Lord Chatham, His Early Life and Connections

by Earl of Archibald Philip Primrose Rosebery

Pitt declined to enter into this premature traffic, 'it would look too like a faction, there was no country in it'; but expressed himself, in the fashion of the day, with warmth and confidence as to Bubb himself. He thought Bubb of the greatest consequence; nothing was too good for such a man; no one was more listened to in the House and in the country. He wished to be connected with Bubb in the strictest sense politically, as he already was by marriage.[288]

Bubb demurely records these confidences, and was left happy; glad to find, as he writes, that he should receive such support in an opposition which, on patriotic and conscientious grounds, he must have pursued even had he stood alone.[289]

Once more we have to deplore the hapless destinies of political alliance and of Parliamentary twins, united in bonds of principle, who are to part no more. This conversation took place on September 3 (1755). On November 20 Pitt was dismissed, because of his adherence to the virtuous course which Bubb had resolved to pursue without flinching, even if isolated, with or without Pitt. Bubb records the removal in a terse entry of his diary, and the next, not less terse, records his acceptance of a lucrative post tendered by Newcastle. History has to note some such incidents, but we know of none so cynically and complacently narrated by the renegade himself.

Hardwicke made one last desperate effort to move Pitt, but without success. He writes to Newcastle on September 15 (1755): 'I have had a long conversation with the gentleman your Grace knows, but with little effect. I talked very fully and strongly to him upon every part of the case, both as to persons and measures. He made great professions of his regard and firm attachment to your Grace and me, but adhered to his negative. He puts that negative upon two things: His objections to the two treaties of subsidy ... his other objection arose from Mr. F., with whom he declared he could not act.'[290]

On this scene, coming more and more into prominence as the King became older, and as the Prince of Wales, or rather Bute and his clique, waxed bolder, appears the mysterious and elusive influence of Leicester House. It is difficult to trace or measure this combination, except in the naked fact of an old King and a young heir, nor is it easy to trace the connection of Pitt with this party. Every movement in Leicester House was jealously watched by the politicians, much as a late Sultan is said to have tracked the movements of the least menial of his dethroned and secluded predecessor. We read of the Princess being stirred to wrath by her father-in-law's project of marrying her son to the daughter, supposed to be active and ambitious, of a woman she detested. Then there is the suspicion that the Heir Apparent was surrounded by persons who were more or less Jacobite; Bute himself having, it was presumed, Jacobite leanings. But the King at once desisted with rare good sense from any idea of the projected marriage, though no doubt it would have given him pleasure. And the danger of an Hanoverian sovereign becoming a Jacobite under any influence seems too fantastic for a pantomime. The real apprehension was no doubt that Leicester House might shake off the domination and destroy the long monopoly of the Whigs, as indeed it eventually did. And certainly Leicester House, with the throne full in view, was becoming more and more inclined to assert itself. Human nature and family relations had, as usual in such cases, much to do with the matter. The Hanoverian Kings did not love their heirs apparent. George the First hated his, but he had no other son to love, and indeed little capacity for loving, except mistresses who found favour with no one else. George the Second hated his with a peculiar hatred, and was thus able to devote what fatherly affection he had to give to his second son, the Duke of Cumberland. These parental preferences, however justifiable, do not tend to affection between sons. And so there was no love lost between Prince Frederick and his family on the one side, and Duke William on the other. These feelings, as is usually the case, survived, when Frederick died, with increasing intensity between the widow and her brother-in-law. She saw him on the right hand of the King, enjoying all his confidence, as was natural, and herself and her bashful son of no account; so that a new jealousy was added to the original rancour.

Understanding these facts, we are able to follow the course of Pitt. Fox was essentially the Duke of Cumberland's man, and so by the force of circumstances Pitt became allied, but not at this moment closely allied, to Leicester House. He had been a friend and servant of the dead Prince of Wales, then had quarrelled with him, but the original brand was not altogether effaced. Now he was the one champion whom the faction of the late Heir Apparent could adopt; and so the politicians began to see behind Pitt the influence of the coming King, his mother, and their favourite. Thus, when Newcastle had to make the option between Fox and Pitt, it was not merely the choice between two rival orators, but between two rival Courts, the Old and the New. We may be sure that no element in this business was more essentially present to the Minister's mind.

All this seems petty but essential; but all was petty then, as is proved by the mere fact of Newcastle being at the head of the Ministry and master of the House of Commons; and it is all essential to the reader who would understand the history of those times, because the complication of these byways and intrigues is so extreme. There was the King with Lady Yarmouth and Cumberland; there were Newcastle and Hardwicke, with the House of Commons at their feet, and anxious to remain at their feet if that were possible; there was the influence of Cumberland apart from the King, and represented by Fox; there was Bedford, powerful from his property and connections, with a clique hungry for office; there was Pitt with his Grenville relations, who were ready to give him their support, but not less ready to withdraw it if something better should offer. And around and below these was the great shifting mass of politicians by profession and cupidity, the parliamentary Zoroastrians, who worshipped the rising sun, when they could discern it; the sun which should shed upon them office, salary, and titles; striving, sweating, cringing, as Bubb, the most shameless of them all, emphasises in capital letters, 'and all for quarter-day.' It was through this scene of confusion and intrigue that Pitt had to thread his way, not very scrupulously; for he had always lived in this society, had lost whatever thin illusions he had ever possessed, and followed the clues which his experience had taught him to prize. He played the game.

Nov. 13, 1755.

The meeting of Parliament took place two months afterwards and that period was spent by Newcastle and Hardwicke in arranging to discard Pitt and Legge, and to lean on Cumberland and Fox. Newcastle did not yield to Fox without reluctance, for it was, in Pitt's words, parting with some of his sole power. In his helplessness and despair he even offered to cede his place to Granville, who as Carteret had been his most detested bugbear, but who had now subsided into a quiescent President of the Council. Granville refused with a laugh, and preferred to conduct the negotiation with Fox. Fox had to him the merit of keeping out Pitt, whose former denunciations he had neither forgotten nor forgiven. So he had first endeavoured to inspire Murray to face, and now Fox to supplant Pitt. With a flash of his old diplomacy he was able to bring together the two mistrustful parties, on terms which Newcastle had curtly refused in the first insolence of his power, but which now, at the instance of Hardwicke as we have seen, he had to concede. The insane plan of a leaderless House of Commons, left like sheep on a barren moor, owned by an absentee Duke secluded in the Treasury, was to be abandoned. Fox was to be Secretary of State, leader of the House of Commons in name and in fact, and what was far more than either, he was authorised to announce that he represented the full influence of the King in the House 'to help or to hurt.' When the two shepherds, the old and the new, burning with mutual hatred and distrust, met to ratify the conditions, Fox suggested sardonically that it would be best that this should be the last time on which they should meet to agree, that there should be a final settlement, or none at all, meaning that it should be honest and complete. Newcastle, no doubt with a wry face, agreed. 'Then,' said Fox, 'it shall be so'; though indeed it was not. Fox stipulated for the admission or promotion of five persons, the only memorable ones of whom were George Selwyn, whose lovable and humorous personality has survived that of many more eminent contemporaries, and Hamilton, who is the only man, except the less-known Hawkins, who is remembered by a single speech. Chesterfield, on hearing of the reconstitution of the Ministry, observed with his habitual shrewdness that Newcastle had turned out everybody else and had now turned himself out. Fox at once repented of his adhesion, for Stone, Newcastle's confidant, informed him that had he not joined them the Ministry would have instantly resigned.[291] But now he had to content himself with negotiating through Rigby with the Bedford group, which he hoped to bring into office for the purpose of wrecking the administration.

Robinson made less than no difficulties in accommodating himself to the new pretensions. He only yearned to return to the Great Wardrobe of which he had been Master. And so with a pension of 2000l. a year, fixed upon luckless Ireland, he vanishes into space, with the natural remark that he had never looked on his seven children with so much satisfaction as on the completion of these domestic arrangements.