His Grace is succeeded in title and estate by the Hon. John Frederick Sackville (son of the late Lord John Philip Sackville, second son of Lionel Cranfield, first Duke of Dorset), and Knight of the Shire in the present Parliament for the county of Kent.
[101] Lionel Cranfield, first Duke of Dorset, had gone through most of the great posts, and was at this time Lord President, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Constable of Dover Castle, and Knight of the Garter.
He had voted once or twice with the Tory Ministry, when coming one day into the Kit Cat Club (it was about the time that the Portuguese had abandoned the Army of the Allies in Spain) Earl Berkeley, a boisterous zealous Whig seaman, cried out, “God d—n you, Sir, no Portuguese! I will keep company with no Portuguese!”—([Vide Appendix.])
[102] The Duke of Cumberland.
[103] Edward Vernon, a silly, noisy Admiral, who, towards the beginning of the war with Spain, was rash enough to engage to take Porto Bello with six ships only, and rash enough to accomplish his engagement; which made him so popular, that, notwithstanding his failing soon afterwards in an attempt upon Carthagena, and after that, more blameably upon Cuba, by his dissensions with General Wentworth, he was chosen into Parliament for several places, had his head painted on every Sign, and his birth-day kept twice in one year. Yet as his courage was much greater than his sense, his reputation was much greater than his courage. One should have thought that the lightness of his head would have buoyed up his heart in any extremity! He had withdrawn himself but very awkwardly from two or three private quarrels, and lost his public character with still greater infamy; for being out of humour with the Admiralty, he published a series of letters and instructions from that Board in the very heat of the Rebellion, by which he betrayed our spies—[It was believed that one of them was actually hanged in France, he being never heard of after this transaction]—and intelligence to the French, and was removed from all command with ignominy. He raised great wealth by the war, and by his economy, and was at last chosen one of the Directors of the New Herring Fisheries, which occasioned the following epigram:—
Long in the senate hath brave Vernon rail’d,
And all mankind with bitter tongue assail’d;
Sick of his noise, we wearied Heav’n with pray’r,
In his own element to place the tar:
The gods at length have yielded to our wish,