Born in the year 1800 and dying in 1870, Lord Clarendon lived through a period of social, political, and economic change more rapid probably than had been witnessed in any similar space of time in the previous history of mankind. It was his lot, moreover, to wield considerable influence over the course of affairs, inasmuch as his public service, extending over fifty years, caused him to be employed in a succession of highly responsible, and even critical, situations. British Minister at Madrid at the outbreak and during the course of the Carlist Civil War from 1833 to 1839, he was admitted into Lord Melbourne's Cabinet immediately upon returning to England in the latter year. He was Lord Lieutenant of Ireland throughout the memorable famine years, 1847-1852. Relieved of that arduous post, Lord Clarendon entered Lord Aberdeen's government in 1852 as Foreign Secretary, which office he retained through the Crimean War, and became responsible for the terms of the Treaty of Paris in 1856. On Lord Palmerston's death in 1865, he returned to the Foreign Office, and had to deal with the settlement of the "Alabama" claims.
The annals of the first half of Queen Victoria's reign having been pretty thoroughly explored and dealt with by many competent writers, the chief interest in these pages will be found in Lord Clarendon's private correspondence, which has been well preserved, and has been entrusted to Sir Herbert Maxwell for the purpose of this memoir. Lord Clarendon was a fluent and diligent correspondent; Charles Greville and others among his contemporaries frequently expressed a hope that his letters should some day find their way into literature. Sir Arthur Helps, for instance, wrote as follows in Macmillan's Magazine: "Lord Clarendon was a man who indulged, notwithstanding his public labours, in an immense private correspondence. There were some persons to whom, I believe, he wrote daily, and perhaps in after years we shall be favoured—those of us who live to see it—with a correspondence which will enlighten us as to many of the principal topics of our own period." It is upon this correspondence that Sir Herbert Maxwell has chiefly relied in tracing the motives, principles, and conduct of one of the last Whig statesmen. Among the letters dealt with, and now published for the first time, are those from Lord Melbourne, Lord Palmerston, Lord Aberdeen, Lord Derby, M. Thiers, M. Guizot, the Emperor Louis Napoleon, etc., and many ladies.
WILLIAM AUGUSTUS, DUKE OF CUMBERLAND,
HIS EARLY LIFE AND TIMES, 1721-1748.
By the Hon. EVAN CHARTERIS,
Author of "Affairs of Scotland, 1744-1746."
With Plans and Illustrations. 12s. 6d. net. [In preparation.
Mr. Charteris has a good subject in "Butcher" Cumberland, not only on account of the historical and romantic interest of his background, but also by reason of the Duke's baneful reputation.
In the present volume the author has carried the career of the Duke of Cumberland down to the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle. The period includes the Duke's campaigns in Flanders against Marshal Saxe, the Battle of Culloden, and the measures taken for the suppression of the Jacobites in Scotland. Mr. Charteris has had the exceptional advantage of studying the Cumberland Papers at Windsor Castle, and it is largely by the aid of hitherto unpublished documents that he is now able to throw fresh light on a character which has been the subject of so much malevolent criticism. At the same time the volume deals with the social and political conditions among which Cumberland was called on to play so important a part in the life of the nation. These have been treated by the author with some fulness of detail. Cumberland, in spite of his foreign origin, was remarkably typical of the characteristics of the earlier Georgian period, and an endeavour has been made in the present volume to establish the link between the Duke and the politics, the morals, the aims, and the pursuits of the age in which he lived.