CHAPTER IV
FLAG RANK AND PARLIAMENT
When Rodney became a rear-admiral he had already been in Parliament for eight years. No word good or bad need be said of his career as a member in the House, for it had necessarily been, and was to continue to be, insignificant. The truth is that he valued his seat for social and professional reasons. It has always been a pleasant thing for a gentleman to be a member of the House, and at that time the best club in England was particularly agreeable. The work demanded was as much as you chose to do, and the privileges were many. For a naval or military officer a seat was especially valuable. When Rodney was on his way from the relief of Gibraltar to his third command in the West Indies in 1779, he wrote to his second wife a letter, in which he said that no man could hope to hold a satisfactory position in the navy unless he had a seat in Parliament. His meaning is easy to understand. A naval officer who was also a member had in the first place a much better chance of obtaining a command than another, and in the second, was much more likely to be well backed up when he was in it. The possession of a vote which might be used to support or annoy a minister would give him an independent position, or at least a claim. Moreover, his mouth could not be shut. The calculation was a convincing one, and therefore His Majesty’s sea officers went into the House as much as they could. Indeed, the number of admirals and captains who were members of Parliament in the early and middle eighteenth century was large. The Treasury and Admiralty made a similar calculation for their part. If it was convenient for a naval officer to have a seat, it was equally useful to ministers that many members should belong to a body of gentlemen who might be soothed by the prospect of command, or kept in order by fear of the loss of place. Naval officers were therefore commonly chosen as Treasury candidates (i.e. nominees) for dockyard seats, or for the pocket boroughs in the west. So there was between ministers and naval officers not a little of that mutually advantageous give-and-take by which His Majesty’s Government was so largely carried on in the last century.
Rodney, with the sagacity of a practical man, had early seen the advantage of obtaining a seat in Parliament, to say nothing of the fact that as a gentleman of good connections he would naturally wish to be in the House if possible. For one who, like himself, could not cultivate popularity there were three ways in which his useful seat might be obtained. An officer might belong to a great family with plenty of “influence” of its own. This—the best—was Boscawen’s position. “Old Dreadnaught,” as the sailors called him, had largely to thank the fact that he was Lord Falmouth’s brother and M.P. for Truro for the commands which enabled him to destroy M. de la Clue at Lagos, and to help in the taking of Louisburg. Another way was to inherit or make money enough to “cultivate an interest,” as the process was politely called, in some properly constituted borough. The third way was to attach yourself to a patron and follow him. It was the tamer eighteenth-century equivalent of the alliance recorded in the Fair Maid of Perth which bound the stout Laird of Wamphray to ride with the redoubted Lord of Johnstone, who again was banded with the doughty Earl of Douglas. In the meantime the Devil’s Deck of Hellgarth was employed in looking after the borough.
Not having family influence or private fortune enough, or of the right kind in the right place, and being withal resolute to get on in this world by all means permissible to a gentleman, Rodney had nothing for it but to attach himself to a patron. With what Carlyle would doubtless have praised as showing a certain veracity of intellect, he recognised the conditions of the game and played it resolutely. He sat for Saltash in Cornwall as nominee of John Clevland, the Clerk of the Admiralty. Clevland, a Cornishman of Scotch descent, owned Saltash by inheritance, and used it with judgment to push his own fortunes in the world. To give the seat to a naval officer was for him an obviously convenient way of making it serve that end. In 1751 it was Rodney who was selected, while he was in command of the Rainbow on the Newfoundland station. Doubtless, Mr. Clevland’s protection helped to make him a more acceptable suitor for the hand of Miss Jane Compton, and beyond all question it helped him to his successive commands of the Kent, the Fougueux, the Prince George, and the Monarch.
Before 1759 Rodney, however, had secured a greater and more powerful patron than Clevland. I have already quoted the passage of one of his letters in which he thanked the Duke of Newcastle for all his preferment in the service. It was to the Duke that he owed his seat at Okehampton in this year. There does not appear to have been any quarrel with Clevland, but no doubt reasons judged sufficient by all the gentlemen concerned made it desirable to give Saltash to somebody else. For the rest, Newcastle was distinctly a patron worth having. He would, in this alliance, play doughty Earl of Douglas to Clevland’s Lord of Johnstone and Rodney’s Laird of Wamphray. It was promotion for the Laird to deal directly with the Earl. Between 1751 and 1759 there is evidence to show that Rodney was employed as negotiator in confidential transactions between Newcastle and the Earl of Northampton. He did not come empty-handed to the alliance. Rodney had his own “plump of spears,” in the form of some Parliamentary interest in Hampshire, acquired probably by his first marriage, which was at the minister’s disposal in return for the proper consideration. Still there can be no sort of doubt as to the relations between the men. They are indicated in a letter dated “Spithead, December 2nd, 1759,” which lies written in Rodney’s large, flowing, but slightly gouty handwriting in the Newcastle correspondence.
“My Lord,” he begins, “I beg Your Grace will permit me to return you my most sincere thanks for the Honour you have bestowed on me in chusing me a Member of Parliament for Okehampton. A steady adherence to Your Grace’s commands shall ever distinguish me while I have a seat in the House.” Then after a few words of congratulation on Hawke’s recent magnificent victory off Quiberon, he ends, “I have the Honour to be with the utmost Respect and Gratitude Your Grace’s most Devoted and most obedient humble Servant, G. B. Rodney.” The style of the time allowed a gentleman to write in this submissive way, but it was a gentleman who was protected writing to his protector. That this was the footing on which the Admiral stood to the Duke he never attempts to conceal, nor is there the slightest reason to suppose that he saw aught undignified in it. There is something respectable in the honesty with which he tells the naked truth as to his election for Okehampton.
The Parliament he joined in this year did not last long. It was dissolved by the death of George the Second in 1760, and a general election was made necessary. At once Rodney hastened to put his Parliamentary influence in Hampshire at the minister’s command. He did not again sit for Okehampton, but for Penryn. It appears, from a very piteous letter of Rodney’s to West of the Admiralty, written in February, 1761, that Okehampton was wanted for a Mr. Wenman Coke who was to be elected “on the interest” of Mr. Thomas Pitt. Rodney asks West in anguish to tell him, “for God’s sake,” what he has done “to gain His Grace’s displeasure,” which is the harder to bear because he came in only to serve His Grace, and wishes to “continue on no other foundation.” West stood his friend, and the Admiral was sent down to contest Penryn, where Clive was spending his Indian booty in “making himself an interest.” Rodney, though his reputation was as yet small, not only in comparison with what it was destined to be, but with that of several of his contemporaries, was a distinguished naval officer, and Cornwall liked naval officers. He could, moreover, pay part at least of his expenses. It may be, too, that the death of Admiral Boscawen in the January of this year opened the way for Rodney by removing the natural candidate of the important Falmouth family. However that may be, Rodney went down supported by the Boscawens and the Edgcumbes, and recommended by His Grace. The contest is the subject of a letter of his to his patron, which is so characteristic of the man and the time that I shall quote it bodily.
Penryn, March 25th, 1761.
My Lord—I must beg leave to lay before Your Grace the present situation of affairs at this place, where I arrived on Sunday last, and hence in company with Lord Falmouth and Mr. Edgcumbe canvassed the town.
We find at present but a small majority owing to the defection of several officers in the customs and salt office, both here and at Falmouth, as likewise two men belonging to the Pacquets, who are all obstinate in opposition, the Agents of the other party having had the presumption to read a letter as from Your Grace, which has deluded these people so much that Mr. West’s letter signifying Your Grace’s pleasure had not the least effect. I must therefore join with Lord Falmouth and Mr. Edgcumbe for the Dismission of one Charles Robbins, a Tydesman, etc., at Falmouth, which may have the desired effect on the other officers.