TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE

Footnote anchors are denoted by [number], and the footnotes have been placed at the end of each chapter.

The Appendix has sections marked B to K; there is no section A, and no section J.

As the Editor notes in his Preface, “Some, though very few, coarse expressions, have been suppressed by the Editor, and the vacant spaces filled up by [3 or 4] asterisks.” A few names have been editorially omitted; these are sometimes indicated by —— and sometimes by ****.

Some minor changes to the text are noted at the [end of the book.]

MEMOIRS
OF THE REIGN OF
KING GEORGE THE SECOND.

VOL. I.

GEORGE II.
London. Henry Colburn, 1846.

MEMOIRS

OF THE REIGN OF

KING GEORGE THE SECOND.

BY

HORACE WALPOLE,

YOUNGEST SON OF SIR ROBERT WALPOLE, EARL OF ORFORD.

EDITED, FROM THE ORIGINAL MSS.

WITH A PREFACE AND NOTES,

BY THE LATE

LORD HOLLAND.

Second Edition, Revised.

WITH THE ORIGINAL MOTTOES.

VOL. I.

LONDON:
HENRY COLBURN, PUBLISHER,
GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET.
1847.

EDITOR’S
PREFACE.

The work now submitted to the public is printed from a Manuscript of the late Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford.

Among the papers found at Strawberry Hill, after the death of Lord Orford, was the following Memorandum, wrapped in an envelope, on which was written, “Not to be opened till after my Will.”

“In my Library at Strawberry Hill are two wainscot chests or boxes, the larger marked with an A, the lesser with a B. I desire, that as soon as I am dead, my Executor and Executrix will cord up strongly and seal the larger box, marked A, and deliver it to the Honourable Hugh Conway Seymour, to be kept by him unopened and unsealed till the eldest son of Lady Waldegrave, or whichever of her sons, being Earl of Waldegrave, shall attain the age of twenty-five years; when the said chest, with whatever it contains, shall be delivered to him for his own. And I beg that the Honourable Hugh Conway Seymour, when he shall receive the said chest, will give a promise in writing, signed by him, to Lady Waldegrave, that he or his Representatives will deliver the said chest unopened and unsealed, by my Executor and Executrix, to the first son of Lady Waldegrave who shall attain the age of twenty-five years. The key of the said chest is in one of the cupboards of the Green Closet, within the Blue Breakfast Room, at Strawberry Hill, and that key, I desire, may be delivered to Laura, Lady Waldegrave, to be kept by her till her son shall receive the chest.

(Signed) “Hor. Walpole, Earl of Orford.

“August 19, 1796.”

In obedience to these directions, the box described in the preceding Memorandum was corded and sealed with the seals of the Honourable Mrs. Damer and the late Lord Frederick Campbell, the Executrix and Executor of Lord Orford, and by them delivered to the late Lord Hugh Seymour, by whose Representatives it was given up, unopened and unsealed, to the present Earl of Waldegrave, when he attained the age of twenty-five. On examining the box, it was found to contain a number of manuscript volumes and other papers, among which were the Memoirs now published.

Though no directions were left by Lord Orford for the publication of these Memoirs, there can be little doubt of his intention that they should one day or other be communicated to the world. Innumerable passages in the Memoirs show they were written for the public. The precautions of the Author to preserve them for a certain number of years from inspection, are a proof, not of his intention that they should remain always in the private hands of his family, but of his fears lest, if divulged, they might be published prematurely; and the term fixed for opening the chest seems to mark the distance of time when he thought they might be made public without impropriety. Ten years have elapsed since that period, and more than sixty years since the last of the historical events he commemorates in this work.[1] No man is now alive whose character or conduct is the subject of praise or censure in these Memoirs.

The printed correspondence of Lord Orford contains allusions to this work. In a letter written in 1752,[2] he informs Mr. Montagu, that “his Memoirs of last year are quite finished,” but that he means to “add some pages of notes that will not want anecdotes;” and in answer to that gentleman,[3] who had threatened him in jest with a Messenger from the Secretary’s Office to seize his papers, after a ludicrous account of the alarm into which he had been thrown by the actual arrival of a King’s Messenger at his door, he adds, “however, I have buried the Memoirs under the oak in my garden, where they are to be found a thousand years hence, and taken, perhaps, for a Runic history in rhyme.”

The Postscript, printed in this edition at the end of the Preface, but annexed by the Author to his Memoirs of the year 1751, evidently implies, that what he had then written was destined for publication. It is addressed in the usual style of an author to his reader, and contains an answer to objections that might be made to him. In this answer or apology for his work he justifies the freedom of his strictures on public men, vindicates the impartiality of his characters and narrative, claims the merit of care and fidelity in his reports of parliamentary proceedings, and explains the sources of information from which he derived his knowledge of the many private anecdotes and transactions he relates.

In the beginning of his Memoirs of 1752, he again speaks of his work as one ultimately destined for the public. “I sit down,” he says, “to resume a task, for which I fear Posterity will condemn the Author, at the same time that they feel their curiosity gratified.”

Many other passages might be quoted that imply he wrote for Posterity, with an intention that at some future time his work should be given to the public. “These sheets,” he remarks, “were less intended for a history of war than for civil annals. Whatever tends to a knowledge of the characters of remarkable persons, of the manners of the age, and of its political intrigues, comes properly within my plan. I am more attentive to deserve the thanks of Posterity than their admiration.”—“I am no historian,” he observes in another place; “I write casual memoirs, I draw characters, I preserve anecdotes, which my superiors, the historians of Britain, may enchase into their mighty annals, or pass over at pleasure.”—“To be read for a few years is immortality enough for such a writer as me.”—“Posterity, this is an impartial picture.”

At the conclusion of his Memoirs of 1758, where the Author makes a pause in his work, and seems uncertain whether he should ever resume it or not, he again addresses himself to his readers in the style of an author looking forward to publication. If he should ever continue his work, he warns his readers “not to expect so much intelligence and information in any of the subsequent pages as may have appeared in the preceding.”—“During the former period,” he goes on to observe, “I lived in the centre of business, was intimately acquainted with many of the chief actors, was eager in politics, indefatigable in heaping up knowledge and materials for my work. Now, detached from these busy scenes, with many political connexions dropped or dissolved, indifferent to events, and indolent, I shall have fewer opportunities of informing myself or others.”

He then proceeds to give a character of himself, and to “lay open to his readers his nearest sentiments.” He acknowledges some enmities and resentments, confesses that he has been injured by some, and treated by others with ingratitude, but assures his readers, as he probably thought himself, that he has written without bias or partiality, “that affection and veneration for truth and justice have preponderated above all other considerations,” and that when he has expressed himself of particular men with a severity that may appear objectionable, it was “the unamiableness of the characters he blames that imprinted the dislikes,” to which he pleads guilty. Can it be supposed, he asks, that “he would sacrifice the integrity of these Memoirs, his favourite labour, to a little revenge that he shall never taste?” Whatever may be thought of the soundness of this reasoning, and whatever opinion may be formed of the impartiality of his work, it seems impossible that anything short of a positive injunction to commit his Memoirs to the Press could have conveyed a stronger indication of the intention and desire of the Author, that, at some future period after his decease, this his favourite labour should be communicated to the public.

The extraordinary pains taken by Lord Orford to correct and improve his Memoirs, and prepare them for publication, afford no less convincing proof of his intentions in the legacy of his work. The whole of the Memoirs now published have been written over twice, and the early part three times. The first sketches or foul copies of the work are in his own hand-writing; then follows what he calls the corrected and transcribed copy, which is also written by himself; and this third or last copy, extending to the end of 1755, is written by his secretary or amanuensis, Mr. Kirkgate, with some corrections by himself, and the notes on the blank pages, opposite to the fair copy, entirely in his own hand. This last copy was bound into two regular volumes, with etchings from designs furnished by Bentley and Muntz, to serve as a frontispiece to the whole work, and as head-pieces for each chapter, explanations of which were subjoined at the end.

So much for the authenticity of the present work, and obvious intention of the Author that after a sufficient lapse of years it should be published. Of the Author himself, so well known by his numerous publications, little need be said, except to give the dates of his entrance into Parliament, and of his retirement from public life, with some few observations on his political character and connexions.

Horace Walpole, afterwards Earl of Orford, was third son of the celebrated Sir Robert Walpole. He was born on the 5th of October, 1717, and brought into Parliament in 1741, for the borough of Callington. At the general election in 1747, he was returned a second time for the same borough; and in 1754 he came into Parliament for Castle Rising. On the death of his uncle, Lord Walpole, of Wolterton, in 1757, he accepted the Chiltern Hundreds, in order to succeed his cousin, become Lord Walpole, in the representation of Lynn Regis, “the Corporation of which had such reverence for his father’s memory, that they would not bear distant relations while he had sons living.”[4] At the general election for 1761, he was again returned for Lynn without opposition; but being threatened with a contested election, and heartily tired of politics, from which he had in a great measure withdrawn after the accession of his friends to office in 1765, he voluntarily retired from Parliament in 1768. In 1791 he succeeded his nephew as Earl of Orford, and died on the 2nd of March, 1797, in the eightieth year of his age.

The House of Commons, in which Mr. Walpole first sat, was the one that overturned his father’s Administration. In the very first week of the session, the Minister was left in a minority. He still, however, kept his place, and so nearly were parties balanced, that for two months he maintained, with alternate victories and reverses, a contest with his adversaries. At length, secretly betrayed by some of his colleagues, who had entered into private engagements with his enemies, and defeated in an election question, which had been made a trial of strength between Ministry and Opposition, he retired from office, and became Earl of Orford.

His son Horace, though exempt from ambition, was roused by his father’s danger, and, while the struggle lasted, took a lively interest in all that passed. In his letters, he gives an entertaining and not uncandid account of the Debates that took place, and communicates freely to his Correspondent the hopes and fears, the good and bad success of his party; his anticipations of their strength in the different questions as they arose, are followed by his explanations of their failures, as far as he could account for them at the time; the desertion and falling off of their friends are stigmatized as they occurred, with the severity such conduct deserved; and when Sir Robert was compelled to resign, his son records with satisfaction the successful efforts used to secure him from the vengeance of his enemies, by disuniting the parties coalesced against him, and rendering them odious to the public, and hostile to one another.

But, though assiduous in his attendance on Parliament during this period, and sincerely anxious for his father, Mr. Walpole, who had no turn for public speaking, once and once only addressed the House. It was on a motion of Lord Limerick, seconded by Sir John St. Aubin, to appoint a Committee of Inquiry into the conduct of Robert, Earl of Orford, during the last ten years of his Administration.[5] A similar motion to inquire generally into the conduct of affairs at home and abroad for the last twenty, had been made and rejected a fortnight before.[6] The selection of this occasion for his maiden speech, did credit to the judgment and feelings of Mr. Walpole; and, though there is little force in his arguments against the motion, there is modesty, right feeling, and some happiness, both of thought and expression, in what he said. The speech, as he delivered it, is preserved in his Correspondence; and as it has no sort of resemblance to the speech published in his name by the London Magazine, and since reprinted in the Parliamentary History, we subjoin it for the satisfaction of our readers. The report of it, given by Mr. Walpole himself the day after it was made, is as follows:—

“Mr. Speaker,

“I have always thought, Sir, that incapacity and inexperience must prejudice the cause they undertake to defend; and it has been diffidence of myself, not distrust of the cause, that has hitherto made me so silent upon a point on which I ought to have appeared so zealous.

“While the attempts for this inquiry were made in general terms, I should have thought it presumption in me to stand up and defend measures in which so many abler men have been engaged, and which, consequently, they could so much better support: but when the attack grows more personal, it grows my duty to oppose it more particularly; lest I be suspected of an ingratitude, which my heart disdains. But I think, Sir, I cannot be suspected of that, unless my not having abilities to defend my father can be construed into a desire not to defend him.

“My experience, Sir, is very small; I have never been conversant in business and politics, and have sat a very short time in this House. With so slight a fund, I must mistrust my power to serve him, especially as in the short time I have sat here, I have seen that not his own knowledge, innocence, and eloquence, have been able to protect him against a powerful and determined party. I have seen, since his retirement, that he has many great and noble friends, who have been able to protect him from farther violence. But, Sir, when no repulses can calm the clamour against him, no motives should sway his friends from openly undertaking his defence. When the King has conferred rewards on his services; when the Parliament has refused its assent to any inquiries of complaint against him, it is but maintaining the King’s and our own honour to reject this Motion, for the repeating which, however, I cannot think the authors to blame, as I suppose, now they have turned him out, they are willing to inquire whether they had any reason to do so.

“I shall say no more, Sir, but leave the material part of this defence to the impartiality, candour, and credit of men who are no ways dependent on him. He has already found that defence, Sir, and I hope he always will. It is to their authority I trust; and to me it is the strongest proof of innocence, that for twenty years together no crime could be solemnly alleged against him; and, since his dismission, he has seen a majority rise up to defend his character, in that very House of Commons in which a majority had overturned his power. As, therefore, Sir, I must think him innocent, I must stand up to protect him from injustice—had he been accused, I should not have given the House this trouble; but I think, Sir, that the precedent of what was done upon this question a few days ago, sufficient reason, if I had no other, for me to give my negative now.”

This speech of a son, in defence of his father, appears to have been well received by the House. Mr. Pitt, who was at that time one of the most violent against Lord Orford, said in reply, “How very commendable it was in Mr. Walpole to have made the above speech, which must have made an impression on the House; but, if it was becoming in him to remember that he was the child of the accused, the House ought to remember, too, that they are the children of their country.” “It was a great compliment from him,” adds Mr. Walpole, “and very artful, too.” The Motion was carried by a majority of 252 to 245. Nothing was made of the inquiry.

For many years after the fall of Lord Orford, Mr. Walpole took an active part in all the political intrigues and dissensions of the times. Though he had not been treated, as he frequently hints, with any great kindness or indulgence by his father, he was indignant at the persecution against him, and appears to have been warmly and affectionately attached to his memory. In his private correspondence, he continually alludes to the mild and prudent policy of Sir Robert, and contrasts it with the violence and rashness of succeeding Ministers; and, as he advanced in life, these impressions became stronger, and recur more frequently in his writings. His political connexions were originally with his father’s friends; and for many years he appears to have indulged in sentiments of bitter hostility towards his enemies. When any of them were guilty of tergiversations, either in their public conduct or political friendships, he never fails in his correspondence to mark their perfidy and inconsistencies, and seems to enjoy with delight their apostasy and disgrace. But after a certain time he became less inimical to their persons, though to the end of his life he never ceased to blame their persecution of his father, which, indeed, many of them subsequently acknowledged to have been unmerited and unjust.

At the time when these Memoirs commence, the resentments he retained on his father’s account were directed less against the enemies who had openly opposed, than against the friends who had secretly betrayed and deserted him. He appears, for instance, to have been reconciled very speedily to Lord Granville, and ultimately to have become a warm admirer of Mr. Pitt. But against the Pelhams and Lord Hardwicke, whom he repeatedly and unequivocally charges with treachery to his father, his resentment was implacable.[7] In the early part of his public life, his chief political friends appear to have been Mr. Winnington and Mr. Fox. For the former, who died in 1746, his admiration was unbounded.

In his Memoirs, indeed, where in no instance but one he ever confers praise unmixed with censure, he bestows on Mr. Winnington the character of being one “whom it was impossible to hate or to trust;” and, in a subsequent passage, he describes him “as perniciously witty, affecting an honesty in avowing whatever was dishonourable.” But, in his private correspondence, written immediately after the sudden and melancholy death of Mr. Winnington,[8] he calls him one of the first men in England, and adds, “I was familiarly acquainted with him, loved and admired him, for he had great good-nature, and a quickness of wit most peculiar to himself; and for his public talents he has left nobody equal to him, as before nobody was superior to him but my father.”

With Mr. Fox he appears to have lived on the most confidential terms, till that gentleman accepted the Seals in 1755 under the Duke of Newcastle. Mr. Walpole, whose inveteracy to the Pelhams was unabated, could not pardon in his father’s friend, a connexion with the man whom he regarded as the chief traitor in the accomplishment of his father’s ruin. The step too was taken without consulting him. This added to his indignation; and from that time, though he continued in habits of intimacy with Mr. Fox, he became cold to his interests, and, by his own account, was, on one important occasion, active and successful in traversing his designs.

He was, in truth, during the whole of his public life, too much under the guidance of personal feelings and resentments, and too apt to sacrifice his friendships to his aversions; and as the latter were often excited by trivial and accidental causes, his political conduct, though unexceptionable on the score of interest or ambition, was fluctuating and uncertain, and his judgment of men variable and capricious. The affair of Admiral Byng, in which he took a part that does credit to his feelings and humanity, completed his estrangement from Mr. Fox. He animadverts with great severity on the cruelty of obstructing an irregular application for mercy with the view of embarrassing an Administration. The questionable conduct of Mr. Fox on that occasion seems to have deserved some such censure; but Mr. Walpole betrays his own partiality by the comparative tenderness with which he treats the Ministers themselves. They had it in their power to save Admiral Byng, and justice as well as humanity required them to exert it if they thought him either injured or innocent. Yet they chose to sign the warrant for his execution rather than incur the odium with the King or the public of insisting on his pardon.

About the time of his separation from Mr. Fox, Mr. Walpole appears to have lost the influence he had acquired over the Duke of Bedford through the intervention of Mr. Rigby; and during the latter part of these Memoirs, detached from all political intimacies, he seems to have had no better means of information than might have been possessed by any other industrious and attentive member of the House of Commons.

On the merits of the present work it would be improper to enlarge in this place. That it contains much curious and original information will not be disputed. The intimacy which the Author enjoyed with many of the chief personages of the times, and what he calls, “his propensity to faction,” made him acquainted with the most secret intrigues and negotiations of parties; and where his resentments did not cloud his judgment, his indifference to the common objects of ambition rendered him an impartial spectator of their quarrels and accommodations. The period of which he treats was not distinguished by splendid virtues or great vices, by extraordinary events or great revolutions; but it is a part of our history little known to us, and not undeserving our curiosity, as it forms the transition from the expiring struggles of Jacobitism to the more important contests that have since engaged, and still occupy our attention.

The account of Parliamentary Debates in these Memoirs would alone be a valuable addition to our history. No one is ignorant, that from the fall of Sir Robert Walpole to the American war, our reports of the proceedings in Parliament are more barren and unsatisfactory than at any period since the reign of James the First. For the last ten years of George the Second, Mr. Walpole has supplied that deficiency in a manner equally entertaining and instructive. His method was to make notes of each speaker’s argument during the Debate, and frequently to take down his expressions. He afterwards wrote out the speeches at greater length, and described the impression they made on the House. The anecdotes interspersed in the work are numerous, and, from the veracity of the Author, when they are founded on his personal knowledge, they may always be received as authentic. When derived from others, or from the common rumour of the day, he gives his authority for them, and enables his readers to judge of the credibility they deserve.

To his portraits it will be objected, that in general they incline to severity, and though he professed, and probably intended the strictest impartiality in his delineations of character, it cannot be denied that they are sometimes heightened by friendship, and more frequently discoloured by resentment; and on many occasions it is evident, that they are dictated by the conduct of the persons he describes in the last occurrence that brought them before his eyes, rather than by a steady and comprehensive view of their merits and defects. His observations on the Cavendishes may be taken as an illustration of this remark. He seldom mentions the two Dukes of Devonshire, who flourished in his time, without some sneer or malignant reflection. The truth was, that notwithstanding his Whiggism, he held all the members of that family in detestation, on account of the part they had taken against him on his breach with his uncle Lord Walpole. Yet, within a few years after the conclusion of these Memoirs, when William, fourth Duke of Devonshire, had bequeathed five thousand pounds to his friend Mr. Conway, in approbation of his public conduct, he uses the following exaggerated expressions in speaking of the legacy.

“You might despise,” he writes to Mr. Conway,[9] “the acquisition of five thousand pounds simply; but when that sum is a public testimonial to your virtue, and bequeathed by a man so virtuous, it is worth a million. Who says virtue is not rewarded in this world? It is rewarded by virtue, and persecuted by the bad: can greater honour be paid to it?”

There are, indeed, few persons in his Memoirs, of whom he does not vary his opinion in the course of his work. Marshal Conway, the Pelhams, and Lord Hardwicke, are almost the only exceptions. He always speaks of Marshal Conway with affection and respect; of Mr. Pelham with dislike; of Lord Hardwicke with hatred; and of the Duke of Newcastle with contempt and aversion. Of other persons mentioned in his book, there is scarcely any strong expression of commendation or censure, which in some subsequent passage he does not qualify, soften, or contradict. It is a proof, however, of his fairness, at least of his desire to give his readers the impression he formed at the time of the personages and transactions he describes, that even when he changed his opinion, he allowed his original account to remain, leaving it to be effaced in the minds of others, as it was not unfrequently in his own, by subsequent reflections and events. In some instances, but rarely, he subjoins a note correcting his first impression: more frequently he only intimates to his readers his change of sentiment by the difference of his language with respect to the person he had before described. In his Memoirs of 1752, for example, he characterizes Lord George Sackville as a man “of distinguished bravery,” and that passage he has left as originally written, though after the battle of Minden he appears to have had more than doubts of Lord George’s courage. He was, in truth, as he says of himself, a bitter, but placable enemy, a warm, but (one instance only excepted) an inconstant friend.

It remains only to say a few words of the labours of the Editor. He has added some notes marked (E), and in some very few instances added or altered a word for the sake of delicacy or perspicuity. On such occasions the word added, or substituted, is printed between brackets of this shape [ ].

The spelling of the manuscript is peculiar, and different from that in ordinary use. It was the intention of the editor to have followed this orthography in the printed book, knowing it was the result of system and affectation, and not of accident or carelessness. He has accordingly retained it in the title of the book, and in words of unfrequent recurrence; but, finding such vicious and affected orthography disfigured the text, and fearing it might perplex on perusal, he determined in common words to revert to the usual and approved mode of spelling. The word to-morrow, for instance, which Lord Orford always writes to-morow, he has printed in the usual manner.

With respect to omissions, it is right to inform the reader, that one gross, indelicate, and ill-authenticated story had been cut out by Lord Waldegrave before the manuscript was delivered to the Editor; but he is assured the Author himself acknowledged that the facts related in it rested on no authority but mere rumour. Some, though very few, coarse expressions, have been suppressed by the Editor, and the vacant spaces filled up by asterisks; and two or three passages, affecting the private characters of private persons, and nowise connected with any political event, or illustrative of any great public character, have been omitted. Sarcasms on mere bodily infirmity, in which the Author was too apt to indulge, have in some instances been expunged; and where private amours were mentioned in the notes or appendix, the name of the lady has been seldom printed at length, unless the story was already known, or intimately connected with some event of importance, to the elucidation of which it was indispensable. Such liberties would be still more necessary if the remaining historical works of Lord Orford were ever to see the light. They have been very sparingly used on the present occasion, and appeared to be warranted by the consideration, that, though the work had been obviously written for publication, it was left without directions how to dispose of it, and entirely at the discretion of those by whose authority it is now given to the public. Greater freedom might perhaps have been taken, without prejudice to the Author, or to his Memoirs. But the Editor was unwilling to omit any fact or anecdote, that had a direct or indirect tendency to illustrate the causes, or trace the progress of any political change or public event. The few omissions made are entirely of a private nature, and, in general, regard persons comparatively insignificant.

The Author had himself affixed an Appendix to the work. Some of his notes, which were of an inconvenient length, have been transferred to that part of the book, and some articles have been added by the Editor. The latter are marked with asterisks, and are for the most part taken from notes and compilations of Lord Orford himself, or of some contemporary pen.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The reader will bear in mind, that some years have elapsed since this was written.

[2] June 6th, 1752.

[3] July 20th, 1752.

[4] Correspondence, Feb. 13th, 1757.

[5] March 23rd, 1742.

[6] March 9th, 1742.

[7] A story of the private intrigues of the Duke of Newcastle with Lord Carteret, during Sir Robert Walpole’s Administration, is told by Lord Orford in his Common Place Book. When Lord Hervey was to be made Privy Seal (in 1740), the Duke of Newcastle, to prevent the appointment, obtained Lord Carteret’s consent to accept the office, and moved at Council, that it should be offered to him. Sir Robert said he did not know whether Lord Carteret (who was then in Opposition) would take the place. The Duke said he would answer for him. Sir Robert replied, “I always suspected you had been dabbling there, now I know it; but if you make such bargains, I don’t think myself obliged to keep them.” Lord Hervey had the office.

[8] Correspondence, April 25, 1746.

[9] Letter to Mr. Conway, October 13, 1764.

THE AUTHOR’S
POSTSCRIPT[10]
TO THESE MEMOIRS.

The reader has now seen these Memoirs; and though some who know mankind, and the various follies, faults and virtues, that are blended in our imperfect natures, may smile with me at this free relation of what I have seen and known, yet I am aware that more will be offended at the liberty I have taken in painting men as they are; and that many, from private connexions of party and family, will dislike meeting such unflattered portraits of their heroes or their relations. Yet this, I fear, must always be the case in any history written impartially by an eye witness: and eye witnesses have been generally allowed the properest historians. Indeed, the editor of Chalon’s History of France was of a different opinion, and lamented that Thuanus, who has obliged the world with so complete and so ample a history of his own times, should have confined himself to write nothing but what passed in his own time, and comme sous ses propres yeux.[11]

Thus much I shall premise: if I had intended a romance, I would not have chosen real personages for the actors in it; few men can sit for patterns of perfect virtue. If I had intended a satire, I would not have amassed so many facts, which, if not true, would only tend to discredit the Author, not those he may censure. Yet councils and transactions, not persons, are what I anywhere mean[12] to blame. The celebrated Bayle has indeed offered a notable excuse for all who may offend on the severer side. “The perfection of a history,” says he,[13] “is, when it displeases all sects and all nations, this being a proof that the author neither flatters nor spares any of them, and tells the truth to all parties.” A latitude this, in which I am not at all desirous of being comprehended; nor very reconcileable with a notion of history which he has laid down in another place.[14] There he says, “As the sacred history was not the work of a particular person, but of a set of men, who had received from God a special commission to write; in like manner, civil history ought to be drawn up by none but persons appointed by the State for that purpose.”

Unless State writers could be inspired, too, I fear history would become the most useless of all studies. One knows pretty well what sort of directions, what sort of information would be given from a Secretary’s office; how much veracity would be found, even if the highest in the historical commission were a Bishop Sprat. It is not easy to conceive how Bayle, who thought it his duty to collect and publish every scandalous anecdote from the most obsolete libels, should at last have prescribed a method of writing history, which reduces it to the very essence of a gazette; a kind of authorized composition which the most partial bigots to a Court have piqued themselves upon exposing. Roger North, the voluminous squabbler in defence of the most unjustifiable excesses of Charles the Second’s Administration, has drawn[15] the following picture of State Historians. “It was hard to varnish over the unaccountable advancement of this noble Lord without aid of the Gazetteer—but the historian has made sure of a lofty character of his Lordship, by taking it from the Court. We may observe in his book in most years a catalogue of preferments, with dates and remarks, which latter, by the secretarian touches, show out of what shop he had them; and certainly the most unfit for history of any, because they are for the most part not intended for truth but flourish; and what have Court compliments to do with history?” Here I beg leave to rest this part of my apology; and proceed to answer other objections, which I foresee will be made to me.

For the facts, such as were not public, I received chiefly from my father and Mr. Fox, both men of veracity; and some from communication with the Duke of Bedford at the very time they were in agitation. I am content to rest their authenticity on the sincerity of such men; at the same time I beg it may be remembered, that I never assert anything positively unless from very good authority; and it may be observed, that where I am not certain, I always say, it was said, it was believed, it was supposed, or use some such phrase. The speeches, I can affirm, nay, of every one of them, to be still more authentic, as I took notes at the time, and have delivered the arguments just as I heard them; never conceiving how it can be proper in a real history to compose orations, as very probably counsels were not taken in consequence of those arguments which the Author supplies; and by that means his reasoning is not only fictitious, but misleads the reader. I do not pretend by this to assert, that parliamentary determinations are taken in consequence of any arguments the Parliament hears; I only pretend to deliver the arguments that were thought proper to be given, and thought proper to be taken.

It will perhaps be thought that some of the characters are drawn in too unfavourable a light. It has been the mode to make this objection to an honest Author, Bishop Burnet, though he only did what Tacitus, the Cardinal de Retz, and other most approved historians taught him to do, that is, speak the truth. If I have thought such authorities sufficient, I have at least acted with this farther caution, that I have endeavoured to illustrate, as far as I could, my assertions by facts, and given instances of effects naturally flowing from the qualities I ascribe to my actors. If, after all, many of the characters are bad, let it be remembered, that the scenes I describe passed in the highest life, the soil the Vices like:[16] and whoever expects to read a detail of such revolutions as these brought about by heroes and philosophers, would expect—what? why, transactions that never would have happened if the actors had been virtuous.

But to appease such scrupulous readers—here are no assassins, no poisoners, no Neros, Borgias, Catilines, Richards of York! Here are the foibles of an age, no very bad one; treacherous Ministers, mock Patriots, complaisant Parliaments, fallible Princes. So far from being desirous of writing up to the severe dignity of Roman historians, I am glad I have an opportunity of saying no worse—yet if I had, I should have used it.

Another objection which I foresee will be made to me, is, that I may have prejudices on my father’s account. I can answer this honestly in a word: all who know me, know, that I had no such prejudice to him himself, as blinded me to his failings, which I have faithfully mentioned in my character of him. If more is necessary, let me add, his friends are spared no more than his enemies; and all the good I know of the latter I have faithfully told. Still more; have I concealed my father’s own failings? I can extend this defence still farther. Some of my nearest friends are often mentioned in these Memoirs, and their failings I think as little concealed as those of any other persons. Some whom I have little reason to love, are the fairest characters in the book. Indeed, if I can call myself to any account for heightening characters, it is on the favourable side; I was so apprehensive of being thought partial, that I was almost willing to invent a Lord Falkland.

With more reason I can avow myself guilty of the last objection, I apprehend, and that is, having inserted too many trifling circumstances. Yet, as this is but the annal of a single year, events which would die away to nothing in a large body of history, are here material; and what was a stronger reason with me, the least important tend to illustrate either the character of the persons or the times. The objection will particularly have weight against the notes; I do not doubt but some anecdotes in them will be thought very trifling; it is plain, I thought them so myself, by not inserting them in the body of the work. I have nothing to say for them, but that they are trifles relating to considerable people; and such all curious persons have ever loved to read. Are not such trifles valued, if relating to any reign of 150 years ago? If this book should live so long, these too may become acceptable; if it does not, they will want no excuse. If I might, without being thought to censure so inimitable an author, I would remark that Voltaire, who in his Siècle de Louis XIV. prescribes the drawing only the great outlines of history, is as circumstantial as any chronicler, when he feels himself among facts and seasons that passed under his own knowledge.

If it is any satisfaction to my readers to assist them in censuring the Author, I may say that I have spared the most inconsiderable person in the book as little as the demigods: obliquely it is true, for my own character could have very little to do directly in this Work: but I have censured very freely some measures, for which I voted, particularly the transactions about Mr. Murray, which I must confess were carried on with an intemperate rashness very ill-becoming Parliament or justice. Among these measures I must not have involved the rigorous clauses in the Mutiny Bill, or the præmunire clause in the Regency Bill, for none of which, I thank God, I ever voted!

When I said I foresaw no other objections, let me be understood to mean objections to faults that I might have avoided, such as want of sincerity, partiality, &c.: I hope I have cleared myself from them. As to the composition, I fear faults enough will appear in it: I would excuse them too if I could: but if imputations must lie upon my memory, let my character as a writer be the scape-goat to bear my offences!

FOOTNOTES:

[10] [Vide Preface.]

[11] See the Preface to the first volume of L’Histoire de France. Paris, 1720.

[12] As personal enmity undoubtedly operates on every man’s mind more or less, I have, in a subsequent part of these Memoirs, specified the persons whom I did not love, that so much may be abated in the characters I have given of them, as are not corroborated by facts.

[13] Vide Gen. Dict. vol. 10, p. 426.

[14] Vide Gen. Dict. vol. 10, p. 336.

[15] Vide his Examen, part i. chap. 2, p. 33.

[16] The soil the Virtues like.—Pope.

[CONTENTS]
OF
THE FIRST VOLUME.

ILLUSTRATIONS.

MEMOIRS

OF THE REIGN OF

KING GEORGE THE SECOND.

1751.

An nescis, Mî Filî, quantillâ Prudentiâ regitur Orbis?

Chancellor Oxenstiern to his Son.

[CHAPTER I.]

State of the Ministry at the commencement of the year 1751—The Duke of Newcastle disagrees with the Duke of Bedford—Lord Sandwich’s subserviency to the Duke of Cumberland—Mr. Pelham adopts his brother’s jealousies—Removal of Lord Harrington on the King’s return to England—Some account of his career—Conclusion of the Spanish war—Meeting of Parliament—Mr. Pitt’s recantations—Circulation of a political paper, called “Constitutional Queries,” brought before the notice of Parliament—Motion for providing eight thousand seamen—The Westminster Election and Petition—Speeches of Lord Trentham and Mr. Fox—Debate on the Naval establishment—Quarrel of Pitt and Hampden—Breach of privilege—Anecdote of Onslow.

It had been much expected that on the King’s return from Hanover several changes would be made in the Ministry. The Duke of Newcastle had, for some time before his attending the King thither, disagreed with the other Secretary of State, the Duke of Bedford, not only because he had brought the latter into the Ministry (his incessant motive of jealousy,) nor from the impetuosity of the Duke of Bedford’s temper, but from the intimate connexions that Lord Sandwich had contracted with the Duke.[17] Lord Sandwich had been hoisted to the head of the Admiralty by the weight of the Duke of Bedford, into whose affection he had worked himself by intrigues, cricket-matches, and acting plays, and whom he had almost persuaded to resign the Seals in his favour. There had been a time when he had almost obtained the Duke of Newcastle’s concurrence; and if he could have balanced himself between the Duke and the Duke of Newcastle, one may, without wronging the delicacy of his political character, suspect that he would have dropped the Duke of Bedford’s confidence. But a blind devotion to the Duke’s inclinations, which he studied in all the negotiations[18] of the war and the peace, protracting the one to flatter his command, and hurrying on the other when no part of Flanders was left for the Duke’s army, and himself was impatient to come over to advance his interest in the Cabinet, this had embroiled him with the Duke of Newcastle, and consequently cemented his old attachments.

Mr. Pelham had, according to his manner, tried to soothe where his brother provoked, been convinced by trifles that his brother’s jealousy was solidly grounded, adopted his resentments, and promoted them. While the Court was at Hanover, Lord Sandwich had drawn a great concourse of the young men of fashion to Huntingdon races, and then carried them to Woburn to cricket-matches made there for the entertainment of the Duke. These dangerous practices opened Mr. Pelham’s eyes; and a love affair between one of his [relations] and a younger brother[19] of the Duchess of Bedford fixed his aversion to that family. At this period the Duke of Richmond[20] died, who besides the Duchess and his own dignity, loved the Duke of Newcastle—the only man who ever did. The Pelhams immediately offered the Mastership of the Horse to the Duke of Bedford, which he would have accepted, had they left him the nomination of Lord Sandwich for his successor.

The King came over: but though the brothers were resolved to disagree with their associates in the Ministry, they could not resolve to remove them; none of the great offices were filled up but the Lieutenancy of Ireland, from which Lord Harrington[21] was removed in the most unworthy manner. He had raised himself from a younger brother’s fortune to the first posts in the Government, without either the talent of speaking in Parliament, or any interest there. He had steered through all the difficulties of the Court and changes of Ministry, with great dexterity, till, in the year 1746, notwithstanding all his personal obligations to the King, he was the first man who broke into his closet at the head of those insulting and disloyal resignations that were calculated and set on foot by the Pelhams, in the very heat of the rebellion, to force their master, by a general desertion of his servants, to abandon Lord Granville, whom he was recalling into the Ministry. The King had brooded over this ingratitude, not with much hope of revenging it, but as he sometimes resented such indignities enough to mention them, the Pelhams sacrificed Lord Harrington to their master, astonished at their complaisance, in order to bargain for other victims on his part, which they would have forced, not purchased, if there had been any price necessary but their own ingratitude. Lord Harrington was removed, and the Lieutenancy of Ireland again heaped on the Duke of Dorset, then President of the Council.

January 10.—The South Sea Company having consented to receive the hundred thousand pounds on the new treaty with Spain in lieu of all their demands, thought they had a title to some favour with the King, and accordingly came to a resolution to address him, to be pleased to continue their Governor, and to take into his consideration the state of the Company. To this message they received an answer in general terms. They addressed again for one more particular: they were told in very harsh phrase, that the King had obtained for them from the Crown of Spain all that was possible to be obtained.

This was the conclusion of the Spanish war; fomented (to overturn Sir Robert Walpole) by Lord Granville, who had neglected it for a French war; by Lord Sandwich, who made a peace that stipulated for no one of the conditions for which it was undertaken; by Pitt, who ridiculed and condemned his own orations for it, and who declared for a peace on any terms; and by the Duke of Newcastle, who betrayed all the claims of the merchants and the South Sea Company, when he had got power, to get more power by sacrificing them to the interests of Germany and the Electorate. As there never was a greater bloom of virtue and patriotism than at that period, if posterity should again see as fair a show, it will be taught to expect as little fruit.

17th.—The Parliament met. The King acquainted the Houses with the new treaties concluded with Spain for terminating our differences, and with Bavaria for securing the peace of the Empire (by the meditated election of the Archduke Joseph for King of the Romans, was understood). The Address was moved in the House of Lords by the Earl of Northumberland[22] and the Lord Archer; and in the Commons by Horace Walpole[23] (son of the late Earl of Orford) and Mr. Probyn. Lord Egmont opposed the Address, on the approbation it gave to the treaties, and the subsidies it promised to pay, and proposed leaving out many of the paragraphs. The House sat till near eight; the speakers against the Address were Mr. Henley, Mr. Bathurst, Sir John Cotton, Mr. Vyner, Mr. Martin, Mr. Doddington, Mr. Potter, and Dr. Lee; for it, Mr. W. Pitt, Mr. Pelham, Sir J. Barnard, General Oglethorpe, Horace Walpole senior, and Mr. Fox. Mr. William Pitt recanted his having seconded the famous question for the no search in the last Parliament; said it was a mad and foolish motion, and that he was since grown ten years older and wiser: made a great panegyric on the Duke of Newcastle’s German Negotiations of this summer, and said he was himself so far from wishing to lessen the House of Commons, that whatever little existence he had in this country, it was owing to the House of Commons. These recantations of his former conduct were almost all he had left to make. On his first promotion he had declared against secret committees, and offered profuse incense to the manes and friends of Sir Robert Walpole. He now exploded his own conduct in contributing to kindle the Spanish war, and hymned that Hanoverian adulation in the Duke of Newcastle, which he had so stigmatized in Lord Granville. Indeed, the Duke of Newcastle had no sooner conquered his apprehensions of crossing the sea, than he adopted all Lord Granville’s intrepidity in negotiation. The Address was carried by 203 to 74.

The morning the Parliament met, great numbers of treasonable papers were dispersed by the Penny Post, and by being dropped into the areas of houses, called “Constitutional Queries,”[24] levelled chiefly at the Duke, whom they compared to Richard III. As it was the great measure of the Prince’s Opposition to attack his brother, the Jacobites bore but half the suspicion of being authors of this libel.

On the 22nd the Duke of Marlborough[25] moved in the House of Lords to have the Queries burnt by the hangman, which was agreed to, and they communicated their resolution to the Commons at a conference in the Painted Chamber. Sir John Strange, Master of the Rolls, in a lamentable discussion, seconded by the Attorney-General, Rider, moved to concur with the Lords. Sir Francis Dashwood, after much disclaiming of Jacobitism, objected to the word false in the resolution, as he thought some of the charges in the Queries not ungrounded, particularly in the complaint against alarm-posts, and the dismission of old officers, an instance of which he quoted in the person of his uncle, the Earl of Westmoreland, who had been removed seventeen years before, and under the administration of Sir Robert Walpole. General Handasyde, a blundering commander on the Prince’s side, spoke strongly against the Queries; and Colonel Richard Lyttelton, with a greater command of absurdity, spoke to the same points as Sir Francis Dashwood; like him, disclaimed Jacobitism, and wished that “even a worse punishment than burning could be found out for the paper;” told a long story of Colonel George Townshend’s having been refused leave to stay in Norfolk, “though he was cultivating the Whig interest;” and an alarming history of the Duke’s having placed two Sentinels to guard the ruins of Haddock’s Bagnio and the Rummer Tavern at Charing-cross, which had been burnt down; and then ran into a detail of the abuse on the King about the Hanover troops in the year 1744, when his own relations and friends had been at the head of the Opposition.

Mr. Pelham answered in a very fine speech, and said, he had a new reason for condemning this paper, as he saw it already had had part of its intended effects, in catching honest minds. Lord Egmont made an extremely fine and artful speech, “That in general he disliked such methods of proceeding against libels, for two reasons; that he did not approve of Parliament taking the business of the law upon them, and because such notice only tended to spread the libel more; but that the present was of so evil a nature, that no censure could be too severe, especially as it was calculated to sow division between two brothers of the Blood Royal, where he was persuaded and hoped there was no such thing: that if there were any grounds for the accusations in the paper, he should choose a more proper day to inquire into them, and would; that as to the case of the Hanover troops,[26] he did not know why, as the same Ministry continued, that satire was left so unpunished, this so condemned; or why the author of this was so sought after, the authors of the other so promoted.” The resolution was agreed to, nemine contradicente, and an Address presented to the King, to desire him to take effectual means to discover the author, printers, and publishers of the Queries, which were burnt on the 22nd.

The same day, Lord Barrington[27] moved that the number of seamen should be but eight thousand for the present year. Nugent, Lord Egmont, Potter, and the Opposition, declared for the old number of ten thousand, on a supposition that the view of the Ministry was to erect the land army into our principal force. W. Pitt, who, with his faction, was renewing his connexions with the Prince of Wales, as it was afterwards discovered, and impatient to be Secretary of State, which he expected to carry, as he had his other preferments, by storm; and the competition between him and Fox, the principal favourite of the Duke, breaking out more and more, said (without previously acquainting Mr. Pelham with his intention) that if the motion had been made for ten thousand, he should have preferred the greater number. Potter immediately moved for them, and Pitt agreed with him. Mr. Pelham seemed to acquiesce; but when the question was put, Lord Hartington, a favourite by descent of the old Whigs, to show Pitt that he would not be followed by them if he deserted Mr. Pelham, divided the House, and the eight thousand were voted by 167 to 107; only Pitt, Lyttelton, the three Grenvilles, Colonel Conway, and eight more, going over to the minority.

On the 28th, Mr. Cooke, a pompous Jacobite, and Member for Middlesex, presented a long petition from several of the Electors of Westminster against Lord Trentham. This election and scrutiny had taken up above five months of the last year. The resentment of the Jacobites against Lord Gower for deserting their principles had appeared in the strongest colours, on the necessity of his son being rechosen, after being nominated into the Admiralty. They had fomented a strong spirit against Lord Trentham, on his declining to present a petition to the King in favour of a young fellow[28] hanged for a riot; and on his countenancing a troop of French players[29] in the little theatre in the Haymarket. Lord Egmont, who was intriguing to recover his interest in Westminster, had set up a puppet, one Sir George Vandeput; and the Pelhams were suspected of not discouraging the opposition. On Lord Trentham’s success, a petition had been framed in such treasonable terms, that Mr. Cooke himself waved undertaking it, and this new one was drawn up: Sir John Cotton opposed the party’s petitioning at all, but did not prevail. Both Mr. Cooke and the petition severely abused the High Bailiff (whose practice, as a lawyer, the Jacobites totally destroyed), and who, as Mr. Cooke said, had attempted to violate the maiden and uncorrupted city of Westminster.

Lord Trentham,[30] who had never spoken in Parliament before, replied with great manliness and sense, and spirit, reflecting on the rancour shown to him and his family, and asserting that the opposition to him had been supported by perjury and by subscriptions, so much condemned and discountenanced by the Opposition, when raised to maintain the King on the Throne during the last Rebellion. In answer to the censure on the High Bailiff, he produced and read a letter from Mr. Cooke to the High Bailiff, while he was believed in their interest, couched in the strongest terms of approbation of his conduct and integrity. This was received with a loud and continued shout. It was long before Mr. Cooke could get an opportunity of replying, and longer before he had anything to reply. He reflected on Lord Trentham’s not telling him of this letter, and justified it. Lord Egmont talked of his own obligations to Westminster, called Mr. Cooke’s letter honest flattery, to encourage a man to do his duty; and said that the opposition to Lord Trentham was the sense of the nation, expressed against the Administration.

Mr. Fox replied with great wit and abilities, and proved that of all men in England Lord Egmont had least obligation to Westminster, which had rejected him at the last general election, and exposed the doctrine of honest flattery, which was only given, when the person it was given to was thought honest, by acting as his flatterer desired. Mr. Fox was apt to take occasion of attacking Lord Egmont, the champion against the Duke, and because, after Mr. Fox had managed and carried through his contested election, Lord Egmont had not given one vote with the Court. Mr. Cooke moved to hear the petition that day fortnight; Lord Trentham for the morrow se’nnight, which was agreed to. Lord Duplin then moved to call in the High Bailiff to give the House an account how he had executed the orders which he received last February of expediting the scrutiny as much as possible. He came, pleaded many obstructions, and being asked why he had not complained, said, he had feared being taxed with putting an end to the scrutiny.

Lord Trentham then desired he might be asked, if he remembered any threats used to him. Lord Egmont objected to the question, and the High Bailiff was ordered to withdraw. A long debate ensued, though Mr. Fox proposed to put the question in these less definite words, “how he had been obstructed.” At last it was proposed that the Speaker should decide, whether, supposing the High Bailiff accused any person, they could be heard to their defence, consistently with the orders of the House, before hearing the merits of the petition. The oracle was dumb—at last being pressed, it said, “I wish, without using many words, I could persuade gentlemen to go upon some other matter.” Lord Trentham finding the Speaker against him, and the Ministry and one or two of the old Whigs inclined to give it up, gave it up with grace and propriety. But the young Whigs, headed by Lord Coke, grew very riotous, and though the Speaker declared still more fully against them, they divided the House, and carried it by 204 to 106 to call in the High Bailiff, who, returning to the bar, charged Crowle, Sir George Vandeput’s Counsel, with triumphing in having protracted the scrutiny, and with calling the orders of the House brutum fulmen. Being further questioned, he said he had been scandalously abused; had received papers threatening his life; had been charged with running away to Holland; had been pursued into the vestry after declaring the majority for Lord Trentham; had been stoned there, and that one gentleman at the head of the mob had asked them, if nobody had courage enough to knock the dog down, and that he ought to be killed. Being asked who this was, he named Mr. Alexander Murray, brother of Lord Elibank; both such active Jacobites, that if the Pretender had succeeded, they could have produced many witnesses to testify their zeal for him; both so cautious, that no witnesses of actual treason could be produced by the Government against them: the very sort of Jacobitism that has kept the cause alive, and kept it from succeeding. Mr. Murray, with Crowle and one Gibson, an upholsterer, were ordered to attend on the Thursday following with the High Bailiff, to have his charge made out.

29th.—The report for the eight thousand seamen was made from the committee, and debated again till past eight at night, when it was agreed to by 189 to 106. Mr. W. Pitt spoke with great affectation of concern for differing with Mr. Pelham, protested he had not known it was his measure (which Mr. Pelham made many signs of not allowing), and that it was his fear of Jacobitism which had made him differ on this only point with those with whom he was determined to lead his life. He called the fleet our standing army, the army a little body of military spirit, so improved by discipline, that that discipline alone was worth five thousand men; made great panegyrics on Mr. Pelham (so did Lyttleton and George Grenville), and concluded with saying, “I do not believe the majority of this House like eight thousand better than ten.”

The times were changed! Men who remembered how Sir Robert Walpole’s fears of the Pretender and his Spithead expeditions were ridiculed by his opponents, admired Mr. Pitt’s humility and conviction, who was erecting a new opposition on those arguments.

He was attacked by Hampden, who had every attribute of a buffoon but cowardice, and none of the qualifications of his renowned ancestor but courage. He drew a burlesque picture of Pitt and Lyttleton under the titles of Oratory and Solemnity, and painted in the most comic colours what mischiefs rhetoric had brought upon the nation, and what emoluments to Pitt. Pitt flamed into a rage, and nodded menaces of highest import to Hampden, who retorted them, undaunted, with a droll voice that was naturally hoarse and inarticulate. Mr. Pelham interposed, and, according to his custom, defended Pitt, who had deserted him; gave up Hampden, who had supported him. It was not unusual for Pitt to mix the hero with the orator; he had once blended those characters very successfully, when, having been engaged to make up a quarrel between his friend Hume Campbell[31] and Lord Home, in which the former had kissed the rod, Pitt within very few days treated the House with bullying the Scotch declaimer. On the present occasion, the Speaker insisted on the two champions promising to proceed no farther, with which Punch first, and then Alexander the Great, complied.

31st.—Mr. Crowle appeared with the High Bailiff at the bar of the House, and owned the words charged on him, but endeavoured to prove that the protraction was meant for the benefit of his client; and that the brutum fulmen was applied to those who urged him with the orders of the House impertinently. He showed great deference and submission to the House. It was then debated till six o’clock, whether any witnesses should be called in against him, and carried by 204 to 138, that there should. Three were called, who proved the words. Lord Hartington, (whose head being filled with the important behaviour of the Cavendishes and Russels at the Revolution, was determined that it should be the fault of the times, not his, if his conduct did not always figure equally with theirs in solemnity), moved, with a pomp of tragic tenderness, and was seconded by Lord Coke, who abused the independent electors, “that Mr. Crowle had wilfully protracted the scrutiny, and showed contempt of the House.”

This was opposed;[32] the lawyers pleaded in earnest for their brother, and the Ministry were inclined to give it up, till Lord Egmont made a furious speech for Crowle, and called the Whigs the Rump of their old party. Mr. Fox took this up warmly in an exceedingly fine speech of spirit and ridicule, and concluded with telling Lord Egmont, that though he intended to have interceded for Crowle (who had interest at Windsor, where Fox was chosen), he must now be for this resolution; but yet should show compassion for Mr. Crowle, if it were only on his having such a friend. The House divided at eleven at night, and the resolution passed by 181 to 129. Lord Hartington then offered to the House to take Mr. Crowle into custody, or to reprimand him immediately; the latter of which was chosen for him by Mr. Fox, and he was reprimanded on his knees by the Speaker. As he rose from the ground,[33] he wiped his knees, and said, “it was the dirtiest house he had ever been in.”

The Whigs took pleasure in copying the precedents,[34] that had been set them at the famous Westminster Election, in 1742; and the Speaker had the satisfaction both times of executing the vengeance of either party, and indulging his own dignity. On the former occasion, his speech to the kneeling Justices was so long and severe, that the morning it was printed, Sir Charles Hanbury Williams complained to him of the printer’s having made a grievous mistake—“Where?—how? I examined the proof sheet myself!” Sir Charles replied, “in the conclusion he makes you say, more might have been said; to be sure you wrote it, less might have been said.”

The King on these votes commended the young men, and said to the Duke of Newcastle before the Duke of Bedford, “they are not like those puppies who are always changing their minds. Those are your Pitts and your Grenvilles, whom you have cried up to me so much! You know I never liked them.”

February 1.—Mr. Murray appeared at the bar of the House of Commons, and heard the High Bailiff’s charge. He asserted his innocence; said he should deny nothing that was true; that much was false; smiled when he was taxed of having called Lord Trentham and the High Bailiff rascals, and desired Counsel, which, after a debate of two hours, was granted to him, and a respite till the Wednesday following, upon condition of his being taken into custody, and giving bail for his appearance. Gibson, the upholsterer, was then brought to the bar, witnesses for and against him heard, and the words proved, though some members[35] of the House, who had been present at the conclusion of the scrutiny, did not hear him speak them. Sir William Yonge moved a resolution of his guilt, which was carried by 214 to 63, and he was committed to Newgate.

Sir William Yonge[36] was still employed in any government causes where the Ministry wanted to inflict punishments and avoid odium—their method of acquiring merit! His vivacity and parts, whatever the cause was, made him shine, and he was always content with the lustre that accompanied fame, without thinking of what was reflected from rewarded fame—a convenient ambition to Ministers, who had few such disinterested combatants! Sir Robert Walpole always said of him, “that nothing but Yonge’s character[37] could keep down his parts, and nothing but his parts support his character.”

FOOTNOTES:

[17] William, second son of George the Second, Commander of the army in Flanders, and Duke of Cumberland. He was, by an affectation of adopting French usages, called emphatically “The Duke,” during the latter years of George the Second and the beginning of the reign of George the Third.—E.

[18] Lord Sandwich had been Plenipotentiary at the Conference at Breda in 1747, and concluded the Peace at Aix-la-Chapelle in 1749.

[19] Richard Levison Gower.

[20] The second son of that name, Knight of the Garter and Master of the Horse, died Aug. 8, 1750, aged 49.

[21] Yesterday morning (Dec. 8, 1756), died at his house in the Stable-yard, St. James’s, the Right Hon. William Stanhope, Earl of Harrington, a General of his Majesty’s Forces, a Governor of the Charter-house, a Fellow of the Royal Society, and one of the Lords of his Majesty’s Most Honourable Privy Council.

His Lordship served in the reign of Queen Anne in Spain, being Captain of a Company, with the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel, in the third regiment of Guards; and in the end of the year 1710 was constituted Colonel of a regiment of Foot.

On the accession of his late Majesty he was appointed Colonel of a regiment of Dragoons, and returned to Parliament for the town of Derby; and in 1715 was made Colonel of a regiment of Horse. On the 19th of August, 1717, he was appointed Envoy Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to the King of Spain.

November 17, 1718, he was appointed Envoy and Plenipotentiary to the Court of Turin; from whence he returned to Paris; and, May 31, 1719, set out for the Duke of Berwick’s camp before Fontarabia. After Admiral Byng had destroyed the greatest part of the Spanish fleet, Colonel Stanhope procured an English squadron to fall upon the port of St. Anthony in the Bay of Biscay, in which were one Spanish man-of-war of seventy guns, and two of sixty, newly built, with an incredible quantity of timber, pitch, and tar, and other naval stores, for building more; all which were destroyed by the English squadron, assisted by a detachment which the Duke of Berwick spared from his army, at the solicitation of Colonel Stanhope, who contrived the design, and, serving as a volunteer in the enterprise, principally contributed to the execution of it; where, finding it necessary to encourage and animate troops which had not been used to enterprises by sea, he was the first that leaped into the water when the boats approached the shore.

At the end of that war he was declared a Brigadier-General, and returned with the same character as before to Spain. But the Spaniards having laid siege to Gibraltar, he left Madrid on the 11th of March, 1726, and his late Majesty was pleased, in May, 1727, following, to appoint him Vice-Chamberlain of his Household, and to command him to be sworn of his Privy Council.

After his present Majesty’s accession, he was nominated first Ambassador and Plenipotentiary to the Congress at Soissons; and September 9, 1729, declared Ambassador to the King of Spain. On the 20th of November following, he was advanced to the degree of a Peer of Great Britain, by the title of Lord Harrington; and on the 13th of June, 1730, was constituted principal Secretary of State. December 18, 1735, he was declared Major-General of the Horse; and Lieutenant-General, July 17, 1739. His Lordship resigned the Seals, February 12, 1741-2, and the next day was declared Lord President of the Council. February 9, 1741-2, he was raised to the dignity of a Viscount and Earl of Great Britain, by the title of Viscount Petersham, Earl of Harrington.

On the resignation of Earl Granville, October 18, 1744, his Lordship was again appointed principal Secretary of State; and in 1745 attended on his Majesty to Hanover. February 10, 1745-6, his Lordship resigned the Seals; but his Majesty was pleased to re-deliver them to him four days after.

November 22, 1746, his Lordship was declared Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, in the room of the Earl of Chesterfield, in which post he continued until 1771. March 22, 1746-7, he was constituted General of his Majesty’s Foot forces.

His Lordship’s rare accomplishments were such, that it is difficult with justice to determine whether he deserved most our admiration for his political integrity in the Cabinet, or for his military conduct in the field; whether he excelled most as a perfectly fine gentleman, or as a man of letters. But, without flattery, he deserved to have it said of him—

His life was gentle, and the elements

So mix’d in him, that Nature might stand up,

And say to all the world, “This was a man!”

His Lordship married Anne, daughter and heir of Colonel Edward Griffith, one of the Clerks Comptrollers of the Green Cloth, by Elizabeth his wife, daughter of Dr. Thomas Laurence, first Physician to Queen Anne; and by her had two sons, twins, born December 18, 1719; but their mother died in child-bed. Thomas, the younger, was in August, 1741, appointed Captain in Honeywood’s Dragoons, and going over sea, died February, 1742-3.

William, Viscount Petersham, the eldest son, succeeds his Lordship in honour and estate; and thereby makes a vacancy in the House of Commons for Bury St. Edmunds. [Extracted from some printed paper of 1756, and annexed to the MS. as a note by the author of the Memoirs.]

[22] Sir Hugh Smithson had married the Lady Elizabeth Seymour, only surviving child of Algernon, Duke of Somerset, and heiress of the house of Percy, on which account they were created Earl and Countess of Northumberland.

[23] The author of these Memoirs.

[24] Vide the [Appendix, B.] [A.] The author of these Memoirs, in a MS. note on Doddington’s Diary, asserts, that the Constitutional Queries were generally ascribed to Lord Egmont.—E.

[25] Charles Spencer, Duke of Marlborough and Earl of Sunderland, Knight of the Garter and Lord Steward.

[26] In the year 1744, besides several other libels and ballads, had been published two pamphlets that made much noise, called “The Case of the Hanover Troops,” and the Vindication of that Case, supposed to be written by or under the direction of Pitt, Lyttelton, Doddington, &c. The first was answered by old Horace Walpole, in a pamphlet called “The Interest of Great Britain steadily pursued.”

[27] William Barrington Shute, Viscount Barrington, one of the Lords of the Admiralty.

[28] Bosavern Penlez, condemned for stealing linen, and demolishing a bagnio in the Strand. Fielding wrote a pamphlet to justify the condemnation of him.

[29] During Sir Robert Walpole’s administration, a troop of French Players had been brought over, but the audience and populace would not suffer them to perform. Another company came over in 1750, but with no better success. Several young men of quality had drawn their swords in the riot, endeavouring to support them: Lord Trentham’s being present had been exaggerated into his being their chief protector. French Players had been no uncommon spectacle in England. The foundation of the late animosity against them was this. The opposition to the Court had proceeded so far, as to be on the point of ridiculing the King publicly on the stage of the little theatre in the Haymarket, in a dramatic satire, called the “Golden Rump,” written by Fielding. Sir R. Walpole, having intelligence of this design, got the piece into his hands—[I have in my possession the imperfect copy of this piece, as I found it among my father’s papers after his death]—and then procured the act to be passed for regulating the stage, by which all theatres were suppressed but such as should be licensed by the Lord Chamberlain. This provoked the people so much, that the French company having a licence granted soon after, when several English companies were cashiered, it was made a party point to silence foreign performers.

[30] Granville Leveson Gower, eldest son of John, Earl Gower.—A. Created Marquis of Stafford in 1786. Died, 1803.—E.

[31] Alexander Hume Campbell, brother to the Earl of Marchmont, a very masterly speaker and able lawyer, had been Attorney-General to the Prince of Wales, which post he resigned when his Royal Highness erected his last Opposition, and was supposed to have a considerable pension, on which he neglected the House of Commons, giving himself up entirely to his profession.

[32] Nugent very absurdly told the House, “that he could not help recollecting the epitaph on Lord Brooke, Here lies the friend of Sir Philip Sidney, which he begged leave to apply, by acquainting them that Mr. Crowle was the friend of that excellent man, Lord Lonsdale, who then lay dying, and that he hoped they would not disturb his death-bed by any harsh treatment of his friend.” Henry, the last Lord Viscount Lonsdale, died soon after this. He had been Constable of the Tower and Lord Privy Seal, which he resigned with outgoing into Opposition. He was a man of very conscientious and disinterested honour, a great disputant, a great refiner—no great genius. Nugent published two or three poems on his virtues.

[33] Crowle was a noted punster. Once, on a circuit with Page, a person asked him if the Judge was not just behind? He replied, “I don’t know; but I am sure he never was just before.”

[34] When Sir Charles Wager and Lord Sundon were declared illegally chosen by military influence, on the prevailing of the opposition against Sir Robert Walpole; and the Justices of Peace who had called in the soldiers were committed at five o’clock in the morning, the Speaker having been seventeen hours in the chair.

[35] Sir John Cotton and Sir Charles Fynte.

[36] August 10, 1755.—Sunday died at his seat at Escott, near Honiton in Devonshire, the Right Hon. Sir William Yonge, Bart., LL.D., F.R.S., Knight of the Most Honourable Order of the Bath, one of his Majesty’s Most Honourable Privy Council, and Lord Lieutenant and Custos Rotulorum of Carnarvonshire. He was chosen to represent the borough of Honiton in the sixth Parliament of Great Britain, which was summoned to meet on the 10th of May, 1722, and served for that borough in the five succeeding Parliaments; for though chosen for Ashburton in the eighth, and Tiverton in the seventh and tenth, he each time made his election for Honiton, and was five times re-elected on his accepting places. In the present Parliament he represented Tiverton. He was appointed to be one of the Lords of the Treasury in March, 1724; a Lord of the Admiralty in May, 1728; again a Lord of the Treasury in May, 1730; Secretary at War in May, 1735; and in May, 1746, joint Vice-Treasurer of Ireland. He is succeeded in his estates and title of Baronet by his only son, now Sir George Yonge, member for Honiton.—[From a printed paper of 1755, annexed as a note to MS. text by the author of the Memoirs.]

[37] He was vain, extravagant, and trifling: simple out of the House, and too ready at assertions in it. His eloquence, which was astonishing, was the more extraordinary, as it seemed to come upon him by inspiration, for he could scarce talk common sense in private on political subjects, on which in public he would be the most animated speaker. Sir Robert Walpole has often, when he did not care to enter early into the debate himself, given Yonge his notes, as the latter has come late into the House, from which he could speak admirably and fluently, though he had missed all the preceding discussion. He had been kept down for some time by the prevailing interest of General Churchill with Sir Robert Walpole, on the following occasion. Yonge, in a poetic epistle (to which he had great proneness, though scanty talents) addressed to Hedges, who was supposed to be well with Mrs. Oldfield, said, speaking of that actress in the character of Cleopatra,

“But thou who know’st the dead and living well.”

[The dead and living Cleopatra.]—This coming to the fair one’s knowledge, she never ceased, till she had made such a rupture between her fond General and Yonge, as had like to have ended in the total ruin of the latter.

[CHAPTER II.]

Mr. Alexander Murray summoned to the bar of the House of Commons, and committed to Newgate—Sir William Yonge—Debate on the Army—Evidence of the witnesses against Mr. Murray, and remarks in Parliament upon it—Quarrel of Lord Coke and the Speaker—The party of the Prince of Wales—Murray’s behaviour in the House of Commons considered contemptuous; he is sentenced to closer confinement—Sir John Cotton—Report on Murray’s case—Character of Lord Egmont—Colonels Lyttleton, Townshend, and Conway—Sir Henry Erskine—Charge against General Anstruther—Vices of the people—Sir John Barnard—Factions—Subsidy to Bavaria—Lord Chesterfield’s bill for reforming the calendar; his character—Naturalization Bill.

February 4th.—An army of 18,850 men was proposed. Lord Limerick[38] moved for 15,000. Ever since the defeat of Lord Bath, he had been listed under the Prince, but for the last three or four years had lived retired in Ireland. He had preserved a sort of character from the impossibility of his being dismissed with the rest of his friends, as he had secured the reversion of a large sinecure for life, and, consequently, had less occasion to be intriguing after new preferment. His speeches were reckoned severe, and it was not his fault if they did not answer the character; he meant to wound, but his genius did not carry equal edge with his temper. Martin, a West Indian lawyer, attached to the Prince, made a speech of great wit against standing armies, with very new arguments. The eighteen thousand men were voted in the committee by 240 to 117, and carried next day on the report, after a long debate, by 175 to 75.

6th.—The High Bailiff produced eight witnesses against Mr. Murray, who gave the strongest evidence of his menaces and seditious behaviour. He was then heard by his Counsel, who brought the High Constable, Carne, Mr. Gascoyne, Lord Carpenter, and Sir John Tyrrel, to invalidate the charge. The first only proved that the words might have been said without his hearing them; the second confirmed the accuser’s charge in some particulars. Lord Carpenter, with the greatest decency, gave the most unconscientious evidence; but though he confined it to negatives, he at last contradicted himself, and was materially contradicted by Sir John Tyrrel, a foolish young Knight, who did not know how to reconcile his awe of the House with the little regard he had for what he was ready to depose. Lord Carpenter was undertaking Westminster, and having lately succeeded to a large estate, seemed to think elections the most equal way of restoring the sums which his father had amassed by excessive usury. The Counsel made small defence; one of them even made an excuse for engaging in that cause. Mr. Murray then advanced to the bar, and said he was ashamed of nothing he was accused of having said, but calling Lord Trentham a rogue to the chimney-sweeper, which was below him to have done.

The High Bailiff made short, clear, and fair observations on the evidence. Colonel Richard Lyttleton then moved a long resolution of the proofs being full, and was seconded by Colonel George Townshend. Sir Francis Dashwood opposed it, and would have reduced all the proofs to immaterial words, and the probability of one of the witnesses having mistaken the sound of a voice when he did not see the face of the person who spoke them, though he turned immediately and saw Mr. Murray, whose voice he had recollected. Lord Duplin replied. Sir John Cotton reflected on the length of the motion brought ready drawn, and complained of the House not having paid due regard to his evidence for Gibson; and both he and Sir Francis laid great stress on the dignity and character of Lord Carpenter. Mr. Fox answered in one of the finest, most spirited, and artful speeches that he ever made; set Lord Duplin’s evidence against Cotton’s; summed up the whole charge and proofs, and instead of ridiculing Sir John Tyrrel’s ridiculous evidence, as less able speakers would have done, he enforced it, commented it, and then produced it against Lord Carpenter’s. Lord Egmont made an artful speech, W. Pitt a florid one, T. Pitt a dull one.

During the debate, the strangers in the gallery were called to, to withdraw; the Speaker said that was his business, unless any gentleman would move it, and then he would be obliged to him. Lord Coke rose, moved it, and said, “Sir, I am that gentleman, and grant your request.” The Speaker immediately ordered them to withdraw, and said with a smile, “and, my Lord, I have obeyed your commands.” But as soon as they were gone, he fell into a pompous passion, and complained of Lord Coke’s repeating his words; having mistaken a disposition to pomp in another for burlesque, which he did not perceive was the result of the thing, and not of the intention. The episode concluded with Lord Coke’s begging his pardon, and with his being content to have thought himself affronted, as at all events it had procured him submission.

Of the Prince’s people only thirteen stayed to vote; and towards midnight, the resolution was carried by 210 to 74. It was then moved to send Mr. Murray close prisoner to Newgate. Sir John Cotton and others divided on the word close, but were only 52 to 169: Lord Egmont and his faction had retired. The young Whigs, angry at this second division, determined to bring Murray on his knees; and it was proposed to Mr. Pelham in the lobby: he consented, and it was moved by Colonel Lyttleton and Lord Coke. The Tories were enraged, and divided again, after Mr. Dowdeswell had moved for the Tower; but a precedent having been quoted of Middleton, the Sheriff of Denbigh, being sent to Newgate (in times[39] that the Whigs loved now to imitate, from the aversion they had felt to the first example), while they were disputing on the word close, and Mr. Harding had made the Clerk read the journal till it came to the resolution of addressing the King even to take away an office from Middleton, Mr. Fox recurred to that precedent, and said, “If the gentlemen of North Wales, where the Middletons of Chirk Castle are one of the most ancient families, would yield the precedence to the Murrays, he would consent that the latter should go to the Tower.”

It being carried by 163 to 40, that he should be brought on his knees, he was called in. He entered with an air of confidence, composed of something between a martyr and a coxcomb. The Speaker called out, “Your obeisances! Sir, your obeisances!”—and then—“Sir, you must kneel.” He replied, “Sir, I beg to be excused; I never kneel but to God.” The Speaker repeated the command with great warmth. Murray answered, “Sir, I am sorry I cannot comply with your request, I would in anything else.” The Speaker cried, “Sir, I call upon you again to consider of it.” Murray answered, “Sir, when I have committed a crime, I kneel to God for pardon; but I know my own innocence, and cannot kneel to any body else.” The Speaker ordered the Serjeant to take him away, and secure him. He was going to reply; the Speaker would not suffer him. The Speaker then made a representation to the House of his contemptuous behaviour, and said, “However you may have differed in the debate, I hope you will be unanimous in his punishment! Pray consider on it; if he may with impunity behave thus, there is an end of the dignity and power of this House!”

Sir George Oxenden said he had foreseen this refusal, and had not voted for bringing him on his knees, and was not answerable for the consequences—a fine consolation in their dilemma! Mr. Harding quoted three precedents where persons, and some of them members, had received their sentence on their knees. Mr. Pelham proposed a committee to search for precedents how to treat him, and that they should give their opinion upon it. Mr. Cooke went out, and tried to persuade him to submit; but he said he would sooner cut his throat. Mr. Fox went so far as to mention a place of confinement in the Tower, called Little Ease; but Mr. Pelham declared against such severe corporal punishment. Sir William Yonge proposed the closest confinement in Newgate without being visited, (a triumph which the Tories meditated for him,) and without pen, ink, and paper. This opinion was afterwards taken up by Lord George Sackville, and agreed to, though Vyner urged that he would be punished twice if they adhered to the former sentence after his submission. Alderman Jansen moved in vain to adjourn. W. Pitt hinted at a bill to be passed against him if he would not comply. Admiral Vernon made such an outrageous speech against these proceedings, desiring to have Magna Charta referred to the committee, that he was several times taken to order by the Speaker, Sir John Mordaunt, and Mr. Pelham, and was on the brink of falling under the sentence of the House. The Speaker himself proposed the question on Murray’s contempt, which Sir John Cotton tried to prevent being inserted in the votes, but it passed, with the order for his closer confinement; and then, after naming the committee, the House, at near two o’clock in the morning, adjourned over the next day.

At five in the morning, Mr. Murray was carried in a hackney-coach strictly guarded to Newgate. He sung ballads all the way; but on entering the gaol burst into tears, kissed the Serjeant, said he was very ill, and must have a physician. In two days the House was mollified, permitted him to be ill, and gave leave for his brother to visit him with a physician and an apothecary; and in five days more, their compassion grew so tender as to indulge him with the company of his sister, a nurse, and his own servant.

11th.—The staff was opposed by Lord Egmont, Dr. Lee, Nugent, Potter, and Bathurst; defended by Mr. Fox, Mr. Pelham, Sir William Yonge, Lord George Sackville, Lord Barrington, and General Mordaunt, and carried by 205 to 88. In the night, new Queries[40] abusing the House of Commons for their proceedings on the Westminster affair were dispersed at several doors, but no notice was taken of them. The Commons were not eager to have more prisoners to nurse!

12th.—Sir George Vandeput’s and the Westminster petitions were withdrawn. Some of the independents had tried to prevent it; and, at a meeting on the 9th, thirty-seven divided for going on with them against thirty-one: but Sir George declaring he would withdraw his, and he, Lord Carpenter, and Sir Thomas Clarges leaving the meeting, it was agreed to drop both petitions.

13th.—Sir William Yonge acquainted the House, that the committee of which he was chairman was ready with their report on Mr. Murray’s case; but as the prisoner was ill, they desired to postpone it to the following Monday. Mr. Cooke presented a petition from Gibson the upholsterer, who had not caught the infection of heroism from his fellow captive, but begged for enlargement, which was granted, and he was ordered to attend on the morrow, when he was reprimanded on his knees, and discharged.

The same day Mr. Pelham opened the Ways and Means, in which he generally shined, and did not disgrace his master, Sir Robert Walpole, though the latter had gathered his chief laurels from his knowledge and perspicuity in that service. Sir John Cotton piddled with a little opposition to the land-tax of three shillings, but it was carried by 106 to 43, and on the report by 229 to 28. They could not conjure up a spirited division now on the most popular points: if they were not new, they would scarce furnish a debate.

Sir John Cotton had wit, and the faithful attendant on wit, ill-nature, and was the greatest master of the arts of the House, where he seldom made but short speeches, having a stammering in his elocution, which, however, he knew how to manage with humour.[41] In the end of Queen Anne’s reign he was in place;[42] during Sir Robert Walpole’s administration constantly and warmly in opposition, and was so determined a Jacobite, that though on the late coalition he accepted a place in the Household, and held it two years, he never gave a vote with the Court, which argued nice distinction, not only in taking the oaths to the King (for that all the Jacobites in Parliament do), but in taking his pay, and yet obstructing his service: and as nice in the King’s Ministers, who could discover the use of making a man accept a salary without changing his party. When the Duke of Bedford, with all my Lord Russel’s integrity of Whiggism, was involved in a Jacobite opposition, he had been so suspicious, as to mistrust Sir John’s principles, till my Lord Gower quieted his uneasiness by assuring him, “Cotton is no more a Jacobite than I am.”

18th.—Sir William Yonge read the report of the committee appointed to search for precedents on Murray’s case. It concluded with proposing to send for him again to the bar of the House: but as gentler counsels, and a candour that might have been equitable before his contempt, though absurd now, prevailed, Sir William only moved to have the report lie on the table, saying, that if Murray should not submit this session, he should move in the next to resume the sentence. Mr. Pelham spoke much for moderate proceedings—more moderate indeed it would have been difficult to pursue after the lengths themselves and Murray had gone; but they who wanted to extort a submission from him for offences which he had not acknowledged, were ready to release him after an outrage which he gloried in, and had no ways atoned. Mr. Fox read a paragraph from the Whitehall Evening Post, by which it appeared that Murray had had the use of pen, ink, and paper, and had been writing an apology for some part of his private conduct;[43] the greatest part of which his future historian may be glad to colour over with the varnish of martyrdom. Mr. Fox, on this apparent recovery of the prisoner’s nerves, moved to order the physician and apothecary to attend that day se’nnight with an account of Mr. Murray’s state of health, which was agreed to.

On the 19th, 20th, and 21st, the Mutiny Bill was debated each day for several hours. This Bill, which formerly had passed as quietly as the Malt Act, had, for the two or three last years, constantly afforded the longest contests. Lord Egmont[44] had gained his greatest reputation by opposing it; and he was not a man to forget, or to let any body else forget where his strength lay. His great talent was indefatigable application, which he loved rather than wanted, for his parts were strong, and manly, and quick: his heart rather wanted improvement than his head; though when his ambition and lust of Parliament were out of the question, he was humane, friendly, and as good-humoured as it was possible for a man to be who was never known to laugh; he was once indeed seen to smile, and that was at chess. He did not dislike mirth in others, but he seemed to adjourn his attention till he could bring back the company to seriousness. He was personally very brave, as brave as if he were always in the right.

His father had trained him to history and antiquities; and he early suckled his own political genius with scribbling journals and pamphlets. Towards the decline of Sir Robert Walpole’s power, he had created himself a leader of the Independents, a contemptible knot of desperate tradesmen,[45] many of them converted to Jacobitism by being detected and fined at the Custom-house for contraband practices. By those people he was shoved into Parliament on the expulsion of Lord Sundon and Sir Charles Wager; but having written that masterly pamphlet called “Faction Detected,” in defence of Lord Bath’s political apostasy, the patron and champion mutually lost their popularity, and nothing was openly remembered of Lord Percival’s works, but a ridiculous history[46] of his own family, which he had collected and printed at an immense expense. Thus exploded, he was very willing to take sanctuary with his leader in the House of Lords; but the Ministry did not think his sting formidable enough to extract it by so dear an operation: how often since has Mr. Pelham wished him laid up in ermine!

At the beginning of this Parliament, rejected by Westminster, and countenanced nowhere, he bought the loss of an election at Weobley, for which place, however, on a petition, Mr. Fox procured him to be returned by Parliament, and had immediately the satisfaction of finding him declare against the Court, declared a Lord of the Bedchamber to the Prince, and, on the first occasion, the warmest antagonist of the Duke and the Mutiny Bill. On Lord Trentham’s being opposed at Westminster last year, Lord Egmont tried, by every art and industry, to expiate his offences in the eyes of his old electors, and was the great engine of the contest there. All the morning he passed at the hustings; then came to the House, where he was a principal actor; and all the evening he passed at hazard; not to mention the hours he spent in collecting materials for his speeches, or in furnishing them to his weekly mercenaries. With this variety of life, he was as ignorant of the world as a child, and knew nothing of mankind though he had acted every part in it. But it is time to continue the history of the Mutiny Bill, and to conclude with the conclusion of his Lordship’s memoirs of his family and himself—“let us here leave this young nobleman struggling for the dying liberties of his country!”

When the Duke had set himself to restore the discipline of the army, and bring it nearer to the standard of German severity, he found it necessary to reform the military code, that whatever despotism he had a mind to establish might be grounded in an appearance of law. The Secretary at War, with a few General Officers, was ordered to revise the Mutiny Bill, and (if one may judge by their execution of this commission) to double the rigour of it. The penalty of death came over as often as the curses in the Commination on Ash-Wednesday. Oaths of secrecy were imposed on Courts Martial; and even officers on half-pay were for the future to be subject to all the jurisdiction of military law. My Lord Anson, who governed at the Admiralty Board, was struck with so amiable a pattern, and would have chained down his tars to a like oar; but it raised such a ferment in that boisterous profession, that the Ministry were forced to drop several of the strongest articles, to quiet the tempest that this innovation had caused.

The Mutiny Bill was likely to pass with less noise; when Colonel Richard Lyttleton, intending mischief, though without seeing half way into the storm he was raising, took notice of the extraordinary novelties and severity of these modern regulations. He was a younger brother of the pious George Lyttelton, with less appearance of, but with not much more real integrity. He was grown a favourite of the Prince of Wales by a forwardness of flattery that had revolted even the Duke, at whose expense on some disobligations he was now paying court to the elder brother.

He was seconded by Colonel George Townshend, eldest son of my Lord Townshend, a very particular young man, who, with much oddness, some humour, no knowledge, great fickleness, greater want of judgment, and with still more disposition to ridicule, had once or twice promised to make a good speaker. He was governed by his mother, the famous Lady Townshend,[47] who having been neglected by the Duke, after some overtures of civility to him, had dipped into all the excess of Scotch Jacobitism, and employed all her wit and malice, the latter of which, without any derogation to the former, had vastly the ascendant, to propagate the Duke’s unpopularity. The Pelhams, who were very near as ill with her, had placed their nephew, Mr. Townshend, in the Duke’s family, to remove him from her influence; and the Duke had softened his haughtiness as much as possible to second their views. But my Lady Townshend’s resentments were not at all disappointed by this notable scheme, nor by the opportunities it gave her son of learning more of his commander’s temper, nor by the credit it gave to any reflections on him when authorized by, or coming directly from one of his own servants and a supposed favourite. The Duke has often said since, that he was never hurt but by the ingratitude[48] of Mr. Townshend and Lord Robert Sutton, whom he had made the greatest efforts to oblige.

This attack from two officers was artfully relieved by Lord Egmont, who had stickled so vehemently against the innovations, that one after another they were given up, or much softened one year after another, though not till many disagreeable instances had been publicly produced of his Royal Highness’s arbitrary control, and though they had been defended in a masterly manner by Mr. Fox, Lord George Sackville, and Colonel Henry “Seymour” Conway;[49] the latter a young officer, who having set out upon a plan of fashionable[50] virtue, had provoked the King and Duke by voting against the Army at the beginning of the war. He was soon after, by the interest of a near relation of his, placed in the Duke’s family, where he grew a chief favourite, not only by a steady defence of military measures on all occasions, but by most distinguished bravery in the battles of Fontenoy and Laffelt (in the latter of which he was taken prisoner), by a very superior understanding, and by being one of the most agreeable and solid speakers in Parliament, to which the beauty of his person, and the harmony of his voice, did remarkably contribute.

This year a new field was opened, during the discussion of the Mutiny Bill, by Sir Henry Erskine, another young officer, lately brought into Parliament by the Duke of Argyle. This man, with a face as sanguine as the disposition of the Commander-in-Chief, had a gentle plausibility in his manner, that was not entirely surprising in a Scotchman, and an inclination to poetry, which he had cultivated with little success either in his odes, or from the patrons to whom they were dedicated; one had been addressed to the Duke, and another to an old gentlewoman at Hanover, mother of my Lady Yarmouth. Of late he had turned his talent to rhetoric, and studied public speaking under the baker at the Oratorical Club[51] in Essex-street, from whence he brought so fluent, so theatrical, so specious, so declamatory a style and manner, as might have transported an age and audience not accustomed to the real eloquence and graces of Mr. Pitt.

It was on the second debate on the Mutiny Bill this year, that Sir Harry Erskine, complaining of the exorbitant power of General Officers on Courts Martial, instanced in his own case, and severely abused General Anstruther, who had treated him very rigorously some years before at Minorca. The charge was so strong, that Mr. Nugent said, if the General (who was not present) did not appear next day and justify himself, he would move for an inquiry into his conduct. This was so well received, that the Secretary at War thought proper to write to General Anstruther to acquaint him with the accusation. He appeared the next day, and spoke some time, but with so low a voice, and so strong a Scotch accent, that scarce ten people heard or understood him. He said “he had undergone a long persecution from his countrymen, who all hated him for having been the only Scot that, on Porteous’s affair, had voted for demolishing the Nether Bow at Edinburgh.” He produced and read an anonymous and bitter letter wrote against him to the late Duke of Argyle, with two letters to himself, one from the author to own the former, and to beg his pardon for it; the other from the council of war at Minorca to vindicate him to the General. He said he suspected Sir Harry Erskine of having been in the conspiracy against him, which he had not punished near so rigorously as it deserved: and he concluded with justifying his government, where, he affirmed, he had eased the people of all taxes imposed by former Governors.

Sir Harry Erskine, with all the false lustre of oratory, and all the falsehood of an orator, replied in an affected gesture of supplication; besought the House to proceed no further in this affair; said he had forgiven all the ill-usage, had mentioned nothing out of revenge, and now pardoned the General’s suspicions. This justification ill-heard, and this deprecation as ill-founded, concluded the affair for the present as awkwardly as it had been begun. The General’s charge against his countrymen was undoubtedly well-grounded, and that of tyranny against him, no less. Indeed, the Scotch would have overlooked his tyranny to the Minorchese, if they could have forgot his supporting the Government, when it was necessary to chastise the mutinous disposition of Scotland, where Captain Porteous had been murdered insolently and illegally by the mob.

Anstruther had been tried before the Council for his unwarrantable behaviour in his government a few years ago, and a heavy number of articles proved against him; but Lord Granville defeated the charge by calling in a Minorchese, and talking to him for an hour in Spanish, and then assuring the Council that the witness had fully justified the General. The secret of Erskine’s being willing to drop his accusation was on receiving intimation that Anstruther, if pushed, would recriminate on General St. Clair, Sir Henry’s uncle, who, on the expedition to Port L’Orient, had used the most violent methods to bring a Court Martial over to his opinion, and had abused Lord John Murray, the President of it, in the grossest terms, who, on this occasion, begged Mr. Fox to tell the King and Duke from him, that his only reason for having taken no steps to complain of that usage, was for fear of increasing the heats already raised on the Mutiny Bill; but that at a proper time he would seek some redress.

A committee had been appointed to consider on amending the laws enacted against the vices of the lower people, which were increased to a degree of robbery and murder beyond example. Fielding, a favourite author of the age, had published an admirable treatise on the laws in question, and agreed with what was observed on this occasion, that these outrages proceeded from gin. The depopulation of the city was ascribed to the same cause, which gave Nugent occasion very properly to offer again his Bill of general Naturalization, a favourite Whig point, overthrown in the Queen’s time by the narrow ignorance of the Tories, and defeated in the first session of this Parliament by Mr. Pelham’s complaisance for Sir John Barnard. It was now received, and the second reading ordered for the 20th, the day before which a petition was presented against it from the city of London. The next day they presented another against gin, on which old Horace Walpole attacked Sir John Barnard on the absurdity of their remonstrating on the decrease of people, and their making interest against replacing them by foreigners. Nugent ridiculed him on the same topic, and made a distinction of humour between the good citizen in his fur gown and corporate capacity, and really wishing well in his mercantile capacity to trade and populousness: and he observed, that even in this enlightened age, the city of London had not got beyond the prejudices of the reign of Harry the Third, the laws of that age against aliens, and the reasoning of the present petition against naturalizing foreigners being exactly the same.

Sir John Barnard was as little ready to reply to banter, as Nugent was inferior to him in reasoning. The citizen, with the most acute head for figures, made that sort of speaking still more unpleasant by the paltriness of his language, as the arrogance of his honesty clouded the merit of it. The Irishman’s style was floridly bombast; his impudence as great as if he had been honest. Sir John’s moroseness looked like ill-nature, and may be was so. Nugent affected unbounded good-humour, and it was unbounded but by much secret malice, which sometimes broke out in boisterous railing, oftener vented itself in still-born satires. Sir John Barnard had been attached to Lord Granville, but had been flattered from him by Mr. Pelham. Nugent’s attachments were to Lord Granville; but all his flattery addressed to Mr. Pelham, whom he mimicked in candour, as he often resembled Lord Granville in ranting. Sir John Barnard meant honestly, and preserved his disinterestedness: he would probably have sunk in his character of a great genius, if he had come into business with Sandys and others—as they did. Nugent[52] * * * * had lost the reputation of a great poet, by writing works of his own, after he had acquired fame by an ode[53] that was the joint production[54] of several others. One would have thought his speeches had as different an origin; sometimes nothing finer, generally nothing more crowded with absurdities.

At this time all was faction, and splitting into little factions. The Pelhams were ill with one another, and ill with the Bedfords. The latter Duke would have set up Fox against Mr. Pelham; and the former Duke[55] was countenancing Pitt against all. Mr. Pelham supported Pitt and his clan against the Duke of Cumberland, who was united with the Bedfords. The Prince’s Court, composed of the refuse of every party, was divided into twenty small ones. Lord Egmont at the head of one, Nugent of another, consisting of himself and two more, Lady Middlesex and Doddington of a third, the chief ornament of which was the Earl of Bute, a Scotchman, who, having no estate, had passed his youth in studying mathematics and mechanics in his own little island, then simples in the hedges about Twickenham, and at five and thirty had fallen in love with his own figure, which he produced at masquerades in becoming dresses, and in plays which he acted in private companies with a set of his own relations. He became a personal favourite of the Prince, and was so lucky just now as to give up a pension to be one of the Lords of his Bedchamber. The Jacobites had quarrelled at Oxford on the choice of a member, and would not join with the Prince, who courted them. Lord Granville, Lord Chesterfield, and Lord Winchelsea, were each separately courted by the Duke of Newcastle, and Lord Oxford by Mr. Pelham, who at the same time was making new connexions, trying to preserve the old ones, adopting his brother’s jealousies, and yet threatening to resign on account of them. He had once solemnly declared in the House of Commons, that he would retire from business as soon as the rebellion should be extinguished. When the Duke of Grafton was told of this vow, he said, “God, I hope my friend will see the rebellion twinkle a good while yet in the Highlands!”

22d.—Sir Hugh Dalrymple moved for Mr. Golding (apothecary to the Prince of Wales) to have leave to attend Murray, being used to bleed him, which, as his veins laid low, was difficult for any other person to do. Mr. Pelham observed on the impropriety of this, as the doctor and apothecary were to appear on Monday. Mr. Fox said, he had heard that they would report he was very well, and proposed that the House should name a surgeon. It was at last agreed that Golding should go to bleed him, but should not be called for any account of his health.

Mr. Pelham, in the committee, opened the subsidy of forty thousand pounds a year to be paid to Bavaria for six years, twenty by England, and ten each by the Empress-queen and Holland. Martin made a speech of great wit against it, Lyttleton a learned one, and Murray, Solicitor-General, a very masterly one for it. It was obvious that the latter, not Mr. Pelham, had been instructed in the true secret of this negotiation by his friend Stone, secretary to the Duke of Newcastle. They had been bred at Christ Church together, and had tasted of the politics of Oxford as well as of its erudition. Sir Robert Walpole, on quitting the Ministry, had cautioned Mr. Pelham against Stone, having touched upon the scent of some of his intrigues, as he was hunting after Jacobite cabals. Mr. Pelham neglected the advice, as he had before rejected the offer of having Sir Robert’s clue of secret intelligence put into his hands. He would scarce have found either Stone’s or Murray’s name there from this time; they were converted by their own interest,[56] a conviction preferable to all detection. Lord Egmont spoke ill, and owned it was rather a right than a wrong measure; and was answered by Pitt in a good but too general a speech. Between seven and eight the House divided, but the majority for the subsidy appearing very great, it was given up without telling. This treaty with some others was calculated to purchase a majority of votes to choose the Archduke King of the Romans, but France and Prussia defeated the scheme: our Ministry could not buy off their opposition, as they bought off opponents at home, and they knew no other art of baffling an enemy.

25th.—The Bavarian Subsidy was debated on the report, and carried by 194 to 77. Then Dr. Lamont was called in and asked several questions about Murray’s health. He said he had found him with a cold and a fever, of which he was so well recovered this day se’nnight, that he had since visited him only every other day; but that going to Newgate on Saturday, he had found him with the cramp in his stomach, to which he had been subject these seven years, and of which his sister expected he would have died the day before: that he thought close confinement, without riding, dangerous for him: that he had advised him to petition the House for his liberty, though he had heard nobody else give him the same advice; but that Mr. Murray had replied in a passion, “he would take his prescriptions, but not his counsel.” Sir William Yonge then moved to restrain everybody but the Physician, Apothecary, and Nurse from visiting him, which being opposed, particularly by Lord Egmont, who reflected on the want of precedents, the Speaker made a warm and solemn speech for the honour of the House, instanced in the Earl of Shaftesbury and others, who had knelt to receive the reprimand of the House of Lords, and said that the want of a precedent of such behaviour as Murray’s did but conclude more strongly against him. Sydenham, a mad High-Church zealot, taking notice of some epithets the Speaker had used on Murray, was interrupted by him, saying, “I called him high-spirited too; if he had been only wrong-headed, I should have forgiven him.” The restriction was voted by 166 to 81.

The same day, Lord Chesterfield brought a Bill into the House of Lords for reforming our Style according to the Gregorean account, which had not yet been admitted in England, as if it were matter of heresy to receive a Kalendar amended by a Pope. He was seconded by Lord Macclesfield, a mathematical Lord, in a speech soon after printed, and the Bill passed easily through both Houses. Lord Chesterfield had made no noise since he gave up the Seals in 1748, when he published his Apology for that resignation. It was supposed to be drawn up by Lord Marchmont, under his direction, and was very well written; but to my Lord Chesterfield’s great surprise, neither his book nor his retirement produced the least consequence. From that time he had lived at White’s, gaming, and pronouncing witticisms among the boys of quality.

He had early in his life announced his claim to wit, and the women believed in it. He had besides given himself out for a man of great intrigue, with as slender pretensions; yet the women believed in that too—one should have thought they had been more competent judges of merit in that particular! It was not his fault if he had not wit; nothing exceeded his efforts in that point; and though they were far from producing the wit, they at least amply yielded the applause he aimed at. He was so accustomed to see people laugh at the most trifling things he said, that he would be disappointed at finding nobody smile before they knew what he was going to say. His speeches were fine, but as much laboured as his extempore sayings. His writings were—everybody’s: that is, whatever came out good was given to him, and he was too humble ever to refuse the gift. But, besides the passive enjoyment of all good productions in the present age, he had another art of reputation, which was, either to disapprove the greatest authors of other times, or to patronize and commend whatever was too bad to be ascribed to himself. He did his admirers the justice to believe that they would applaud upon his authority every simple book that was published, and every bad actor that appeared upon the stage.

His first public character was Embassador to Holland, where he courted the good opinion of that economical people by losing immense sums at play. On his return he attached himself to Lord Townshend, who was then breaking with Sir Robert Walpole, and did himself no good by that connexion: but what pinned down his disgrace, was the Queen’s seeing him one Twelfth Night, after winning a large sum of money at hazard, cross St. James’s Court, to deposit it with my Lady Suffolk till next morning:—the Queen never pardoned an intimacy there. He continued in Opposition for the remainder of Sir Robert Walpole’s Ministry, and after the ineffectual motion in 1740 for removing that Minister, Lord Chesterfield was dispatched to Avignon by the party to solicit, by the Duke of Ormond’s means, an order from the Pretender to the Jacobites, to concur roundly in any measure for Sir Robert’s destruction: they had retired without voting on the question abovementioned. Lord Chesterfield had accepted no employment till the removal of Lord Granville, when he was sent again to Holland, and then made Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and became the most popular Governor they ever had. Nothing was cried up but his integrity, though he would have laughed at any man who really had any confidence in his morality: and how little he repented his negotiations at Avignon would appear, if a story told of him is authentic (which I do not vouch), that being at Dublin in the height of the Rebellion, a zealous Bishop came to him one morning before he was out of bed, and told him he had great grounds to believe the Jacobites were going to rise. The Lord Lieutenant coolly looked at his watch, and replied, “I fancy they are, my Lord, for it is nine o’clock.”

He had married the Duchess of Kendal’s niece,[57] designing to become heir to her aunt, but had not the address to succeed; yet, miscarrying with the late King’s mistress, he was rewarded by old Marlborough among the rest of the legatees,[58] whom she had selected for the prejudice they had done to the Royal Family. She was scarce cold before he returned to the King’s service. In short, my Lord Chesterfield’s being the instrument to introduce this new era into our computation of time will probably preserve his name in almanacs and chronologies, when the wit that he had but laboured too much, and the gallantry that he could scarce ever execute, will be no more remembered.

26th, 27th.—The Mutiny Bill was finished. Sir Henry Erskine declared he should postpone till next year the offer of several more clauses and amendments.

28th.—The Naturalization Bill was read a second time. Petitions for it had been presented from Bristol and Liverpool; and this day Mr. Nugent presented another from one hundred and forty-two very considerable Merchants of London. Mr. Sydenham desired to have the names read, that it might appear many of them were Foreigners. Nugent observed, that it was evident from thence that men of all denominations were for it; and Sir William Yonge, that Foreigners already composed a very serviceable and considerable part of our Merchants. Sir John Barnard spoke an hour and a half against the commitment, and then stalked away to dinner, according to his custom, without deigning to wait for any reply. To every body’s surprise, Mr. Pelham declared for the Bill, said he had always approved the principle of it, but had formerly feared its raising disturbances; but that finding no reason to apprehend that consequence now, since our trading cities concurred in petitioning for it; that we were daily in want of recruits for Nova Scotia, and to repair our losses by the war; and having last year received applications from Spitalfields for encouragement of Foreign hands and materials, and having actually encouraged the importation of the latter, he hoped we should, and he would now vote for encouraging the former. On Mr. Pelham’s having formerly offended the Whigs by opposing this scheme, the Duke of Bedford, trusting to his adhering to the same style, had eagerly taken up the protection of this Bill, and privately made great interest to carry it through. Mr. Pelham discovered this, and turned short, and carried it for the commitment. The Duke of Bedford’s faction being thus baffled, made a shorter turn, kept away, and the Bill was lost at last. Mr. Fox, who had formerly at Mr. Pelham’s desire spoken against the Bill, stuck to his former vote, at the same time showing that he approved the Bill, though he said he doubted if it would have any effect. Pitt spoke immediately after Fox for the Bill; and it was committed by a majority of 146 to 81, three only of the Whigs adhering with Mr. Fox to their former vote. The House sat till past nine.

FOOTNOTES:

[38] James Hamilton, Lord Viscount Limerick, a great friend of Lord Bath, who had obtained the reversion of King’s Remembrancer for him and his son on the change of the Ministry in 1742. He was created Earl of Clanbrazil in 1756.

[39] In 1742.

[40] Vide the [Appendix, C.]

[41] Soon after Mr. Winnington deserted the Tories, and had made a strong speech on the other side, Sir John Cotton was abusing him to Sir Robert Walpole, and said, “That young dog promised that he would always stand by us.” Sir Robert replied, “I advise my young men never to use always.” “Yet,” said Cotton, stammering, “you yourself are very apt to make use of all—ways.”

[42] Feb. 1752.—On Tuesday night last, died at his house in Park-place, Sir John Hinde Cotton, Bart. He was a Commissioner of Trade and Plantations in the reign of Queen Anne; also member in several Parliaments in that reign for the town of Cambridge; and in the last Parliament of his late Majesty was one of the Knights of the Shire for the county of Cambridge; and in the two first Parliaments called by his present Majesty served again for the town of Cambridge; in the last and present Parliaments for Marlborough. He was also Treasurer of the Chamber to his Majesty in 1742. He married first a daughter of Sir Ambrose Crawley, Knt., and has issue one son, now Sir John Hinde Cotton, and one daughter, married to Jacob Houblon, of Hallingbury, in Essex, Esq. He married to his second lady, the daughter of the late James Craggs, Esq., one of the Commissioners of the Post-office, and relict of Samuel Trefusis, Esq., who died August 23, 1724, by whom he had only one daughter, who died young.

[From a printed paper annexed as a note by the author of the Memoirs.]

[43] Mr. Murray’s very first step to preferment was by presenting himself and being received into a commission in the Army, which had been made out for another Alexander Murray.

[44] John Perceval, the second Earl of Egmont of that name. He was scarce a man before he had a scheme of assembling the Jews, and making himself their King.

[45] One of the principal Independents was Blakiston, a grocer in the Strand, detected in smuggling, and forgiven by Sir R. Walpole; detected again and fined largely, on which he turned patriot, and has since risen to be an alderman of London, on the merit of that succedaneum to money—Jacobitism.

[46] It was called the “History of the House of Yvory,” in two large volumes. The collecting and consulting records and genealogies, and engraving and publishing, cost him (as the Heralds affirm) near £3000. He endeavoured afterwards to recall it, and did suppress a great many copies.

[47] Ethelreda Harrison, wife of Charles, Lord Viscount Townshend.

[48] Mr. Townshend had quitted the Army at the end of the last year, had connected himself with the Prince, and took all opportunities of opposing any of the Duke’s measures, and ridiculing him, and drawing caricatures of him and his Court, which he did with much humour. A bon mot of his was much repeated. Soon after he had quitted the Army, he was met at a review on the parade by Colonel Fitzwilliam, one of the Duke’s military spies, who said to him, “How came you, Mr. Townshend, to do us this honour?—but I suppose you only come as a spectator!” Mr. Townshend replied, “And why may not one come hither as a Spectator, Sir, as well as a Tatler?” Lord Robert Sutton was second son to the Duke of Rutland, and had been preferred to the command of a favourite regiment which the Duke had nearly instituted, before Lord Robert was of any rank in the Army; yet he deserted him, and accepted the place of Lord of the Bedchamber to the Prince.

[49] Honourable Henry Seymour Conway, second son of Lord Conway, and brother of the first Earl of Hertford. Commander-in-Chief in 1782; Field-Marshal in 1793.—E.

[50] This is surely a slip of the pen; should we not read unfashionable virtue?—E.

[51] This went by the name of the Robin Hood Society, and met every Monday. Questions were proposed, and any persons might speak on them for seven minutes; after which, the baker, who presided with a hammer in his hand, summed up the arguments.

[52] Robert Nugent, bred a Roman Catholic, had turned Protestant, and not long after married Mrs. Knight, sister and daughter to the two Craggs’s.

[53] It was addressed to Lord Bath upon the author’s change of his religion; but was universally believed to be written by Mallet, who was tutor to Newsham, Mrs. Nugent’s son, and improved by Mr. Pulteney himself and Lord Chesterfield.

[54] Had this ode been really his own, he would resemble the poet Tynnichus in Plato’s Io, “who never composed any other poem worth the mention or remembrance, besides that poem which every body sings.”—See Sydenham’s Translat. p. 49.

[55] The Duke of Newcastle included in the word “Pelhams.”—E.

[56] Yet it was remarkable that Dr. Gally, the Minister of his parish, could never get admitted to Murray, when he was collecting subscriptions against the Rebellion, though he went several times to his house at all hours.

[57] Melusina Schulemburgh, Countess of Walsingham.

[58] She left £20,000 to Lord Chesterfield, and £10,000 to William Pitt.

[CHAPTER III.]

General Anstruther’s Government of Minorca—Petition from a Minorchese—Speeches on the subject—State of parties—Affairs of Nova Scotia—Sir Henry Erskine’s charge against General Anstruther—Character of Bishop Secker—Dangerous illness of the Prince of Wales—Council held at Bedford House—Death of the Prince—His conduct and character—Sensation produced by his death—Changes in Prince George’s family—Addresses of condolence—Meeting at Lord Egmont’s—A council—German politics—Character of Lord Albemarle.

March 4.—George Townshend moved to have all papers relating to Courts Martial during General Anstruther’s government of Minorca laid before the House, and complained of his still keeping his regiment, though he had been found guilty by the Privy Council. Sir Harry Erskine again disclaimed revenge, but, with heaping new aggravations, said he had still more in reserve to urge against him; defied any retaliation on his uncle St. Clair, and affirmed that partialities had lately been exercised towards the Scotch—not favourable ones. Mr. Pelham replied to this; said he knew little of military promotions, but could observe from the Newspapers, that there were at least as many Erskines and Dalrymples preferred as of any English name; that he disliked proceeding parliamentarily in this business, but would engage to have Anstruther tried by a Court Martial. Mr. Pitt gave strongly into a Parliamentary Inquiry. Mr. Fox was as warm against it, and said that if Sir Harry Erskine had not openly disclaimed revenge, he should have much suspected him of harbouring the bitterest, especially as Sir Harry had too much parts to have accused out of ignorance. He urged the impropriety of trying a man after an Act of Grace had passed, which that he did not mention from prejudice would appear from his having voted at Council for condemning Anstruther. The Attorney and Solicitor Generals spoke to the same point of Law. Fazakerely endeavoured to show that pardons from the Crown were not pleadable against impeachments, which were now threatened by Lord Egmont and others. The Attorney in answer showed that the Act of Grace was the act, not of the Crown singly, but of the whole Legislature. Colonel Haldane, who had been one of the warmest against Murray, talked high for inquiries, more necessary, he now said, than prosecutions on elections. Mr. Conway temporized, proposed a middle way; the House was going to divide, when Mr. Fox moved for some fewer papers that would serve the purpose, and that Sir Harry Erskine might have two days to prepare a charge in form; but desired it might be delivered in before the papers in question were brought, that they might not be assisting to the composition. The House sat till past nine without dividing.

5th.—George Townshend presented a vehement petition from one Don Juan Compagni, a Minorchese, who had been barbarously treated by Anstruther; had had his sentences reversed by the Council here; but having run in debt while he attended the event of his suit, had applied without success to the Treasury for money to carry on the prosecution: this was the scope too of the petition, though Mr. Townshend said it was only presented to be in the eye of the House when the other trial should come on, and moved to have it lie upon the table. Mr. Pelham owned he had refused money from the Treasury, and observed upon the impropriety of suffering such petitions, as it would encourage the like from all our Governments and Plantations: that for his part he would not oppose it, unless somebody else did, and then he should be for rejecting it. Lord Duplin and Harding spoke against the want of order in it, as the accused was a member, as the petition would appear at length in the votes, a heavy accusation! and as the money must be granted without hearing either the cause or the defendant; or if heard, you might find a crime, and could not find a punishment.

Mr. Pitt spoke warmly for the petition, on the fitness of granting two or three thousand pounds to a poor man oppressed by military law, and of so good a family as the Compagnis, (so deeply was Mr. Pitt versed in Minorchese genealogies!) and declared he would support such a cause to the last drop of his blood. Mr. Fox ridiculed this warmth; observed how little foundation there was for believing the allegations of the petition, and then said he discovered much persecution in this affair; that good men would join in the persecution if they thought Anstruther guilty; others would, because he had been guilty of what he did not think bad (the vote on Porteous’s case); and that it was Anstruther-guilt, as much as the guilt of the Governor, that had blown up this vengeance; and then he moved for rejecting the petition, or for the Orders of the Day. Pitt disclaimed warmth, but with so much coolness and endeavours to be cool, that it only proved him more angry. Colonel Haldane defended the Scotch; Oswald still more, and called on Fox to charge them. Mr. Fox said he scorned prudence when it was honesty to speak out; urged the notoriety of the national inveteracy to the General, to a degree, that a petition on a contested election having been presented against him soon after his vote of offence, all the Scotch members had to a man voted against him; and said, that as he himself had been warm on the affair of Porteous’s murder, a Scotch General Officer had told him at the time, “young man, this will never be forgiven you.”

This pique created a constant opposition between Fox and Oswald, a man who was master of a quickness and strength of argument, not inferior to Fox, or any speaker in the House. The rapidity of his eloquence was astonishing; not adorned, but confined to business. He had come into Parliament about the time of Sir Robert Walpole’s fall, and had consulted a friend, whether the Minister or the Opposition were likely to prevail. His friend recommended him to the former; his own sagacity conducted him to the latter, which being soon after victorious, he reproached his friend with the scrape into which he had near drawn him. On the change he was made a Commissioner of the Navy, which he resigned on the New Place Bill, to keep his seat; but wavering in his connexions, had no new preferment. Mr. Conway spoke for the Orders of the Day; but asking if the intention was to hear the cause, and Pitt telling him it was, he then spoke and voted for the petition. Lord Egmont made a very fine and inflammatory speech for it, and said the nation would so much resent its being rejected, that no man who voted for the rejection would dare to show his face. Mr. Pelham took this up, said he would serve the King and his line faithfully, in place and out of place too, without opposing from resentment, and then should always dare to show his face any where. Pitt then endeavoured to prevent a division, but was disregarded; and towards seven o’clock it was carried by 97 to 58 for reading the Orders of the Day. Lord Ankram, Carneguy, Hope Weir, and M’Cleod, voting in the majority, and no English Whigs but Pitt, Conway, and the three Grenvilles in the minority. When the House was up, Pitt, in a dispute with Mr. Pelham, defended parliamentary inquiries, and said, “he would never consent to lop the bough on which he stood.”

The King asked Mr. Fox “with whom it was that Pitt meant to ingratiate himself? was it with Lord Egmont?” and he told the Duke of Bedford that he would not, even if addressed by the House, take away Anstruther’s regiment, who had got his favour by the vote that had so much offended his countrymen. The General, after that vote, had been obliged on his return to Scotland, to pass in disguise to his own estate, and crossing a firth, he said to the waterman, “This is a pretty boat; I fancy you sometimes smuggle with it.” The fellow replied, “I never smuggled a Brigadier before.”

Pitt’s behaviour, who at this time had the chief influence with the Duke of Newcastle, had extremely offended both the King and the Whigs. The tide of popularity was running with the Duke of Bedford and Mr. Fox; and without the great event[59] that soon after happened, possibly the charm might have been broken, that held a whole nation enchanted to such phantoms, either of honesty or abilities as the two Pelhams.

The 7th was appointed for the Naturalization Bill, but the House adjourned to attend at Drury-lane, where Othello was acted by a Mr. Delaval and his family, who had hired the theatre on purpose. The crowd of people of fashion was so great, that the Footman’s Gallery was hung with blue ribbands.

8th.—The Bill was read in the Committee. Mr. Fox spoke against it, but said he was open to conviction. Mr. Pelham mentioned the forfeited estates in Scotland, which might be improved by a colony of Foreigners. Mr. Fox declared himself convinced by this argument. Pitt ridiculed Fox’s conviction, and did it well. The Bill was carried in the Committee by 123 to 52. While Pitt was speaking, Fox said to one who sat next to him, “He is a better speaker than I am; but, thank God, I have more judgment!”

Lord Halifax had been soliciting to have a fifty and a sixty gun ship sent to Nova-Scotia, upon a report that the French were sending a fleet thither: the Admiralty had refused, for fear of drawing on a new war. The Board of Trade presented a long Memorial to promote their demand, which the Duke of Bedford carried to the King; the Duke of Newcastle was present, but said not a word. The Duke of Bedford said to the King, “Sir, this paper is too long for your Majesty to read, but I will tell you the purport of it: it is a project of the same faction, who have endeavoured to increase the Navy this year: I have desired your Majesty’s servants to meet at my House next Wednesday; I believe they will not think it proper to come into this proposal.” “No,” replied the King, “they are the most troublesome, impracticable fellows I ever met with; there is no carrying on the measures of Government with them.” Mr. Pelham wrote the Duke of Bedford word, on his summons, that he would wait upon him, but did not believe[60] he should think Lord Halifax’s proposal fit to be complied with.

11th.—A proposal came from the South Sea Company for lowering their interest after a term of seven years. Mr. Pelham moved to accept it, provided they gave up all demands on the King of Spain. Belchier desired time till the next General Court; but the resolution passed.

Lord Duplin[61], who, considering how fond he was of forms and trifles and being busy, was not absolutely a bad speaker, opened in a long deduction the affairs of Nova-Scotia, and moved for a sum of money for carrying on that new Colony, the establishment of which had been eagerly revived by Lord Halifax on his coming to the head of the Board of Trade, and his friend Colonel Cornwallis[62], sent thither as Governor, who was a brave, sensible young man, and of great temper and good-nature. Vyner alone opposed the Motion; the Opposition favoured it, and Th. Pitt spoke much against ever giving up that Colony to France.

Sir Henry Erskine then presented his charge against General Anstruther, which he called only a state of his own case. It was very trifling in comparison of what had been expected from the parade of his first accusation; his grievances barely comprized in a confinement of six weeks before and during his trial, and of a few days after it. George Townshend moved to address for the proceedings of that Court-Martial. Mr. Pitt desired there might be no Motion till the House came to some determination how to proceed. Mr. Fox read a letter from Anstruther, to say that he was laid up with the rheumatism, but would attend as soon as possible, and would send in an answer to the charge. It was agreed to send him a copy of what they were in doubt whether to call a charge, or a complaint, or simply a paper. Mr. Fox called upon Erskine to prove the accusation, which he said he was ready to do. Fox then said, that General Anstruther desired to inform the House that he had the copy of the Court-Martial in his own possession, and would send it whenever they pleased; though it was not necessary to preserve sentences of acquittals, nor were they ever sent to the War-office. Notwithstanding this voluntary offer, the House sat debating for two hours on the method of coming at this copy, and whether they should address the King, or order Anstruther to send it by their own authority. Joddrell, the Prince’s Solicitor, flamed, and Lord Egmont still more, on this notice of records of Courts-Martial not being preserved. The House sat till eight, but came to no division.

10th.—The King would not go to Chapel, because Secker, Bishop of Oxford, was to preach before him. The Ministers did not insist upon his hearing the sermon, as they had lately upon his making him Dean of St. Paul’s. Character and popularity do not always depend upon the circumstances that ought to compose either. This Bishop, who had been bred a Presbyterian and Man-midwife, which sect and profession he had dropt for a season, while he was President of a very free thinking club,[63] had been converted by Bishop Talbot,[64] whose relation he married, and his faith settled in a Prebend of Durham: from thence he was transplanted, at the recommendation of Dr. Bland,[65] by the Queen, and advanced by her [who had no aversion to a medley of religions, which she always compounded into a scheme of heresy of her own], to the living of St. James’s, vacant by the death of her favourite Arian, Dr. Clarke, and afterwards to the Bishoprics of Bristol and Oxford.[66] It is incredible how popular he grew in his parish, and how much some of his former qualifications contributed to heighten his present doctrines. His discourses from the pulpit, which, by a fashion that he introduced, were a kind of moral essays, were as clear from quotations of Scripture, as when he presided in a less Christian society; but what they wanted of Gospel, was made up by a tone of fanaticism that he still retained. He had made a match between a daughter of the late Duke of Kent[67] and a Doctor Gregory, whose talents would have been extremely thrown away in any priesthood, where celibacy was one of the injunctions. He had been presented with a noble service of plate for procuring a marriage between the heiress[68] of the same Duke of Kent and the Chancellor’s son, and was now forced upon the King[69] by the gratitude of the same Minister, though he had long been in disgrace for having laid his plan for Canterbury in the interest he had cultivated at the Prince’s Court. But even the Church had its renegades in politics, and the King was obliged to fling open his asylum to all kind of deserters; content with not speaking to them at his levee, or listening to them in the pulpit!

12th.—Potter produced several Physicians and Masters of Workhouses to prove the fatal consequences of spirituous liquors, which laid waste the meaner parts of the town, and were now spreading into the country. Sir Joseph Jekyll had formerly carried through a Bill against Gin, but with such danger from the populace, that the Act had been established merely by military force, and with little success, as informers against the retailers of it had seldom escaped the vengeance of the mob. Mr. Sandys,[70] on succeeding Sir Robert Walpole, had repealed this Act to increase the Revenue; but being one of the acts of his short reign, to which he had risen by deserting his party, he was as ill-treated by the faction as the prohibition had been by the lower people. Lord Hervey,[71] who had turned patriot at that season on being turned out of place, had made three remarkably fine orations against the repeal; and Sir Charles Williams had made a couple of ballads[72] with much wit, to ridicule both Sandys and Lord Hervey. Mr. Pelham spoke now against the appearance of the Physicians, &c. as he believed no remedy could be found for the evil, and yet imposing new duties would greatly diminish the Revenue: but they were examined.

18th.—Mr. Fox acquainted the House that Mr. Moncrief attended without, who was called in, and delivered the original copy of the Court-Martial from General Anstruther; and (as he was not able to come in person, being above seventy, and laid up with a rheumatism and pain in his bowels) an answer to Sir Henry Erskine’s complaint, in which he acknowledged the facts, but denied the aggravating circumstances. That day se’nnight was appointed to consider the charge and answer, and the Minutes of the Council; after Sir Harry Erskine had declared he would say no more, though if he chanced to prove more, it would be but the more conspicuous: to which Mr. Fox replied, that it would be fairer to acquaint Anstruther with that more. Mr. Fox then moved, at Anstruther’s desire, for a copy of a Resolution of Council against Colonel Pinfold, a former Governor of Minorca, who had been condemned to make satisfaction to the oppressed parties, and had. Anstruther would have done the like, but was prevented.

The Prince was dangerously ill.

19th.—The Council, which had been postponed, was held at Bedford-house, whither the Duke of Newcastle would have carried Lord Halifax and Lord Anson, but the Duke of Bedford refused to admit them. It was proposed to hear the whole Board of Trade upon their Memorial; but the Duke of Bedford said, that this proposal of stationing two men of war at Nova Scotia, upon the notion of a French fleet going thither, had not been mentioned in a long letter that he had received from that Board in January last, since which period there had been no letters from Governor Cornwallis. Nobody agreed with the Duke but Lord Sandwich, not even his father-in-law, Lord Gower, who had been with him an hour before the rest arrived, and said to him, “Now we have caught Lord Halifax in a trap;” (but he himself was intangled in Mr. Pelham’s snares, and did not know it!) nor the Duke of Marlborough, though his friend and brother-in-law, and though his connexion with Mr. Fox had made the Duke of Bedford flatter himself with his support: but both the Duke and Lord Sandwich were too sanguine about Mr. Fox, who had declared to them, that if it came to a rupture, he must adhere to Mr. Pelham. He had repeated this to Lord Sandwich in the summer, when commissioned by him to carry a reconciling message to Mr. Pelham. Mr. Fox had made the same declaration of his unavoidable connexion with Mr. Pelham to the Duke of Cumberland: but the Duke of Bedford was not only apt to forget what he did not care to hear, and even to forget his own change of opinion, but would and did often believe the very reverse. He told the two brothers that this was designed as a hostile measure against him, which they then denied.

20th.—Potter[73] opened in an able manner his scheme for an additional duty of two shillings on spirits, to be collected by way of Excise. He was a young man of the greatest goodnature, though he had set out with two of the severest speeches[74] that ever were made against the Ministry and the Grenvilles, and with the greatest applause; but his goodnature had kept up to its character much more than his parts. He was not bashful nor void of vanity, and had now flattered himself that he should figure like Sir Robert Walpole by attempting to re-establish the defeated Excise Scheme; not reflecting that the opposition to that project was levelled at the Minister, not occasioned by the pretended inconveniences and dangers of it. Mr. Pelham spoke greatly against it, and for suppressing unlicensed houses, and for a visitation by parish officers. He was seconded by the Solicitor General. Alderman Baker, a man rather busy and confident than very able, fluctuated between both schemes: but Mr. Pelham desiring a respite till the morrow se’nnight for further deliberation, it was agreed to.

The Prince of Wales had been ill of a pleurisy, but was so well recovered as to attend the King to the House of Lords on the 12th, where he was very hot. He went to Carlton-house to unrobe, put on only a light frock, and went to Kew, where he walked some time, and returning to Carlton-house, laid down upon a couch for three hours in a ground room next to the garden, caught a fresh cold, and relapsed that night. He had had a blow upon his stomach in the summer by a fall, from which he had often felt great pains. Dr. Wilmot, Taylor, and Leigh attended him, and Hawkins the Surgeon. On Monday, 18th, a thrush appeared; however, he was thought better. On Wednesday night, between nine and ten o’clock, Wilmot and Hawkins were with him; he had a fit of coughing. Wilmot said, “Sir, you have brought up all the phlegm; I hope this will be over in a quarter of an hour, and that your Royal Highness will have a good night.” Hawkins went out of the room, and said, “Here is something I don’t like.” The cough continued; the Prince laid his hand upon his stomach, and said, “Je sens la mort.” Pavonarius, his favourite German valet-de-chambre, who was holding him up, felt him shiver, and cried, “Good God! the Prince is going!” The Princess, who was at the feet of the bed, snatched up a candle, but before she got to him, he was dead! An imposthume had broken, which, on his body being opened, the Physicians were of opinion had not been occasioned by the fall, but from a blow of a tennis-ball three years before.

Thus died Frederick Prince of Wales! having resembled his pattern the Black Prince in nothing but in dying before his father. Indeed it was not his fault if he had not distinguished himself by any warlike achievements. He had solicited the command of the Army in Scotland during the last Rebellion; though that ambition was ascribed rather to his jealousy of his brother than to his courage. A hard judgment! for what he could he did! When the Royal Army lay before Carlisle, the Prince, at a great supper that he gave to his Court and his favourites, as was his custom when the Princess laid in, had ordered for the dessert the representation of the citadel of Carlisle in paste, which he in person, and the Maids of Honour, bombarded with sugar plums! He had disagreed with the King and Queen early after his coming to England; not entirely by his own fault. The King had refused to pay what debts he had left at Hanover; and it ran a little in the blood of the family to hate the eldest son: the Prince himself had so far not degenerated, though a better natured man, and a much better father, as to be fondest of his second son, Prince Edward. The Queen had exerted more authority, joined to a narrow prying into his conduct, than he liked; and Princess Emily, who had been admitted into his greatest confidence, had not forfeited her duty to the Queen by concealing any of his secrets that might do him prejudice.

Lord Bolingbroke, who had sowed a division in the Pretender’s Court, by the scheme for the father’s resigning his claim to the eldest boy, repeated the same plan of discord here, on the first notice of the Prince’s disgusts; and the whole Opposition was instructed to offer their services to the Heir Apparent against the Crown and the Minister. The Prince was sensible to flattery, and had a sort of parts that made him relish the sort of parts of Lord Chesterfield, Doddington, and Lyttelton, the latter of whom being introduced by Doddington, had wrought the disgrace of his protector. Whoever was unwelcome at St. James’s was sure of countenance at the Prince’s apartments there. He was in vain reprimanded for this want of respect. At last, having hurried the Princess from Hampton Court, when she was in actual labour, to the imminent danger of hers and the child’s life,[75] without acquainting either King or Queen, the formal breach ensued; he having added to this insult, a total silence to his mother on her arriving immediately to visit the Princess, and while he led her to her coach; but as soon as he came in sight of the populace, he knelt down in the dirt and kissed her hand with the most respectful show of duty. He immediately went all lengths of opposition and popularity till the fall of Sir Robert Walpole, when he was reconciled to, though never after spoken to, by the King.

On Lord Granville’s disgrace, he again grew out of humour; but after having been betrayed and deserted by all he had obliged, he did not erect a new standard of opposition, till the Pelhams had bought off every man of any genius that might have promoted his views. Indeed, his attachment to his followers was not stronger than theirs to him. Being angry with Lord Doneraile[76] for not speaking oftener in the House of Commons, he said, “Does he think I will support him, unless he does as I would have him? Does not he consider that whoever are my Ministers, I must be King?” His chief passion was women, but like the rest of his race, beauty was not a necessary ingredient. Miss ****, whom he had debauched without loving, and who had been debauched without loving him so well as either Lord Harrington or Lord Hervey, who both pretended to her first favours, had no other charms than of being a Maid of Honour, who was willing to cease to be so upon the first opportunity.

One of his favourites, Lady Archibald Hamilton[77] had been neither young nor handsome within his memory. Lady Middlesex[78] was very short, very plain, and very yellow: a vain girl, full of Greek and Latin, and music, and painting, but neither mischievous nor political. Lady Archibald was very agreeable and artful, but had lost his heart, by giving him William Pitt for a rival. But though these mistresses were pretty much declared, he was a good husband, and the quiet inoffensive good sense of the Princess (who had never said a foolish thing, or done a disobliging one since her arrival, though in very difficult situations, young, uninstructed, and besieged by the Queen, Princess Emily, and Lady Archibald’s creatures, and very jarring interests), was likely to have always preserved a chief ascendant over him.

Gaming was another of his passions, but his style of play did him less honour than the amusement. He carried this dexterity[79] into practice in more essential commerce, and was vain of it! One day at Kensington that he had just borrowed five thousand pounds of Doddington, seeing him pass under his window, he said to Hedges[80] his Secretary, “That man is reckoned one of the most sensible men in England, yet with all his parts, I have just nicked him out of five thousand pounds.” He was really childish, affectedly a protector of arts and sciences, fond of displaying what he knew: a mimic, the Lord knows what a mimic!—of the celebrated Duke of Orleans, in imitation of whom he wrote two or three silly French songs.[81] His best quality was generosity; his worst, insincerity, and indifference to truth, which appeared so early, that Earl Stanhope wrote to Lord Sunderland from Hanover, what I shall conclude his character with, “He has his father’s head, and his mother’s heart.”

The Princess staid four hours in the room after he was dead, before she could be quite convinced of it. At six in the morning they put her to bed; but she rose again at eight, and sent for Dr. Lee, and burnt, or said she burnt, all the Prince’s papers. As soon as he was dead, Lord North was sent to notify it to the King, who was playing at cards. He immediately went down to Lady Yarmouth, looking extremely pale and shocked, and only said, “Il est mort!” He sent a very kind message to the Princess, and another the next morning in writing by the Lord in Waiting, Lord Lincoln. She received him alone, sitting with her eyes fixed; thanked the King much, and said she would write as soon as she was able; in the meantime, recommended her miserable self and children to him.

The King and she both took their parts at once; she, of flinging herself entirely into his hands, and studying nothing but his pleasure, but with winding what interest she got with him to the advantage of her own and the Prince’s friends: the King of acting the tender grandfather; which he, who had never acted the tender father, grew so pleased with representing, that he soon became it in earnest. When he was called the morning after the Prince’s death, they found him drest, walking about his room, and extremely silent. Princess Emily, who had no great reason to flatter herself with much favour if her brother had lived to be King, sent immediately for the Duke from Windsor, who, on receiving the news, said to Lord Sandwich with a sneer, “It is a great blow to this country, but I hope it will recover it in time!” He little thought that himself was to receive the greatest shock from it! He sent a compliment by Lord Cathcart to Prince George, who cried extremely. As soon as the Prince’s death was published, elegies were cried about the streets, to which they added, “Oh, that it was but his brother!”[82] and upon Change and in the city, “Oh, that it was but the butcher!”[83] In short, the consternation that spread on the apprehensions that the Duke would at least be Regent on the King’s death, and have the sole power in the mean time, was near as strong as what was occasioned by the notice of the Rebels being at Derby.

The Houses met the next morning, but adjourned without doing any thing.

The Duke of Bedford proposed to the King to remove Dr. Ayscough from the young Princes, which he much approved, and nobody but the Cobham cousins[84] disliked, who had just patched up their peace with the Prince by his intervention. Lyttelton, whose sister he had married, solicited Mr. Pelham to save him. Mr. Pelham answered, “I know nothing of Dr. Ayscough—oh, yes, I recollect, a very worthy man told me in this room two years ago that he was a great rogue!” It was Lyttelton himself who had quarrelled with him about an election business. Ayscough, who was an insolent man, unwelcome to the Clergy on suspicions of heterodoxy, and of no fair reputation for integrity, had been placed by Lyttelton and Pitt with the Prince, into whose favour he had worked himself, chiefly by partialities to Prince Edward; and managed his Privy Purse and his election affairs. The Princess, finding that Prince George, at eleven years old, could not read English, though Ayscough, to make amends, assured her he could make Latin verses, had already introduced a new Preceptor, one Scot, recommended by Lord Bolingbroke, who had lately seen the Prince two or three times in private.

22d.—The King sent a Commission to pass the Mutiny Bill. Lord Egremont in the House of Lords, and Lord Hilsborough in the Commons, moved the Address of Condolence; and then the Lords adjourned to Wednesday, and the Commons till Monday. Lord Egremont, who was son to the great Sir William Windham, and grandson to the old Duke of Somerset, whose prodigious pride he inherited, more than his father’s abilities, though he had a great deal of humour, had formerly been a personal favourite with the Prince, but had slighted that intimacy when Lord Granville his patron would not co-operate in the Prince’s last Opposition.

Lord Hilsborough was a young man of great honour and merit, remarkably nice in weighing whatever cause he was to vote in, and excellent at setting off his reasons, if the affair was at all tragic, by a solemnity in his voice and manner that made much impression on his hearers.

At seven o’clock of the very morning after the Prince expired, Lord Egmont sent cards to several of the Opposition, desiring them to meet at his house, to consult on the measures proper for them to take on the present conjuncture. Many of them came. He did not make any formal oration, but whispered most of them something about taking upon themselves the protection of the Princess and her children. The meeting passed in a sort of dumb confusion and uncertainty, and broke up without taking any measures at all.

An Order of Council was made to omit the name of the Prince of Wales in the prayers. As no rank was yet given to Prince George, it created murmurs. Though the House sat, nothing was done but private business. On the 26th, Colonel Haldane moved, as the Prince’s servants did not yet attend the House, that Anstruther’s affair might be postponed till after Easter, which was agreed to, though the General was present, and earnest to have it heard sooner.

28th.—A Council was held at the Cockpit, on the Nova-Scotia affair. They divided: the Chancellor, Mr. Pelham, the Dukes of Newcastle, Grafton, Dorset, and Argyle, were for complying with the request of the Board of Trade; the Duke of Bedford and Lord Sandwich, who had now got the Duke of Marlborough and Lord Gower on their side, against it.

The German politics went ill. What Allies we had there wanted more money. The Elector of Cologne, who had signed a treaty with the King, refused to execute it, and united with France. That Court used continual evasions with us, on the evacuation of Tobago, and the contested islands in the West Indies, and gave great disturbance to our Colony of Nova-Scotia. In the east, they were driving us out of our Settlements; and upon the coast of Africa seizing our forts, raising others, inveigling away our Allies, and working us out of our whole Negro and Gold-Coast trade. The British Minister at Paris, Lord Albemarle,[85] was not a man to offend the haughtiness of that Court, or the pusillanimity of his own, by mixing more sturdiness with his Memorials than he was commissioned to do. It was convenient to him to be anywhere but in England: his debts were excessive, though he was Embassador, Groom of the Stole, Governor of Virginia, and Colonel of a regiment of Guards. His figure was genteel, his manner noble and agreeable: the rest of his merit, for he had not even an estate, was the interest my Lady Albemarle had with the King through Lady Yarmouth, and his son, Lord Bury, being the Duke’s chief favourite. He had all his life imitated the French manners, till he came to Paris, where he never conversed with a Frenchman; not from partiality to his own countrymen, for he conversed as little with them, living entirely with a Flemish Columbine, that he had brought from the Army. If good breeding is not different from good sense, Lord Albemarle, who might have disputed even that maxim, at least knew how to distinguish it from good nature. He would bow to his postilion, while he was ruining his tailor.

31st.—The King went to see the Princess. A chair of state was placed for him, but he refused it, and sat by her on the couch, embraced, and wept with her. He would not suffer the Lady Augusta to kiss his hand, but embraced her, and gave it to her brothers, and told them, “They must be brave boys, obedient to their mother, and deserve the fortune to which they were born.”