Lord Chatham, His Early Life and Connections

by Earl of Archibald Philip Primrose Rosebery

Never, indeed, was family so well provided for during an entire century as the Temple-Grenvilles. Although the system by which the aristocracy lived on the country was not carried nearly as far in Great Britain as in the France of the fourteenth Louis and his successor, yet it had no inconsiderable hold. Even the austere George, though averse in Burke's expressive language to 'the low, pimping politics of a Court,' did not disdain, when Prime Minister, to hurry to the King to announce the death of Lord Macclesfield and secure for his son, afterwards Marquis of Buckingham, the reversion of the Irish Tellership of the Exchequer thus vacated;[94] nor, a few months later, to obtain the grant of a lighthouse as a provision for his younger children.[95] The Tellership, held as it was under the unreformed conditions, was a place of vast emolument; it is not now easy to compute the amount.[96] Nor is it necessary for the purpose of this book to follow up these details. Cobbett reckoned from returns furnished to the House of Commons that this Lord Buckingham and his brother Thomas, the sons of George Grenville, had in half a century drawn 700,000l. of public money, and William, another brother, something like 200,000l. more. These figures, of course, are open to dispute, but they indicate at least that the revenues from public money of this family of sinecurists must have been enormous. Of English families the Grenvilles were in this particular line easily the first. Had all sinecurists, it may be said in passing, spent their money like the younger Thomas, who returned far more than he received by bequeathing his matchless library to the nation, the public conscience would have been much more tender towards them.

Nor was it need that drove them thus to live upon the public, for the private wealth of the family was commanding; it was the basis of their power. Richard by the death of his mother was said to have become the richest subject in England.[97] And, as time went on, his possessions swelled and swelled. The estates of Bubb[98] devolved upon him. Heiresses brought their fortunes. There seemed no end to this prosperity, and it was all utilised steadily and ceaselessly to extend the political influence of the family.

So all the brothers, even the sailor Thomas, were brought into the House of Commons; and, with their connections and their discipline, so long as this was preserved, formed a redoubtable political force. They were not only a brotherhood but a confraternity. What is really admirable indeed is the pertinacity and concentration of this strange, dogged race, and their devotion, indeed subjection, to their chief; they were a political Company of Jesus. Their objects were not exalted, but from generation to generation, with a patience little less than Chinese, they pursued and ultimately attained what they desired. They were of course unpopular, because their scheme was too obvious; but they knew the value of popularity, and attempted it with pompous and crowded entertainments. They were not brilliant; but in every generation they had a man of sufficient ability, two prime ministers among them, to further their cause. They built, no doubt, on inadequate foundations, but these lasted just long enough to enable the structure to be crowned. It is a singular story; there is nothing like it in the history of England; it resembles rather the persistent annals of the hive.

The career of Pitt is concerned with only two of these Grenvilles, Richard and George. These two men had this at least in common, an amazing opinion of themselves. They were in their own estimation as good as or better than any one else. They resented the slightest idea of any disparity between themselves and Pitt. On what this prodigious estimate was founded we shall never know; we can only conjecture that it was the combination of fortune and family with some ability that made them deem their position at least equal to his. When Pitt had raised Britain from abasement to the first position in the world, when he was indisputably the greatest orator and the greatest power in the country, the Grenvilles considered themselves at the least as Pitt's equals, and him as only one and not the first of a triumvirate. In 1769, when Pitt was reconciled to them, Temple trumpeted the 'union of the three brothers' as the greatest fact in contemporary history. As the alliance of a man of genius with great parliamentary influence and powers of intrigue it was undoubtedly a political fact of note. But any disparity between the three personalities never occurs to Temple. In 1766, he writes: 'If a lead of superiority was claimed (on the part of Pitt) it was rejected on my part with an assertion of my pretensions to an equality.' And again: 'I claimed an equality, and have no idea of yielding to him.... a superiority which I think it would be unbecoming in me to give.' Poor forgotten Temple! With such superb scorn did he reject the offer of the First Lordship of the Treasury, with the nomination of the Chancellorship of the Exchequer and the whole Board of Treasury, when offered by the first man in Europe. An hallucination of the same kind was observed in the brothers of Napoleon. But in that case it was only noted by cynical contemporaries, in this it was proclaimed on the housetops.

Of Richard, the eldest, who became, as will be seen, Earl Temple, a competent and laborious critic has said that he was one of the 'most straightforward, honest, and honourable men of his age.' The age, no doubt, was not famous for public men of this type; but it was not so barren as this judgment would imply. And indeed it is difficult to discern the grounds on which it is based. To the ordinary student Temple, we imagine, will always appear a selfish and tortuous intriguer, who hoped to utilise his brother-in-law's genius and popularity for practical objects of his own. But he had other resources of a more questionable kind. He delighted in the subterranean and the obscure. 'This malignant man,' says Horace Walpole with truth and point, 'worked in the mines of successive factions for over thirty years together.' He was in constant communication with Wilkes, whom he supplied with funds. He was an active pamphleteer. So well were his methods understood that he acquired the dubious honour of a candidature for the authorship of Junius. It is almost certain at any rate that he was one of the few confidants of that remarkable secret. But his wealth and strategy and borough power were all concentrated on selfish and personal objects. As head of the Grenvilles, his design was that the Grenvilles and their connections and all other influences that he could bring to bear should co-operate for the elevation of the family in the person of its chief. For this purpose his brother-in-law, Pitt, was a priceless asset. But all the family had to serve. All of them were put into the House of Commons; and, it may be added, into the Privy Council, except Thomas, the sailor, who was prematurely removed by death. George, who under Pitt and Temple only enjoyed subordinate office, was for a time lured from the family allegiance by Bute with the offer of a Secretaryship of State and the reversion of the headship. But George himself was eventually brought into line.

Temple's aims were simple and material; from the first moment that we discern him he is pursuing them with persistent but intemperate ardour. Hardly was Cobham's body cold, Cobham, his uncle and benefactor, to whom he owed everything, when we find Temple urging that his mother, Cobham's sister and heiress, should be made a Countess in her own right, with descent, of course, to himself. Cobham died on September 13; on September 28 Temple applied for this title. Even Newcastle, the most hardened of political jobbers, was shocked at his precipitation, and suggested a postponement, on the ground of common decency. Temple brushed this objection aside with contempt. He wished the thing done at once, and done it was.

Hardly had he thus been ennobled when we find him signalising his new rank by a filthy trick more suited to a barge than a court. At a reception in his own house, presided over by his charming and accomplished wife, Lord Cobham, as he was now styled, spat into the hat which Lord Hervey held in his hand. This feat Cobham had betted a guinea that he would accomplish. Hervey behaved with temper and coolness. Cobham took the hat and wiped it with profuse excuses, trying to pass the matter off as a joke; but after some days of humiliation he had to write an explicit apology with a recital of all his previous efforts to appease Hervey's resentment.[99] Such diversions, Lady Hester Stanhope declares, were common at Stowe. She narrates one scarcely less nauseous.[100]

Having obtained the earldom, his next object was the Garter. George II. detested him, and refused the request with asperity. So Pitt had to be brought in. Pitt was then all-powerful, for this was the autumn of 1759. He wrote a note full of sombre menace to Newcastle, and demanded the Garter for Temple as a reward for his own services; but still the King refused. Then the last reserves were brought into play. Temple resigned the Privy Seal on the ground that the Garter was denied. Pitt had at the same time a peremptory interview with Newcastle. The King had to yield, but could not repress his anger. He threw the ribbon to Temple as a bone is thrown to a dog. But delicacy, as we have seen, did not trouble Temple in matters of substance, and he was satisfied.

Having obtained these two objects of ambition, he now played for a dukedom. This ambition, suspected presumably in Cobham, had been the subject of epigram so early as 1742.[101] It was avowed, according to Walpole, in 1767, and, indeed, no other explanation seems adapted to his various proceedings at critical junctures. Thus, when in June 1765, George III. and his uncle Cumberland tried to form a Pitt ministry, but found that an absolute condition of such a ministry was that Temple should be First Lord of the Treasury, Temple refused on various flimsy pretexts. When these were surmounted, he declared that 'he had tender and delicate reasons' which he did not explain to the King, or, apparently, to Pitt.[102] That this unwonted delicacy and tenderness were concentrated on the superior coronet appears from the negotiation carried on by Horace Walpole in 1767, when Lord Hertford assured him of the fact that Lord Temple's ambition was now a dukedom.[103] It is not doubtful that this had now become the central preoccupation of his life, and the hereditary object of the family combination. At first sight it would seem improbable that Pitt was aware of it, for the simple reason that he would probably have made efforts to obtain it from the King. On the other hand, it is unlikely that Temple, in the affair of the Garter, having found the inestimable value of Pitt's pressure on George II., could have foregone the effort to exercise it on George III. On the whole, the most plausible conjecture appears to be that Pitt was unsuccessfully sounded by his brother-in-law. All that we know is, that when Pitt finally determined to undertake the ministry without Temple, they had a heated interview, which seems to have left deep marks on Pitt's nerves and health, but whether it turned on Temple's particular ambition or not can now only be matter for surmise.

The death of Temple made no difference to the family ambition. His nephew made violent, even frantic, but ineffectual efforts to obtain the title through Chatham's son. Nor were other means of aggrandisement neglected. By marriage there accrued the fortunes of Chambers, Nugent, Chandos, and, by some other way, that of Dodington. Acre was added to acre and estate to estate, often by the dangerous expedient of borrowed money, until Buckinghamshire seemed likely to become the appanage of the family. Borough influence was laboriously accumulated and maintained. Nor were nobler possessions disdained. Rare books and manuscripts, choice pictures, and sumptuous furniture were added by successive generations to the splendid collections of Stowe. Finally, in the reign of George IV., and in the time of Temple's great-nephew, the object was attained. Lord Liverpool acquired the support of the Grenville parliamentary influence by an almost commercial compact, Louis XVIII. added his instances, and Buckingham became a duke. From that moment the star of the family visibly paled. Eight years afterwards the duke had to shut up Stowe, and go abroad. Less than twenty years from then the palace was dismantled, its treasures were dispersed, the vast estates sold, and the glories of the House, built up with so much care and persistence, vanished like a snow-wreath.