Lord Chatham, His Early Life and Connections

by Earl of Archibald Philip Primrose Rosebery

The day after Fox's conversation with Pitt at the levee, the King sent for Devonshire, and bade him form a Ministry. This Duke was now Lord Lieutenant of Ireland and Fox's closest friend. The King probably hoped in this way to bring about the union between Pitt and Fox, which almost every one desired, save Pitt himself. Pitt himself had nominated Devonshire, but without consulting him, in the interviews with Hardwicke. Devonshire had written to Fox in approval of the resignation as soon as he had heard of it. Five days afterwards he wrote again: 'If my friendship or assistance can be of any use you can command me,' and went on to say, 'Nothing has hurt Mr. Pitt so much as his having shown the world that in order to gratify his resentment and satisfy his ambition he did not value the confusion or distress that he might throw this country into. This I own has in some degree altered the good opinion I had of him.'[361] Devonshire therefore did not seem a propitious Prime Minister for Pitt. But dukes counted for much in those days. No one can read the history of those times without seeing the vast importance attributed to forgotten princes like Marlborough, Bedford, and Devonshire.

Fox soon quarrelled with Devonshire. He considered that Devonshire had abandoned him. The Duke had been his confidential friend, and had left him to help Pitt, and act as Pitt's figurehead. At first he affected to approve. But his wrath only smouldered. On one of the eternal questions of patronage it broke out. Fox wrote to him a note of real dignity and pathos. 'The Duke of Bedford has just now told me that Mr. John Pitt is to kiss hands to-morrow for Mr. Phillipson's place;' (promised, according to Fox, to his friend Hamilton). 'Consider, my Lord, everything that has pass'd, and do not drive me from you. I neither mean to do you harm, nor can do you harm if you think. But Your Grace's own reflections will not please you when you have done so.'[362] Devonshire was a weak man, but he was unconscious of blame and was deeply hurt. Political friendships, when paths diverge, are more difficult to maintain than men themselves realise at the moment of separation.

Oct. 31, 1756.

Devonshire was now sent to Pitt in the country,[363] but found that his terms were such as the King could not be brought to accept. He positively declined association with Fox in any shape, but deigned to apologise to the Duke for having nominated him without previous consultation. It was necessary, he said, to place some great lord there to whom the Whigs would look up, and his partiality had made him presume to suggest his Grace.[364]

Then the King, refusing Pitt's terms, and aware that he had been misinformed as to Fox's language about Bute, sent for Fox and offered him the government. 'I was never dishonest, rash, or mad enough for half an hour to think of undertaking it,' says Fox.[365] And again, 'I am not capable of it,' and goes on to give the reason. 'Richelieu, were he alive, could not guide the councils of a nation, if (which would be my case) he could not from November to April have above two hours in the four-and-twenty to think of anything but the House of Commons.'[366] If that were Fox's need in 1756, it is difficult to imagine the kind of physical and intellectual combination that he would have thought adequate to the stress of affairs in the twentieth century. But in spite of Fox's private opinion thus expressed, his friend Walpole records that he offered at the worst to take the Treasury and go to the Tower if it would save his Sovereign from having 'his head shaved.' 'Ah!' replied the King with his usual shrewdness, 'if you go to the Tower I shall not be long behind you.'[367]

Then the distracted monarch, at the instigation of Fox, tried the fatal expedient of an Assembly of Notables, and summoned all the leading nobles and commoners who were at hand to meet at Devonshire House.[368] But this meeting never took place, for Devonshire postponed or got rid of it. It was to have recommended that Devonshire should have the Treasury, Fox the Exchequer, and Legge be content with a peerage. Pitt himself was to have the seals, with carte blanche for his other friends and dependents. Temple was to be First Lord of the Admiralty.[369]

Fox declares that Devonshire put an end to this plan by positively refusing the Treasury.[370] Holdernesse sent word to Newcastle that les Renardins (the followers of Fox) were less sanguine.[371] And indeed, on November 4, the day after that fixed for the assembly, Devonshire went in to the King and came out from his audience having accepted the Treasury. Bubb says that he stipulated for Fox as Chancellor of the Exchequer.[372] This is at least doubtful. 'This question,' Fox afterwards wrote, 'I beg may be asked: whether at the time his Grace did take it with Legge I was not pressing him strongly to another thing, viz., to offer to take it with me. I pressed this even to ill-humour at his own house with Grenville at night. He refused absolutely, and the next morning what he would not take with me he took with Legge.'[373] This would seem conclusive, were it not that Bubb evidently had his information from Fox at the time; but politicians are prone to illusions on the subject of office. In any case, Devonshire left the Closet First Lord of the Treasury with Legge as Chancellor of the Exchequer; the man with whom two days before he had refused under any circumstances to serve,[374] and whom the King had absolutely refused to take. Fox and Bedford were in the anteroom as he came out, and were thunderstruck. Bedford broke into passionate expostulation; Fox scented an intrigue. However, the deed was done.[375]

Fox says that Devonshire offered him, and he refused, the Pay Office.[376] This is difficult to believe, and does not accord with his other statements that he had offered to serve in a subordinate capacity and been refused. Moreover, it was the office for which he always hankered, with its vast profits and safe obscurity, as compared with the Spartan frugality and dangerous prominence of the Secretaryship of State.[377]

As to the intrigue, Fox's instinct did not deceive him. The fact was that Horace Walpole, having heard of the scheme of the Notables, saw at once that it must put an end to the new arrangement, as it was one that Pitt could not accept. Walpole feared no doubt that, in case of failure, Newcastle, the object of his special detestation, might return to office. So he sent his cousin Conway to alarm the Duke of Devonshire, who consequently suppressed the meeting, and who went himself, as we have seen, to the King to accept office.[378] Horace might well pique himself on his powers of intrigue or duplicity, for a week before he had spontaneously written to Fox to say that he heard that the King and Lady Yarmouth were persuaded that Fox would not take the Treasury, but he hoped they were wrong.[379]

The new First Lord of the Treasury may have resisted having Legge as his Chancellor of the Exchequer, but was easily overborne. What is more difficult to understand is the King's nominating Legge, whom he detested. It was a rude shock for Fox, who had planned the meeting of Notables and framed the scheme it was to advise. Henceforth he controlled himself no more, and became the sleepless enemy of the new administration, which can be no matter of surprise. Pitt had made his total exclusion as absolute a condition as that of Newcastle, and Fox after his warm offers of co-operation and assistance could not but be bitterly mortified. He believed, perhaps justly, that the proscription laid on him proceeded from Leicester House.[380] Henceforth during the short life of the new government he plotted and planned against it, inspiring 'The Test,' a new paper under an old designation, with venomous articles, and ready to form alternative administrations at a moment's notice.[381]