In September, the Margrave of Anspach, nephew of the late Queen, and to whom on that relation the King had given the Order of the Garter, wrote a circular letter to the Princes of the Empire, to dissuade them from holding a Diet of Election, till it was declared necessary to have a King of the Romans. The King was unlucky in his German alliances. The Landgrave of Hesse, and the Duke of Saxe Gotha, the one father-in-law of the Princess Mary, the other, brother of the Princess of Wales, declared themselves against the election.
With these disappointments, the King returned to England, and arrived at St. James’s, November 18th. The Princess appeared again in public, and the King gave her the same honours and place as the Queen used to have. He was not in the same gracious mood with others of the Court. The calamity of Lord Holderness, the Secretary of State, was singular; he was for some days in disgrace, for having played at blindman’s-buff in the summer at Tunbridge. To Lord Harcourt, the King said not a word. In the beginning of December, the Chancellor and the Archbishop sent to Lord Harcourt that they would wait on him by the King’s command: he prevented them, and went to the Chancellor, who told him that they had orders to hear his complaints. He replied, “They were not proper to be told but to the King himself,” which did not make it a little suspicious, that even the Princess was included in his disgusts. The first incident that had directly amounted to a quarrel, was, the Bishop of Norwich finding the Prince of Wales reading Père d’Orleans’s Revolutions d’Angleterre; a book professedly written by the direction, and even by the communication, of James the Second, to justify his measures.
Stone at first peremptorily denied having seen that book in thirty years, and offered to rest his whole justification upon the truth or falsehood of that accusation. At last it was confessed that the Prince had the book, but it was qualified with Prince Edward’s borrowing it of his sister Augusta. Stone acted mildness, and professed being willing to continue to act with Lord Harcourt and the Bishop: but the sore had penetrated too deep, and they, who had given the wounds, had aggravated them with harsh provocations. The Bishop was accused of having turned Scott one day out of the Prince’s chamber, by an imposition of hands, that had at least as much of the flesh as the spirit in the force of the action. Cresset, the link of the connexion, had dealt out very ungracious epithets both on the Governor and Preceptor; and Murray, by an officious strain of strange imprudence, had, early in the quarrel, waited on the Bishop, and informed him, that Mr. Stone ought to have more consideration in the Prince’s family: and repeating the visit and opinion, the Bishop said, “He believed that Mr. Stone found all proper regard, but that Lord Harcourt, the chief of the trust, was generally present.”—Murray interrupted him, and cried, “Lord Harcourt! pho! he is a cipher, and must be a cipher, and was put in to be a cipher.” A notification, however understood before by the world, that could not be agreeable to the person destined to a situation so insignificant! Accordingly, December 6th, Lord Harcourt had a private audience in the King’s closet, and resigned. The Archbishop waited on his Majesty, desiring to know if he would see the Bishop of Norwich, or accept his resignation from his (the Archbishop’s) hands. The King chose the latter.
The Junto did not find it so easy to fix new ciphers as to displace the old. Dr. Johnson, the new Bishop of Gloucester, was the object of their wishes for Preceptor; but his education with Murray and Stone, and his principles, which were undoubtedly the same as theirs (whatever theirs were), proved obstacles they could not surmount. The Whigs were violently against his promotion; the Archbishop strongly objected to him. It was still more difficult to accommodate themselves with a Governor: the post was at once too exalted, and they had declared it too unsubstantial, to leave it easy to find a man, who could fill the honour and digest the dishonour of it. Many were named; some refused it. At last, after long waving it, Lord Waldegrave, at the earnest request of the King, accepted it, and after repeated assurances of the submission and tractability of Stone. The Earl was very averse to it; he was a man of pleasure, understood the Court, was firm in the King’s favour, easy in his circumstances, and at once undesirous of rising, and afraid to fall. He said to a friend, “If I dared, I would make this excuse to the King; Sir, I am too young to govern, and too old to be governed.”—But he was forced to submit. A man of stricter honour, or of more reasonable sense, could not have been selected for the employment; yet as the Whig zeal had caught flame, even this choice was severely criticized. Lord Waldegrave’s grandmother was daughter of King James; his family were all Papists, and his father had been but the first convert.
The Preceptor was not fixed till the beginning of the new year, but I shall include his promotion here, not to interrupt the thread of the narration: it was Dr. Thomas, who during the first civil war of Leicester-house, had read prayers to the present King: it was not till within two years of this period that the King had found an opportunity of preferring him, and then made him Bishop of Peterborough. He was a man of a fair character, esteemed rather a Tory in his principles. It may not be unentertaining to mention another instance of the King’s good fortune in being able to promote an old friend. General Legonier one day went and offered his Majesty the nomination to a living in his gift. The King expressed the greatest joy and gratitude, and said, “There is one I have long tried to make a Prebendary, but my Ministers never would give me an opportunity; I am much obliged to you, I will give the living to him.”
FOOTNOTES:
[216] The Author of these Memoirs.
[217] Archibald Campbell, [Earl of Isla, and, on the death of his brother,] Duke of Argyle, died suddenly in his chair after dinner, at his house in Argyle Buildings, London, April 15, 1761.