Change of the Ministry—Character of Mr. Legge—The Duke of Bedford has an audience—He declines office—Further appointments—Lord Anson—The Duke of Devonshire and Lord Hartington—The Whigs satisfied—Character of Lord Holderness—Murray released—The Princess delivered of a posthumous child—Discovery of Lyttelton’s letter—Foreign affairs—The Marquis de Mirepoix—Character of Sir Charles Hanbury Williams—Death of the Prince of Orange—Princess of Orange—Debates on Privilege—Illness of the Duke of Cumberland—Debate on the army estimates—Affairs of France—Death of Lord Bolingbroke—The characters of Sir Robert Walpole and Bolingbroke—Death of the Queen of Denmark—Walpole and Pelham.
June 13th.—The Duke of Newcastle wrote to Lord Sandwich, that the King had no farther occasion for his service; and in the evening sent Mr. Legge to acquaint the Duke of Bedford with the dismission of his friend. Legge was a younger son of Lord Dartmouth, who had early turned him into the world to make his fortune, which he pursued with an uncommon assiduity of duty. Avarice or flattery, application or ingratitude, nothing came amiss that might raise him on the ruins of either friends or enemies; indeed, neither were so to him, but by the proportion of their power. He had been introduced to Sir Robert Walpole by his second son, and soon grew an immeasurable favourite, till endeavouring to steal his patron’s daughter,[166] at which in truth Sir Robert’s partiality for him had seemed to connive, he was discarded entirely; yet taken care[167] of in the very last hours of that Minister’s power; and though removed from the Secretaryship of the Treasury, being particularly obnoxious to Lord Bath, he obtained a profitable employment[168] by the grossest supplications[169] to the Duke of Bedford; and was soon after admitted into the Admiralty by as gross court paid to Lord Winchelsea, whom he used ill the moment he found it necessary to worship that less intense but more surely-rising sun, Mr. Pelham. He had a peculiarity of wit and very shrewd parts, but was a dry and generally an indifferent speaker. On a chosen embassy to the King of Prussia, Legge was duped and ill-treated by him. Having shuffled for some time between Mr. Pelham, Pitt, the Duke of Bedford, and Lord Sandwich, and wriggled through the interest of all into the Treasury, and then to the Treasurership of the Navy, he submitted to break his connexions with the two latter by being the indecent messenger of Lord Sandwich’s disgrace. The Duke met him on the steps of Bedford-house (as he was going to Lord Gower to know what part he would take on this crisis) and would scarce give him audience; but even that short interview could not save Legge from the confusion he felt at his own policy; and with the awkwardness that conscience will give even to an ambassador, he said, he had happened, as he was just going out of town, to visit the Duke of Newcastle, where he had not been in two months before, and had been requested by him to be the bearer of this notification.
The Duke of Bedford, who carried Lord Trentham with him, found Lord Gower in no humour to resign with him; on the contrary, enraged at his son, who told him he could not serve under Lord Anson, the new head of the Admiralty. “Sir,” said his father, “he is your superior; he is a Peer.” “Who made him so?” replied Lord Trentham. Lord Gower told the Duke of Bedford that he had listed all his children against him; and threatened Lord Trentham to disinherit him of all that was in his power; who told him in pretty plain terms, how much he was a dupe to the Pelhams; and after many high words, they both left him.
When the Duke of Bedford arrived at Kensington, he found none of the opposite faction but Lord Lincoln, whom he desired to acquaint the Duke of Newcastle with what he was going to say to the King. “Tell him, my Lord, because perhaps he would not like to come in and hear it; I shall neither say more or less for his presence or absence. If he comes into the closet and begins to dispute, I will not altercate with him there; I will afterwards wherever he pleases.” When he went in to the King, he spoke above an hour warmly and sensibly on his own grievances, particularly on the Duke of Dorset being designed Lord Lieutenant for six months before he was made acquainted with it; on his relation, Lord Hartington, being named in the same manner for the Master of the Horse, and called up to the House of Peers, for which he had that very morning kissed hands; on the dismission of his friend Lord Sandwich; and on all the treacheries of the Duke of Newcastle, which he recapitulated, and the scenes of mischief which Mr. Pelham had been acting in Lord Gower’s family: and he concluded with telling the King, that their persecution of him and Lord Sandwich arose solely from their attachment to his son the Duke; and then desired leave to resign the Seals. The King was struck and pleased with this remonstrance; agreed to all he had said of the Duke of Newcastle; doubted of the facts charged on Mr. Pelham; and with regard to Lord Sandwich, only said, “I don’t know how it is, but he has very few friends.” He told the Duke of Bedford, that if he was uneasy in his present post, he would give him that of President; but the Duke said it was impossible for him to act with the two brothers. He begged three reversions in the Secretary’s office for his two secretaries, Mr. Leveson and Mr. Aldworth, and his steward Butcher; to which the King deferred giving an answer till next day, but then granted them; and parted with him with particular marks of favour and approbation.
As soon as the Duke of Bedford had resigned, Lord Trentham sent his resignation in a very explicit letter to Mr. Pelham, in which he spoke warmly on malicious people who had prejudiced his father against him. Mr. Pelham, who could neither avoid doing wrong nor bear to be told of it, was inconceivably stung with this reproach; and as if shifting off the consequence would clear him from being the cause, he would have waved accepting the resignation, sending Lord Trentham word that he was misinstructed in sending it to him, who had no authority to receive it, but yet was sorry for what he was doing.
17th.—Lord Granville was appointed President of the Council, Lord Hartington Master of the Horse, Lord Albemarle Groom of the Stole, Lord Anson First Lord, and the Admirals Boscawen and Rowley Commissioners of the Admiralty; the latter attached to Lord Granville, the other to nothing but his own opinion. He was on the worst terms with Anson, who had carried off all the glory of the victory at Cape Finisterre, though Boscawen had done the service, and whom he suspected of having sent him on the impracticable expedition to Pondicherry on purpose to ruin him. Lord Anson was reserved and proud, and so ignorant of the world, that Sir Charles Williams said he had been round it, but never in it. He had been strictly united with the Duke of Bedford and Lord Sandwich, but not having the same command of his ambition that he had of his other passions, he had not been able to refuse the offer of the Chancellor’s daughter, nor the direction of the Admiralty.
Lord Hartington, and his father, the Duke of Devonshire,[170] were the fashionable models of goodness, though their chief merit was a habit of caution. The Duke’s outside was unpolished, his inside unpolishable. The Marquis was more fashioned, but with an impatience to do everything, and a fear to do nothing. Sir Robert Walpole had set up the father as the standard of Whiggism; in gratitude, he was constantly bigoted to whoever passed for head of the Whigs: but the dexterity of raising his son to so eminent a post as Master of the Horse during his own life, and obtaining a Peerage for his own son-in-law,[171] by retiring from power himself, extremely lessened the value of the rough diamond[172] that he had hitherto contrived to be thought.[173]
However, the Whigs were so satisfied with the promotion of Lord Hartington, that they overlooked the conjunction of Lord Granville, though so little time had passed since they had been enrolled in a crusade against him; and it would have been difficult for the Pelhams to have told what they had done to give Lord Granville a higher opinion of them, or what he had done to give them a lower opinion of him: what had happened to make him feel less contempt for them; or they to see less danger in him. So little reason had they to expect better union with him, that when he was wished joy on their reconciliation, he replied, “I am the King’s President; I know nothing of the Pelhams; I have nothing to do with them.” The very day he kissed hands, he told Lord D ****, one of the dirtiest of their creatures, “Well, my Lord, here is the common enemy returned!” Nugent, the Sancho Pança of this Quixote, began to beat up for volunteers for him; and himself made large overtures to Fox, desired to have some private conversation with him at Holland House, and told him he would reconcile himself to the Duke. Fox replied, “They have paved your way.” Lord Granville the next day repeated this conversation to Mr. Pelham, with the only difference of inverting the persons of the speakers, and ascribing to Fox all the overtures that had come from himself. Two or three of his inferior dependents were promoted, but no mention made of his fellow martyrs.
On the 18th appeared the last and greatest phenomenon, Lord Holderness,[174] who had been fetched from his Embassy in Holland to be Secretary of State. In reality, he did justice to himself and his patrons, for he seemed ashamed of being made so considerable, for no reason but because he was so inconsiderable. He had a formality in his manner that would have given an air of truth to what he said, if he would but have assisted it with the least regard to probability; but this made his narrations harmless, for they were totally incredible. His passion for directing operas and masquerades was rather thought a contradiction to his gravity, than below his understanding, which was so very moderate, that no relation of his own exploits would, not a little time before, have been sooner credited, than his being made Secretary of State. What contributed a little to make the King consent to this wonderful promotion was his mother, Lady Fitzwalter, being distantly related to the Royal Family. The Queen and Princesses always talked to her in French, though she had never been out of England, because her ancestors came originally from Germany.
When the King delivered the Seals to Lord Holderness in the presence of the Duke of Newcastle, he charged him to mind only the business of his province; telling him that of late the Secretary’s office had been turned into a mere office of faction. The Duke of Newcastle, who understood the reprimand, and Lord Holderness, who did not, complained equally of the lecture. The former could not well complain of any direct chiding; for the King, who had parted with the Duke of Bedford, to quiet his wayward humour, to revenge the Duke of Bedford would not speak to the Duke of Newcastle for some weeks; an excuse he made advantage of pleading to the Duke of Marlborough, who had solicited for a Prebend of Windsor; and to Lord Halifax, who was pushing to get the West Indies entirely subjected to the Board of Trade, and to be nominated a third Secretary of State for that quarter of the world. As Lord Halifax persisted in this demand, and the Duke of Newcastle did not care to push the King any further, especially in the tender article of new appointments, Lord Holderness was made to taste of the servile uses for which he was introduced, and ordered to solicit the King to take so fair a feather from his own command as the direction of the West Indies; but for this time the Monarch would not, and Lord Halifax, after many vain threats, was forced to yield. He was[175] a man of moderate sense, and of great application to raise the credit of his employment; but warm, overbearing, and ignorant of the world.[176]