[59] On April 7, 1763, Lord Bute resigned, and was on the same day succeeded by George Grenville, as First Lord of the Treasury. During the autumn recess, George III. opened negotiations with Pitt to take Grenville's place. But no change was made, and Grenville was preparing to meet Parliament in November, 1763, as Prime Minister.
[60] Henry Temple, second Viscount Palmerston (1739-1802), a man of artistic tastes, and, in after-years, a frequent resident in Italy. He was at this time M.P. for Hastings. He married, as his second wife, January 3, 1783, Miss Mee, by whom he was the father of the Prime Minister, born 1784.
[61] In Gibbon's Journal for September 23, 1762, written at Southampton, occurs the following entry which explains the words "my friend Wilkes:"— "Colonel Wilkes of the Buckinghamshire Militia dined with us, and renewed the acquaintance Sir Thomas and myself had begun with him at Reading. I scarce ever met with a better companion; he has inexhaustible spirits, infinite wit and humour, and a great deal of knowledge: but a thorough profligate as well in principle as in practice; his character is infamous, his life stained with every vice, and his conversation full of blasphemy and bawdy. These morals he glories in, for shame is a weakness he has long since surmounted. He told us himself that, in this time of public dissension, he was resolved to make his fortune. Upon this noble principle he has connected himself with Lord Temple and Mr. Pitt, commenced a public adversary to Lord Bute whom he abuses weekly in the North Briton, and other political papers in which he is concerned. This proved a very debauched day; we drank a good deal both after dinner and supper, and when at last Wilkes was retired, Sir Thomas and some others (of whom I was not one) broke into his room and made him drink a bottle of claret in bed." Wilkes had been challenged by Mr. Samuel Martin, M.P. for Camelford, formerly Secretary of the Treasury under both the Duke of Newcastle and Lord Bute, for speaking of him in the North Briton as a low fellow and dirty tool of power. Wilkes was dangerously wounded in the duel, which was fought in November, 1763. In the preceding April he had been arrested under a General Warrant on suspicion of being the author of No. 45 of the North Briton. He applied for a writ of Habeas Corpus, and the case came before Lord Chief Justice Pratt in the Court of Common Pleas. He was discharged from custody, the judges unanimously holding that the arrest was a breach of his privilege as a member of Parliament.
[62] Gibbon refers to his promotion to the rank of major in the Hampshire Militia.
[63] Lady Mary died in 1761. A surreptitious edition, said to be edited by John Cleland, of her letters written during her travels in Europe, Asia, and Africa, was published in three volumes at London in 1763.
[64] George Pitt, first Lord Rivers (cr. 1776), served as Envoy at the Court of Turin from 1761 to 1768, in which latter year he was elected M.P. for Dorsetshire. He died in 1803, at the age of eighty-two.
[65] Edward Augustus, Duke of York, third child and second son of Frederick, Prince of Wales, born March 14, 1739, died September 17, 1767, at Monaco.
[66] Louis Dutens (1730-1812), chaplain to the Embassy at Turin in 1758, had, in the absence of the Envoy (the Hon. Stuart Mackenzie), acted as chargé d'affaires. He retained the post till the appointment of George Pitt in 1762. In 1764 he was once more acting as chargé. The Count de Viry had been Sardinian Minister in London, where his services to Lord Bute gained him from George III. a pension of £1000 a year, and a promise of the post of minister for his son. Viry was at this time Foreign Secretary to Charles Emanuel III.
[67] Sir M. Featherstonhaugh, Bart., F.R.S., M.P. for Portsmouth, died March, 1774.
[68] At Lausanne, in 1764, Gibbon met Mr. Holroyd (afterwards Lord Sheffield). In his Journal for April 6, 1764, he says: "J'ai conçu une véritable amitié pour Holroyd. Il a beaucoup de raison et des sentimens d'honneur avec un cœur des mieux placé." The friendship then begun ripened into warm affection. "My obligations to the long and active friendship of Lord Sheffield," Gibbon says in the will by which he appoints his friend one of his executors, "I could never sufficiently repay." Of the warmth of his affection, and the nature of some of his obligations, the letters now published afford continual proof.