In the beginning of December, the English Privy Council sat on the dissolution of the Parliament so much demanded. All were unanimous against it, yet the Chancellor peremptorily condemned the introduction of Lutterell. Mr. Conway, by my advice, proposed a popular declaration in the King’s Speech against unusual exertion of prerogative. Most of the Council approved the idea; and, at Mr. Conway’s request, I drew words for that purpose; but he had not weight enough with the Duke of Grafton to get them admitted, or the King had too much influence over his Grace not to overrule so unpalatable a condescension.
A momentary triumph the Duke obtained over the popular party. Vaughan, a sanctified leader of the Bill of Rights, offered him 5000l. for the reversion of a place in America. The Duke, who should only have exposed the man, prosecuted him: yet Vaughan had much to plead in his excuse. Great debts were owing to him in the colony, of which the place in question was the Register, who resided in England, whence it was difficult to get his debts, which amounted to 80,000l. registered; and, therefore, he had tried to purchase the place, which had been often sold, for his son.[253] The Duke’s over affectation of virtue drew on him from Junius a detection, in which his active aversion to corruption did not appear quite so pure as his passive. It was proved that he had bestowed on Colonel Burgoyne a place, which the latter was to sell to reimburse himself for the expenses of his election at Preston. Some other papers from the same hand fell cruelly on Burgoyne.
As the Session approached, Lord Chatham engaged with new warmth in promoting petitions. He asked Mr. Cholmondeley,[254] Member for Cheshire, why his county had not petitioned? and told him he himself would move for dissolution of the Parliament; and, if not able to stand on his legs, “I will speak,” said he, as he lay on his couch, “in this horizontal posture.” Calcraft was not less zealous, and more active. He and Sir Joseph Mawbey obtained a petition from the county of Essex, though neither High Sheriff, the Members, nor one gentleman of the county would attend the meeting, at the head of which they were forced to set Sir Robert Bernard, Knight for Huntingdonshire.
In the City, attempts were made to save three more condemned cutters of looms, and handbills were dispersed inviting the weavers to assemble on the morrow in Moorfields, in order to petition the King for a pardon; but Beckford, the new Lord Mayor, and the Sheriff Sawbridge went thither and persuaded them to disperse; and the cutters were hanged without disturbance.
These many essays towards an insurrection were crowned by the unparalleled remonstrance of Junius to the King, the most daring insult ever offered to a prince but in times of open rebellion, and aggravated by the many truths it contained. Nothing could exceed the singularity of this satire, but the impossibility of discovering the author. Three men were especially suspected, Wilkes, Edmund Burke, and William Gerard Hamilton. The desperate hardiness of the author in attacking men so great, so powerful, and some so brave, was reconcileable only to the situation of Wilkes; but the masterly talents that appeared in those writings were deemed superior to his abilities: yet in many of Junius’s letters an inequality was observed; and even in this remonstrance different hands seemed to have been employed. The laborious flow of style, and fertility of matter, made Burke believed the real Junius: yet he had not only constantly and solemnly denied any hand in those performances, but was not a man addicted to bitterness; nor could any one account for such indiscriminate attacks on men of such various descriptions and professions. Hamilton was most generally suspected. He, too, denied it—but his truth was not renowned. The quick intelligence of facts, and the researches into the arcana of every office, were far more uncommon than the invectives; and men wondered how any one possessed of such talents, could have the forbearance to write in a manner so desperate as to prevent his ever receiving personal applause for his writings: the venom was too black not to disgrace even his ashes.[255]
A North Briton, of very inferior or no merit, followed this remonstrance, and spared the two royal brothers no more than Junius had palliated the errors of the King. The Duke of Cumberland, a weak and debauched boy, was censured for an intrigue with a lady of rank, which became of public notoriety, and will be mentioned hereafter. The Duke of Gloucester, a virtuous, discreet, and unexceptionable Prince, had involved himself in a more serious affair; of which, as I can, I must give a more particular account than was known to others.
Maria Walpole, second natural daughter of my brother, Sir Edward, and one of the most beautiful of women, had been married, solely by my means, to James late Earl of Waldegrave, Governor to the King and Duke of York, an excellent man, but as old again as she was, and of no agreeable figure. Her passions were ambition and expense: she accepted his hand with pleasure, and by an effort less common, proved a meritorious wife. When after her year of widowhood she appeared again in the full lustre of her beauty, she was courted by the Duke of Portland; but the young Duke of Gloucester, who had gazed on her with desire during her husband’s life, now openly showing himself her admirer, she slighted the subject, and aspired to the brother of the Crown. Her obligations to me, and my fondness for her, authorized me to interpose my advice, which was kindly but unwillingly received. I did not desist; but pointing out the improbabilities of marriage, the little likelihood of the King’s consent, and the chance of being sent to Hanover separated from her children,[256] on whom she doated, the last reason alone prevailed on the fond mother, and she yielded to copy a letter I wrote for her to the Duke of Gloucester, in which she renounced his acquaintance in the no new terms of not being of rank to be his wife, and too considerable to be his mistress. A short fortnight baffled all my prudence. The Prince renewed his visits with more assiduity after that little interval, and Lady Waldegrave received him without disguise. My part was soon taken. I had done my duty—a second attempt had been hopeless folly. Though often pressed to sup with her, when I knew the Duke was to be there, I steadily refused, and never once mentioned his name to her afterwards, though as their union grew more serious, she affectedly named him to me, called him the Duke, and related to me private anecdotes of the royal family, which she could have received but from him. It was in vain; I studiously avoided him. She brought him to see my house, but I happened not to be at home; he came again, alone; I left the house. He then desisted, for I never staid for his court, which followed the Princess Dowager’s, but retired as soon as she had spoken to me. This, as may be supposed, cooled my niece’s affection for me; but being determined not to have the air of being convenient to her from flattery, if she was not married, and having no authority to ask her the question on which she had refused to satisfy her father, I preferred my honour to her favour, and left her to her own conduct. Indeed my own father’s obligations to the royal family forbad me to endeavour to place a natural daughter of our house so near the Throne. To my brother the Duke was profuse of civilities, which I pressed him to decline; and even advised him not to see his daughter, unless she would own her marriage, which might oblige the Duke, in vindication of her character, to avow her for his wife. Married, I had no doubt they were. Both the Duke and she were remarkably religious; and neither of them dissolute enough to live, as they did at last, with all the liberties of marriage. The King and Queen denied their legal union, yet the respect with which they treated her spoke the contrary; and the homage which all men and all women paid her by a fortune singular to her, assured the opinion of her virtue, and made it believed that the King, privy to their secret, had exacted a promise of their not divulging it. By degrees her situation became still less problematic; and both the Duke and she affectedly took all occasions of intimating it by a formal declaration. At first she had houses, or lodgings, in the palaces nearest to his residence; and the latter were furnished from the royal wardrobe without limitation. She changed her liveries to a compound of the royal—was covered with jewels—the Duke’s gentlemen and equerries handed her to her chair in public—his equipages were dispatched for her—his sister, the Queen of Denmark, sent her presents by him, and she quitted all assemblies at nine at night, saying, “You know I must go.” At St. Leonard’s Hill, in Windsor Forest, near his own lodge at Cranbourn, he built her a palace, and lay there every night: his picture and Lord Waldegrave’s she showed in her bedchamber. These were not the symptoms of a dissoluble connection! Once they both seemed, in 1766, to be impatient of ascertaining her rank. She had obtained lodgings in the most inner court of the palace at Hampton, and demanded permission of Lord Hertford, Lord Chamberlain, for her coach to drive into it, an honour peculiar to the royal family. He, feeling the delicacy of the proposal, which would have amounted to a declaration, unless a like permission had been indulged to other countesses residing there, delayed mentioning it to the King, to whom he knew the request would be unwelcome. Lady Waldegrave sent to the Chamberlain’s office to know if it was granted. Lord Hertford then was obliged to speak. The King peremptorily refused, saying, he would not break through old orders. Afraid of shocking her, Lord Hertford begged I would acquaint Lady Waldegrave. I flatly refused to meddle in the business. In the meantime the Dukes of Gloucester and Cumberland went to Hampton Court. The former asked Ely, of the Chamberlain’s office, if the request was granted; and being told Lord Hertford was to ask it of his Majesty, the Duke, losing his usual temper, said passionately, “Lord Hertford might have done it without speaking to the King (which would have been rash indeed!)—but that not only Lady Waldegrave’s coach should drive in, but that she herself should go up the Queen’s staircase.” This being reported to Lord Hertford, he again pressed me to interpose; but I again refused: but, lest the Duke should resent it, I advised him to write to my niece: but she threw up her lodgings, when she could not carry the point she had aimed at. She obtained, however, about a year after, a sort of equivocal acknowledgment of what she was. The Duke of Gloucester gave a ball to the King and Queen, to which nobody, without exception, but certain of their servants and their husbands, and wives, and children, were admitted: yet Lady Waldegrave and her eldest daughter appeared there. She could have no pretension to be present, being attached by no post to either King or Queen; and it spoke itself, that the Duke could not have proposed to introduce his mistress[257] to an entertainment dedicated to the Queen. The Princess Dowager (and she was then believed to be the principal obstacle to the publicity of the marriage) alone treated Lady Waldegrave with coldness[258]—another presumption of their being married. His declining health often carried the Duke abroad. The Great Duke, with whom he contracted a friendship, told Lady Hamilton, wife of our Minister at Naples, that the Duke had owned his marriage to him. It was this union that was censured in the North Briton, as threatening a revival of the feuds of the two roses, by a Prince of the blood marrying a subject.
END OF THE THIRD VOLUME.
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