His friend Lord Sandwich[162] was of a very different character; in nothing more than in the inflexibility of his honesty. The Duke of Bedford loved money, to use it sensibly and with kindness to others; Lord Sandwich was rapacious, but extravagant when it was to promote his own designs. His industry to carry any point he had in view was so remarkable, that for a long time the world mistook it for abilities; but as his manner was most awkward and unpolished, so his talents were but slight, when it was necessary to exert them in any higher light than in art and intrigue. The King had never forgiven his indecent reflections[163] upon the Electorate when he was in Opposition, and as soon as ever he found his Ministers would permit him to show his resentment, he took all occasions to pay his court to them by treating Lord Sandwich ill, particularly by talking to Lord Anson before him on all matters relating to the fleet. An incident (one should have thought quite foreign to the Administration) contributed to give the King a new handle to use Lord Sandwich with indignity: the Bedfords had transacted a marriage between one of the Duchess’s sisters[164] and Colonel Waldegrave, against the consent of her father, Lord Gower; and Lord Sandwich had been so imprudent as to let the ceremony be performed at his apartments at the Admiralty. The Pelhams, who always inoculated private quarrels on affairs of state, dispatched my Lord Gower to ask a formal audience of the King, and complain of Lord Sandwich’s contributing to steal his daughter. Lord Gower[165] was a comely man of form, had never had any sense, and was now superannuated. He had been educated a stiff Jacobite, elected their chief on his first coming into the King’s service, and had twice taken the Privy Seal before he could determine to change his principles. The King entered into his quarrel; and the Pelhams by this artifice detached him from his family, and persuaded him that to resign with them would be sacrificing himself in the cause of Lord Sandwich, who had offered him such an indignity.

When Lord Sandwich found his disgrace unavoidable, and even had got intelligence of the day on which he was to be dismissed, he endeavoured by his own solicitations, and by the interposition of the Duke, to prevail on the Duke of Bedford to throw up the Seals first. This finesse, which did not succeed, was calculated to prevent the appearance of the Duke of Bedford’s resigning upon his account, and consequently the new obligations to be laid upon him by that measure: governing that Duke no longer, he chose to be no longer connected with him; but Bedford now would neither stay in, nor go out by his advice.

FOOTNOTES:

[134] A story is current, that Sir Robert, finding it difficult to prevail on Yorke to quit a place for life for the higher but more precarious dignity of Chancellor, worked upon his jealousy, and said, that if he persisted in refusing the Seals, he must offer them to Fazakerley. “Fazakerley!” exclaimed Yorke; “impossible! he is certainly a Tory, perhaps a Jacobite.” “It’s all very true,” replied Sir Robert, taking out his watch, “but if by one o’clock you do not accept my offer, Fazakerley by two becomes Lord Keeper of the Great Seal, and one of the staunchest Whigs in all England.” Yorke took the Seals and the Peerage.—E.

[135] Yet, in the course of the work, the author laments Lord Hardwick’s influence in Cabinets, where he would have us believe he was despised, and acknowledges that he exercised a dominion nearly absolute over that House of Parliament, which, he would persuade his readers, laughed at him. The truth is, that wherever that great magistrate is mentioned, Lord Orford’s resentments blind his judgment, and disfigure his narrative.—E.

[136] Sir R. Walpole often said of the Duke of Newcastle, “His name is Perfidy.” ([Vide Appendix.])

[137] He never lay in a room alone; when the Duchess was ill, his footman lay in a pallet by him.

[138] An instance of it: after Sir Robert Walpole was out, he often pressed Mr. Pelham to take care of Sturt, who had been employed in Spain, which he neglecting, Sir Robert said one day to Mr. Pelham, “Here has been poor Sturt with me.” Mr. Pelham could not help interrupting him, and crying out, “G— d— the rascal! what does he come to you for?”

[139] John Carteret, Earl of Granville, was early distinguished in business, and sent Embassador to Denmark, and made Secretary of State when very young; but attempting to undermine Sir Robert Walpole, he was removed to the Lieutenancy of Ireland, and afterwards entirely laid aside. He became the principal speaker against the Court in the House of Lords; but towards the end of that Opposition, he was compelled by his associates, who suspected that he was negotiating a peace for himself, to make the famous motion for removing Sir Robert Walpole, on whose fall he was again made Secretary of State.

[140] In one of his speeches upon the war with Spain, he said, “We were entering upon a war that would be stained with the blood of Kings, and washed with the tears of Queens!” It was in ridicule of this rant, that Sir Charles Williams, in an unfinished poem, called the “Pandemonium,” where he introduced orations in the style of the chief speakers of the Opposition, concluded Lord Granville’s with the following line, at the close of a prophetic view of the ravages of the war,