in an indignant tone, “I will not accept!” Lord Rockingham fixing his eye on him, calmly but emphatically exclaimed, “You shall.” Sheridan seemed perfectly daunted, bowed his head, and made no further remonstrance. It was very rare, said Lord Spencer, that Lord Rockingham’s decisions did not meet the immediate acquiescence of the party. Nor was this purchased by the arts that exhausted the revenues and lowered the character of the Duke of Newcastle. Lord Rockingham stood clear of any charge of parliamentary corruption. His mode of living, though noble as suited his rank, was simple and unostentatious, and the disinterestedness of his political supporters may be inferred from the honourable boast of one of the most needy of them, that they had derived no permanent provision from his acceptance of office.[A] The same friendly pen has recorded, in the noble monumental inscription at Wentworth, “that his virtues were his arts,” and no doubt he was a virtuous, high-minded, amiable man; but he owed his success mainly to “a clear, sound, unadulterated sense,” which showed itself in great discretion, sagacity, and tact. His views were generally correct, and his firmness and perseverance never yielded in the most adverse and discouraging crisis, as was strongly evinced in the great American contest; and thus without eloquence, or any large share of the qualifications which usually confer eminence on popular leaders, he retained his political supremacy to the close of his life.—E.

[A] “A Short History of a Late Short Administration.”

[166] Lady Elizabeth Finch, youngest sister of Daniel Earl of Winchelsea, and of the Marchioness-dowager of Rockingham.

[167] Lord Northington.

[168] George Lord Townshend.

[169] “The vacillation of this eminent person was so decided as materially to lessen his influence and general consideration.” (See Charles Townshend’s singular Letter to Mr. Dowdeswell. Cavendish’s Debates, i. p. 576.) It eventually drew him to that fatal step which ruined his peace of mind and hurried him to the grave.—E.

[170] John Yorke. He died in 1769.—E.

[171] The Marchioness of Grey, wife of Philip Yorke, second Earl of Hardwicke, was the eldest daughter of the Earl of Breadalbane by his first wife, eldest daughter and co-heiress of the last Duke of Kent.

[172] Mr. Pitt’s reply, however, was cold and ungracious, and the Ministers must have been men of a very sanguine temperament to derive any comfort from it. His repudiation of the charge is clogged by such a distinct avowal of want of confidence in the Government, as must have defeated the object for which the letter was most wanted. It could hardly have been shown, except to friends.—Chatham Correspondence, ii. 319. It does more credit to the Duke than to Mr. Pitt.—E.

[173] Henry Lord Digby, an Irish baron, nephew of Lord Holland.

[174] The fact was this: Grenville, afraid of publishing his rapaciousness before he was sure of success, had forborne to mention the business to his brethren, the Commissioners of the Treasury, and even to inquire if the reversion was not already granted; but, going directly to the King, asked for the reversion. The King was very loth to bestow it on him; and, on being much pressed, said, “Mr. Grenville, I thought you were a severe enemy to all reversions!” Instead of being abashed, he had the confidence to reply: “Sir, if your Majesty will grant me this, I will take care you shall never give away another.” The King yielded. When Grenville notified the boon at the Treasury, he learned, to his inexpressible mortification, that the reversion was already engaged. Yet in the year 1770 he had the front, in Parliament, to censure a lucrative grant for life to Dyson!

[175] John Duke of Argyle, father of the Marquis, of Lord Lorn, of Lord Frederick Campbell, and of the Countess of Ailesbury, wife of Mr. Conway.

[176] Groom of the Bedchamber to the Duke, and conqueror of Belleisle. [He had been aide-de-camp to the second Earl of Albemarle at Dettingen and Fontenoy, and all the principal actions in Flanders. He was subsequently transferred to the family of the Duke, whom he attended at Culloden.—(Life of Lord Keppel, i. 298.) Several of his letters during the expedition to Belleisle are published in Mr. Keppel’s work. They are very well written, and their frankness, vivacity, and good feeling, make it a subject of regret that more is not known of the writer. He died a field marshal.—E.]

[177] A severe character of the Duke is given in the Memoirs of George the Second, vol. i. p. 85; nor has his memory found more favour from posterity. A love of truth, a dutiful consideration for his parents, and a decided preference of active employment, either civil or military, to the intrigues or frivolities of a Court, honourably distinguished him from his elder brother. In other respects he was not much to be esteemed.—E.

[178] He was enormously fat, had lost one eye and saw but ill with the other, was asthmatic, and had had a stroke of the palsy, besides the wound in his leg, that had not healed.

[179] George Keppel, third Earl of Albemarle, Lord of the Bedchamber to the Duke, and his favourite. The promise was not only renewed, but fulfilled at the end of the year, when the vacant garters were given to the Prince of Wales, the Hereditary Prince, and Lord Albemarle. [The latter was also entrusted by the King with the examination of the Duke’s papers and the administration of his property.—(Keppel’s Life, vol. iv. p. 384.)—E.]

[180] A statue of the Duke was erected afterwards in Cavendish Square by General Strode, at his own expense.

[181] Robert Adam, projector of the Adelphi Buildings and other known works. [An interesting life of him is given in the Biographical Dictionary of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.—E.]

[182] This statue was not finished and set up till 1772. A bitter inscription was affixed to it in the night, supposed to be written by Wilkes.

[183] Sir John Lambert was of a Huguenot family. He was born in 1728; he died in 1799.—E.

[184] The concession was made too late to be of much benefit to the original holders of the bills. It had been confidentially intimated to the friends of the late Government, before the latter left office, that the point would not be pressed on the French Court, and the bills, in consequence, were sold at a very great depreciation. Sir George Colebrooke, who was one of the sufferers, mentions the circumstance in his MS. memoirs.—E.

[185] When the Duc de Nivernois came to England to conclude the Peace, he would never take his remittances in bank bills, lest they should be traced. My cousin, Thomas Walpole, told me that he had paid to that Duke four thousand guineas in specie at a time. I do not charge the Ministers with the guilt of this corruption. They were paid by Lord Bute in places, honours, and power; but that French money had a share in that infamous transaction I do not doubt. The Duc de Nivernois, a man of economy, spent above thirty thousand pounds here in half a year. He kept a table for the tradesmen of London, that they might harangue for the Peace.

[186] What the French thought of our glorious successes and of our shameful Peace, appeared from what the famous Madame Geoffrin said to me one day at Paris,—“Vous avez eu un beau moment, mais il est bien passé!”

[187] His long and able services deserved a less tardy reward. He had been minister at Berlin from 1753, and was a constant companion of Frederick the Great during the Seven years’ war. Few understood that monarch better, and few, it is supposed, were loved by him so well. He died at an advanced age in 1771. His correspondence during his embassy, extending to 68 folio volumes, is preserved in the British Museum, and furnishes many valuable illustrations of cotemporary history—especially the letters addressed to him by his correspondents in England. It proves, also, his sagacity in perceiving that the minister of a representative Government requires an intimate knowledge of the state of affairs at home, in order to discharge his duties abroad most to the advantage of his country.—E.

[188] Reported under the name of Entick v. Carrington and others, 2 Wilson, 275. The outlawry against Wilkes being unreversed, he could not sue.—E.

[189] An account of Terrick has been given in a former page.—E.

[190] A better reason for dissolving the Parliament was furnished by the great measures in the contemplation of the new Government. No doubt the character of the House fell in the public estimation by the readiness with which the same individuals concurred in the repeal of Acts passed after due deliberation only in the preceding year. It is true that circumstances had altered in the interval, but the only alteration which the country regarded as influential upon the Parliament, was that which had taken place in the Government. Some politicians of later date have however pronounced it a blunder in any Minister to dissolve Parliament until it has rejected a Government measure.—E.

[191] The following are the words of his amendment:—

“To express our just resentment and indignation at the outrageous tumults and insurrections which have been excited and carried on in North America, and at the resistance given by open and rebellious force to the execution of the laws in that part of his Majesty’s dominions.”—E.

[192] “He asserted with vehemence his approbation of the Stamp Act, and was for enforcing it: he leant much to Mr. George Grenville’s opinion, soothed him, and sat down determined to vote against his amendment! Mr. Elliot the same; thereby insuring a double protection.”—Mr. Cooke to Mr. Pitt. Chatham Correspondence, vol. ii. p. 351.—E.

[193] Lord Shelburne appears to have spoken rather against the amendment than for the Ministers. He regarded the language applied to the Americans by the Opposition both in their speeches and the amendment as dangerous, and perhaps imprudent and unjust, and he deprecated a motion which seemed to preclude a repeal before it was considered thoroughly how far it might be necessary. His speech met with Mr. Pitt’s entire approbation.—(Lord Shelburne’s Letter to Mr. Pitt, and the reply in the Chatham Correspondence, vol. ii. p. 353.)—E.

[194] Lord Shelburne had attached himself to Mr. Pitt, and would not enter the Government without him.—(Chatham Correspondence, vol. ii. p. 357.)—E.

[195] He was affectionate to his daughters, but surely not to the Dauphin, whose life he made unhappy by excluding him from active employment, and whose death he bore with feelings of very slight regret.—E.

[196] He even stood at a window to see her coffin carried out of the palace.

[197] If the French were thus ignorant of the real character of the Dauphin, the ignorance has been of long continuance. All the French historians regard him as a fanatic. According to Sismondi (Histoire des Français, vol. xxix. p. 328) the Archbishop of Paris and the Molinist clergy formed around him a cabal which at first inspired alarm, next disdain, and at last pity. The story of his scepticism came, probably, to Walpole from the Duc de Choiseul, who had always been on the worst terms with him; nor is the Duc de Nivernois, the partizan of Choiseul, a courtier of pursuits and feelings utterly dissimilar to those of the prince, a much better authority. The only vice which the irreproachable conduct of the Dauphin admitted of being imputed to him, was hypocrisy. Whether he had sufficient energy of character to have averted the destruction which afterwards overwhelmed his unfortunate son, is more doubtful. He was personally brave, and is said to have shown spirit and readiness at Fontenoy, and it was with difficulty that the jealousy of the Duc de Choiseul could prevent his serving in the seven years’ war; but the qualities requisite for the successor of Louis the Fifteenth, were hardly compatible with his gentle, yielding, and amiable disposition. He died on the 20th of December, 1765, in his thirty-seventh year.—E.

[198] The Dauphin certainly preserved a tender attachment for the memory of his first wife, the Infanta Maria Therese. She died in child-bed in July, 1746. This did not, however, prevent his appreciating the merit of the second Dauphiness. Observing him in tears just before their marriage, she bade him indulge his grief, for it assured her of what she too might expect from his regard if she had the happiness to deserve it. She was by no means popular in the coteries frequented by Walpole, but by the nation at large she was held in high estimation. Her death was ascribed to a disorder she had contracted in nursing her husband. The Duchesse de Lauragais might have treated the expressions of a person in the agonies of death with more indulgence. Judging from this speech, she must have been as heartless as her lover the Maréchal de Richelieu, than whom, allowing for the difference of sex, she was not much more respectable.—E.

[199] The Duchesse was a niece of the financier Croisat, and brought to the Duc the great fortune of four millions of livres. After her husband’s death she retired into a convent, and submitted to severe privations in order to obtain the means of paying not only his debts, but even his legacies, for he had the assurance to make large testamentary bequests, though he must have known himself to be worse than insolvent. She was the Duc’s second wife. His first, also a considerable heiress, died within a year of their marriage, and he generously restored her fortune to her relations, though he was at that time poor.—E.

[200] His mal-administration of Brittany was an appropriate prelude to his career as President of the Council. In both offices he incurred almost universal hatred and contempt. It was at the Court alone that he shone. There his brilliant success was undeniable; and indeed it is not to be wondered at, for he was eminently adroit and specious; and, with a noble deportment, he possessed the art of expressing himself nobly. The English officers taken at St. Cas returned home fascinated by his urbanity and generous sayings. Though an undisguised profligate, he was the acknowledged leader of the religious party to which the Dauphin belonged, and the confidant of that exemplary Prince; and this did not prevent his subsequently becoming the minister of Louis the Fifteenth. The Duc was the great-nephew of Cardinal de Richelieu, and had inherited Aiguillon from the Cardinal’s favourite niece, Madame de Combalet. He died in 1783, leaving an only son.—E.

[201] The persecution to which M. de Chalotais was subjected has been detailed in a work extending to three volumes quarto, entitled “Procès Extraordinaire contre MM. Caradeuc de la Chalotais,” &c., with this singular motto: “Ad perpetuam sceleris memoriam.” He appears to have narrowly escaped with his life. The most important witness against him was a young Maître de Requêtes, M. de Calonne, twenty years later unhappily celebrated as the minister of Louis the Sixteenth. The trial gives a frightful picture of the state of criminal justice in France in those days. M. de Chalotais had pure motives, and was an able man; but his indiscretion, the irascibility of his temper, and the bitterness with which he treated all who differed from him in opinion, no doubt greatly aggravated his difficulties. His first work, “Compte rendu des Constitutions des Jesuites,” appeared in 1762, he being then sixty-one years of age: from that time until his death, in 1785, he maintained a hot and incessant warfare against the Court and religious parties, who regarded him as the representative of principles fraught with ruin to them both. This struggle no doubt materially hastened the Revolution. An interesting account of the proceedings against Chalotais is given in Anquetil (Hist. de France, vol. viii. p. 106–116), one of the best parts of a book of slender merit, and also in Sismondi (Hist. des Français, vol. xxix. p. 321), and in the able article on Chalotais in the Biographie Universelle.—E.

[202] It would be difficult to find, in the various histories of the period, a more ably drawn character of the Duc de Choiseul than this. The Duc was born in 1719. His administration lasted from 1757 to 1770, and he died in 1785.—E.

[203] It should be recollected that D’Alembert’s intimacy with Mademoiselle Espinasse had caused him to quarrel with Walpole’s old friend, Madame du Deffand. He wrote much that has long ceased to be read; but his Introduction to the Encyclopédie is a very able work, and as a mathematician he was one of the most eminent of his day. He died in 1783, aged sixty-six.—E.

[204] Nor could they be respected as judges are in England, as solicitation is practised in France in all causes. Where there is solicitation, there must be partiality. Where partiality is, there must be injustice; and injustice will never be popular.

[205] In his youth he had served with some distinction in Italy, where, in conjunction with the Infant Don Philip, he commanded the allied army of France and Spain. He possessed the personal courage, the cleverness, the turn for political intrigue, and the wrong-headedness which seemed hereditary in his family. The part he took in the affairs of the Parliament gained him the sobriquet, from the King, of “Mon Cousin l’Avocat.” He died in 1776, aged fifty-nine.—E.

[206] A dissolute courtier of illustrious family, who had the poor merit of being sincerely attached to an unworthy master. Unhappily for his country he was trusted with high commands, even after the battle of Rosbach, where he had shared all the dishonour of that signal defeat. The assistance of Marshal d’Estrèes enabled him for once to be successful at Johannisburgh. He died in 1787, aged seventy-two. The ex-Jesuit, Georgel, who was attached to the family, has painted him in flattering colours. See Mémoires de Georgel, vol. i. p. 278.—E.

[207] The Maréchal d’Estrèes, Louis César le Tellier, grandson of the celebrated Louvois. He was at this time seventy years old, and probably exhausted by long service. He had greatly distinguished himself at Fontenoy; but his chief exploit was the victory he gained at Hastenbeck, over the Duke of Cumberland. This did not prevent his being harshly treated by the Court, and through the intrigues of the Maréchal de Richelieu he was for a time deprived of his rank and employment, and imprisoned in the Castle of Doulens on an unfounded charge of having left his victory incomplete. He was afterwards recalled and employed, but his last campaign against Prince Ferdinand was not a successful one. He died in 1771, aged seventy-six.—E.

[208] See vol. i. p. 138, supra.

[209] See vol. i. p. 139, supra.

[210] He had defeated Prince Ferdinand at Clostercamp, in the battle which made the name of the Chevalier d’Assas so illustrious in the French annals. In the reign of Louis the Sixteenth he became Minister of Marine and was much respected. He died in 1801, aged seventy-four.—E.

[211] The Duc had none of the brilliancy of his cousin. His manners were cold and reserved, which his enemies ascribed to pride, and his friends to modesty. He never was popular. As Minister of Marine he appears to have discharged his duties efficiently, and the French fleet under his administration recovered the losses it had suffered in the war. His splendid seat near Melun, still in the possession of his descendants, and formerly the delight of the Intendant Fouquet, shows that his public services were not unrewarded. He died in 1795, aged seventy-three.—E.

[212] Madame de Staël paints him to the life: “C’étoit un homme d’esprit dans l’acceptation commune de ce mot.... Sa dignité de Prêtre, jointe au désir constant d’arriver au Ministère, lui avoit donné l’extérieur réfléchi d’un homme d’état, et il en avoit la réputation avant d’avoir été mis à portée de la dementir.... Il n’étoit ni assez éclairé pour être philosophe, ni assez ferme pour être despote; il admiroit tour à tour la conduite du Cardinal de Richelieu, et les principes des encyclopédistes.”—Considérations sur la Révolution Française.—His brief administrations made the Revolution inevitable, and he was among its early victims. The manner of his death is uncertain; the Abbé Morellet, his friend and dependant, insinuating that he poisoned himself. According to an article in the Biographie Universelle, which is very carefully written, he died in consequence of the brutal treatment he received from some soldiers at Sens. The Abbé makes a feeble effort to defend his memory.—(Mémoires de Morellet, vol. i. p. 17; vol. ii. p. 16–467.)—E.

[213] He also became at a great age Chief Minister, in the next reign, and died so. Walpole must have written this eulogy on Maurepas before the latter was restored to office. Agreeable as he might be in society, he proved a most inefficient minister, and altogether unequal to the times. He died in 1781, eighty years old, regretted only by the King and the courtiers, who enjoyed his wit and profited by his patronage. One of his last acts was the disgrace of Necker, a minister who perhaps could then have saved the monarchy, though he afterwards hastened its downfall.—E.

[214] He was related to the Duc de Bouillon by his mother, the Princess Clementina Sobieski.—[Lord Mahon’s Hist. of England, vol. iii. p. 523.—E.]

[215] Clement XIII. His name was Charles Rezzonico, a Venetian.

[216] Avignon.

[217] After a reign of twenty years. He had governed his small kingdom with prudence and ability; and had shown spirit and firmness in the manner in which he met the preparations made by Peter III. for invading Denmark, in 1762. He has the honour of having employed the celebrated Niebuhr, on that scientific expedition to the East, of which the latter has left so interesting a description.—E.

[218] The Duke of Newcastle, besides having joined Lord Bute against Mr. Pitt at the beginning of the reign, had personally offended the latter, by contriving to have his American pension paid at the Treasury, which subjected it to great deductions.

[219] George Bussy Villiers, only son of William Earl of Jersey.

[220] An interesting account of the debate, and especially of Mr. Pitt’s speech, is given in a note to a letter of Mr. Pitt to Lady Chatham.—Chatham Correspondence, vol. ii. p. 363. It agrees generally with the text; indeed, many of the expressions are identical.—E.

[221] Mr. Pitt, however, with less kindness, said, in reply to Conway’s defence (on the ground of defective information) against the charge of having given such tardy notice to the House of the disturbances in America, that “The excuse to be a valid one, must be a just one. This must appear from the papers now before the House.”—(Parliamentary History, vol. xvi. p. 101.)—E.

[222] Sir Francis Dashwood, Lord Despencer.

[223] Charles Montagu, Earl of Halifax, First Commissioner of the Treasury under George I.

[224] Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford, Lord Treasurer to Queen Anne.

[225] Robert Walpole, Earl of Orford, Prime Minister to George I. and George II.

[226] Sir William Draper, created Knight of the Bath for the conquest of the Manillas.—[The credit he had gained by his conduct there, and at the capture of Fort St. George, he lost by various weaknesses, and especially by his gross flattery of Mr. Pitt and Lord Granby. In 1779 he was appointed Lieutenant-Governor of Minorca, and held that office at the time of its capture in 1782, when he exhibited twenty-nine charges against General Murray, his superior in command; the only result of which was, a reprimand to himself. He died at Bath, in 1787. Sir William Draper had been a fellow of King’s College, Cambridge, in whose noble chapel the standards taken at the Manillas are still preserved. See more of him in Wraxall’s Posthumous Memoirs, vol. ii. pp. 186–7. Chatham Correspondence, vol. iii. p. 326. Walpole’s Letters to Mann, vol. iii. p. 386.—E.]

[227] Dowdeswell.

[228] These papers are printed in the Parliamentary History, vol. xvi. p. 112.—E.

[229] Mr. Huske was M. P. for Malden. He died in 1773.—E.

[230] Sir John Cust.

[231] It was not strictly a new paper, but a series of occasional letters in the daily papers. Lord Sandwich will again be found a persecutor of the press in 1773; for printers were alternately, as they served his purposes, his tools or his prey.—[Mr. Scott afterwards received from Lord Sandwich the lucrative appointment of chaplain to Greenwich Hospital. He was more respectable in his profession than might have been expected from his having such a patron, and an accomplished scholar. See an anecdote to his honour, in Twiss’s Life of Lord Eldon.—E.]

[232] The club in Albemarle Street, erected by the late Opposition, now Ministers.

[233] To the bar of the House, whither members are ordered when they violate the rules or privileges of Parliament.

[234] Mrs. Burke was a Presbyterian; the belief, however, of her being a Papist was very general.—E.

[235] A lively description of Burke, as a speaker in the House of Commons, is given in Wraxall’s Hist. Mem. v. ii. p. 35.—E.

[236] William Burke was M. P. for Bedwin, in Wiltshire. He shared all his cousin’s fortunes, and lived with him on terms of the most intimate friendship. When the prospects of the Whigs seemed to be hopeless, he went to India; and through the support of Mr. Francis, obtained some lucrative offices. He was a person of considerable accomplishments. He survived Mr. Burke, and died in 1798.—E.

[237] This division was the result of a junction of the friends of the late ministers with the friends of Lord Bute.—(Chatham Correspondence, vol. ii. p. 380.)—E.

[238] Eldest son of Lord Bute.

[239] Lord George Sackville was intimate with Wedderburne, who had been counsel for him on his trial.

[240] Sir William Burnaby had been Admiral and Commander-in-Chief on the West India station. He was knighted in 1754, and made a baronet in 1767.—E.

[241] I have not been able to find another report of this important debate.—E.

[242] The fall of the Ministers was so much expected, that it was said, “They were dead, and only lying in state; and that Charles Townshend [who never spoke for them] was one of their mutes.”

[243] Walpole takes no notice of the debate in the House of Lords on the American Resolutions. It took place on the 10th of February, and will be found in the Parliamentary History, vol. xvi. p. 168. The speeches of Lord Camden and Lord Northington are eloquent and interesting.—E.

[244] Prime Minister of Portugal.

[245] Mr. Frederick Vane, M. P. for Durham.—E.

[246] Whatever might be Lord Rockingham’s exultation at having carried a measure on which he considered the safety of the empire to depend, he was so far from being blind to his own precarious position, that a few days after, on the 26th, he made overtures to Mr. Pitt expressing an earnest desire to transfer the Government to him. The letters that passed on this occasion are given in Lord Chatham’s Correspondence, vol. ii. p. 397.—E.

[247] Mr. Fuller, no doubt, was a hearty well-wisher of the repeal. He was a sensible man, and his opinion carried additional weight from the decided and independent tone in which he delivered it; and Almon says, that after his death it was discovered that he had been for many years in the receipt of a pension from the Government of 500l. a year, a fact that explains the sudden decline of his zeal mentioned by Burke, Correspondence, ii. 8.—E.

[248] Dr. Hay was a man given up to his pleasures.

[249] Some political writers, opposed to the Rockingham Ministry, have condemned and ridiculed this bill as inconsistent with the principle, and calculated to defeat the object of the repeal of the Stamp Act. Indeed, they have gone so far as to say that it raised an insurmountable barrier to the settlement of these unhappy differences. However unjust the charge may be, the bill proved a fertile experiment to maintain the dignity of the country, and the best defence of the measure is to be found in the state of political parties, which rendered it apparently impossible to obtain the repeal without this concession to the feelings of the King, and to public opinion. The Colonies, also, gave themselves, at that time, little concern about abstract resolutions of right, so long as the same were not carried into practice. The joy with which the Repeal Act was received in America seems to have been unqualified, and some years elapsed before any serious objections were taken against the Declaratory Act. Even in 1775, Burke writing to his Committee at Bristol, observes, that it had not yet become a grievance with the Colonists.—E.

[250] Lord Rockingham gave the place to Mr. Milbank, and was justified in so doing, for the patronage did not belong to the Lord-Lieutenant, who was very indiscreet to have a difference with Lord Rockingham on such a subject.—E.

[251] See pp. 184–187, 202, 203, supra.—E.

[252] Stephen Fox.

[253] Mary, eldest daughter of the Earl of Ossory, by Lady Evelyn Leveson, youngest daughter of John first Earl Gower.

[254] There is no such prohibition in the Navigation Act, but the Act of 6 Geo. III. c. 62, seems to imply the possession of a monopoly of the cotton trade by our West India Islands. No cotton was at that time cultivated in North America. In 1843 our importation of cotton from the United States exceeded 574,000,000 lbs., whilst from our West India Islands it actually did not reach 2,000,000 lbs.—E.

[255] The Duke of Richmond had married Lady Mary Bruce, daughter by her first husband of Lady Ailesbury, Conway’s wife.

[256] Henry Arthur Herbert had married Barbara, niece of the last Marquis of Powis, and had been created Earl of Powis on the accession of the fortune to him and her.

[257] This was the lady celebrated by Pope, who first ambitioned the Crown of Poland, then sought a fortune in the mines of the Asturias, where she met the Comte de Gages. She then was reduced to such extreme poverty, that the young Pretender arriving in Spain, and visiting her, she received him in bed, not having clothes to put on, and he gave her his coat to rise in. She retired to Paris, and was at last harboured in the Temple by the Prince of Conti, where she died not long after the transaction and lawsuit I have mentioned in the text. The Comte de Gages had likewise retired to Paris, and died there a little before Lady Mary Herbert, who lived to August, 1775.

[258] Richard Viscount Howe, an Admiral, Treasurer of the Navy, and a man of most intrepid bravery, as all his brothers were, but not very bright, though shrewd enough when his interest was concerned. [He was personally attached to Pitt, and probably accepted office with his consent. If he paid an undue attention to his own interest it was to very little purpose, for although he was frugal in his habits, and had many opportunities of enriching himself, he died poor.—E.]

[259] He was much connected with the Duke of York, being of the same profession.

[260] Lord Rockingham had reason to complain of Dyson’s conduct, as the King had in some degree answered for the latter when the Government was formed, and in consequence he had been allowed to remain in office. There were others of the Government whose votes reflected blame only on Lord Rockingham himself; for what can be said of his suffering Lord Barrington to become Secretary at War, with the express understanding that he might continue his opposition to the course pursued by the Government on such questions as the American Stamp Act and General Warrants?—(Political Life of Lord Barrington, p. 119.)—E.

[261] Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland.

[262] One was the establishment of a civil government in Canada, a plan for which had lain before the Chancellor for some months, and in which he did nothing [except declaring his entire disapprobation of the plan, and urging that no proposition should be sanctioned by the Cabinet until they had obtained a complete code of the laws of Canada.—1 Adolphus, 226.] It remained unsettled till the year 1774, when the famous bill, called the Quebec Bill, in favour of Popery, was passed, and, agreeably to the supposed author Lord Mansfield’s arbitrary principles, took away decisions by juries.

[263] It appears that Lord Northington’s notification to the King was on the 5th of July.—(Lord Henley’s Life of Northington.) We learn from the same writer that the bad state of Lord Northington’s health, and his frequent disagreements with his colleagues, had for some months made him desirous of an honourable and quiet retreat. There is no doubt, both from his own letters, and the traditions still extant at the bar, that his habits of hard labour and extreme conviviality had by this time undermined his constitution much to the deterioration of his temper, and he perhaps suspected slights that were never intended. Moreover, the scrupulous sense of public duty, the natural reserve and strict propriety of deportment which characterized Lord Rockingham and Mr. Conway were by no means to his taste. He must have felt even less easy with such associates, than his successor Lord Thurlow did in a later day with Mr. Pitt; and, like him, his usual course in the Cabinet was to originate nothing, and to oppose everything. The commercial treaty with Russia, a measure of unquestionable benefit, nearly fell to the ground, owing to his unreasonable and obstinate opposition. He would rarely listen to remonstrances from his colleagues, and was on such cold terms with them as probably justified him in his own mind in breaking up the Cabinet so unceremoniously. He was too fearless to stoop to intrigue, and there was no necessity for it on this occasion. His communications with Mr. Pitt, on the formation of the new Government, are given in the Chatham Correspondence, vol. ii. p. 434.—E.

[264] These words ceased to be true in the year 1783.

[265] That Mr. Pitt’s indisposition was no pretence, is proved by his letters to Lady Chatham. He says on the 15th of July, evidently to calm her anxiety,—“In a word, three hot nights in town rendered a retreat hither [Hampstead] necessary, where I brought yesterday a feverish heat and much bile, and have almost lost it already.” Throughout their correspondence his health is a constant topic, and the extreme delicacy of his nervous system certainly rendered his acceptance of office a most imprudent act.—E.

[266] In a letter of explanation to Lady Chatham, written a fortnight after his interview with Mr. Pitt at Hampstead, Lord Temple admits that his separation from Mr. George Grenville was conditional upon “a public and general union of parties taking place.” This union had long been one of the great objects of Mr. Pitt’s ambition, but was at this time wholly impracticable, as Lord Temple well knew; and taken together with the proposal of Lord Lyttelton for President of the Council, the admission goes far to support Walpole’s statement, that Lord Temple had determined not to take office without his brother. Indeed the connections which Lord Temple had lately formed, and not less than the opinions he had expressed in Parliament, must have rendered his acceptance of Mr. Pitt’s overtures out of the question, unless, to use his own words, he had chosen “to be stuck into the Ministry as a great cypher at the head of the Treasury.”—(Chatham Correspondence, vol. ii. p. 468.)—E.

[267] Nevertheless, had their former connection remained unbroken, Lord Temple might have again proved a valuable colleague to Mr. Pitt. The restless spirit and defective temper, that hurried him when in opposition into excesses so prejudicial to his character, had not prevented his identifying himself completely with Mr. Pitt while in office in all great questions of public policy, and though he had no claim to superior merit as a speaker, his knowledge of the world, fixedness of purpose, and close attention to the details of business, had often compensated for the absence of those qualities in Mr. Pitt. Above all, he was really loved and trusted by him, and through Lady Chatham’s intervention, had access to him when it was denied to every one else. Neither of them prospered after their separation, and Lord Temple had the mortification of finding himself alternately neglected, distrusted, and opposed by the associates of his earlier days during the remainder of his life.—E.

[268] I had written Pitt by mistake, and forget now whom Lord Temple pretended to have recommended. Most probably it was the Duke of Bedford.

[269] A pamphlet in defence, or rather in praise, of the part taken by Lord Temple in those negotiations was soon afterwards published, under the title of “An Inquiry into the Conduct of a late Right Honourable Commoner.” It is justly described by Lord Chesterfield as “scurrilous and scandalous, and betraying private conversation.” It is believed to have been written by Mr. Humphry Cotes, but Lord Temple was suspected to have furnished the materials; and it probably is to this discreditable piece of revenge, more than to the other libels in which Lord Temple was concerned, that Lord Rockingham alluded when he noticed some years afterwards the objection of the Whigs to act under his Lordship.—E.

[270] Two letters, from Mr. Townshend to Mr. Pitt, on the offer of the Chancellorship of the Exchequer, are given in the Chatham Correspondence, vol. ii. pp. 456, 464.—E.

[271] Sir Charles Pratt, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas.

[272] He was Lord Chamberlain, and had married the only daughter of the late Duke of Devonshire, niece of Lord John Cavendish.

[273] Lady Henrietta Harley, sole daughter of Edward second Earl of Oxford, and widow of William third Duke of Portland.

[274] They contested the Parliamentary interest of the counties of Cumberland and Westmoreland, where their estates lay. More of this rivalship will appear hereafter.

[275] Sir James Lowther had married Lady Mary Stuart, eldest daughter of the Earl of Bute.

[276] Francis Russell, Marquis of Tavistock, only son of John Duke of Bedford.

[277] Richard Vernon, Esq., had married the Countess-dowager of Ossory, youngest daughter of John first Earl Gower.

[278] He continued the leader of the Rockingham party in the House of Commons until his death, which took place at Nice in 1775. He left a family of eleven children, of whom one of his younger sons, the Rev. Dr. Dowdeswell, Canon of Christ Church, and Rector of Stansford Rivers, is the present possessor of his estates, having succeeded General Dowdeswell, an elder brother.—E.

[279] Neither had he neglected his interests whilst he held the Great Seal. He had actually given a great sinecure to a trustee for his three daughters.—E.

[280] Mr. Burke’s well-known tract,—a masterpiece of its kind.—E.

[281] The pamphlet has been noticed in p. 345. An attack on Lord Temple also appeared, most bitter and personal, which was ascribed to Mr. Pitt. A curious extract from it is given in Belsham’s History, vol. i. p. 210.—E.

[282] Brother of the Earl of Hardwicke and Charles Yorke.

[283] The Cabinet Council is composed of the First Lord of the Treasury, the First Lord of the Admiralty, the two Secretaries of State, the Lord President, and the Commander-in-Chief; others are now and then added. Lord Chatham, as first Minister, was now necessarily one.

[284] Admiral Augustus Keppel, brother of Lord Albemarle.

[285] Son of the Comte de Virri, the late Envoy from Turin. Baron de la Perriere, who succeeded to his father’s title, married Miss Speed, an Englishwoman, mentioned in Mr. Gray’s long story, and was afterwards ambassador at Madrid and Paris.

[286] Joseph, second son of the Empress Queen Maria Theresa, and of Francis Duke of Lorrain, and Emperor.

[287] Count Kaunitz did not retire; he preserved his influence with occasional fluctuations during the life of Joseph, and he continued nominal Prime Minister until his own death in 1794.—E.

[288] Hans Stanley, employed to negotiate the late peace.

[289] Sir George Maccartney had travelled with Lord Holland’s eldest son. The Czarina obtained a Polish blue riband for him, which he afterwards laid aside on being made Knight of the Bath, while Secretary in Ireland to Lord Townshend, to whom he was recommended by Lord Bute, whose second daughter, Lady Jane Stuart, he married. [He subsequently filled many other employments, having been in succession Governor of Grenada, Governor of Madras, Ambassador to China, and Governor of the Cape of Good Hope. In 1794–5 he was created Earl Maccartney, and in 1796 an English Peer. He died in 1806. He had the merit of being amiable, disinterested, and well informed. His life has been written by his secretary, Mr. John Barrow, in 2 vols. 4to.—E.]

[290] The letters that passed between Lord Chatham and his colleagues on the proposed Northern Alliance may be seen in the second volume of his Correspondence. The scheme was a noble one, and had probably been contemplated by Mr. Pitt during his former Administration, as it certainly would have been an appropriate termination of his brilliant prosecution of the war. Unhappily, Lord Bute’s diplomacy had altered the feeling of foreign powers towards this country, and the King of Prussia, especially, was thoroughly alienated from British connections—partly from personal resentment, partly from distrust of the strength of the Government. His Majesty received the proposal most ungraciously; and it certainly reflects no credit on Lord Chatham’s discretion, to have engaged in this difficult negotiation so precipitately. He had not even consulted Sir Andrew Mitchell, the minister at Berlin—his personal friend, and the person, above others, best qualified to furnish correct information as to the views of the King of Prussia.—E.

[291] George Brudenel, Earl of Cardigan, had married the second daughter and co-heiress of the last Duke of Montagu, and had taken the name of Montagu.

[292] Sir T. Robinson, Lord Grantham, formerly Secretary of State.

[293] Vide Parl. Hist. p. 251, for an eloquent summary of the arguments against the suspending and dispensing prerogative.—E.

[294] Henry Clinton, Earl of Lincoln, Knight of the Garter, and afterwards Duke of Newcastle.

[295] John, only son of Sir John Shelley, (whom he succeeded in the baronetage,) by Margaret Pelham, his second wife, sister of Thomas Duke of Newcastle.

[296] Sir John Shelley had also a personal claim on Lord Chatham, for, although on confidential terms with Lord Temple, he had not followed that nobleman into opposition. He died in 1783.—E.

[297] George third Lord Edgcumbe, [and first Earl Edgcumbe, distinguished himself on some occasions in the navy, and rose to the rank of Rear-Admiral of the Blue in 1762. Before entering the House of Lords, which he did in 1761, he sat in the Commons for Fowey. At his death, which happened in 1795, he was Admiral of the Blue, Lord-Lieutenant of the County of Cornwall, &c. &c.—E.]

[298] This letter, a very creditable one to Mr. Conway’s feelings and good sense, is printed in the Chatham Correspondence, vol. iii. p. 126.—E.

[299] Francis Seymour Conway, son of Francis Earl of Hertford.

[300] Lord Edgcumbe had great weight in Devonshire and Cornwall.

[301] It was a wise intention in no light. Parties are the preservative of a free Government. The King and Lord Mansfield succeeded, though Lord Chatham did not, in breaking all parties; and what was the consequence? that everybody ran to Court, and voted for whatever the Court desired. Lord Chatham, who forfeited his popularity, and set all parties at defiance, sank into an individual of no importance.

[302] It did avail so much, that Grenville fabricated, during his opposition, the famous bill for trying elections by select Committees, likely to give a sore wound to the influence of the Crown, but which, hoping to return to power, he limited in its duration; but it has since been made permanent.

[303] The Duke of Grafton.

[304] Lord Chatham did not long preserve his power, and Lord Edgcumbe soon came into place again, having first revenged himself on the Earl in this humorous epigram:

Says Gouty[B] to Gawkee,[C] pray what do you mean?
Says Gawkee to Gouty, to mob King and Queen.
Says Gawkee to Gouty, pray what’s your intention?
Says Gouty to Gawkee, to double my pension.

[B] Lord Chatham.

[C] Lord Temple.

[305] By Mr. Richard Bentley, son of Dr. Bentley.

[306] According to Mr. Flood, there was little concert, and not much ability shown by the Government in this debate, except in the speech of Townshend, which was “very artful, conciliatory, able, and eloquent. He stated the matter quite anew, disclaiming the officious expressions used by Beckford.”—(Chatham Correspondence, vol. iii. p. 144, note.)—E.

[307] Of these were the two Onslows, the Townshends, and T. Pelham, all connected with and related to the Duke of Newcastle, who, though sedulous in promoting the resignations, could not prevail on his own family to quit, some of them having during their opposition attached themselves particularly to Lord Chatham. A few more were friends of the Duke of Grafton. Yet with these losses, Lord Rockingham’s party remained a very respectable body for numbers and property. The weakness and incorrigible ambition of their chief, the obstinacy of Lord John Cavendish, the want of judgment in Burke, their own too great delicacy, and the abandoned venality of the age, reduced them to be of no consequence, as will appear: but the Duke of Newcastle’s impotent lust of power, Lord Holland’s daring and well-timed profligacy, Lord Chatham’s haughty folly, and Lord Temple’s unprincipled and selfish thirst of greatness, had baffled all opposition, had counterworked Lord Bute’s incapacity and cowardice; and altogether so smoothed the way, that Lord Mansfield’s superior cowardice and superior abilities at last ventured to act and effect almost all the mischief he burnt to execute against the noblest and happiest Constitution in the world.—Sept. 16th, 1774.

[308] A spirited character of Saunders is given in Walpole’s Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 394. His services at Quebec had endeared him to Lord Chatham, and their political connection was renewed upon his Lordship’s retirement from office. A pleasing letter from him is printed in the Chatham Correspondence, vol. iv. p. 231, on his presenting his portrait for the ball-room at Burton Pynsent in 1772. He died three years after, deservedly lamented both in his profession and by the country.—E.

[309] The Duke of Bedford left an interesting account of this negotiation in his private journal. See Cavendish’s debates, vol. i. pp. 591, 596, giving more full details than this book could admit. It confirms the essential parts of Walpole’s narrative, though the reader must draw his own inferences as to the motives of the parties in the transaction.—E.

[310] The King, too, ascribed the Duke’s refusal entirely to the interference of the persons around him.—E.

[311] Thomas Brand, of the Hoo in Hertfordshire, had married Lady Caroline Pierpoint, half aunt of the Duchess of Bedford. Mr. Brand was an old Whig, but had deserted that party in hopes of getting a peerage by the Duke of Bedford’s interest. When the Duke joined the Court after this, he did obtain a promise that Brand should be a Baron on the first creation, but the latter died before that event arrived.

[312] See Walpole’s Letters to Sir Horace Mann, vol. i. p. 320.—E.

[313] Nugent was immediately after created an Irish Peer, by the title of Viscount Clare. [His coarse, clever sayings are frequently recorded in Walpole’s Correspondence. He was the friend and patron of Goldsmith, who dedicated to him the amusing jeu d’esprit the “Haunch of Venison,” and he aspired to be a poet himself, with indifferent success. The Ode to Pulteney, however, contains some spirited lines, and it was therefore pronounced by Gray not to be his. His daughter married in 1775 the first Marquis of Buckingham, to whose interest with Mr. Pitt he owed his elevation to an earldom in 1776. He died in 1788, having survived his son, Colonel Nugent. The present Lord Nugent is his grandson, and has succeeded to his Irish Barony.—E.]

[314] I include Lord Bute’s faction in the standing force of the Crown, and the Scotch in both: but the facility with which the Duke of Bedford had been ready to abandon Grenville, created a new party, or sub-division, that of Grenville and Lord Temple, and their few friends; for though on the failure of the treaty the outside of union was preserved, they evidently remained two distinct factions, as appeared more than once: nor did Lord Temple ever forgive the intended separation, regarding himself and his brother as one, though the Bedfords had frequently told Grenville that they did not look on themselves as connected with Lord Temple, who had opposed them when they were in power.

[315] See an account of this speech in a note to Lord Chatham’s Correspondence, vol. iii. p. 145.—E.

[316] If this supposition be true, it is an extraordinary coincidence that the Duke of Richmond should, eleven years later, have made the speech which unquestionably hastened Lord Chatham’s death.—E.

[317] A Scotch Peer cannot be made an English one by the act of Union; this is evaded sometimes, as in Lord Lorne’s case, by the heir-apparent being created an English Peer. Lord Lorne seemed not to care whom he courted or quitted, so he did but obtain his end. [This disability, which the decision of the House of Lords in 1711 attached to the Scotch Peerage, was removed in 1782, when the point was referred to the Judges, and they delivered an unanimous opinion that the Peers of Scotland are not disabled from receiving, subsequently to the Union, a patent of Peerage of Great Britain.] (Journals of the Lords, 6 June, 1782; Burnet’s Own Times, 586; 1 Peere Williams, 582; Somerville’s Queen Anne, 459.)—E.

[318] The disgraceful practice of nominating Dissenters as Sheriffs, solely with the object of extorting the fines payable on their refusal to act, continued until the spirited resistance of Mr. Evans. The Corporation obtained a judgment against him in the Lord Mayor’s Court, which they expected to be as effectual in his case as it had proved with other contumacious Dissenters; but he appealed to the higher City Courts, and having failed there, carried his plea before the Judge Delegates, who, after a deliberate hearing, decided in his favour. The Corporation then, in turn, appealed to the House of Lords, and the Judges being consulted, Mr. Baron Perrot, the Judge who had distinguished himself by his panegyric on Lord Bute, was the only authority on the Bench that supported the views of the Corporation. The House of Lords accordingly confirmed the sentence of the Delegates. Lord Mansfield’s speech on the occasion, a composition of great ability and eloquence, is reported in the Parliamentary History, vol. xvi. p. 317.—E.

[319] The fact, as I have since learnt from Rigby’s own account, who bragged of it long afterwards, stood thus. He and Wedderburne went to Grenville at Wootton, before the Parliament met, and proposed to him to try to take off two shillings in the pound. Grenville, who not only knew the impossibility of sparing so much, and the mischief the country would suffer, but flattered himself he should soon be Minister again, vehemently opposed the plan; however, as they persisted, he compromised the matter, by making them promise they would confine the reduction to one shilling, for which he not only voted but spoke ably, though so much against his opinion. Perhaps he would have done less hurt, if he had joined in the attempt to reduce it two shillings in the pound, which would have appeared so capital a mischief, that it might possibly have miscarried; and, indeed, supposing a possibility of so much conscientiousness in that or the next Parliament, is paying a compliment to them that may be thought to be overstrained.

[320] Lord Chatham’s letter to the Duke of Grafton of the 23rd of February, in Chatham Correspondence, vol. iii. p. 218.—E.

[321] Mr. Dowdeswell shared the prejudice entertained by most country gentlemen against the land-tax, probably as much as the resentment felt by the Rockingham party against Lord Chatham.—E.

[322] Sir Edmund Isham, Bart., M. P. for Northamptonshire. He died in 1772.—E.

[323] Sir Roger Newdigate, Bart., M. P. for the University of Oxford, and the founder of the prize which bears his name. He died in 1806, aged 87.—E.

[324] What was the context, but that Lord Chatham and Grenville were honester men when Ministers than when patriots?

[325] Quotation of Pitt on Grenville in a debate mentioned before.

[326] See Letters to Sir Horace Mann, vol. i. p. 326.—E.

[327] Sir William Maynard, M. P. for Essex, died in 1772.—E.

[328] Colonel Henry St. John, brother of Frederick Viscount Bolingbroke. [Many of his letters are given in the Selwyn Correspondence. They are smart and lively. He lived among the wits of his day, and was liked by them. He died in 1818.—E.]

[329] Charles Sloane Cadogan, only son of Charles Lord Cadogan. I have said he was attached to Grenville; it was because he thought Grenville likely to come into power again; but when deserted by the Bedfords, Cadogan paid his court to Lord Gower. When Lord North became Minister, he became so servile to him, that being out shooting in Norfolk during the Newmarket season, it was a joke with the persons who returned thence to examine the game going to London, and at every inn was a parcel directed by Cadogan to Lord North. [He married a daughter of Walpole’s favourite sister, Lady Maria Churchill, from whom he was afterwards divorced—a circumstance that ought to be weighed against the severity of this note.—E.]

[330] He was made Master of the Mint; and in 1774, when the light guineas were called in and recoined, he was computed to get 30,000l. by his profits on the recoinage.

[331] Several letters between Lord Chatham and his colleagues at this time in confirmation of the statement in the text are given in the third volume of the Chatham Correspondence.—E.

[332] See vol. iii. of these Memoirs.—E.

[333] Robert Jones, Esq., M. P. for Huntingdon, died in 1774.—E.

[334] Luke Scrafton, for some years Governor of Bengal. He was the author of “Reflections on the Government of Hindostan, with a short sketch of the History of Bengal, from the year 1739 to 1756; with an Account of the English Affairs to 1758,” 8vo., London, 1762. A second edition was printed in 1770. See an account of his controversy with Mr. Vansittart, in Nichols’s “Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century,” vol. ix. p. 573, and in the Gentleman’s Magazine, vol. xxxiv. p. 55.—E.

[335] This was written in October, 1769.

[336] I am assured by my friend Lieutenant-General Sir Richard Bourke, the editor of Mr. Burke’s Correspondence, that this charge is unfounded, and utterly at variance with the statements of Mr. Burke’s private affairs, to be found in his papers.—E.

[337] Henry Lyttelton, formerly Governor of Carolina, and youngest brother of George Lord Lyttelton.

[338] Francis Russell, only son by Gertrude Leveson, the Duke’s second wife.

[339] They were called, in the satires of the time, the Bloomsbury Gang, Bedford House standing in Bloomsbury Square: of these the chief were Earl Gower, Lord Sandwich, and Rigby. Sandwich gloried in his artifices; Rigby was not ashamed of his, but veiled them for better use; Lord Gower had neither feeling, shame, nor remorse. All three were men of parts, and agreeable. Lord Weymouth became an accession, and inferior to none of them in their worse faults; he brought pride into the account, and a less proportion of parts.

[340] Lady Tavistock died in 1768 at Lisbon, where she had been sent for the recovery of her health. Hers was really a case of broken heart. From the hour that her husband’s death was made known to her, she drooped until she sank into what she truly designated “the welcome grave.”—E.

[341] Walpole’s hatred of the Duke and Duchess of Bedford must have been intense, or his sagacity could have scarcely overlooked, that in censuring Junius he condemns himself. Perhaps he is the more blameable of the two. Junius may have believed the Duke to have been a bad man. Walpole has elsewhere described him as having a good heart. He knew the facts urged by Junius in support of the charge of the Duke being an unnatural parent to be untrue; and yet he not only leaves them uncontradicted, but frames his narration so as to facilitate their belief. The Duke’s memory has been repeatedly vindicated from this cruel aspersion, and never with more generous and indignant eloquence than lately by Lord Brougham.—(Political Sketches, vol. iii.) It has always been understood in the quarters likely to be the best informed, that he felt his son’s loss deeply to the last hour of his life. Instead, however, of yielding to his grief, he endeavoured to employ his thoughts on public business, and the natural fervour of his disposition insensibly engaged him in the scenes before him perhaps more deeply than he was aware of. The meeting he attended at the India House must, as appears from the Company’s books, have been that of the 8th of April, which determined the course to be taken by the Company on the Government propositions: a great question, in which he took the liveliest interest. The force of mind he thus displayed is noticed with commendation in a letter written at the time by David Hume, who, from his connection with Conway, is assuredly an impartial witness.—(Hume to M. de Barbantine, Cav. Debates, vol. i. p. 601.) The absurd charge brought by Junius against the Duchess, of making money by Lord Tavistock’s wardrobe, originated in its having been sold for the benefit of his valet and Lady Tavistock’s maid, according to the general practice of that day.—E.

[342] He was brother of the Member for Berkshire, and of Miss Vansittart, favourite of the Princess of Wales, and was lost not long after in a voyage to India, along with Mr. Scrafton, author of an excellent tract on Indian affairs.

[343] He not only risked, but lost it in 1783.

[344] Three Lords of the Bedchamber, the Earls of Coventry, Eglinton, and Buckinghamshire, were also in the minority. (See Chatham Correspondence, vol. iii.) The Duke of Bedford notices the Debate in his Journal as if he had not felt much interest in the matter. (Cavendish’s Debates, vol. i. p. 601.)—E.