[17] Mary, wife of Edward Duke of Norfolk, one of the daughters and co-heiresses of Edward Blount of Blagden, in Devonshire. The biographer of the Blount family states that “she graced her high station by the beauty and dignity of her person, and the splendour of her wit and talents.” She had lived with her husband in the South of France, until he succeeded to the dukedom on the death of his elder brother, without issue, in 1732. She died without issue in 1773. The Duke survived her and died at the advanced age of 92, in 1777.—(History of the Croke and Le Blount Family, vol. ii. p. 150.)—E.
[18] The debate was hot and personal. Lord Denbigh threw out indirect reflections on Chief Justice Wilmot, and on being stopped as disorderly, he turned upon Lord Mansfield, and went so far as to give his lordship the lie. Eventually he was obliged to ask pardon, which Lord Mansfield seems to have given with rather unbecoming alacrity.—(Duke of Bedford’s Journal, in Cav. Parl. Deb., vol. i. Appendix.) On the following day, the Duke of Grafton communicated the result of the division by letter to Lord Chatham, and earnestly entreated an interview to consider what was to be done. Lord Chatham, as before, begged “to be allowed to decline the honour of the visit, finding himself quite unable for a conversation which he should be otherwise proud and happy to embrace.”—(Chatham Correspondence, vol. iii. pp. 255, 256.)—E.
[19] The Duke says in his MS. Memoirs—
“Though I expected to find Lord Chatham very ill indeed, his situation was different from what I had imagined: his nerves and spirits were affected to a dreadful degree, and the sight of his great mind, bowed down and thus weakened by disorder, would have filled me with grief and concern even if I had not long borne a sincere attachment to his person and character. The confidence he reposed in me, demanded every return on my part, and it appeared like cruelty in me to have been urged by any necessity to put a man I valued to so great suffering. The interview was long and painful: I had to run over the many difficulties of the session, for his lordship, I believe, had not once attended the House since his last return from Bath. I had to relate the struggles we had experienced in carrying some points, especially in the House of Lords; the opposition, also, we had encountered in the East India business, from Mr. Conway as well as Mr. Townshend, together with the unaccountable conduct of the latter gentleman, who had suffered himself to be led to pledge himself at last, contrary to the known decision of every member of the Cabinet, to draw a certain revenue from the Colonies, without offence to the Americans themselves; and I was sorry to inform Lord Chatham, that Mr. Townshend’s flippant boasting was received with strong marks of a blind and greedy approbation from the body of the House; and I endeavoured to lay everything before his lordship as plainly as I was able, and assured him that Lords Northington and Camden had both empowered me to declare how earnestly they desired to receive his advice as to assisting and strengthening the system he had established by some adequate accession, without which they were satisfied it could not nor ought to proceed.
“It was with difficulty that I brought Lord Chatham to be sensible of the weakness of his Administration, or the power of the united faction against us, though we received every mark we could desire of his Majesty’s support. At last, after much discourse and some arguing, he proceeded to entreat me to remain in my present station, taking that method to strengthen the Ministry which should appear to me to be the most eligible; and he assured me that if Lords Northington and Camden, as well as myself, did not retain our high places, there would be an end to all his hopes of being ever serviceable again as a public man.”
Eventually Lord Chatham acquiesced in the Duke entering into a negotiation with the Bedford or Rockingham party—though he preferred the former,—a preference which explains the Duke’s remark in the text of p. 49.—E.
[20] Conway was right—Prince Ferdinand realized very little property during the war, and died poor. The vast sums drawn from England fell into the hands of subordinate agents.—E.
[21] They were both descendants of Charles II.
[22] A brief report of the debate is given from Lord Hardwicke’s Notes in the “Parliamentary History,” vol. xvi. p. 350, by which it appears that Lord Mansfield’s opposition was most decided and effective. He treated it as an unprecedented exertion of absolute power to set aside a legal act of private men legally empowered to dispose of their own property—they having neither violated the general principles of justice nor the bye-laws of the Company; their circumstances being amply adequate to the payment of the dividend: and he also insisted that stock-jobbing would be promoted by the bill, and left no doubt of his own impression that such was its sole object. These arguments are reproduced with great ability in the Protest, and have never been satisfactorily refuted. The insolvency of the Company—a ground afterwards abandoned by the Government—seems to be the only legitimate defence that could have been alleged for such an arbitrary act.—E.
[23] Many, if not all of these, are to be found in the third volume of Lord Chatham’s Correspondence.—E.