July 24th, 1829
The accounts from Ireland are very bad; nothing but massacres and tumults, and all got up by the Protestants, who desire nothing so much as to provoke the Catholics into acts of violence and outrage. They want a man of energy and determination who will cause the law to be respected and impartially administered. If Lord Anglesey was there, it is very probable these outrages would not have taken place, but no one cares for such a man of straw as the present Lord Lieutenant.
The Duke of Cumberland is doing all he can to set the King against the Duke; he always calls him ‘King Arthur,’ which made the King very angry at first, and he desired he would not, but he calls him so still, and the King submits. He never lets any of the Royal Family see the King alone; the Duchess of Gloucester complains bitterly of his conduct, and the way in which he thrusts himself in when she is with his Majesty. The other day Count Münster came to the King, and the Duke of Cumberland was determined he should not have a private audience, and stayed in the room the whole time. He hates Lady Conyngham, and she him. They put about that he has been pressed to stay here by the King, which is not true; the King would much rather he went away. The Duke of Wellington told me that he one day asked the King when the Duke was going, and he said, ‘I am sick to death of the subject. I have been told he was going fifty times, but when he goes, or whether he ever goes at all, I have not the least idea.’ He is now very much provoked because the King will not talk politics with him. His Majesty wants to be quiet, and is tired of all the Duke’s violence and his constant attacks.
August 8th, 1829
There is a story current about the Duke of Cumberland and Lady Lyndhurst which is more true than most stories of this kind. The Duke called upon her, and grossly insulted her; on which, after a scramble, she rang INTRIGUES OF THE DUKE OF CUMBERLAND. the bell. He was obliged to desist and to go away, but before he did he said, ‘By God, madam, I will be the ruin of you and your husband, and will not rest till I have destroyed you both.’
Vesey Fitzgerald has turned out the Chief Clerk in the Board of Trade, and put in Hume[1] as Assistant Secretary. He told me it was absolutely necessary, as nobody in the Office knew anything of its business, which is, I believe, very true, but as true of himself as of the rest. Hume is a very clever man, and probably knows more of the principles of trade and commerce than anybody, but so it is in every department of Government—great ignorance on the part of the chiefs, and a few obscure men of industry and ability who do the business and supply the knowledge requisite, sic vos non vobis throughout.
[1] [Mr. Deacon Hume, a very able public servant. He remained at the Board of Trade many years.]
O’Connell was elected without opposition; he was more violent and more popular than ever. They treat him with every indignity, and then they complain of his violence; besides, he must speak to the Irish in the strain to which they have been used and which pleases them. Had he never been violent, he would not be the man he is, and Ireland would not have been emancipated.
August 18th, 1829
Last Saturday I came back from Goodwood, and called on Lady Jersey, whom I found very curious about a correspondence which she told me had taken place between the Duke of Cumberland and the Chancellor relative to a paragraph which had appeared in the ‘Age,’ stating that his Royal Highness had been turned out of Lady Lyndhurst’s house in consequence of having insulted her in it. She said she was very anxious to see the letter, for she heard that the Duke had much the best of it, and that the Chancellor’s letter was evasive and Jesuitical. The next day I was informed of the details of this affair. I found that the Duke had called upon her and had been denied; that he had complained half in jest, and half in earnest, to the Chancellor of her not letting him in; that on a subsequent day he had called so early that no orders had been given to the porter, and he was let in; that his manner and his language had been equally brutal and offensive; that he afterwards went off upon politics, and abused the whole Administration, and particularly the Chancellor, and after staying two or three hours, insulting and offending her in every way, he took himself off. Soon after he met her somewhere in the evening, when he attacked her again. She treated him with all possible indignation, and would have nothing to say to him.