CHAPTER V.
In 1734 there had been a fiercely contested General Election, and Thomas Pitt had been returned for both Okehampton and Old Sarum. He elected to sit for Okehampton, and nominated his brother, William, together with his brother-in-law, Nedham, for the other borough. So, on February 18, 1735, William was returned Member for the notorious borough of Old Sarum; an area of about sixty acres of ploughed land, on which had once stood the old city of Salisbury, but which no longer contained a single house or a single resident. The electorate consisted of seven votes. When an election took place the returning officer brought with him a tent, under which the necessary business was transacted.[91]
To such a constituency it was superfluous, and indeed impossible, to offer an election address, or an exposition of policy. But William's politics could not be other than those of his brother and nominator, though it would seem that Thomas conformed to William rather than William to Thomas. We have seen some indications in his letters to Ann that Thomas had been favourable to Sir Robert Walpole, and that so late as November 1734. But it seems probable that William, who was united in private friendship with Lyttelton and the Grenvilles, was drawn to them by political sympathy as well, and was thus in agreement with the fiercest section of the Opposition. By the time that William was elected, Thomas, who was connected with the same group by marriage, must also have thrown in his political lot with it, or he would not have nominated his brother. For William, though only a cornet of horse, was known to be an enemy, and a redoubtable enemy, to the Minister. On this point we have clear evidence in a remarkable statement by Lord Camelford, which will be quoted later.
William's political opinions were then, we may safely suppose, the result of family connection, for through his brother and his own friendships he was closely united with that band of politicians who met and caballed at Stowe, the stately residence of Lord Cobham. There he was a visitor for the first time this year (1735). His stay lasted not less than four months, from the beginning of July to the end of October. He could scarcely have remained so long without being enrolled in this small but important group, even had he not been enlisted already. But he was probably a recruit before his visit began. His brother, as we have seen, had married Christian Lyttelton, Cobham's niece; George, afterwards Lord Lyttelton, was her brother, and Cobham's nephew, as well as William's intimate friend; Richard and George Grenville, the first of whom is better known as Lord Temple, and the second as a laborious but intolerable prime minister, were Cobham's nephews; Richard, indeed, was his heir. A family connection was thus formed, which, at first held up to ridicule under the nickname of 'Cobham's cubs,' or 'The Cousins,' or 'The Boy Patriots,' was to be for the next thirty years a notable factor in political history, and a sinister element in Pitt's career.
So it may be well here to turn aside for a moment to consider these Grenvilles, who exercised so singular and baleful an influence on Pitt, and indeed on public affairs in general. For from the moment that Pitt became their brother-in-law, he was adopted as one of the brotherhood and choked in their embraces. From this mortal entanglement he emancipated himself too late. It was then patent how different his career would have been had he had a man of common-sense at his elbow, or at least an unselfish adviser. George Grenville, however, complained on his side that the connection had been fatal to the peace and happiness of the Grenvilles.[92]
Who was the chief of this combination? Richard Temple, Viscount Cobham, best remembered as the 'brave Cobham' to whom Pope addressed his first Epistle and as the founder of the dynasty and palace of Stowe, was not merely a soldier who had served with distinction under Marlborough, but a fortunate courtier on whom the House of Hanover had heaped constant and signal honours. He was created first a Baron, then a Viscount, Constable of Windsor Castle, Governor of Jersey, a Privy Councillor, Colonel of the First Dragoons, and was afterwards to become a Field Marshal and Colonel of the Horse Guards. He had, hints Shelburne, some of the Shandean humour of Marlborough's veterans, but his portrait shows a keen, refined, perhaps sensitive countenance; he was also something of a bashaw.[93] Sated with military honours, and always a staunch Whig, he had now taken to conspicuous politics and splendour; politics exacerbated by a personal slight, and splendour displayed in sumptuous hospitality, princely buildings, and lavish magnificence of gardens. These, laid out under the supervision of Lancelot Brown, extended at last to not less than four hundred acres. Here he erected pavilions and shrines in the fashion of those times; the most daring of which was one to commemorate his friendships, with which politics had made sad havoc before the temple was completed. Here he kept open house in the spacious and genial fashion of that time, and entertained Pope, Congreve, Bolingbroke, Pulteney, the wits as well as the princes of the day. From these pleasing cares he had recently been diverted by one of those needless affronts which seem so inconsistent with the robust and genial character of Walpole, but to the infliction of which Walpole was singularly prone. On account of his opposition to the Excise Bill, Cobham had been deprived of his regiment, the same, by-the-bye, in which Pitt was a subaltern. Stung to political ardour by this insult, he had begun to form a faction of violent opposition, of which his nephews and their friends were the nucleus. Thus began that formidable influence which had its home and source at Stowe for near a century afterwards, and which for three generations patiently and persistently pursued the ducal coronet which was the darling object of its successive chiefs.
Cobham, then, founded the family, and, so long as he lived, directed their operations, with too much perhaps of the spirit of a martinet. When he died his fortune and title passed to his sister, afterwards, as we shall see, Countess Temple in her own right, the mother of the Grenvilles with whom we are concerned.
There were originally five Grenville brothers: Richard, George, James, Henry, and Thomas. Three of these, however, are outside our limits. Thomas, a naval officer of signal promise, was killed in action off Cape Finisterre in May 1747. James and Henry were cyphers, not ill provided for at the public charge. Both seem to have broken loose at one time from the tyranny of the brotherhood: James at first siding with Richard against George in 1761; and Henry, whom we find Richard anxious, on opposite grounds it is to be presumed, to oust from the representation of Buckingham in 1774. James, who, says Horace Walpole, 'had all the defects of his brothers and had turned them to the best account,' was Deputy Paymaster to Pitt; and Henry was a popular Governor of Barbadoes, as well as Ambassador at Constantinople for four years, after which both subsided into the blameless occupation of various sinecures.