After considerable delay Horne and Campbell were appointed Attorney- and Solicitor-General; the delay was occasioned by ineffectual attempts to dispose of Horne elsewhere. They wanted to get some puisne judge to resign, and to put Horne on the Bench, but they could not make any such arrangement, so Horne is Attorney. Pepys was to have been Solicitor if the thing could have been managed. I don’t think I picked up anything else, except that the King was very averse to the French attack upon Antwerp, and consented to the hand-in-hand arrangement between France and England with considerable reluctance. The fact is he hates this Government so much that he dislikes all they do.
Lord Lansdowne is just come from Paris, and gives a flourishing account of the prospects of King Louis Philippe and his Government, but as he is the Duc de Broglie’s intimate friend his opinion may be prejudiced. The King appears certainly to have rather gained than not by the attack which was made on him, from the coolness and courage he evinced, and it is a great point to have proved that he is not a coward.
Brighton, December 14th, 1832
Came here last Wednesday week; Council on the Monday for the dissolution; place very full, bustling, gay, and amusing. I am staying in De Ros’s house with Alvanley; Chesterfields, Howes, Lievens, Cowpers, all at Brighton, and plenty of occupation in visiting, gossiping, dawdling, riding, and driving; a very idle life, and impossible to do anything. The Court very active, vulgar, and hospitable; King, Queen, Princes, Princesses, bastards, and attendants constantly trotting about in every direction: the election noisy and dull—the Court candidate beaten and two Radicals elected. Everybody talking of the siege of Antwerp and the elections. So, with plenty of animation, and discussion, and curiosity, I like it very well. Lord Howe is devoted to the Queen, and never away from her. She receives his attentions, but demonstrates nothing in return; he is like a boy in love with this frightful spotted Majesty, while his delightful wife is laid up (with a sprained ancle and dislocated joint) on her couch.
Brighton, December 17th, 1832
On Sunday I heard Anderson preach. He does not write his sermons, but preaches from MR. GULLY. notes; very eloquent, voice and manner perfect, one of the best I ever heard, both preacher and reader.
The borough elections are nearly over, and have satisfied the Government. They do not seem to be bad on the whole; the metropolitans have sent good men enough, and there was no tumult in the town. At Hertford Duncombe was routed by Salisbury’s long purse. He hired such a numerous mob besides that he carried all before him. Some very bad characters have been returned; among the worst, Faithful here; Gronow at Stafford; Gully, Pontefract; Cobbett, Oldham; though I am glad that Cobbett is in Parliament. Gully’s history is extraordinary. He was taken out of prison twenty-five or thirty years ago by Mellish to fight Pierce, surnamed the ‘Game Chicken,’ being then a butcher’s apprentice; he fought him and was beaten. He afterwards fought Belcher (I believe), and Gresson twice, and left the prize-ring with the reputation of being the best man in it. He then took to the turf, was successful, established himself at Newmarket, where he kept a hell, and began a system of corruption of trainers, jockeys, and boys, which put the secrets of all Newmarket at his disposal, and in a few years made him rich. At the same time he connected himself with Mr. Watt in the north, by betting for him, and this being at the time when Watt’s stable was very successful, he won large sums of money by his horses. Having become rich he embarked in a great coal speculation, which answered beyond his hopes, and his shares soon yielded immense profits. His wife, who was a coarse, vulgar woman, in the meantime died, and he afterwards married the daughter of an innkeeper, who proved as gentlewomanlike as the other had been the reverse, and who is very pretty besides. He now gradually withdrew from the betting ring as a regular blackleg, still keeping horses, and betting occasionally in large sums, and about a year or two ago, having previously sold the Hare Park to Sir Mark Wood, where he lived for two or three years, he bought a property near Pontefract, and settled down (at Ackworth Park) as John Gully, Esq., a gentleman of fortune. At the Reform dissolution he was pressed to come forward as candidate for Pontefract, but after some hesitation he declined. Latterly he has taken great interest in politics, and has been an ardent Reformer and a liberal subscriber for the advancement of the cause. When Parliament was about to be dissolved, he was again invited to stand for Pontefract by a numerous deputation; he again hesitated, but finally accepted; Lord Mexborough withdrew, and he was elected without opposition. In person he is tall and finely formed, full of strength and grace, with delicate hands and feet, his face coarse and with a bad expression, his head set well on his shoulders, and remarkably graceful and even dignified in his actions and manners; totally without education, he has strong sense, discretion, reserve, and a species of good taste which has prevented, in the height of his fortunes, his behaviour from ever transgressing the bounds of modesty and respect, and he has gradually separated himself from the rabble of bettors and blackguards of whom he was once the most conspicuous, and tacitly asserted his own independence and acquired gentility without ever presuming towards those whom he has been accustomed to regard with deference. His position is now more anomalous than ever, for a member of Parliament is a great man, though there appear no reasons why the suffrages of the blackguards of Pontefract should place him in different social relations towards us than those in which we mutually stood before.
Petworth, December 20th, 1832
Came here yesterday. It is a very grand place; house magnificent and full of fine objects, both ancient and modern; the Sir Joshuas and Vandykes particularly interesting, and a great deal of all sorts that is worth seeing. Lord Egremont was eighty-one the day before yesterday, and is still healthy, with faculties and memory apparently unimpaired. He has reigned here for sixty years with great authority and influence. He is shrewd, eccentric, and benevolent, and has always been munificent and charitable in his own way; he patronises the arts and fosters rising genius. Painters and sculptors find employment and welcome in his house; he has built a gallery which is full of EARL OF EGREMONT. pictures and statues, some of which are very fine, and the pictures scattered through the house are interesting and curious. Lord Egremont hates ceremony, and can’t bear to be personally meddled with; he likes people to come and go as it suits them, and say nothing about it, never to take leave of him. The party here consists of the Cowpers, his own family, a Lady E. Romney, two nieces, Mrs. Tredcroft a neighbour, Ridsdale a parson, Wynne, Turner, the great landscape painter, and a young artist of the name of Lucas, whom Lord Egremont is bringing into notice, and who will owe his fortune (if he makes it) to him. Lord Egremont is enormously rich, and lives with an abundant though not very refined hospitality. The house wants modern comforts, and the servants are rustic and uncouth; but everything is good, and it all bears an air of solid and aristocratic grandeur. The stud groom told me there are 300 horses of different sorts here. His course, however, is nearly run, and he has the mortification of feeling that, though surrounded with children and grandchildren, he is almost the last of his race, and that his family is about to be extinct. Two old brothers and one childless nephew are all that are left of the Wyndhams, and the latter has been many years married. All his own children are illegitimate, but he has everything in his power, though nobody has any notion of the manner in which he will dispose of his property. It is impossible not to reflect upon the prodigious wealth of the Earls of Northumberland, and of the proud Duke of Somerset who married the last heiress of that house, the betrothed of three husbands. All that Lord Egremont has, all the Duke of Northumberland’s property, and the Duke of Rutland’s Cambridgeshire estate belonged to them, which together is probably equivalent to between 200,000ℓ. and 300,000ℓ. a year. Banks told me that the Northumberland property, when settled on Sir H. Smithson, was not above 12,000ℓ. a year.[2]
[2] [The eleventh Earl of Northumberland, Joscelyn Percy, died in 1670, leaving an only daughter, who married Charles Seymour, ninth Duke of Somerset. This lady is described as ‘the betrothed of three husbands,’ because she was married at fourteen to Henry Cavendish, son of the Duke of Newcastle, who died in the following year. She was then affianced to Thomas Thynne of Longleat, who was assassinated in 1682; and at last married to the Duke of Somerset. The eldest son of this marriage, Algernon Seymour, who succeeded to the Dukedom of Somerset in 1748, was created Earl of Northumberland on the 2nd of October, 1749, and Earl of Egremont on the following day, with remainder (as regards the latter title) to his nephew Sir Charles Wyndham, who succeeded him in February 1750. The Earldom of Northumberland passed at the same time to Sir Hugh Smithson, son-in-law of Duke Algernon, who was created Duke of Northumberland in 1766. The titles and the vast property of the Duke of Somerset, Earl of Northumberland, thus came to be divided.