In Ireland the scene was very turbulent. Lord Townshend’s conduct was equally insolent and preposterous. He set the whole nation at defiance; shut himself up with a low woman and her friends, and at his own table publicly ridiculed all parties, declaring he knew he could, and declaring he would buy a majority. Nor was this silly profligacy confined within the palace. He wrote satiric ballads on friends and foes, and distributed them without reserve. To the shame of the Irish Parliament, and to the dishonour of the English Government, that still supported such a buffoon, a list of pensions to the amount of 25,000l. a-year was sent by him to London, and though delayed, was not rejected. Still as the English Administration demurred on the demand, they who had promised their votes for promises, not seeing the conditions performed, threw their weight into the opposite scale, lest the Viceroy, profiting of their acquiescence, should afterwards frustrate their hopes. These fluctuations, and the acrimony of the rest of the Opposition, who were men of parts superior to those employed by the Lord-Lieutenant, cost the Castle a question early in the session; nor were its advocates prepared to support even the address on the speech; for the capricious ruler had neither sent a copy of the speech to England, nor communicated it to many in office. It was consequently composed with his Lordship’s usual want of judgment, and gave much offence by charging the deficiencies of the revenue on the improvements of the country, whereas they flowed notoriously from the late long prorogation of Parliament. This defeat alarmed the Court of England, but instead of recalling the culpable Viceroy, they granted him his full catalogue of pensions, excepting only 2000l. a-year to his secretary, Sir George Maccartney, who being son-in-law of Lord Bute, it was not thought advisable to furnish so unpopular a topic to either country.[209] The confirmation of their pensions soon recalled the stragglers, and procured a considerable majority to the Castle; but the debates were so long, and were followed by such zealous libations, that Dr. Lucas, the Wilkes of Ireland, fell a victim to his patriotic fatigues. Still the wanton intemperance of Lord Townshend’s tongue and conduct, and a further stretch of authority in erecting new wards of revenue for the sake of multiplying offices, once more turned the scale, and by the end of November he lost a question against a majority of 46, who voted that it appeared to the House by evidence that the former boards of Custom and Excise had been sufficient, and that there was no want of more commissioners. Many of the placed voted against the Castle. The late pension to Dyson had given much additional disgust, being a formal breach of the King’s promise given by the Duke of Northumberland that no more pensions for terms of years should be granted but on extraordinary occasions: and the Irish Attorney-General being asked what such occasions were, had replied, On such cases as Sir Edward Hawke’s and Prince Ferdinand’s. Was Dyson’s pension a violation of that engagement, or was such a prostitute tool of office a proper pendent to the victor of the Spanish navy, or to the hero of Minden? Those ill-humours, it was feared, would induce the House of Commons not to send over the money bills; yet so great was the attachment of the Irish Whigs to the English Government, that they did transmit the bills hither, content with resolving, by a majority of one vote only, that they would make no provision for Dyson’s pension. A fresh indiscretion, negligence, or trick, turned the scale once more against the Castle. Two copies of all bills, for fear of miscarriage, are always sent by different roads to Dublin. In one copy of the returned bills which happened to arrive first, the English Attorney-General, to whom they were referred, had omitted the word “cottons.” The Irish Commons, who deny the Crown’s right of altering a money bill, flamed at the omission, and though the exact copy arrived four days after the former, and was offered to the House by the Lord-Lieutenant, the tenacious Commons adhered to their rejection. The English Government immediately abandoned the alteration, but, to preserve the King’s pretensions to a power of altering a money bill, they changed the monosyllable and for or, which was accepted in Ireland, and returned time enough to save the expiration of the annual duties; yet the time pressed so much, that orders were sent to the Custom-house officers at Dublin, to plead the recess for the Christmas holidays, as an excuse for not clearing several ships then in port, who, as the annual bill was on the point of expiring, would not have paid the duties. It was marvellous in the eyes of most men that after such repeated mismanagement Lord Townshend should be suffered to retain his government. Many imputed it to his favour with Lord Bute; yet his daily insults to Sir George Maccartney, the Earl’s son-in-law, gave him little title to that patronage. I believe two other causes contributed to Lord Townshend’s impunity: one, the difficulty of finding a successor, every man of character or prudence dreading the abuse or the expense attendant on that post; the other was the King’s satisfaction in being able to govern one of his kingdoms, at least, by so worthless a Minister—for to be able to do wrong to a whole nation is the flowering time of prerogative. The Earl of Shannon was soon after gained over by hereditary corruption, and Lord Townshend remained triumphant.
I shall briefly recapitulate a few incidents that fell out in the remainder of the year, and then close these long Memoirs with two events, of which, one was a royal marriage of the most extraordinary complexion, the other a royal death, which put an end to an influence that had given colour to all the troubles of the present reign.
Lord Rockingham and his friends, wearied out by continual defeats, the consequences, in a good measure, of their own weak conduct, determined to sit still and give over parliamentary opposition, unless any new invasions of the constitution by the Crown should awaken the people to resistance, or foreign troubles should give an opportunity of attacking the Court by its becoming unpopular; for one of the evils of bad government is, that even the best men are apt to regard foreign disgraces as small misfortunes, when they serve to check the insolence of domestic tyranny. Yet might war be an additional evil; success would advance the power of the Crown, and such unrelaxed attention to recruiting the army with Scotchmen had been kept up, that the King had reason to depend on blind obedience from a great proportion of it. The marines were almost all Scots. The haughty English were too much at their ease to enlist in that despised service. The Scots, with not less pride, were never stubborn to their interest. A new occasion gave handle to reviving abuse on that nation and on their countryman Lord Mansfield. One Eyre, a wealthy citizen, had been detected in stealing writing-paper from public offices, was tried and convicted of that mean pilfering. He had married a Scottish woman, and three of her kinsmen solicited the Chief Justice to allow him to be bailed, which was granted. This partiality occasioning clamour, the three Scots avowed and defended in the public papers what they had done, which but increased the scandal and redoubled the abuse on their nation. It was a greater triumph to the discontented, that the cause between Sir James Lowther and the Duke of Portland for Inglewood Forest being at last heard, the former was non-suited, his counsel, Sir Fletcher Norton, now Speaker, having forgotten, in drawing the grant, to insert a reserve of the third part of the rent to the Crown. But these were trifling consolations. The Court was predominant at home; Wilkes was fallen, the City was recovering from the dominion of the popular tribunes, the Rockingham party was crest-fallen, and now came news that Spain had actually restored to us the Falkland Islands, which it had been doubted she ever would surrender. Thus was the King at peace both at home and abroad, after a vexatious and ignominious struggle for near eleven years. It seemed an additional promise of tranquillity to him that his mother, who, by the bad education she had given him, and the bias which she impressed by her creatures on his counsels, was now known to be dying; and though she had lost much of her influence, she retained enough over his awe of her, to perplex his measures and throw uncertainty over the duration of his Ministries. At this very period such a storm of private calamities burst on his head as few kings ever experienced at once. Part of them touched his pride, and accordingly penetrated deep; he had a happy insensibility that surmounted the rest without an effort.
The malignant humour in the blood of the Princess Dowager had fallen on her throat, and though her fortitude was invincible and her secrecy and reserve invariable, the disorder could no longer be concealed. She could swallow but with great difficulty, and not enough to maintain life long. At times her sufferings and her struggles to hide them were so much beyond her strength, that she frequently fainted, and was thought dead. Yet would she not allow she was ill, even to her children; nor would she suffer a single physician or surgeon to inspect her throat, trusting herself solely to a German page who had some medical knowledge: and going out to take the air, long after it was expected that she would die in her coach. Her danger was publicly known by the beginning of November, on the fifth of which month, when her death was hourly expected, an express arrived from Leghorn, that her son the Duke of Gloucester was at the point of death there, and it was concluded by that time dead. He had gone to a warmer climate in search of health, and having passed by sea from Genoa to Leghorn, had fallen into a diarrhœa, attended by every bad symptom.
The very next day it became public that the Duke of Cumberland had, on the first of the month, retired to Calais with a widow, Mrs. Horton, whom he had married, and had notified his wedding to the King. What was the astonishment of mankind, what the mortification of the King and Princess, and what the triumph of Wilkes, when it came out that this new Princess of the Blood, was own sister of the famous Colonel Lutterell, the tool thrust by the Court into Wilkes’s seat for Middlesex! Could punishment be more severe than to be thus scourged by their own instrument? And how singular the fate of Wilkes, that new revenge always presented itself to him when he was sunk to the lowest ebb!
The Duke of Cumberland, after having been exposed to the derision of mankind by his foolish letters, by his absurd conduct in his intrigue, and by his pusillanimity on the detection, had added perfidy to ridicule, and abandoned his victim to her shame. He had next engaged openly in an intrigue with another married woman, a very handsome wife of a timber-merchant; and it was uncertain which was most proud of the honour, the husband or the wife. But they had not long displayed their triumph in all public places, before the restless Duke seeking new diversions, was made a more substantial conquest of at Brighthelmstone by Mrs. Horton, who had for many months been dallying with his passion, till she had fixed him to more serious views than he had intended.
She was daughter of Simon Lutterell, Lord Irnham, and had married a gentleman of fortune, with whom she had been in love; and had the misfortune of losing an only child, an infant daughter, and her husband within a fortnight of each other, still covering her grief for the first to conceal the misfortune from the last. She was rather pretty than handsome, and had more the air of a woman of pleasure than of a woman of quality, though she was well made, was graceful, and unexceptionable in her conduct and behaviour. But there was something so bewitching in her languishing eyes, which she could animate to enchantment if she pleased, and her coquetry was so active, so varied, and yet so habitual, that it was difficult not to see through it, and yet as difficult to resist it. She danced divinely, and had a great deal of wit, but of the satiric kind; and, as she had haughtiness before her rise, no wonder she claimed all the observance due to her rank after she became Duchess of Cumberland. It had been believed that she would marry General Smith, a very handsome well-built young man; but glory was her passion, and she sacrificed her lover to it, as she had never sacrificed her virtue to her lover. Thus in herself she was unexceptionable—at least, superior to the frailty of her sex, if not above its little ambition. From her family, though ancient, she drew many disadvantages. Her ancestors had been noted and long odious in Ireland for treachery, villany, and arrogance. Her father did not retrieve the honour of his blood, and though very brave in his person, and tolerably brutal, had every other failure of his race. Nor was he happier in his own issue. Not intending to return to his native country, Ireland, he had given up his house there to his son, but changing his mind, went thither. His son shut both his father and mother out of the mansion house, and was countenanced by his brothers and sisters,—a scene of vexation that pierced the mother’s heart, and threw her into religious melancholy. But to the King the most grievous part of the affliction was the connection with Colonel Lutterell, and the satisfaction it must give to the friends of the constitution to see the invasion of their privileges punished by the same hand by which they had been attacked; for it was soon known that Mrs. Horton’s brothers had been privy to the matrimonial transaction between the Duke and their sister. The Duke’s flight to Calais with his bride spoke as little heroism as he had exerted on former occasions, and showed how little consultation he had held on the validity of his marriage; yet it proved indissoluble, the royal family being expressly excepted out of the late Lord Hardwicke’s Marriage Act. That proud legislator had indeed inserted them; but the late Duke of Cumberland and Lord Holland, in order to traverse Hardwicke, had represented to the late King that it was an indignity to the Princes of the Blood to be levelled with the mass of his subjects, and the haughty Monarch had ordered them to be erased out of the bill, saying, “I will not have my family laid under those restraints.”
The King, Queen, and Princess Dowager were beyond measure enraged at this degradation of their house; but the misfortune was regarded with indifference or ridiculed by almost every one else. Yet though the King was not pitied, no indulgence was shown to the Duke; even the Opposition giving him up as Lutterell’s sister had been the object of his choice. The zealous—that is, the servile courtiers were loud in their condemnation. Even the placid and plausible Lord Barrington pronounced that the new Princess deserved to lose her head,—a wretched imitation of Lord Clarendon’s[210] outrageous strain of affectation, who pretended to demand the trial and execution of his own daughter for marrying the Duke of York. The Duchess of Buckingham, natural daughter of James the Second, a steady and active Jacobite, observing Sir Robert Walpole’s partiality to his natural daughter, Lady Mary, sent for him, and asked him if he recollected what had not been thought too great a reward to Lord Clarendon for restoring the royal family? He pretended not to understand her. She said, Was not the Duke of York allowed to marry his daughter? Sir Robert smiled, but told her he was content with the honours he had attained. He little thought his natural granddaughter would obtain a rank he declined for his natural daughter!
The Duke of Cumberland’s marriage was, indeed, a heavy blow on Lady Waldegrave, and seemed to cut off all hopes of the King’s permitting the Duke of Gloucester to acknowledge her for his wife. It might even inspire the King with the thought of, or furnish him with an excuse for, breaking such marriages. At the best it would be a great drawback on her dignity. The honour became less valuable when shared with Lutterell’s sister; and though hitherto all the world had paid her distinguished regard, and, from her singular piety, virtue, and propriety of behaviour, had concurred in believing her married, her situation became more problematic when Mrs. Horton assumed the title of Duchess of Cumberland, and she did not dare to wear that of Duchess of Gloucester.
It was still more remarkable that every one of the four eldest royal brothers either had married, were said to have married, or were on the point of marrying, subjects. Edward Duke of York had made love to Lady Mary Coke, whose great birth, great ambition and pride, and untainted virtue, had certainly never entertained his addresses in a criminal light. In truth, for some time his attachment had seemed serious; and though it had not only worn away for the two last years of his life, but that he had made a jest of her pretensions, he had written her such letters as at least she chose to construe into promises of marriage, and which, to colour the immoderate grief she acted for his death, she carried to Princess Amelie, as proofs that her trust had been well founded: but, as the Duke was very liberal of his overtures, there was a young Irish gentlewoman, whose intellects not being sound, proclaimed herself loudly his widow. The Dukes of Gloucester and Cumberland had, as I have said, gone much farther; and the King himself, as I have mentioned, seemed to have designed to make Lady Sarah Lenox his Queen.