The next day the House of Lords issued out orders for preservation of the peace; but the weavers continued to parade the streets and the park, though without committing any violence.
On the Friday, the Lords sent for Justice Fielding, who said the weavers had done no mischief. The Chancellor, who had been trusted by the Ministers with none of their late extraordinary measures, and who probably foresaw their downfall, was sullen, and would take no part. Few Lords attended, and everything announced to the Ministers their approaching disgrace. About dinner-time, the Duke of Bedford received intelligence that his house would be assaulted at night, on which he sent away his jewels and papers, and demanded a party of horse; the Duchess[125] persisting in remaining with him in the house. His friends and dependants, and several officers, garrisoned it; and as was foreseen, the rioters in prodigious numbers assaulted the house in the evening, and began to pull down the wall of the court;[126] but the great gates being thrown open, the party of horse appeared, and sallying out, while the riot act was read, rode round Bloomsbury Square, slashing and trampling on the mob, and dispersing them; yet not till two or three of the guards had been wounded. In the meantime a party of the rioters had passed to the back of the house, and were forcing their way through the garden, when fortunately fifty more horse arriving, in the very critical instant, the house was saved, and perhaps the lives of all that were in it. The Duke, however, and his company kept watch all night; and the coffee-houses were filled with curious and idle people, who sent with great indifference every hour to learn how the siege went on. The disappointed populace vented their rage on the house of Carr, a fashionable mercer, who dealt in French silks, and demolished the windows. All Saturday they remained peaceable; and though another attack on Bedford House was threatened, no further mischief ensued.
On Sunday evening I went to compliment the Duke and Duchess, as most of their acquaintance did, on their escape. I found the square crowded, but chiefly with persons led by curiosity. As my chariot had no coronets, I was received with huzzas; but when the horses turned to enter the court, dirt and stones were thrown at it. When the gates opened, I was surprised with the most martial appearance. The horse-guards were drawn up in the court, and many officers and gentlemen were walking about as on the platform of a regular citadel. The whole house was open, and knots of the same kind were in every room. When I came to the Duchess, and lamented the insult they had suffered, she replied, with warmth and acrimony, that the mob had been set on by Lord Bute. I was not much inclined to believe that, nor thought a mob a tool with which Lord Bute would choose to amuse himself. Immediately after, came in the Earl and Countess of Northumberland. Words cannot describe the disdainful manner in which they were received.[127] The Duke of Bedford left the room; the Earl was not asked to sit, nor spoken to; but was treated with such visible marks of neglect and aversion, that Lord Waldegrave said to another of the family, “Faith! this is too much.” In my own opinion, the mob was blown up by Humphrey Cotes,[128] and the friends of Wilkes. Almond, the friend and printer of the latter, owned to me, that they were directed by four or five gentlemen in disguise, who were not suspected; and seemed willing to disclose the secret to me. I said, “Name no names to me, I will not hear them.” He gave me a print published by Cotes against Lord Bute and Lord Holland; and talked of risings that would be all over England. I said, “I should be sorry to have the mob rise: it would occasion the army being quartered in London, and then we should be enslaved.”
Perhaps I have dwelt too minutely on this episode; perhaps I have done so on many other points equally unimportant. But it must be remembered that I am painting a portrait of the times, rather than writing history. The events, too, of this time were so linked together, that trifles gave birth to serious eras; and unless it be detailed with the circumstantial exactness which I shall use, and which I stood in a situation to know more thoroughly than most men, from my intimacy or connection with many of the actors, the history of this reign will be very imperfectly understood; and posterity would see sudden and extraordinary changes; without being able to account for them from the public appearances of things. When it is known, it will be easy to compose a more compendious account; and my narrative, that may serve for the scaffolding, may be thrown by as no longer of use.
The King, on all other occasions so able and steady a dissembler, did not affect now to disguise the offence he had taken at his Ministers. He had long inwardly groaned under their insolence and disagreeable qualities: and though for some time Lord Bute a little restrained his Majesty’s impatience to throw them off, both the Favourite and the mother had contributed to foment the King’s aversion. The Duchess of Bedford had openly affronted the Princess, and avowed her hatred to Lord Bute. To Lord Sandwich the Favourite bore private resentment, for having courted a little too assiduously, though he was disappointed in the pursuit, rich old Wortley Montagu, Lady Bute’s father.[129] But Grenville was the principal rock of offence. I have mentioned his jealousy and ill-treatment of the Favourite; his manners made him as distasteful to the King, as his engrossing fondness for power had made him to the Favourite. His ill-judged economy had led him to refuse twenty thousand pounds to the King, to buy the ground behind the Green Park, where the King had made a new garden, and where, by the loss of that purchase, a new row of houses was erected, that overlooked the King and Queen in their most domestic hours. And, as if non-compliance with even his innocent pleasures was not sufficiently offensive, that awkward man of ways and means, whom Nature had fitted for no employment less than a courtier’s, fatigued the King with such nauseous and endless harangues, that, lamenting being daily exposed to such a political pedant, the King said to Lord Bute of Grenville, “When he has wearied me for two hours, he looks at his watch to see if he may not tire me for an hour more.”
The measure of these disgusts was filled up by the conduct of the Ministers on the Bill of Regency; yet, though that conduct threw down the sluice, the resolution had been taken before to discard them on the first opportunity. When the Duke of Cumberland had waited on the King, before setting out for Newmarket, his Majesty had vented himself to his uncle on the uneasiness he felt from being in their hands, and he must have felt before he chose that Prince for his confident. At Newmarket, the Earl of Northumberland had private instructions to continue the negotiation, and the Duke had listened with no unwilling ear, as I have hinted before; yet he had been so over-prudent as not to trust the secret to the chiefs of the Opposition, who, driven on by Lord John Cavendish, had intemperately displayed their aversion to the Princess and Favourite, while they had not the least suspicion that the Duke was secretly paving the way for their return to Court. Yet even that intemperate behaviour of the Cavendishes and their friends could not deter the Court from the resolution of removing the Ministers, whose crime appeared, as indeed it was, of a much blacker dye. Indeed, those of the Opposition who had gone the greatest lengths, were not of importance enough to make the Court lay aside its design. The royal Junto depended on the support of the Duke of Cumberland, and could not doubt but they might have Newcastle, whenever they called for him: the rest of course must follow their leaders. But the Court intended to avail itself of a still firmer support, and that was Mr. Pitt’s, on whose easy compliance they depended too inconsiderately—and with still greater inconsideration, they began to take the machine to pieces, before they had made the common preparations for refitting it. This rash conduct was probably inspired by the riot of the weavers, which the Court regarded as the sense of the nation expressed against the Administration. Had the King temporized, he might have dealt to advantage with any faction he chose. By beginning with the dismission of the Ministers, he exposed himself to the extravagant demands of all who saw the dilemma to which he had reduced himself, and the necessity he was under of submitting to some disagreeable set of men or other, who were sure to make him purchase dearly a support that they knew he wished not to accept at all.[130]
CHAPTER VIII.
The King’s differences with his Ministers.—Negotiations with Mr. Pitt to form a new Administration.—Contemplated appointment of a Captain-General.—Reconciliation of Lord Temple and Mr. Grenville.—Ministers recalled.—Dismissal of Mr. Mackenzie.—Parliament Prorogued.
On May the 18th, Grenville went to receive the King’s orders for the speech at the close of the session, which was to end the next week. The King said, coldly, there was no hurry; he would have the Parliament adjourned, not prorogued. Grenville, thunderstruck, said, “There was so much mystery in that speech, that he must beg leave to ask if his Majesty had any thoughts of making a change in his Administration?”—“Certainly,” replied the King; “I cannot bear it as it is. I will have the Parliament only adjourned.” “I hope,” replied Grenville, “your Majesty will not order me to cut my own throat.”—“Then,” said the King, “who must adjourn the Parliament?”—“Whoever your Majesty shall appoint my successor,” said Grenville.