The Duke undoubtedly intended to pursue the policy of Lord Chatham, but, falling under the influence of the King—who was willing enough to forgive, for his political ends, such a flagrant insult to his consort as that narrated above—it so happened that whenever the ministry moved it was in the opposite direction to that which the Earl would have desired.
CHAPTER XVI
THE KING'S RULE
The Duke of Grafton as a matter of course now became Prime Minister, but there were not wanting signs that the administration would not long endure, and when Lord Chatham reappeared in the political arena it was obvious its days were numbered. The famous statesman's return was most unexpected, for he was still supposed to be in the country, incapable of ever again transacting business.[85] "He himself," wrote Walpole on July 7, 1769, "in propria personâ, and not in a straight-waistcoat, walked into the King's levée this morning, and was in the closet twenty minutes after the levée." At his interview Chatham told George that he disapproved of the policy of the ministry, especially as regarded Wilkes and America—a statement calculated to alarm the King, who approved of the action taken. "For my part," said the Earl, "I am grown old, and unable to fill any office of business; but this I am resolved on, that I will not even sit at Council but to meet Lord Rockingham. He, and he alone, has a knot of spotless friends, such as ought to govern this kingdom." As he emerged from the Royal Closet, Chatham encountered Grafton, and, embittered especially by the remembrance of the dismissal of his personal friend, Sir Jeffrey Amherst, from the post of Governor of Virginia, greeted him with the utmost coldness. It was to be war to the death, and Chatham was too great a man to veil his enmity under the cloak of friendship.
The battle began after the reassembling of Parliament on January 9, 1770, when the King in his speech referred to a distemper which had recently appeared among the horned cattle. This was seized upon by the caricaturists, and denounced by "Junius": "While the whole kingdom was agitated with anxious expectation upon one great point, you meanly evaded the question, and instead of the explicit firmness and decision of a king, gave us nothing but the misery of a ruined grazier and the whining piety of a Methodist." It has not been made clear whether this was inserted by the King, who in his capacity of farmer was much perturbed by the ravages made by the disease, or whether it was an attempt to attract the attention of Parliament to this rather than to more serious issues.
Serious issues enough there were at the end of 1769 to occupy the attention of all thoughtful men. The English were undeniably angry, the Wilkes affair was dividing parties and sowing dissension between statesmen, and America was threateningly restless. The King's treatment of the City's remonstrance[86] had aroused to a fine frenzy habitually calm folk, and discontent was so rife that rebellion itself was in the minds of many Englishmen. "The tumults of London, in March, 1769, which menaced with insult or attack even the palace of the sovereign, bore no feeble resemblance to the riotous disorders that preceded the Civil Wars, under Charles the First," Wraxall wrote. "A Hearse, followed by the mob, was drawn into the Court-yard at St. James's, decorated with insignia of the most humiliating and indecent description. I have always understood that the late Lord Mountmorris, then a very young man, was the person who on that occasion personated the executioner, holding an axe in his hands, and his face covered with a crape. The King's firmness did not, however, desert him, in the midst of these trying ebullitions of democratic rage. He remained calm and unmoved in the Drawing-room, while the streets surrounding his residence echoed with the shouts of an enraged multitude, who seemed disposed to proceed to the greatest extremities."[87]
Horace Walpole was somewhat perturbed at the situation. "The English may be soothed: I have never heard that they were to be frightened," he wrote. "This is my creed and all our history supports it." The King, however, seemed bent on desperate measures and, according to The Whisperer (February 24, 1770), When the Marquis of Granby resigned his employments, the King said to him, "Granby, do you think the army would fight for me?" To which the Marquis nobly replied, "I believe, Sir, some of your officers would, but I will not answer for the men."[88] This state of turmoil gave a great unholy joy to David Hume: "I am delighted to see the daily and hourly progress of madness, and folly, and wickedness in England," he wrote from Edinburgh. "The consummation of these fine qualities are the ingredients for making a fine narrative in history, especially if followed by some signal and ruinous convulsion, as I hope will soon be the case with that pernicious people. He must be a very bad cook who cannot make a palatable dish from the whole."
The duel between Chatham and Grafton took place during the debate on the Address. The Earl who, owing to his ill-health had never yet done justice to his oratorical powers in the House of Lords, now made a splendid fighting speech, in which after expressing the good-will he bore his fellow-subjects in America, he denounced the proceedings against Wilkes and the American policy of the ministry. This was the signal for the other malcontents to engage. "I accepted the Great Seal without conditions," Lord Camden states in the House of Lords. "I meant not therefore to be trammelled by his Majesty—(I beg pardon) by his ministers; but I have suffered myself to be too long. For some time I have beheld, with silent indignation, the arbitrary measures of the minister; I have often drooped and hung down my head in Council, and disapproved by my looks those steps which I knew my avowed opposition could not prevent; I will do so no longer, but openly and boldly speak my sentiments." The Duke of Beaufort and the Duke of Manchester, the Earl of Coventry and the Earl of Huntingdon gave up their offices at Court; and the resignation of James Grenville, Vice-Treasurer of Ireland, and Dunning, Solicitor-General, followed, together with that of Lord Granby, Commander-in-Chief and Master of the Ordnance, who retained only his colonelcy of the Blues.