Lord Harcourt rose next, and though a little abashed as never accustomed to speak in public, said, with great grace and propriety, that he thought the King had the best right to judge in his own family; that he had communicated to his Majesty alone the reasons of his dissatisfaction in the government of the Prince: his Majesty had not thought his reasons good; he had therefore resigned a post which he thought he could not hold with credit and reputation.
If the decency and consistency of this speech had wanted a foil, it would have found it in Lord Talbot’s subsequent harangue; who said, that if the Motion had come from a person of less known integrity, he should have thought it dictated by a spirit of confusion. That some indeed love the Crown, some a jumble of Administrations. That a very sensible man drunk, may make a very good Jacobite: that he knew Fawcett, and had had a good opinion of him; but that often where he thought there was most perfection, he had found least. That he would not have acted like Lord Ravensworth—yet—(what a yet after such a prelude!) shall a private Council exclude the activity of the greater? The management of the Royal Children is of public import: shall the Council engross the direction of them? Hereafter, if this precedent is suffered, a cabal of Ministers will be worse than the Star-chamber. The precedent will be used to stifle all inquiries against sycophants, by applying to the Crown to appoint a trial by the Cabinet Council.
Hayter, Bishop of Norwich, the late Preceptor, with no less decency than Lord Harcourt, but with a little more artful desire of inflaming the prejudice against Stone and Murray, said that he would not declare the reasons of his resignation till he should be forced. That all he would say was, that he had met with obstructions from inferiors, most cruel obstructions. That he did not think himself at liberty to appeal from the King, yet would willingly tell if he was obliged to it. This insinuating offer the Duke of Bedford had not the presence of mind to take up; and the Bishop’s gauntlet not being challenged, he could not with propriety go any farther. Perhaps the Ministry had not more reason to triumph on the event of the day, than on the Duke of Bedford’s overlooking so fair an opening into their most vulnerable part!
At last rose the Bishop of Gloucester. If provocation often sharpens the genius, it did not in his case. Yet he was not confused, he was insolent: he spoke like a man that had governed children,[227] not like one fit to govern them. His language and circumstances were vulgar and trivial; he dwelt more on his housemaid letting in Mr. Fawcett when he came to him, than on any part of his defence. He said, he did not doubt but their Lordships would treat this accusation with the abhorrence it deserved. That for himself, he yielded to many on the Bench for capacity, he would not to any in loyalty. That he had had promises of favour formerly from his Grace of Bedford, and hoped he had not forfeited them: that it was not true that there had long been a scheme of making him Preceptor; that [he] himself had never heard of it till he was at the Hague, and then he was told of such a design by a noble Duke, who had heard it from a noble Lord, who had heard such a report—but not one of his own friends had thought of it for him: that if his Majesty had designed it, he did not know it. That in the Roman state, when informers were most rife, yet nothing had happened of this kind. He insisted on the badness of Fawcett, and affirmed that he did not dictate to him the letter for himself, though he owned he stood by while Fawcett wrote it; and that two days afterwards, when he desired Fawcett to add some words to it, they were not, This is all I can say consistent with truth, but, This is the truth.
Lord Ravensworth entirely acquitted the Bishop, and added this extraordinary problem, that Fawcett’s character was so bad only from its being so good. He desired to know of all the Lords, whether they did not acquit him; and whether they did not believe that Fawcett had told him all he had announced.
Of the Duke of Newcastle’s speech, an hour in length, I shall touch but a few of the most remarkable passages, such as, after acquitting Lord Ravensworth, were his panegyric on Harry Vane, who never said a false thing, or did a bad one! and another, scarce less exaggerated, on the Duke of Devonshire’s sagacity, for which his Majesty had ordered him to be added to the Council. Of his own immediately going to the King, and saying, “Sir, I am come to keep my promise; that you should be the first to hear any complaints against Stone; if he is a Jacobite, he is a greater traitor to me than to you.” How Stone, who had had the fate of kingdoms in his breast, had desired to have the accusation examined, and to be sequestered from his attendance on the Prince of Wales, till he should be acquitted; and lastly, how these stories had been propagated by cabal and intrigue, and by the anonymous Memorial sent assiduously all over the kingdom, full of falsities and irreverence to the King; and which General Hawley, as was his duty, had brought to him within an hour after receiving it.
At last opened the solemnity of the scene! the Chancellor’s hackneyed sophistries, the Bishop of Gloucester’s pedantic scorn, and the Duke of Newcastle’s incongruous volubility, were rightly judged or foreseen to want a proper weight on so serious an occasion. To raise the comely pompous dignitaries of the Cabinet Council, and make them break their long mystic silence in favour of the accused, was a resource that did honour to the policy, as it effectually did the business, of the secret junto. The Duke of Marlborough first, and then the Archbishop, rose and gave short accounts of their having fully agreed in the sentence and report of the Council. Lord Waldegrave, with decency and spirit, commended Stone, spoke highly of the young Prince, and added, that he would not act a moment longer as Governor, than he should find Mr. Stone a man of honour, principles, and integrity. Dr. Hay Drummond, Bishop of St. Asaph, and brother of Lord Duplin, made a very elegant and eloquent speech in behalf of the accused. The Marquis of Hartington and the Duke of Dorset gave their testimonials, like the two former,[228] to the acts of the Cabinet Council. Lord Granville added to his, “That innocence was no defence against temporary clamour; it will blow over: but I don’t like Mr. Stone’s desiring to have it heard any farther; it would be making ourselves an inquisition. Some often accuse others, to come at a third person. I love my Lord Harcourt for what he said.” The Duke of Grafton, too, bore his testimony.
The Duke of Bedford rose again, and said, that if he had been angry, he had had time to cool: and must say, on the utmost deliberation, and with the greatest attention to what he had heard, that he had not found sufficient reason to acquit the accused persons, and for this strong reason, amongst others, that it remains evident that the Bishop of Gloucester had tampered with Fawcett—do the innocent tamper with evidence? as little could he agree with the Duke of Newcastle, who said he would be guilty to be so acquitted by the Chancellor—Newcastle interrupting him, that he had only said, he would be suspected; the Duke of Bedford rejoined, that when his Grace had gone so far, it was no wonder if he had gone a little farther; but so far from agreeing even to that modification, he would not be suspected by one man, to be acquitted by that whole House. That, when he had been of the Cabinet Council, he had never known such a thing as their sitting on a trial. That the Duke of Newcastle had told them almost the whole examination; what can induce their Lordships still to refuse to ask for it? That he had been particularly called upon to make this Motion; that the nation demands it; that the very Parliament of Paris would go into such an examination. That if any, in so high a trust as the care of the Prince of Wales, are suspected, can it be called a point of domestic concern only? can it be deemed so domestic as to forbid public inquiry? That he must still urge that Fawcett had never prevaricated, till the Bishop had been with him—but if his Lordship is really desirous of purging himself of this charge, let him promote this Motion: here he will be sure of the most impartial trial, of the most open, and consequently of the most satisfactory acquittal. “To prompt witnesses to prevaricate—to stifle inquiry—these arts will not quiet the suspicions of mankind. A more manly way it had been to have said, we did drink these healths, we were as Jacobite as it is pretended we were, but we are converted—but, my Lords,” concluded the Duke, “it is not to prove that these healths were drunk that I contend—if any part of the charge is true, more is true.”
Lord Bath objected to any farther examination of a man who had so prevaricated with the Cabinet Council, whose proceedings, he said, were not only sufficient, but not unprecedented. That he had once been examined so himself, with Sir Paul Methuen and Mr. Cholmondeley, and that they had been examined separately; it was in relation to one Lewis, a clerk to Lord Oxford, who, by mistake for one Levi, a Jew, had been suspected of negotiations with the Court of St. Germains: it was in the Queen’s time, and she had referred it to the Cabinet Council.