[CHAPTER VIII.]
George Townshend’s Circular Letter—Admiral Byng publishes a Defence—The public mind prejudiced against him—Loss of Oswego—Affair of the Hanoverian Soldier at Maidstone—The King admits Lord Bute into the Prince’s Establishment—Fox discontented with Newcastle—Offers to resign—Applies to the Author—His audience with the King—Pitt’s demands—Prince of Wales’s new Household—Pitt visits Lady Yarmouth—State of Parties—Duke of Newcastle determines to resign—Pitt declines acting with Fox—Negotiations for the formation of a new Ministry—The designs of Fox to obstruct the formation of a new Ministry defeated—Changes—Pitt becomes Prime Minister—Meeting of Parliament.
Affairs at home wore the same troubled aspect. As addresses and petitions were in vogue, and the approaching session likely to be warm, George Townshend took the opportunity of writing a circular letter to great boroughs and corporations, instructing them to instruct their representatives to stickle for another Militia Bill. Besides its being drawn in a wretched style, the impropriety of a private man assuming to himself such dictatorial authority, and the indecency of a man who had the last year so severely censured Mr. Fox’s circular letter, were notorious. Townshend’s epistle met the contempt it deserved.
Mr. Byng having notice to prepare for his trial, had demanded his witnesses; and now added a list of thirty more, but they were refused. Among those he summoned was Captain Young, who had been one of his loudest censurers. If the step was injudicious, at least it did not indicate any consciousness of guilt. Yet the people and the Ministry continued to treat him as a criminal; and the former reporting that he had endeavoured to escape, the latter increased the strictness of his confinement. He complained to the Secretary of the Admiralty of the rigorous treatment he received from Admiral Townshend, the Governor of Greenwich. A creature of office was not likely to feel more tenderness than his superiors; Cleland returned the most insulting answers. Mr. Byng at last thought it time to make representations as well as to adhere to his innocence. He published his case. Of the engagement I shall not say a word, till I come to give an account of his trial. Of the arts used to blacken him, the pamphlet gave the strongest evidence, and had very great effect in opening the eyes of mankind.
It appeared, that the Admiral’s own letter, which had served as the great engine of his condemnation, had been mangled and altered in a manner most unworthy of honest men, of gentlemen. Some parts were omitted, by which others were rendered nonsense; other periods, which gave the reasons of his behaviour, as obedient to his orders, were perverted to speak the very language of cowardice,—for instance, making the best of my way to Gibraltar was substituted to the genuine passage, making my way to cover Gibraltar. And thus the Ministry sunk their own positive (and, by their neglect of Minorca, grown necessary) orders, that he might appear to have retired to save himself, not Gibraltar. Other preceding dispatches the Admiral published in the same pamphlet, in which he had represented the bad condition of the Fleet committed to him; and with much reason concluded, those expostulations had been the first causes of his ruin; they who had been guilty of the neglect determining that the first discoverer should bear the punishment. Pity and indignation took place. Mr. Byng was everywhere mentioned with moderation, the Ministers with abhorrence. But three months were to come before his trial. He was a prisoner, his adversaries powerful. His pamphlet was forgotten; new slanders replaced the old. I shall defer the prosecution of Mr. Byng’s story till the following year, for though his trial began the end of December, no material progress could be made in it.
But though the fate of Mr. Byng remained in suspense, the crisis for the Ministers drew to a quicker termination, being hurried on by several circumstances that heightened public discontent, and which could not be imputed to the unhappy Admiral. Among these incidents was the loss of the important fort of Oswego, which the French seized and demolished before a design upon it was suspected. Another was of Hanoverian growth, and happening under the eye of the people, threatened very alarming consequences. There were at this time five camps in England: one at Chatham, under Lord George Sackville; another in Dorsetshire; the artillery at Byfleet in Surrey, commanded by the Duke of Marlborough, Master of the Ordnance; the Hessians at Winchester; the Hanoverians at Coxheath, near Maidstone. The sobriety and devotion of the foreigners had been remarkable, and amid such a scene of uneasiness and faction, they had even reconciled the public voice to German mercenaries. The imprudence of their superiors, up to their very chief, had like to have widened the breach for ever. A Hanoverian soldier buying four handkerchiefs at Maidstone, took by mistake the whole piece, which contained six. All parties have allowed that the fellow did it in ignorance; yet a robbery was sworn against him, and he was committed to jail. Count Kilmansegge, the commanding officer, demanded him, with threats of violence; but the Mayor, no whit intimidated out of his duty, refused to deliver him. Kilmansegge dispatched an express to Kensington. The Chancellor, Newcastle, and Fox were all out of the way; Murray, the Attorney-General, was so rashly complaisant as to draw a warrant, which Lord Holderness was ordered to copy, for the release of the man. This in a few days occasioned such a flame, being mixed, as might have been expected, even in the tumultuous addresses of the time, that it was thought proper to transfer the crime, according to the politics of the year, to the subordinate agents. Kilmansegge was ordered to retire without taking leave; and the poor soldier (as a warning to Mr. Byng) received three hundred lashes. The ignorant Secretary of State was menaced by the Opposition; the real criminal, Murray, with no ignorance to plead, found such an outrageous violation of law no impediment to his succeeding as Chief Justice.
The disturbances flowing from these blunders, neglects, and illegalities, alarmed Newcastle. He found it was no longer a season for wantoning with the resentment of the successor and his mother: he determined to gratify them. The Chancellor, who was with great difficulty drawn to make a sacrifice of his revenge, was sent to the King, to prevail on him to yield that Lord Bute might be at the head of the Prince’s family. The old man could not but observe to the Chancellor how contradictory this advice was to the refusal himself had suggested, pressed. “Sir,” replied the Judge, with sanctimonious chicane, “your Majesty has said, that you would not make the Earl of Bute Groom of the Stole, and undoubtedly your Majesty cannot make the Earl of Bute Groom of the Stole; but your Majesty has never said that you would not make the Earl of Bute Treasurer, or place him in some other great post.” However, this sophistry was too gross; and the King thought it less dishonourable flatly to break his declared resolution, than palliate it to himself by so mean an evasion.
Newcastle, not to lag behind in the race of untruths, told Fox that nothing more would be said in Council of the Prince’s family; he believed nothing more would be done in it. In the meantime, he regulated the whole establishment, though it hung awhile in suspense, as they wished to extract from the Princess a promise of giving no further trouble.
Fox now found it was time to consult his own security. He saw Newcastle flinging up works all round himself; and suspected that Pitt would be invited to defend them. He saw how little power he had obtained by his last treaty with the Duke. He saw himself involved in the bad success of measures on which he had not been consulted, scarce suffered to give an opinion; and he knew that if Newcastle and Pitt united, he must be sacrificed as the cement of their union. Indeed, his Grace, so far from keeping terms, had not observed common decency with him: a few instances, which Fox selected to justify to the King the step he was reduced to take, shall suffice. Early in the summer, Newcastle complaining of want of support, Fox told him, that if it would facilitate his Grace’s measures, he would resign Secretary of State to Mr. Pitt, and take an inferior place. This, at the beginning of October, the Duke recollected, and told Lord Barrington, that if Fox would not take it ill, he would offer his place to Pitt the next day. So far from not taking it ill, Fox made it matter of complaint that his Grace had dared to think he was sincere in the offer.
In the list for the Prince’s family, Fox saw the names of eight or ten members of Parliament, of whom he had not heard a word, till the Duke of Newcastle told him all was settled with the King; and, which though meant to soften, was an aggravation by the manner, at the same time acquainted him that the King would let Lord Digby (Fox’s nephew) be a Lord of the Bedchamber to the Prince, preferably to the other competitors: “But it was at my desire,” said the Duke; “for his Majesty was very averse to do anything for you.”—Fox replied, coldly, “Lord Digby is not likely to live.”—“Oh!” said Newcastle, with a brutality which the hurry of folly could not excuse, “then that will settle it.” Fox made no reply; but the next day wrote him a letter to notify that he would go on no longer. Newcastle, thunderstruck with having accomplished what he had projected, reached the letter (he received it at the Board of Treasury,) to Nugent, and cried, “What shall I do?”—and then hurried to Lord Granville, and told him he would resign his place to him. “I thought,” said Granville, “I had cured you of such offers last year: I will be hanged a little before I take your place, rather than a little after.” Fox, too, went to vent his woes on Lord Granville, and prefacing them with a declaration of his unambitious temper, that shrewd jolly man interrupted him, and said, “Fox, I don’t love to have you say things that will not be believed—if you was of my age, very well; I have put on my night-cap; there is no more daylight for me—but you should be ambitious: I want to instil a nobler ambition into you; to make you knock the heads of the Kings of Europe together, and jumble something out of it that may be of service to this country.”