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Lord Granby. Charles Manners (1754-1787), second son of the Marquis of Granby famous as a military hero; M.P. for Cambridge University; succeeded his grandfather as fourth Duke of Rutland, 1779.
Pulteny. Sir William Pulteney (1684-1764), Earl of Bath; long the leader of the “patriot” opposition during Sir Robert Walpole’s administration, but politically ruined by his acceptance, upon Walpole’s fall, of an earldom.
Cavendish ... Meredith ... Young. Three supporters of the Whig Opposition: John Cavendish (1732-1796), fourth son of the third Duke of Devonshire, M.P. for York, friend and correspondent of Burke; Sir William Meredith (1725?-1790), third Baronet, M.P. for Liverpool; Sir George Yonge (1731-1812), fifth Baronet, M.P. for Honiton.
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that inestimable character of our own times. William Pitt (1708-1778), first Earl of Chatham. The “Great Commoner’s” acceptance of a peerage in 1766 occasioned a storm of popular indignation.
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Admiral Keppel ... Vice Admiral Sir Hugh Palliser. Augustus Keppel (1725-1786), second son of the second Earl of Albemarle; M.P. for Windsor; Admiral of the Blue and Commander-in-Chief of the Grand Fleet, 1778; cr. Viscount Keppel, 1782. Sir Hugh Palliser (1723-1796), first Baronet; M.P. for Scarborough and a Lord of the Admiralty; Vice-Admiral of the Blue, 1778.
The allusions are to the indecisive action off Ushant between the Channel fleet under Keppel, with Palliser as third in command, and the Brest fleet under D’Orvilliers, 27 July 1778; see Introduction, p. 10. On the third day of the session an altercation broke out in the House of Commons between the two admirals, and a few days later Palliser applied to his colleagues at the Admiralty Board for a court-martial on Keppel. After a protracted trial the court declared Palliser’s charges “malicious and ill-founded.” This verdict so delighted the populace that street riots ensued in which the Admiralty was attacked and Palliser’s house in Pall-Mall was gutted. Palliser was obliged to resign all his public appointments. See Sir G. O. Trevelyan, George the Third and Charles James Fox: The Concluding Part of the American Revolution, New York, 1912-14, I, ch. v.
Philip Stevens, Esq. Philip Stephens (1723-1809), M.P. for Sandwich and First Secretary to the Admiralty; cr. a baronet, 1795.