[48] He had had his regiment taken from him by Sir Robert Walpole.
[49] As on the Bill “for Liberty of Conscience.”—Clarendon’s Life, continuation, p. 248. The noble historian, however, observes, that from that time he never had the same credit with His Majesty he had before.—E.
[50] The trial is reported in vol. xix. of the State Trials, p. 1178: of 123 peers present, 119 voted him guilty of manslaughter; the remaining four voted him not guilty generally.—E.
[51] An abstract of the arguments in this debate is given in the Parliamentary History, vol. xvi. p. 8.—E.
[52] So in the original MS.
[53] George Simon Viscount Nuneham, eldest son of the Earl of Harcourt, was a sincere republican, and retired from Parliament because he could not continue to vote according to his principles without offending his father. [He became wiser afterwards, and accepted the post of Master of the Horse to the Queen, and his wife that of Lady of the Bedchamber. Wraxall describes him as a nobleman of high breeding, well informed, and of a most correct deportment, though of manners somewhat constrained and formal. He died without issue in 1809, aged 63, and was succeeded by his brother, the late Field-Marshal Lord Harcourt, on whose death the title became extinct.—E.]
[54] Lord Sandwich and Lord Halifax.
[55] He was a favourite of the King, who made him Commander-in-chief in Lord Shelburne’s Administration, and he was afterwards a Field-Marshal.—E.
[56] Henry, second Viscount Palmerston, the grandson of the first Viscount. He was a very accomplished nobleman. At this time he was only 26 years old.—E.
[57] Almon was a bookseller and political writer, as well as a printer, in all which capacities he received frequent employment from the extreme section of the Liberal party. He was a bustling, self-important personage, whose zeal and fidelity brought him into a certain degree of intimacy with several of the leading men of his day, and he was thus enabled to collect the information which occasionally presents itself in his works. His life of Lord Chatham, though not to be generally depended upon as an authentic narration, contains some curious anecdotes illustrative of the political disputes of that period, and is in every respect superior to his life and letters of Wilkes—an insipid, tedious, and disgusting book, particularly discreditable to its author, as he was in possession of materials that might have yielded both interest and instruction. Almon, in his latter days, was unfortunate in business, and died very poor at an advanced age in 1805.—E.