25th.—The King put an end to the Session. The Speaker touched but gently and artfully on the Regency Bill; enough to show his disapprobation, and not enough to reflect on the decision of the House; praying for the King’s life, because of the difficulties in which the Princess would be involved in a Regency without Sovereignty.
The instant the Parliament was prorogued, the two Sheriffs of London—I forget their names—accompanied by Lord Carpenter and Sir George Vandeput, went to Newgate, released Murray, and conducted him in paltry triumph to his own house. On the 28th, his case, scurrilously written by one Whitehead,[177] a factious poet, was published, for which the printer was taken into custody.
In July, the posthumous child of which the Princess was delivered was christened. The Prince had affected to baptize all his children by popular names; but his wife being more prolific than the English history, in heroes and heroines, the Edwards and Elizabeths were exhausted, and he had been forced to go back as far as the Conqueror’s daughter. The King would not suffer the last Princess to be called Matilda,[178] but now, out of regard to his son’s memory, indulged it.
Soon after the Prince died, an unlucky discovery had been made. George Lyttelton had written a lamentation, on that occasion, to his father,[179] an antiquated Baronet in Worcestershire, telling him that he and his friends had just renewed their connexions with the Prince of Wales, by the mediation of Dr. Ayscough, which, though not ripe for discovery, was the true secret of their oblique behaviour this session in Parliament. This letter he had delivered to a gentleman’s servant, who was going into that county; but the fellow having some other letters for the post, had by mistake given in the private negotiation, which was only subscribed To Sir Thomas Lyttelton. It was opened at the Post-office, and carried to Mr. Pelham. Had it been seen by no other person, the secret had been safe, and the treachery concealed, as carefully as if he had been in the conspiracy himself, instead of being the object of it; but it was talked of from the Post-office, though obscurely for some time, till at last it was nursed up somehow or other, and arrived at the King’s ears, who grew outrageous, and could not be hindered from examining Shelvocke, the Secretary of the Post-office, himself. Here he got very little further light; for Shelvocke had been instructed to affirm that the letter was sent back to Mr. Lyttelton, unopened; but Lyttelton, who had not been so well instructed in his own secret, avowed it; and as if there were nothing to be ashamed of but the discovery, he took pains to palliate no other part of the story.
Absurdity was predominant in Lyttelton’s composition: it entered equally into his politics, his apologies, his public pretences, his private conversations. With the figure of a spectre, and the gesticulations of a puppet, he talked heroics through his nose, made declamations at a visit, and played at cards with scraps of history, or sentences of Pindar. He had set out on a poetical love plan, though with nothing of a lover but absence of mind, and nothing of poet but absence of meaning; yet he was far from wanting parts; spoke well when he had studied his speeches; and loved to reward and promote merit in others. His political apostasy was as flagrant as Pitt’s: the latter gloried in it: but Lyttelton, when he had been forced to quit virtue, took up religion, and endeavoured to persuade mankind that he had just fixed his views on heaven, when he had gone the greatest lengths to promote his earthly interest; and so finished was his absurdity, that he was capable of believing himself honest and agreeable.
In the beginning of September came news of the birth of a Duke of Burgundy; an event of the greatest moment to France, but not received with their usual transports. The Court had disgusted the clergy, by demanding an account of their revenues. The priests, equally ready at contriving or imputing an imposture, persuaded half the nation that the child was spurious; and to drive off the war from their own quarters, endeavoured to light up or to lay the foundation of a general war in the kingdom. The English Prelates sent Harry the Fifth to the conquest of France, to prevent a scrutiny of the same nature.
The same courier brought the Marquis de Mirepoix a patent of Duke. He was much esteemed in England, having little of the manners of his country, where he had seldom lived; and except a passion which he retained for dancing, and for the gracefulness of his own figure, there was nothing in his character that did not fall in naturally enough with the seriousness of the English and German Courts,[180] where he had been Ambassador; nor any quickness of parts that could have made him offensive, if our Ministry had been inclined to take exceptions. Their suspicions seldom ascended to enemies really formidable. They bore with General Wall,[181] an artful Irishman, Ambassador from Spain, and who but last year had clandestinely sent thither several of our woollen manufacturers. Greater insults were shown to us at Paris and Berlin, where Marshal Keith and Lord Tyrconnel, two outlawed Jacobites, were reciprocally Ambassadors. Indeed, it was a constant war of piques and affronts between the King and his nephew of Prussia. The latter had insisted upon the recall of Sir Charles Hanbury Williams, who had sacrificed to the ruling passion of the uncle, by treating the character of the Prussian King, in his public dispatches and private letters, in the strongest terms of satire.[182] He returned to Dresden, where, about this time, he concluded a subsidiary treaty with the King of Poland, to engage his vote for the Archduke Joseph to be King of the Romans—the darling object of the ambition of the Court of Vienna, and the common gulph of our profuse politics. The King of Prussia openly, the French underhand, opposed the election. The very opposition of the latter had a politic effect, as the longer it remained in suspense, the longer would be the duration of our extravagance. In one of the King of Prussia’s rescripts, he taxed the King, whom he called the last and youngest of the Electors, with violating both his oath and the Golden Bull.
Sir Charles Hanbury Williams had been attached to Mr. Winnington, and was the particular friend of Fox. Towards the end of Sir Robert Walpole’s power, they, Lord Hervey and Lord Ilchester, had forced the last into the Secretaryship of the Treasury, against the inclination of the Minister; an instance at that time unparalleled; much copied since, as the Government has fallen into weaker hands. Sir Charles remained a steady friend to Walpole, and persecuted his rival, Lord Bath, in a succession of satiric odes, that did more execution in six months, than the Craftsman had done in twice the number of years; for the Minister only lost his power, but the patriot his character. If Sir Charles had many superiors in poetry, he had none in the wit of his poetry. In conversation he was less natural, and overbearing: hated with the greatest good-nature, and the most disinterested generosity; for fools dreaded his satire—few forgave his vanity. He had thrown up his place on some disgusts; the loss of Mr. Winnington, and a quarrel with the Irish, occasioned by an ode[183] he wrote on the marriage of the Duchess of Manchester and Mr. Hussey, fomented by Lord Bath and his enemies, and supported with too little spirit, had driven him to shelter his discontents in a Foreign Embassy, where he displayed great talents for negotiation, and pleased as much by his letters, as he had formerly by his poetry.[184]
On the 13th of the following month, an express arrived of the death of the Prince of Orange, who, having been at Aix la Chapelle, caught a fever on his return, and died in five days.
He had long been kept out of all share in the government, like his predecessor, King William; like him, lifted to it in a tumultuous manner, on his country being overrun by the French; and the Stad-holdership made hereditary in his family before they had time to experience how little he was qualified to re-establish their affairs. Not that he wanted genius, but he was vain and positive, a trifling lover of show, and not master of the great lights in which he stood. The Princess Royal was more positive, and, though passionately imperious, had dashed all opportunities that presented for the Prince’s distinguishing himself, from immoderate jealousy and fondness for his person. Yet the Mars who was locked in the arms of this Venus, was a monster so deformed, that when the King had chosen him for his son-in-law, he could not help, in the honesty of his heart, and the coarseness of his expression, telling the Princess how hideous a bridegroom she was to expect, and even gave her permission to refuse. She replied, she would marry him if he was a baboon. Well then, said the King, there is baboon enough for you!