19th.—The Council, which had been postponed, was held at Bedford-house, whither the Duke of Newcastle would have carried Lord Halifax and Lord Anson, but the Duke of Bedford refused to admit them. It was proposed to hear the whole Board of Trade upon their Memorial; but the Duke of Bedford said, that this proposal of stationing two men of war at Nova Scotia, upon the notion of a French fleet going thither, had not been mentioned in a long letter that he had received from that Board in January last, since which period there had been no letters from Governor Cornwallis. Nobody agreed with the Duke but Lord Sandwich, not even his father-in-law, Lord Gower, who had been with him an hour before the rest arrived, and said to him, “Now we have caught Lord Halifax in a trap;” (but he himself was intangled in Mr. Pelham’s snares, and did not know it!) nor the Duke of Marlborough, though his friend and brother-in-law, and though his connexion with Mr. Fox had made the Duke of Bedford flatter himself with his support: but both the Duke and Lord Sandwich were too sanguine about Mr. Fox, who had declared to them, that if it came to a rupture, he must adhere to Mr. Pelham. He had repeated this to Lord Sandwich in the summer, when commissioned by him to carry a reconciling message to Mr. Pelham. Mr. Fox had made the same declaration of his unavoidable connexion with Mr. Pelham to the Duke of Cumberland: but the Duke of Bedford was not only apt to forget what he did not care to hear, and even to forget his own change of opinion, but would and did often believe the very reverse. He told the two brothers that this was designed as a hostile measure against him, which they then denied.
20th.—Potter[73] opened in an able manner his scheme for an additional duty of two shillings on spirits, to be collected by way of Excise. He was a young man of the greatest goodnature, though he had set out with two of the severest speeches[74] that ever were made against the Ministry and the Grenvilles, and with the greatest applause; but his goodnature had kept up to its character much more than his parts. He was not bashful nor void of vanity, and had now flattered himself that he should figure like Sir Robert Walpole by attempting to re-establish the defeated Excise Scheme; not reflecting that the opposition to that project was levelled at the Minister, not occasioned by the pretended inconveniences and dangers of it. Mr. Pelham spoke greatly against it, and for suppressing unlicensed houses, and for a visitation by parish officers. He was seconded by the Solicitor General. Alderman Baker, a man rather busy and confident than very able, fluctuated between both schemes: but Mr. Pelham desiring a respite till the morrow se’nnight for further deliberation, it was agreed to.
The Prince of Wales had been ill of a pleurisy, but was so well recovered as to attend the King to the House of Lords on the 12th, where he was very hot. He went to Carlton-house to unrobe, put on only a light frock, and went to Kew, where he walked some time, and returning to Carlton-house, laid down upon a couch for three hours in a ground room next to the garden, caught a fresh cold, and relapsed that night. He had had a blow upon his stomach in the summer by a fall, from which he had often felt great pains. Dr. Wilmot, Taylor, and Leigh attended him, and Hawkins the Surgeon. On Monday, 18th, a thrush appeared; however, he was thought better. On Wednesday night, between nine and ten o’clock, Wilmot and Hawkins were with him; he had a fit of coughing. Wilmot said, “Sir, you have brought up all the phlegm; I hope this will be over in a quarter of an hour, and that your Royal Highness will have a good night.” Hawkins went out of the room, and said, “Here is something I don’t like.” The cough continued; the Prince laid his hand upon his stomach, and said, “Je sens la mort.” Pavonarius, his favourite German valet-de-chambre, who was holding him up, felt him shiver, and cried, “Good God! the Prince is going!” The Princess, who was at the feet of the bed, snatched up a candle, but before she got to him, he was dead! An imposthume had broken, which, on his body being opened, the Physicians were of opinion had not been occasioned by the fall, but from a blow of a tennis-ball three years before.
Thus died Frederick Prince of Wales! having resembled his pattern the Black Prince in nothing but in dying before his father. Indeed it was not his fault if he had not distinguished himself by any warlike achievements. He had solicited the command of the Army in Scotland during the last Rebellion; though that ambition was ascribed rather to his jealousy of his brother than to his courage. A hard judgment! for what he could he did! When the Royal Army lay before Carlisle, the Prince, at a great supper that he gave to his Court and his favourites, as was his custom when the Princess laid in, had ordered for the dessert the representation of the citadel of Carlisle in paste, which he in person, and the Maids of Honour, bombarded with sugar plums! He had disagreed with the King and Queen early after his coming to England; not entirely by his own fault. The King had refused to pay what debts he had left at Hanover; and it ran a little in the blood of the family to hate the eldest son: the Prince himself had so far not degenerated, though a better natured man, and a much better father, as to be fondest of his second son, Prince Edward. The Queen had exerted more authority, joined to a narrow prying into his conduct, than he liked; and Princess Emily, who had been admitted into his greatest confidence, had not forfeited her duty to the Queen by concealing any of his secrets that might do him prejudice.
Lord Bolingbroke, who had sowed a division in the Pretender’s Court, by the scheme for the father’s resigning his claim to the eldest boy, repeated the same plan of discord here, on the first notice of the Prince’s disgusts; and the whole Opposition was instructed to offer their services to the Heir Apparent against the Crown and the Minister. The Prince was sensible to flattery, and had a sort of parts that made him relish the sort of parts of Lord Chesterfield, Doddington, and Lyttelton, the latter of whom being introduced by Doddington, had wrought the disgrace of his protector. Whoever was unwelcome at St. James’s was sure of countenance at the Prince’s apartments there. He was in vain reprimanded for this want of respect. At last, having hurried the Princess from Hampton Court, when she was in actual labour, to the imminent danger of hers and the child’s life,[75] without acquainting either King or Queen, the formal breach ensued; he having added to this insult, a total silence to his mother on her arriving immediately to visit the Princess, and while he led her to her coach; but as soon as he came in sight of the populace, he knelt down in the dirt and kissed her hand with the most respectful show of duty. He immediately went all lengths of opposition and popularity till the fall of Sir Robert Walpole, when he was reconciled to, though never after spoken to, by the King.
On Lord Granville’s disgrace, he again grew out of humour; but after having been betrayed and deserted by all he had obliged, he did not erect a new standard of opposition, till the Pelhams had bought off every man of any genius that might have promoted his views. Indeed, his attachment to his followers was not stronger than theirs to him. Being angry with Lord Doneraile[76] for not speaking oftener in the House of Commons, he said, “Does he think I will support him, unless he does as I would have him? Does not he consider that whoever are my Ministers, I must be King?” His chief passion was women, but like the rest of his race, beauty was not a necessary ingredient. Miss ****, whom he had debauched without loving, and who had been debauched without loving him so well as either Lord Harrington or Lord Hervey, who both pretended to her first favours, had no other charms than of being a Maid of Honour, who was willing to cease to be so upon the first opportunity.
One of his favourites, Lady Archibald Hamilton[77] had been neither young nor handsome within his memory. Lady Middlesex[78] was very short, very plain, and very yellow: a vain girl, full of Greek and Latin, and music, and painting, but neither mischievous nor political. Lady Archibald was very agreeable and artful, but had lost his heart, by giving him William Pitt for a rival. But though these mistresses were pretty much declared, he was a good husband, and the quiet inoffensive good sense of the Princess (who had never said a foolish thing, or done a disobliging one since her arrival, though in very difficult situations, young, uninstructed, and besieged by the Queen, Princess Emily, and Lady Archibald’s creatures, and very jarring interests), was likely to have always preserved a chief ascendant over him.
Gaming was another of his passions, but his style of play did him less honour than the amusement. He carried this dexterity[79] into practice in more essential commerce, and was vain of it! One day at Kensington that he had just borrowed five thousand pounds of Doddington, seeing him pass under his window, he said to Hedges[80] his Secretary, “That man is reckoned one of the most sensible men in England, yet with all his parts, I have just nicked him out of five thousand pounds.” He was really childish, affectedly a protector of arts and sciences, fond of displaying what he knew: a mimic, the Lord knows what a mimic!—of the celebrated Duke of Orleans, in imitation of whom he wrote two or three silly French songs.[81] His best quality was generosity; his worst, insincerity, and indifference to truth, which appeared so early, that Earl Stanhope wrote to Lord Sunderland from Hanover, what I shall conclude his character with, “He has his father’s head, and his mother’s heart.”
The Princess staid four hours in the room after he was dead, before she could be quite convinced of it. At six in the morning they put her to bed; but she rose again at eight, and sent for Dr. Lee, and burnt, or said she burnt, all the Prince’s papers. As soon as he was dead, Lord North was sent to notify it to the King, who was playing at cards. He immediately went down to Lady Yarmouth, looking extremely pale and shocked, and only said, “Il est mort!” He sent a very kind message to the Princess, and another the next morning in writing by the Lord in Waiting, Lord Lincoln. She received him alone, sitting with her eyes fixed; thanked the King much, and said she would write as soon as she was able; in the meantime, recommended her miserable self and children to him.
The King and she both took their parts at once; she, of flinging herself entirely into his hands, and studying nothing but his pleasure, but with winding what interest she got with him to the advantage of her own and the Prince’s friends: the King of acting the tender grandfather; which he, who had never acted the tender father, grew so pleased with representing, that he soon became it in earnest. When he was called the morning after the Prince’s death, they found him drest, walking about his room, and extremely silent. Princess Emily, who had no great reason to flatter herself with much favour if her brother had lived to be King, sent immediately for the Duke from Windsor, who, on receiving the news, said to Lord Sandwich with a sneer, “It is a great blow to this country, but I hope it will recover it in time!” He little thought that himself was to receive the greatest shock from it! He sent a compliment by Lord Cathcart to Prince George, who cried extremely. As soon as the Prince’s death was published, elegies were cried about the streets, to which they added, “Oh, that it was but his brother!”[82] and upon Change and in the city, “Oh, that it was but the butcher!”[83] In short, the consternation that spread on the apprehensions that the Duke would at least be Regent on the King’s death, and have the sole power in the mean time, was near as strong as what was occasioned by the notice of the Rebels being at Derby.