Abandoned by his highest and most showy friends, Fox felt the mortification of discredit both with his patron and the public, and the keenest appetite for revenge. As a politician, his credit was saved by his industry and success; and by his arts his vengeance was soon gratified on two of those that thus cast him off. But now were the seeds sown, which, though slowly, produced such bitter crops in subsequent years. Detested by the public, Fox could never recover from the stain contracted at this period:—but first we must relate his triumph, and the temporary victory he gained for the Court.
Nothing was so unpromising as the prospect of the new system at first. All the devotion of the Tories to the Court could not reconcile them to the nomination of Fox. They knew the mischief he had done them, and had not the quickness to see that a renegade is tied to make satisfaction by greater benefits. Lord Mansfield, not trusted, as he had expected to be, by Lord Bute, had blown up discontents against the peace. Lord Egremont and George Grenville had adopted those doubts; and doubts from men in high place convey extensive influence. Had the peace been instantaneously proposed to the House of Commons, there is no question but it would have been rejected; so strong a disgust was taken at the union of Bute and Fox, and so numerous were their several personal enemies. Yet in one respect Bute had chosen judiciously: Fox was not to be daunted, but set himself to work at the root. He even made applications to Newcastle; but the Duke of Cumberland[244] had inspired even Newcastle and Devonshire with resolution! This, however, was the last miscarriage of moment that Fox experienced. Leaving the grandees to their ill-humour, he directly attacked the separate members of the House of Commons; and with so little decorum on the part of either buyer or seller, that a shop was publicly opened at the Pay-office, whither the members flocked, and received the wages of their venality in bank-bills, even to so low a sum as two hundred pounds for their votes on the treaty. Twenty-five thousand pounds, as Martin,[245] Secretary of the Treasury, afterwards owned, were issued in one morning; and in a single fortnight a vast majority was purchased to approve the peace!
Bad as that peace proved, it was near being concluded on terms still more disadvantageous; for France, receiving earlier intelligence than we did of the capture of the Havannah, had near prevailed on the Duke of Bedford to sign the treaty,—but Aldworth,[246] his secretary, had the prudence or foresight to prevent that precipitate step.[247]
The Court having secured the obedience of Parliament, it was determined to assume a high tone of authority; to awe, and even to punish the refractory. “The King, it was given out, would be King,—would not be dictated to by his ministers, as his grandfather had been. The prerogative was to shine out: great lords must be humbled.” Fox—whose language ever was, that the Crown must predominate whenever it would exert its influence—warmly upheld the doctrine of rewards and punishments; and, having employed the former with so much success, he was rejoiced to inflict the latter to glut his own vengeance. The first fruit of these councils struck mankind with astonishment. The Duke of Devonshire, who had kept himself in the country, coming to town on the 28th of October, went to pay his duty to the King, and, as is customary with the great officers, went to the backstairs, whence he sent the page in waiting to acquaint his Majesty with his attendance. “Tell him,” said the King angrily, “I will not see him.” The page, amazed, hesitated. The King ordered him to go and deliver those very words. If the page had been thunderstruck, it may be imagined what the Duke felt. He had, however, the presence of mind to send in the page again to ask what he should do with his key of Lord Chamberlain. The reply was, “Orders will be given for that.” The Duke went home with a heart full of rage, and tore off his key, which immediately after he carried to Lord Egremont, the Secretary of State; and the next morning his brother Lord George Cavendish, and Lord Besborough[248] his brother-in-law, resigned their places. As the Court urged that the Duke’s disgrace was owing to his refusal of attending Councils, his Grace’s friends pleaded that he had asked and obtained the King’s leave not to attend them, as he seldom had attended them even in the late reign; and that, his summons having been made by a commis in Lord Egremont’s office, the Duke did not think that such a message interfered with his dispensation. Some said there had been no intention to dismiss the Duke; attributing the affront to a sudden start of passion in the King, who, coming from Richmond that morning, had met the Dukes of Devonshire and Newcastle together in a chariot, whence suspecting a Cabal, he had gone home in anger, and, at the moment the Duke arrived at St. James’s, was writing to Lord Bute that now was the time; words which proved at least that the Duke’s disgrace had been meditated, and which in truth nobody doubted. The Princess had more than once termed him ironically the Prince of the Whigs; and his Grace having dared to desert from Fox’s banner, left no doubt of the latter having contributed to irritate the prejudice already conceived. Nor could Fox wipe off the suspicion: though, as soon as the affront was known, he had hurried to Devonshire House,[249] and protested his utter ignorance of any such design. The Duke received him coolly, did not pretend to believe him; and his family never forgave it.
The fairness of the Duke’s character, his decent and timid caution, and the high rank in which he stood with the party, made the measure much wondered at; yet it was far from producing such open offence as might have been expected, nor did the consequences spread. The Marquis of Rockingham, five days afterwards, resigned the Bedchamber; but, offering to explain his disgusts, the King with much haughtiness refused to hear him—another strain of authority much vaunted, and not without effect. The Peerage itself kissed the rod, which was declared to be held out to humble them. Nor did they take the alarm, though the rigour towards the Duke of Devonshire was prosecuted farther; for, a Privy Council being summoned November the 3rd, the King ordered the Duke’s name to be struck out of the Council-book: a severity of which there had been no precedent in the last reign but in the cases of Lord Bath and Lord George Sackville; the first, in open and virulent opposition; the second on his ignominious sentence after the battle of Minden. John Duke of Argyle,[250] when his regiment was taken from him, was not thus affronted; nor had George the First refused to admit Lord Oxford[251] to kiss his hand on the Queen’s death, nor denied an audience to the Earl Marichal[252] involved in Jacobitism.
CHAPTER XIV.
Preliminaries of Peace with France and Spain.—Secret springs of Political actions.—Embassy to the Court of Spain offered to Lord Sandwich.—Insult to the Duke of Cumberland.—Honours and Preferments.—Resignation of Lords Ashburnham and Kinnoul.—Lord Lincoln’s ingratitude to the Duke of Newcastle.—Bait offered to Lord Granby.—Mr. Conway.—The Duke of York obliged to go to Italy.—Profusion exercised by the Court.—Charles Townshend’s want of judgment.—His bons mots.—Attempt to propitiate Walpole.—Correspondence between him and Fox respecting the Rangership of the Parks offered to Lord Orford.—Conduct of the latter.
On the 8th of the month a courier arrived with the preliminaries signed by France and Spain. I shall not detail those preliminaries, too well known, and to be found in all common histories. It is my part to explain, as far as I could know them, the leading motives of actions and events; and, though the secret springs are often unfathomable, I had acquaintance enough with the actors to judge with better probability than the common of mankind; and where these memoirs are defective or mistaken, still they may direct to the inquiry after sounder materials, and prove a key to original papers that may appear hereafter.
The peace with Spain, as it opened a door for an embassy to that Court, afforded Mr. Fox a new opportunity of revenge; and as this measure at least he could not waive the honour of having suggested, so did it corroborate the belief of his being the author of the other too.[253] He immediately offered that embassy to Lord Sandwich,[254] who as greedily accepted it. Sandwich, rejected and exploded by all mankind, had been adopted, fostered, patronized in the most kind and intimate manner by the Duke of Cumberland; nor had he the confidence now to consult his Royal Highness, or to venture in person to notify to him his desertion. He wrote. The insult was too glaring, and could not be pardoned to either Fox or Sandwich, both of whom were for ever excluded from the Duke’s presence but at his public levées, and there underwent the most mortifying neglect from him; though Fox often sued in most abject manner to be forgiven.