Bathurst[99] and Joddrell were continued Attorney and Solicitor to the Princess. Bathurst was an unpleasant, but sometimes a good speaker. Joddrell was a very rising man, but died soon after, and was succeeded by Henley, who was a lawyer in vogue, but his abilities did not figure in proportion to the impudence of his ill-nature. Douglas and Boone (in the room of Sir John Cust, who was soon after restored on the death of Douglas) were named to the Green Cloth, and Bloodworth had the sole direction of the Stables. The King offered the Princess a Master of the Horse, but told her it must be a Nobleman, and there was one to whom he had an objection: This was Lord Middlesex.[100] She desired none; if she had been disposed to contend, it would not have been of all men in favour of the Lord in question. His figure, which was handsome, had all the reserve of his family, and all the dignity of his ancestors. He was a poet, too, because they had been poets. As little as he came near them in this talent, it was what he most resembled them in, and in what he best supported their honour. His passion was the direction of operas, in which he had not only wasted immense sums, but had stood lawsuits in Westminster Hall with some of those poor devils for their salaries. The Duke of Dorset had often paid his debts, but never could work upon his affections; and he had at last carried his disobedience so far, in complaisance to, and in imitation of the Prince, as to oppose his father in his own boroughs. That Duke,[101] with the greatest dignity in his appearance, was in private the greatest lover of low humour and buffoonery. He had early lost the hearts of the Whigs by some indirect connexions with Lord Oxford in the end of Queen Anne’s reign; and he was never thought to have wanted a tendency to power, in whatever hands it was, or was likely to be lodged.
The people had idly imagined that advantage would be made of the youth of the Prince’s children to raise the Duke to the Throne. Nobody had doubted but he must be Protector if the King should die during their minority. All the precedents ran in his favour, except two Acts which had never taken place, made in the reign of King Henry the Eighth, for appointing Anne Boleyn and Jane Seymour Regents during the eventual minorities of their respective children. No woman had ever yet been Regent in a minority. Even the Black Prince’s widow, though of the most distinguished virtue and character, though an English woman, and of the Blood Royal of England herself, was passed over, and her son regented by his uncles. The King, who never thought of disturbing the right order of succession, and who grew a little jealous of the Duke the moment he had lost his other son, had, immediately on the Prince’s death, proposed to have the future Regency settled by Parliament.
The Duke of Bedford, though connected with, and wishing well to the Duke, and upon no terms with the Princess, had the honesty to be the first man that declared for her being Regent. The Pelhams took care not to disagree with him on this article. The Duke[102] had broke entirely with the Duke of Newcastle towards the end of the war, when Lord Sandwich having been ordered to communicate a new plan to Count Kaunitz, had desired to be excused, but the orders being repeated, he had obeyed artfully. The Duke thought him in the wrong, and had received his consent to say everything that might reconcile him to the Duke of Newcastle, but that he thought himself in the wrong. The Duke of Newcastle had neither accepted nor refused the Duke’s mediation, who was not apt to pardon slighter offences than contempt. He loved indiscriminate submission; flattery did not come up to his ideas of obedience, and consequently he overlooked it: but the least opposition he never forgave. With the most heroic bravery, he had all the severity that levels valour to cowardice, and seemed to love war for itself, without feeling the passions that it gratifies.
It is certain that his martial genius did not proceed from love of glory, nor much from ambition. Glory he despised, saying, “That when he was most popular, the satisfaction was allayed, by thinking on Admiral Vernon!”[103] and he had taken every step to make himself unpopular both with the people and the Army; and thought it so much beneath his rank to have any share in the Ministry, that he would not be of the Cabinet Council, and even when desired to attend their consultations for the Expedition to Port L’Orient, he would not vouchsafe to give his opinion, but confined himself to answering their questions. His strongest principle was the dignity of the Blood Royal, and his maxim to bear anything from his brother if he had lived to be King, rather than set an example of disobedience to the royal authority. These prejudices and this pride were the swellings of his heart and temper, not the errors of his head, for his understanding was strong, judicious, and penetrating, though incapable of resisting partialities and piques, of which he was susceptible from the slightest merit, or most trifling offence. He was as angry at an Officer’s transgressing the minutest precept of the military rubric as at deserting his post, and was as intent on establishing the form of spatter-dashes, or the pattern of cockades, as on taking a town, or securing an advantageous situation.
The misfortunes[104] the nation had suffered from his inexperience while he commanded in Flanders had been amply atoned by his defeating the Rebels in Scotland; but that victory made him in the end more unpopular than all his defeats; for the Scotch, the Jacobites, and his brother’s jealousy never rested till they had propagated such stories of his tyranny and severity, as entirely lost him the hearts of the nation. He bore that hatred mildly, and said, “That so far from resenting it (though he did not know, since he came from Flanders, that he had deserved either praise or blame) he should always with gratitude remember the behaviour of the English, who received him with transports after the battle of Laffelt, instead of impeaching him.” It is said, that after the loss of that day, an English captive telling a French Officer, that they had been very near taking the Duke prisoner, the Frenchman replied, “We took care of that; he does us more service at the head of your Army.” General Legonier,[105] who, by an action of the most desperate gallantry, had prevented the total destruction of our troops in that battle, and almost made Marshal Saxe doubt of his victory, was never kindly treated by the Duke afterwards. Hawley,[106] his executioner, who had been beat at Falkirk by his own arrogance and obstinacy, was always in his favour. He despised money, fame, and politics; loved gaming, women, and his own favourites, and yet had not one sociable virtue.
The Pelhams taking advantage of this national antipathy to the Duke; of their own superiority in Parliament, which was now enforced by the greatest part of the late Prince’s faction; and of a Hanoverian regulation, by which the nearest male relation must be Administrator of that Electorate during a minority, and consequently the Duke’s presence necessary there, even if the King of Prussia should not pretend to the Government in case of his absence, yet as so formidable a neighbour would be too dangerous to an infant Elector, an apprehension that they well knew would easily make its way into the King’s breast, where hatred and fear of his nephew were already sufficiently implanted; by these arts and insinuations they worked upon the King to nominate the Princess, Regent, with a Council; and the Lord Chancellor was deputed from the King to communicate the plan to the Duke. He went in a great fright: the Duke read the scheme, and asked if he must send an answer. The Chancellor hesitated, and did not make a direct reply. However, the Duke desired “He would return his duty and thanks to the King for the communication of the plan of Regency;” and said, “For the part allotted to me, I shall submit to it, because he commands it, be that Regency what it will!” The Duke bad Mr. Fox tell Mr. Pelham this answer, and remember the word submit; adding, “It was a material word; the Chancellor will remember it, however he reports it.”
The Duke felt the force of this treatment in the most sensible manner, and lamented himself in moving terms with his intimates, wishing “the name of William could be blotted out of the English annals;” and saying, “He now felt his own insignificance, when even Mr. Pelham would dare to use him thus!”
From this moment he openly declared his resentment to the two brothers, and professed being ready to connect with, nay, to forgive any man, who would oppose them, even Lord Granville, who was not at all unwilling to overset their power, though till that could be done conveniently, he thought it as well to unite with them. Lord Granville had, during his short and precipitate Ministry, offended the Duke, not only by negotiating a match for him with the King of Denmark’s sister, to favour some of the King’s German views, but had treated him roughly enough, on his expressing an aversion to that marriage, and had told him, he must be taught his duty to his father. The Duke consulted Sir Robert Walpole, then retired from business, how to avoid this wedding. Sir Robert advised him to seem willing to consent, provided the King would immediately make him a large settlement. The Duke took the advice, and had no reason to repent it. The King would not part with his money, as Sir Robert Walpole had foreseen, even to purchase advantages for Hanover.
A mortification of a slighter sort followed soon after the Regency Bill, that showed the Duke in what light he had appeared at his brother’s Court. Prince George making him a visit, asked to see his apartment, where there are few ornaments but arms. The Duke is neither curious nor magnificent. To amuse the boy, he took down a sword and drew it. The young Prince turned pale and trembled, and thought his uncle was going to murder him. The Duke was extremely shocked, and complained to the Princess of the impressions that had been instilled into the child against him.
23rd—Mr. Pelham proposed some further restrictions on the sale of Gin; slight ones indeed for so enormous an evil! They were ratified.