SOUTHERN BRANCH UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY LOS ANGELES. CALIF. K K Pine, pinac JOHN WI I; K E S , M . J>. Lor. don ,R:i oli^rd Ben tley, 1859, JOURNAL OF THE REIGN KING GEORGE THE THIRD, FROM THE YEAR 1771 TO 1783. BY HORACE WALPOLE. NOW FIRST PUBLISHED FROM THE ORIGINAL MSS. " For 'tis a chronicle of day by day." SHAKSPEARE, Tempest. " On pre'voioit que la patrie allait etre sacrifice 4 la dignite de la famille royal e, dont la veritable gloire est de se sacrifier toujours an bonheur de la patrie." VIE DE MAINTENON, torn, v., page 18. EDITED, WITH NOTES, BY DE. DOEAN, AUTHOK OF ' HISTORY OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND OF THE HOUSE OF HANOVET5,' ETC. IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. I. . \J J LONDON: RICHARD BENTLEY, Pnblisbtr in rbinarg to Itr ^lajtstn. M.PCCC.UX. Q^ The right of Translation is resemil. LONDOII : fKniTRD BT WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONfl, iTAMFORD STREET AND OHARINO CBO8B 4821 O v/v (9 O INTRODUCTION. " THE ' Journals,' or, as the writer himself called them, the 'Last Journals of Horace Walpole,' now published for the first time, form a continuation of his ' Memoirs ^ of the Reign of King George III./ which work termi- i nates with the year 1771. After that year, the author Q continued his manuscript collections under this title of \ t m r 'Journals.' To describe these, it is only necessary to quote Walpole's own words. In the concluding paragraph of March, 1772, he says: "This Journal is rather calcu- lated for my own amusement than for posterity. I like to keep up the thread of my observations : if they prove use- ful to anybody else I shall be glad ; but I am not to answer for their imperfections, as I intend this Journal for no regular work." From numerous passages in these volumes, it will be apparent that the Journalist wrote, in more or less full detail, after he had collected a series of brief notes ; and frequently he added, under entries of an earlier date, details of circumstances in connexion with those entries, but the occurrence of which belonged to a later period. a 2 IV INTRODUCTION. With regard to his own qualities and defects as an his- torical writer, there is a phrase in this Journal (p. 278, vol. i.) distinguished by more candour than even some of Walpole's admirers have been disposed to consider as forming a portion of his character. "Authentic papers," he remarks, " will, I flatter myself, corroborate the authen- ticity of these * Memoirs,' though in some things I may have been misinformed, and in others, from my own pas- sions, I may have exaggerated faults." With this hope and this acknowledgment, his Journal will be read with additional interest. Finally, Walpole came to regard his Diary as possessing uses for others rather than providing only amusement for himself. Towards the close of his remarks, dated February 27th, 1782, he says that he has "continued it so long merely to preserve certain passages less known and to aid future historians, not intending the journalist part for any other use." After speaking modestly of himself, his powers, his opportunities, and the employment he had made of them, he concludes by intimating, with reference to fur- ther entries, that " they will be chiefly such as I can warrant the truth of, and are not likely to be found in narratives of men much less conversant with some of the principal actors." In such words does Walpole describe the chief object of a Journal, the publication of which he made over to a suc- ceeding century. The title and the epigraphs on the title- page are his own, exactly as he left them, ready for the INTRODUCTION. V press. The latter serve as texts for a history, ten years of which included a period of the greatest peril which ever threatened our country. Walpole has detailed the daily intrigues, the defeats and triumphs, the alternate exultation and depression, the glory and the shame, of that critical and eventful epoch. This varied narrative he has illus- trated by various annotations ; and it only remains to be added, that the notes bearing the initial D. are those for which Walpole is not responsible, but which have been contributed by the Editor. J. DOR AN. London, Dec. 1858. CONTENTS OP THE FIEST VOLUME. 1772. JANUAEY. Lord Rochford His handsome conduct Death of the Earl of Northington The Comte de Guines Sir Charles Hotham Sir William Hamilton Wilkes's ' Answer to Stephens ' Promises to conform his conduct to Magna Charta Thurlow Junius's Letter to Lord Mansfield Parlia- ment meets No opposition to the Address Death of the Princess Mary The Navy Augmentation Bill Imprisonment of the Queen of Denmark in the Castle of Cronenburg Her seizure at a masquerade The Princess of Wales Early life of the Queen of Denmark Thoughtless conduct of the King Misfortunes of the Royal family , .. .. .. Pages 1-4 FEBEUAEY. Mr. Keith's Report on the arrest of the Queen of Denmark Witty retort of Mr. Dayrolles Charles James Fox The Marriage Bill Gambling at Almack's George Selwyn Controversy on the Thirty-nine Articles Lowth, Bishop of Oxford Lord North Sir William Meredith Sir Roger Newdigate Sir William Petty Burke's speech on the Liturgy question Sir George Saville Gambling of Stephen and Charles Fox Dunning Wedderburn Dr. Hay Death of the Princess-Dowager of Wales The Duke of Cumberland not permitted by the King to see his mother Lord Bute Conduct of the Court of Denmark Sir William Hamilton Affairs in Ireland Lord Townshend's satirical ballad - Burial of the Princess of Wales The Princess of Brunswick Jealousy of the Queen, and cruel conduct to the Princess of Brunswick Charity of the Princess-Dowager Lord Bute's sudden wealth Mr. Seymour on " Dor- mant Claims of the Church " Resignation of Charles Fox Marriage of Lady Susan Strangways Royal Marriage Bill Dr. Newel's Sermon on Charles the First Rigby's vote Lord Camden's speech on the Marriage Bill Opinion of the Judges Lord Mansfield's chagrin Lady Walde- grave Governor Pownall Dictatorial conduct of the King .. 5-38 viii CONTENTS OF VOL. I. MAECH. Lord Lyttelton Protest against the Marriage Bill drawn by the Duke ot Richmond and Burke Motion to discontinue the observance of the 30th of January Triennial Parliaments Situation of the Queen of Denmark The Order of the Bath sent to Mr. Keith Dowdeswell, Seymour, T. Pitt, Wedderburn, Dunning, Charles Fox, Lord North, Burke, General Con- way, Colonel Barre, and others on the Marriage Bill The King's complaint of General Conway Conway seeks Walpole's advice Great opposition to the Marriage Bill Lord John Cavendish's amendment rejected Spirited conduct of Mr. Herbert Adjournment of the House Koee Fuller moves to confine the duration of the Bill to the King's life Narrow division on this clause Vehement speeches of T. Townshend and Colonel Barre' Dinner at Mr. Crawford's Wedderburn's admission Merits of the speakers on the Marriage Bill discussed Letter from Keith Dis- turbances in the North of Ireland Oppression in India Charges against Lord dive Lord Clive's defence .. .. .. .. Pages 39-79 APRIL. Inquiry into the conduct of the House of Lords Protestant Dissenters State of Denmark Marriage of the Pretender Proclaims his consort Queen The Pope refuses to acknowledge the title T- Wilkes and Bull's ' Letter ' Walpole goes to hear Charles Fox speak Colonel Burgoyne Lord North Description of Burke's speech on the Old Marriage Bill Fox's reply to Burke Fox and Burke compared, and Fox with Charles Townshend Defeat of Lord North Character of Lord North Grant of an island to Lord Rochford Penn claims it, and substantiates his claim Abuses in India Insurrections in Essex in consequence of the high price of food Food riots in London Masquerades (see note) Attacks on Madame Schwellenburg Impertinent conduct of the Danish Minister at the lev^e Fitting out the fleet The Queen of Denmark's confession Committee for Indian Affairs .. .. .. .. .. 80-91 MAY. Bradshaw's appointment as Lord of the Admiralty Expedition to conduct the Queen of Denmark to Zell Prussians march into Polish Prussia Presentation of Madame Dieden, the Danish Minister's lady Execution of Stniensee Bradshaw unseated Petitions to be reseated Fox's Mf r- riage Bill thrown out Return of the Duke of Gloucester from Italy The laws against Dissenters proposed to be repealed Warburton's conduct on the occasion during the debate in the Lords Lords Chatham, Lyttelton, and Barrington on the Bill Lady Waldegrave Letter of Sir Edward \Vnl|K)le Letter from Lady Waldegrave to her father on the subject of her marriage with the Duke of Gloucester Walpole's approval of this letter, and comments on it Character of Lady Waldegrave The Duke of Glou- cester's proposed Icv^e, and Walpole's reasons for not appearing at it CONTENTS OF VOL. I. IX Character of Sir Edward Walpole Anecdote of him and of Frederick Prince of Wales Anecdote of George the Third when young Leve'e of the Duke of Gloucester Conduct of the Duchess of Cumberland Smuggling by Ambassadors (see also notes) Luttrell's motion on Smuggling Pages 92-113 Supplement to May. Arthur Tell-Truth's Letter to the Commissioners of the Admiralty in tl.e 'Public Advertiser' .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 114 Extract from a letter from Copenhagen on the subject of Struensee's exe- cution .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 115 JUNE. Middlesex election Bradshaw's Petition Close of the session Aldenr.an Townsend The Land tax Lord Mansfield Case of a black slave claiming the freedom of England Visit of Ladies Waldegrave and Dysart Account of the Duke of Cumberland's announcement of his marriage to the King Conduct of the King Installation of the Knights of the Bath, and of Prince Frederick Account of the Danish trial of Struensee and Brandt Details of Danish Court life Lord North made a Knight of the Garter Fordyce's bankruptcy Disastrous consequences of it Great failures Kun upon the Bank of Edinburgh Partition of Poland Conduct of the Empress of Austria Want of spirit in the French po- licy 117-126 JULY. Scrutiny for new Sheriffs Aldermen Oliver and Lewes the popular candi- dates Account of Hugh Kelly, the playwright (see note) Continuation of disasters in the City Failure of four bankers .. .. 127, 128 AUGUST. Plan for purchasing lands on the Ohio Thomas Bradshaw Lady Holder- ness Lady Charlotte Finch Ungovernable character of the Prince of Wales Mr. Smeet Mr. Stone Bishop of Chester Lord North Lord Hillsborough Fears of Lord North Earl Gower Lord North takes advice from Rigby Lord Weymouth Resignation of Lord Hills- borough Allen Lord Bathurst made an Earl Lord Dartmouth takes office Illness of the Marquis of Rockingham .. .. .. 129-133 SEPTEMBER. Revolution in Sweden Fordyce gives himself up Is almost lauded as a martyr The Duke of Gloucester's marriage made public The King places the Duke under the same proscription as the Duke of Cumberland CONTENTS OF VOL. I. Walpole's letter to the Duchess of Gloucester He visits her Kind re- ception Mr. Legrand's conversation with the King on the Duke of Glou- cester's marriage Walpole's advice to the Duchess of Gloucester Entrance of the Duke of Gloucester Kindly treatment of Walpole Walpole writes to Lord Hertford a letter for Lord Hertford to show to the King touching the Duke of Gloucester's marriage The King's reply Lord Hertford's advice Walpole's spirited reply Meeting of the Duchesses of Cumberland and Gloucester The Duke of Gloucester's temper Pages 134-143 OCTOBER. The Duchess of Gloucester applies for apartments for her children in Windsor Castle The request is granted Lord Hertford Earl of Lichfield Lady Charlotte Finch The Duchess of Gloucester Sir Edward Walpole General Conway's reforms in the Ordnance The King's anger at Con- way's conduct on the Marriage Bill Disgrace of Conway Lord Townshend His courage called in question Captain Montgomery Captain Osborn Lord Bute Ingratitude of Lord Townshend to Lord Bute Arbitrary rule of Lord Townshend in Ireland approved by the King Lord Townshend as a speaker Lord Townshend removed from Ireland Affront to General Conway Conway's love for his official duties Walpole interferes in his behalf Seeks Lord Hertford Lord Hertford's intercession Lord North Negociations in favour of Conway Conway yields so far as to accept the Governorship of Jersey Conway does not appear at the Duke of Glou- cester's leve'e The King's pleasure at this Conway made Governor of Jersey The Duchess of Gloucester's letter to Walpole respecting Conway's and Lord Hertford's absence at the leve'e Walpole's reply . . 144-159 NOVEMBER. Walpole's letter to the Duchess of Gloucester on her position with respect to the King and the Royal family Walpole advises that the Duke should go to the King and ask pardon The Duchess of Gloucester is enceinte Death of the Earl of Lichfield Lord North made Chancellor of Oxford Defeat of the Earl of Radnor as a candidate for the Chancellorship Wilkes offers himself for Lord Mayor of London The Court party set up Alder- men Halifax and Shakespeare Election for Lord Mayor Deceitful con- duct of Alderman Oliver Strong feeling in favour of Wilkes Townsend is returned by finesse Anger of Wilkes Suspicion falls on Lord Shel- burne Riots at the Guildhall ball Parson Home mobbed The Russian and Turkish war The Crimea Count Orloff The Empress Catherine Duties exacted from us at Dantzig Abuses in the East India Company Probability of India being lost to us Affairs of the Company brought before Parliament Richard Fitzpatrick moves the Address Lord North General Burgoyne Fox at Newmarket (see note) .. .. 160-168 CONTENTS OF VOL. I. xi DECEMBER. The East India Company resolve to send out Supervisors Government objects Burke's speech on the occasion Majority for Government The Com- pany heard by Counsel Lord George Germaine Duke of Richmond The question comes before the Lords Lord Bathurst's Sunday visitors Mr. Sykes's fortune made in India Exposed by Mr. Wilkes New dispo- sition of places in the Ministry .. .. .. .. Pa^es 169-172 1773. JANUARY. Meeting of Parliament Birth of another Prince Mr. Andrew Stuart's letters on the Douglas cause .. .. .. .. .. .. 173 FEBRUARY. Sale of the jewels of the Princess Dowager of Wales Lord Townshend's quarrel with Lord Bellamont Duel Lord Bellamont wounded Petition of Navy Captains Lord Howe Lord Sandwich Sir Gilbert Elliot The expedition against the Caribbees Sir William Young Lord Hills- borough T. Townshend Examination of witnesses before the House Loyal conduct of the French Governor of Martinique Lord North threatens to resign The King frightened The King takes upon himself to bestow a large number of military preferments Affairs of the East India Company Governor Johnston Duke of Richmond Townshend's speech on the Carribbean question Ironical speech of Lord George Germaine Lord North Colonel Barre' Colonel Burgoyne General Howard General Harvey Sir Gilbert Elliot Defeat of the motion The Duke and Duchess of Gloucester The Duchess comes to town for her lying-in The Opposition pay their court to the Duke and Duchess The King first approves, and afterwards speaks with anger of the conduct of those who attend the Duke of Gloucester's levees Reception of the Duke of Glou- cester at the theatre The Duchess of Cumberland's reception Townsend the Lord. Mayor proposes to the Aldermen to urge short Parliaments Wilkes opposes Townsend Sir William Meredith moves to reconsider the Thirty-nine Articles Lord North throws out the motion Sir Roger Newdigate Charles Fox Charles Jenkinson Sir John Dal- rymple's history The India Directors Impey Sickness among the troops 173-186 MARCH. Death of the King of Sardinia Mason's Epistle to Sir William Chambers The King buys the book to tease Chambers Finds an attack upon himself xii CONTENTS OF VOL. 1. Lord Bristol refuses to read it Sir John Dalrymple's History Acri- mony against the Scotch Lord Mansfield disavows having aided Dalrymple Lord Nuneham Papers accusing Algernon Sidney transcribed for the King Designs against Lord North Lord Mountstewart Lord North moves a grant for the East India Company Sir Basil Keith made Governor of Jamaica The City Remonstrance Drawn up by Wilkes Death of the Earl of Chesterfield His will Presentation of the City Eemonstrance The King treats it as a joke Pages 187-190 Supplement t(J March. The City Remonstrance .. .. .. .. .. .. 190 Wilkes's letter 192 The King's reply to the City Remonstrance .. .. .. 192,193 APEIL. The Prussian Minister threatens to depart Affairs of the East India Com- pany Lord North LordClive offended at the Secret Committee News from the Caribs Cession of part of their territory Call of the House of Commons The Sheriffs of Middlesex summon Wilkes Contempt of the City for the Court Sir Thomas Robinson of Rokeby ' The House of Commons afraid of Wilkes News from Boston Rumours of a war with France Fall in the funds Sir Charles Saunders named to the command of the fleet Wilkes demands his writ Motion to hear Wilkes at the Bar Motion rejected Fears of war unfounded Meeting of the freeholders of Middlesex Resolutions to adhere to Wilkes's election Meeting of the Proprietors of East India Stock 194-200 Supplement to April. Sir Fletcher Norton's letter to the Sheriff of Middlesex .. .. 201 The Sheriff's reply 201 Wilkes's letter to the Speaker of the House of Commons .. 202-204 MAY. Petition of the Court of Proprietors of the East India Company Lord dive's speech Defence of his Administration Present of diamonds to the King Burgoyne's attack on Clive Debates on dive's proceedings Thurlow revives the feeling against LordClive Burgoyne's resolutions carried Fall of India stock Recriminations of Wedderburn and Burgoyne .Jimius Burgoyne's election at Preston The Court of East India Pro- prietors vote not to agree with the Government plan The Duke and Duchess of (Houccster Their levdes deserted by a servile nobility The Due do Choiftcul and the French nobility contrasted with the English nobility and CONTENTS OF VOL. I. xm the Duke of Gloucester Paltry excuses for their absence Lord and Lady Waldegrave The Countess of Powis Pregnancy of the Duchess of Gloucester Illness of the Duke Dr. Jebbe The Duke writes to the King The King's delay in answering The Duke writes again Unfeel- ing message of the King Cruel conduct of the King Firm attitude of the Duke of Gloucester The Duke of Richmond, Lord George Germaine, Sir William Meredith, and Lord Eockingham on the Duke of Gloucester's marriage Circumstances of the marriage Walpole's interview with the Duke of Gloucester The King yields Walpole's advice to the Duke of Gloucester The Duke of Gloucester's indignation at the threatened Com- mittee of Inquiry Charles II. 's conduct in compelling the Duke of York to acknowledge his marriage favourably contrasted with the King's in ignoring the Duke of Gloucester's marriage Lord North, and the Duchess of Argyle well disposed to the Duke of Gloucester Sensible con- duct of the Duke Imbecility of the Lords Commissioners, Archbishop Cornwallis, Lord Bathurst, and Dr. Terrick, Bishop of London Inquiry into the Duke of Gloucester's marriage Examination of the Duke and Duchess Deposition of the Bishop of Exeter Inquiry into the Duke of Cumberland's marriage Visit from Lord Hertford Lord Hertford fright- ened at the Duke of Gloucester's boldness Sir Edward Walpole's congra- tulatory letter Lady Gower Council on the Duke's marriage Lord Carnden Mean conduct of the King and Lord Mansfield Persecution of the Duke of Gloucester The King proposes the marriage over again The Duke of Gloucester's reply The Archbishop of Canterbury Triumph. of the Duke Disingenuousness of the King The Duchess of Gloucester gives birth to a Princess East Indian Affairs Duke of Eichmond Lord North Accusation of Lord Clive Lord Clive's able and interesting Defence General Burgoyne moves that Lord Clive abused his powers Sir William Meredith, Thurlow, Fox, and Colonel Barre support General Burgoyne's motion Wedderburn, Conway, Saunders, .Burke, and Lord George Germaine support Lord Clive Defeat of Lord North Bill of Regulations , Pages 205-246 JUNE. Generals Monckton and Clavering Wilkes proposes to congratulate the King on the birth of a child to the Duke of Gloucester Fresh attacks on Lord Clive Andrew Stuart Lord Mansfield's memory of injuries Debate on the India Bill in the Lords Admirable speech of the Duke of Richmond The King's journey to Portsmouth Lord Sandwich -The King's statue Highway robbery in St. James's Square Lord North's Budget The East India Bill passed in the Lords Lord Shelburne's con- version News from America The Bostonians disclaim the authority of Parliament The House of Lords " smiles " The King's visit to Portsmouth His enthusiastic reception Christening of the Duke of Gloucester's daughter The King invited to be godfather, refuses The King to mortify the Duke refuses to review his regiment .. .. .. 247-252 xiv CONTENTS OF VOL. I. JULY. Prorogation of Parliament Miller fined 2000Z. for an accusation of Lord Sandwich The India Company vote not to employ General Clavering Lord North isu'alled Chancellor of Oxford General Moyston cast in damages of 3000J. for arbitrarily imprisoning Mr. Fabregas The Duke of Cumberland applies for permission to go to Italy Influence of the Duchess of Cumberland Cornwall quits the Opposition Fresh uneasiness at Boston Governor Hutehinson recommends coercion .. Pages 253-255 AUGUST. The Duke and Duchess of Cumberland dine with the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester Coldness of the Duke of Cumberland Death of George Lord Lyttelton His character and writings Character of his son .. 256, 257 SEPTEMBER. The Duke and Duchess of Cumberland set out for Italy Directions given to the English Ministers abroad not to visit them Death of Evelyn, Duke of Kingston Miss Chudleigh Her beauty Account of her early life Her lavish expenditure Takes measures to annul her marriage with Augustus Hervey Marries the Duke of Kingston His will Lady Mary Wortley Montagu The Duke of Cumberland at Calais Goes to the play Present to the players Conduct of the players East Indian affairs .. .. .. .. 258-261 OCTOBER. Contest for Lord Mayor Wilkes and Bull versus Sawbridge and Oliver Townsend maltreated by the mob Sawbridge accuses Wilkes of slander Discoveries amongst the papers of the Jesuits Annoyance of the Pope The King of Prussia protects the Jesuits Affairs of Ireland Simon Lord Harcourt Discussion in the Irish House respecting Lord Townshend Proposed tax on absentees Conduct of the absentees Lord Rocking- ham Lord Shelburne Conversation between Lords Besborough and JShelburne Edmund Burke The letter of the five Lords to Lord North Lord North's reply Character of the five Lords Lord and Lady Gower Rigby The King's attention to him Lord North and Mr. Rigby .. .. 262-268 NOVEMBER. Tlie remonstrance against the Absentee tax Mr. Fortescue LordClermont Measures of the Court Lord Hertford Colonel Blaquiere Impolitic liHclosures Jealousy of Prussia and Spain Sir Robert Ladbrooke I'.ull a candidate for the City' Roberts opposes him in the Court interest - Wilkcs and Townshend General Moyston King's favour to him I : -jection of the tax on absentees Recantation of Fludd .. 269-274 CONTENTS OF VOL. T. xv DECEMBER. Bull declared duly elected for London The Duke of Kichmond General Johnston The tax on tea in America Death of Andrew Stone, Treasurer to the Queen Character of Andrew Stone Earl of Guilford, Treasurer to the Queen General Grasme Sir George Macartney George Selwyn The Duke of Grafton Lord North's conduct to Selwyn Panegyric on Lord Chatham Satire on the King Dr. Robertson Flood, the Irish orator Baratariana Flood's change of politics Lord Clive Secret service money Royal Marriage Act Abandonment of the Falkland Islands Dr. Johnson's pamphlet on the occasion Sir William Young's debt to Government His bankruptcy Impoverishment of the Crown Temple's duel iu America with Mr. Whately the banker Rage for duelling The " Sensible Woman " Her conduct to the Quaker Represents herself as the Hon. Mrs. Grieve Charles Fox becomes her dupe Sir John Dalrymple's ' History of Charles II.' Foote's ' Cozeners ' Description of Dalrymple's History Fletcher of Saltoun Barillon Algernon Sidney Death of Thomas Hollis, the antiquary and collector An account of him His love of liberty His editions of works supporting the cause of freedom Another account of Hollis (see note) .. .. Pages 275-289 Supplement to December. Letter from Mr. Temple to the ' Public Advertiser ' on the subject of his duel between Whately and Temple 289-293 1774. JANUARY. The Duke and Duchess of Gloucester go to Covent Garden in state Received with applause The King meets their child, the Princess Sophia Parlia- ment meets Mr. Prescott the banker The Duke of Richmond General Graeme resigns his post of Secretary to the Queen Mr. Harris, the author of ' Hermes ' Riots at Boston Dr. Law, Bishop of Carlisle, writes against the Thirty-nine Articles Whitehead's ode The City petition in favour of Roberts Lord North opposed to it Fox's unpatriotic con- duct Rigby courts Fox Dr. Franklin heard by counsel before the Privy Council Wedderburn abuses him Franklin makes no reply The Council advise a rejection of the Memorial Franklin turned out of his place Dr. Dodd, the popular preacher His intrigues for advancement Struck off the list of chaplains .. .. .. .. .. 294-299 xvi CONTENTS OF VOL. I. FEBRUARY. The disturbances at Boston The Earl of Stair's maiden speech Lord Buckingham's motion General Clavering appointed to the command in India The City Petition Mr. Grenville's Act for Select Committees Conviction of Mr. Rons of bribery Sir Edward Astley promises to move for the perpetuity of Grenville's Bill Lord Eockingham Lord North 'An Heroic Postscript to the Heroic Epistle' Liberty of the press Daring attack on the Speaker, Sir Fletcher Norton, in the ' Public Adver- tiser ' William Tooke, of Purley The Speaker accused of partiality Mr. Herbert moves to have the publisher of the ' Public Advertiser' punished Lord North's ironical speech Dowdeswell Wilkes Woodfall the printer ordered to attend Appears at the bar of the House His excuse Charles Fox counsels harsh measures Herbert and Sir William Meredith for moderation Lord North proposes to send Mr. Woodfall to the Gate- house Dowdeswell shows a precedent for milder measures Lord North, willing to yield, appeals to Charles Fox Fox indecently adheres to his original harsh proposition, but is defeated Letter of " A South Briton " The Rev. John Home committed to the custody of the Serjeant at Arms Invective on the Revolution Violence of the press Virulent satire on Lord Ly ttelton Charles Fox complains of the press T. Townshend throws in Lord North's teeth the pensions paid to Drs. Johnson and Sheb- beare and Sir John Dalrymple Lord North denies the latter Lord Bute Defeat of the Administration Home surrenders Sawbridge Description of Mr, Home His skilful defence Wedderburn Woodfall Defence by Dunning Lord Shelburne Colonel Barre* Examination of Woodfall Address of Home Examination of Woodfall's men Home's defence Herbert and Pbipps vote his discharge Fox, disap- pointed, blames Lord North Colonel Barre's speech Home ordered to be at liberty The Ordinary of the Navy Copyright decision Dismissal of Charles Fox The Queen delivered of another Prince Fox and Burke Petition fiom Woodfall dismissed Sir Edward Astley's motion for making Grenville's Select Committee Bill perpetual Lord North's indeci- sion Debate on the Select Committee Bill Sir John Molcsworth, Lord North, James Grenville, Stephen Fox, T. Townshend, Sir George Younge, .lenkinson, Pen ton, Colonel Barre', and General Burgoyne, on the Bill George Selwyn and Charles Fox The King's dislike to Fox Fox in diffi- culties Anecdotes of Fox Mr. Drake, Phipps, Sir George Germaine, Sir < iillx.Tt Elliot, and others, on Mr. Grenville's Bill Mr. Rigby's coarse de- fence of Government Defeat of the Government .. Pages 300-325 MAIU'11. Wood fell's petition a^ee,! to Popularity of Mr. Grenville's Bill The Bill carried to the I/>rds City address to the King on the birth of the Duke of Cambridge New promotions The American question Lord North, Mr. Wcddcrlmrn, Burke, &c., on American affairs Want of any plan in American affairs - Strong feeling against the Bostonians Grenville's Bill CONTENTS OF VOL. I. xvn debated in the House of Lords and carried East Indian affairs Lord North moves to remove the Custom-house from Boston* Colonel Barre" de- clares the Americans ought to be punished for their ingratitude Calvert proposes to take away charters The Bill read a first time to remove the Custom-house from Boston Speeches of Mr. Herbert, Lord North, Bamber Gascoyne, Mr. Montagu, and others Character of Mr. Montagu Colonel Barre's defence of the Bostonians Petition from Massachussets Bay re- jected Edmund Burke's oration The Bill read in the Lords Attacked by the Duke of Richmond and Lord Camden Lords Gower, Temple, Mansfield, and Lyttelton, support the Bill News arrives of the taking of Tangier General Smith The Massachussets Bay Bill Lord George Germaine's speech on the Bill Career of Lord George Germaine His defection Efforts of the King State of parties Lord George Germaine offered the reversion of the Wardenship of the Cinque Ports Refuses it, and demands the Master-Generalship of the Ordnance Walpole agitates against him Conversation with the Duke of Gloucester The Czarina's disclosure to General Loyd .. ... .. ... Pages 326-347 APRIL. The Middlesex election Colonel Luttrell's complaint of the Sheriffs Lord Beauchamp moves- the Orders of the day Charles Fox seconds Colonel Luttrell Fox attacks Lord North Lord North's witty reply Sir Charles Whit-worth's Bill for the better regulation of the government of Massachussets read a first time The King's Message taken into considera- tion General Con way reproaches the Government for their despotic mea- sures in America Rose Fuller moves the repeal of the Tea Bill Burke's speech received with applause Glover makes a good speech on a matter of trade Ballot for Directors of the East India Company " Civil Jurisdic- tion Bill" (America) Rose Fuller and Sir George Saville denounce Government for condemning the Americans without being heard Con- way's defence of the Americans Lord North's reply Sir George Younge and General Johnston blame the injustice of Administration Governor Pownall intimates that the Americans are in rebellion Rigby's speech Fox's defence of the Americans Anecdote told by Sir Richard Sutton to show the levelling system in America .. .. ... .. 348-356 MAY. Petition from Americans resident in London against sending troops against them - The petition only suffered to lie on the table Insolence of the Court party Third reading of the Massachussets Bill Lord Chatham disapproves the rigour used towards Boston Rumours respecting Lord Chatham Dunning strongly opposes the third reading of the Massachus- sets Bill Lord Caermarthen defends Government Rigby's impudent speech General Conway's prediction Lord George Germaine comes round to the Government Fox assails Lord George Germaine's position Burke's statement Rebutted by Lord North Sir George Saville again protests against the wrong of condemning the Americans unheard Sir VOL. I. b xviii CONTENTS OF VOL. I. "William Meredith renews his motion for reviewing the Thirty-nine Articles Sir Roger Newdigate offers his usual opposition Burke's defence of the Articles Government of Canada Louis the Fifteenth seized with the small-pox The Duke and Duchess of Cumberland arrive in England Magnificently treated by the Pope The Bostonian Bill in the Lords The Duke of Richmond and Lord Camden support the Bostonians Pul- teney, Mansfield, and Sandwich support Government Death of Louis the Fifteenth Accounts from Boston The Quebec Bill The Duke of Rich- mond, Lords Rockingham, Gower, Sandwich, Dartmouth, Hillsborough, on the Bill ' Considerations on the Present Measures ' Reported saying of the King Complaisance of the Bishops The Budget Lord North's speech Retiring pensions (see also note) Lord Chatham's conduct Third reading of the Bill for providing Quarters for the Officers and Troops in North America Lord Temple speaks with animosity Lord Chatham's entry in black velvet boots and leaning on a black stick Compliments Lord Sandwich The oration ineffective Lord Chatham's pride and mad- ness Picture of him by Walpole The Bostonians, hearing of severe measures, intend to stand on their defence .. .. .. Pages 357-371 JUNE. Bill to relieve booksellers Sir John Dalrymple opposes it, and arraigns news- papers He is stated to have received from these same booksellers 20001. for his book The City of London present a petition against the Quebec Bill Dr. Marriot General Murray Lord North Townshend Charles Fox Burke makes an angry speech on the Quebec Bill Lord North News arrives that New York takes part with Boston Wedderburn and Governor Hutchinson burnt in effigy Choiseul's justification for the surrender of Canada (see note) Strong opposition to the Quebec Bill Lord Chatham bitterly arraigns the Bill Lord Stanley's entertainment (see note) Debate in the Lords Conduct of the Bishops The Duke of Gloucester votes against the Court Unpopularity of the Bill The Clergy Presbyterians Bishoprics in America Comparison between George III. and Charles I. Reflections of Walpole on the aspect of the times The City of London vote a strong petition to the King not to pass the Bill The King goes to the House of Lords and passes the Bill Prorogation of Parliament Alarm of the Court General Moyston Lord Mansfield The King threatened on his way to the House The Duchess of Gloucester delivered of a second Princess Election of Sheriffs The Court candidates elected Accounts from America Death of Zachary Pcarcc, Bishop of Rochester .. 372-382 JULY. Death of Lord Holland His great wealth Solemn fast in Virginia in behalf of I fcwton Association in Maryland against trade with England Trea- sonable papers affixed at St. James's and other public places The Duchess of Kingston returns to England Christening of the Duke of Gloucester's daughter Death of Lady Holland 383,384 CONTENTS OF VOL. I. XDC AUGUST. Unpromising news from America Solemn league and covenant not to trade with Great Britain General Gage declares the league illegal -- North, Wedderburn, and Hutchinson burnt in effigy Five hundred soldiers de- sert Affairs of the Duke of Gloucester Proposed application to Parlia- ment Letter of Walpole to the Duchess of Gloucester on the affairs of the Duke Provision for the Duchess and her children Application to the King Cold reply of the King Threat of the Duke of Gloucester Brutal answer of the King Sir William Meredith enrolled in the Court Meredith and Onslow excuse themselves from waiting on the Duke of Glou- cester Howard and Blaquiere made Knights of the Bath Unfavourable accounts from America General Gage advises Ministers to persist Peace between the Eussians and the Turks Rumoured death of Lord Lytteltoii Lord Mansfield goes to Paris Relations with France .. Pages 385-395 SEPTEMBER. Gloomy aspect of affairs Intended dissolution Dr. Franklin (see note) Lord North The King's debts Probability of war Reasons for the dissolution Bad news from America Effect of Mr. Grenville's Bill Unfavourable time for the elections General Conway Intrigues against him The Duke of Grafton His weakness His conduct to General Conway Walpole bestirs himself for General Conway Rigby at the Duchess of Grafton's Gives the Duke notice of the dissolution Colonel Keene Electioneering topics Embarrassment of the Duke of Grafton Conversation with Lady Hertford Character of Lady Hertford Character of Lady Ailesbury The Duke of Richmond Mrs. Darner Anecdote of Mrs. Darner Her decision and character General Sir Robert Rich His character Anecdote of him Quarrels with Conway Conway abroad The King dismisses Sir Robert Rich from his service . . 396-409 OCTOBER. Dissolution of Parliament Lord Barrington sent by the King to Lady Ailes- bury Penetration of Mrs. Darner Duplicity of the King Colonel Keene's message from Lord North Lord North's handsome conduct Con way's independence Arrival of Lord Hertford His chicanery Remarkable scene at Lord Hertford's Walpole's strong letter to Lord Hertford Letter from Lady Hertford Lord Hertford promises to come to Walpole Walpole declines his acquaintance Lady Hertford Her amiable character and spirited conduct The Earl of Hertford visits Wal- pole The quarrel at an end Lord Hertford sends for Walpole The Duke of Grafton throws Conway over Treachery of the Duke of Graf ton -The borough of Thetford Bad news from America General Gage implores more men and ships Letter to Conway Conway likely to be offered the command in America The elections Election for Mayor \Vilkes elected The duration of his influence Candidates for Middlesex Sir John Hawkins His ' History of Music ' Account of him (see note) xx CONTENTS OF VOL. I. Majority for Wilkes's nominees A poll demanded Conduct of Alderman Townsend The city of Westminster Lord Percy The Earl of Lin- coln Earl Stanhope Anecdote of Lord Percy's penuriousness (see note) Lord Mahon stands for Westminster on liberal principles Humphrey Cotes Lord Mountmorris associated with Lord Mahon for Westminster Alarm of the Duke of Northumberland Lord Thomas Clinton nominated on the Court side Death of Pope Ganganelli His contest with the Jesuits Their persecution of him His death and suspicious circumstances attending it Supposed to have been poisoned by the Jesuits in the Sacrament Letter from Sir Horace Mann, describing his death Election for the City Wilkes and Glynn elected for Middlesex Losses of the Court party Proclamation against the export of gunpowder Colonel Lee Lords Percy and Clinton returned for Middlesex ... ... .. Pages 410-428 NOVEMBER. Wilkes abused by the Court and Scotch faction Answer in the ' Public Advertiser,' signed "Toby" Chancellor Apsley and Mr. Wilkes Advices from America Spread of the discontent Burke elected for Bristol Death of Thomas Bradshaw The King's liberality to his widow and children The Duke of Athol drowned Dr. Johnson publishes ' The Patriot ' Dr. Shebbeare's ' Answer to Queries ' Death of Lord Clivc Dr. Fothergill Lord Clive dies by his own hand The printers of the ' South Briton ' tried and sentenced for a libel on Charles Fox Results of the elections Inactivity of the Rockingham party and the Dissenters Wilkes's treatment of Burke in the Westminster election A sermon at Bristol before Burke Death by dropsy of Lord Holland Meeting of the new Parliament Sir Fletcher Norton Accident to, and death of, Dr. Johnson, Bishop of Worcester Dr. North named his siiccessor De- bate on the King's speech in the Lords Speeches of the Duke of Rich- mond, Lords Hillsborough, Shelburne, Camden, Dartmouth, Talbot, and Lyttelton .. 429-435 DECEMBER. Debate on the King's Speech in the Commons Lord Beauchamp and Mr. De Grey move the Address Strong feeling against the Americans Success of the Court party Panic caused by the state of American affairs George Grenville Lord Lyttelton moves to open the door of the Lords Lord Weymouth seconds him Rigby and the Court disappointed Debates on the army and navy Admission of Lord Beauchamp Burke makes a fine speech on American affairs Alarming news from America Dismay of the Administration Influence of Lord Mansfield and Jenkinson Vacillating conduct of Ministers Increase of the national debt 436-441 CONTENTS OF VOL. I. xxi 1775. JANUABY. A remarkable advertisement Who is to succeed Mr. Bradshaw ? The American merchants petition Parliament against the late measures of Administration Burke's famous speech on the repeal of the tea duty Description of that speech and of Burke's oratory in general Burke a stockjobber The American merchants Dissensions in the Cabinet Lord North for moderate measures Mansfield and Jenkinson for carrying out a high policy The Bedfords vacillate Glasgow dissatisfied The West Indian merchants' petition Desertions amongst the soldiery at Boston Distress of the King More regiments ordered to Boston Meet- ing of Parliament American papers laid before the House of Commons Lord Chatham moves in the House of Lords to recall troops from Boston Debate in the Lords Lords Shelburne, Camden, and the Duke of Rich- mond for the motion Lords Suffolk, Lyttelton, Townshend, Gower, Wey- mouth, and Eochford vote for the Court Petition of the merchants of London on American affairs Another from Bristol Debate against observing the 30th of January Wilkes considers it rather a festival than a fast Alderman Hayley's petition Lord Gorge Germaiue Charles Fox attacks Lord North Sir George Saville Colonel Barre A petition from the agents of the colonies rejected . . ... Pages 442-450 FEBKUABT. Lord Chatham's Bill for conciliating America Ministers reject it The French Court Lord Gower complains of the conduct of Lord Chatham The Duke of Grafton announces a Bill of his own Lord Mansfield absents himself Sawbridge proposes triennial Parliaments Wilkes and Mr. Moysey support it Lord North's irresolution His plan for carrying on the war His speech Reinforcement of General Gage Dunning's reply to Lord North Speech of the Attorney-General Five thousand men in arms against Government in New Hampshire Colonel Grant Fox makes a fine speech against Government Grenville's defence. The House votes in favour of carrying on the war Want of policy in the Opposition Burke makes a long and pathetic speech Barre speaks with more fire The Opposition flag Maiden speech of Sir Robert Smith The Address communicated to the Lords Attacks on Lord Mansfield He is threat- ened with impeachment His defence The Duke of Grafton attacks Lord Mansfield State of the fleet discussed Publication of the debates in the Lords complained of by Lord Lyttelton Sir Francis Molesworth, Serjeant- at-Arms, sent to take up the printer The printer not " at home " The printer writes to Sir Francis to tell him at what time he would -be at home The Lords hesitate The Court eagerly push forward the war Sir Jeffery Amherst offered the command, which he declines Howe, Burgoyne, and Clinton made Majors-General under Gage Their characters Lord North moves to put the trade of America under temporary restrictions xxii CONTENTS OF VOL. I. Evidence of the rebellion contested Dilatoriness of Lord North 2000 seamen asked Temple Luttrell opposes the demand Lord North offers terms of pacification The Ministry frightened Broken into factions Lord North's plan very similar to Lord Chatham's Astonishment of Parliament and the people Fluctuating conduct of Ministers exposed The Ministry in danger The Secret Junto come forward to rescue it Wedderburn shows that conciliation means no conciliation Insincerity of the Ministry The motion carried Surprise without the House The stocks rise Wilkes's motion for rescinding the Acts of the last Parliament respecting the Middlesex election Lord North threatens to resign if the motion is carried Debate on the motion Wilkes draws a portrait of the Duke of Grafton Vann accuses Wilkes of blasphemy Bill against Mas- sachussets Lord Effingham Moves to have a pamphlet called ' Present Crisis with respect to America considered ' burnt by the common hangman The Bill offering self-taxation to the Americans debated General Burgoyne's speech in favour of the motion .. .. Pages 451-466 MARCH. The merchants heard against the Massachussets' Bill Aspect of affairs in America ' The crisis ' Rigby ridicules the House of Lords Warm dis- cussion in that House Lord Sandwich accuses the Duke of Richmond of encouraging libels against the King The Duke of Richmond makes him ask pardon ' A State. Tinker. ' Lord Pigot Dowdeswell's death at Nice Cardinal Braschi chosen Pope, and takes the name of Pius the Sixth Petitions for and against the Americans Cooper moves the engrossment of the Bill against Massachussets First occasion on which the word starva- tion was used Fox's speech Jenkinson upholds the exercise of power Our force in America Dundas's heartless speech Lord George Cavendish ridicules him Burke breaks out into bitter invective Styles the sup- jwrters of the Bill ' the blackest traitors ' The Lord Advocate charges the Opposition with the war Lord North moves a similar bill for other states in America State of Ireland The Whiteboys commit great ravages Dr. Johnson's ' Taxation no Tyranny ' Wai pole's character of Dr. Johnson Macpherson Ossian's poems The Scotch Jacobites Death of the Princess Caroline, youngest daughter of the Duke of Gloucester The King affronts the Duke of Gloucester and refuses burial for his child in the Royal vault at Westminster The Duke has a vault made at Windsor Lord Hertford frightens the King by intimating that the Duke of Gloucester might make the affair public Insignificance of German Princes George Orcnville and Lord Bulkelcy move to bring in a bill for allowing Members of Parliament to vacate their seats The Chiltern Hundreds Lord North's imprudence The New England Fishery Bill Death of Lord Bristol at Bath Results of it Conway's election prospects The young Princess Caroline lies in state at Gloucester House Carried <<> Windsor Burke's plan for pacifying America Large majority against Burke Wilkes gives notice of a Reform Bill next session Ix>rd Weymouth made Groom of the St. ,li Protest against the Massachussets Bill Grcnville's Election Bill I'.ill for dwfmnchiBing Hindon Lord Hertford tries to quash UK; bill < li.n-les Fox utlacks Itigby .. .. 467-479 CONTENTS OF VOL. I. xxiii APRIL. New bill against the refractory Colonies The Opposition, disgusted, absent themselves General Conway laments the measures of Government Rigby attacks Conway High talking with respect to America Lord John Cavendish reproves Rigby' s indecent levity Maiden speech of the Marquis of Granby Follows the policy of Lord Chatham T. Townshend ridicules Rigby Conway votes against the Court The Livery of London vote a strong remonstrance to the American Bills, and Wilkes presents it His respectful conduct to the King The King declines to receive future remonstrances from the City except in their corporate capacity The Duke of Gloucester enters the proofs of his marriage in the journals of the House of Lords The Irish fisheries State of Ireland Motion to sell Somerset House to pay the King's debts Adjournment of the Houses The Generals sail for Boston Parliament meets again .. Pages 480-485 MAY. Accounts from America Position of General Gage Apprehension of the Spaniards Lord Grantham The Budget Wilkes's reply to the Lord Chamberlain Ramsay, the King's painter Account of the Ramsays (see note) Remonstrance from New York Burke intends to present it The Court throw out the petition by a large majority The bishops Death of Caroline Matilda, Queen of Denmark Strange, the engraver Lord Bute The Royal Academy Lord Camden moves for a repeal of the Quebec Bill Lord Mansfield opposes the motion Lord Shelburne Lord Lyt- telton attacks Lord Camden Lord Bristol The Spanish armaments The Quebec Bill Sir George Saville moves its repeal in the Commons supported by Fox Burke's plan for the pacification of America printed The Duchess of Kingston surrenders herself to answer a charge of bigamy Parliament rises - The King's Speech Prince of Masserano First victory obtained by the Americans .. .. .. .. 486-491 JUNE. Captain Darby sent for by Lord Dartmouth Refuses to go to him Parson Home opens a subscription for our brethren in America The whole conti- nent of America thrown into a flame by the news of the victory Boston invested The King's friends driven out of New York Lord Dunmore has to leave Virginia The Administration thunderstruck Gaieties of the metropolis Regatta on the Thames The Americans send over an address to Wilkes Election for Sheriffs Strong proceedings in the City. The Earl of Effingham Bad news pour in from America Lord Chatham and the Duke of Richmdnd Violent resolutions in the City 492-495 xxiv CONTENTS OF VOL. I. JULY. General Gage Remonstrance to the King presented by the City The dockyards Half-pay officers not paid Mrs. Bradshaw Lady Margaret Fordyce Nuttal Charles Fox Jenkinson News from America Lord Dunmore forced to take refuge in the ships Proclamation of General Gage The Luttrells The Duke and Duchess of Gloucester set out for Italy Attentions of the French Court to them M. de Castries Gene- ral opinion abroad that we should lose America Accounts received from Boston Repulse of our troops Recall of General Gage Command given to General Howe Congress at Philadelphia Washington named General-in-Chief Attack by the Spaniards on Algiers repulsed Foote and the Duchess of Kingston Foote introduces her into a play Lord Hertford stops the play Correspondence between the parties Pages 496-499 AUGUST. The King issues a proclamation declaring the Americans rebels The Minis- ters order the prosecution of the printers of Home's advertisement The London Association subscribe for supporting the printers The Cabinet send for 20,0$) Russians The merchants of Dublin thank Wilkes, Lord Effingham, and the English Peers, who opposed the American war, 500, 501 SEPTEMBER. The shipwrights Major Rogers neglected, goes over to the Americans Admiral Greaves beaten at Boston Recalled Riot amongst the sailors at Liverpool Addresses Death of Lord Bathurst Meeting of the free- holders of Middlesex Wilkes receives a letter from the Provincial Con- gress Sawbridge Lord Mayor The merchants of London present a strong address against the war Wesley's calm address to the Colonies 501-503 OCTOBER. Irish Parliament meets Blunders of the Ministry Admirable conduct of the Americans State of the funds Resources of trade The Scotch party Lord North Approach of the session Fears of the Ministry Rigby Thurlow The Duke of Grafton writes to Lord North on the errors of the war Newmarket Charles Fox The Duke of Grafton in Opposition The Bedfords alarmed The Duke of Grafton vacillates Fox again meets the Duke at Newmarket The Provincials seize Nova Scotia The Court attempt to intimidate Wilkes Absurd charge against Sayer Warrants issued for apprehending two dissenting divines Incendiary pi>r8 distributed inviting the people to rise and prevent the meeting of Parliament Extraordinary speech of the King The addresses Debate on th si>eech The Duke of Grafton condemns the 8[cech The Bishop of Peterborough Lord Lyttelton Lord Ferrers Lord Gowcr Lord CONTENTS OF VOL. I. xxv Rochford The Court carry the day Debate in the Commons on the Address General Conway's speech Fox makes a brilliant speech Saw- bridge announces his intention of impeaching Ministers Report on the Address Gibraltar Colonel Barre' Lord North's reply to Adam Rigby Governor Johnston Sayer carried before Lord Mansfield Colonel Keene Walpole's place in the Custom-house Conversation with Colonel Keene respecting it Temptation held out to Walpole Folly of it Pages 504-517 NOVEMBER. Several Lords protest against the Address 28,000 seamen proposed in the Commons Lord North no longer pacific General Con way upbraids him The seamen carried without a division The Duke of Manchester in the Lords, and Sir James Lowther in the Commons, move a censure on em- ploying the Hanoverians without consent of Parliament Dunning re- proaches Lord North with the mode in which addresses had been obtained The Duchess of Kingston petitions the House of Lords for her trial Mr. Pownall arrives from Quebec Temple Luttrell made a motion for pacifica- tion with America Its ill-success Debate on the Army A violent speech of Wilkes on giving up the mayoralty to Sawbridge The privy seal taken from the Duke of Grafton Ministerial changes Lord George Sackville Germaine becomes a Minister The Earl of Suffolk The Earl of Dartmouth becomes Lord Privy Seal Lord Rochford dismissed with a pension Lord Weymouth takes his place Other ministerial changes Infamous conduct of Lord Lyttelton Insincerity of the King The Duke of Richmond Governor Penn examined before the House Recriminations between Lords Sandwich and Shelburne General Gage arrives from Boston The Duke of Grafton The Militia Burke makes his concilia- tory motion Offends Dunning and Barre Lord Camden, Lord Ossory, and Richard Fitzpatrick go into Opposition Charles Fox Wedderburn Lord George Germaine Rejection of the conciliatory plan Lord North move's to repeal the Boston and Massachussets' Bill T. Townshend and Con way censure the severity of the new bill The King's power over the Militia limited to seven years Fox Ackland attacks Fox with gross personality Fox's reply Death of Sir John Hill Account of him (see note) Alderman Oliver moves to know who advised the war Ireland The Nova Scotia Bill The Indemnity Bill Addresses and petitions Earl Cornwallis asks to go out at the head of his regiment Triumph of Ministers Disgust of the Opposition Dissensions among them Disso- lute life of Fox 517-526 DECEMBER. Bill for capturing American ships Dunning opposes the bill Townshend attacks the Ministers on their late measures to Ireland Sawbridge abiises Lord George Germaine Sir George Saville's panegyric on Admiral Sir Charles Saunders Disposition of the troops Bill for destroying American VOL. I. c xxvi CONTENTS OF VOL. I. shipping passed Lord George Germaine Sir Charles Saunders Palliser Lord North's perplexities Lord Howe threatens to resign Major Stuart Lord George Germaine seizes letters going to America The Whiteboys American Shipping Bill Lord Mansfield delivers a speech in favour of the war The Duke of Richmond defends the Americans Lord Denbigh Lord Townshend Lord Dunmore His success Canada Defeat of General Carle ton Lord North's apathy Lord George Germaine Mon- treal taken by the Provincials General Howe Admiral Greaves General Burgoyne arrives from Boston Brings thirty prisoners The Provincials capture a store ship Sermon at Emanuel College, in which the restoration of convocation is spoken of as probable Illness of the Duke of Gloucester The ill-treatment of him by the King Dr. Jebbe The King goes to the play in spite of the Duke's illness and danger The Duke of Gloucester's fondness for his child His anxiety about his affairs Writes to the King Anecdote of the King Dilatoriness of Lord North Anecdote of Lord North ' Mr. Foley Lord Harrington Anecdote of Lord North's picture Sir Edward Walpole and Lord North Pages 527-537 JOURNAL OF THE REIGN GEORGE THE THIKD. 1772. JANUARY. A GENTLEMAN whom Lord Rochford 1 had made Consul at Messina died, and gave his whole fortune, between 3000/. and 4000/., to his patron. Nobody wanted money more than the Earl ; yet he immediately gave the whole legacy to the testator's family. 14th. Robert Henley, Earl of Northington, 2 formerly Lord Chancellor, died. The Comte de Guines, Embassa- dor from France, arrived here again. 1 William Henry Nassau Zulestein, Earl of Kochford, Secretary of State. * Lord Northington was one of the " swearing Chancellors," but a man of good sense also. In his last illness he was recommended to avail himself of the services of a certain prelate. " He will never do," said the Chancellor ; " I should have to acknowledge that one of my heaviest sins was in having made him a bishop." Lord Northington's coarse wit was inherited by his daugh- ter, Lady Bridget Fox Lane, whose jokes and smart sayings delighted the King and Queen, and made of Lady Bridget a sort of court jester. Her VOL. I. mother, who was an ignorant woman, once told George III. that their country house, the Grange, was built by Indigo Jones. To this the King replied that he "thought so by the style." When her Ladyship related this conversation to Lord Northington, the latter re- marked, to her surprise, that he could not well tell which was the greater fool, she or his Majesty. A reference to Northington's death will be found in Walpole's letter to Mann, Jan. 21, 1772, and a sneer at Lady Bridget's wit in a letter to Lady Ossory, Marcli 27, 1773. D. B LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. JAN. 15th. Sir Charles Hotham, Groom of the Bedchamber to the King, and Mr. William Hamilton, 3 Minister at Naples, were made Knights of the Bath. 20th. Wilkes published an answer to one Stephens (a prisoner who had distinguished himself by acting and writ- ing in behalf of debtors) and others, who had attacked him for not showing more favour to debtors in his capacity of Sheriff; and he promised to conform his conduct exactly to Magna Charta. He had a short time before, in con- versation with Thurlow, the Attorney-General, told the latter he should print this defence the day before the meeting of the Parliament ; and that a Junius would appear on the morning of the meeting : both which hap- pened ; for on 21.s was published along and able letter from Junius to Lord Mansfield, on his bailing Eyre, taken in the fact of stealing paper the last year. 4 The Parliament met. The Duke of Beaufort 5 and the Earl of Pembroke 6 moved the Address in the Lords ; Lord Hinchinbrook 7 and Mr. Frederic Vane in the Corn- There was not a word of opposition in either nions. house a most extraordinary event ! It was well said that the Parliament was not unanimous, but un-animous. 25#A. An account came of the death of Princess Mary, Landgravine of Hesse, fourth daughter of King George II. 8 1 A younger son of Lord and Lady Archibald Hamilton [and subsequently husband of Nelson's Emma Hamilton. -DJ 4 Junius denounces Mansfield for violating the law, inasmuch as that " a MUII under the circumstances of being taken in tho fact, with the stolen goods upon him, and making no defence, is not l.iiilnl'li- by the laws of England." -U. * Henry Somerset, Duke of Bcuufurt. 8 Henry Herbert, Earl of Pembroke. 7 John Montagu, Lord Hinchinbrook, elilcst son of John, Earl of Sandwich. On tho 27th of January tho Pan- theon in Oxford Street was first opened to a vast assembly of gay and disrepu- table people of all ranks, from May Fair to Drury Lane. Tho death of the Prin- cess had a curious effect on the opening. " It is thought tho company would have been still more numerous but for the midden notice of tho death of tho Land- 1772. IMPRISONMENT OF QUEEN OF DENMARK. 29th. The ministers in the House of Commons proposed to augment the Navy to 25,000 men, it being necessary to keep a considerable force constantly in the East Indies. The Admirals Saunders 9 and Keppel 10 said, that in their naval capacity they should approve the measure, but could not as members of Parliament ! Colonel Barre found some faults, and said he had not changed his opinion of the Administration, but would support the Government in everything that was right. The spirit of opposition was at an end, and the augmentation was voted without a division. The same morning a courier from Denmark brought advice to the King that his sister, the Queen of Denmark, 1 had been suddenly sent prisoner (with her youngest child, 2 whom the King of Denmark disavowed) to the Castle of Cronenburg. She had been seized at a masquerade with the physician, who was her lover and Prime Minister. Three or four noblemen were arrested at the same time, and accused of having partaken of her favours, of which she was said to be very liberal. The King, on being told she was secured, said, " Then, I am a free man ;" 3 but the persons who had driven him to give the order told him he must call to court the Queen Dowager, 4 his mother-in-law, gravine of Hesse Cassel, which pre- vented many from going, on account," says Mr. Urban, "of not having been prepared with mourning ! " D. 9 Sir Charles Saunders, Knight of the Bath. 10 Augustus Keppel,brother of George, Earl of Albemarle. 1 Caroline Matilda.youngest daughter of Frederic, Prince of Wales. 2 It was a daughter. 3 This was not true. 4 Juliana, or Julia Maria, second wife of Frederick V., and sister of the Duke of Brunswick and of Prince Ferdinand, Knight of the Garter, and General of the English forces in the last war. The first wife of Christiem VI. was Louisa, youngest daughter of George II. Charles, hereditary Prince of Brunswick, nephew of Queen Juliana, married Augusta, eldest daughter of Frederic, Prince of Wales, and sister of Carolina Matilda, Queen of Denmark. A niece of Queen Juliana was wife of the Prince Royal of Prussia, from whom she was divorced for adultery. A sister of Christiern VII. by Queen Louisa was married to her first cousin the Prince of Hesse, son of the Princess Mary of England, whose death happened this month, as is men- tioned in the preceding page. B 2 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. JAN. and her son. This young prince, named Frederick, aged about eighteen, and the Queen Dowager, were supposed to be at the bottom of this revolution. Queen Caroline had been kept by her mother, the Princess Dowager of Wales, in the closest retirement, having scarce appeared even in the drawing-room, till she was married at sixteen to the King of Denmark. She was not yet twenty-one. King George, her brother, was advised, considering the deplor- able state of her health, to conceal this new misfortune from the Princess of Wales, but he answered incautiously, " My mother will know everything, and therefore it is better that I should break it to her by degrees." He therefore went to her directly, suddenly forbidding his leve'e, but half-an-hour before it was to begin, and thus was the first to publish the disgrace of his sister. Such an accumulated succession of mortifications has seldom fallen on a royal family is so short a space. They seemed to have inherited the unpropitious star of the Stuarts, from whom they are descended, as well as their Crown. The marriage of the Duke of Cumberland with Colonel Lut- trell's sister, the dangerous illness of the Princess of Wales and Duke of Gloucester, and this dishonour of the Queen of Denmark, all happening within three months ! 1772. IMPRISONMENT OF QUEEN OF DENMARK. FEBRUARY. 2nd. THE following account of the Danish history, as it was sent hither to the King by Mr. Keith, our Minister at Copenhagen, was told me by a person who had it from his Majesty's own mouth. There was a ball at court, which went on as usual till three in the morning;, when, the Queen being retired, an obscure officer tapped Istruinski* the physician and favourite, on the shoulder, and told him he was his prisoner. Istruinski in a rage asked him how he dared to speak in that manner to him, who was Prime Minister, and had the whole power of the kingdom in his hands ? The officer, and another, his companion, said it was in vain to resist ; and seizing him, carried him off, and loaded him with irons. Count Rantzau then went into the Queen's room, who was in bed, and rudely bade her rise. She did, but insisted on going to the King, which he said she must not, but she got the better, and went to the King's chamber, but at the door of it stood a soldier with a drawn sword, which he presented, and told her his orders were to prevent her entering, even at the expense of her life. Still she attempted to push forward ; but finding the fellow determined, and that she should lose her life, she desisted, surrendered herself, and was sent to the Castle, attended by only one lady. Mr. Keith represented against this usage, saying that, though he could have no orders from his court, he yet thought it his duty to complain of such disrespect shown to his master's sister ; on which all her ladies were sent to her, and, though confined, she was treated i Struensee. 6 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. FEB. with the former respect. Her infant daughter was shut up with her. The King, her husband, was threatened, that, if he did not acquiesce in all that was done, he should lose his Crown ; and that he must send for his mother-in-law ; to all which he submitted. The King added to this account, that both the Queen Dowager and her son Prince Frederick were persons of no capacity or understanding, nor likely to have been authors of the plot. His Majesty said he did not suspect the Czarina neither, as the politics of the Danish Court had lately relapsed to the Eussian interest; but he seemed to doubt whether the King of Prussia was not at the bottom of the conspiracy. With Struensee were seized six noblemen of his faction, amongst whom was one Brandt, who had been the King's favourite before the dis- graced Count Holke, and who had now recovered the King's good graces. Struensee had obtained from the King a patent that gave him the full power of Viceroy ; and on a late mutiny of the Guards he had signed a paper to them with the King's signature, Christian VII. About a week after the account came, Count Malzaku, the Prussian Envoy, asked Mr. Dayrolles, with a sneer, " Qu'est de venue votre Heine de Danemarc ? " Dayrolles replied with spirit, " Apparemment qu'elle est a Spandau avec votre Princesse Koiale de Prusse." She had been divorced for adultery. 6th. Charles Fox, whose ambition was checked by the inactivity in Parliament, gave notice in the House of Com- mons that he intended on that day fortnight to make a motion for the repeal of the Marriage Act, in order to bring in a new bill. His father, Lord Holland, had dis- tinguished himself in the late reign by his animated opposition to that bill. When Fox moved this repeal he had not read the 1772. RAGE FOR GAMING. 7 Marriage Bill, nor did till some days after. A few even- ings before, he had been at Brompton on two errands : one, to consult Justice Fielding on the penal laws ; the other, to borrow ten thousand pounds, which he brought to town at the hazard of being robbed. As the gaming and ex- travagance of the young men of quality was arrived now at a pitch never heard of, it is worth while to give some account of it. They had a club at one Almack's in Pall Mall, where they played only for rouleaus of 50. each rouleau ; and generally there was 10,()00/. in specie on the table. Lord Holland had paid above 20,000/. for his two sons. Nor were the manners of the gamesters, or even their dresses for play, undeserving notice. They began by pull- ing off their embroidered clothes, and put on frieze great- coats, or turned their coats inside outwards for luck. They put on pieces of leather (such as worn by footmen when they clean the knives) to save their lace ruffles ; and to guard their eyes from the light, and to prevent tumbling their hair, wore high-crowned straw hats with broad brims, and adorned with flowers and ribbons ; masks to conceal their emotions when they played at Quinze. Each gamester had a small neat stand by him with a large rim, to hold their tea, or a wooden bowl with an edge of ormolu, to hold their rouleaus. They borrowed great sums of Jews at ex- orbitant premiums. Charles Fox called his outward room, where those Jews waited till he rose, the Jerusalem Cham- ber. His brother Stephen was enormously fat ; George Selwyn said he was in the right to deal with Shylocks, as he could give them pounds of flesh. For a few years past a controversy had been carried on in pamphlets on the signature of the Thirty-nine Articles. Oflate some conscientious clergymen had proceeded further, and formed themselves into a society for attempting relief. LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. FEB. The younger men in the University of Cambridge had gone heartily into the scheme, but had been rudely and tyrannically handled by the Vice-Chancellor and Heads of Houses. One, Dr. Halifax, preached three sermons at St. Mary's, Cambridge, against the conscientious. The other University, ever devoted to the Church, was zealous in asserting their antiquated tenets. Even the Methodists espoused the same cause, pretending themselves to be the purest sons of the Church of England ; and Madan, 1 once a buffoon and mimic, and who since his reformation had en- deavoured to cheat a poor old clergyman out of a living, wrote in defence of the Articles, and was much counte- nanced at Court, where pious or profligate rogues were equally welcome. Queen Caroline had much wished to make Dr. Samuel Clarke a bishop, but he would not sub- scribe the Articles again. I have often heard my father, Sir Robert Walpole, relate that he sat up one night at Kensington Palace with the Doctor, till the pages of the backstairs asked if they would have fresh candles, my father endeavouring to persuade him to subscribe again, as he had for the living of St. James's. Clarke pretended he had then believed them. " Well," said Sir Eobert, " but if you do not now, you ought to resign your living to some man who would subscribe conscientiously." The Doctor would neither resign his living nor accept the bishopric. The dissatisfied Clergy appointed a committee at the Feathers Tavern to manage their cause. The son of Dr. Law, Bishop of Carlisle, and another of his relations, attended their meeting, which demonstrated the Bishop's opinion, though he had not resolution enough to declare himself openly. Lowth, Bishop of Oxford, an abler man, 1 "Go turn to Maclan, and in Gospel trntli, And Tlielyptlioric lore, instruct our yuulli." Pursuitt of Literature. D. 1772. SUBSCRIPTION TO THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 9 and more capable of figuring in a debate, had encouraged the new party to expect his countenance, but abandoned them. They applied to Lord John Cavendish, and then to Sir George Saville, to present to the House of Commons their petition for dispensing with subscription, but both, though they supported it when it came thither, excused themselves from presenting it. Lord North was very uneasy at the progress of this controversy, and not being able to prevent it, though resolved not to favour the demand, recommended to his party great decency and moderation in treating it ; but the High Church and old Tories, secure of the King's favour, paid little regard to a Minister who, they knew, was but the servant of a junto that really governed ; and though all other men allowed the absurdity of the Articles, and agreed that the Bishops themselves could riot believe them, but that yet a door was not to be opened to farther innovation and religious disputes which are the most dangerous of factions, the Tories still combated for their old Diana as stiffly as they could have done in the monkish ages. On the 2 7th Sir William Meredith, seconded by Mr. Thomas Pitt, informed the House that he had in his hand a peti- tion, signed by many respectable clergymen, complaining of the subscription to the Thirty-nine Articles : 3 that the grievances which affected the minds of those gentlemen were greater than any that could regard their properties : and that the whole clergy were obliged to sign those Articles, which not three of them had ever defended. The peti- tioners set forth that they desired to subscribe to no Arti- cles, but to the Holy Scriptures themselves ; with many 2 See a good and fuller account of Articles, and the form of subscription, this debate in the ' London Clironicle ' The society is said to have been dis- of Feb. llth. solved on an intimation from the bishops 3 Dr. For tens was a member at this " that it would be neither safe nor time of a clerical society established prudent to do anything in the matter." for procuring a re visal of the Thirty-nine | D. 10 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. FEB. other heads, on which Sir William commented very ably. Sir Roger Newdigate, a hot-headed bigot, and formerly as warm a Jacobite, 4 desired to know how many of the clergy had signed the petition. Sir W. Meredith answered, 250, most of them beneficed clergymen. Sir Roger ridiculed them and said, tender-conscienced as they were, they had however signed the Articles. Everything had been over- turned in the last age by tender consciences ! The walls of religion must not be broken down ; Church and State were inseparable. But his great argument was, that it was a breach of the Union with Scotland to alter the Thirty-nine Articles, and that the petition was therefore inadmissible ; and he and Jenkinson moved to have the Articles of the Union read. Stanley, with more decency, and declaring himself a warm friend to toleration, advised a lenient negative. To make any alteration would be going through anarchy and confusion to persecution. The peace of mankind was the fortieth article of his creed. Mr. Burn said, if the Convocation had erected itself into an Inquisi- tion, he should be for the petition. Mr. Fitzmaurice, 5 Lord Shelburne's brother, spoke against the petition, and said it was modesty in comparison of what would be asked if this was complied with. It had grown, he was informed, out of a libel * against the State. Sir W. Petty had com- puted the clergy of England at 20,000 ; how small a por- tion were 250 ! If the petition was received, mobs would come to force the House to do what they pleased reli- gious mobs worse than patriotic mobs ! Lord George Germayne defended the petition, and said most of the * When I was at Rome he openly hunted in the villas there with the Pretender's two sons. * Colonel Barre was not present. His absence, and Mr. Fitzmaurice's conduct, showed Lord Shclburne was willing to make his peace at Court. Mr. Fitzmaurice was desirous, too, of being member for the University of Oxford. 1 ' The Confessional,' a celebrated book, which had begun this controversy. 1772. SUBSCRIPTION TO THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 11 clergy in his neighbourhood had signed it, not wishing the Liturgy or Episcopacy altered. He wondered the House did not take some steps on this subject with regard to the Universities, where boys were made to subscribe the Ar- ticles without reading them a scandalous abuse. His son might be obliged to subscribe to what he himself should not be able to explain to him. He should be sorry if the petition open the door to faction. T. Pitt lamented the levity with which the subject had been treated, but used wit himself in ridiculing the Articles, which he wished to have expunged and obliterated for the sake of common sense. Lord North said he had hoped he should see no- thing in the petition to prevent his being for bringing it up, having intended to enter his protest against doing anything more than put off the consideration for six months ; but he must now object to the receiving it, as clashing with the Act of Union. To alter the Articles would be opening the door to thousands of wicked men. 2 The decay of reli- gious controversy was the increase of religion. If once the nation got into a religious dispute, not all the poppy, and mandragora, and sweet syrups of the East, could restore that sweet sleep it had before possessed. Th. Townshend (whose father was member for the University of Cam- bridge) declared he was simply for receiving the petition, lest the rejection should occasion a flame, Edmund Burke made a fine laboured speech against the petition, urging that the civil war began by forcing Episcopacy on Scot- land against the bent of the nation : but his chief argument was, the necessity of a precise rule of faith. 3 The petitioners 2 A most absurd argument. Are wicked men kept out of the Church by scruples ? 3 On the law of England. The ne- cessity of a rule of faith is a Popish tenet and familiar to Mr. Burke, who was of a Catholic family, and whose wife is a Papist. 12 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. FEB. declared they would be bound by the Scriptures ; but what are the Scriptures ? are they a book bound in red morocco with clasps, and printed by Baskett ? What was the Bible but a miscellaneous body of writings ? Was he to find the Scriptures in the Mosaic Law, in the Psalms, or in the New Testament ? If we were to be bound by the Bible, we must take the book of Deuteronomy, and lay aside Dr. Blakiston. For himself, he wished to open the Act of Toleration and widen it. Sir George Saville said he pre- ferred the Church of God to the established church of the land, and that he adhered to St. Paul, who was the first ,./ Protestant, and withstood Peter to the face. Charles Fox declared for rejecting the petition, but for doing something with regard to the Universities. Religion, he said, \vas best understood when least talked of. He did not shine in this debate, nor could it be wondered at. He had sat up playing hazard at Almack's, from Tuesday evening 4th, till five in the afternoon of Wednesday 5th. An hour before he had recovered 12,000^. that he had lost, and by dinner, which was at five o'clock, he had ended losing 11,000. On the Thursday he spoke in this debate ; went to dinner at past eleven at night; from thence to White's, where he drank till seven the next morning; thence to Almack's, where he won 6000. ; and between three and four in the afternoon he set out for Newmarket. His brother Stephen lost 1 1 ,000/. two nights after, and Charles 10,000/. more on the 13th ; so that in three nights the two brothers, the eldest not twenty-five, lost 32,00(M. Charles Fox com- plained of the quiet of the session, and said the House of Commons was always up before he was. There being a re- port that he was going to be married, it was told to his father, Lord Holland, who replied, *' I am glad of it, for then he will go to bed at least one night." Sawbridge, in the above 1772. SUBSCRIPTION TO THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 13 debate, read the most absurd Articles. Dunning spoke with much wit for the petition. He was desired, he said, to give a lenient negative, which was voting against what was thought right, only because it was of too much consequence to be entered into ; and he laughed at Lord North's doubt- ing the efficacy of his poppy and mandragora 4 on the present occasion, when it had served him so well the pre- sent session. Wedderburn approved the acceptance of the petition, but would go no farther, as the Church was but a rope of sand, without tests. Dr. Hay said the House was not an assembly of divines, and that the petition was more proper for the consideration of the Convocation. The Articles had been the law for 200 years ; why alter them now ? Sir W. Meredith said, he repented of the candour with which he had opened the petition, since it had been so ill treated. The petitioners would find relief if any religious liberty remained in this country. Archbishop Cranmer compiled the Articles, which were accommodated for his acceptance of the Archbishopric. The House divided at eleven at night, and the petition was rejected by 217 to 71. Burke and Dowdswell, the latter an old Tory, separated from their friends the Cavendishes, and divided with the majority ; as did Lord Sefton and Dillon, two converts from popery ; Lord Palmerston and Wedder- burn, two placemen, with the minority. It will be ob- served from the language of Fitzmaurice and Lord G. Germayne, as well as from Burke's and Dowdswell's votes, how much disposition was spreading towards all annihila- tion of patriotism. Wilkes, abandoned by all his lukewarm or interested fellow labourers, saw nothing but persecution could revive The gold of the Treasury. 14 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. FEB. his importance. He accordingly caused the debates, even with the speakers' names to them, to be copied in the public papers the great offence, which the last year had drawn on the imprisonment of the Lord Mayor and Alderman Oliver. The ministers seemed still to dread Wilkes, and the printers went on with impunity. 5 8th. Died Augusta, Princess Dowager of Wales, the King's mother, aged fifty-two, of an abscess in her throat. Some called it an abscess, some a cancer, but the surgeons a cancerous humour or skimes. The reason of these uncer- tainties was, that the Princess would suffer nobody but her German page or surgeon to look into her throat, and once Sir John Pringle, whom she permitted to make the report to Hawkins ; but the latter never saw her throat. The only medicine she was known to try was hemlock. She had long struggled secretly with a humour in her blood, which she had fatally brought into the family, and for the last three months her sufferings had been dreadful, and menacing her life, yet her fortitude was invincible, and she kept up to the last moment that disguise and reserve which predominated so strongly in her character. She not only would not acknowledge her danger to her children, servants, and physicians, but went out in her coach. One day (it was on the Monday before she died), reading in the newspapers an account of her own danger, she instantly ordered her coach, and went through the streets to Kew, though swooning away in it, and showing herself occa- sionally to various persons after her speech was almost unintelligible. She had a long fit on the arrival of her daughter the Princess of Brunswick, who thought her The journals could not print " divi- sions" any more than debates, as they do now ; l-ut the supporters of the bill of the petitioning clergy were named in the principal papers as a " list of gentlemen toasted by all friends to the cause." D. 1772. DEATH OF PRINCESS OF WALES. 15 expiring; but the next morning rose by nine o'clock, dressed, and went to her daughter, to convince her, she said, how well she was, and that her disorder was only nervous. Though she had sent for the Princess of Bruns- wick, yet she never intimated to her that she thought herself dying. One day the Princess of Brunswick, coming suddenly into the room, found her reading, but she hid the book under the couch. Happening to go out of the room, the Princess of Brunswick looked at the book, and found it A Preparation for Death. She never dropped a syllable that intimated her expecting death ; though, after receiving the news from Denmark, 6 she scarce took any nourishment but cordials. On Thursday, the 6th, her approaching end was evident ; and on Friday the King forbade his levee on that account. It was his custom to visit the Princess, with the Queen, every Saturday evening from six to eight ; they now went at that hour on the Friday. Hearing they were come, the Princess rose, dressed herself, and attempted to walk to meet them, but was so weak and unable, that the Princess of Brunswick ran out and called in the King and Queen. At eight o'clock they rose to leave her, but though she could only hear, not converse with them, she pressed them to stay till ten ; and when that hour came, made a sign to them to retire, as usual. They stayed, however, in her palace, and she went to bed still taking no notice of the extremity of her case. Some of her women, and a page who attended her as a surgeon, sat up in her room. At half an hour after six in the morning, perceiving he did not hear her breathe, the page softly drew the curtain, and touched her hand, which he found cold, and that she had been dead 6 She answered the King of Den- own hand, but two days before her mark's letter on that occasion with her death. 16 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. FEB. some time, and without a groan. The King and Queen remained at Carlton House till eight, probably to look for her will, and to seal up her papers. The Princess sent for her son the Duke of Cumberland two days before she died, and then sent to the King to ask his consent to her seeing the Duke, The King said he would not oppose it, if it would give her satisfaction. The Duke stayed three hours in her house without her admitting him. At last she wrote again to the King to beg that, if there was to be any reconciliation, she might have the happiness of making it. The King replied, that it was a matter that required too much deliberation to be deter- mined so abruptly. On this she waived it, and did die without seeing the Duke. N.B. I do not warrant the circumstances, 7 though from good authority ; but it is certain that the Duke was at Carlton House, and yet did not see his mother. Lord Bute was two hours with the Princess on Thursday evening ; he returned on the Friday while the King and Queen were with her, and sent to let her know he was there, but she declined seeing him, and the next morning she died. The evening after she died another courier arrived from Denmark, who brought advice that the governing party would palliate the Queen's adultery as much as possible, but would prosecute severely the pursuit against Struensee, who had intended to give the King drugs to disorder his understanding, and make him declare Struensee regent. One of the chief plotters against the Queen and her favourite was Count Ostein, lately returned from the embassy at Naples. Sir William Hamilton, our envoy at Tho fact is certain, as I have learned since. 1772. MEETING OF PARLIAMENT. , 17 that court, and newly come to England on his private affairs, told me three months ago that Ostein was one of the most intriguing men in the world, and would certainly be very busy at home. When the account of the revolu- tion arrived, Sir William said to me, " I am persuaded Ostein is engaged in the conspiracy ;" and so it proved. In Ireland the scene was grown very stormy,- Lord North had been averse to the erection of the new Board; 8 Lord Townsherid had assured him the Irish would like it, as it would furnish more employments. They here, who knew Ireland best, advised against it, yet the Administra- tion allowed Lord Townshend to proceed in his plan, and he immediately declared his new Board. The Parliament met on the 6th, and the House of Commons opened in a flame, and threatened the greatest violence. 9 The popular leaders were the more enraged, as Lord Townshend had personally provoked them by writing a satirical ballad, called the Cotillon, in which he introduced their several characters. This account arrived on the llth. 13th. The Princess of Wales was buried. The mob huzzaed for joy, and treated her memory with much dis- respect. 1 8 It was properly a separation of two boards, and had been established by an Act of Charles II. 9 See an account of those debates in the ' London Chronicle ' for Feb. 18, 1772. 1 It was not the mob alone by whom the Princess was disrespectfully treated. public funerals, especially if they had anything to gain by it. Thus we read in the ' General Evening Post ' for Sa- turday, 24th January, 1772, that " the remains of the late Lord Baltimore, who died abroad, were carried from Exeter Change, in the Strand, where they had lain in state, in order to be interred iu Little more than a week before her ' the family vault at Epsom. His Lord- death the following paragraph appeared in the papers : -" Fifty guineas were yesterday offered and refused to insure 100J. on the life of a certain great lady in Pall Mall for two months only ; and five offered at the same time, and refused, to underwrite her for three days." It seems to have been the fashion of the mob to act indecently at VOL. I. ship had injured his character in his life by seduction ; so that the popu- lace paid no regard to his memory when dead, but plundered the room where his body lay, the moment it was removed." Again, at the funeral of the Princess Dowager of Wales, the mob stripped the black cloth from the platform to the Abbey, before half the 18 LAST JOURNALS OF HOEACE WALPOLE. FEB. I8tk. The Princess of Brunswick returned to Germany. The King and Queen had taken great pains to disgust her; and the Queen never suffered her to see the King alone. Though her mother had sent for her, she was not lodged at Carlton House, nor even at St. James's, which was empty ; and yet the Prince of Mecklenburg had apartments there ; but a miserable little house in Pall Mall was taken for the Princess of Brunswick. A stronger instance of the Queen's jealousy of her, and even of her Majesty's haugh- tiness, broke out. On her own birthday 2 Lady Gower, 3 having formerly been Lady of the Bedchamber to the Princess, and now civilly waiting on her, followed her into the ball-room, and by sufferance of the Duchess of Argyle, 4 her great friend, sat next to her, who was in waiting on the Queen. Her Majesty was exceedingly angry, and in a day or two afterwards, all her ladies being present, said aloud to the Duchess, " Duchess, I must reprimand you for letting Lady Gower take place of you, as Lady to the Princess of Brunswick. I had a mind to speak to you on the spot, but would not, for fear of saying anything I should repent of, though I should have thought it. 5 The Princess of Brunswick has nothing to do here, and I insist on your recovering the precedence you gave up. One day or other my son will be married, and then I shall have his wife's ladies pretending to take place in my palace, which they shall not do." To mortify the Princess still farther, the King refused to let her be chief procession had passed across ; aud the ager of Hamilton, and wife of John soldiers on guard, fearful of losing their Campbell, Duke of Argyle. hliiip', lu'LTiiii to help themselves. D. 5 Another instance tliat gave offence : 2 Tin- (Jurrii's. ' the two first drawing-rooms after the ' Luily Susan Stewart, daughter of Princess's death were exceedingly full : the Karl of Galloway, and third wife of at the second the Queen said, "I do Granvillc L<-vcwm, Earl Gower. I not call this a circle, but a crowd." * Elizabeth Gunning, Duchess Dow- I 1772. THE LATE PRINCESS OF WALES. 19 mourner at her mother's funeral, which she asked : he pre- tended it would afflict her too much, as she was not well. On this she would have set out the day after her mother expired, but Princess Amelia advised her against it as in- decent, and she stayed till after the burial. Her fate was on all sides unhappy ; the Prince her husband did not care for her, and had many mistresses, and was extravagant. Her allowance was scanty, nor, though she had put her to the expense of this journey, did her mother leave" her any- thing. 6 In fact, to the astonishment of all mankind, the Princess of Wales left no will ; and to their greater sur- prise, she left no money ! 7 She enjoyed for twenty years , a revenue of 64,000/. a-year ; her life was the most private, ! her expenses 8 extremely reduced, and her parsimony very great, though she was sometimes generous, and always very charitable. Her friends, in print, computed her charities at 6000/. a-year, and some said 8000. At Kew she had laid out between 30,000^. and 40,000/., and the keeping of it was expensive. Still the most moderate cal- culation had reckoned her worth 300, OOO/. Many persons supposed that her journey to Germany had been made with an intent of carrying her money thither, and depositing it with, or bestowing it on, her own family at Saxe Gotha, or on the Princess of Brunswick. The latter indubitably did not prove true ; and as even the former was never pre- tended by her friends, 9 it is no wonder that it became thej universal belief that she had wasted all on Lord ButeJ 6 This neglect, and the King's ill- 16.000Z. and 20,OOOZ. a year. Her whole treatment of her, making noise, the j income fell to him. King paid both her journeys, and gave 9 Till after her death, when it was her 1000Z. besides. said she had made them great presents, ' Only 27,OOOZ., which were found in j and even to the Princess of Brunswick, her cabinet after her death. ! and it was believed that during the 8 The King continued not only their j war she sent large sums to her brother salaries to her servants, but their board the Duke of Saxe Gotha. wages, amounting in all to between ' c 2 20 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. FEB. This became still more probable, as he had made the pur- chase of the estate at Luton in Bedfordshire, at the price , of 114,00(U, before he was visibly worth 20,00(tf. ; * had built a palace there, another in town, and had furnished the former in the most expensive manner, bought pictures and books, made a vast park and lake, and, in short, had given but too much handle to illnatured conjecture. IJth. Mr. H. Seymour moved the House of Commons to give leave to bring in a bill for " quieting the subjects against dormant claims of the Church." Acquiescent as the Opposition was, and servile as the majority, the spirit that appeared in favour of this motion showed that this Parliament was not totally abandoned. The ministers set themselves against the bill ; yet was there but one strong rea- son to weigh against the many for it, and that was the proba- bility that country gentlemen would delay their tithes and invent obstructions till prescription should weigh against the clergymen who had a right to them. This, however, might be remedied by abolishing tithes and fixing stipends. Mr. Seymour said that the nullum tempus of the King and Church were twins ; that the first was buried, and the other he hoped would share the same fate. He took up the cause, he said, on impartial ground : it was levelled at no individual. The Church at present was, as Wolsey said, Ego et Rex meus. He quoted an instance of an estate recovered by the Church from Sir Thomas Clavering after it had been in his family an hundred years ; and he men- tioned the title deeds of his own father, which the butler 1 His wife's futhcr, Wortley Mon- tague, had left her a vast estate, but so tied up that who could raise no money on it. HIT mother. Lady Mary Wortley, wlio was believed very rich, had left her solo heiress; but as Lord Bute him-. If had no estate at all, it was im- possible to account for his vast expense hut from the Princess's poverty. His liulisr in lit rki Icy S(|U;i|-c he Sold to Lord Shelburne fur 24,00(M., but even half that sum was not paid in some years. 1772. DEBATE OX ECCLESIASTICAL AFFAIRS. 21 had taken away, and, turning woollen-draper, had cut into shreds ; but, not having used, they were found in a sack. Had they been destroyed, what might have been the consequence, as the whole estate was Church land ! He said he had carried the plan of his bill to the Archbishop of Canterbury. 2 He desired a copy : it was sent. He would not accuse his Grace of having shown it, but a printed paper 3 had been delivered at the door, of which he hoped the House would take notice. He had gone afterwards to the Archbishop of York, 4 who, being a lively and ingenious man, had humorously said that he was only lieutenant- colonel, and could do nothing in it. For himself, he was determined, if unsuccessful now, to renew his motion every year. The younger T. Townshend, whose father was mem- ber for the University of Cambridge, opposed the motion ; and said he did not see how the bill would prevent the deeds of careless people from being sent to a woollen- draper's and cut to pieces. Mr. Cornwall declared his willingness to assist the inferior clergy, and to attack deans and chapters. It could never be the intention that one man should hold two great livings ; and he quoted a saying of Warburton on two clergymen, that the one 5 made reli- gion a trade, and the other 6 made trades by religion. The Lord Advocate of Scotland declared himself against the mo- tion, but advised obliging the Church to register their title- deeds. Dowdswell and Burke supported the motion. Lord North opposed it warmly, said no grievance called for it, and affirmed arbitrarily, and contrary to all usage, that Mr. Seymour ought to have brought in his plan thoroughly di- 2 Dr. Cornwallis. 3 Written by Dr. Tucker, Deau of Gloucester. 4 Dr. Hay Druramond. 5 Dr. Squire, late Bishop of St. David's. 6 Tucker, Dean of Gloucester, who wrote much on Trade. 22 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. FEB. gested, and should have offered the clauses. He was glad, too, he said, that the gentleman had felt the printed papers : he hoped the dignity of the House would be restored by not suffering their debates to be published. Charles Fox, oppressed with debts, and impatient to distinguish himself, seized the occasion presented by Lord North, and fell vio- lently on the new doctrine of beginning by stating the clauses of a bill when first moved for. He called it most unparliamentary and arbitrary; espoused the motion the rather, he affirmed, because no particular grievance pressed, and because no one parliamentary reason had been alleged why the bill should not be brought in ; yet Mr. Seymour, he believed, would have great difficulties to remove before the bill could be made perfect. Seymour, too, provoked by Lord North's behaviour, accused him of deceit. He had acquainted that lord, he said, with his intention at the beginning of the session, who had seemed to assent to it, and had been very civil, but asked if he did not think it would meet with opposition in the House of Lords ? From thence he passed to a censure on the Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry, Lord North's brother, who, not satisfied with that bishop- ric, which had contented Dr. Hough, one of the most ingenious men that ever lived, had obtained two livings in commendam. Lord North replied that he would not accuse the gentleman of betraying private conversation, as he supposed Mr. Seymour did not look on it as such ; but, because he had asked if the Honourable gentleman expected no opposition from the Lords, had he expected of course that there would be none in the Commons ? For himself, he might have bowed and been civil ; but that his bows and civility might not be misunderstood for the future, he would tell the Honourable gentleman, and everybody else, that if he was solicited for a place and bowed and was civil, it 1772. RESIGNATION OF FOX. 23 meant No. If he intended to serve the person, he would tell him so at once. For the two livings held by his relation, they were neither small nor great, nor was his income more than that of other Bishops. Nor did he know that he was himself rapacious. The Bill was rejected by only 141 to 117, a very small majority in such a session. Charles Fox, his brother, and several other ministerial men were in the minority. 7 20th. Charles Fox resigned his place in the Admiralty ; probably by direction of his father, who was dissatisfied at not obtaining his Earldom, and was particularly angry with Lord North for refusing a place to O'Brien, formerly an actor, who had married Lord Holland's niece. 8 Lord North and the Bedfords were ridiculously alarmed at this resignation, 9 which was indeed timed very disagreeably, for 7 It was popularly said by the wits at the Smyrna coffee-house, that the " dormant claims of the clergy " were preferred against the habit of sleeping in church. D. 8 Lady Susan Fox Strangways, daughter of Stephen Earl of Ilchester, elder brother of Lord Holland. Lady Ilchester wrote to Lord North, who returned no answer, an ill-breeding to which he was accustomed, and by which he made many real enemies. He had much distinguished Charles Fox the last year, and had as much neglected him this ; yet as soon as Fox had spoken against him, he weakly and timidly called him aside, and asked him if he had seen Maclean, who had got the place which had been asked for O'Brien, and who would make O'Brien his de- puty ; but this Fox received with con- tempt. One of the opposition triumph- ing on the acquisition of Fox from the Court, George Selwyn said, " You have no reason to triumph : you will bo forced to pay his debts, as you did Wilkes's, or you will lose him again." 9 There were some curious details connected with the marriage of O'Brien, the actor, with Lady Susan. The young couple appear to have been provided for after a singular fashion. Fox, writing to Macartney, Dec. 25, 1764, says, " We have heard from Lady Susan since her arrival at New York. I do not think they will make much of their lands ; and I fear it will be impossible to get O'Brien a place." The actor was, nevertheless, not overlooked ; and in 1772 the London papers attributed Fox's resignation to Lord North's re- fusal to appoint O'Brien to this post, "a kind of sinecure," ultimately given to Maclean, and winch was worth 1000L a year. Fox is, by the same authority, reported to have asked for this place for the ex-actor, " in exchange for two lucrative places which Mr. O. now enjoys abroad, of about 8001. per annum, and which require his attendance in that country." Fox writes to Ossory, 21 Feb. 1772, " It is impossible to tell you the real reason of my resigning, it is very complicated. I should not have resigned at this moment, merely on account of my complaints against Lord North, if 1 had not determined to vote against this Royal Family Bill, which in place I should be ashamed of doing." See Lord J. Russell's ' Memorials and Correspondence of Fox,' under the above dates. D. LAST JOUKNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. FEB. on that very day was delivered to the Houses by Lord Kochfbrd and Lord North the following message from the King : " G. R. His Majesty, being desirous, from paternal affec- tion to his own family and anxious concern for the future welfare of his people, and the honour and dignity of his Crown, that the right of approving all marriages in the Royal Family (which ever has belonged to the Kings of this realm as a matter of public concern) may be made effectual, recommends to both Houses of Parliament to take into their serious consideration whether it may not be wise and expedient to supply the defect of the laws now in being, and by some new provision more effectually to guard the descendants of his late Majesty King George II. (other than the issue of princesses who have married or may hereafter marry into foreign families) from marrying without the approbation of His Majesty, his heirs and suc- cessors, first had and obtained." This hard and despotic power claimed by the Crown, and excited by the late marriage of the Duke of Cumber- land, was insisted upon by the King and Queen, and the Bill drawn by Lord Mansfield, though much and undis- guisedly disapproved by most of the Ministers, 1 and even by some of the King's own creatures. When the message was delivered, it was received with the utmost coldness and disgust by botli Houses. It not only set out with a false- hood (the assertion of the King's power over such marriages), but contradicted itself by devising a remedy for the very deficiency of that power. The Bill teemed with seeds of future civil wars, by bastardizing children of the Royal 1 At a previous meeting at Lord North's General Conwuy made many objections, which were allowed to have weight, but nobody else would then np< nly venture to speak his sentiments. 1772. ROYAL MARRIAGE BILL. 25 Family born in wedlock which had not the King's consent. Princes marrying Englishwomen, though without that consent, and having issue, such issue, in spite of the Act, would undoubtedly be preferred by the nation to foreign and unknown descendants of George II. A king preferring his second son might prevent his eldest from marrying ; and could a Christian nation and Christian Bishops say that the younger sons of the Crown should pass all their lives in fornication or adultery, unless the King pleased to find them wives ? The House of Com- mons had just maintained the Thirty-nine Articles, one of which affirms that all Christians have a right to marry. These and numerous other objections were in every man's mouth ; so that the very day after the delivery of the message, the general disapprobation and the defection of Charles Fox 2 terrified the Ministers so much, that they obtained a mitigation of the Act, and brought it in the next day with an alteration, which, though it satisfied some who wished to be satisfied, was either annulling the Bill in great measure, if intended to relieve, or a chicane invented (I believe by Lord Mansfield) to make a seeming softening without a real difference ; for the Bill now said that the Act should bind the princes but till twenty-five ; after which age they were to declare their intention to the Privy Council, before whom it should be for a year ; and that the princes might then marry, if Parliament should make no objection. 2lst. Complaint was made in the House of Commons of Dr. Newel's sermon preached before them on the 30th of January, in which he vindicated Charles I. and drew a 2 Charles Fox had asked Lord North I additional reason for its being believed for an Irish peerage for a Mr. Upton, that the father had influenced the a friend of his father, Lord Holland, j son's resignation, though the father which was not granted, and was an | denied it. LAST JOURNALS OF HOEACE WALPOLE. FEB. parallel between him and the present King. T. Townshend, jun., moved to have it burned by the hands of the common hangman ; but as the House had, according to custom, thanked the parson for his sermon without hearing or reading it, they could not censure it now, without exposing themselves to great ridicule. In Ireland two questions were carried by majorities of twelve and ten against the Castle, 3 by which they resolved to make no provision for the commissioners of the new Board, nor to assist in the execution of the excise under the new commission. The Duke of Leinster 4 insisted on the party proposing a violent question to which they were averse, viz. to expel, or at least take away the votes of, the new commissioners ; and the motion was actually made by Mr. Barry Maxwell ; 5 but Ponsonby, the late Speaker, left the House, and the motion was given up. The oppo- sition was little less at variance than that in England. Alderman Sawbridge had moved for a call of the House, intending to bring in a Bill for Triennial Parliaments. Nash, the Court Lord Mayor, had been desired to call an extraordinary Common Hall, that the Livery might instruct their members to vote for it. This he refused, which raised great resentment against him, and Sawbridge attacked him in a very warm and severe speech, 6 in which he taxed him with lying, and hinted at his imitating a higher magis- trate, whose veracity had been called in question. The call had been fixed for the 25th, but was put off for a fortnight. Mr. Walsingham 1 Sec the account in the ' Gazetteer ' of Feb. 27. 4 James Fitzgerald, Duke of Leinster, formerly Enrl of Kildim . * Called Mr. Barry Jiarry ; lie was brother of the Earl of Funilmin. 6 Sawbridge was the wealthy demo- cratic HherifF, who, with his colleague, five times returned Wilkes to Parlia- ment in defiance of .the House of Com- mons. D. 1772. DE. NOWEL'S SERMON. 27 Boyle 7 and General Irwin 8 then moved to expunge from the journals the thanks of the House which had been ordered to Dr. Nowel, Principal of Mary Hall, Oxford, for his sermon on the 30th of January. This was opposed by Sir William Dolben and Sir Roger Newdigate, who had proposed both the preacher and the thanks. Sir Roger was particularly hot, and spoke with all the flame of stupid bigotry, declaring he would maintain that all the doctrines in the sermon were constitutional. T. Townshend, jun., showed how repugnant they were to the constitution, and it was carried by 152 to 41 to expunge the thanks; General Keppel, 9 Colonel Fitzroy, 1 Vice-Chamberlain to the King, and Charles Fox, 2 all descendants of Charles I., voting against the sermon, as did even Dyson 3 and many courtiers. The 41 were rank Tories, all but Rigby, 4 who had retired behind the Chair, but, being made to vote, voted as he thought the King would like, to whom he paid the greatest court, expecting to be Chancellor of the Exchequer, if Lord Guildford should die, and Lord North go into the House of Lords. This proper severity on the sermon was 7 A captain in the navy, son of the grown an active tool of the Court. Earl of Shannon. His old leaven seemed on this occasion 8 Major-General John Irwin, colonel ! to return ; he said, " If King Charles's of a regiment ; both he and Captain : grandsons vote against him, sure I Walsiiigham were in opposition. ! may." ["Jerry Dyson," in 1770, had 9 General William Keppel, brother of been granted an Irish pension by the George, Earl of Albemarle, descended \ Court ; the amount was 500?. for his from Charles II. by his mother, Anne, life and that of his three sons. The daughter of the first Duke of Rich- | Irish House of Commons, however, moud, son of the Duchess of Ports- struck it oif the list. The abuse of mouth. ! granting pensions out of Irish revenue 1 Colonel Charles Fitzroy, brother of was enormous. Lady-lieutenants even Augustus Henry, Duke of Grafton, I put their " dressers " on the list for a descended from the Duchess of Cleve- j hundred a year. A pension to that land. ! amount was procured this very year for 2 Charles- Fox, son of Caroline, Lady ! Miss Elizabeth Biddels, dresser to Lady Holland, daughter of the second Duke j Townshend, wife of the out-going vice- of Richmond. | roy. D.] 3 Jeremiah Dyson, formerly Clerk of ! 4 Richard Rigby, Paymaster of the the House of Commons, and had ori- Army, formerly a vehement Whig, ginally been a republican, though 28 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. FEB. a great blow to the Court, as clergymen would fear to be too forward with their servility, when the censure of Par- liament might make it unadvisable for the King to prefer them. 5 This was another instance, too, that the present Parliament was not entirely abandoned. 26th. The bill for regulating the marriages of the Royal Family, or, as it was called, the Kings Bill, was read a second time in the House of Lords. Of the debates in that assembly I can give but a very imperfect account. The Lords, since their quarrel with the other House the last session, finding the sweets of coldness from a thin audience, and still more the little effect which the best orations against them could make on such determined voters as the majority, and which were not easily trans- mitted to the public when there were no spectators, rigor- ously adhered to their exclusion of all intruders, and the Opposition took no pains to disperse their own arguments. What I could gather was as follows : Lord Buckingham had caused the Judges to be summoned, intending to ques- tion them on the assumptions in the King's message, and came prepared with many questions for that purpose ; but the determined chicanery of Lord Mansfield, supported by the Ministerial party, at the head of which, now there was no danger, he affectedly seemed to place himselfj and which undoubtedly he possessed in the King's confi- dence, blasted all attempts to make the Judges explicit, though on the first day's debate there appeared great dis- cordance among the subordinate Ministers. Lord Rock- ingham's first question was, " Is the King intrusted with the care and approbation of the marriages of the descend- ants of King George II., other than his Majesty's own * Yet Dr. Nowel was afterwards preferred. 1772. ROYAL MARRIAGE BILL. 29 children during their minorities ?" Baron Smythe 6 in the name of his brethren gave an unanimous negative to this question, because it comprehended even the issue of our princesses married abroad, over whom his Majesty could have no power. Lord Rockingham then amended his question by omitting the foreign descendants. The Judges, in spite of Lord Mansfield's arts, desired time to consider on their answer. This occasioned a long debate ; it was Wednesday ; on Saturday the Judges were to set out on the circuit, and it would waste two months ere they could return; yet what haste demanded precipitation ? No child of the King was near the marriageable age ; his brother Cumber- land was married ; his brother Gloucester was believed to be so. A bill that so nearly affected the whole succession, so big with possibilities of occasioning future civil wars, so new a power claimed by the Crown, such new difficulties thrown on matrimony, and the indissolubleness of that contracted in a Christian light so attacked, seemed to call for mature and serious deliberation. The precipitation which strode over all these most important considerations spoke not only pride, passion, and the obstinacy of impa- tient prerogative, but looked as if some secret reason, which even a short time might defeat, lurked beneath. And this reason was supposed to be the possibility of the Duke of Gloucester's return, whose health was much mended. This advantage taken of a favourite and dying brother's absence did not indicate much affection or justice. People went farther, and suspected that the Duke was only con- tracted to Lady Waldegrave ; in which, though his mar- 6 Of the Exchequer. He, with Aston of the King's Bench, and Bathurst of the Pleas, had held the Great Seal by commission, before the appointment of Bathurst, the most incompetent of three incompetents. Bathurst, by sup- porting the bill, acted contrary to the opinions he held when attorney-general to Frederic Prince of Wales. D. 30 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLF. FEB. riage, if accomplished, could not be annulled, yet, the act once passed, could never be completed without the King's consent ; and how relenting his Majesty was on that article the bill itself explained. Lord Caniden, though ill of the gout, was so struck with the whole arbitrary measure, with the dangers it threatened^ the injustice it enacted, no coun- sel even being allowed to the princes to defend their cause, and with the hurry with which it was driven on, that, however unwilling to offend the Crown, and waive all hopes of recovering the Great Seal, he had gone to the House, and with great energy, 7 yet with signal incense to the King's person, descanted on all the objectionable parts of the bill. Even the Duke of Grafton, vaunting his own unalterable Whiggism, declared for hearing the Judges; though whispering afterwards with Lord Mansfield, he explained away his pretended firmness. Lord Shel- burne was very warm against the bill. Lord Temple's conduct was more particular. He had abroad talked strongly against the bill : but on Charles Fox's resignation, and the panic that ensued, his tone had lowered ; and even in the preceding week, surmising that the bill might dis- joint the administration, he had been three times at Court, to intimate how ready he should be to repair any breach. Lord Lyttelton with more solemn decency had likewise declared himself dissatisfied with the measure. In that exigence Lord Mansfield, called upon by the Ministers at 7 He asked earnestly for an answer to the question, Who are the Eoyal family ? proved there was no reason for con- fining it to the descendants of George II., since all the descendants of Edward III., of which there are a thousand, were likewise so; and he showed that the numerous branches from even George II. might extend so that hall' Ku^laml might become wards of the Crown, and effectually revive the grievous and abrogated court of wards and liveries. I think it was Lord Mansfield who answered that, should the line of the Princess Sophia fail, the nation would be at liberty to choose a new family a gross mistake, considering how many lawful Protestant descendants there me of George Duke of Clarence, Lady Catherine Grey, &c. &c. 1772. EOYAL MARRIAGE BILL. 31 midnight, had devised what was called the softening alter- ation, but with his usual mischievous address, for when he drew out the dagger he inserted a slow poison in its room. Lord Lyttelton, the devotee (amidst all his patriotism) of that high-priest of despotism, readily swallowed the potion, flew with the cup to Lord Temple, and for four-and-twenty hours intoxicated him too. But whether it was that Lord Temple, discovering that the treacherous remedy had been gulped by too many others, and that the tottering Ministers would recover their stability, he reverted to his first opinion ; and after notifying to the House that the alteration had been made in compliment to his importance, not only he, but Lord Lyttelton whom he dragged after him, spoke their dissatisfaction. The Duke of Richmond was the most vigorous of the opponents and not to be beaten from his hold ; but the most interesting object of the scene was the Duke of Cumberland himself, who appeared at the debate ; yet was he, or those great Lords, sunk so low, that, except the Dukes of Bolton and Richmond, not a soul spoke to him. He held notes in his hand, which he seemed to con over, as intending to speak. The Duke of Richmond asked him if his Royal Highness should have any objection to being named in the debate ? He said, No ; and added, that he had come to satisfy himself whether there was any intention of setting aside his mar- riage ; if there were, he proposed to throw himself on the justice of the House. Not perceiving there was, he asked Richmond if he had not better retire, which the latter approving, he went away, and came no more to the discus- sion. Lord Rockingham asked if marriages made without the King's consent were invalid. Lord Mansfield refused to answer ; but the same interrogatory being proposed the ensuing day to be put to the Judges, the Chief Justice, 32 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. FEB. though without assigning any reason, said it was an im- proper question, but that he would take upon himself to declare that such marriage solemnized before this bill should take place could not be abrogated. Still the necessity of the Judges absenting themselves, and the more important necessity of their having time to weigh well so deep and extensive a question, filled the House with anxious uncer- tainty not lessened by the magisterial declaration of the young but pompous Earl of Suffolk, who, though so recent a renegade, took upon him to pronounce that the Judges should be allowed but one, one little, day to form their opinion, and should deliver it on the Friday. This oracle, of which that hollow youth was but the inflated spokesman, was maintained by the rest of the Ministers of their fac- tion, and at near nine at night was voted by 78 Lords to 35 as horrid a mockery both of forms and justice as ever was acted. Yet even some little rub disquieted the Court ; the young Lords, less hackneyed in the trammels of indis- criminate voting, were refractory. The Dukes of Buc- cleuch and Dorset dissented, and even Lord Carlisle, son- in-law of Lord Gower, whether influenced by Charles Fox his friend, or angry with Lord North who had omitted respect to him, voted in the minority. The Dukes of Montagu 8 and Northumberland, 9 the only two of that rank of the present King's creation, absented themselves, though the first a creature, the second an opponent of the Court. But Northumberland was willing to pay a compliment; and pleaded the absence of Lord Chatham, to whom he was now more glad to owe an excuse than an obligation. That fallen star, Lord Chatham, was in the country, 8 This title, conferred in 1766, bo- I 9 Sir Hugh Smithson, grandfuthcr of cnmo extinct in 1790. D. | the present duke. D. 1772. ROYAL MARRIAGE BILL. 33 ineptly solacing his disappointment, which he miscalled retirement, by writing silly verses to Garrick the actor, in which he affected to have renounced ambition ambition so often renounced and so often resumed, that he could impose on nobody but a man as ambitious of fame as him- self, and as bad a poet. I ought to mention that even Lord Temple and the Rockingharn party agreed with the Court that some mea- sure was requisite to prevent improper marriages being formed by princes too juvenile and thoughtless. But if this concession authorised the King and his Ministers to seek that remedy, impossible perhaps to be found without entailing greater mischiefs on posterity, surely it did not justify their proceeding without deliberation, without giving the Judges time to deliberate, though they had asked their opinions, and when the Ministers themselves could not assign a reason (at least such as they could avow) against procrastination ! On the 27th Sir George Saville moved for leave to bring in the bill that he had moved, and that had been re- jected the last session, for enacting that expulsion from the House of Commons should not constitute incapacitation. This was to keep up a spirit against the intrusion of Colonel Luttrell, but was quashed with contempt by the Administration, and by a majority of 181 to 135. In Ireland the Opposition moved a resolution that who- ever had advised the carrying into execution the increas- ing the Commissioners of the Revenue beyond seven, after the Resolution of the House against it, which resolution was subsequent to the King's letters for that purpose, though prior to the execution, advised a measure contrary to the express sense of the House. This was supported by 106 voices and opposed by an equal number, but was given for the motion by the Speaker's l casting vote. This was 1 Mr. Perry. VOL. I. D 34 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. FEB. but a tame measure, after violence and victory. But not only was the Opposition ill-connected, but afraid of Eng- land ; or merely driven to resistance by Lord Townshend's absurd and profligate conduct. The moderation of the Opposition showed how easily that country might be governed by prudence and temper a lesson to posterity, should posterity be free, that not moderation, not corrupt servility, can render a Court temperate. The former does not disarm them ; but encourages them, as much as the latter, to innovate farther. Hence does the science of Opposition, I mean in true patriots, in knowing when to advance or recede, require as great skill as that of govern- ment itself. How far to act against bad men is to good men a difficult crisis of judgment indeed ! It was now apprehended that the Judges, for want of sufficient time, would refuse to make any answer to the query put to them. The Ministers threatened to proceed without their answer ; and might in truth, in point of decency, as well have acted without their opinion, as go beyond it. But though those sages of the law would not go so far as Lord Mansfield required, yet he did prevail on them to make some answer ; and On the 28th Baron Smythe declared that their unani- mous opinion was, 2 " that the care and approbation of the marriages of the King's children and grandchildren, and of the presumptive heir to the Crown (other than the issue of Princesses married into foreign families), do belong to the Kings of this realm ; but to what other branches of the * In these debates much reference was had to what is called the grand <>li>'niuH of the Judges in 1717, as com- j'li-ti: u piece of legal jargon as exists, and worthy to ho read for its extreme absurdity and ridiculous arguim nts. [On thn occasion here referred to liaron Price and Baron Eyre were against giving the power required to the King, George I. Lord Chief Justice Parker was supposed by lii.s Majesty to have secured the majority iu his favour, and Lord Campbell suggests that this circumstance may account for the ele- vation of Parker to the dignity of Lord Chancellor, and the title of Earl of Macclesficld. D.j 1772. ROYAL MARRIAGE EILL. 35 Royal family such care and approbation do extend, we do not find precisely determined." This response, so far short of the pretensions in the Bill, gave full cause to Lord Rockingham and his friends to ask of the Judges, " To what other degrees of kindred, and to what ages of the contracting parties, does such right of approbation extend ? " But this question Lord Mansfield and the Ministers would not suffer to be put, because they were aware that the Judges could not answer it in a manner to justify what they were determined to enact. Through- out the whole progress of the Bill they would hear no reason, they would lend no assistance to improve, explain, or soften it, they would admit even no verbal alteration, though the Duke of Richmond the last day of it, to de- monstrate their unfairness, reminded them that they had omitted a word in one clause which they had used in another, exactly to the same tenor and in the same form, and which Lord Mansfield still would not suffer to be replaced : however, what equity refused, absurdity granted, t The Chancellor, 3 in the most nonsensical of all speeches, \ blabbed out, that one of the reverend Judges had owned to him that he believed the prerogative did go one degree farther than they had asserted in their unanimous opinion ; nay, and that another Judge had told him that he doubted whether it did not go two or three degrees further. This refutation of their decision out of their own mouths, and delivered by the ostensible head of the law, was artfully seized by the Duke of Richmond, who showed the House how indecent it was not to give farther time for examination to the Judges, when on the evidence of the Chancellor they were still very much in the dark. 4 Lord 3 Bathurst, Lord Apsley. 4 It is very remarkable that, should the descendants of the present King, of his brothers, and of the Princess of Brunswick fail, the Crown of England would descend to the King of Den- D <2 36 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. FEB. Hillsborough, a tragic scaramouch, did not yield to the Chancellor in blunders, while Lord Mansfield sat with every mark of vexation in his face at seeing his cobwebs brushed away by the awkwardness of his own instruments. Lord Camden, who had declared he would not attend the Committee, nor meddle with the botching of so bad a bill, made an oration that was allowed to be a masterpiece of elo- quence and argument, even by his antagonists except in their votes. Lord Temple, though less fine, was not less strong, and concluded with saying that, as he was connected with no man or men, so had he no enmity even to the Ministers, for whose miserable politics he felt a good- natured contempt. Lowth, Bishop of Oxford, confessed he could not reconcile the votes of his brethren to their pro- fession, so abhorrent was the Bill from the doctrines of Christianity. His tremor from disuse of speaking made him deliver what he said with a bad grace. His old enemy Warburton, as ready to sacrifice his Christianity to his interest, as he had embraced it for his interest, replied to him in a style even ludicrous, and with so much indeli- cacy, that Lord Pembroke said the Bishop of Gloucester had said so much in behalf of fornication, that for the future he should go openly to a brothel with his own chariot and liveries. 5 Keppel of Exeter voted in the minority, but did not speak ; he, Lowth, and Ewer of Bangor, were the only three prelates who did not abandon all the doctrines of the Bible and of the Church on matri- mony : and yet Lowth signed no protest ; and though murk's son, before him, as issue of the present King's sister. It would tlicn go to his (doubtful) sister, then to the House of Orange, and then to the King of Denmark himself; and nl'icr him ami his issue to liis .sister, not to his brother, as the latter is not born of the Princess Louisa, but of a second wife. There is another doubtful prin- cess in our lino of succession, though farther off; i. e. the child of the divorced Princess of Prussia. 4 " KVn saintlike Gadby b ts her eyes, and stt ills Pembroke's the most abandon'd of the peers." Diaboliad. D. 1772. ROYAL MARRIAGE BILL. 37 Ewer signed one, it was not the one that regarded the religious part. Thus within three weeks were the 39 Articles affirmed, and the New Testament deserted ! There was another incident in this debate, of which, though no reply was made to it, much notice was taken. The Duke of Richmond said that, though it \vas known that the Duke of Cumberland was actually married, and though universally believed that the Duke of Gloucester was so too, no communication of either match had been made to that House a great indecency, considering that, if there were children from either match, they might be- come entitled to the Crown. The Duke of Richmond had asked me if I should have any objection to his naming my niece Lady AValdegrave. I thankeu him, but said it was impossible for me to give his Grace any answer, for, as I did not know whether she was married to the Duke of Gloucester or not, I could not tell whether the mention of her would serve or hurt her. As I did not know her mind, I could not tell whether she would like to be mentioned or not : were she not married, and the mention of it should bring that secret to light, I should ruin her by advising it, and therefore I begged to be excused from giving any opinion at all. Governor Pownall 5 had come to me on the same occa- sion, and I had given him the same answer. Even with General Con way I would not talk on the subject; I told him he knew how little fond I was of royal families, and how little desirous of being related to them ; that I had done all I could to break off my niece's connexion with the Duke of Gloucester, and that, not having succeeded, I had determined never to meddle with that affair more, and had 6 He had married Lady Fawkner, sister of my brother-in-law Mr. Churchill. Lady Fawkner was a very intriguing woman, and intimate both with Lady Waldegrave and the Duchess of Cumberland. 63153 38 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. FEB. strictly kept my resolution ; that I knew, if he dissented from the bill, that it would be supposed I had influenced him, but, as I should declare I had not, I would have it to say with the utmost truth that I would not suffer even him to talk to me on the subject ; and though, according to his custom, he was anxious that I should advise him what was proper for him to do with regard to his character, 7 I persisted in not talking to him on the subject. All I would say, and which was not at all in character for me to say, was that I thought he should not offend the King if he could help it. When I would not go into the Court by the straight door, I was resolved nobody should even sus- pect that I wished to creep up by a private staircase. The majority was much increased on the 7th. Lord Mansfield had told the King that his Ministers were di- vided (in truth they were in their hearts unanimous against the bill), and that he must oblige them to support it heartily, or change his Administration. The advice was taken angl succeeded. The King grew dictatorial, and all his creatures kissed the earth. It was given out that he would take a dissent on this bill as a personal affront adieu ! qualms, fears, and care of posterity ! Zeal, and money, and influence of all sorts went to work, and the consequence was a division against Lord Buckingham's questions of 90 to 32. Lord Carlisle voted against the individual question that he had voted for two days before. To complete his folly, the next time he did not vote at all. I shall say nothing of the bill in the Committee, as I have comprehended part of what was said that day in the account of the preceding debate, and because, though many alterations were proposed, not one was admitted. 7 I say this to his praise, nor did I ever give him any advice that was not trictly honourable for him. 1772. ROYAL MARRIAGE BILL. MARCH. ON the third reading 1 Lord Lyttelton put home to the bishops their renegade behaviour, which was defended on mere political principles by the Archbishop of York 2 and the Bishops of St. Asaph 3 and Lincoln. 4 I approve bishops that are good citizens ; but if the duty of a citizen clashes with that of a pastor, and he prefers the former, I know what to think of his Christianity. In the present case I am certain that the Bench made a compliment of their religion to their King, not a sacrifice of it to their country, whose future peace their votes may dread- fully have hazarded. Those fathers of the Church were hampered by the Duke of Richmond, who quoted a case 5 that happened in the reign of Henry VI., when, a law being passed to forbid the remarriage of a Queen Dowager, the whole Bench of Bishops refused to join in it. After two more divisions the bill was passed at night and sent to the Commons. A protest of great strength and weight, admirably drawn by the Duke of Richmond and Edmund Burke, was signed by fourteen of the dissenting Peers : another, more con- 1 March 3rd. son of the Duke de Brancas. Laura- Dr. Hay Drummond. gais, a wild dissolute man, of a head not very sound, but of some parts, had come to England to publish a book against 3 Dr. Barrington, brother of Lord Barrington, Secretary at War. 4 Dr. Greene. 5 This case was discovered in Eymer's Fcedera, by the Comte de Lauragais, the new despotism in France, for which hia estate had been forfeited, and whither he did not dare to return. 40 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. MARCH, fined to the argument of religion, was signed by Lord Temple, Lord Lyttelton, and four more ; and a short one by the Lord Radnor alone. 6 On the same 3rd of March, on the occasion given by Dr. Newel's insolent sermon, Mr. Frederick Montague moved the House of Commons for leave to bring in a bill for laying aside the observance of the 30th of January. He protested against any idea of his designing an attack on the Church. He revered the Church, he said ; not, indeed, that high-flying Church under Bancroft and Laud, but the mild Church under Tillotson. It was out of respect that he made the motion. It was a great oppres- sion on the clergy to be obliged to read the service of that day, which Bishop Burnet said was drawn up by San croft ; and, as others said, had been enlarged by Father Petre, and was full of impiety, containing throughout a parallel between Jesus Christ and Charles I. Should that service riot be abrogated now, while Dr. Nowel's sermon was ring- ing in their ears, he could never hope to see it repealed, nor would ever repeat his motion. The nation might as well be concerned for Richard II. as for Charles I. He was seconded by Mr. Hipsley Cox, a young man of very quick parts ; and answered in a long, absurd rhapsody, stuffed with all the prejudices of clergy and old women, by Sir Roger Newdigate, who also, in Dr. Nowel's name, disclaimed any design of offence in his offensive sermon. T. Townshend said, Henry IV. of France was not made a saint, and yet was so excellent a prince 6 Tho silly conduct of the Rocking- ham party appeared now in a new in- stance. Instead of consulting Lord Camden, or asking him, as the head of Hi' law on their uide, to draw their protest, they only sent it to him inde- cently, at seven o'clock of the very morning on which it was to ho signed. As they might well have expected, he returned it unsigned. 1772. ROYAL MARRIAGE BILL. 41 that it would be a disgrace to compare Charles I. with him. Judge Jefferies deserved as much to be mourned for. Fox 7 spoke against innovation, and, being of enormous fat- ness, said, with humour, that nobody would believe he had ever fasted on the 30th of January. He and all the other spurious descendants 8 of Charles, except Admiral Keppel, now supported the memory of their patriarch, and the Court 9 under Lord North taking up the cause, the motion was rejected by 125 to 97; even General Con way, from too timid candour and that plausible argument of avoiding disputes, the palladium of all established nonsense, voting in the majority. On the 4th, the Marriage Bill being delivered to the House of Commons, Mr. Seymour and Mr. Cornwall moved to have it printed, which was refused by a majority of 193 to 109. Lord North, however, by no means equally fond of the bill with Lord Mansfield, nor so iin- " This was Stephen Fox, who further said that he saw no harm in the ob- servance of the 30th of January, ex- cept that it compelled the Speaker to go to church once a year. Sir Thomas Cave ended a few observations by re- counting a visit of Queen Caroline to the pictures of the sovereigns of Eng- land, painted by Kichardson. Observing the portrait of a plain-looking indivi- dual between Charles I. and Charles II., she asked the painter if he called that personage a king. " No, madam," answered Richardson, " he is no king ; but it is good for kings to have him among them as a memento." In con- nexion with this subject I may add that in 1733, from the 23rd to the 30th of January, there raged in the metro- polis the " London headache and fever," which were extensively fatal ; more than 1500 persons dying there- from in the capital. Some chroniclers of the fact, remembering that in 1649 Charles denied the jurisdiction of his judges on the 23rd of the above month, and that he suffered death on the 30th, have suggested, not without a little hesitation indeed, that the destructive- ness and duration of the malady might be an assurance to royalists that London had not then expiated the murder or martyrdom which had taken place at Whitehall more than fourscore years before. D. 8 Qne of Lord Bute's sons, and an- other Stuart, probably for a little popu- larity with the Whigs, voted against the fast ; but it was well said by a Whig, that they did so because the Pretender had scratched the name of Charles I. as a heretic out of his pro- clamation. 9 It is remarkable that the present King had never from the beginning of his reign gone to church on the 30th of January, whereas George II. always did, wore mourning on that day, and everybody went to Court in mourning. His sister, the Queen of Prussia, as is more natural for all princes who do not personally profit by the ruin of the Stuarts, was a declared Jacobite. 42 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. MARCH, petuous to dispute it, agreed to a Committee for searching the Journals of the Lords ; and consented to the debate being postponed to Monday Qth. The same day Sawbridge's motion for Triennial Parlia- ments was treated with great slight, and rejected by 251 to 83. While these things were in agitation, the situation of the Queen of Denmark and her favourite grew worse. Rantzau, and two other noblemen, heads of the con- spiracy, governed the King despotically, and never suffered him to be out of their sight, Rantzau even lying in his chamber. Of his son no notice was taken or mention made. The Court of England knew, or at least said, very little of what was passing there, except that the Queen was to be sent to Norway. King George, however, to mark his resentment of the treatment of his sister and brother-in- law, and his approbation of Mr. Keith's spirit in her be- half, sent him the Order of the Bath, with a positive com- mand to put it on immediately himself, since there was no sovereign in Denmark to invest him with it. It might be justified to send this riband, though none was vacant ; but it was not very wise to mark anger when it was not safe to do more. When there was so little spirit in our councils, the Danes, who had trampled on their own King, were not likely to tremble at Mr. Keith's red riband. 9th. The Royal Marriage Bill was to be read the se- cond time by the Commons, but Dowdswell, to prevent the reading, went into a strong confutation of the asser- tion in the King's message, that to the Crown had al- ways belonged the care and approbation of marriages in the Royal Family, which he proved to be a falsehood, even by the recent opinion given by the Judges in the other House. The Crown could have had no such right, because 1772. EOYAL MARRIAGE BILL. 43 the law gave no remedy ; and remedy there must be if there is law. The Star Chamber was all the remedy! The Crown has no legal prerogative that cannot be brought into Westminster Hall. The bill would tend to extermi- nate the House of Hanover. He moved a Resolution that the assertion was unfounded in any law, and unwarranted by the opinion of any of the Judges of England. Mr. Seymour seconded the motion, with bitter reflections on the bill, which he said he heard came from the Lord Chief Justice : x he read several cases, in particular the opinion of the Bishops that the Duke of York's was a valid marriage. Mr. Herbert was for reading the bill, though he declared strongly against the doctrines in it, which he said only tended to oppress such great families as should happen to marry with the blood royal. T. Pitt spoke well against the bill, which he said ought to be intituled an Act decla- ratory of obsolete and dangerous laws. Mr. Cornwall went farther, and wished to know who had advised the bill. Wedderburn, the Solicitor-General, spoke with infinite applause in favour of the bill. The most remarkable part of his speech was, that he restricted the Royal Family to the Settlement by King William, and would not allow that any descendant of Edward III. could claim the Crown on failure of that Settlement a strange proposition ! Dunning answered him in a speech that lasted above two hours, but was tedious and disgusting. Charles Fox (who it was believed had already made his peace, that is, his bargain) was not only very temperate, but profuse of incense to Lord North on the stand he had made against Opposition, and of his grief for differing with him. One sage observation he made : it had been urged and cases 1 Mansfield. 44 LAST JOUBNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. MARCH, had been quoted of persons fined for being concerned in Royal matches : he said, there ought to be a bill of indemnity, as it was known there were great persons in the predicament. Lord North was not ungrateful, but returned Fox's flattery with interest, and not without ridicule for its being so exaggerated, and for its being proof of his fear. Burke spoke with much wit, and laughed at the grand opinion in Fortescue's Reports. History was not law ; and the arguments used on this occasion were the same that had been employed to defend ship-money and the dispensing power. General Conway disapproved the motion, yet owned he thought the Crown claimed more than it was entitled to. He lamented his doubts, feared he must express them in the Committee, wished to combine his affection for the King with his free opinion, was a friend to the principle of the bill and to the minutest wish of the Crown. At one in the morning the House divided on the orders of the day, when it was carried for the second reading of the bill by 268 to 140. Lord Irnhain, 2 his son the Colonel, and another Luttrell, voted with the Opposition ; who moved to adjourn, but it was carried to proceed to the reading. After the last division Colonel Barre said the Ministers had been holding a bed of justice to register an edict, instead of meeting an English parlia- ment; but he would leave the House when prerogative stalked at that dead hour of the night. Lord North was questioned and forced to explain away a daring expression, that the King would approve of the conduct of those who did not use an improper violence. On the llth, when the House should have gone into the Committee on the bill, the affair took a new turn. It Simon Luttrcll, Lord Irnlmm, father of the Duchess of Cumberland. 1772. ROYAL MARRIAGE BILL. appeared that there were three distinct bodies : the first were totally against the principle of the bill ; these were Sir William Meredith, the leader of a very small squadron, and supposed, by the Rockingham party, to lean to the Court ; to them were joined the Shelburne faction, and, on this occasion, the Foxes. The second division were for going into the Committee in order to mend the bill, thinking some restraint necessary, yet enemies to the bill unless corrected. The third troop was the Ministerial squadron, who desired to send the bill to the Committee for form, but void of any intention of altering it, though they disavowed that intention. Stephen Fox, in patriot terms, complained of the enormity of recurring to history for precedents ; Stanley fetched precedents from Vienna, Berlin, Turin, and every arbitrary court, yet he lamented the unlimited flight of the bill, and yet approved even that, since he could not devise a better method. Captain Phipps more shrewdly observed that the Parliament was so flat- tering to the Royal Family, that it was giving leave to the Princes of the Blood to lie with our wives, and forbidding them to marry our daughters. 3 The very draught of the bill showed the hand of one 4 wedded to tyranny, and the fruit tasted of the tree of prerogative. When the bill should be passed the author of it would lay himself down 3 There could not be greater servility in a free nobility and gentry * than to fetch a little family from Germany, and indulge them in the scorn they had for marrying into our families. The House of Hanover was descended from a low Frenchwoman, one Mile. d'Olbreuse, maid of honour to a Duchess of Zell, and then left-handed wife to a Duke of Zell, father of the wife of King George I. The Queen was daughter of a younger branch of the insignificant House of Mecklenburg. 4 Lord Mansfield. * When Louis XIV. broke off the match of Mademoiselle with Lausun, and ordered his Ministers at foreign Courts to declare he scorned such an alliance, his nobility, slaves as they are, represented to him the disgrace he inflicted on them, whose families had so often had the honour of matching with the House of Bourbon. Plantagenets, Tudors, and Stuarts matched with the nobility. The House of Hanover, though at best descended from the little family of Este in Italy, scorned it. 46 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. MARCH, with the pleasing idea of the tyranny he had inflicted on this country. Mr. Herbert said the bill ought to be intituled An Act to encourage Adultery and Fornication. Colonel Barre asked directly if more was intended, and whether it was meant to attack the Duke of Cumberland's marriage? And let not, said he, that other marriage 5 be a doubt. Did they mean to bastardize the children of those two princes ? It had taken eighty or ninety years to quiet the parties raised by the Act of Settlement was another Act of Settlement to be made now ? He said Lord North was the honestest and justest man in the administration, which yet was no compliment, nor did he pretend to mean one ; for the majority, it would be exactly the same whoever should succeed him. When the King's children should be grown up, what were they to do ? All women would avoid them. They would have no paddock of their own ; they would, indeed, have a right of com- mon. Would Lord North like to be a prince of the blood ? " Or you, Sir/' said he to the Speaker, " should you have a handsome wife, should she grant the favour to a prince, and you should demand damages of a jury, would not they laugh in your face, and ask why you had tied up the princes from marrying ?" Charles Fox was so inoffensive that, as Burke said afterwards, the dissent of some gentlemen was the opposition of half an hour. Lord George Germaine said, things wore a bad aspect when it was necessary to revive prerogative : it was drawing in Parliament to give a right that had never existed. It was right to send the bill to the Committee, as it was absolutely necessary to declare that it was no ex-post-facto law. Lord Folkstone, 6 mentioning the Duke of Cumberland's marriage, added, " Report says the 6 The Duke of Gloucester's. I Son of the Earl of Radnor. 1772. ROYAL MARRIAGE BILL. 47 Duke of Gloucester is married still more exceptionably in point of birth. 7 Had the Ministers been 'impartial, they would have brought in the bill when that match was made." Lord North said the bill would prevent, not punish, im- proper marriages. Sir W. Meredith said Lord Hard- wicke's bill had given rise to the doctrine of marriage being only a civil contract. It had lessened the sacredness of the tie, and given a loose to divorces , there were fifty bills of divorce then actually before the House. For the persons who were against the principle of the bill and yet for carrying it to the Committee, they were like a man who takes a common prostitute to his arms and then marries in hopes of reclaiming her. Burke took up this expression very warmly, and ridiculed Sir William with much wit. The gentleman, he said, had got on a high prancing horse, but it was not well in him to bespatter others as they passed by on foot ; that he himself was married and had been seven years in Opposition, and that, as he thought he could hold it, it was proper for him to go on ; and therefore, if he did not go as fast as was wished by that gentleman, who had only a step or two to go, it was be- cause he had farther to go. At past one in the morning the House divided, and, by the jarring of the Opposition, the Ministers carried it by 300 to 64 to go into the Com- mittee on the 13th; Dowdswell, Burke, the Cavendishes, T. Pitt, T. Townshend, Lord George Germaine, and most of the Rockinghams voting with the Ministry ; Sir George Saville with the minority. This new disagreement in the Opposition was the first fruit of their revival. As the Court paid men for their opinion, that party had but one opinion ; the unpaid, as was natural, had twenty. Lady Waldegrave was a natural daughter. 48 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. MARCH, On the 13th, the House being resolved into a Com- mittee on the Royal Marriage Bill, the Rockingham party desired to begin with the preamble, which it is generally the custom to postpone till the clauses of a bill are settled. Lord North declared it was indifferent to him which method was preferred. General Conway objected to the preamble being read, and said the clauses ought to stand on their own merit, not depend on the introduction, and that, as the House was likely to hear a great deal in the course of the bill, he hoped they should not hear it oftener than was necessary. For his part, he should neither be capti- vated by history nor poetry. Charles Fox observed that he was not surprised that the (Rockingham) gentlemen were for going into the preamble, as they did not know how to attain their ends, and always defeated their own pur- poses. The House was not inclined to divide about the preamble, but Rigby, eager to get Conway, whom he hated, into a minority, drove on a division, and, the Rock- inghams voting with the Court, there were but 68 for postponing the preamble, and 203 for reading it then. This prelude was of no consequence, and only gave the Court false hopes that the rupture in the Opposition would continue favourable to them ; but things soon wore another aspect. The arrogance with which the Ministerial party set up prerogative, the total want of argument to support those pretensions, the opinion of the Judges, which fell so far short of what was claimed, the injustice of the bill, the indefinite extent of it, and the civil wars which it might ; occasion, had made deep impressions on several members, who were even zealous courtiers. And though the nature of the bill could not affect the people but collaterally or in remote degrees, and though the inactivity of the Opposi- tion had neglected to inform the nation of the dangerous 1772. ROYAL MARRIAGE BILL. 49 tendency of the bill in various lights, still was this House of Commons, as I have observed on several 'occasions, pos- sessed of so many conscientious men, that the Crown found reason to perceive that the constitution was not totally at its mercy, nor could be destroyed without a struggle. The preamble was no sooner read 8 than Mr. Dowdswell moved to leave out the words "and therefore the kings of this realm have been intrusted with the care thereof" This occasioned a very serious and fine debate till near midnight, five-and-twenty persons speaking either on the one side or the other, with great disadvantage on the side of the Court Sir Fletcher Norton as a friend, and General Conway as an enemy to the bill, contributing most to the detriment of the King's cause. Sir Fletcher, insidiously towards Lord Mansfield, said, if the prerogative asserted was false, the word had no business in the preamble ; if true, the words should be handed down to posterity. It was a bold asser- tion of a bold prerogative ; it was a commendable warmth with which gentlemen had disputed the King's right. He would not militate with every gentleman's opinion ; he would speak his own frankly. The term Royal Family ought to be first settled. If he saw the Royal Family so extensive as some did, he should be against the bill ; but there was nothing to fear from prerogative. If he should be asked if he could draw the line, he would say it should not be drawn : he would go farther it could not be drawn. It was a matter that behoved the State to regulate, and right that it should be done. The opinion of the Judges in 1717 remained upon the books of the Privy Council. Was there any opinion or any determination of 8 A Mr. Baker first proposed an immaterial alteration, which was rejected by 169 to 58. VOL. I. E 50 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. MARCH, any Judges to the contrary of what was contended for ? He believed, if the nine Judges who had now given their opinions had had more time allowed to them, they would have carried their opinions farther than the Judges did in 1717, for these have gone to the presumptive heir. He should fix his opinion on that of the Judges. Whoever, that was not bred to the profession, should read law books, would only find it lumber in his head. Very often gentle- men of the law have not time to read on the subject on which they were to debate. He would tell the House what constituted the presumptive heir to the Crown : the pre- sumptive heir might be ten degrees off; it was propinquity, it was proximity to the Crown, that induces the necessity of the case. What is propinquity? He would not tell there ; he could tell any gentleman at his chambers. He begged leave to mention an ingenious book, called a * Treatise on Collateral Consanguinity :' he would not enter into the policy of this or of the Marriage Act ; but in the Marriage Act princes are excepted by the term Royal Family. He dropped an obscure hint, as if the Duke of Cumberland's marriage had not been properly solemnized. The Eoyal Family, he said, had been settled by the Act of Precedence in the reign of Queen Anne. The Attorney- General and Morton disagreed with him and with each other, and Norton's absurd speech was deservedly turned into great ridicule. Mr. Cornwall said he had led them in a circle and left them just where he set out. Who could tell where the numerical circle ended, and where began that which the gentleman had drawn ? l For himself, he 1 Norton rose to explain himself the end of the world." The line of afterwards, as to the hint at tin- Duke consanguinity, ho still insisted, could of Cumberland's match, saying, that ' if it was good, it would be good to not be drawn. 1772. ROYAL MARRIAGE BILL. 51 would say, in answer to the pride with which this bill had been planned, if the proudest Duke's daughter was a fit alliance for the Royal Family, so was the daughter of a private gentleman : he knew of no other qualification than a good character. Mr. Sutton, Under-Secretary to Lord Rochford, a young man of parts, who had been bred a lawyer and was a great master of modern languages, and of a very singular turn, often, though in office, speaking against the Court, and never speaking for them when he voted for them (but too necessary to be dismissed), fell likewise severely on the Speaker's juggling oration. Such doctrines as Sir Fletcher's, he said, were dangerous to the subject, that a prince of the blood, not being within the line, might marry his servant- maid, and afterwards by deaths might come within the line by proximity and propinquity to the Crown, the marriage might be annulled and the children bastardized. He assured the House that it was Sir Fletcher's speech that had deter- mined him to vote against the preamble. Edmund Burke said he was rejoiced to hear the law as it had been stated by the Speaker: hitherto it had been locked up in the strong box of the Chair of that House, but it was now let loose that men and dogs might drink at the fountain till they burst. The preamble vitiated both the present Act and the Marriage Bill ; but he was struck with horror because there might be a doubt on the past marriage (of the Duke of Cumberland). He feared there was a little of the politician mixed with the lawyer in Sir Fletcher's speech; " but consider, Sir," said he, addressing himself to Norton, " this bill will operate when you shall be enjoying in another world the rewards of a life well spent in this " a bitter sarcasm, much tasted by the House. Thurlow, Attorney-General, asked if there was a doubt whether the E 2 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. MARCH, prerogative existed ? If the Act did not pass, the Eoyal Family would be surprised into marriages that would be a stain to them and a disgrace to the country. The word prerogative he found was understood as if it meant fire and sword. A prerogative -man was as necessary as a justice of peace : the bill could not affect the Duke of Cumberland's marriage in the least. Sir W. Meredith said, that, though the validity of the Duke of Cumberland's match seemed to be allowed at present, would not any Judge hereafter conclude that that match had been the object of this bill ? He cen- sured in strong terms the clause of praBmunire, which is the loss of all a man has in the world, and perpetual imprison- ment. Mr. Graves observed how extraordinary it was that not a single book written on prerogative had ever men- tioned this pretended right over Royal marriages. Ad- dresses proved nothing ; 2 they are always consonant to the temper of the times. He did not believe his Majesty was informed of the extent of the bill. John Crauford, an amiable young Scot, said he believed gentlemen disliked the preamble because they thought it an old prerogative converted into a new law. He thanked the gentleman for explaining marriage ; for his part, he had ever thought it a cruel encroachment on the rights of mankind. The bill he believed was capable of being made better ; but he would not obstruct it because he could not get through all the niceties. Morton (though a Court Tory) said he totally differed with Sir Fletcher Norton that a prosecution had ever been commenced against any person of the Eoyal Family for marrying without the consent of the Crown : he defied him to show that it was punishable by the laws 8 This alluded to an argument used by the Court, that the House of Com- muna addressed Charles II. to hinder the Duke of York's marriage with the Princess of Moclena. 1772. ROYAL MARRIAGE BILL. 53 of the land. It was called the law of the Crown, not pre- rogative. Sir Fletcher said he had been misrepresented that he had not a particle of doubt existing on the validity of the Duke of Cumberland's marriage. Sawbridge stated a case that made much impression : had this bill existed in King Williams time, he might have prevented the Duke of Gloucester from marrying, and intro- duced his own family. Lord North said but little ; that the right had been proved by records under the great seal, and that the bill was the reverse of a Prerogative Bill ; the preamble was built in the prerogative it enjoys. Charles Fox made a greater figure than ever, chiefly at the expense of Sir Fletcher Norton, whose dreaded abilities he held in contempt ; but he first blamed Lord North for having said indiscreetly on the preceding day that there were 300 members to 64 who had declared the bill to be agreeable to law, yet many of the 300 had entered their protest against being included in that opinion. He himself had ever thought the bill odious ; he thought it ten times more so since he had heard Sir Fletcher's doctrines. It was the more odious from the uncertainty under which he had left it "that glorious uncertainty," said he, " which always attends the law." 3 Had any gentleman explained the term descendants of the Royal Family ? He would answer No ! He had been told that particular care had been taken to find out the person who solemnized the Duke of Cumber- land's marriage for what purpose he knew not. This and much more he uttered with great warmth, energy, and applause. General Conway, with serious dignity and be- coming firmness, did not make less impression. He owned he was a friend to the principle of the bill, but thought 3 His father, Lord Holland, too, had always taken great pleasure in attacking the lawyers. 54 LAST JOURNALS OF HOKACE WALPOLE. MARCH, there would be a degree of absurdity in voting a rigbt what was only a compliment a compliment that ought not to be paid anywhere : it was creating a power that could never be taken away again. He begged the House to consider this, and told them they would not do their duty if they did not resist the preamble. At half an hour after eleven at night the House divided, and, to the great mortification of the Court, their majority, which on the first day of the bill had amounted to 128, was now sunk to 36 the numbers being 200 to 164 : a clear proof of the badness of the bill, for conscience must be violently attacked when so triumphant a superiority as 128 shrinks from the test. Thus had the Court, by new intemperance and folly, raised from the dead a departed Opposition demonstration that it was not a desire of tranquillity and legal government that was aimed at, but extension of prerogative. On the 14^, in the evening, Mr. Conway came to me, and showed me a letter he had received from his brother, Lord Hertford, in which the latter said the King had written to him that morning, complaining grievously of Conway 's opposition to the bill, though the King had, as he said, shown him so many marks of kindness ; and though it was a personal question to himself. Conway asked me what he should do, for he would not disgrace himself by retracting. I said he was sensible that I had refused to talk to him on the bill because I had not meddled in my niece's connection with the Duke of Glou- cester, whatever it were, nor would with the bill; but that now he (Conway) had taken his part, and asked my advice on the present occasion, I would give it him fairly. The question, I said, was indeed personal to the King, nay, and too personal, for it went to an extension of his 1772. ROYAL MARRIAGE BILL. 55 prerogative, a point in which he ought not to ask or expect to be obliged. That the duty to our country was to supersede private gratitude. Kings might enslave a nation if their favours were to tie men up from obeying their conscience. That I approved what he (Conway) had done, and begged him not to recant for his own sake. I said it ill became his brother to interfere in what con- cerned his honour; and I added that, if he allowed his brother to dissuade him from acting as he ought to do, he himself would have no thanks : Lord Hertford would have all the merit, and, instead of Conway's receiving favours, Lord Hertford would be rewarded for governing him. He agreed with me entirely, censured his brother for his unbounded servility, and owned that he was now convinced that what I had so often told him, and which he never believed before, was true that Lord Mansfield aimed at stretching the prerogative. Lord Hertford wrote him more letters, but they had no effect. The King was so indiscreet as to write to that silly boy Lord Sefton, whom he had lately made an earl, 4 and who voted against the bill ; and Sefton kept away on the 16th. Colonel Burgoyne, who had kept away too, was made to vote for the bill. On the 16th the Committee sat again till two in the morning, the Opposition fighting the bill so strenuously that they could not get through a whole clause. Dowds- 4 Charles William, eighth Viscount Molyneux, was created Earl of Sefton in 1771. He died in 1795. His mother, Maria Leverly, by a third marriage with Mr. Errington, of Northumber- land, became the mother of Maria, who, marrying with Mr. Walter Smythe, be- came in her turn the mother of the celebrated " Mrs. Mary Anne (or Maria, as her tombstone at Brighton has it) Fitzherbert," who, like Maria Leverly, (or, as the name is sometimes written, Levery\ was the wife of three succes- sive husbands, the last of whom, it is hardly necessary to add, and "there- fore," as Mr. Shirley Brooks remarks on a similar occasion, "let us add it," was George IV. D. 56 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. MARCH, well moved to omit in the first clause the words descendants of George //., and insert children and grandchildren, or heir-apparent to the Crown, in order to give some limita- tion to the bill. The Ministers refused to come into the amendment. After some debate, Rose Fuller, a ministerial man, said he had been endeavouring to find out some proper limitation, but could possibly discover none, for which reason he thought the bill ought to be limited in time that is, to be restrained to the reign of his present Majesty and one year after his demise ; and that, should he con- tinue of the same opinion after the bill was gone through, he would propose this restriction as an amendment to the bill. He was not for trusting the Crown with powers that could never be got back. Richard Whitworth, a neces- sitous member of the Opposition, who had spoken against the bill, had now been bought off and spoke for it. General Conway, who always spoke admirably when warmed, attacked the bill again with peculiar energy. He had attended, he said, to every argument on that im- portant bill, professed himself a friend to the principle of it though not to the form, and therefore wished such a bill might be sent out of the House as might do honour to it. His objection was to the extent, and therefore he should like the limitation in point of time, and approved the amendment proposed. The extent proposed was enormous. The canons of the Church pointed out a limit, as well as the act of Harry VIII. He would first fix the line, and then add heir presumptive. He could not agree that any great inconvenience had ever attended the marriages of the Royal family with subjects ; the mischief had not flowed from proximity to the Crown, but from the power of the great barons. Fifty improper marriages were preferable to making the Crown elective, as Wedder- 1772. ROYAL MARRIAGE BILL. 57 burn had falsely declared it would be if all persons within the Act of Settlement should fail. 5 The Judges, in 1717, declared the right of the Crown was more over the educa- tion of princes than over their marriage. Should this bill pass they must all be educated too by the Crown. No regard ought to be paid to an inconvenience that had hap- pened ; the bill ought to be corrected. It was a law not fit to go out as it was drawn ; he would venture to say the House could not pass it. Were he capable of paying a compliment on this occasion, he should think his tongue icould wither in his mouth. It was an act for which Par- liament could not have any complaisance. They were such acts that had disgraced Parliament. There was a duty superior to everything else. He would have such a bill, but taken up hereafter with less precipitation. Lord North shuddered at Conway's words, but had not the courage to act as honest a part, chicaned on forms of making the amendment, which took up much time and brought on a long controversy on order, which provoked T. Townshend so much that he cried out, "Let us have no dirty tricks ! " Lord North was exceedingly hurt with this and other attacks, particularly at Conway's reflecting on the complaisance of the majority, which, he said, the House would not bear. He himself was independent, the Parliament was independent. Gentlemen had a flippant way of saying things against Parliament. Captain Phipps turned the debate towards Lord Mansfield by a beautiful simile, in which he described the tree of prerogative with the wily serpent winding up it, and offering the fruit to 5 WTiat possible pretence could there j Protestants of their right? I can see be for setting aside the descendants of ; no reason but that the Stuarts might Edward III.? Papists are rejected because of their religion; but what reason can .there be for depriving be eligible, if the descendants of George II. should fail. 58 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. MAKCH, the house of Brunswick. De Grey saying the contest was become a question of bodily strength, E. Burke in a fine rhapsody cried out, he hailed the omen ! He had never had a better opportunity. " Self-denying Court ! " said he ; " mild aristocracy ! When the message came first, it was a round little dwarf; the preamble was a herald at arms, with all his trappings ; and then came the Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance." He then quite ranted with eloquent bombast, and then with admirable pathetic, and seeming to see the image of Lord Mansfield, he cried out, "He has no child " who first formed this bill! 6 He was no judge of the crime of following Nature ! " But if it is true that eloquence fascinates the passions, it is as true that gold is a counterpoison. Nor Burke's oratory, nor Conway's energy, nor Charles Fox's logic could unseal the ears into which the golden infusion had been dropped. Wedderburn said the act was calculated to make royal marriages solemn and notorious, and to restrain improper marriages. It had been said that if the Duke of York had not married Lady Anne Hyde the revolution would not have happened. He would say that it would not have happened unless he had married the Princess of Modena. It was said marriage would prevent the licentiousness of princes : had not everybody heard of their amours when married ? The Duke of Berwick had sprung from such amours. Sir George Saville said there was not a man in the House but could propose less objectionable words than those in the bill. Charles Fox said no decent reason had been given why the words should not be descendants of George III., not of George II. He was not clear the bill had not a retrospective view. He spoke on with Macbeth. 1772. ROYAL MARRIAGE BILL. 59 great force, though less applauded than the preceding day, yet still severe on Sir Fletcher Norton, who rose again, and said the severe chastisement he had received the other day had had no effect upon him ; abuse never had. When he was in the wrong he would kiss the rod. He desired a truce with arguments drawn from his great wig and being locked up in his strong box. He had a rough side of his tongue as well as other gentlemen, though he had forborne to make use of it. He was as ready to de- scend from the Chair as he had been to ascend it : it was not an honour he had sought. He would explain his sentiments, which had been grossly misrepresented. So far from throwing a doubt on the present marriage (of the Duke of Cumberland), he had given it as a datum. If fame said true, the solemnities of that marriage were not complied with, and in that case the saving clause in the Marriage Act could only indemnify. He had asked, was the term Royal Family known or not? Give him the case, he would give the rule. He thought words should be moved more restrictive than those already moved. When the Royal Family was branched out, could he call them the Royal Family ? he could not ; therefore he thought some regulation necessary. Thus did his explana- tion leave his opinion more obscure, more unintelligible than ever ; probably he could not explain it better. Charles Fox implored him to assist them with proper words, since he and the other lawyers disagreed. Burke and Cornwall lashed him again, but to no purpose. Then the House divided, and by the unwearied efforts of the Court, who had sent to Scotland for votes and had used every other means of procuring them, there were 222 for the original words and 164 for the amendment. The Opposition then moved to adjourn : the Ministers, on 60 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. MARCH, a new division, determined to proceed ; but so many members went away that at two o'clock in the morning the House broke up without having advanced a step. The Committee sat again on the 18th, when Charles Fox proposed to omit the words other than the issue of princesses married into foreign families, and substitute the words, being a subject of Great Britain, because, as he showed, foreigners could not be bound by our laws ; and that foreign families would take in so many cases that there would be more danger of foreign wars even than of domestic. Sir W. Meredith urged that even the Bishop of Osnaburg, the King's second son, icas a foreign sove- reign prince, and could not be bound by the bill. Should he marry, as he would have a right to do, without the King's consent, and his next brother with it, and the Prince of Wales die without children, there would be a contested succession. Queen Elizabeth succeeded to the crown, though bastardized. Lord North could only say, in answer to this very strong case, that the Bishop of Osnaburg was not an hereditary sovereign, and that his children would be only princes of England. Burke said that the Bishop, as a prince of the empire, could not be restrained from marry- ing. The lines drawn in the bill were loosely, not safely drawn. This was a law to create doubts; till now, laws were made to explain doubts. Wedderburn said, children born abroad of English parents are English subjects still he could not evade the personal case of the Bishop. One or two particulars in the bill he owned must be altered. Charles Fox persisted in asking whether persons not subjects of England came within the Act ? Mr. Jackson said they would. Mr. Sutton and Sir W. Meredith showed the great hardship on younger princes, who, having no appanages, would yet be debarred from marrying heiresses. 1772. ROYAL MARRIAGE BILL. 61 Wedderburn, on the contrary, owned the Act did not mean to bind foreigners, nor could it bind them. Mr. Hussey said, if the Prince of Wales should marry without the King's consent, he would inherit Hanover, though not the Crown of England. Charles Fox urged that, while the lawyers contradicted one another, it was in vain to say, as Wedderburn maintained, that the line was ascertained. This would be the first time that ever a penal law was passed with the lawyers differing. Governor Johnson said there was nothing but confusion and ambiguity in every clause of the bill. Would men lay their hands upon their swords, and say, This is a good cause ? General Conway said he did not think the amendment would answer the purpose, and should not be for it. The Attorney-General Thurlow owned the bill must be altered, according as exigencies should arise. The amendment, though so very weakly opposed, was notwithstanding rejected by 188 to 102, so little were men deterred by a cloud of dangers from pursuing their instant interest ! Mr. Phipps then asked, as the chairman proceeded with the clause, why the Duke of Cumberland had not been punished by the King's prerogative, if the King, as the preamble asserted, had such prerogative ? Was the bill preferred as a safer and surer mischief ? He begged pardon ; the prince had been twice punished ; his horses had been turned out of the Royal mews, and himself for- bidden the Court, according to the text, the cattle and the stranger that is within thy gates} The prince was still of 7 The democracy adopted their own in his sedan to service at St. James's method of commenting on the conduct Chapel, one of the crowd through which of George III. towards his brother the he passed thrust a paper into the royal Duke of Cumberland, for whom he was | chair, on which was written " First supposed to have small affection he go and be reconciled to thy brother, could indeed have but small respect, and then come and offer thy gift." The As the King was going about this time Duke did not lose much by being for- G2 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. MARCH, the Privy Council, and high in the sea service had he been turned out, the question would have been asked who advised the measure, and had sown dissension in the Royal Family ? The Chancellor, he said, was a puppet, while there was one pouring poison into the King's ear, and, serpent-like, slipping his skin every year, as it best suited his purpose. By the words sign manual the House would never be able to get at the person who should advise the refusal of any intended marriage. It was then proposed to leave out sign manual, and insert, shall not lawfully contract matrimony without the King's consent under the great seal. Sir Fletcher Norton said, some alteration was certainly necessary ; he did not know where the bill had originated, nor did he care. He would consider it with propriety and freedom. He hoped to throw out the annulling clause. The notoriety of the King's consent was the great object. Objections rose against eveiy part of the bill. He was for the great seal, rather than the sign manual. Lord North consented to the alteration. bidden the Court, which was unusually dull, considering that two young sove- reigns were at the head of it. One paper remarks that " the Duchess of Grafton is now, in a manner, the only woman of her rank who dances on public occasions at St. James's." Of the little liveliness of other duchesses we have a sample in the case of the Duchess of Northumberland, of whom the London journals report the follow- ing quiet trait, a few weeks prior to the period in the text. "Her Grace the Duchess of Northumberland's somno- lency seems to increase ; and at Court on Saturday she was asleep the princi- pal part of the time she stayed in the drawing-room." The Duchess of Graf- ton above-named was the third duke's second wife, Elizabeth Wrothcsley. They were married in 17G9, and she died duchess-dowager in 1822. The som- nolent Duchess of Northumberland was the once young heiress of the Seymours and Percys, who brought a duoal coronet to her husband Sir Hugh Smithson. While young Grafton danced and the more mature Northumberland dozed at Court, there were men who were not forbidden to appear there like the Duke of Cumberland, but who mostly abstained out of delicacy and their own free-will. "It is remarkable," so runs a paragraph in the papers of the early part of this year, "that the Judges, if we except the Chancellor only, seldom or never attend a levee at St. James's, it being deemed incompatible with the proper administration of the law for the expositors to maintain an intimacy with the Court." For a further account of the above Duchess of Northumber- land the reader is referred to Walpole's ' Memoirs of the Reign of King George III.,' edited by Sir Denis Le Marchant, Bart., vol. i. p. 419. D. 1772. ROYAL MARRIAGE BILL. 63 They then went into much discussion on the annulling of marriages, and registering them ; and it appeared that Royal marriages are not registered. Lord Folkstone said he had heard that the Duke of Cumberland had applied to have his marriage registered, but was told it could not be done unless a herald attended. Burke with humour desired he might have the office of Registrar, and said Lord North could not give him the ministerial answer, that it was promised. It was carried without a division to alter the words. Dowdswell next proposed to omit the conclusion of the clause, and insert part of the Act of Settlement, 8 nothing being so much to be apprehended as a match with a papist. Burke spoke on the hardship put on princes in taking away their right of choice ; and he com- pared them to Gulliver's Strulbrugs, who were immortal, but deprived of the rights of mankind hard condition, to be told you shall be a prince on such terms ! The charter of nature is greater than that of law. God forbid the House should pay greater regard to the dirty books on the table than to the great Creator ! T. Townshend said this was the worst part of the worst bill that had ever been framed ; and Stephen Fox, that innocent children were to be punished for the faults of their parents. Sir W. Meredith said, if Scotland had not been open, marriage, since Lord Hard- wicke's bill, could not have gone on. This bill was equally obnoxious by its certainties and uncertainties. The Royal Family will always be able to find a necessitous clergyman , to marry them, if they pay his poverty though not his will. 9 General Conway said he could neither approve the clause nor the amendment, which he did not think would remove 8 See the Votes. 9 Romeo and Juliet. LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. MARCH, the difficulty. He disliked punishing innocent children. Should a Prince of Wales marry without his father's consent, and have children, would he not on coming to the Crown rehabilitate them ? How many persons in our history had been set aside, and restored by Parlia- ment! He wished to see natural and legal parental authority re-established, but must dissent from both pro- positions. 10 Lord John Cavendish said he had a different doubt; might not a prince, married under this restrictive act, endeavour, if he came to the throne, to have his marriage annulled? T. Pitt said the bill was pure and absolute tyranny. The words heir-presumptive had been adopted, because the heir-apparent would treat this act as it deserved. Was it within the competency of legislation to forbid marriage ? A prince must be doomed to eternal chastity, with guards attending him to make amends for taking away his rights. In Spain, in Portugal, in all countries that admit the Council of Trent, no prohibition of marriage is known. Yet he did not approve the amend- ment, which he thought too severe, nor could he acquiesce in the clause. Should the clause be carried, he would attend the bill no more. He begged that the bill might only be temporary ; he could trust the King ; let future remedies be applied to future evils. Charles Fox said the occasion was pitiful and disgraceful. Did the dignity of the Crown consist in the marriages of the lioyal Family ? Cornwall said he did not expect to hear the strong part of the bill so weakly defended. The man who planned the bill would 10 There was a well-invented story spread about to ridicule Oonway's irre- 8<>lutions : that he went with Charles Fox and others to Breslau, the conjurer, who told persons what card they had thought of. He told all the rest directly ; but when Conway presented himself, Breslau said, " Oh ! here is something very odd ! Sir, you have not fixed upon a card ; you first thought of the knave of clubs, then of the aco of hearts, and then of the nine of diamonds, but you have not determined on which." 1772. ROYAL MARRIAGE BILL. 65 never have credit in this country. What magic could induce the House to be for that clause ? Rose Fuller said, if the bill was temporary, it could not be mischievous ; he was for limiting its duration. Charles Fox, perceiving the Ministers would not argue, yet maintained the clause, said artfully, he perceived Lord North's friends had abandoned his defence. They, however, stuck to him with their votes, for the amendment was rejected at midnight by 197 to 140. Then for two hours and a half followed great confusion ; the Opposition dividing for adjournment, the Ministers for going on, by which, as on the foregoing day, they only lost time, as they sat too late to meet the next day. The Speaker was grown a strong opponent, and carried Fred. Vane and Dundas with him into the minority. He wanted a peerage for his wife, a lieutenant-colonelcy for his son, and to be Chancellor himself, but lost the Court, was given up by the Opposition, and left alone the next day. The bill was finished in the Committee on the 2Qth t though again sitting till two in the morning, after a dull de- bate, both sides having exhausted their fire. Burke wished to offer an amendment to the last clause which had been passed the preceding day, for which he had laid in his claim; but Dyson and the men of order denied that the clause could be resumed. Eigby, who had shrunk from the contest, took this opportunity of showing some zeal, and, though with many compliments to Burke, contested his right of amend- ing a clause passed. Herbert 1 exclaimed on the want of candour and justice ; and Burke said they were adding to the bill fraud, violence, and folly. Surely there had been enough of the lion's skin in the act, without adding the fox's tail, and piecing it out with the ass's ears. Dowds- 1 First cousin of the Earl of Pembroke, and a very conscientious young man. VOL. I. F 66 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. MARCH, well asked if they meant a Prince of the Blood should ask the King's consent after twenty -five? Would not the King's refusal prejudice the Parliament against the Prince? Rigby said, he did not believe a King would refuse his consent if asked. Lord North suffered the debate, content to reject the proposition by vote, which was done by 103 to 48. Dowdswell proposed that the Prince's notification of marrying should lie before the Council but one month, not twelve ; Thurlow said twelve months would give the Prince time to deliberate ; T. Townshend, that it would only give the Crown more time to tamper with Parliament. The amendment was however rejected by 127 to 60. Herbert moved between the words aforesaid and con- tracted to insert lawfully, to which Lord North objected, but made another slight alteration, to which the Com- mittee agreed. Lord John Cavendish moved to leave out the word unless, which motion Sir Charles Hotham (a courtier) said he liked, lest Parliament might be drawn in to shelter King or minister. Lord North said he never knew a great question carried by surprise. Burke asked him if the House had not been surprised into thanking Dr. Nowel but the other day? It was a vain hope, a Parliamen- tary cheat, and delusive power that was held out to the Prince who was to ask the consent of the House, and a power that belonged to neither King nor Parliament. If the Crown should dissent, would Parliament consent? Should a Prince of Wales ask their consent, and they re- fuse, and he still marry, what a hardship to members to disoblige the reigning or the future King ! how hard too on any woman a Prince might wish to marry, to have all that relates to her and her family discussed in Parliament ! 1772. ROYAL MARRIAGE BILL. 67 She would be liable to the most absurd examination of her morals, person, history, health, constitution, &c. T. Townshend saying this would clash with the Regency Act, Rigby answered (and it was the best argument given for the bill) that the existence of the Regency Act was a strong argument for the present bill, for, unless this should pass, persons of the Regency might get a match for their family with the Royal family, unless Parliament could in- tervene. Lord John's amendment was rejected by 196 to 107. They went then on the clause of Pramunire. Mr. Herbert said, " We are now come to the clause of Pras- munire, a very fit clause to close this infamous piece ; " and moved to leave out the whole clause, in which he was seconded by Sir George Colebrook. Sir Fletcher Norton strongly attacked the clause, and called on the gentlemen of the law, who he concluded had been consulted, to attend to what he should say. If the Committee thought as he did, they would see the absurdity, nay, impossibility, of passing the clause as it then stood if he had got a true copy of the bill, which he doubted, because it was so absurd. It set forth that the punishment was to be accord- ing to the statute of Richard II. for provision of prremu- nire. Now that Act expressly sets forth the word Prce- munire and not provision ; so that, if the word "provision" remained, there was no such statute as that mentioned in the present bill. Cornwall said, as they were passing a heavy clause, he wished to know whether the parties them- selves contracting a marriage were included in the prsemu- nire ? Lord North answered positively, they are not in- cluded in it. Mr. Rigby said the words were the same as in the Regency Act. Sir Fletcher Norton said he pro- tested against any imputation on his conduct; if they F 2 68 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. MARCH, would leave the words so, be it so. Charles Fox asked Lord North with what face he could tell him that a prince who should contract a marriage contrary to this bill would not be guilty of a praBmunire ? That clause was a tacit confession of the weakness of the nullity. I was told privately a most memorable circumstance, and from very good authority. The Ministers chose to leave the clause with the error the Speaker had pointed out, in order that nobody might be punished a secret they probably did not tell the King. They said the same error had been made designedly in the Regency Bill, which I do not quite believe. It was more like Lord Mansfield's chicanery to adopt the error, which is like what is done on outlawries, and of which he had profited to annul Wilkes's outlawry, than like Lord Plardwicke's severity. The clause was retained by a majority of 179 to 112. Rose Fuller would then have moved his clause, but Lord John Caven- dish persuaded him rather to do it on the report, as it was then so late. The House adjourned to the 23rd. On that day Fuller renewed his motion for a clause to confine the duration of the bill to the King's life. He had talked, he said, with men of all sides, and all thought that the Act ought to be but temporary. This was opposed by Lord North and Mr. Rice, 2 who said the marriages of the Royal family will always be matter of public concern. T. Townshend said all the advocates for the bill had con- fessed that Parliament must interpose some time hence. What made the bill necessary at this time? Lawyers would have time to consider the bill more maturely. Mr. Curzon, though a Tory, spoke for the clause. Sir H. Houghton said the King's message had given great jea- Ooorgc Rice, a Lord of the Admiralty, and son-in-law of Lord Talbot. 1772. HOYAL MARRIAGE BILL. 69 lousy : it had given him great uneasiness. He opposed the bill from conviction : the bill had given great jealousy. Lord North said the clause was worse than any part of the bill, and also went from the usual practice of Parliament. It was not right to trust one king with a power that is not fit to be trusted to all kings. It would not be difficult to recover the power of marriages : to give it for a time would be invidious. There would be danger in having the law expire. The best time to make the law is when the princes are too young to marry. Pie himself had been very well acquainted with the drawing of this law. Any gentleman might move to alter it next year. The law, if not a good law, would not last even during the life of the present King. Colonel Jennings said it was safer to grant away a lease than an inheritance of power. Mackworth said this was the first time he ever heard of a bill made with a view to its being repealed. Colonel Burgoyne said he could give a conscientious vote for the bill ; yet he had spoken against the preamble, had then stayed away, and had then been ordered to go and vote for the bill. General Conway applauded Burgoyne's manly honesty (with a sneer) : there was no rule for an honest man but to act as he felt. It was not a parliament if it did not reject the bill. He had been told that all who voted for the bill were against it in their private sentiments. It had been said, even to him Why take a part in this bill in the situation you are in ? you are but one, why not do as others do ? You cannot turn the fate of the bill ! why break through your connexions? He would answer, if this bill were adopted, the Parliament was no longer a parliament. After Rome fell there was a form of parliament, but only the skeleton. He would never, in any great constitu- tional question, be confounded in the mass of courtiers. He 70 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. MARCH never knew any bill call more for attention. If the Minis- ters would adopt any other limitation, he would be for it. At present they were making bad laws to have them repealed. The opinion of the Judges was against the bill. This bill established the old prerogative, and all its appur- tenances would come back with it. They were not called upon penal laws ; and of all laws he ever knew, this most called for limitation. Thurlow chicaned in answer, and had the front to affirm that the King asked nothing, but that the House pressed him to accept this act for his life : there lay the adulation, he said. Did Mr. Conway think that his taking one part, and other gentlemen another, de- stroyed the essence of Parliament ? It was better to be against the bill than endeavour to smother it obligingly. Conway replied, that he had said gentlemen had differed from themselves, not from him. He had also said that he had been told that he was not to break into parties nor divide from his friends ; but he detested the odious prin- ciple of having one opinion in public and another in private, which was the case of all the Ministry on this bill. He knew opinions were carried where they ought not to go, and where they were misrepresented. The question for the clause was put at a little past nine at night, and rejected by 150 to 132, a majority of only 18 ! Fourteen persons were shut out who had not thought the division would happen so early, and twelve of them would have voted for the clause a formidable hint to the Court that the free spirit of the nation was not yet quite broken, and that tyranny could never be established by a majority of eight. Thus had the pride and folly of the Court, and the despotic knavery of Lord Mansfield, \ shaken a Ministry so triumphant, though the Opposition li.ul disbanded itself. On January 21st there had not 1772. EOYAL MARRIAGE BILL. 71 been a negative to the address ; on the 2 3rd of March the Ministry were reduced to a majority of eight ! May arbitrary power have still worse success ! On the 24th the bill was reported to the House, and opposed with vehemence by T. Townshend. The lady Arabella Stuart, he said, was poisoned 3 in the reign of James I. He wondered why the precedent of poison had < not been put into the preamble : it would have made as good a figure there as prerogative. The House was pass- ing this bill, while a prince of the blood 4 was upon a sick bed at Naples, and could not come and protest against it. One brother 5 was married, the other absent, the children of the Crown, infants; could this bill, therefore, pass at present with any propriety ? Let the man 6 who framed this bill apply his notions to the family r to whom they belonged. He hoped the doctrines in it would be driven back to the Star-Chamber, and the author buried in the ruins with them ! If the Pretender, with Lord Dunbar 8 at his elbow, had been here, he could not have planned a bill more dangerous to the constitution or to the liberties of the people. Colonel Barre treated as severely both the bill and its author Mansfield. Though the principle of the bill, he said, was styled regulation, it was in fact pre- rogative. The highest ranks were to be kept in order for , fear of being guilty of an impropriety ; decency was held [ out to the middle degree of people, threats and terrors 3 Bishop Goodman, who censures some portion of the conduct of his master James I. towards this unfor- tunate lady, and justifies other portions, 5 The Duke of Cumberland. 6 Lord Mansfield. i The Stuarts. 8 First Minister to the late Pretender, makes no allusion either to the alleged j and elder brother of Lord Mansfield, poisoning or to the 'alleged lunacy of ; [James; he held the title of Lord Lady Arabella. See his ' Court of I Dunbar from the Pretender, and died King James I.' D. at Avignon, A.D. 1770, aged 80. D.] 4 The Duke of Gloucester. 72 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. MARCH, to the lower sort. As the old Marriage Act would pro- bably be altered, there might have been a clause inserted in it to regulate the marriages of the Royal family, which would have answered every purpose. The bill was not ill-shaped, though a monster ; it had stern prerogative for its head ; for its tail, bloody prsemunire. It had not an English face. Charles II. said King William had an honest face, and therefore he would have him for his nephew. Lord North had worked double sides ; his associates had not supported him ; yet nothing was so con- temptible as the other Ministers sitting still, disliking and abusing the bill, yet giving a steady aye to every part of it. He wished to alarm everybody on the bill : the man who framed it had his budget full of such bills. 9 Nothing but alarming the minds of men could put an end to his influence. In the course of the bill he had observed some sober men quitting the line of their politics, and joining the opposers of it. Mr. Fitzmaurice l said the Ministers had been ordered to defend the bill without an argument. Sawbridge, that the bill had been brought in to satisfy the rancour of a monster, 2 and the resentment of a man. a Lord North had not yet acquired the gift of second sight, though in time he might, conversing as he did with the framer of the bill. Lord Mansfield, for he might name him, had said that juries were not to judge of fact : should he find me, said Sawbridge, guilty of a pncmunire, I should indeed be in a pitiable case ! The bill was founded in iniquity, and would end in a civil war. The Ministers declining all these challenges and just reproaches, and not a breath of defence being even whis- 9 This proved a prophecy ; Lord Mansfield had then drawn the Fopinh codo for Canada, which iu very few years after he promulgated. 1 Brother of Lord Shelburno. 2 Lord Mansfield. 3 The Kiug. 1772. ROYAL MARRIAGE BILL. 73 pered in favour of Mansfield, at five in the afternoon the bill was passed by a majority of 168 to 115, and returned to the Lords, who passed it the next day without a word and without a blush : the bishops even without repentance. Yet had the struggle in the Lower House been so consi- derable, that the minds of true Englishmen were much comforted. They saw the national spirit was not totally gone ; and though the King, amidst all his disgraces, loved > to show his Ministers how little they were independent, and how little they could depend on him, still it was not likely that either he or Mansfield would have spirit enough to return soon to the charge, though neither would aban- don his views. But if the King had shown Lord North that he was not to be trusted, he had on his side expe- rienced that he could not trust his own tools. Even Dyson and Dr. Hay had declined all defence of the bill, the former by silence, the latter by not saying a word but on a point of order. Even fawning Lord Barrington had in private company been so bold as to say the bill would politically unman the Royal family. But a more remarkable secret came out. Very few days before the conclusion of the bill, young Mr. Crawford, mentioned above, told me this story. He gave a dinner to his countryman Alexander Wedderburn the Solicitor-General, to Charles Fox, and others. They got drunk ; and in his cups Wedderburn , blabbed that he and Thurlow had each drawn the plan of an unexceptionable bill, but that Lord Mansfield had said they were both nonsense, had rejected them, and then himself drew the present bill. " And damn him ! " added j Wedderburn ; " when he called my bill nonsense, did he think I would defend him ? " In the course of the debates I have given very inadequate ideas of the speeches of Burke, Charles Fox, and Wedderburn, three excellent 71 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. MAIJOI, orators in different ways. I could only relate what I heard at secondhand, or from notes communicated to me, which must be imperfect when not taken in short-hand. Burke's wit, allusions, and enthusiasm were striking, but not imposing. Wedderburn was a sharp and clear arguer, though unequal. Charles Fox, much younger than either, was universally allowed to have seized the just point of argument throughout, with most amazing rapidity and clearness, and to have excelled even Charles Townshend^ as a parliament man, though inferior in wit and in variety of talents. Lord North did not much shine but by the respect paid to his irreproachable character. Conway's integrity, ever at war with his fortune or his judgment, gained great honour, but his understanding often lost ground by his refining fickleness. Phipps, 4 though not admired, showed much wit. The Speaker confirmed the reputation of his knavery, and lost much of his character for abilities. But enough of that bill ! Never was an act passed against which so much, and for which so little, was said. All this time the public obtained no light into what was passing in Denmark. All that came out was, that about the 13th or 14th the King received a letter from Keith that he hoped by the next post to be able to tell his Majesty that the life of the Queen, his sister, was safe which intimated what bloody designs had been conceived against her. Struensee was under examination, and, it was said, would discover nothing. The Irish Opposition, besides being divided amongst themselves, received a great blow by the defection of Lord Shannon, 6 who sold himself and friends to the Court. At 1 I ''.Most son of Ix>rd Mulgrave. I late Speaker, who Lad also sold him- 6 Jtoylc, Earl of Shannon, son of the | self. 1772. AFFAIRS OF IRELAND AND INDIA. 75 the same time there were ugly disturbances in the north of Ireland. Lord Donegal, a very weak creature, had married a daughter of a Duke of Hamilton. Her aunt, Lady Charlotte Edwin, an avaricious Scotchwoman, re- commended to them a knavish attorney, who went over, and raised the rents with so much harshness and tyranny, thnt the lord brought back 100,000/., and the attorney 18,OOOZ. The poor tenants offered to increase their rents, but the extortioner insisted on heavy fines, which they could not pay, and were driven out starving. They rose in arms to the number of 4000 men, all Protestants, and refusing junction with Papists. The latter still existed, in small bodies, under the title of Whiteboys. Other insurgents, dissatisfied with enclosures, called themselves Hearts of Oak. The new rioters assumed the denomination of Hearts of Steel. With melancholy despair they com- mitted great outrages ; attacked the house of an active justice of peace, who escaped with difficulty, but, as they shot into the house, they killed a clergyman. Three detachments of infantry, under Colonel Gisbourn, were sent against them, and a regiment was ordered from Scotland. 3Qth. The oppressions of India, and even of the English settled there, under the rapine and cruelties of the servants of the Company, had now reached England, and created great clamour here. Some books had been published, particularly by one Bolts and Mr. Dow, the first a man of bad character, the latter of a very fair one, which carried the accusations home to Lord Clive ; and the former represented him as a monster in assassination, usurpation, and extortion, with heavy accusations of his monopolising in open defiance of the orders of the Com- pany, the latter charge being confirmed by letters under 76 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. MABCH, his own hand. To such monopolies were imputed the late famine in Bengal, and the loss of three millions of the inhabitants. A tithe of these crimes was sufficient to inspire horror. The Company now applied to Parliament themselves, desiring some regulation, and this day two of the Directors moved for a bill to reform the courts of justice in India, to send three dictators thither, and to settle appeals to this country. Cornwall, Barre, and others demanded previously a Committee to inquire into the abuses complained of. Mr. Rumbold 6 denied the greater part of the charge, allowed Dow was an honest but disap- pointed man, said much against Bolts, and denied the depopulation of the country. Lord Clive then rose, and in a speech 7 of two hours made a much-admired defence of himself, though he could not wipe off the accusation of monopoly : in some points he cleared himself, but till the examination into facts his bare denial or act could not disculpate him. Lord North said he saw no reason for deferring the bill, but he should not be against a Com- mittee of Inquiry. Burke reproached him with having prepared no plan for settling that country. Leave was given for bringing in the bill. The history of Indian affairs is too vast to enter into the compass of such a journal as this : nor shall I attempt it. Our concerns are become so extensive and so various that they must baffle the knowledge and attention of any single man. What book can contain them ? Into what one narrative will they not throw confusion ? How little 6 This Rumbold went again to India, returned with a vast fortune, and was pronecutcd by the House of Commons in 1782. [The prosecution was, how- ever, abandoned. D.] 7 OIK; of Lord Olive's complaints was that English candidates for writer- whips in India were merely asked if they eoidd " write and cipher," and that an affirmative reply was deemed a suitable qualification for rendering them eligible to become the future administrators of India. D. 1772. CHARGE AGAINST QUEEN OF DENMARK. 77 resemblance between the affairs of America and Bengal ! Who is master of both ? I shall only touch on either as they arise on the scene. Even my Memoirs did not pretend to embrace the whole of our system ; but to assist future historians with such lights as came to my know- ledge. This journal is rather calculated for my owns/ amusement than for posterity. I like to keep up the thread of my observations ; if they prove useful to any- body else, I shall be glad; but I am not to answer for their imperfections, as 1 intend this journal for no regular work. SUPPLEMENT. Articles from the public papers, the truth of which I do not warrant. Hamburgh, Feb. 26th. It is said that the Sieur Struensee, Superin- tendent-General of the Churches in the Duchies of Sleswick and Holstein, was seized with a fit of apoplexy upon receiving the news of his son Count Struensee's imprisonment, and died upon the spot. He often expressed great concern at the rapid advancement of his son ; and when he heard that he was made Prime Minister, he said, with great warmth, that he had rather have received advice of his death. London, Extract of a Letter from Copenhagen, dated Feb. 22nd. Yesterday morning the Commission of Inquiry went to the Citadel, and opened their commission in the Governor's house for the ex- amination of the state prisoners. They began with Count Struensee, who was brought in the Governor's coach about ten o'clock from his place of confinement, guarded by two Serjeants and four grenadiers with their bayonets fixed. He had on a blue suit of clothes, and as he had not been shaved for five weeks his beard was veiy long. At the entrance of the room where the Commissioners sat his chains were taken off, and he was permitted to sit down during his exami- nation, which lasted till two o'clock, when he was sent back to prison ; and at four o'clock he was brought again, when his examina- 78 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. MARCH, tion continued till after seven in the evening. He showed a great deal of uneasiness all the time of his going and coming from exami- nation. All we can learn with respect to his examination is, that he denied the charge that was laid against him. He was shown the instruments of the torture he was to undergo if he would not con- fess ; but he said they would get little out of him by such means, as he always acted according to his conscience. One of the Commis- sioners fell into a passion with him, to whom he replied, " That as he was cool, he hoped they would be so too ;" but at last he burst into tears, confessed his guilt, and begged for mercy. When he was ordered back to prison, he desired to have a little time allowed him to compose himself. Major Falckenschiold is taken into custody, and guarded in his own house by two Serjeants and four soldiers. He wrote a note to his brother the colonel, and gave it to his friseur, who put it under his neckcloth, but the officer observing it took it and delivered it to the Commissioners. The King's messenger, who was sent to London on the 18th of last month (Mr. Brummer), is returned with despatches of conse- quence. Everybody is desirous to know whether the letters that are brought from London to the Queen will be delivered to her at the Castle of Cronenburg. The Cabinet Secretary, Paning, is since his examination closer confined than he was before ; he cannot see his wife nor children. Three Secretaries are appointed to the Commission for the more speedy expedition of the trials of the state prisoners. More persons are taken into custody every day for conspiracy. Since our last arrived the Mails from Holland and France. Copenhagen, Feb. llth. The Commission appointed to try the prisoners of state has published an order that all persons who have received presents from the Counts Struensee and De Brandt in the name of the King and Queen are to return them. The expedition against Algiers will not take place ; in consequence of which the sailors who were here on that account have received passports to return home. Altona, Feb. 18th. The following couplet on Count Struensee is handed about here : Sic Kcgi Mala multa Struens se pcrdidit ipse, Jam vinctus Claustris, qui modo Victor erat. London. The following letter was lately written by the King of Denmark to his Queen : " Madam : I pity your present just fate. Let this prove my last ;nl :i-u. I wish you a sincere and Christian repentance. " CHRISTIAN REX." 1772. CHARGE AGAINST QUEEN OF DENMARK. 79 Extract of a Letter from Copenhagen, Feb. 15th. The examined papers of the state prisoners turn clearly against, them, notwith- standing the Court shows all the lenity possible to them. Yesterday noon the English Minister, Colonel Keith, had an audience of his Danish Majesty, in the presence of his Privy Council, on account of despatches he received from his Court. Two Cabinet Secretaries, two ladies belonging to the Queen, the waiting-woman to the young Prince, the two young Blackmoors that attended occasionally upon the Queen and upon the Koyal Family, and about twenty other persons were this week examined before the Commissioners, and next week the examination of the state prisoners will begin. General Schmidt is appointed ex parte to the Commis- sion of the Inquisition. Admiral Hausen is so far free that he has no guard set over him, but is no^t permitted to go out of his house ; one of the Queen's ladies who was under arrest is set at liberty. On Wednesday morning arrived Monsieur Ernst, Colonel Keith's Secre- tary, from England, who was sent from hence thither the 18th of last month. In the Castle are three rooms fitted up for Colonel Falcken- schiold, Lieut. -General Hesselberg, and Counsellor Sturk. This is done for the convenience of the Commissioners ; the examination of those is to begin on Thursday next, on account that they may be near at hand. Counsellor Sturtz was for the first time under exami- nation on Friday last by the members of the Commission, and was permitted pen, ink, and paper ; after he had written about two sheets they were taken from him by the major of the guard. The Danish Ambassador to the British Court, Baron de Dieden, who had leave of absence, is ordered immediately to repair to London. The two clergymen belonging to the garrison of Helsingor and Cronenburg have received orders from the King to preach by turns before the Queen, the one in German, the other in the Danish language. Letters from Copenhagen mention that the Queen is now per- mitted to walk out two miles' distance from the Castle of Cronenburg. Her name is omitted in the public prayers. 80 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. APRIL. APRIL. 3rd. A MESSAGE being sent from the Lords to the House of Commons, and but one Master in Chancery being in waiting, a clerk was sent down with him, dressed like another Master, which it was said was not unprecedented. How- ever, Mr. W. Burke 1 and Mr." Dempster took this up with great warmth, and complained of it as an indignity, at the same time calling to the memory of the House the insulting manner in which their members had been turned out of the House of Lords the last year; and a later affront this session, when the Speaker had gone up to hear the King's speech, and before the Speaker could retire several Lords 1 had cried out " Clear the House ! " The House grew very angry on these representations, and it was moved, after refusing to hear the messengers, to appoint a Committee / to inquire into the improper behaviour of the Lords. The House was very thin, and few of the courtiers there. Lord North and Sir Gilbert Elliot, seeing the Opposition endea- voured to make a breach between the two Houses, did all they could to prevent it. They represented against the word improper as prejudging the case, and urged that it ought to be seen whether the Lords would not make excuses. It was carried but by a majority of three to omit improper ; but a Committee of Inquiry was voted. 4th. Sir Henry Houghton 2 made a motion in the House 1 Cousin of Edmund. Sec Wulpole's ' Memoirs of George III.,' vol. li. p. 273. D. 11 Member for Preston. 1795. D. He died in 1772. MOTION FOR RELIEF OF DISSENTERS. 81 of Commons in behalf of Protestant Dissenters, in order to take off the obligation on them of subscribing; to the Thirty- nine Articles. As the Bishops would not consent to this, though the penalty was never enforced, Lord North and the Ministers in the Commons, that the members might not disoblige their Dissenting constituents by opposing the relief, determined to take no part, but to leave it to the Lords to throw out the Bill ; on which leave was given to bring it in. It began to be believed that the governing party in Denmark was too narrow, and consequently not popular. The Queen Dowager sent to her father the Duke of Brunswick to consult him on her conduct. He replied, as she had not asked his advice in time, he desired now to be excused from giving any ; nor did he approve of what she had done. It was said, but not so authentically, that she made the same application to the King of Prussia, and received a like answer. Struensee and Brandt had under- gone several examinations, and an account of their execu- tion was expected soon. The insurgents in Ireland dispersed themselves on the approach of the regular forces ; but, as the latter were not numerous, it was feared they would reassemble on the first opportunity. An account came of the Pretender being married at Paris by proxy to a Princess of Stolberg. She was elder sister of the wife of the " Marquis de la Jama'ique," only son of the Duke of Berwick. Those sisters were descended from Thomas Bruce, Earl of Ailesbury, who died an outlaw for King James at Brussels, and one of whose daughters married the Prince of Home. Many persons had believed that the Pretender had turned Protestant a few years ago. General Redmond, a brave old Irish officer VOL. i. G 82 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. APRIL, in the French service and a Eoman Catholic, told Lord Holland that the Pretender had abjured the Roman religion at Liege, and that the Irish Catholics had withdrawn their contributions on that account. This seemed to excuse the injustice of the Court of Rome, which had refused him the title of King, though his family had lost a kingdom for that Church. The Pope had withdrawn the pension paid to the father, only allowing the Cardinal of York to give up his pension to his brother, who was now said, but I doubt it, to have 25,000/. sterling a-year. His marriage in a family connected with the bigoted house of FitzJames did not look as if he was turned Protestant. When the bride approached Rome, the Pretender went to meet her at Loreto, and first conducted her to a villa of Cardinal Marefoschiati Macerata, and thence to Rome, where, the moment he was arrived, he notified to the Cardinal Secre- tary of State and to the Maestro di Camera his return colla Regina sua Consorte. This gave great offence, and his messenger was told that no such person could be in Rome. His insisting on her assuming the title of Queen, contrary to her own and the Cardinal of York, his brother's, earnest entreaties, was a cruel circumstance on her, as it condemned her to live in solitude with him, who was drunk half the day and mad the other ; for as the Pope would not acknow- ledge him or her for King or Queen, the Roman nobility, sufficiently proud, would not pay her the honours he re- quired, and consequently could not visit her. 7th. Wilkes and Bull, six months of their sheriifalty being expired, published a very bold letter in the news- papers, in which they not only vaunted their services by attention to prisoners, &c., but boasted that they had got the better of the arbitrary prosecutions of printers by the House of Lords, who no longer dared to punish them for 1772. FOX'S MARRIAGE BILL. 83 publishing the debates. The latter spoke, too, of the Mar- riage Bill, of the Lord Mayor, &c. 7th. Though I had never been in the House of Commons since I had quitted Parliament, the fame of Charles Fox raised my curiosity, and I went this day to hear him. He made his motion for leave to bring in a bill to correct the old Marriage Bill, and he introduced it with ease, grace, and clearness, and without the prepared or elegant formality of a young speaker. He did not shine particularly ; but his sense and facility showed he could shine. He said, the two great points of the former bill were to fix the notoriety of marriages, and to prevent improper marriages by esta- blishing a nullity. He approved the first; he highly con- demned the second. To encourage marriage by facilities was the business of a republican kind of government ; but the late bill had been the work of a proud aristocracy, and he believed had hurt propagation, though he was not ready with proofs that it had. Colonel Burgoyne, a pompous man, whose speeches were studied and yet not striking, seconded him. Lord North, who had declared he would not oppose the introduction of the new bill, now unhand- somely opposed it, to please the Yorkes and the Peers, and spoke well. He said, formerly the bill had been matter of speculation ; it was no longer so : twenty years had shown its utility ; it ought not to be laid aside unless proofs could be brought that it had done hurt. T. Townshend supported the motion. Ellis, who owned he had been strongly against the old bill, said he had been converted to it in many points (by Lord North's supporting it), but should not oppose considering how to amend it. Ongley and Cornwall were, the first for the old, the second for the new bill. Cornwall 3 3 He was afterwards Speaker of the House of Commons. The Eolliad alludes to his porter- the session of 1789 ; and was succeeded by Mr. (afterwards Lord) Grenville. D. drinking propensities. He died during G 2 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. APRIL, was a comely sensible man, decent in his manner and matter, but of no vivacity. Burke made a long and fine oration against the motion ; for Burke was certainly in his principles no moderate man, and, when his party did not interfere, generally leaned towards the more arbitrary side, as had appeared on the late debates on the Church, in which he had declared for the clergy. He laid his chief stress on the impropriety of allowing men to beget children till they were of an age by strength and prudence to maintain them. He spoke with a choice and variety of language, a profusion of metaphors, and yet with a correctness in his diction that were surprising. His fault was copiousness above measure, and he dealt abundantly too much in establishing general positions. Two-thirds of this oration resembled the be- ginning of a book on speculative doctrines, and yet argu- ment was not the forte of it. Charles Fox, who had been running about the House talking to different persons and scarce listening to Burke, rose with amazing spirit and memory, answered both Lord North and Burke, ridiculed * the arguments of the former and confuted those of the latter with a shrewdness that, from its multiplicity of reasons, as much exceeded his father in embracing all the arguments of his antagonists, as he did in his manner and delivery. Lord Holland was always confused before he could clear up the point, fluttered and hesitated, wanted diction, and laboured only one forcible conclusion. Charles Fox had great fa- cility of delivery ; his words flowed rapidly, but he had v nothing of Burke's variety of language or correctness, nor his method. Yet his arguments were far more shrewd ; 4 He said ingeniously that the clan- destine marriages made in Scotland hod prevented some of the bod effects of the hill ; and vet that he disliked those marriages, because, by preventing those mischiefs, they had prevented the re- peal of the bill. He maintained what Burke had denied, that it was an aristo- cratic bill ; and ho asked if it was the mildness of the aristocracy that had saved the bill, when a repeal of it had twice passed the House of Commons ? 1772. FOX, TOWNSHEND, AND BURKE. 85 he was many years younger. 5 Burke was indefatigable, learned, and versed in every branch of eloquence. Fox was dissolute, dissipated, idle beyond measure. He was that very morning returned from Newmarket, where he had lost some thousand pounds the preceding day. He had stopped at Hockerel, where he found company, had sat up drinking all night, and had not been in bed when he came to move his bill, which he had not even drawn up. This was genius was almost inspiration. Being so extremely young, he appeared in that light a greater prodigy than the famous Charles Townshend. Townshend's speeches for four or five years gave little indication of his amazing parts. They were studied, pedantic, and like the dissertations of Burke, with less brilliancy. When he attained his maturity he exceeded everybody. Charles Fox approached to Charles Townshend only in argument. Though Towns- hend grew idle, he had taken pains. Both could illuminate themselves from the slightest hints ; but Townshend's wit exceeded even Burke's, and was abrupt and unprepared, which Burke's was not, and he could shine in every science, in every profession, with a quarter of Burke's application. All three were vain, and kept down by no modesty. Towns- hend knew his superiority over all men, and talked of it ; Fox showed that he thought as well of himself; Burke endeavoured to make everybody think so of him. Burke had most ambition, and little judgment; Townshend no judgment, and most vanity ; Fox most judgment in his speeches, and none of Townshend's want of courage and truth. If Fox once reflects and abandons his vices, in which he is as proud of shining as by his parts, he will excel Burke ; for of all the politicians of talents I ever * Burke was born in 1730 ; Fox in 1749. D. 86 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. APRIL, knew, Burke has the least political art. None of the three was well calculated to command adherents. No man could trust or believe Townshend ; and though he would flatter grossly, he would the next moment turn the same men into ridicule. Fox was too confident and overbearing ; Burke had no address or insinuation. Men of less talents are more capable of succeeding by art, observation, and assiduity. The House dividing, Lord North was beaten by 62 to 61 a disgraceful event for a Prime Minister. Since he would oppose Fox's motion, contrary to his decla- ration, he ought to have taken care to have his members about him ; but he daily showed that he was only a sub- servient minister ; the Scotch cabal and the Tories could sway him as they pleased, and his negligence demonstrated that he followed their dictates, not his own objects. In fact, he disliked his post, and retained it only from hopes of securing some considerable emoluments for his family. He was indolent, 6 good-humoured, void of affectation of dignity, void of art ; and his parts and the goodness of his character would have raised him much higher in the opinion of mankind, if he had cared either for power or applause. Two strong objections against the old bill came out, which called loudly for reconsideration. Lord Mansfield had expressed doubts on the clandestine marriages in Scot- land, and had advised some persons married there to be Lord North sometimes slept in the sciously carried off Welbore Ellis's wig House ; sometimes only feigned to sleep ; (who sat before him) on the handle of and at others wished he were able to his dress-sword. About this time he sleep. Burke, on one occasion, when was elected Knight of the Garter ; and Lord North was in as deep a slumber he practised the charity enjoined by the during a debate as the Duchess of rules of chivalry, by a distribution every Northumberland at a royal drawing- Sunday morning, at the door of his resi- room, referred to him under the figure dence in Downing-street, of broken of Lazarus sleeping. It was on one of victuals and five shillings and three hia sudden awakings from a fit of som- pence to each of twenty poor persons nolency that, in starting up, lie uncon- there assembled by order. D. 1772. GRANT TO LORD ROCHFORD. 87 married again legally. The other was still more crying : a young man could marry, complying with the other forms, by swearing he was of age. Should it come out twenty years afterwards that he had sworn falsely, whether by design or by ignorance, the marriage would be null, and his children irretrievably bastards. Lord Rochford obtained a grant of an island near Pennsylvania, which he immediately sold for 20,000^. It was an island off Pennsylvania, and came out to be the property of Mr. Penn, who was called before the Council and asked what he had to say in behalf of his pretensions ? He replied, " a great deal, for the island was his." He was asked in what time he could make out his right ? He said he would endeavour to prove it in six weeks. They allowed him six days ; but they soon found he was in the right, and Lord Rochford lost his grant, which he had only sold conditionally. I was told it was given him as a bribe to take the Lieutenancy of Ireland ; but I am not sure of the fact. Indeed, nobody cared to go thither, though the insurrection was suppressed, and several of the poor wretches found guilty, whom it was difficult not to pity, though they had committed great outrages and barbarities, from their oppressions. 9M. The Report was made to the House from the Com- mittee appointed to inquire into the illtreatment of the Speaker and Commons by the Lords. The Speaker, who was in exceedingly bad odour for veracity, had deposed much less before the Committee than he asserted in the House, which gave room to the ministerial party, who feared a breach with the Lords, to excuse the latter, and to resist two motions made by the Opposition one for sending back the bills unpassed, the other for a conference. Both were rejected by above two to one, and a resolution was carried 88 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. APRIL, to represent to the Lords that their behaviour, having been unusual, it was hoped would not be drawn into precedent, the Commons desiring a good correspondence with them. The Lords answered that they were equally desirous of harmony, and should give no occasion to interrupt it. 13th. Colonel Burgoyne moved for a Committee to inquire into the abuses in India. It was discussed, rather than opposed, till eleven at night. Lord North said he did not understand those affairs, and wished to have them examined for his own information : Lord Clive defended himself by affirmations. A Select Committee of thirty-one was ordered to be chosen by ballot ; they were chosen, and sat during the holidays. Great insurrections at Sudbury, Colchester, and Chelms- ford, on the immoderate dearness of provisions/ 7 These food-riots extended to Lon- don. The conduct of the mob at nearly every locality where a riot occurred was systematic. It was their custom to seize meat and other provisions brought to market ; sell what they seized, at a low price (beef, for instance, at 3d. per pound, when the market tariff quoted it at ll^d.), and give over the produce to the owners. At this period the condition of the middle and lower classes was one of extreme dis- tress. They found little sympathy on the part of the "fashionable classes," very few of whom set a wholesome moral example to the " order " beneath them. In the very midst of the dis- tress alluded to above there was a rage for masquerades. At one of these li- centious entertainments, given at the I '.: ni In mi, it was calculated that not less than 10,000 guineas had been ex- pended by the revellers in dress and other luxuries. The trade of the me- tropolis would have profited by this to a certain extent, had payment of lia- bilities been a recognised duty of the time. As a sample of the sort of | i- BOJW, and their conduct at these orgies, I may cite from the various reports in different journals the.presence of groups of gentlemen from the universities, some of them attired as " Tom-fools, with cap and bells ;" of clergymen who gained applause for originality by try- ing to represent "old sober hackney- coachmen ;" and of ladies, the Duchess of Ancaster at their head, in male attire. " Dr. Goldsmith " is named among those who masqueraded in an " old English dress ;" and after lists of noble ladies, descriptions of their attire, and praises of their wit and beauty, we find a sample of the easy virtue of the times in the presence of very infamous women " with their young ladies," who are eulogised for their good taste in appearing as "a lady abbess and her nuns." The gentlemen present were not more nice of speech to the noble ladies from court than they were to the Delias from Drury-lane. The licence of speech, action, and allusion was some- thing astounding. At the Pantheon tin excited crew generally finished by breakfasting, at daylight, on the re- mains of the supper, and then going home " gloriously drunk." At the masquerades in Soho-square, at break of day, after a supper marked by hard 1772. CONDUCT OF THE DANISH MINISTER. 89 Attacks began to be made in the papers on Madame Schwellenburg, the first of the Queen's two German ladies, as a powerful favourite. A strong fleet was now fitted out, and universally sup- posed to be destined for the Baltic, to protect the impri- soned Queen of Denmark, whose cause now wore a very melancholy aspect. Struensee was said to have confessed everything, and it was thought she would be divorced, if not brought to a trial. The King would not speak to Baron Dieden, the Danish Minister, at his levee. Dieden behaved impertinently, standing out in the circle and laughing at the King to the Prussian Minister. Dieden's wife was just arrived, but did not go to Court, nor did any of the Court ladies visit her. Hill, the most prudent, thought, or, at least, hoped, that the fleet was only intended to intimidate the Danes, but would not sail, as the King of Prussia would certainly march an army immediately to Hanover, and thence a new war be lighted up in the north. On the 22nd counter-orders for suspending the preparations were sent to Portsmouth. drinking and filthy singing, " which no lady need leave save those who are too immodest to stay," as the formula ran, the custom was to fling open the win- dows and pelt the eager, hungry, thirsty, and howling crowd below with half- empty bottles and the remains of the supper. The very Queen of Beauty at these demoniacal orgies was young Ger- trude Con way, niece of Walpole's friend General Conway, daughter of Francis, first Marquis of Hertford, and only just married to George Villiers (Earl of Grandison). She was the Queen of Fashion as well as of Beauty ; and she excited the greatest admiration by giv- ing frocks and tambour waistcoats, as undress livery, to her servants, and by the splendour of her chairmen, who never carried her abroad without feathers in their hats. This " fast " young wife died in 1782, in only the thirty-second year of her age. In this lady masquerades lost their great patroness. This species of entertainment was never encouraged by George III., at whose request Foote abstained from giving one at the little theatre in the Haymarket. There were some curious scruples entertained even by people of pleasure at this time. The most fashionable of them appeared at the theatre in Lent attired in mourn- ing ; and at the same season masque- rades were considered as out of place ; but these scrupulous persons found a method of reconciling their sense of re- ligion with their taste for dissipation. " In LemV' says Bramston, the satirist, " In Lent, if masquerades displease the town, Call 'em ridottos and they still go down." D. 90 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. APRIL, The King, as Lord Hertford told me, had certainly ordered the fleet to sail ; and a near relation of Lord North told me that the latter had not been acquainted with that intention. Lord Mansfield, therefore, who had now got the King's ear, or Lord Sandwich, First Lord of the Admiralty, must have been consulted. The latter, though I should think he could not approve it, was capable of flattering the King's wishes ; Lord Mansfield assuredly would. The destination was changed on the arrival of a courier from Denmark, who brought word that the Queen was repu- diated, and, I suppose, a promise that her life should be saved ; for though the Danes had thirty ships, and the best seamen next to ours in Europe, and though we were sending but ten against them, the governing party were alarmed, probably from not being sure their nation was with them. The Queen had confessed her intrigue with Struensee, and signed that confession. When the counsellor who was to defend her, went to receive her orders, she laughed and told him the story was true. They gave her the title of Countess d'Aalbourg, and condemned her to be shut up in the castle of that name. The King of England had certainly known her story two years before, a clerk in the Secretary's office having opened a letter that came with the account, and told that he had seen it before the Secretaries gave it to the King. It was now believed that that intelligence had occa- sioned the Princess of Wales to make her extraordinary journey to Germany, where she saw her daughter, though to no purpose. Princess Amelia told Lord Hertford on the 26th, that when the King of Denmark was in England, observing how coldly he spoke of his wife, she asked him why he did not like her ? He answered, " Mais elle est si blonde!" The Princess added that Queen Matilda had a very high spirit that she believed the Danes would con- 1772. COMMITTEE FOR INDIAN AFFAIRS. 91 sent to let her go to Hanover ; " but she will not be let go thither," added the Princess meaning that the Queen's brother, Prince Charles of Mecklenburg, commanded there " or to Zell ; but she will not go thither another of the Queen's brothers was there ; perhaps she may go to Lunenberg." The Select Committee for Indian affairs began with great warmth. Governor Johnson, Lord Clive's great enemy, called witnesses against his corruption. Lord Clive said he thought this inquiry had been to regulate those affairs, but found it was for accusation. Sir Gilbert Elliot replied, they could not regulate without going to the bottom of abuses. 92 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. MAT, MAY. 1st. THOMAS BRADSHAW kissed hands as Lord of the Admiralty, in the room of Charles Fox a promotion much censured, from the dirty character of the man ; but he had great weight still with the Duke of Grafton. 1 The same day Lord North opened the budget of Ways and Means. 2 Two frigates were now ordered to sail for the Queen of Denmark and carry her to Stade in her way to Zell, where the Danes consented she should reside. The King ordered them to be furnished royally from the Lord Chamberlain's office. Lord Suffolk had been a chief actor to natter the King in promoting the intended expedition to Copenhagen, and Lord North was supposed not to have pleased by opposing it. Account of a Prussian army being marched into Polish Prussia, even with the consent of the Emperor 3 and Czarina. An armistice agreed on between the Russians and Turks to treat of peace. 3rd. Madame Dieden, the Danish Minister's wife, was presented to the King and Queen. 7th. The account arrived of the execution of Struensee 1 Seo Sir Denis le Marchanf s re- marks in Walpole's Memoirs of George III., vol. iv. p. 68. D. * Lord North declared he thought it likely that we should have no war in ten years, and tliut by that time we should pay off seventeen millions. Had the fleet sailed to Denmark it would have spoiled the pacific prophecy. 3 The King of Prussia had reduced the Emperor to this acquiescence, hav- ing previously bought up all manner of forage, and half starved the Emperor's army. 1772. DISSENTERS' DISABILITIES. 93 and Brandt. Each had his hand cut off, and then was beheaded. After Struensee had lost his hand he resisted, and was executed by force. The King was made to sign the warrant for his execution. Query if true that he re- sisted ? No. Bradshaw, when he stood for his re-election, was opposed by a West Indian, who bribed the corporation, and was returned. Bradshaw petitioned, and, though the Parliament was to adjourn immediately after the King's birthday, the Ministry determined to keep it sitting to hear the cause. This was much censured, and added to the unpopularity of such a fellow's promotion. 18th. Charles Fox's Marriage Bill, on which he had given himself no trouble, having taken away all restraints but the single one of a register, was thrown out without a debate by 93 to 34. He arrived from Newmarket just as his bill was rejected. The same night the Duke of Gloucester arrived from Italy, quite recovered. The Dissenters, though the penal laws were never exercised against them, were with reason uneasy at their remaining in force, and had now petitioned to be exempted from them. The Bishops as obstinately insisted on re- taining the power of persecution, though they declared against exerting it why then should they keep it ? The Ministers, afraid of disobliging the Dissenters before the general election, suffered the bill to pass the House of Commons, hoping the loss would be imputed to the Lords only, and not to Members of Parliament. Lord Gower accordingly gave notice that he would oppose it, and did on the 19th. The Duke of Richmond, in a speech of nearly two hours, warmly attacked the Bishops on their Jesuitic spirit, LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. MAY, want of candour, and scandalous love of power and money ; 5 and he read many quotations in favour of toleration from Bishop Warburton's * Divine Legation and Doctrine of Grace.' Warburton, 6 formerly a heretic, had now driven the bishops upon this opposition to toleration ; then changed his mind, and declared he would not attend the bill. His friend Dr. Heberden,* the physician, went to him, and told him, if he had changed his mind, he ought to declare it like a man, but would lose all character if he absented himself. He went to the House, but did not mend the matter, for he made no reply to the Duke, but said he scorned to answer or to stay away. Hay Drummond, Archbishop of York, Terrick of London, Hinchcliffe 8 of 5 The poets had long before attacked the prelates in the same spirit which marked the speech of the duke. Paul Whitehead was, perhaps, the most vi- gorous of these satirists. In his ' Man- ners ' he thus writes : " In vain behold yon rev'rend turrets rise, And s.ir inn's sacred spire salute the skies ! If the lawn'd Levite's earthly vote be sold, And God's free gift retail'd for Mammon-gold, No rev'rence can the proud cathedral claim, But Henley's shop and Sherlock's are the same." D. 8 Walpole'g estimate of Warburton partakes of the prejudices of his con- temporaries. The reader may consult Kurd's biography for a more correct, yet not entirely laudatory, judgment on the same subject. At the period re- corded in the text the bishop was a remarkably venerable and dignified old man, but as arrogant and intolerant as ever he had been. His infelicitous style and perplexed arguments exposed him to charges of heterodoxy. He pos- sessed more learning than wisdom, and could not well apply that which lie possessed. Bentley remarked of him that he had " a monstrous appetite, but a very bad digestion." An anonymous epigrammatist wrote of him : " Great to your wisdom. Sir, no doubt ; Siirpass'd by very few ; Who fttrtke not only now lights out, But all the old ones too." He was still more roughly handled by Churchill. Witness the famous pas- sages in the ' Duellist,' of which the fol- lowing lines are a part : " He was so proud that, should he meet The twelve apostles in the street, He'd turn his nose up at them all, And shove his Saviour from the wall. He wrote, too, of the Holy Ghost, Of whom no more than doth a post He knew ; nor should an angel show him, Would he, or know, or choose to know him." Warburton died in 1779, at the age of fourscore and one. D. 7 Heberden was one of the most able and most virtuous men of his day. His great work, the ' Commentaries on the History and Cure of Diseases,' gained for him a posthumous, but a world- wide, fume. It was he who outbid a publisher for the copyright of a scep- tical work by Dr. Conyers Middleton, offered for sale by the doctor's widow. On receiving the manuscript he com- mitted it to the flames. Heberden died in 1801 ; he was then above ninety-ono years of age. D. 8 Hinchcliffe was the son of a livery- stable keeper, and was educated at West- minster, of which school he was ap- pointed head-master in 17G4, through the piilronnge of the Duke of Grni'ton. He married the sister of his liberal friund and pupil, Mr. Crewe. Hindi- 1772. DISSENTERS' DISABILITIES. 95 Peterborough, Lowth of Oxford, 9 and Barrington l of Landaffe, opposed the bill. Terrick said he had letters from several Dissenters expressing content with the bill as it stood. Lowth took up the affair in a spirit of revenge, declaring he would not favour the Dissenters, became they \ would not receive Bishops in America. Lord Shelburne said that he was Secretary of State when Archbishop Seeker had straggled for an American Bishop, and that both the Archbishops Seeker and Drummond had been with him; and when he had urged how unwelcome a Bishop would be to the Dissenters, they had both assured him that the Dissenters did not object to it. This Drummond could not deny. Lord Chatham, who had not appeared this whole session, answered the Bishops with many ironic compliments, severity, yet temper, and with more know- ledge of their affairs than all of them together possessed. He said they had talked much of the system of the Church of England; but it had no system. He would in three cliffe had been employed by the latter to persuade the lady not to entertain the suit of an officer in the Guards ; and he did this so effectually that the lady graciously listened to his own, and be- stowed on him a hand that carried a large fortune with it. The prelate was strongly opposed to the American war. He acquired the surname of the " Bloody Bishop " in 1774, being the only mem- ber of the episcopal bench who sup- ported severe measures against the Arminians. Hinchcliffe died in 1794, aged sixty-three. D. 9 The great episcopal contributor to biblical literature. His well-known work on Isaiah has been pronounced " the best book in the world after the Bible." In his controversies with War- burton it would be difficult to say which of the disputants exhibited the greater amount of ill-temper. Lowth was some- thing of a courtier ; but he was an up- right prelate. He refused to institute a clergyman to a living who (he knew) had signed a bond of resignation. The law-courts condemned the bishop ; but the House of Lords ultimately declared in his favour by a majority of one. He died in 1787, aged seventy-seven. D. 1 The brother and biographer of Vis- count Barrington. He was promoted from Llandaff to Salisbury, and subse- quently to Durham, of which diocese he died bishop in 1826. Shute Bar- rington was a good and liberal man, who found it better to give than to re- | ceive. He was a firm anti-Komanist ; always examined candidates for holy orders himself; and on one occasion settled 5001. a-year on a relation, ex- pressly to keep him out of the Church, on which the bishop thought his kins- man would reflect little credit. D. 96 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. MAY, words explain the whole to their Lordships. Their Thirty-nine Articles were Calvinistical, their Creeds Papistical, and both the Church and Dissenters were every day approaching nearer to Arminianism. Socinus was the reverse of our Bishops. He had set out wealthy, and died poor. Lord Lyttelton spoke on the same side with more applause ; the Lords Bruce and Radnor with the Bishops. The Bill was rejected by 73 to 23, and with proxies by 102 to 27. Lord Camden did not speak; Lord Mansfield, for I know not what timid or trimming reason, voted in the minority, as did Lord Talbot. This subject occasioned Lord Barrington to expose himself, as he often did, especially by his letters. His father had been reckoned the head of the Dissenters, whom he sold and betrayed to the Court. Some of the present Dissenters waited on his son, desired his interest, and intimated their wishes that his brother the Bishop would at least absent himself. Lord Barrington, with all the frankness of duplicity, pleaded his own and brother's situations as ties that obliged them to oppose the bill ; but added, that the Bishop believed the Thirty-nine Articles no more than he did. This made a noise, and came to his brother's ears, who was angry and disavowed the imputa- tion. The Dissenters charged Lord Barrington with what he had said. He returned a written answer, in which he 1 said his brother, like a Pope, whether he believed or not, must defend his own Church. I must now enter into a curious detail relative to the Royal Family and my own. On the 19th of May I re- ceived the following letter from my brother Sir Edward Walpole : 1772. LADY WALDEGRAVE'S MARRIAGE. 97 DEAR BROTHER, Pall Mall, Tuesday Evening, May 19, 1772. I owe it to you in friendship, and your kindness to my children 2 gives you a kind of paternal right to be informed of every event of consequence to them. I have this moment received an express from Lady Waldegrave, with the Duke of Gloucester's permis- sion to acquaint me with their marriage, which was in 1766. The clergyman s who I always thought married them called here this morning, but would not come up, as I had a good deal of company, but pressed to see Mrs. Clement, 4 who was gone to Ham to Lord Dysart He said he would come again to-morrow. I had not then received the express, but figured to myself that his visit was on account of the marriage, for I have no sort of acquaintance with him. I fancy he will be here to-morrow ; and I suppose we are to settle what is proper to be done for the security and proof, for they will not yet awhile make it public, or she take the title ; which probably will be best till they have taken time to see what the K. will do in it. I think it incumbent upon me to communicate it to you as early as I know it myself; And am very affectionately yours, ED. WALPOLB. P.S. This is confusedly wrote, as I have people with me, and have but just got her letter. I was a good deal embarrassed at the receipt of this letter. I had opposed the match till I had found it was to no purpose; and had continued steadfastly to avoid * Sir Edward Walpole, second son of Sir Robert Walpole, Prime Minister and Earl of Orford, was never married, but by Dorothy Clement, of Durham, a milliner's apprentice, had four natural children : Edward, who was in the army, and died in 1771 ; Laura, mar- ried to Dr. Frederick Keppel, Bishop of 1 Exeter and Dean of Windsor, fourth son of William Anne, Earl of Albemarle ; Maria, first married to James, second Earl of Waldegrave, Knight of the Garter and Governor of King George VOL. I. III., and secondly to his Royal High- ness William Henry Duke of Glou- cester, third son of Frederick Prince of Wales ; and Charlotte, of whom her mother died in childbed, and who was wife of Lionel Talmache, Lord Hunting- tower, eldest son of Lionel Earl of Dysart, whom he succeeded in the title in 1771. 8 Mr. Baddeley. This was a mistake ; they were married by a Dr. Morton, as will appear afterwards. 4 Aunt of Lady Waldegravo. H 98 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. MAY, having any hand in it. I was determined still not to avail myself of an alliance that I had condemned, nor to pay court to my niece when she had carried her point, since I had declined doing so while her situation was un- certain. On the other hand, as I concluded the Duke of Gloucester would be forbidden the Court, like the Duke of Cumberland, I had no sort of inclination to engage in a quarrel with the King and Queen in support of a cause that I had disapproved, especially as my taking part for my niece would seem to contradict all my declarations. I did not desire to be abandoned by all the world like the Luttrells, and reduced to live almost in solitude with the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester, who would not love me for what was passed. Nor was I pleased with the Duke of Gloucester, who had recently mortified my particular friend Sir Horace Mann, Resident at Florence, by un- merited slights. I determined, therefore, to act as neutral a part as I could, and at once decline all share in the honours or disgrace of my niece. This was a conduct, I own, more prudent than affectionate or heroic ; but I was cured of sacrificing myself for others : I had done with the world, and wished to pass in tranquillity the remainder of a turbulent life, in which I had given proofs enough of spirit and disinterestedness. For these reasons I the next morning sent my brother this letter 5 in answer to his : DEAR BROTHER, Arlington Street, May 20th, 1772. I am much obliged to you for the mark you have given me of your friendship in acquainting me with Lady Waldegrave's marriage ; and I give you many thanks for the justice you do me in believing that I interest myself extremely in the welfare of all your children. Though entirely out of the secret of the match, I never doubted 5 Never before printed. D. 1772. LADY WALDEGRAVE'S MARRIAGE. 99 it, from the long conviction I have had of Lady Waldegrave's strict virtue and many excellent qualities; since it is accomplished, I hope in God it will prove as great felicity to her as it is an honour to her and her family. When I have said this with the utmost truth, it would be below me to affect much zeal and joy for the attainment of an object which, at the beginning, I said all I could to dissuade her from pursuing, on the sincere belief that it was not likely to tend to her happiness. When I found I had no chance of pre- vailing, I desisted ; and, having no right to question her, I forbore all mention of the subject. For her sake I did not approve the connection ; for my own I could take no part in it, without being sure of the marriage. As both friendship for her and regard for my own honour dictated this conduct, I can neither repent it nor deny it. Your daughter, I think, has too nice a sense of honour herself to blame me ; and the Duke of Gloucester, I hope, will not be sorry that his wife's relations (for it is justice to you to say that you have always been more anxious about her character than her fortune) were infinitely more afraid of any disgrace that might happen to her, than they were ambitious of an honour so much above their pretensions. It is not to make my court that I say this. I have no vanity to gratify ; I have no wishes that were not satisfied before. I receive the honour done to the family with great respect for the royal person who confers it, but with no pride for myself, having never aspired above the privacy of my situation. To you and to your daughter I sincerely hope the event will prove a source of great happiness, and shall always be, with proper de- ference for her, and with cordial good wishes for her and you, Dear Brother, yours most affectionately, HORACE WALPOLE. To this Sir Edward answered as follows : Wednesday, May 20, 1772. If I had seen you to-day I should have shown you a letter which 1 cannot resist sending you a copy of, to be preserved among your valuable collection of papers ; in which, or any other top company, I think it highly deserves a place, for it strikes me as one of the sweetest samples of sense, language, and goodness of heart that I ever saw. H 2 100 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. MAY, At the same time it will be a necessary information to you of what they wish to be our conduct on the occasion. The substance of it, though not put together so well as it is in that letter, was what I wrote to her about a year and half ago, intended for his perusal And it was my way of thinking from the beginning ; for, as you very kindly observe in yours of to-day, my solicitude was for her good, not her great name. And, indeed, if she were Queen of England, I do not believe, as near as St. James's is, that ever I should go thither. 6 Yours, &c., E. W. P.S. Be assured she has the highest respect for you imaginable. Lady Waldegraves letter to her father, Sir Edward Walpole, on occasion of her marriage with the Duke of Gloucester. St. Leonards, May 19, 1772. MY DEAR AND EVER HONOURED SlR, You cannot easily imagine how much every past affliction has been increased to me by my not being at liberty to make you quite easy. The duty to a husband being superior to that we owe a father I hope will plead my pardon, and that, instead of blaming my past reserve, you will think it commendable. When the Duke of Gloucester married me (which was in September, 1766) I promised him upon no consideration in the world to own it even to you without his permission ; which per- mission I never had till yesterday, when he arrived here in much better health and looks than ever I saw him ; yet, as you may suppose, much hurt at all that has passed in his absence : 7 so much so, that I have had great difficulty to prevail upon him to let things as much as possible remain as they are. To secure my character, without injuring his, is the utmost of my wishes ; and I dare say that you and all my relations will agree with me that I shall be much happier to be called Lady Waldegrave and respected as * Sir Edward lived so very retired a life that he had not at this time stirred out of his house since the 13th of the preceding December, when he hod ar- rived from his seat, Luxborough, in MB, 7 The King, by trying to hinder the declaration of the Duke of Gloucester's marriage, or to prevent it by the Mar- ria^i' Hill, was the cause that the Duke now owned it. 1772. LADY WALDEGRAVE'S MARRIAGE. 101 Duchess of Gloucester, than to feel myself the cause of his leading such a life as his brother 8 does, in order for me to be called your Royal Highness. 1 am prepared for the sort of abuse the news- papers will be full of very few people will believe that a woman will refuse to be called Princess if it is in her power. To have the power is my pride ; and not using it in some measure pays the debt I owe the Duke for the honour he has done me. All I wish of my relations is, that they will show the world that they are satisfied with my conduct, yet seem to disguise their reasons. If ever I am unfortunate enough to be called Duchess of Glou- cester, there is an end of almost all the comforts which I now enjoy, which, if things can go on as they are now, are many. I sent my brother word tbat I had been ready to kiss his daughter's hand, but was now ready to kiss her feet ; and I advised his showing her letter confidentially to some few, only omitting what related to the Duke of Cumber- land, whom she ought not to offend. That my brother said not too much of this inimitable letter, every one who reads it must confess. It struck me with astonishment, admiration, and tenderness and, I confess, with shame. How mean did my prudence appear compared with hers ! which was void of all personal con- siderations but of her honour. What proper spirit ! what amiable concern for and gratitude to her husband ! what scorn of the Duke of Cumberland, of rank, of malice, and (at least implied) of the King and his power ! what sense in her conduct ! Address how laudably employed ! This letter proved two things. I have always thought that feeling bestows the most sublime eloquence, and that women write letters better than men. I, a writer in some esteem, and all my life a letter-writer, never penned any- 8 The Duke of Cumberland. 102 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. MAY, thing like this letter of my niece. It is great, it is pathetic, it is severe, and it is more than all these it is | the language of Virtue in the mouth of Love. She wrote a letter to her sister Dysart that did not breathe total self-denial. That she recounted with pleasure the magni- ficent presents the Duke had brought her was natural, was not to be blamed. Other expressions intimated further views. She desired her sister to make confidences of her marriage to persons likely not to keep the secret nor was even this faulty. The vindication of her character justi- fied her eagerness to have the secret, so long and painfully concealed, known. She acquainted Lady Dysart with the Duke's intention of having a levee, which he had never practised, and requested her sister to publish that intention. Of the King, she said, " he seems not to have courage enough to be angry with the Duke, 9 but he will wound him in the dark, though he dare do no more." Her letter concluded with desiring Lady Dysart to omit the word Dowager in the subscription of her letters, which, said Lady Waldegrave, I cannot bear ! These symptoms convinced me that the natural ambition of her temper would not long be smothered. Lady Waldegrave, with ; many and great virtues, was impetuous, and from her childhood ambitious. While a girl, she had often said she would be a lady. Her father, to correct her, asked her " How that could be, for she was a beggar ? " "Then," said she, " I will be a lady-beggar." -She was Lord Hertford told me the King hoped to prevail on the Duke not to declare the marriage publicly, and con- fessed he thought the King afraid of who shunned the younger brother for marrying Luttrell's sister, would flock to the Duke of Gloucester if forbid- den the Court. Even the Queen must quarrelling with the Duke, who was I fear disobliging the Duke of Gloucester, very differently respected from the Duke who, if the King died, would, under her, of Cumberland ; the Opposition, too, ! preside in the Council of Regency. 1772. LADY WALDEGKAVE'S MAERIAGE. 103 very pious, charitable, sincere, frank, and friendly, but warm and resentful ; her sense strong, her wit ready and very pointed ; yet from the time of her marriage with the Duke of Gloucester she had conducted herself with singu- lar humility and attention to all sorts of persons, and, except by the ostentation of her expense, had given no indication of her feeling herself a princess even her mag- nificence was the less striking, as she never had had any idea of economy. To her daughters 10 she was an excellent mother, blending the greatest tenderness with the most sensible education. On the 23rd I received this note from her : MY DEAR SIR, My father writes me word that he showed you my letter, and that you approve of my conduct, which is an addition to my present happiness. The same day my brother wrote to me, with an account of the great respect and court which Lady Waldegrave told him had been paid to the Duke by all sorts of people, and that he intended to have a levee, to which he had expressly desired Sir Edward would not go, as it would distress him, the Duke (from the difficulty of receiving or not receiving him as a father). Sir Edward, alluding to his own retired life, answered with humour, that, if he were to appear, people would certainly think he was dead. 11 Of the levee my brother said he informed me for my own judgment, who knew best whether I would or should go to it. Of this difficulty I was already well aware. Lady Waldegrave's noble conduct had captivated me, and I was determined to take her part in the most disinterested manner. Still, as she did not declare her marriage openly, 10 By Lord Waldegrave she had three daughters, the Ladies Laura, Maria, and Horatia. 11 t. ., would take him for a ghost, as he had not been seen in the world so long. 104 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. MAY, it was by no means proper or consistent that her family should proclaim it ; and as I had never waited on the Duke, and had besides always declared that I never would go to him till I was certain my niece was his wife, not his mistress, my appearance would be the most clear avowal of the marriage. The case seemed to me too delicate to risk the decision myself. I consulted my brother ; he was clearly, nay, positively, of opinion that I ought not to go, and desired I would send his daughter my reasons. I said, " No ; I did not care to take so much on myself." "Then," said he, "say we both think so." "No," re- plied I ; "if you please, I will say you think so." He said, " Pray do." I went home and wrote to my niece, stating the case, telling her her father's opinion and desire, and yet referring it to the Duke and her to order what I should do, whether appear at his levee or not. This was my letter, 1 in which I meant to show all manner of respect to the Duke, and even to my niece, now become my superior, and withal a proper and spirited sense of what I owed to myself: My DEAR MADAM, Arlington Street, May 24, 1772. It is very true what your father has told you, that I never was so struck with admiration of anything as I was with your letter to him. It shows the goodness of your heart, of your understanding, and of your conduct ; and a greatness of mind that makes you worthy of your fortune. You will not think this flattery, for you know I am incapable of flattering you and it cannot be designed as a compliment to your rank, when I approve, as I do exceedingly, your waiving it. The Duke of Gloucester has thence a satisfac- tion that few princes taste the conviction that you married him from inclination, not from ambition. I do not ask your pardon for having opposed that inclination, because I did it from fearing 1 Now printed for the first time. D. 1772. LADY WALDEGRAVE'S MARRIAGE. 105 it would not tend to your happiness. Nor can I repent ray conduct and silence since ; you cannot disesteera me for it, and his Royal Highness cannot be sorry to have found that his wife's relations had too much honour to be proud even of his favour to you till they were satisfied of your marriage. The Duke, I hear, is to have a levee on Thursday ; as I would not dare to take any liberty, and cer- tainly would as little omit any mark of veneration and gratitude to his Royal Highness after the honour he has done to the family, I went to your father to consult him on what would be most proper for me to do. Having never had the honour of being presented to his Royal Highness or of kissing his hand, it would be pre- sumption in me to approach him without that testimony of duty ; but at the same time, as the motives of my past absence are well known, my going through that ceremony just now would be a positive declaration of my being assured of your marriage. Sir Edward is clear that such a step at this time would be the most improper imaginable, and very repugnant to that amiable and wise moderation you have adopted, and he bid me tell you how wrong he thinks it would be for me to go to the Duke's levee. Let me beg you, therefore, dear Madam, to acquaint his Royal Highness with the reasons why I am not one of the first to express my zeal and gratitude, together with my joy for his recovery and return. I have the utmost respect and attachment to his person, the more sincere as I have no views, no ambition, no pride to gratify. My wishes are completely satisfied in your having acted as became the names you bore. The accession of dignity without your excellent qualities would never have made me, so much as I am, either in affection or respect, Your most obedient humble servant, HORACE WALPOLE. To this letter I received a very civil letter from my niece, approving my non-appearance at the Duke's levee, and telling me she had communicated to him what I had said. At the same time she expressed great uneasiness at having heard tbat her father had shown her letter ; which he had done with so little caution that the very words of it almost were quoted about the town. He had, 106 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. MAY, in particular, shown it to one Touchet, a broken merchant of a very bad character, but much in his esteem, and much more connected with Lord Holland, to whom he imme- diately reported the contents, as well as to many others. The Duke was exceedingly hurt at this indiscretion, and Lady Waldegrave complained to her father of that im- prudence. Sir Edward owned the charges, but, having seen me so pleased with his daughter's letter, concluded I had been as little guarded as himself, and imputed the publicity of it to me as well as to himself. I, who, as the reader has seen, had been over-circumspect from the very beginning of the amour, was astonished when my brother told me what he had written to his daughter ; but on my giving him various proofs how little foundation there was for his involving me in the charge, he handsomely pro- mised to clear me to Lady Waldegrave, and I myself sent her a minute account of the caution I had observed. My brother Edward, father of the Duchess of Glou- cester, and second son of Sir R. Walpole, Prime Minister to George I. and II., and afterwards Earl of Orford, was a man of excellent parts and numerous virtues ; the first he buried in obscurity and retirement, the latter he never failed exerting. He had great natural eloquence, wit, humour even to admirable mimicry, uncommon sensibility, large generosity and charity. He drew well, but seldom, was a profound musician, and even invented a most touch- ing instrument, which, from the number of its strings, ho called a pentachord. All these engaging qualities and talents, formed for splendour and society, were confined to inferior companions, for he neither loved the great world, nor was his temper suited to accommodate himself to it, for he was exceedingly passionate, jealous, and impatient of contradiction, though in his later years he acquired 1772. SIR EDWARD WALPOLE. 107 more mildness. He wrote several small pieces occasion- ally both in prose and verse, a very few of which were printed, but never with his name, for no man had less parade. In pathetic melancholy he chiefly shone, espe- cially in his music, and yet, though his ear was all har- mony, his verse was more replete with meaning than it was sonorous. His father he idolized ; to his children he was magnificently liberal ; to his friends, dependants, servants, profuse; and so far from arrogant to inferiors, he was over-ceremonious. This tribute to his virtues I pay with pleasure, and it may be credited, for to me he was never affectionate, though, but for one short period, we always lived on fair terms. 2 After the commencement of the American war he took a turn in politics very afflicting to almost all his family, and, as we thought, to the principles in which he had been educated those of the Revolution. He grew a warm Royalist, though at the time of the General Warrants he had embarked zealously with the Whigs against the Court. For his change we could never clearly account : I am sure it was from no abject selfish motive ; he never had been ambitious, nor was interested, nor ever stained withthe slightest taint of corruption ; but from what observations I could make, I believe the follow- ing were his chief inducements. The profligacy of Wilkes made the first impression, and, recollecting the unprincipled opposition to his beloved father, Sir R. Walpole, Sir Ed- ward grew to see all opposition in the same light. The death of his great friend Mr. Legge broke off his connec- tion with the Whigs, and the apostacy of Dr. Butler, whose friendship he inherited from Mr. Legge, for whom Butler had written more than one Whig pamphlet against * See Cunningham's 'Letters of Horace Walpole,' voL i. p. 355-360. D. 108 LAST JOURNALS OP HORACE WALPOLE. MAY, the Court, contributed in my opinion to the alteration in my brother, at whose request I recommended Butler to Lord Hertford for a King's chaplain, Butler professing, as he had a good fortune, that he wished but for a feather, and desired neither deanery nor bishopric, only the honour of preaching before the King, he being an esteemed preacher. Yet no sooner had this unambitious priest en- tered on his new office, then he became one of the most servile of his cloth, and by a zealous Fast Sermon and other courtly acts obtained a bishopric, though Dr. Porteus outstripped him by a grosser dose of flattery at the same \ time and on the same occasion, and got the first nomina- tion a preference which Butler, who had lately borne being cut for the stone like a hero, bore like a woman. 3 I suspect that Butler owed his mitre a little too to poisoning my brother's principles; a most welcome offering to the King when he was persecuting my brother's own daughter and son-in-law, the Duchess and Duke of Gloucester. Her, Sir Edward loved above his other children and though he often exclaimed against the King's ill-treatment of her, yet nothing could shake his zeal for the King or his inveteracy to the Opposition. The Duke of Gloucester once said to me, "I wonder how your brother and you, who are of such different parties, can agree." I replied, "Sir, I beg your Royal Highness to be easy ; I give you my word you shall never hear of a quarrel between my brother and me. I know I can command myself with him ; I never do contradict him." The Duke's prudence kept him more easily from any dispute with his father-in-law, whom indeed he rarely saw, for Sir Edward even to him did 3 Dr. Porteus was appointed to the bishopric of Chester in 1776, at the re- quest of Queen Charlotte, to whom, during an illness, he had officiated as private chaplain. D. 1772. SIR EDWARD WALPOLE. 109 not go twice in a year. Nor did the Duke take a declared part in politics, for, though ill-treated by his brother, he received little attention from the Opposition, except from a very few. The noble generosity, too, of Sir Edward to the Duchess could but exact gratitude from the Duke. A story I will relate of Sir Edward will exemplify many parts of the character I have given of him. When Frederick Prince of Wales first came to England, Sir Edward Walpole was one of his favourites, and constantly a performer at his private concerts. When His Royal Highness began to glance towards Opposition, he endea- voured to persuade Sir Edward to absent himself from the House of Commons on the question of the army. He refused. The Prince pressed to know why he would not oblige him. " You will never forgive me, Sir," said Sir Edward, " if I give you my reasons." " By God, I will," said the Prince, who was walking about the room with his arm round my brother's shoulder. Sir Edward replied, jestingly, " By God, Sir, you will not yet I will tell you, that I will not stay away, because your father and mine are for the question." The Prince flung from him in anger ; but the Princess Royal, who was at the harpsichord, and heard what passed, cried out, " As I am a musician, I may i say, bravo, Mr. Walpole ! " (he was not then Knight of the Bath), " bravo ! " The Prince stomached the refusal and the reason more ; and at his next concert asked the several hired performers whether they had played the night before at one Lancetti's benefit, and then, strutting up haughtily to Sir Edward, put the same question to him, as if he was a fiddler by profession. Sir Edward started with rage, and, running to the bell, rung it violently, and, a page entering, bade him take away a base viol and call his servants. The Prince asked what he meant, and whether he was going LAST JOURNALS OP HORACE WALPOLE. MAY, away? He said, " Yes ; he would be affronted by no man living." " You are mad," said the Prince : " come back." " Never, Sir, never," replied he; "never, as long as I breathe." The Duke of Rutland, and other persons of rank, who were present, endeavoured to soothe Sir Edward, but away he went with proper indignation. The story getting wind, the Prince sent Hedges, his treasurer, to ask Sir Edward if he had set it about ; but he proving firmer than was expected, Hedges, instead of using any menaces, made many excuses in the Prince's name, and by his Royal Highness's order pressed him so much to wait on the Prince again, that Sir Edward, finding the satisfaction as honourable as he could desire, went to the Prince's next birthday. After the death of Sir Robert Walpole the Prince ordered Sir William Irby to write to Sir Edward, and press him, now at liberty, to join his Royal High- ness's Opposition. Sir Edward, in answer to Sir William, begged him to ask the Prince how his Royal Highness would have him behave when he should be King ; and in that manner would he (Sir Edward) behave under King George then living. The Prince had candour enough to cry out, " He is an honest man, and I will keep his letter." He did so ; and Sir Edward having made him a present of a valuable Cremonese violoncello, the Princess of Wales after her husband's death ordered it to be care- fully locked up, and said to her son, the present King, then a boy, " George, that instrument was given to your father by a man from whom I will show you a letter. When you are King get him about you, if you can : you cannot have an honester man." 4 4 By way of further illustration of this royal-household life I add the fol- lowing, which is now before mo in a note in the handwriting of Mrs. Piozzi. "The character of George III. was uniformly moral, and uniformly discreet. 1772. DUKE OF GLOUCESTER'S LEVEE. Ill Having enlarged this account, I will relate a story which was told me this summer, 1772, by her Royal Highness Princess Amelia. She told me that having, one day when his Majesty was a boy, done something to please him, the Princess Dowager said to her, " Madam, you are very good to my children ; but, Madam, if you was to lay down your life for George, George would not be obliged to you." On the 28th the Duke of Gloucester had his levee, which was exceedingly crowded. It was called an atten- tion to the nobility and foreign ministers, &c., who had been officious in their inquiries after him on his return. Perhaps he had a mind to feel the pulse of the public. On his arrival he had scarce spoken to any of the ministers ; and though the King affected much kindness to him, the least observing courtiers took notice how coldly and sul- lenly the Duke received his Majesty's advances. At his levee he was more gracious, though to Lord Mansfield he spoke with irony. To the Opposition, to General Conway, and above all to the Duke of Richmond, who had warmly opposed the Royal Marriage Bill, he was remarkably courteous. His brother Cumberland he visited and, in truth, it was their common interest to support each other. Lady Waldegrave, who felt acutely the hurt the Duke of Cumberland's marriage had occasioned to her, and Mrs. He was what we call a ' steady boy ' in early youth. A confidential friend, and natural son, indeed, of one of my uncles, was about the court when Prince Fre- derick of Wales died. He told my mother the following story. The Prin- cess was sitting, one day of her early widowhood, pensive and melancholy; her two eldest sons were playing about the room. 'Brother,' said the second boy (Edward, Duke of York), ' when you and I are men grown, you shall be married, and I will keep a mistress.' ' Be quiet, Eddy !' replied the present King (George III.), ' we shall have anger presently for your nonsense. There must be no mistresses at all.' ' What you say?' cries old Augusta; 'you more need learn your pronouns, as the preceptor bid you do. Can you tell vat is a pronoun ?' ' Yes ; very well !' re- plied Prince Edward ; ' a pronoun is to a noun what a mistress is to a wife, a substitute and a representative !' " D. 112 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. MAY, Keppel, her sister, still more warm, had expressed much acrimony against the Duchess of Cumberland, who, from the first declaration of her wedding, had assumed un- common state, as far as she could find opportunities ; but their diminutive court was so shunned that she was forced to bestow her hand to be kissed by her menial servants. Her brother, Colonel Luttrell, burned with impatience to see her and himself of more consequence. If that could not be obtained, his next wish was to annoy the Court. An occasion presented itself. The exorbitant impositions of the tradesmen of London had induced many of the nobility to import goods from France. The Ministers of smaller foreign courts, whose pay is scanty, taking advan- Itage of their sacred character, were turned notorious smugglers, 5 and, without paying duties, kept warehouses of contraband commodities. Haslang, the Bavarian Minister, who maintained himself for above thirty years by gaming, smuggling, and selling protections against arrests, 6 and the envoys from Venice and Naples, were the principal offenders. The cabinet-makers, who aspired at monopolising frauds, were outrageous at those dignified The Spanish ambassador was almost , against the ambassadress for smuggling, the only envoy from a foreign court who | but sent the package through the post- disdained to turn his exalted office to trading purposes. His idea of an am- bassador was, that he should rather watch over the honour of his own country than derive profit to himself by dealing in furniture or pictures. The office. It was charged by weight, as a letter, and the postage, amounting to a formidable sum, was paid without obser- vation. D. 8 Count Haslang was guilty of a much viler proceeding. He had for strictures on the alleged speculations of I very many years hired a house for which the half-brother of the Emperor of the I the landlord could get no rent from him. French, the Count de Mornay, in Russia, ' His public character saved him from were made in the spirit of the old Span- ish envoy. Not very many years since, a package directed to a French am- bassadress in this country was acci- being arrested. The poor man at lust offered to relinquish what was duo to him, provided Haslang would quit and give up the house. Haslang, sanctified dentally opened at the custom-house, j by the inviolable law of nations, re- ftnd found to contain French gloves, at fused to be even so honest a rogue as to that time liublc to an exceedingly heavy compound with the man he had op- duty. The authorities did not proceed ' pressed. 1772. PETITION AGAINST SMUGGLING. 113 interlopers, and drew up a petition to Parliament for redress. Luttrell, who had not forgotten the arts of his antagonist Wilkes, presented himself to the complainants, offered to carry their petition to the House of Commons, and did, at the head of a multitude of clamorous trades- men. Not content with winning their hearts, he carried the war into the very quarters of the Court. He trembled, he said, for the safety of the heir of the Crown. The House was amazed. Yes, continued he, the Prince of Wales is often at the house of the principal smuggler ; and as the mob some day or other, provoked past bearing, will indubitably attack and demolish that palace of contraband commerce, the life of the successor himself may be in danger ! No man guessed the meaning of the rant. Lord North asked at whom it was levelled. Luttrell, in a more than half whisper, which, from the silence of curiosity, was heard distinctly by the whole House, named Lord Hol- derness, the governor of the Prince, who, with his wife/ was indeed a notorious dealer in prohibited merchandise. As the session was so near a conclusion, Lord North begged the petitioners to respite their demand of redress till the next winter, when he promised he would endeavour to correct the abuses complained of, with which assurance they departed satisfied. 7 Lady Holdemess, in Mr. Grenville's i seized. Her lord becoming afterwards administration, had occasioned the put- ting the laws against contraband goods into rigorous execution, having at one journey from Paris imported one hun- dred and fourteen gowns, which were Governor of the Cinque Ports, she carried on a smuggling intercourse at Walmer Castle, on the coast of Kent, for importing French clothes and furni- ture for herself. SUPPLEMENT. VOL. I. I 114 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. MAY, SUPPLEMENT. (For the Public Advertiser, May 8, 1772.) To THE RIGHT HONOURABLE THE LORDS COMMISSIONERS OF THE ADMIRALTY. MY LORDS, Having seen in last Saturday's paper that Mr. Bradshaw was appointed to be a member of your Board, give me leave to con- gratulate your Lordships on the event, as a person of Mr. Bradshaw's birth and talents may be of the greatest use to you on many occa- sions, besides adding infinitely more weight and dignity to the Board ; I was therefore a good deal surprised at the simple manner in which his well-merited promotion was announced to the public, but must attribute it either to his own modesty or the printer's ignorance ; but whatever be the cause, I think it necessary to acquaint you, his brother Lords, with a little of his history. It is needless to trouble your Lordships with an account of his birth or education, as the first might be a very difficult task, and the latter your Lordships may see has not been neglected. His first appearance in the great world was as one of Lord Barrington's domestics, from whence he moved to Ireland, set up a shop, and, under the influence of a happy planet, returned to England, where, by means of his uncommon address in administering to the pleasures of the great, he was appointed one of the Secretaries to the Treasury, which office he held during the Duke of Grafton's administration, and by exerting his happy talents between his Grace and the cele- brated Nancy Parsons, he so far ingratiated himself with the Duke that he became his chief confidant, and was privy to the whole of his generous treatment of that young lady, and of course became his Grace's bosom friend ; for which service he first received a pension of fifteen hundred pounds a year for three lives, and, that not being suffi- cient, is now made one of you. I cannot avoid again congratulating you on the acquisition of such a brother member, as it is to be hoped ho will assist any of your Lordships with his good offices upon all occasions. I have the honour to be, My Lords, Your Lordships' most humble and obedient servant, Pall Mall. ARTHUR TELL-TRUTII. 1772. AFFAIRS OF DENMARK. The Duke of Grafton's ambition was to be at the head of the Admiralty, and he had insisted on Bradshaw being placed at that Board as a spy on Lord Sandwich, and to learn the business, that he might be his Grace's Secretary there, if he could obtain the com- mand. It came out afterwards that he belonged more to the Court than to the Duke of Grafton, though the Court had no objection to have it believed that he owed his promotion to that Duke. Extract of a Letter from Copenhagen, dated April 30. " In my last I gave you an account of the execution of Counts Struensee and Brandt, but, through hurry, omitted to mention the crimes they were charged with, which are as follows : Struensee was convicted of having embezzled from the King's coffers almost six tons (?) of gold, amounting to 125,OOOZ. sterling ; of having expe- dited many orders from the Cabinet without the King's knowledge ; of having been guilty of criminal conversation ; of having kept from the King and never delivered to him several letters sent to his Majesty, &c. Count Brandt was convicted of having been privy to Count Struensee's criminal conversation, and all his other crimes, without divulging them, and of having laid violent hands on the King's Majesty, &c. The scaffold on which the above criminals were executed is ordered to remain on the place where it now is for a month longer, from which circumstance it is supposed that some more of the state prisoners will suffer death. The Colonels Falcon skiold and Hesselberg are brought to the apartments in the citadel wherein Struensee and Brandt had been confined." The following was published by somebody attached to the Court, but I do not know that it is authentic: May 26, 1772. The last letters from Copenhagen advise that the sentences against the unfortunate Struensee and Brandt are just published, but, instead of satisfying the public, have excited a general compassion for them, and an abhorrence of their barbarous execution; and, in short, they are now looked upon as victims of state, sacrificed to the ambition and hatred of their enemies. These letters add, that the Queen Carolina Matilda was preparing to set out for Hanover towards the end of the present month. Letters from Hamburgh by yesterday's mail advise that the lower order of people at Copenhagen, who had been irritated to the highest pitch by the discourses of Dr. Munter against the Counts Struensee and Brandt, had taken another turn, in consequence of which it was said to be determined by the Court that there should i 2 116 LAST JOURNALS OF HOEACE WALPOLE. MAY, be no more executions. These letters add, that the articles ex- hibited against the two Counts were only general charges of their intentions to get the whole power of the kingdom into their hands, but that it seemed very improbable any such thing was intended. The following account of Count Struensee is transmitted from Hamburgh. The Count was born at Halle on Aug. 5, 1737 ; his father was pastor to the parish of Ulric. He began his first exercises in a public school in that city, after which he was removed to the University there, where he studied physic and received his doctor's degree. In 1757 he went with his father to Altona, where the latter was appointed first pastor, with the title of Ecclesiastical Counsellor to the King. Soon after the son was appointed physician to the Signiory of Pinneberg and of the county of Eantzau ; here he practised his art with great success, and was in such a situation as to have lived happily, contentedly, and esteemed ; but how few can properly enjoy the precious state of mediocrity ! In 1768 he was appointed physician to the King, and chosen to accompany him on his travels to England, Holland, Germany, and France; this unhappily was the beginning of his greatness. He accompanied his Majesty throughout and gave him the greatest proofs of his zeal and attachment, and had more than one opportunity of exercising his skill in the medical way both on the King and Queen ; his assi- duity and address soon gained him the affections of their Majesties, and the King appointed him his reader ; on the 12th of May, 1769, his Majesty invested him with the character of Counsellor of State, two days after with that of Counsellor of Conference, and in De- cember following appointed him Master of Eequests. In the month of July, 1771, he was declared Minister of the Cabinet, and at the same time raised to the dignity of a Count, and invested with the order of Queen Caroline Matilda ; so that he enjoyed his height of greatness little more than six months. It is false that he was accused of diverting to his own use fifteen tons of gold from the Treasury, it being only six ; but when his accusers were at work it was as easy to write the one sum as the other. The Queen, Struensee, and Brandt had acted like mad people ; they certainly gave the King laudanum frequently ; and yet, if he did not go to bed so soon after supper as they chose, Brandt used to kick him out of the room. Other instances appeared on the trial of similar indignity. Sir Robert Keith, after his return, owned to a person from whom I had it, that the junto certainly had meant by drugs to hurt the King's understanding. 1772. BRADSHAWS PETITION. 117 JUNE. ON the 3rd the Duke of Richmond, to keep up the Opposition disavowal of the legality of the last election for Middlesex, moved to reconsider the resolution of the Lords on that question; and the motion, as usual, was rejected with little debate, and by a large majority. 5th. A Committee for hearing the merits of Bradshaw's petition was chosen. The whole Opposition made a point of not attending, that there might not be 100 Members present, the necessary complement ; but the Ministers, by private application, procured 112 to meet; and four days after the Committee decided the election in favour of Bradshaw. This man, of the lowest extraction, coarse manners, and clumsy figure, had the confidence to take the Duchess of Grafton out to dance at a ball at Lady Hillsborough's. Somebody asked if he had lately learned to dance where grown gentlemen were taught? Lady Bridget Lane asked in return, where he had learnt to grow a gentleman? On the 6th the King put an end to the session. The Bill for regulating the affairs of India had been dropped from the difficulties of forming it, and the Committee of inquiry into the mismanagements and abuses in that country was postponed till the next session. The same day, the 9th, was heard, in the King's Bench, the cause of Alderman Townsend against the collector of the land-tax, which Townsend had refused to pay. 1 JSerjeant 1 See Supplement at the end of June. 118 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. JUNE, Glynn, counsel for Townsend, urged the nullity of the Parliament by the irregularity of the last Middlesex elec- tion, and that consequently the land-tax was not a valid Act. Lord Mansfield adhered to the Act, declared Glynn's argument nothing to the purpose, and ordered the jury to find for the collector, which they did, as every- body expected they would. Lord Mansfield betrayed the greatest symptoms of fear when he sat in the Alderman's cause, and soon after gave another instance of his timidity. It was in a memorable cause between a black slave and his master, the former claiming the freedom of England after being brought thither. The Chancellors Talbot and Hardwicke had given an opinion formerly against slaves. Lord Mansfield now for a little popularity, after first advising the affair to be made up, gave judgment in favour of the slave, but advised procuring an Act of Parliament. Whether this was to soothe the master, or to get slavery confirmed by Act of Parliament, cannot be decided, but his arbitrary disposition countenanced the belief of the latter. }3th. Lady Waldegrave came to me with her sister Dysart, from Ham House. 2 She told me the Duke of Gloucester had not been able to find a moment for de- claring his marriage to the King, who would not be alone with him a minute. I did not like this : it showed either timidity or irresolution in the Duke. The Duke of Cum- berland had behaved with much more spirit when he married Mrs. Horton, as Lady Waldegrave now told me. The Duke of Cumberland went to the King with a letter in his pocket containing notice of his wedding. After walking some time in the garden with the King, the Duke 1 Seat of the Earl of Dysart, near Richmond. 1772. THE KING'S FALSEHOOD. 119 gave him the letter. The King put it into his pocket, saying, " I suppose I need not read it now." " Yes, Sir," said the Duke, "you must read it directly." The King had no sooner read it than he broke out in these terms " You fool ! you blockhead ! you villain ! you had better have debauched all the unmarried girls in England you had better have committed adultery with all the married women but this woman can be nothing she never shall be anything." The Duke asked what he would have him do. The King said, " Go abroad till I can determine what to do." Thus that foolish journey was his Majesty's own thought, not that of his supposed more foolish brother ; and the pious apostrophe above showed the texture of the King's vaunted religion. Lady Waldegrave told me too that the King now said his Ministers had made him pro- mise never to forgive his brother Cumberland another instance of his piety, and yet probably a falsehood ; what interest had the Ministers to exact that promise, and make the Duke their irreconcilable enemy ? Lady Waldegrave added that the King had not notified the Marriage Bill to the Duke of Gloucester till in the very letter in which he told him of his mother's death thus heaping indignity on cruelty, and closing all with another falsehood, by affirming that the Marriage Bill was enacted to please the Princess ; 3 and with a new indignity to the Duke of Gloucester, by thanking the Parliament at the close of the session, just as the Duke arrived, for having regulated, that is restrained, the marriages of the Royal Family. On the 15th a great installation of Knights of the Bath. The King had his son (Prince Frederick) installed by 8 The King's implacability against those who opposed the Marriage Bill proved it was his own act, as will appear by the case of General Conway, which I shall mention hereafter. 120 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. JUNE, proxy, 4 to save the expense of the entertainment, which the King must have borne had the Prince been installed in person. 16^. Account of the Queen of Denmark being landed at Stade, in her way to the Gorde, a villa of the King's near Hanover. On embarking aboard the frigate the royal standard of Denmark was hoisted. It was impossible to learn exactly the truth of the Danish history. In general the conduct of the Queen, Struensee, and Brandt appears to have been absurd and extravagant even to frenzy. In the printed trial, which is very ill drawn up, and more agreeable to the vague, unsatisfactory manner in which despotic countries render accounts to the public, than to the notions of a nation that requires positive breaches of known laws proved by facts and evidences, it seems that Brandt, by Struensee's consent, went into the King's closet to demand satisfaction of him, and even ill-treated his master, and bit his finger. In Germany, I know from good authority, that it is believed that they frequently gave the King laudanum, and that after supper \ they said, We must make him go to bed ; and that, as he went out of the room, Brandt used to kick him. If true, all three ought to have been shut up as mad people. Nor do these accusations agree with the King's endeavouring twice or thrice to get to the Queen, especially the day of Struensee's execution. It has been said that, when the * Most of the public journals of the time state that the Bishop of Osnaburgh (Frederick) was installed on this occa- sion, with Sir Horace Mann, Sir W. Draper, Sir W. Hamilton, and eleven others. At night, as was then the custom on those occasions, a magnificent ball was given at the Opera-house, fol- lowed by as magnificent a supper. The whole was at the expense of the new knights ; and every person of distinc- tion in town was present, without ex- ception. When Lord North was in- vested with the Garter, a few days later, he celebrated the occasion by giving, at his official residence in Downing- street, an entertainment of such splen- dour that London talked of it for a fort- night. D. 1772. THE GARTER CONFERRED ON LORD NORTH. 121 conspirators forced the King to declare to the, people from a balcony his assent to what had been done, Rantzau stood behind him with a dagger, to awe him. This is as little probable on the other side. Rantzau and two more of the leaders lie by turns in the King's bedchamber. If half that is said of the Queen is true, the Queen Dowager, who saw children yearly born to the prejudice of her own son, and who could not well believe them legitimate, had cause to countenance the revolution ; and yet it is believed she had no more hand in it than lending her name. On the ISth, Frederick Lord North, First Lord of the Treasury, and eldest son of Francis Earl of Guilford, was made a Knight of the Garter, alone. It had long been promised to him, and when the Duke of Saxe Gotha died in the preceding winter the King confirmed the promise ; but Lord Chesterfield's death being expected, his Majesty wished to keep his uncle's garter for one of his own sons, and give that which had been worn by a subject to Lord North. He was assisted in this delay by the Court of Gotha, who deferred sending over the riband some said from discontent, because the pension which the late Princess of Wales had paid to her brother was not con- tinued to his successor others from a dispute between two Gothan lords, each of whom wished to bring it. Hence many persons concluding the King unwilling to give the Order to Lord North, his Majesty, to silence those rumours, conferred it on him. It was a singular honour in this age. It was not usual to give a single garter, but to wait till two were vacant ; yet this King had not adhered to that custom. Sir Robert Walpole was the only commoner who had had the Garter since the reign of Queen Elizabeth, 5 * Lord Palmerston is the only commoner who is now a member of this order. D. 122 LAST JOUKNALS OF HORACE WALK)LE. JUNE, and no son had had it in the lifetime of his father since the Earl of Ossory, son of the Duke of Ormond, in the reign of Charles II., nor before him since the time of Henry VIII. At this time happened an affair of great consequence, and that threatened national mischief. One Fordyce, for- merly clerk to a banker, had become a banker, and was exceedingly countenanced by his countrymen. He plunged into all manner of expense and extravagance, and added ; that dangerous vice of gaming in the stocks, hazarding the property of his partners, and of all that had placed money in his hands, and borrowing from all quarters. He lost in the Alley, and blew up, failing for two or three hundred thousand pounds. Scarce the bubble of the South Sea occa- sioned greater consternation. One of his partners shot himself; another man, ruined by him, drowned himself; a third flung himself out of window and broke his limbs. The Aldermen Glynn and Halifax were declared bankrupts in | the ' Gazette.' Drummond, a great banker, was near failing. The Bank lent Sir George Colebrook 1 90,000 J., or he had failed too. The brothers Adam, undertakers of the Adelphi buildings, were ruined. The Dukes of Queensberry and Buccleuch and Archibald Douglas offered their estates to the Bank of England for security for the Bank of Edinburgh. Indeed that Bank had waded very deeply into circulating a prodigious number of their own notes ; and all this revived great clamour against the Scots. It was feared there would be a run on the Bank of England itself as soon as the Dutch should learn the / news. Thus did one rascal shake the mighty credit of such a nation as Great Britain. Nor will twenty years perhaps remove the prejudice that men will contract against bankers. Who can like to venture their property being 1772. PROPOSED PARTITION OF POLAND. 123 gamed for by men they trust, without knowing it is gamed for? A most extraordinary scene was also acting at this mo- ment on the theatre of Europe : the Emperor, the Czarina, and the King of Prussia had agreed to divide Poland; among themselves, except a small part, which, to indemnify the King of Poland for all the rest of his dominion, they intended to bestow on him as an hereditary kingdom ; and to satisfy the Czarina with less of Poland, they proposed to oblige the Grand Signior to sacrifice to her as much of the conquest she had made on him as would answer that end. In this combination, for which there was no title but the law of force, were two remarkable circumstances one, the indifference with which the Apostolic Empress-Queen of Hungary abandoned the Popish confederates, against whom the Czarina had protected the Protestant dissidents ; so that the murderous Russian princess was true to her religion, and the pious Austrian faithless to hers. The other circumstance was more remarkable, because the bad are often zealous, and the devout often insincere. But great empires are seldom treated with the lowest contempt ; and since Cardinal Richelieu, France had certainly not been contemptible. The humiliation of Louis XIV. was but the reverse of a great monarch's fortune ; and if he had been insolent in prosperity, he at least maintained dignity in the midst of his calamities. Now the three associated powers did not even deign to notify their association and plan to the Court of Versailles. The Empress-Queen, who had entered into the Family Compact, seemed to forget she had such an ally as the King of France. That monarch's new Ministry had indeed at the end of last year sent a reinforce- ment to the confederates so ridiculous a reinforcement that no wonder it drew contempt ; it consisted solely in 124 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. JUNE, twenty officers. Viomenil, a lieutenant-general, who led them, was taken prisoner, and sent home. But if Louis and his Ministers were treated with ignominy, his late Minister, Choiseul, had cause to triumph. The slight put on his master was a compliment paid to him. Kaunitz, Prime Minister to the Empress-Queen, was intimately connected with Choiseul, and had incited his mistress to protect him. Their ill success was returned by this league with two princes the most obnoxious to the Court of France, the Czarina and the King of Prussia. SUPPLEMENT. London, June 10, 1772. Yesterday came on in the Court of King's Bench the long-expected cause between Mr. Alderman Townsend and the collector of the land-tax. Lord Mansfield had appointed the trial for nine o'clock precisely, but he delayed it till near eleven, waiting for the Attorney-General, who did not attend. The cause was opened by Mr. Davenport, after which Mr. Serjeant Glynn addressed the jury, and informed them that in common cases it was the custom to con- tent themselves with proving the trespass, and then leave the justi- fication of it to the defendant ; but he said the present case required a farther discussion from him ; that it was an important constitu- tional point upon which the valuable rights of the whole nation depended. He said he was directed by his client, Mr. Townsend, to conduct the cause as its importance demanded ; that, therefore, he should waive all the informalities in the collector's proceedings. He would admit him likewise to be collector, and that he was authorised by the Commissioners ; that the single ground of his pleading would be that the Commissioners themselves were not authorised ; for that a House of Commons legally chosen by the people are alone empowered to levy taxes in this country ; and he said he insisted, and would prove by evidence, that the persons who passed the Act of Parliament (under which the collector had seized Mr. Townsend's hay) were improperly called a House of Commons, 1772. ALDERMAN TOWNSEND'S CASE. 125 because they were illegally and defectively constituted. He said that to the making of all laws, and the levying of all taxes, it was formerly necessary that every freeholder should assent individually, and especially before a tax was to be levied the constituents were formerly first referred to, because they were to consent to what they were to pay. Custom and usage, he said, had now made it common for the representatives in Parliament to speak for the people, and this was considered the same as the consent of the people, because they were freely chosen by the people for that purpose ; and after every election a formal letter of attorney (the indenture) is always given by the electors to the person they have chosen. He said that this implied consent of the people by their representatives depended entirely on their having the free choice of their representatives ; for that if their freedom of choice was in- vaded the reference and implication was destroyed, and the people would no longer have any the least consent in the making of laws or levying of taxes ; but that their lives and their property would be absolutely at the mercy of any set of men who should call them- selves a Parliament, corrupted by the revenue and supported by the troops of a weak or a wicked tyrant. He said that this, as far at least as it related to representation, was the case with the pre- sent persons who call themselves a House ; for which, he said, as they were not chosen, so neither are they acknowledged, by the people. The county of Middlesex, he said, was not represented : that one of the members legally chosen by the county had been forcibly and illegally excluded, and another person as illegally and forcibly substituted in his room. Mr. Glynn then gave a very striking account of the absurdity and impudence of Mr. Luttrell's pretensions, and of the infamy of our , and his abettors and accomplices. He said, the present pretended House of Commons had superseded the election of the county by an unwarrantable reso- lution of their own ; and had by so doing seized into their own hands, and for their own use and emolument, the birthright, of all the people of England. He proved in the clearest manner that the pretence of Mr. Wilkes's incapacity does not exist in the law ; and that the people's right of representation is less than a name, if the House of Commons has an indefinite power of expulsion. Mr. Glynn said he would produce unquestionable evidence to the points on which he had rested the merits of his cause, notwithstanding that he thought it unnecessary, because the facts were so notorious and so well known to the jury themselves, that they could of their own knowledge, agreeably to the laws of the land, give a verdict for the plaintiff even without any evidence. 126 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. JUKE, As soon as Mr. Glynn had finished his speech, and was directing the evidence to be called, Mr. Wallace, the King's counsellor, pro- duced a printed paper, which he said was the Act of Parliament by which the collector levied the tax. As for the objection that had been made by Mr. Glynn relative to the seat of one of the members, or of the legality of the Parliament, he said the courts of West- minster-Hall had no power to determine. Lord Mansfield then rose and said that he perceived Mr. Glynn wanted that court to retry the Judgment of the House of Commons touching the case of the Middlesex election ; " that is," said his Lord- ship, "he wants to prove that the Legislature is dissolved, and that all the Acts of Parliament made since the year 1769 are void. The , evidence which Mr. Glynn wants to produce is not by law admis- I sible, and I will not suffer it to be given. Gentlemen of the jury, you will find for the defendant." The clerk then hurried over the form and said, " Gentlemen of the jury, hearken to your verdict, &c. ; you find for the defendant, and so you say all." Whereupon one of the jury, Mr. Long, said that he did not consent to that verdict. This dissent caused some embarrassment to Lord Mansfield, which he soon got over by saying, " Gentlemen, you are sworn to give a verdict according to the evidence ; now no evidence has been v' produced to you against the defendant, therefore you must find for him. You cannot try facts by notoriety, that is not law ; you must go by the evidence, and you have heard no evidence ; you must find for the defendant." The jury acquiesced, and by their tameness proved that the Scotch Lord Mansfield treats an English jury as they deserve. 1772. HUGH KELLY. JULY. ON the 1st was determined the scrutiny for new Sheriffs, when Alderman Oliver and one Lewes, the popular candidates, appeared to have a very great majority against Plumbe, set up by the Court faction in the City. Cap- tain Allen, the now ringleader of the anti-Court niob, harangued the Livery two or three times on this occasion, and, about the same time, he beat one Kelly in Vauxhall Garden for having given him the lie in print. This Kelly had been a tailor, and had become a playwright, and scribbled much abuse against the City patriots in news- papers. 1 1 Walpole speaks sneeringly of Kelly, probably because the latter had spoken severely, in his Thespis, of Walpole's friend Kitty Olive : " undamn'd with any casual part Of dive's weak head, or execrable heart." i Kelly was at this time about thirty years I of age. He had not been a tailor, but !a staymaker, to which honest occupa- jtion ho had been bound in Ireland by i his father, a man of good family, but Ismail means. Hugh Kelly failed in i London as a master in the above voca- jtion. The poor Irishman might have taken to the road, but he preferred the employment he found in an attorney's office. It is likely, and deplorable enough, that his necessities being stronger than his principles mode of liim a venal writer. The democrats had then- re- ;venge when he began to write for the i stage. His comedy of False Delicacy, iby no means a bad comedy of the sen- timental class, fell of itself; but the Wilkes party swept from the stage his Word to tlte Wise, in 1770. His School for Wives, of which he was not at first known to be the author, was produced in 1773, and was acted, with an admir- able cast, as late as 1813. Kelly wrote other dramatic pieces, and some poems, all included in the 4to. volume of his works. After his decease, in 1777, his Word to the Wise was acted for the benefit of his family. Dr. Johnson wrote a poor prologue for it. He had not long before been writing speeches and sermons for the unlucky Dr. Dodd. " When they come to me," said John- son, " with a dying parson and a dead staymaker, what can a man do?" In the best days of his London life Kelly resided in Gough-square, Fleet-street. He was then in comfortable circum- stances, marked by a little eccentric ostentation. " He was so fond," says Johnson (Boswell's ' Life,' v. 321), " of displaying on his sideboard the plate which he possessed that he added to it his spurs." To return to Walpole : I may notice that Chatterton alluded to Kitty Olive in a gentler spirit than Kelly, but gained no more respect from 128 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. JULY, The failures among the bankers continued ; four more broke on the 1st, and two persons, ruined by the crash, shot themselves. The failures were computed to amount to 4,000,000^. It came out now that Fordyce was rather the handle than the cause of this ruin. The Scotch had for several years been drawing vast quantities of specie into Scotland by remitting bills to England ; they had carried thence 15,000/. a week. This had made specie rare here, and had prodigiously raised their manufactures, and consequently estates. The Bank of England had long beheld this practice with jealousy, and were glad to take the opportunity of Fordyce's gaming, villany, extra- vagance, and destruction, to put an end to so ruinous a combination. 2 Kitty's friend on that account. In the lines called 'Advice,' addressed to a Bristol Maria, the young poet says : " Yet when that bloom and dancing fire In silver'd rev'rence shall expire, Aged, wrinkled, and defaced ; To keep one lover's flame alive Requires the genius of a Clive, With Walpole's mental taste." D. * The general distress at this tune was greater than the national charity. Charity sermons were delivered from various pulpits, but with small results. These very results only excited the jokers. As an instance I may cite an epigram. On nine-and-twenty shillings being collected after a charity sermon in a chapel in Bishopsgatc a copy was found pasted on the wall : " So little given at chapel door I This people, doubtless, must be poor. So much at gaming thrown away ! No nation, sure, so rich as they. Britons ! 'twere greatly for your glory, Should those who shall transmit your story, Their notions of your grandeur frame, Not as you give, but as you game." That among the preachers of the period some were either grossly incom- petent or grossly maligned may be seen in the columns of most of the news- papers. In one of the latter a corre- spondent declares that a clergyman to whose sermon he had listened had, some years before, stood in the pillory for a crime which he does not hesitate to name. He was probably one of the class of mere "fashionable "preachers, shams in the Church, and curses among Christians. D. L772. THE BRADSHAW FAMILY. 129 AUGUST. IN the beginning of this month was determined an affair that had much agitated the Ministry for some time. A plan had been laid before them, I think as early as in the Duke of Grafton's administration, for allowing a set of gentlemen to purchase of the Crown and settle lands on the Ohio. Thomas Walpole, brother of Horatio Lord Walpole, was at their head, but the person who had most credit in carrying the affair through was the famous Thomas Bradshaw, who had lately occasioned much con- versation. At this very time Bradshaw's own sister was [woman to Lady Holderness. Their father was an out- awed Irish smuggler, whose wife was protected by a lace- roman, whom one Michael Hatton, a toadeater of Lord Elolderness, married for her money, and he recommended tie widow Bradshaw to Lady Holderness, who made her ler housekeeper at Sion Hill, but, the woman growing nfirm, the daughter was taken in to assist her, and thence >ecame chambermaid. It was probably interest, not want )f liberality, that made Bradshaw leave his sister in so nean a situation. Miss Bradshaw had great credit with ler lady, who was grown a particular favourite of the ^ueen, while Lord Holderness was Governor of the rinces. Lady Holderness had already tripped up Lady harlotte Finch, 1 Governess of the children, a woman of 1 Second daughter of Th. Fermor, I Chamberlain William Finch, and ,url of Pomfret, widow of the Vice- | mother of the Earl of Wmchelsea. VOL. I. K LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. AUG. remarkable sense and philosophy, who was not disgraced, indeed, but half laid aside. In the mean time the King grew much alarmed about the Prince of Wales, who, though but ten years old, was very ungovernable. He was not, as Mr. Sineet owned, suffered to see a newspaper, and the Bishop of Chester took true pains to keep up the authority of Mr. Stone, who, though forgotten by the world, was, with Lord Mansfield, the chief director. Mr. Sineet owned, in his innocent simplicity, to a friend that the Bishop of Chester had told him Mr. Stone was the man that they ought all to look up to. Lord North was thought to be no friend to the above land-scheme in his heart, though he would not oppose it ; but the Earl of Hillsborough, who at first had much ap- proved it, had latterly set himself to impugn it violently, and had even persuaded the Board of Trade to represent strongly against it. On this the plan had been laid before the Council, who were unanimously for it, particularly Earl Gower (to please the Duke of Grafton and Brad- shaw). Lord Hillsborough was taxed with having origin- ally favoured the scheme, and was so weak as to plead in defence that he had seemed to approve it that he might deceive the patrons of it, and defeat it the more easily. This frank confession of double-dealing did not heighten the opinion o his Lordship's character or sense. He was, indeed, a man of more pomp than solidity, very ambitious, changeable, and false to his friends, clear in none of his ideas but in the determination of pursuing his interest, but always losing esteem faster than he raised his fortune. His American administration had raised him many ene- mies, without securing favour or benefiting either country, nor did his affectation of laborious assiduity produce any order or despatch. Earl Gower declared himself the ^ 1772. FEARS OF LORD NORTH. 131 champion of the plan, and it came to a necessity of one of the two Earls quitting his office. Lord North was exceed- ingly alarmed, and, as usual, did not show himself a man of firmness. He feared the Bedford faction aimed at overturning him and the administration ; and though it was probable that their view was to make Lord Wey- mouth Secretary for America instead of Lord Hills- borough, and though Lord North's own wish was to place the Earl of Dartmouth 2 in that office, yet, after trying every method of accommodation or compromise in vain (for Lord Hillsborough, for private reasons that shall be mentioned, would not yield, though Lord Gower consented to give much longer time for decision 3 ), Lord North, in a panic, went to Rigby, declaring he saw the administration would dissolve, and proposed to give the Seals to Lord Weymouth a step that would have made that party too formidable to Lord North in the Cabinet. Rigby, no firm politician, yet he saw the childishness of his fears, showed him that Lord Hillsborough could not influence any one man, told him Lord Weymouth would not take the Seals, and advised him to stand his ground like a man. 4 Still Lord North made the offer to Weymouth, which was rejected haughtily, the latter saying he did not look on a third Secretary as Secretary of State. The fact, as his friends owned, was that Lord Weymouth had de- clared so strongly against the creation of a third Secretary that he could not, with any decency, accept it himself; 9 William Legge, Earl of Dartmouth. < 3 Lord North proposed to refer the His mother, widow of George Lord ' scheme to Sir W. Johnson, in America, j Lewisham, had remained with Francis to which Lord Gower consented ; but / Earl of Guilford, Lord North's father ; j Lord Hillsborough said he had gone too and Lord Dartmouth and Lord North far to retract. had travelled together, and lived as 4 For he had even talked of resign- brothere. i ing. K 2 132 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. AUG. but who could expect that decency would have governed Lord Weymouth ? At last, on the 7th, Lord Hillsborough resigned, and on the 12th was created an English earl 5 to indemnify him. As he had a large estate in Ireland, and was extremely desirous of being Viceroy of that country, it was believed that half his discontent was feigned in order to obtain an earl's coronet, which raised him to a rank proper for that dignity. With him was created an earl, the Chancellor's father, old Allen Lord Bathurst, now near ninety. He had been one of Queen Anne's twelve peers, and had been fixed on by Bolingbroke, Swift, and the Tory party, at the beginning of George II. 's reign, as the person through whom Lady Suffolk, the King's mistress, was to try, by asking an earldom for him, whether she could prevail over, or at least balance, the power of the Queen and Sir Robert Walpole. The two latter obtained the victory, and Swift, in a rage, set out for Ireland. As a door to peerages was now again opened though only by increase of rank, not by entirely new creations, which the King was hampered by too many promises and solicitations to begin many renewed their applications, particularly Lord Holland, who was, in truth, very ill used by neglect. He sent his son Charles to Lord North, to repeat his request of an earldom, but was again refused. There being now no other competitor, Lord North ob- tained the Seals for Lord Dartmouth. It was with much more difficulty that the latter was prevailed on to accept them. He was extremely conscientious and delicate of his honour; and though his very near connection with Lord North could but dispose him to wish well to the latter's 5 The Earl of Hillsborough waa raised to the rank of Marquis of Downshire in 1789. D. 1772. LORD DARTMOUTH SECRETARY. 133 administration, yet he had been so leagued with Lord Rockingham and that party that he made the utmost diffi- culty of leaving them, though they had, in a manner, given up opposition, and Lord Rockingham was dying: 6 yet would not Lord Dartmouth accept the Seals till he had explained himself to the Marquis, and, it was said, obtained his consent. 6 Lord Rockingham survived till the year 1786 ; but the coffeehouses near the Exchange were re-echoing with the voices of speculators betting on the chances of his living or dying before the present year expired.!). 134 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. SEPT. SEPTEMBER. IN the beginning of this month came the first accounts of the revolution of Sweden, 1 where the King had wrenched the power from the Senate, who thought they had bound him in firmer bonds than ever. I know not enough of the facts to specify them, nor of that nation to foresee whether the nobility will be able to struggle ; as, whichever gets the better, the people will still remain slaves, I am pretty indifferent to which side the power of tyranny falls. Fordyce, secure from justice because secure from law, came over and surrendered himself. The Scots cried up his behaviour to the skies, and this extravagant villain, for a little plausible demeanour and address, and from national partiality, was almost celebrated as a martyr. \6th. At night I found on my table, when I came home, the following letter : MY DEAR SlR, Pavilions,' September 16th, 1772. I am just now too much flurried to do more than write you the matter of fact. The Duke has sent M. Legrand 8 to the King to own his -marriage, and the King is now gone to town to inform his Ministers that the Duke of Gloucester is under the same proscription as the Duke of Cumberland. You will, perhaps, wonder why we have changed our plan, but the Duke found it too inconvenient to go on as we were. 4 1 This revolution was concerted with France, which obtained from the court of Spain a very large sum of money to unable the King of Sweden to corrupt a sufficient number of adherents. France acted in this odious affair chiefly from hatred of the Czarina. * At Hampton Court, where the Duke of Gloucester sometimes resided. 8 He had been Governor to the Duke of Gloucester. 4 It was on the Duchess finding her- self enceinte. 1772. DUKE OF GLOUCESTER'S MARRIAGE. 135 The King must be displeased, but his behaviour has been such upon the occasion that we have all the reason in the world to be grateful to him. I must do Mr. Legrand the justice to say that his behaviour upon the occasion was manly and friendly. This letter is scarcely to be read, but, as it is only for your perusal, it shall go. I am, dear Sir, Affectionately yours, MARIA GLOUCESTER. On this open rupture it was impossible the Duke could avoid seeing my brother, and so far I was glad that the marriage had not only been concluded without my know- ledge, but was even publicly owned before I had once seen the Duke or been consulted. I was now to determine what part to take, and, as the Duke was now disgraced and my niece oppressed, I chose the handsome part, and resolved to offer to incur the King's prohibition and pay my court to them. Accordingly, the very next morning, as early as I could, I sent a servant to the Duchess with this letter : 5 Having long known, Madam, that your understanding is as good as your heart is excellent, I must believe that you have not changed a plan of conduct which I thought so right without having still stronger reasons for what you have done. I am very happy to hear that, though forced to act impartially, his Majesty has softened his justice with kindness. It must be my prayer, as well as expectation, that your virtues will reconcile the King to you and ease his Royal Highness's mind of the only pang which, I flatter myself, you will ever occasion to him. My wish is to pay my duty to you, Madam, immediately, and to the Duke, if I might be allowed that honour ; but as I think that would be too great a liberty to take without his Royal High- ness's permission, I must hope that the kind familiarity which you still show me, Madam, and which I burn to return, but restrain * Now printed for the first time. D. 136 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. SEPT. from a proper respect, will prescribe the conduct to me which his Royal Highness and you choose I should observe, and which may best express the regard with which I am his and your Royal Highness's Most faithful and most obedient, humble servant, HORACE WALPOLE. The Duchess immediately sent me this very engaging answer : My dear Sir (N.B. You forgot those two little words with lines under them in your kind note to me), I am at home now, and so shall remain all this morning, and shall be very happy to see you ; the Duke bids me say he shall be glad to see you. I am ever truly yours, M. G. I went directly and found her alone ; she received me with the greatest kindness, and insisted on my treating her as familiarly as ever. The first time I saw her, in July, she had refused to let me kiss her hand, and embraced me. She told me now the Duke thought we should like better to talk the whole over, and then would come to me. She said they had found so many difficulties in her situation 6 that they could go on no longer ; that the Duke had tried in vain to bring the King to talk on it ; that he owed it to his brother the Duke of Cumberland to own his marriage ; and that she could sign no paper legally, not even for receiving her jointure from Lord Waldegrave, but by her real name Gloucester ; and a propos, she asked me if I did not approve her signing Maria Gloucester, instead of simply Maria, in the royal style ; for, said she, modestly, "there was a time when I had no right to any name 6 A principal one was, that, if the I to go abroad, she must, now her mar- Duke's hcul t li should again oblige him | riage was known, accompany him. 1772. DUKE OF GLOUCESTER'S MARRIAGE. 137 but Maria." She said the King had told Mr. Legrand that he had not thought they were married ; and on Le- grand's urging the publicity of her letter to her father, the King said he had heard it, but did not believe what the servants said. He added, that, as nobody knew of this notification but he and Legrand, it might still remain un- declared, and Legrand saying that was impossible, the King begged the Duke would take time. Legrand went away, and, returning the next morning, told the King the Duke had taken a day to consider, but could not alter his resolution. The King cried, and protested he had not slept all night, and had not told the Queen, which seemed to be true, for her Majesty coming into the room just then he called Legrand into the garden. There he asked him, if he should forgive his brother, what he should say to his children if they had a mind to marry ill. Legrand put him in mind that the Marriage Bill would prevent that. He still talked of not seeing the Duke, though he said it should not be for ever : he should be miserable never to see that brother again whom he loved ; but he had never loved Harry. Legrand begged him not to push the Duke too far ; he did not know what might be the consequence. The Opposition might bring the affair into Parliament ; the Duke might resign his regiment. The King said, God forbid ! he could not bear that, but he did not mind what the Opposition could do. The Duchess said the Queen had owned that, when the late Princess Dowager heard of the Duke of Cumberland's marriage and the Duke of Gloucester's danger, she had said to the "King that, if William died, she insisted on his never forgiving Harry, though she did afterwards forgive him herself before she died. The Duke of Cumberland had just been to see her, which she said the Duke of Gloucester 138 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. SEPT. would return by visiting the Duchess of Cumberland, but she did not talk directly of her seeing the latter. As I was determined to be very cautious till I knew the Duke better, I would not advise it, though I thought it wrong that they did not meet. She said the Duke of Cumber- land had protested he had suffered very much for the three last days, though he had never cared about himself. I said, the common idea was that the King would forgive him if he would give up the Duchess. "Pho!" replied she, " he is eager to get back to Court, and the King has a letter from him to tell him so." She said she was content to live in the country, and go nowhere ; she should only be hated if she appeared at Court. She thought the King now would take no notice (which I doubt), or, at most, forbid the foreign Ministers to visit them. The Duke, she said, would not deal with the Opposition unless the Court persecuted him and her. I begged her to dissuade him from that. I said she knew I had long been inclined to the Opposition (which, I believe, was one great cause of the Duke's coldness to me), but that I never would give her advice that I thought against her interest, how- ever it might suit my inclinations ; that she was now a Princess of the blood, and that their interest was insepar- able from the Crown, and that I thought they ought, by patience and submission, to endeavour to reconcile the King to them. I asked her if she approved my asking leave to see the Duke before I came ? She said, Yes ; that she had intended to bid her sister Dysart tell me to come, but the Duke had said it was best to wait and see if I would offer to come. This showed he thought I neg- lected him. I said, I hoped she knew me too well to suspect I would desert her in her distress ; and I told her, at the same time, I should desire Lord Hertford to ac- 1772. VISIT TO THE DUKE OF GLOUCESTER. 139 quaint the King that I forbore to pay my duty to his Majesty out of respect, as I could not suppose the sight of our family would be agreeable to him just now ; that I could not but be sensible of the honour the Duke had done our family, and concluded his Majesty could not expect that her own family would give her up. She approved my conduct, and I shall add presently the letter I wrote. She said the only thing that wounded her was to part with her children by Lord Waldegrave ; T that she had struggled long, but the Duke had said he could not live with another man's children ; that indeed it would scarce be parting with them ; that she should take a house for them at Windsor, but four miles from St. Leonard's Hill, and that she should see them oftener than she did now ; that one or other of them would always be with her, and that she should give up for the maintenance of them and a proper governess the 1000/. a year she received for their education ; and that to her great comfort Lady Laura, the eldest, was old enough and reasonable enough to comprehend the necessity of what she was doing. She said what made her most doubt the King's forgiving them easily was the aversion he would have to ask of Parlia- ment proper jointures for her and the Duchess of Cum- berland. The Duke 'of Gloucester then came in : I knelt and kissed his hand ; he would have had me keep my seat on the sofa by the Duchess, which I declining, he drew 7 The King asked Legrand if the Duke and Duchess had any children, and expressed great joy on hearing they had not. It is very memorable that the King betrayed liis own want of truth in that very conversation with Legrand, ad the Duchess told me after- wards. As the King read the letter, he said, " I never believed they were married ;" and yet, when he came to the words, " I was married in Septem- ber," the King said, " That is not true, for he was married in July ;" but that was a mistake. 140 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. SEPT. an arm-chair for me, and made me sit. He entered on the reasons that had determined him to notify his marriage to the King, which were on the Duchess's account chiefly, and in justice to his brother. He was very civil, though a little awkward, but I believe would have been more familiar if I had not behaved with the utmost respect, saying absolutely nothing after I had told him how ex- tremely sensible I was of the honour he had done my niece and the whole family, and how noble I thought his justice to the Duchess. He sought several topics of con- versation, and asked me if the King and Queen had been to see my house, as he had heard they intended. I con- fined myself to monosyllables, that he might not think I assumed the familiarity of a near relation, and made a sign to the Duchess to know when it was proper for me to go away, which she would not let me do. In a few minutes more the Duke, finding I would not be free with him, got up, and said he would go take a ride. The Duchess chid me for my respectfulness, and said it had distressed the Duke, but we should be better acquainted another time. I said I would conform to what I should find agreeable to him, but would take no liberties of my- self. In truth, I knew he thought me so anti-monarchic that any freedom at first would have prejudiced him more against me, as supposing I made too light of prin'ces; but though I would never flatter, court, or ask a favour of them, I always piqued myselfj when with them, on showing them I knew the distance between them and me. It were a want of sense and good breeding to behave otherwise. All I desired was to give him a good opinion of me, and prevent my enemies from the satisfaction of thinking he behaved ill to me. I asked the Duchess if she had seen 1772. QUESTION OF GOING TO COURT. 141 her father ? She said, No ; but she had writ to him. 8 I knew she was afraid of his violence and of his giving ad- vice, and she did not enough conceive the great amend- ment in his temper. Upon the whole I was satisfied with her sense and conduct, and resolved to moderate whenever I had an opportunity, in order to reconcile the King to her, and soften as much as I could her fate, which, in truth, seems exposed to many dangers with few flattering appearances. For the Duke, I was sure, over-respect was the fault a prince would the most easily forgive ; and for advice, if he should ask any, I was determined to give him none but the most justifiable. I owed it to him for his goodness to my niece, and I was resolved, if he was reconciled to the King, he should not have it to say that I had ever contributed to their being at variance : it being no uncommon thing for enemies reconciled to make peace at the expense of their friends. It became me too to maintain the part I had acted, and to evince that I had had no hand either in the marriage or in the declaration. On the contrary, having once broke off the connection between the Duke and my niece, and never countenanced it, I deserved the King's esteem and approbation. I did not expect much justice on that account and found none. 9 However, I determined to behave agreeably to the clear- ness of my conduct. I wrote to Lord Hertford a letter, which I meant he should show to the King, couched in the most respectful terms, in which I stated my own ignorance of the marriage till owned, but said that, 8 The Duke, as soon as he had noti- fied his marriage to the King, wrote to invite Sir Edward Wulpole to St. Leo- nard's Lodge, witli which the latter was contented, but did not go. 9 I mean, by his including me in the prohibition. I never found, so clear had been my conduct, that I was ever sus- pected of acting wrong in the affair, or that I was particularly in disgrace. The truth is, I took no pains to inform myself: in general I heard it waa thought that I was in no favour With the Duke. 142 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. SEPT. concluding the new Duchess's family could not be very welcome at St. James's, I should not presume to present myself there without leave. I mentioned having waited on the Duke as a duty, due for the honour he had done the family, and to the tenderness I had always felt for my niece, whom were I to abandon, I should expect his Ma- jesty's own paternal affections would make him despise me. This letter I enclosed in a cover, in which I told Lord Hertford plainly that, if it was expected I should riot see my niece, I was determined rather to give up going to St. James's. Lord Hertford was too good a courtier, 1 I believe, to show even the ostensible letter ; he did, in my name, ask whether I might go to Court and to the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester too. The King, according to regal equity, which involves the innocent with the guilty in offences of a family against Majesty, replied, he chose everybody should take their own part. Mine was soon taken, when the question was whether I should act with spirit against my interest, or dirtily to pay my court ; and I went no more to St. James's. Lord Hertford, when he brought me the King's answer, said, " Well, you will go to Court, won't you ? " I replied, " Certainly not." " Why," said he, " the King will receive you very civilly." " I do not doubt it," replied I ; " but he may say it was impertinent in me to come after his prohibition, and I had much rather he should say it was impertinent in me not to come." On the 25th the Duchess of Gloucester came to me. She and the Duchess of Cumberland had met, but in visits most formal and ceremonious. 2 My niece asked me > " But cautious Hertford shrink* when risks re run."Diaboliad. JJ, 9 The Duchess of Cumberland pro- posed to the Duchess of Gloucester to 1772. VISIT FROM THE DUCHESS OF GLOUCESTER. 113 to meet her at her sister Dysart's at Ham, which seemed to mark the Duke neither intended her relations should come to him nor go to them ; and Lady Dysart afterwards told me he declared he came to her, not to her Lord. Many instances of his high spirit broke out and made me tremble for his wife. While she was with me I showed her a painted pane of glass, with her and Lord Walde- grave's arms. I asked her if I should have it altered and add the Duke's arms too. She cried out, " Oh ! he will not bear to have my arms placed with his." I replied, " Why, they must be on your coach." She said, No ; the Queen's arms were never joined with the King's. I desired her to look at the Queen's coach, where she would find they were. These symptoms of his temper did not make me more pleased with the match. However, I said nothing to her, but persuaded her to take all manner of ways to reconcile herself to the King, that she might obtain a jointure, I dreading the prospect for her, con- sidering the precarious state of the Duke's health, and shocked at what they had told me, that one reason for their owning their marriage had been that, as he was extremely in debt, he could not borrow money but on their joint lives. What was to become of her (should he die), with no jointure from him, liable to his debts, and having nothing but her jointure of 1000/. a year from Lord Waldegrave ? take a box at the Opera together, which the latter declined, and said to me upon the proposal, with wit, " No, I could not go and smell at the same nosegay with her in public ;" alluding to Bong Usher and King Physician in the Re- hearsal. [Ultimately these high per- sonages sat far apart ; the Cumberlands in the very centre of the grand tier, the Gloucesters in a side box on the second floor. D.] 144 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. OCT. OCTOBER. THE Duchess having been obliged to part with her children, but desirous to have them nearer, asked Lord Hertford for lodgings for them in Windsor Castle. 1 It seemed extraordinary to ask for them in one of the King's palaces, when the King had forbidden the Duke and Duchess the Court. It seemed more extraordinary that they should be granted; but when Lord Hertford granted them, and sent his own messenger openly to the Duchess with his compliance, I was very sure so cautious a courtier had the King's full consent. His Majesty acted still the utmost regard for his brother we shall see whether sincerely: his sincerity has not been his most shining quality. Sometimes I have thought, from several indirect circumstances, that the Queen kept him from for- giving his brother. Another boon granted to the Duke in the next month was coupled with a previous incident, that did not convince me the King's compliance with his brother's wishes flowed entirely from kindness. On the death of the Earl of Lichfield, a great favourite, who enjoyed by the King's gift a lodge in Hampton Court Park, near the Pavilions, the Duke of Gloucester sent to Lady Lichfield for the keys. She could not deliver them, as they were given by the King, without his Ma- jesty's consent. She pleaded not having removed all her goods, and in the mean time wrote to Lady Charlotte The Lord Cluiniberluiu disnoaes uf all lodgings, but asks the King's consent. 1772. DUCHESS OF GLOUCESTER'S APPLICATION. 145 Finch, governess of the King's children, to consult her what she should do. The King happened to be in Lady Charlotte's room when Lady Lichfield's letter arrived. He immediately ordered her to deliver the keys to the Duke ; but he had, on the news of Lord Lichfield's death, offered Lady Lichfield to continue in the Lodge, which she had declined. The next transaction in which the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester appear was complicated with a great variety of different circumstances that must be opened, and with many political events, the sources of which were curious, though the incidents not of great moment ; the history, however, I think, will not be unentertaining. The Duchess of Gloucester had a relation by her mother's side, who, though of a good gentleman's family, was an upper officer to and a favourite of the Duchess of Northumberland. Sir Edward Walpole had neglected to serve this gentleman ; and as he and I shared an office in the Customs, the Duchess of Gloucester asked me to bestow one on her relation, or to desire Lord Hertford to provide for him, or General Conway to appoint him a supernumerary officer in the Ordnance, she offering to pension him till he should come into a salary. I desired I might serve him myself, if I should find an opportunity, but I did not care to apply to Lord Hertford, from whom I had obtained several little favours, nor did I think it reasonable the Duchess should so soon expect another from him. To General Conway there were still stronger reasons against my addressing myself. He had greatly distinguished himself by a large, extensive, and economic reform of the abuses gross abuses in the office of Ord- nance ; he was the last man in the world to overcharge an office ; and he was actually at this moment going to quit VOL. i. L 146 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. OCT. his post in disgust was this the hour in which he would transgress his principles ? The causes of that disgust must now be detailed. The King had no sooner heard of the part Conway took in the outset of the Eoyal Marriage Bill than he wrote a warm expostulatory letter to Lord Hertford, com- plaining of his brother's conduct, and reproaching the latter with the various marks of favour he had received, and urging Lord Hertford to stop Conway's farther oppo- sition to the Bill. Lord Hertford, with too much zeal, treated his brother too imperiously, and did but fix him more in his opinion, which, as I have said, he expressed even with acrimony. That behaviour incensed the King, and made him yield to a plan that had long been pressed upon him, and which he constantly resisted. Conway having, from excess of delicacy, declined the Mastership of the Ordnance, though with the King's consent that he should govern that Board, though only Lieutenant- General, the Mastership really remained vacant. Such great posts were much wanted, and both the Ministers that were not his enemies, and the Bed ord faction that were, had often remonstrated to the King that Conway would neither accept the post himself, nor let anybody else enjoy it an assertion not ill-founded. The King now at once resisted no longer, and many were eager to strike at so favourable a moment both for hurting Conway and serving their own views, Conway having often declared that he would serve as Lieutenant-Generai of the Ord- nance under no man but an older officer, and one that had served: for Lord Halifax and Lord Sandwich had been talked of, who, though having the rank, had never been military men, but by having during the rebellion offered to raise regiments which they never did raise. The Bed- 1772. GENERAL CONWAY'S REFORMS. 147 fords, besides their hatred of Conway, hoped that, if Conway was driven from the Ordnance, Lord Hertford might resent it and resign his place of Lord Chamberlain, the great object of Lord Gower's ambition, who never gave up hopes that, could he obtain a post about the King's person, he should still become the favourite ; and his place of President would have just suited their other chief Lord Wey mouth ; as if that seat of equity was never to be filled by a man that was sober. 2 Lord Holland, who never lost sight of injuring Conway, and who had received a recent disobligation from him, set every engine at work to hurt him, and met with an able associate, Lord Mansfield. I must mention the reasons of both. O'Brien, a young actor, had privately married Lord Ilch ester's eldest daughter, niece of Lord Holland ; the family, to remove the disgrace from the eyes of the public, had pro- cured for O'Brien a post of charge under the Ordnance in America. The young couple, weary of their banishment, had lately returned to England, nor had O'Brien had the precaution to ask the leave of the Board of Ordnance. General Conway was labouring to reform that department, and had ordered all the officers under it to repair to their posts, those in America particularly who had abandoned their duty. O'Brien received orders among the rest to return, but refused. Conway declared he would dismiss him ; Lord and Lady Holland interposed, but Conway, inflexible when both his duty and justice to others whom he would not excuse, called upon him, was firm and turned out O'Brien. 3 * Earl Granville, the Earl of North- same night, December 8, 1772, he pro- ington, and Earl Gower, were notorious duced his comedy of The Dud at drunkards. Drury-lane, and his comedietta, as it 3 The ex-actor occupied his enforced would now be called, of frogs Purposes leisure by writing for the stage. On the at Covent-garden. The former is an L 2 148 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. OCT. It happened that at this very period Lord Mansfield wished to bring his nephew Lord Storinont, the Minister at Vienna, to be ambassador at Paris ; but a place was wanting to accommodate Lord Harcourt, if recalled from France, and the place that Lord wanted was the Vice- royalty of Ireland, a post long destined for him had the Ministers known how to satisfy Lord Townshend. Con- way's conduct on the Marriage Bill smoothed all these difficulties, and Lord Mansfield, who loved to whisper arbitrary counsels, and who personally resented Conway's opposition to a Bill his Lordship had drawn from the sources of the Star Chamber, was not slow to gratify his two passions despotism and the Scottish interest. Con- way, it is true, was Lord Stormont's intimate friend ; but when fear did not check Lord Mansfield no other principle could. It might be asked how Lord Townshend's satisfaction happened to prevent an arrangement sooner. He had disgusted Ireland and drawn on himself universal con- tempt. Proud, insolent, sarcastic, ill-tempered, and ill- natured, stooping to the lowest buffooneries, and debasing the dignity of Government; defying Opposition, which almost all his life he had practised, and avowing that he trusted to corruption alone for success, though at the same time he exercised the most hard and unjust persecutions ; from a squanderer become penurious, when generosity, at least ostentation, might have balanced some part of his unpopularity ; having incurred suspicions of a want of adaptation of the Philotophe sant le sa- vmr, in which Baptiste, aine, has de- lighlcd many of ourselves, as Barry did, in London, many of our fathers. The Dud failed through the mawkish, sen- timental scenes which the adapter worked in, at the suggestion of some of his noble relatives, who spoiled his play, but made him pecuniary compen- sation, it is said, for his ill-fortune. D. 1772. LORD TOWNSHEND. 149 bravery which had been but surmised before by those who best knew him. He had been suspected at the conquest of Quebec, 4 and on his intended duel with Lord Albemarle in 1760. In Ireland he refused a challenge from Dr. Lucas, to wipe out which imputation he waited a week at Dublin to give time, now he was a private man, for any one to call him to account that wanted satisfaction. Mr. Rochford, a son of Lord Belvedere, did actually challenge him for having complained to his father of his (Mr. Roch- ford's) absenting himself from the House of Commons on an important question. Lord Townshend denied the charge, but, that not contenting the young gentleman, he obliged Lord Townshend to disavow the charge under his hand, which did not add to the reputation either of his j wisdom in staying to be challenged or of his courage. A Captain Montgomery, whose vote he had obtained by promising him his support in relation to a post in his borough, finding Lord Townshend had engaged the Privy Council to represent against it to England, challenged Lord Townshend, and forced him to make him amends. A Captain Osborn, of disordered intellects, challenged him after he came to England ; Lord Townshend de- ferring immediate satisfaction, though promising it, Os- 4 See the index to Walpole's ' Me- moira of George 1H.' for references to Townshend, whom Walpole treats un- fairly. Bancroft (' Hist. Amer. Revol.,' i. 38i), treating dispassionately of the affair at Quebec, says, after describing the fall of Wolfe and the wounding of Monckton, " The next in command, Towushend, brave, but deficient in sagacity and attractive power, and the delicate perception of right, recalled the troops from the pursuit, and when De Bougainville appeared iu view de- clined a contest with a fresh enemy ; but already the hope of New France was gone." Townshend does not throw off so successfully other assertions against him. Wolfe sent to the Secre- tary of State an able letter, explanatory of his intended movements at Quebec. Charles Townshend maintained that this was the production of his brother. When the latter, however, transmitted to the Secretary a blundering narration of the battle itself, Selwyn asks : " Charles, if your brother wrote Wolfe's letter, who wrote your brother George's ?" D. 150 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. OCT. born sent him word he would horsewhip him wherever he met him. There seemed to be but little cause for hesitating to remove Lord Townshend, and there was a private reason which made many men admire how the King continued to treat him with any indulgence. He had owed his favour at Court to Lord Bute's protection, to whom he had been devoted ; but, whether from caprice or jealousy, he had treated his Secretary, Sir George Macartney, the husband of Lord Bute's favourite daughter, with such venomous tyranny that the House of Bute spoke of Lord Townshend as the most ungrateful of men, and the last deserving countenance or lenity. Two motives congenial with the ruling spirit of the Cabinet despotism and pusil- lanimity concurred with Conway's indiscretion to save this worthless man, who had been on the point of being dismissed to gratify the Butes, with nothing but the com- mand of a regiment of foot. The arbitrary manner with which he had governed and insulted Ireland had softened the King's heart. Joseph gained the favour of Pharaoh by buying their liberty of the Egyptians for bread. At the same time it was apprehended that Lord Townshend, if disgusted, would be troublesome in the House of Lords a panic very ill founded. He was a coarse but ungracious speaker ; in difficult times, and in the House of Commons, where bitterness does the work of eloquence, and where his affectation of patriotism had lent him popularity, he had sometimes carried weight ; the decency and silence of the Lords were not suited to recommend his ill-tempered attacks, nor, had he reverted to patriotism, was it a weapon their Lordships respected. But when fear had gone forth, the Court was not apt to weigh whether it was founded, and, before the end of the session, it got wind 1772. AFFRONT TO GENERAL CON WAY. 151 that Conway was to be punished, that Lord Townshend was to be Master of the Ordnance, Lord Harcourt to succeed him as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Lord Stor- mont to be Ambassador at Paris, and Sir Robert Keith, for his Danish services, to be Minister at Vienna. Lord Townshend was by no means pleased at being de- throned, and tried every method to preserve his station ; but finding his fate decided, accepted the Mastership of the Ordnance. I will say no more of him, but that at his giving up his government he affected a delay of eight days, to give time, when become a private man, to those who resented any part of his behaviour to call him to account ; but Dr. Lucas, who had challenged him, was dead. Conway was still more hurt than Lord Townshend ; for though the affront was only indirect, and that the King affected to suppose he might remain subordinate in the office, as he might, if he pleased, there having been several precedents of elder officers acting under great lords, yet Conway knew what was meant, and was too scrupulous on the point of honour to relinquish the declaration he had made, of not acting under a junior soldier, though to Lord Townshend he had no personal objection, the latter having quitted the post to Conway in a very obliging manner when he was named to the Lord-Lieutenancy. Nor was the meditated blow what wounded Conway most sensibly. He had conceived a passion for his office, had already made great progress in improving it, and had flattered himself with acquiring much renown from the foot on which he meant to place it. It was even his plaything and passion ; and he who had not borne with patience the details of the Secretary's office, though the sphere of im- portant business, was indefatigable in all the minute though 152 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. OCT. necessary drudgery relating to the service of the artillery and all its branches. I, who felt the damage done to his fortune, the greater danger that would hang over it, and who could not bear the triumph of his enemies, though I was sensible how rashly he had drawn the tempest on himself; could with difficulty command my vexation : determined, how- ever, to repair the fruits of his imprudence, I affected to appear indifferent to the event, and to speak of it as a mark of disgrace that Mr. Conway could not but have expected to receive. In the mean time I left no method untried to remedy or stop the evil ; and fortune, as usual, befriended me more than either my art or industry ; while, as usual, Conway, and those from whom I expected the most faci- lities, contributed little to second my endeavours. I began by representing to Lord Hertford that it would prove he had little credit with the King when he could not save his brother from this affront. He broke out told me the pains he had taken to reclaim his brother before it was too late talked of being head of the family, and that his brother ought not to traverse his views and that if Mr. Conway expected favours from Court he must conform to the King's pleasure, and that his brother must take the consequence of his behaviour. I said calmly, but firmly, that Mr. Conway owed nothing to his Lordship, but that his Lordship had owed everything to Mr. Conway, who made him Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, and Lord-Chamber- lain : the first he could not deny, but said Lord Chatham made him Lord-Chamberlain. I replied, Yes, to make room for Lord Bristol ; and that yet Lord Chatham would not have made him the one unless he had found him the other. I touched gently on Mr. Conway 's conscientious- ness and scruples, and hinted that Lord Hertford carried 1772. LORD HERTFORD'S INTERCESSION. 153 his acquiescence with the King's will farther than perhaps was justifiable ; and yet I owned Mr. Conway was in the wrong to expect favour on different terms from what every- body else bought it, when it was in effect what was stipulated by the Court. It was from that consideration that myself would accept no favour from the Court, as I understood the conditions that would be implied, and with which I would not comply. Conway, in a virtuous age, would have had a right to expect the honours and emoluments of his profession, though he should obey the dictates of his con- science as a man that knew the world, he could not expect them ; but his case was harder than mine, who did not want the smiles of the Crown ; his whole fortune de- pended upon them. I bade Lord Hertford apprehend the Opposition, who would foment Mr. Conway 's disgusts, and might provoke him to resign his regiment, or forfeit it as he had done before by farther hostilities. In short, I omitted nothing to engage Lord Hertford to prevent the blow, or procure an indemnification for his brother ; and it is but justice to the elder to say, that, though he did not love to ask favours for others which might interfere with those he wished for himself or his children ; though he shuddered at dropping a harsh or unpleasant word to the King, instead of using a firmness that alone made impres- sion on him ; though Lord Hertford had violent repug- nance to solicit Lord North, governing himself by that ruling humour of his Majesty, that whoever attached himself to any First Minister was not his Majesty's man (in this reign called " the King's friend "), still had Lord Hertford, in a sugared way, tried to ward off the blow ; and when fallen, contrary to his expectation, did earnestly deprecate the King's wrath, sue for reparation, and even more than once negotiate with Lord North for intercession. On the 4th 154 LAST JOUENALS OP HOEACE WALPOLE. OCT. of June Lord Hertford went so far as to ask the King if it was impossible for his brother to be restored to his favour ? and the King, with great good-humour and forgiveness, replied, " No, not if you advise it." Lord North, who had never had any cause to be partial to Mr. Conway, who had quitted the Cabinet Council (not from disliking him but the Bedfords) on Lord North's becoming Minister, and who at first had taken personally, though erroneously, to himself Conway 's warmth on the Eoyal Marriage Bill, Lord North, I say, had still a high opinion of Conway 's virtue and abilities ; and though he thought him a woful poli- tician, from his scruples, he had often, on former attempts, resisted any endeavours to remove him from the Ordnance. When he found the King enraged and decided, it could not be expected Lord North would, unapplied to by Con- way, stem the torrent for him, and thence offend the King. Yet his Majesty, before the end of June, relaxing so much farther still, to please Lord Hertford, as to allow him to speak to Lord North, and see what could be done to keep Mr. Conway in the Ordnance, or procure him an equiva- lent, Lord North embraced the motion with joy; and though he frankly owned he did not see how it was pos- sible to set aside Lord Townshend, when the King had voluntarily offered him the Ordnance, and he had accepted it, yet he promised to search for or promote any other method of contenting Mr. Conway. The great diffi- culty of all was to content Conway himself. He doted, as I have said, on the Ordnance; he would hear of no equivalent said he had declared he would resign it if superseded, and would not unsay his resolution would not bear to hear of intercessions made for him would not accept anything else. This alarmed me ; for all his lan- guage was that of a man injured, not of one that endea- 1772. NEGOTIATIONS IN FAVOUR OP CONWAY. 155 vours were using to soothe. I tried to find expedients, and proposed that, instead of the Ordnance, a marquisate or the Garter, two objects of his ambition, or one of the regiments of Guards, on the approaching death of Lord Tyrawley, should be promised to Lord Townshend, or a Garter to Lord Harcourt, instead of Ireland ; but though I prevailed on Lord Hertford to mention these compro- mises to Lord North, there was not disposition enough to pacify Mr. Conway at such high prices. The King would not let Lord North dispose of principal regiments, or know how he himself designed to dispose of them. Peerages, despite endless promises, were not to be given but on great emergencies, and Lord Townshend was no longer in that or in the predicament of favour ; and for Lord Harcourt an early Garter was designed. Thus, though pardoned by the King, and supported by the Minister, I despaired of Conway 's obtaining an indemnification, or indeed of his accepting it, could it be found. Silence and patience on my part waited for a more favourable moment, and chance, before the middle of October, presented two at once. By little and little, and by ranging on my side his wife, who did not admire the approaching diminution of their income, I had softened Conway 's mind so far as to make him bear the mention of an equivalent. In the interim Lord Albemarle was known to be in a hopeless state of health : he was Governor of Jersey ; on that I fixed my eye, and Lord Hertford, and other friends of Conway, hinted it both to the King and Lord North. The latter asked if it was sure Conway would accept it. I sounded him at a distance, and, though he spoke very dubiously, I ventured to take upon me to answer he would. In the mean time happened the declaration of the Duke of Glou- cester's marriage with my niece, and the King's prohibition 156 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. OCT. of their being visited. With Conway's partiality for the Duchess, 5 I feared he would visit her, which would have blasted his fortune for ever. His brother, who would have prevented it by all means if he could, was unluckily, or perhaps luckily, out of town, for Conway was jealous of his brother's too great eagerness to make him a courtier ; he knew I was more tender of his honour ; yet I own on this occasion, in which he would have staked his fortune against a romantic visit of ceremony, I did again take upon me to tell him abruptly, before he could reflect, that it would be madness, when a great favour from the King was soliciting for him, to throw it from him for a punctilio of form ; and I engaged and promised to take the blame of his neglect to the Duchess of Gloucester, and reconcile her to it. Briefly, he followed my advice ; it was, I think, on the 20th of September. Lord Albemarle died on the 12th of October. The King was delighted that Conway, who had opposed the Marriage Bill, should yet not attach himself to the Duke of Gloucester ; 6 and Lord North pro- posing it, his Majesty immediately consented to give Con- way the Government of Jersey. Conway came directly to me to consult whether he should accept it. I would not let him hesitate a moment. I told him the agreeable manner in which it was offered, pressed upon him, doubled the favour ; that, though inferior in profit, it was more agreeable than the Ordnance ; governments are never, They were first cousins, once re- moved : her grandmother, Lady Wai- pole, and hia mother, Lady Conway, were own slaters. 6 Conway himself assigned a very substantial reason for not offending the King by attending the Duke of Glou- cester. As colonel of the Blues ho had personal conferences with the King. If the King forbad those who waited on the Duke to appear before him, could Conway, consistent with his duty and charge, violate the order or abstain from St. James's? Nobody, I suppose, will say he should have resigned his regi- ment in order to make a gallant com- pliment where he had no obligations. 1772. CON WAY GOVERNOR OF JERSEY. 157 can hardly be, taken away; the Ordnance, a most preca- rious tenure he had even given it up when many prece- dents were against him ; that he could expect no reparation if he declined this ; and would add a still more disagreeable situation to that in which he already was for what could he do ? Could he, would he, be pleased to be ousted from the Ordnance ; if he was not, would he act zealously with the Court ? or could he oppose when the King had offered to make him all the amends in his power? He yielded, went to Court, and accepted the Government, which the King gave him with every accompaniment of grace that he could mix with the boon. The Bedfords, who were dispersed in the country, and had not got the least intelligence of our views, nor of the circumstances that had contributed to realise them, were far from concealing either their sur- prise or anger with equal temper. The Duchess was hurt at General Conway's not waiting on the Duke and her, and suspected that Lord Hertford had been officious at procuring the general prohibition, of which he was very innocent. As they were both so nearly related to her, she wrote to expostulate with me on their behaviour, when I happened to be seized violently with the gout, which she did not know. I justified Lord Hertford, and took the whole blame of General Conway's absence on myself, as I had promised him, and as was true. I had written a long minute account of this affair, but have torn it out of this book, only leaving the Duchess's reply, to show that, though she was warm, her heart was excellent, tender, and most easily reconciled, and that her style was charming: St. Leonards, Sunday evening. MY DEAR SIR, for I will call you so, though you have Madamed me up to the highest heavens. Your letter grieves me because I 158 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. OCT. think you have taken mine wrong. I was hurt with Lord Hert- ford's conduct ; and when a thing strikes me, I am too honest to conceal it. I never could look favourable upon Lord Hertford whilst I believed those reports ; and I cannot look grave upon any one without giving a reason. My author I will not tell, but my author is a good one. The message from you to the King could not cause the foreign Ministers to be forbid visiting the Duke, after having had no message for six weeks. This I only mention to show you that I cannot accuse you, however willing you may be to take it. I am at dinner, therefore am not very explicit ; but I choose to send an immediate answer, because I see you are much hurt, and I should be very sorry to be the cause of an unnecessary moment's pain to one I have such a real regard for. I had rather find Lord Hertford innocent ; but although I may have wrote when I was too warm, your usual candour, however partial to him, will make you grant that I have reason to be hurt, though he may only have been officious. As to General Conway, perhaps what I said of him had better have been omitted ; but you know I am blessed with Walpole hastiness ; and it did appear extraordinary that he (just at the time I heard of his brother's conduct) accepted of so trifling a compensation for what to the world appeared great injuries, and of which he complained as such. However, I am sorry I have given you any pain, but hope you will not be a real sufferer by it ; and if you will think no more about it, no more will I. I am not vindictive ; I have vented myself to you, and had rather think for the best than the worst ; and, if you please, here it shall drop. But whether you will or not, I will still subscribe myself, Most affectionately yours, MARIA GLOUCESTER, &c. To this I sent the following answer : Strawberry Hill, Oct. 27, 1772. I thank you extremely, my dear Madam, for your answer to my letter, and for the permission of concealing what is passed from the two persons in question, who, I am sure, would suffer as much as I have done ; but I had rather bear anything from my friends, and for my friends, than give them the pain, and the world the pleasure, of knowing it. 1772. CORRESPONDENCE WITH DUCHESS OF GLOUCESTER. 159 I wish I had strength to add a few more explanations, Madam, that would be for your satisfaction, or was able to send you a letter, which, as far as my confused head can recollect, would be a better justification of the elder than all I have said ; but I am not capable yet of searching for it, nor can employ anybody to look for it. I must, therefore, wait till I am better. Indeed I am now so low and faint to-day that I must stop ; and will take advantage, my dear Madam, of your late reproof for my too abundant ceremony, though nothing can ever make me forget the respect I owe to the Duke of Gloucester's wife no, not even the kindness of my niece. I am, &c. 7 1 This letter of Walpole's, and that on the next page, have never before been printed. 160 LAST JOURNALS OF HOEACE WALPOLE. Nov. NOVEMBER. Strawberry Hill, Nov. 15, 1772. THAT you have many enemies, my dear Madam, I do not doubt ; your merit and fortune will raise you numbers of such in those who have not the former, and are given up to the pursuit of the latter. Lies will be the consequence, as your very merit will pre- vent them from hurting you, were they to speak nothing but truth. All I take the liberty to beseech of you is., not to let your own honest warmth and sincerity add to the number. At least wait till you can make your resentment felt as well as known or, what is more like you, till it will be noble to forgive. You are now in a position in which your every word will be weighed and, if possible, misinterpreted. In this country nobody escapes ; and you are capable of being hurt till the King and Duke are reconciled. I know how ready you are to bear anything for the Duke's sake, therefore for his sake bear ill-nature ; and when your own virtue is so great as to be willing to waive the honours due to his wife rather than obstruct his Royal Highness' s return to Court, carry the sacrifice so much farther as not to let the malicious know you know them, since by that frankness you will whet their claws in this only moment in which they can hurt his Royal Highness by keeping him from the King. You will say it is very fine in me to preach, who am warm and imprudent, like you and your father ; but that is the very reason, my dear Madam, why I do preach. I have felt the inconvenience of incautious anger, and wish my experience may all turn to your service. That lies swarm in plenty I know by ancient and recent per- sonal experience too. I was told two days ago that a lady said I had been the cause of the last full publication of your marriage, and that the King believed so. I did not vouchsafe to make an answer. You know, Madam, better than anybody does or can, how true that assertion is. If the King has been told such a gross 1772. CORRESPONDENCE WITH DUCHESS OF GLOUCESTER. 161 untruth, I shall certainly be one of the least proper persons in the world to convey to his Majesty what you wish he should be told of your self-denial ; yet it does you so much honour, it is such just gratitude to his Royal Highness, and I am so indifferent about myself, that I shall certainly take care your declaration shall be made known to his Majesty nor have I any doubt but Lord Hertford will be happy to be the messenger. He knows too well the King's affection for the Duke not to be sure he shall execute a welcome office by doing anything that may tend to a reconcilia- tion between the Royal brothers ; and his letter, which I have already mentioned to you, Madam, and which I here enclose, will convince you Lord Hertford could not think for one moment that he should make his court to his Majesty by inflaming the difference between him and the Duke of Gloucester. The letter, I give you my honour and oath in the most solemn manner, is the genuine identic letter that I received at the time ; nor has Lord Hertford the most distant idea or suspicion of what he was accused, or of my sending you his letter. I do both, in justice to him and myself, to prove to you, my dear Madam, that I would not put your interests into his hands if I were not thoroughly convinced of his zeal to obey you. He is now in Suffolk, or shooting in Norfolk with my excellent nephew. As soon as I am able to see him in town or here, which I have not yet done, I will not lose a moment. I will only beg you to return me his letter, because, though so strong a vindication of him, I am not sure he would like my showing it ; but the goodness of my intention must justify me. P.S. 21st. I wrote the above some days ago, but was in too much pain then, and for almost all the week since, to finish it ; and as Lord Hertford was not in town, nor I able to go thither, there was no hurry. In my tedious and sleepless nights I have thought this matter over and over ; and should the method you prescribe not succeed, I think there might be still more direct and more efficacious ways taken ; but I know it does not become me to give advice, and therefore I can only show my zeal by implicit obedience, which you may always depend upon, my dear Madam, in Your Royal Highnesses most faithful, humble servant, H. W. I meant by the last paragraph that the Duchess should either write to the King herself, or, which I thought VOL. i. M 162 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. Nov. would be the only method likely to be crowned with success, that the Duke should go to the King by surprise, fling himself at his feet, and ask his pardon. As he had never done the last, it was at least due from a younger brother to an elder that was a sovereign. I knew the King's pusillanimity, which could not say no to a man's face ; and it was the only way of preventing the Queen or Lord Mansfield from preparing the King to resist; but my opinion was never asked ; and a new circumstance had induced the Duke and Duchess to lay aside their plan, and build upon an approaching event, which I am inclined to think will rather delay than advance the reconciliation. 1 All that was yet notified to me was, that they had changed their minds. This was the Duchess's answer: Gloucester Lodge, Sunday, Nov. 22, 1772. MY DEAR SIR, I have kept your servant so long that I will not write a long letter. I am very sorry that you are still so ill. As to what I wrote to you last, it may rest for a time, as the King will soon be informed of my sentiments in another manner. My not being upon any intimate footing with the Duchess of Cumber- land, I still beg you will take all opportunities to say I am, and shall always be, civil to her ; it is not possible I ever can be more. But I am running into a letter, when I only meant a cover. I am, my dear Sir, Your most obliged and affectionate, MARIA GLOUCESTER, &c. P.S. Observe, we have changed the name of this place (to Gloster Lodge). The event to which I alluded became public in the beginning of December. In one word, the J)uke of Glou- cester sent notice to the King that the Duchess was breed- 1 See Walpolc's letter to Mann, Dec. 22, 1772. D. 1772. ELECTION OF LORD MAYOR. 163 ing ; and she herself wrote to her father to inform me of y it. Here, I believe, was the true reason of the Duke's formal declaration of his marriage ! and here, for the present, I shall leave this long detail drawn up more for the satisfaction of my own family than for the public, to the events of which I shall now return. The Earl of Lichfield 2 dying in December, the Uni- versity of Oxford eagerly chose Lord North for their Chancellor. He was a Tory, he was their neighbour, and he was First Minister. The Earl of Radnor 3 presented himself as a candidate too, but was slighted, despised, and ridiculed. There was no contending against the fortune of Lord North ; his power would have sufficed to carry the election, and his moderation deserved it. A more important contest had a more singular issue. On the ordinary vacancy of the chair, Wilkes offered himself as candidate to be Lord Mayor of London. The Court set up two renegade aldermen, Halifax and Shake- speare. Mr. Townshend was also named, but disdained to canvass, or even to attend the election. Wilkes's friends, treacherous as Townshend had been, gave him their second votes, lest one of the Court candidates should be named by the Court of Aldermen, who, on two objects being pre- sented to them, may make their option. The tide ran violently in favour of Wilkes and Townshend, who had a vast majority ; yet Halifax and Shakespeare demanded a scrutiny ; and then as ridiculously abandoning it, Wilkes and Townshend were returned to the Court of Aldermen. The King trembled, for Wilkes had evidently the voice of the City ; Townshend, without his assistance, would have * George Henry Lee, Earl of Lich- field, Chancellor of the University of Oxford, and Captain of the band of Pen- sioners. [The title became extinct in 1776.- D.] 8 William Bouverie, Earl of Badnor. M 2 164 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. Nov. had scarce any votes ; and the majority of aldermen were supposed to favour Wilkes. It was even said that Towns- hend, if chosen, would waive his pretensions in favour of Wilkes ; and his disgusting behaviour had made it pro- bable. Wilkes's triumph was on the point of being cele- brated with every mark of exultation ; but Alderman Oliver, the late prisoner in the Tower, who had quitted Wilkes for Townshend, by a deceitful finesse procured a Court of Aldermen before all those attached to Wilkes were assembled, and got Townshend named Lord Mayor. Townshend, as if called by the City, took possession of the chair with arrogance and pride. Wilkes was thunder- struck, and, for once, angry in earnest. His rage and that of his partisans broke out in every kind of outrage against Townshend ; and Lord Shelburne, whom they sus- pected of having sold them to the Court, was not spared. Townshend's brutality and haughtiness were the subject of ten thousand invectives ; and as his hot temper was well known, Wilkes determined to put it to the test. On the Lord Mayor's day Wilkes's mob attacked Guildhall during the ball at night, but did little damage. Townshend pro- posed to sally out with drawn swords and fall on the mob, but was restrained. This answered Wilkes's purpose in part ; and he triumphed more by Townshend's causing a few rioters to be seized and committed to Newgate, though the gaol-distemper raged there, and by vaunting he could bring the riot home to Wilkes, in the prosecution of which he was disavowed by his own witnesses. Parson Home was mobbed and insulted as his chief instrument ; but the real advantage that flowed from these dissensions accrued to the Court, who enjoyed Wilkes's disappointment and the unpopularity of Townshend. The real damage was to the nation, which saw those who would have gone farthest 1772. AFFAIRS OF THE CONTINENT. 165 to stem the encroachments of the Crown divided and warring on each other. The peace between the Russians and the Turks, which had been on the point of conclusion, was suddenly broken off before the end of the summer ; it was said from the exorbitant demands of the former more likely by some secret views of Count Orloff, the Empress's negotiator, confidant Minister, and paramount gallant. 4 This is pro- bable, as, on his being immediately laid aside, though with enormous rewards that spoke more fear than love, the treaty was as suddenly renewed. 5 The partition of Poland between that patriot legislatress (the Czarina), the upright legislator the King of Prussia, and the Emperor (the most impudent association of robbers >/ that ever existed), furnished the second with claims equally just on Dantzig, where he imposed and exacted new duties from us and the Dutch. Our Administration did not dare * The fact was, that the Empress had ordered Orloff to give all possible faci- lities to the negotiation, and to accord all that she could with any reason con- cede, but not to mention their surrender of the Crimea till the last moment, in hopes that, rather than lose all she was willing to give up, they would yield that country. In the mean time she had fallen in love with a lieutenant of her guards, and preferred him rapidly. Orloff, getting intelligence of this new favourite, was so impatient to get rid of him, that without opening on the other points he abruptly made the demand of the Crimea ; was refused ; broke off the treaty, and, getting into a postchaise, disguised like a courier, hurried back to Petersburg, announced the rupture of tho negociation, was disgraced, and saw his rival remain in possession. Thus the Empress and her lover-mi- nister's impetuosity prevented the con- clusion of so destructive a war, and was a new instance of what little passions influence the fate of kingdoms. 5 This Orloff was the individual who received the surname of Tschesmeski, for the victory gained for him at Tchesme" by three English officers in his fleet, Elphinstone, Gregg, and Dug- dale. The demands of the Bussians alluded to above included the surren- der to them of the fortresses of Kertch and Yenikale. On the refusal of the Porte ensued the campaign so especially glorious to the Ottomans by their defeat of the Russians at Silistria, Varna, and Bazardchik. The subsequent victory, however, of Suwarrow at Kozlidje led to the famous treaty of Kainardji, whereby Russia gained those aids to the future destruction of the Ottoman em- pire which were stricken from her hands by the allied armies in the Crimea. D. 166 LAST JOURNALS OP HOEACE WALPOLE. Nov. to resent it, and we had no Opposition to dare, at least not strong enough, to call the Ministers to account. 6 But though the Opposition was so tame, and the Court not ready, or too much intimidated, to be actively culpable, a new scene of almost unparalleled abuses was on the point of breaking out. It had not been intended that the Parlia- ment should meet till after Christmas ; but the East India Company, by mismanagement, or from worse reasons, and their servants in India by the grossest crimes, had so in- volved their affairs, that, the Company having applied to the Treasury for assistance or relief, Lord North found it necessary to bring the whole state of the Company before Parliament, which was summoned to meet on the 26th of November. The extent and intricacy of our Indian affairs are too ample and too obscure to be detailed and explained in a Journal, nor am I enough versed in them or the subject, were I so disposed. The history of the usurpation, plunder, and tyrannic administration of an empire is too large for an episode in memoirs. The books, controversial papers, and reports 7 of committees written on that matter would compose a library. In all probability the story will be cut short ; who can believe we shall long retain possession of the Indies ? It will have been ours. The infamy of our usurpation, and the inhuman manner in which we have wielded the sceptre, will be all that will remain to us ! On the 26th the Parliament met. Whether the Ministry intended to wrest the Government of the three Indian provinces from the Company, and throw them into When Mr. Harris (Lord Malraes- bury), our Minister at Berlin, announced the partition of Poland to Lord Suffolk, our Minister for Foreign Affaire, the latter complaisant official spoko of it only as a " curious transaction." D. 7 These Reports were afterwards pub- lished in two largo volumes in folio. ] 772. AFFAIRS OF EAST INDIA COMPANY. 107 the hands of the Crown, was not known. Whatever was the measure in embryo, they set out prudently with deter- mining to lay open to the public the abuses committed by the Company or their servants. Richard Fitzpatrick, brother of the Earl of Ossory, and nephew of Earl Gower, an agreeable young man of parts, dear friend of Charles Fox, and like him overwhelmed with gaming debts, 8 moved the Address, and dropped strong expressions against the dominion of the Company, which were not well taken from a young man of so light a character. Lord North gave notice that he intended to move for a Committee to in- quire into the affairs of the East India Company, and that he meant it should be a Committee of Secrecy ; and said it was out of respect to the Company, as there were secrets in their books not fit to be made public. General Bur- goyne, chairman of the Open Committee, who affected importance, was hurt at the idea of another Committee, which would annihilate or render his insignificant, and objected to the new proposal. Lord North treated his Opposition with contempt ; said he did not mean to defeat the former Committee that he did not intend to inquire into petty larceny, but looked on the proposed Secret Committee as the commencement of a great inquiry ; and it was voted without a division. The persons chosen were 8 A month before this, Fox was pub- licly spoken of as having been more suc- cessful at Newmarket than had been the lot of many adventurers there for years. The newspapers calculate his winnings at 28.000/. Fox is said to have been in partnership with Foley ; they had the finest stud in the king- dom ; and, in the phrase of the day, the best horses being backed by the same parties, " the knowing ones were most egregiously taken in." Fox refused 3000J. for his favourite horse Pantaloon. Warton, in his Satire ' Newmarket,' thus addresses the young legislators of his day, who combined the jockey with the senator : " Go on, brave youths, till in some future age Whips shall become the senatorial badge ; Till England see her thronging senators Meet all at Westminster in boots and spurs ; See the whole House with mutual frenzy mad, Her patriots all in leathern breeches clad ; Of bets, not taxes, learnedly debate, And guide with equal reins a steed or state." D. LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. Nov. all Ministerial: Lord Frederick Campbell; Lord Pal- merston ; Alderman Harley ; Bichard Rigby, paymaster ; Thomas Walpole ; Nathaniel Kider ; Charles Jenkinson, one of the Lords of the Treasury ; Richard Jackson ; William Burrell ; Richard Fitzpatrick ; John Eames ; and Thomas Gilbert. Alderman Harley was elected chairman ; Lord Frederick Campbell would not act. 1772. AFFAIRS OF EAST INDIA COMPANY. 169 DECEMBER. THE Company had, contrary to the inclinations of the Ministry, resolved to send out supervisors to India. To stop that measure, Alderman Harley, by order of the Secret Committee, proposed to the House, on the 9th of December, to bring in a bill to restrain the Company for a limited time from sending out supervisors. This was opposed by Dempster, T. Townshend, Sullivan, and Lord George Germaine, and particularly by Edmund Burke in a speech of exquisite wit and eloquence. He thanked Lord North for having assured the House that he had no hostile intentions against the Company, but wished to make it great and glorious. Three monarchs, said he, have en- i tered Poland with fire and sword, in order, he presumed, to make that country also a great and glorious kingdom. He then drew an admirable picture of the two Committees ; the Ministry, he supposed, had said with Pope " Try what the open, what the covert yield ! " and he compared them to a wife and a mistress ; the Open Committee was the wife publicly avowed, but, finding her barren, they had taken a neat little snug one, which they called a Committee, and the motion in question was her first-born. But the first-born was adopted by 1 1 4 against 45. On the 12th the Company was heard by counsel against the restraining bill, but it was carried by 153 to 28. Lord 1 Essay on Man.' 170 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. DEC. George Germaine spoke excellently for the Court, con- vinced, he said, by the bad defence the Company had made against it more probably by the very small minority in which he had found himself three days before. The Rockingham party had proposed, on the paucity of their numbers, to lie still this winter, and neither Lord Rock- ingham nor the Duke of Richmond had come to town. Lord George Germaine alone, contrary to their and Burke's opinion, had pressed for action, and now deserted them. On this the Duke of Richmond came post to town, and battled the bill warmly in the House of Lords, and, though in vain, made a strong protest with the Dukes of Portland and Devonshire, and four more Lords. That poor creature the Chancellor, 2 who was wont to mistake insolence for importance, telling the House that the bill ought not to be thrown out without hesitation, but 28 having opposed it in the other House, was well reprimanded by the Duke of Richmond, who said, last year the same noble person had impetuously pressed for rejecting a bill sent up unanimously by the House of Commons (the Presby- terians' Bill) ; now his Lordship thought a minority of 28 was sufficient reason for passing a bill. The Duke made another hit from an expression dropped by one of the witnesses, of which more will be said hereafter. But it was a witness at the bar of the other House that gave a clue to many dark and scandalous transactions. Sykes, a member, and one of the Company's servants, who had made an enormous fortune in the Indies, brought one 1 Lord I V 1 1 1 1 1 1 r- 1 . [His title was Lord he was too busy on other days to seo his Apaley till the death of his father in 1 friends, and besides, the King's exam- 1775. This Chancellor's Sunday levees pie was cited as sufficient authority, rather scandalised the serious people of i D.] his time ; but it was said for him that j 1772. AFFAIRS OF EAST INDIA COMPANY. 171 Wilkes, an infirm, old, gouty man, as a witness in behalf of himself and his associates. The man was plain-spoken and honest. He told the House that the servants had, unwarranted by and unknown to the Company, levied an enormous tax in India, which they shared amongst them- selves ; and that Mr. Sykes had been allowed 24,000/. a year for his table. Sykes was thunderstruck, and, to purge his character, challenged the old man, who laughed at him. This detection of abuses had flowed from an unparalleled instance, I believe, of revenge triumphing over avarice in the breasts of opulent citizens, who are used to make peace rather than suffer their dearest interests to transpire to the public. The animosities and jealousies of the Directors amongst themselves, and of others, who wished to direct, against them, exposed that mass of iniquity, which har- mony perhaps might have buried in tenfold darkness. The year, and this first part of the session of Parlia- ment, ended with a new disposition of places, arranged solely to make room for Charles Fox at the Treasury. 3 Lord Edgcumbe, 4 one of the Vice-Treasurers of Ireland, was made to give up that opulent post, and take the vacant place of Captain of the Band of Pensioners, with a salary to make up his loss. Jenkinson, Lord Bute's creature * The contemporary apologists of Fox maintained that he might have had an important and lucrative post in Ireland, instead of a seat at the English Trea- sury Board with a poor 1600Z. a-year, but that he spiritedly preferred the ac- quisition of knowledge to the emolu- ments of office. His adversaries accused him of hoping to become Chancellor of the Exchequer, in the event of Lord North going to the House of Peers, on the expected death of his father, the ever," says the General Evening Post, " but Lord Guilford's death is likely to make Mr. Fox Chancellor of the Ex- chequer, the odds (to use a language he is not wholly a stranger to) are much against him. Lord Guilford's is a better life than his own ; and he has infinitely less to dread from natural decay of age than Tie has to apprehend from headlong vehemence of youthful dissipation." D. Earl of Guilford. "If nothing, how- Admiral. * George, thud Lord Edgcumbe, and 172 LAST JOURNALS OF HOEACE WALPOLE. DEC. 1772. and one of the secret junto, succeeded as Vice-Treasurer ; and Charles Fox replaced Jenkinson at the Board of Trea- sury. Lord Holland had hoped his son would have been able to lead the bargain with the long-wished Earldom for him ; but the King was obdurate when his tools were past service. ( 173 ) 1773. JANUARY. THE Parliament met again after the holidays. 27th. The Queen was delivered of another son. It was christened Augustus Frederic. This month Mr. Andrew Stuart printed and dispersed his four remarkable Letters to Lord Mansfield on the Douglas cause. 1 FEBRUARY. 1st. THE jewels, plate, and trinkets of the late Princess Dowager of Wales were sold by public auction at Christie's in Pall Mall. They were inconsiderable, and it seemed very mean to expose them in that manner ; especially as the amount was to be divided amongst her own children. 2nd. An affair that made most noise was Lord Towns- hend's quarrel with the Earl of Bellamont, a brave young Irish lord, whom he had offended by refusing to see him at 1 See Walpole's ' Memoirs of George III.,' vol. iii. p. 304, edited by Sir Denis Le Marcliant. D. 174 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. FEB. Dublin. Lord Bellamont waited till his return to Eng- land, then resigned his post of Quartermaster-General, and sent Lord Charlemont to demand satisfaction. After many evasions, Lord Bellamont required Lord Townshend to give, under his hand, a formal denial of having intended to affront him. Four challenges evaded made Lord Towns- hend's lingering in Ireland, on purpose to fight, completely ridiculous. He refused to give the written satisfaction, and sent Lord Ligonier to Lord Bellamont to declare he would not, but making an apology, and declaring sorrow for what had happened, with which Lord Bellamont con- tented himself. However, the story being reported very differently by the two parties, great clamour pursued Lord Townshend ; and Lord Bellamont having drawn up the state of the quarrel between him and Lord Townshend, and got it signed by his friends Lords Charlemont and Ancram, and determining to publish it, Lord Townshend found it disgraced him so much, that he at last sent Lord Bellamont a challenge, and they fought between four arid five in the afternoon, when Lord Townshend, firing first, shot Lord Bellamont in the belly, who then fired, shook hands with Lord Townshend, 1 and was carried home to have his wound dressed. 1 Lord Townshend gave great offence by writing a buffoon account of his duel, the very evening after it happened, to Foote, the celebrated buffoon, who showed it in coffee-houses. [The duel took place in that part of Marylebone fields which was in the rear of Bedford House (formerly Southampton House), a mansion which as late ae the year 1800 occupied the entire north side of Bloomsbury Square. The spot had long been sacred to duellists. In the epi- logue to Mountfort'a ' Greenwich Park ' (1691), Florella (Mrs. Mountfort) says: " Well, sirs, Is it peace or war that you declare ? I'm ready arm'd : so IB my second here. If you're displeased with what you've seen to-night, Behind Southampton House we'll do you right Who is't dares draw 'gainst me and Mrs. Knight?" A long time elapsed before Towns- hend's ball was extracted from hia adversary's groin. Nevertheless Lord Bellamont, during his suffering, at- tended to his private affairs, and nego- tiated the purchase of Luxborongh House, Kppiug Forest, which belonged to Sir Edward Walpole. The cost was 20,000*. The epigrammatists feebly 1773. PETITION OF NAVY CAPTAINS. 175 9th. Lord Howe presented to the House of Commons a petition from the captains in the navy, on half-pay, for a small addition. Lord Sandwich had been against it for fear of the precedent. Lord North had intended to take no part, and though he did, for the same reasons as Lord Sandwich, had neglected taking any precautions for having it rejected. Accordingly, as the sum required was incon- siderable, as the navy had made interest for it, and the army, liking the example, would not oppose it, but absented themselves, Lord North was beaten by 154 to 45. There were, however, circumstances in this defeat that looked suspicious, and as if there were some treachery in more places than one. The Duke of Grafton's 2 friends openly acted against Lord North : those of the other part of the Bedford squadron absented themselves, and were known to be envious of the minister's power : but the most remarkable incident was, that Sir Gilbert Elliot (believed to be more trusted by the King than any man except Lord attacked Lord Townshend. Here is a specimen of their small wit : " Sayi Bell'mont to Townshend, ' You turn'd on your heel, And that gave your honour a check.' Tis my way,' replied Townshend ; ' to the world I appeal, If I did n't the same at Quebec.' " When he succeeded to the command at Quebec, after Monckton was wounded, he recalled the English troops from pursuit of the enemy, and subsequently declined to renew the contest with De Bougainville. " But," as before quoted from Bancroft, " already the hope of New France was gone." D.] 2 The Duke of Graf ton, ever since his fall from the post of First Minister, had humbly aspired to be First Lord of the Admiralty ; and now that Lord Sandwich had discouraged the petition for half-pay, and consequently offended part of the navy, it is but extremely probable that the total defection of his friends on that question was enjoined by his Grace. However, on the 12th he positively denied having desired a single person to vote for the petitioners but this was not till Lord North, shocked at finding himself betrayed, had been on the point of resigning all his places and power on the 10th, which had so alarmed the Bedfords, who hated Lord Mansfield more than Lord North, that they bestirred themselves with all their activity to support Lord North on the affair of St. Vincent's, and probably brought back the Duke of Grafton. For the Court's part of the treachery, it remained as little doubt- ful as his Grace's. Sir Gilbert Elliot would not make any apology to Lord North, which showed he was sure of the King and Lord Mansfield ; and as last year he had openly ridiculed General Conway's conscientious scru- ples, and pronounced it impossible for Ministers to act with him, it was good proof that his own embarrassing the Ad- ministration did not proceed from any principle. 176 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. FEB. Mansfield, and yet who for two years had acted the part of discontent) was the warmest supporter of the peti- tion. They who had most jealousy of the King and his cabal suspected that they meant "to insinuate to the navy and army 3 that his Majesty favoured their claim, and that the Minister's economy alone withstood it. 4 10th. Now at last came on an affair in Parliament, the discussion of which had long been expected. The Caribbees, who had been suffered for a great number of years to remain in the Island of St. Vincent before it was ceded to us by the late peace, and had considerably improved their lands, were recently much disturbed by their new governor, Sir William Young, and his council, who, coveting the improved estates of the Caribbees, had formed and recommended to Government a plan for dispossessing them of their lands. The Caribbees resisted. The governor and council sent over bitter complaints, representing them as rebels and traitors, who were treating with the French at Martinico to betray the island to the latter. Lord Hillsborough, arbitrary, ignorant, and incon- siderate, had taken upon him the protection of the governor and council, and, believing all they said, had drawn in Lord North and the Cabinet Council to act as arbitrarily as inconsiderately, and send troops to quell, destroy, or expel the wretched Caribs. To the cruelty of this treatment of the real savages, our polished savages, the Ministers, added another towards the troops despatched, who, despite the representations of experienced men, were sent away at the most improper season, and when it was apprehended * That this surmise was well grounded may bo gathered from the following paragraph, which appeared in the ' Daily Advertiser ' of the following Friday, Feb. 12th : " The petition of the captains of the navy was recom- mended by his Majesty." 4 See an account of that debate in the 'London Chronicle' of Feb. llth, 1773, and sequent. 1773. EXPEDITION AGAINST THE CAEIBBEES. 177 that nothing but distempers or destruction could overtake them. The atrociousness of these proceedings, the disgusts of the officers thus exposed, and the odium that followed Lord Hillsborough, though now out of place, had, in spite of the servility of Parliament and the supineness of Opposi- tion, forced on an inquiry ; and though many causes had staved it off, 5 T. Townshend, jun., having moved for papers to ground an inquiry, and they having not only been granted, but even so far fairly given that they awakened attention and augmented clamour, the examination was opened on this day, 10/A, and many witnesses were examined, among whom Lieutenant-General Trappaud 6 produced a letter exemplifying the distresses of the em- barkation : and then the inquiry was put off to the 12th. 12th. The day was passed in examining witnesses. It appeared that the black or African Caribs had almost driven out or extirpated the yellow or red, original Caribs, and possessed more land than they could occupy ; that our governor and council were very desirous of restrain- ing the blacks to narrower quarters, 7 and had offered to 5 On one side the Ministers wished to receive farther accounts from St. Vincent's ; on the other, Edmund Burke, the soul of the Opposition in the Com- mons (as the Duke of Richmond was in the Lords), had meanly retired to France on the pretence of placing his son at Blois, but in reality, it was be- lieved, to avoid the inquiry, as his cousin, another Burke, was confidential secretary to Sir William Young, and was supposed to be deeply concerned in advising the malpractice against the Caribs in that island. Some, both in place and in opposition, might wish to have Burke return before the inquiry ; but he was not likely to be so en- trapped, after having had so much pre- caution. On the examination relative to the affair at St. Vincent's, before a great assembly, on Wednesday, a Lieut.- General* of the 70th Regiment, at the Grenades, read part of a letter, [dated Nov. 14th, which mentioned that the mortality among the men is very great, owing to the heavy and continual rains at that season ; that the Caribs have been ill-used ; that they act with caution, and the woods are so thick, that they knock down the soldiers with the greatest security to themselves; and that the troops have only been able to penetrate four miles into the country. The above officer also informed the House, that an ofBcer and a party were drowned going ashore in a boat. 7 The planters were horridly eager to cut the throats of the savages in order to seize their property. The English Administration, though abetting the usurpation, had enjoined aa much * General Trappaud. VOL. I. N 178 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. FEB. purchase their uncultivated lands; that the blacks, jealous of our encroachments, had obstructed our surveys, and had even sent to St. Lucia to beg assistance against us. The French governor of Martinique, then at St. Lucia, had, handsomely to us, refused them aid ; had even threatened them with supporting the English, and had actually given us warning of the designs of the Caribs. It appeared, too, that for this fidelity to treaties the French governor had been recalled. The French were represented as encou- raging the obstinacy of the Caribs, whose behaviour, sturdy indeed in defence of their freedom and property, was so exaggerated, that the master of an English sloop swore solemnly that four canoes of Caribs had attempted to board him, and that he had destroyed them all, without a syllable of foundation for his deposition. From Fletcher, a Scotch officer who had been at St. Vincent's, it came out that, though he had arrived with his regiment at Christmas, and had had seven months to season his men, yet, when the bad season and rains came, 250 out of 400 had been sent to the hospital. Being asked what would be the consequence of the new troops arriving at the beginning of the bad season, he replied, Dreadful indeed I Sharp, a shrewd man, who had also been President of St. Vincent, and was willing enough to palliate what had been done, confessed he had been ordered by the Cabinet Council to draw up advice for their proceedings, had been allowed but one day, and had been so pressed by them that he was forced to deliver in the rough sketch of his lenity as could be consistent with in- vasion, and those injunctions had pre- vented force from being used. One Harry Alexander, President of St. Vin- cent, exclaims, in a paper laid before the House of Commons, "I withdrew the troops to their quarters without the discharge of a musket on cither side ; and for a time, I hope it will be short, I quitted that fine cream part of this island with a regret I cannot express to you!" And he afterwards speaks of himself and the inhabitants, as rapacious ns himself, as men of good hearts and hands, but tied up from using their arms. 1773. INQUIRY CONCERNING THE CARIES. 179 rude, indigested, and indeed rash thoughts, and that the Council here had intemperately ordered them to be carried into execution. This was the merciless scheme of trans- porting the black Caribs to a desert island. These lights were proclaimed to be most favourable to the ministry, and much less heinous than the facts had been represented not that they were so, except in the softness of some expressions, as appears from the above state, but because it was become expedient for many who had been disposed to censure, to alter their language. In short, the late amazing overthrow of, at least affront given to, Lord North, had occasioned the greatest fermenta- tion in the Cabinet. Nor could there be a more surprising circumstance than that the first event of the most tri- umphant session ever known, in which Opposition itself had given up the game, that the first event, I say, of such a session, should be a total rout of the First Minister. He had neglected the question, he had declared he would not take any part on it ; yet, unless there had been purposed treachery, his troops would have rallied when once they heard his voice. Lord North was not the dupe. He declared strongly in private to the King, and publicly to others, that he would be supported ; that the question on St. Vincent's should decide his fate as a minister ; and that Sir Gilbert Elliot should make reparation by supporting him, or that he or Sir Gilbert must quit the King's service. Lord North had reason to take his part without loss of a day : it was known that General Harvey, 8 the King's confidential tool for the army, had threatened to condemn in Parliament the embarkation of the troops at so improper 8 General Edward Harvey, of the I Essex. He had a pension also of 1500Z. family of the Harveys of Chigwell in | a year. N 2 180 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLB. FEB. a moment ; and many other officers would have taken the same part. The King was terrified ; for though alert to betray his own servants, he was not always ready to supply their places ; and Lord North happened to be the only unexceptionable man in England who could at this juncture be employed to public satisfaction in the manage- ment of- affairs. Sir Gilbert Elliot was ordered to make amends, General Harvey to be moderate, and the secret junto (probably) to plan Lord North's fall or disgrace on firmer grounds. No wonder the courtiers in the mean time, who had run from the Minister after Sir Gilbert, were quick in discerning that the cause against the Caribs was better than they had been told. To exculpate the King, Lord Bute, and the cabal, of the charge of betraying Lord North, it was proclaimed that Sir Gilbert's treachery was only revenge. Lord Barrington 9 having refused a com- mission in the army to one of his sons. Sir Gilbert him- self would have been ashamed to ascribe his vote in behalf of poor naval officers, to principle. Treachery was not all Lord North complained of: the grounds of his complaint had foundation deep enough to deserve to alarm the constitution itself. Lord North remonstrated against the large numbers of military prefer- ments which the King himself bestowed; a practice, he said, that loosened parliamentary discipline, as officers did not look up to the Minister, nor could he engage the attachment of country gentlemen when they found he had not credit to provide for their sons and relations in the army ; and this personal dependence on the Crown ex- plained collaterally why, on the half-pay, the land ant naval officers had more willingly followed Elliot than Lore Secretary ut War. 1773. AFFAIRS OF EAST INDIA COMPANY. 181 North a secret favourite having better interest than an ostensible minister. But what was not to be apprehended from the King's assiduity in attaching the army person- ally to himself? J On the same 12th of February the Duke of Richmond gave a signal defeat to the measures of Government. Lord North had come to an agreement with the Directors of the East India Company, and the governing chiefs had settled a list of demands and offers to be made to Parlia- ment. They were laid before the General Court of Proprietors ; but Governor Johnson proposing that the Company should rather desire to know Lord North's terms, and some altercations arising, the Duke, unaccus- tomed to appear there, and thence drawing observance, per- suaded the generality of the proprietors of stock to embrace Johnson's motion ; and it was carried by three to one against Sir George Colebrook, Sullivan, and their ad- herents. ~L5th was finished the examination of witnesses in the affairs of St. Vincent's. T. Townshend then entered into a discussion and condemnation of the measures taken. He stated the injustice and cruelty of the conduct held towards the Caribs, even after they had taken the oaths of allegiance to the King, and the inhumanity of the designs against them, merely to gratify the mercenary views of that wretch Alexander, and other planters. He afterwards cen- sured the impropriety of sending troops at a season so de- structive ; and he told the House he should offer two motions of crimination on both measures. Others dwelt on the ex- travagance of despatching 2500 against 700 poor savages. Lord George Germaine summed up the whole barbarity, rashness, and folly in one of his most pointed speeches, full of pith, matter, irony, and satire. Stanley, Sir Richard Sut- LAST JOURNALS OF HOEACE WALPOLE. FEB. ton, 1 Stephen Fox, Lord Barrington, Sam. Martin, Rice, and General Conway defended the conduct the latter rather the person of Lord North, to whose moderation and equity he had been obliged, though owning he was ready to second an address for lenity towards the Caribs. Lord North did not defend himself so well, and was roughly handled by Colonel Barre. With regard to other officers, Colonel Burgoyne was pompously pathetic against both parts of the plan, and exposed the iniquity to the Caribs after they had gotten forty of our people into their power and let them go off unhurt. General Howard voted against the expedition ; so did General Harvey by order, temperate. Sir Gilbert Elliot supported, silently minis- terial. Late at night the first question was put, That the expedition against the black Caribs in the island of St. Vincent was undertaken without sufficient provocation on the part of those unhappy people, and by the advice of per- sons interested, and will end in the extirpation of those unhappy people. This motion was rejected by 206 voices to 88. Townshend then proposed his second motion, That the sending troops which were unprovided with camp equi- page or necessaries in the unhealthy season of the year is not justified by any necessity, and must prove destructive to the best troops in his Majesty's service, and probably defeat the purpose for which they were sent, and bring dis- grace upon his Majesty's arms. This was likewise not accepted, by 199 to 78. Townshend told the House that, had his two first questions been attended with success, he had designed to have taken their sense upon the following motion : That an humble address be presented to his Majesty, that he would be graciously pleased to acquaint Lately in the Secretary's office ; since become a baronet. 1773. THE DUKE AND DUCHESS OF GLOUCESTER. 183 the House by whose advice the measure was undertaken for attacking the Caribs in the island of St. Vincent, and sending troops for that purpose in the most unhealthy season of the year , a measure equally repugnant to the known humanity of his Majesty's temper, disgraceful to his Ma- jesty's arms, and a disgrace to the character of the British nation. But this question, become improper from the contrary sense of the House, was not enforced, and the Caribs were left to the mercy of the elements, which could alone defend them. The Duke and Duchess of Gloucester were now come to settle in town against her lying-in. The Duke of Richmond, his brother Lord George Lenox, Lord George Germain e, with their wives, and several of the Opposition, went to pay their court to them. Some few of the Court went likewise ; but General Harvey going to the Duke, and being told by General Rainsford, the Duke's Groom of the Bed- chamber in waiting, that he might go to the Duchess too, Harvey replied he had come to the Duke on military mat- ters ; but as the Duchess could have no military business with him, he desired to be excused. General Amherst, receiving the like intimation, answered, he had not the honour of knowing the Duchess, and therefore desired to be excused. The King was very civil to those who went, which distressed those who abstained. Lord Denbigh, the lowest and most officious of the Court-tools, endeavoured to incense the King, whose measure, not whose inclination, it was to affect lenity. Lord Rockingham did not wait on the Duke and Duchess, on pretence that it would look too like a system of opposition ! This refinement served to an- nounce his being head of the Opposition, and his fear of its incensing the King and preventing his becoming some time or other the head of Administration again. The Duke, 184 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. FEB. however, sent to desire to meet him at the House of Lords, and did ; and the next day Lord Rockingham waited on him, but took care to let it be known that he had been in- vited. The King soon afterwards spoke with much anger to Lord Hertford against those who had been at Gloucester House, and said he believed he must forbid them more positively ; but, according to his usual timidity, a few days after this he bade Lord Hertford desire his brother, General Conway, to whisper General Amherst that his Majesty dis- liked his going to the Duke. Conway begged to be ex- cused, saying he had been sorry to have been hindered going himself. The Duke, going to Foote's theatre, was received with three claps. The Duchess of Cumberland, in imitation of the Duchess of Gloucester, saw company twice a week ; fifty persons went the first night, but not one man or woman of any name. The Duchess of Gloucester received her visitors with great humility advanced and saluted every Lady to prevent their offer- ing to kiss her hand, and gave it to kiss to the untitled and to the men ; making the company sit (which was not according to Royal etiquette), and asking the ladies to stay and play at cards. -The next day, the 18th, General Conway pressed his brother, Lord Hertford, to ask the King if officers, as was reported, were allowed to pay their duty to the Duke and Duchess. The King answered with great anger that his orders had been positive ; that he had allowed no officer but those of the Duke's own regiment to wait on him, and General Harvey, as Quartermaster-Ge- neral ; and added he did not believe any other officers had been with the Duke if there were, he desired to know who they were, which Lord Hertford requested to be excused telling him. Townshend, Lord Mayor, at this time recommended to the 1773. SHORT PARLIAMENTS. 185 Court of Aldermen to promote measures for obtaining short parliaments. All the Aldermen approved the motion but Wilkes, who, from hatred of Townshend, opposed that popu- lar measure, calling it a worn-out matter. It was declared to be carried unanimously. Wilkes denied the unanimity, yet, on putting the question, did not hold up his hand against it, and it passed unanimously, though not without his charging Townshend with his having delayed his advice till Sawbridge's motion for short parliaments had been rejected in the House of Commons, and could not be renewed till another session, which showed Townshend was only making a fallacious offering to popularity. I 23rd. Sir W. Meredith moved to reconsider the sub- scription to the Thirty-nine Articles. The Archbishop of ! York had complained that Lord North had been too in- different to them last year ; and the University of Oxford applying to him to defend their great Diana, he made a point of throwing out the motion, and earnest request of attendance was sent twice to the Court militia yet did not Sir Gilbert Elliot attend. However, Sir TCoger Newdigate, the spokesman of bigotry and every antiquated doctrine of prerogative and superstition, stiffly opposed going into the Committee ; and with an hypocrisy which churchmen, 2 but seldom their satellites, use, professed moderation. Charles Fox supported the question, but it was quashed by 159 to 67. 24th. Sir John Dalrymple published his Appendix to 2 Charles Jenkinson, who began to assume the airs of a minister, and was thought to aspire to the post of Chan- cellor of the Exchequer, declared that Archbishop Laud, with all his faults, was o very very great man. There wanted nothing to prove the justice of this panegyric, but to quote his ridi- culous and pagan consecration of St. Catherine Cree Church, his Star-cham- ber sentences, as puerile as cruel, his letters to Lord Strafford, and his ' Diary,' in which he relates his dreams, which turned on his jealousy of Arch- bishop Williams. See an account of the debate in the ' London Chronicle ' of Feb. 27th, 1773. 186 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. FEB. his History, of both which more will be said at the end of this year, not to interrupt the suite of events, though both were far from being foreign to the plan of despotism the Court and the Scotch were pursuing. The India Directors, having rallied their troops, re- covered their ground, and carried their point for applying in their own terms to Parliament. One Impey, a lawyer, said he was surprised at the Duke of Richmond deigning to come among them ; but it was a proof how low Opposi- tion had fallen, when his Grace could find no other theatre in which to promote faction. Accounts of great sickness and mortality among the troops sent to St. Vincent. An hundred men were killed by the Caribs, and six hundred sent to the hospital. A regiment that was on the point of returning from America was countermanded. 1773. THE 'HEROIC EPISTLE.' 187 MARCH. AN account came of the death of Charles Emanuel, King of Sardinia, aged 72. l At this time was published an admirable poem, equal in wit and poetry to the Dunciad, though short. It was called An Heroic Epistle to Sir William Chambers on his Book of Gardening ; 2 and though ridiculing him, was a severe satire on the King and his chief tools. The King, expect- ing only an attack on Chambers, bought it to tease, and began reading it to, him ; but, finding it more bitter on him- self, flung it down on the floor in a passion and would read no more. Lord Bristol, the best of courtiers, and as zealous as the Roman who swore to having seen the Emperor's soul fly to heaven, could not be persuaded to read the Heroic Epistle ; he said, from what he had heard of it, he would as soon read blasphemy such pious servants had our pious King ! In the Public Advertiser of March 5th was a bitter attack, signed Justice, on his Majesty's patron- age of Sir John Dalrymple's book. This invective, I imagine, was written by William Burke. It was followed soon after by another and better, signed Hollis : and all the acrimony against the Scotch was revived by that indis- creet publication, to the no small mortification of the Court. Lord Mansfield, a principal promoter and patron of the work, grew frightened, as usual, and affirmed having refused to assist Dalrymple with his interest with the 1 He had reigned forty-three years. D. s Now known to be by Mason. D. 188 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. MARCH, French Ministers to obtain the papers accusing Algernon Sidney. Lord Nuneham, son of Lord Harcourt, Ambas- sador at Paris, told me his father obtained them by the King's order, and that the King paid for transcribing them. Lord Nuneham saw them in his father's hands, I am sure, for he told me the contents of them before they were published. At this time there were certainly designs going on against Lord North ; and some thoughts of putting the Treasury into Lord Gower's hands. Lord North was very ungracious and indolent ; Lord Mansfield blamed him loudly. He had much offended Lord Mountstewart (Lord Bute's son) by refusing him the Lieutenancy of a Welsh county (which Lord M. obtained however), and by the rude manner of the refusal, for which Lord M. said he would have knocked him down if it had not been in the House of Commons, and for which he and all his family would never forgive him. This was some key to Sir Gilbert Elliot's late behaviour. But Lord North's capital crime, or rather merit, was his aversion to promoting the King's wish of obtaining an increase to his revenue of 200,OOOZ. a year. 9th. Lord North moved to grant 1, 400,000 J. to the East India Company, provided necessary precautions were taken to prevent like exigencies in future, which was agreed to. Sir Basil Keith, a younger brother of Sir Robert Keith, late Ambassador in Denmark and since at Vienna, was, though only a junior Captain in the navy, raised to the rich government of Jamaica. IQth. The City agreed on a new Remonstrance to the King, and to use their utmost endeavours to obtain shorter parliaments. Wilkes drew up the Remonstrance in such 1773. DEATH OF THE EAEL OF CHESTERFIELD. 189 strong and violent terms, that he boasted that his enemy Townshend, the Lord Mayor, would be undone at St. James's if he presented it, and stoned by the people if he did not. There were doubts if it were not treasonable, and Thurlow, Attorney-General, declared he thought the King ought to refuse accepting it. Some of Wilkes's friends persuading him to accompany it, he excused himself, and published his answer in the papers, which was not less insulting than the Remonstrance, and said, " how unhappy he should be to see his Sovereign surrounded almost entirely by the enemies of our country and his family" The Lord Mayor behaved absurdly ; asked the Attorney- General if the Remonstrance was not a libel ; who said it was ; and sent for Serjeant Glynn, who adhered to Wilkes, to town, to know his opinion, and then would not see him, but demanded it in writing. 3 23rd. Lord North, previously to his intended measures, proposed two resolutions for restraining the East India Company's dividends to six and seven per cent, till their debt to the public should be reduced to a certain sum. Burke almost alone opposed those motions, with little foundation, and, attacking Conway, was answered well by him. Barre spoke with much temper and applause, ap- proving the measure, which was agreed to. The next day the Secret Committee on Indian Affairs made their Report, but it was thought more partial to the supposed criminals than had been expected. Philip, Earl of Chesterfield, died after a slow decay, i aged 78. He left a will that did him no credit; imposing' impracticable restraints upon his heir, and sporting ludi- crously on the Church, by giving penalties, which his heir 3 See Supplement at end of March. 190 LAST JOUKNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. MABCH, was made liable to, to the Dean and Chapter of West- mister, to whose want of lenity he said he would trust. 5 29tk. The Lord Mayor, very ill attended, presented the City's Remonstrance, and made apologies to the Lord Chamberlain for having been forced to bring it. The King in his answer treated it as not serious, and as if the remonstrants could not expect any other response. SUPPLEMENT. The following is an exact copy of the City's Remonstrance, agreed upon in Common Hall, March llth, 1773, as it was delivered to his Majesty's Secretary of State, that a proper answer might be prepared against the day when the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, &c., are to present it in form to his Majesty : "To THE KING'S MOST EXCELLENT MAJESTY. " The humble Address, Petition, and Remonstrance of the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and Livery of the City of London, in Common Hall assembled. "MosT GRACIOUS SOVEREIGN, " We, your Majesty's dutiful and loyal subjects, the Lord Mayor, 5 See ' Life and Works of Lord Ches- terfield,' by Lord Mahon (Earl Stan- hope). Shortly after Chesterfield's death the following lines were very generally circulated. They were said to have been written by that nobleman, and offered to Colley Gibber, during the lifetime of Frederick Prince of Wales, son of George II., as a birthday ode to that King : " I Colley Gibber, right or wrong, Must celebrate this day, And tune once more my tuneless song, And strum the venal lay. Heav'n spread through all the family That broad, illustrious glare, That shines so flat In ev'ry eye. And makes them all so stare. Heav'n send the Prince of royal race A little and horse, A little meaning in his face, And money in his purse ! And, as I have a son like yours, May he Parnassus rule ! So shall the crown, and laurel too, Descend from fool to fool." Lady Chesterfield, the daughter of the Duchess of Kendal (Melusina von Schulcnburg), when her lord was dying, sent for the Rev. Rowland Hill. Lord Chesterfield refused to see him; and immediately after his death Lady Chesterfield appointed him her chap- lain, and opened Chesterfield House for the preaching of the Gospel. D. 1773. THE CITY REMONSTRANCE. 191 Aldermen, and Livery of the City of London, beg leave to approach the Throne with the respect becoming a free people zealously attached to the laws and constitution of their country, and the Par- liamentary right of your Majesty to the crown of these realms. " We desire, with all humility in the grief and anguish of our hearts, to submit to your Majesty that the many grievances and injuries we have suffered from your Ministers still remain unredressed ; nor has the public justice of the kingdom received the least satisfaction for the frequent atrocious violations of the laws which have been com- mitted in your reign by your Ministers, with a daring contempt of every principle human and divine. Your people have, with the deepest concern, observed that their former humble Petitions and Eemonstrances were received with a neglect and disregard very hardly brooked by the high spirit of a great and powerful nation ; but the hopes of redress still encouraging us to persevere, we again supplicate your Majesty to listen to the voice of your aggrieved subjects in vindication of your own and the nation's honour against your despotic and corrupt ministers, who have perverted the foun- tains of public justice, and undermined the foundations of our excel- lent constitution. Our representatives, who were chosen to be the guardians of our rights, have invaded our most sacred privileges. The right of being represented in Parliament is the inherent inalien- able privilege, as well as peculiar glory, of the free-born inhabitants of this country ; and a person qualified according to law, a magistrate of this city, was duly elected a knight of the shire for the county of Middlesex by a great majority of legal votes, yet has been excluded from the House of Commons by a resolution of that House ; and a candidate, who had only a few votes, declared the representative of the electors of the said county against their consent. Through the like corrupt influence of the same Ministers, the chief magistrate and one of the aldermen of this city were imprisoned for not obeying the illegal mandates of an arbitrary House of Commons, and violating the solemn oaths they had taken for the preservation of the liberties and franchises of the capital of your Majesty's dominions. We recall to your Majesty's remembrance with horror that unparalleled act of tyranny, the erasing a judicial record in order to stop the course of justice, to introduce a system of power against right, and to tear up by the roots truth and law from the earth. " We therefore, your Eemonstrants, again supplicate your Majesty to employ the only remedy now left by the constitution, the exercise of that salutary power with which you are intrusted by law, the dis- solving of the present Parliament, and the removal of those evil counsellors who advised the measures so generally odious to the LAST JOURNALS OF HOKACE WALPOLE. MARCH, nation ; and your Majesty, as the true guardian of our rights, shall ever reign in the hearts of a grateful people." Several of Mr. Alderman Wilkes's friends waited upon him, and pressed very much his going to St. James's with the other Aldermen to present the late Address, Petition, and Remonstrance to the King. Mr. Wilkes's answer was nearly in these words : *' GENTLEMEN, " You well know the support I gave on Thursday to the motions in Common Hall for the Bemonstrance, and the engagement for shortening the duration of Parliaments. I now feel a real pain in declining to comply with the solicitation of so respectable friends. As I have long been personally obnoxious to the King, I have not for many years been at St. James's. It would now be rude and inde- cent to force myself into the Royal presence on an occasion not the most pleasing, I believe, to his Majesty. I am not used to go into any gentleman's house who does not wish to see me. The last year, as sheriff, it would have been the particular duty of my office to have attended the King with any petition or remonstrance, and I should have obeyed the commands of the City. T am now to be considered only as an Alderman. The attendance of the whole body is not necessary. No favourable effect could possibly arise from my being with you at St. James's ; and if the least disturbance should happen without, it would be construed to be a premeditated riot, the Guards immediately be ordered to fire among the people, and another massacre ensue. " I am not fond of the air of a Court : it generally blasts sooner or later, and often nips, even in the bud, our modern patriotism. I should be particularly unhappy at this time to see my sovereign sur- rounded almost entirely by the enemies of our country and his family, and the royal smiles beaming on those very Ministers against whom the City of London now petition and remonstrate with so much truth and justice, while my fellow citizens were received with coldness and disregard. My warmest wishes, however, gentlemen, will go with you, and may you meet with a gracious reception and success." The Lord Mayor, attended by Mr. Serjeant Glynn, Eecorder; Alderman Bull ; Mr. Sheriff Lewes, City Eemembrancer ; Common Serjeant ; Town-Clerk ; eight of the livery, and the rest of the City officers, went to St. James's, where the Recorder read to his Majesty the Address, Petition, and Ecmonstranco from the City of London. To which his Majesty gave the following answer : " I have the satisfaction to think that my people don't doubt of 1773. THE CITY REMONSTRANCE. 193 my readiness to attend to their complaints, or of my ardent de- sire to promote their happiness, which I cannot more effectually do than by resisting every attempt to sow groundless jealousies among them. " Your petition is so void of foundation, and is, besides, conceived in such disrespectful terms, that I am convinced you do not seriously imagine it can be complied with." VOL. I. 194 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. APRIL, APRIL. THE Prussian Minister, Count Malzahn, suddenly de- clared he was going away, and ordered in the bills of his tradesmen. This was supposed to be in consequence of the part we were believed to be taking with France against the invasion and usurpation of Poland. The Ministers denied that he was going, and called it an imposition for the purpose of stockjobbing. 5th. Lord North acquainted the House of Commons that the King, in answer to the petition of the East India Company, had left the decision of that affair to the House. Lord North then moved to leave territorial acquisitions to the Company for six years longer, the Company's exclu- sive charter expiring in 1 780 ; but he hinted that exigen- cies might require the Government's taking those possessions into its own hands sooner. He moved too that after a certain time the Government should partake of the Com- pany's clear profits ; all which was voted with scarce any opposition. Lord Clive, who had been much offended at the report of the Secret Committee, and had threatened to contravert it, forbore. Advice was received that the Caribs at St. Vincent had entered into composition with us, and had ceded part of the contested territory. France prevailed on the Turks to continue the war ; and they refusing to comply with thd Czarina's demands, she broke off the conferences. Lord North having moved for a call of the House or the 26M, when he was to lay business of great importance 1773. CALL OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 195 before them, the Speaker was ordered to send notice to the sheriffs of counties to summon all their members to attend. On this opportunity Sir Watkin Lewes and Alderman Oliver, Sheriffs of Middlesex, sent the summons to Wilkes, instead of Luttrell, and acquainted the Speaker with what they had done : Wilkes himself also wrote a very bold letter to the Speaker, asserting his right. This contempt of the House, which the Court l was afraid to 1 The contempt of the City for the Court, and the characteristic foibles and offences of public men, were satirized in the following anonymous lines, which were in circulation at this time : " Yon I love, my dearest life, More than Georgey loves his wife; More than Ministers to rule, More than North to play the fool. More than Caraden to grimace, More than Harrington his place, More than Clive his black jagueer, More than Bute the Royal ear ; More than patriots love their price, More than Fox loves cards and dice, More than cits the Court to spite, More than Townshend not to fight, More than Colebrook heaps of pelf, More than Elliot loves himself, More than Alderman his gut, More than Hillsborough to strut ; More than cullies love a jilt, More than Grosv'nor horns well gilt ; More than Partmouth loves field preachers, More than Huntingdon her teachers, More than Carlisle those who cheat him. More than Long Tom those who treat him, More than Pomfret a lead-mine, More than Weymouth play and wine. More than fools at wits to nibble, More than Walpole loves to scribble, More than Lyttleton to write. More than blackleg March to bite, More than country squires their dogs, More than Mawbey loves his hogs, More than demireps a spark, More than Martin a sure mark; More than Graf ton loves his pimps, More than Devil loves his imps, More than Tories love the Stuarts, More than Whigs love all true heart*. Thus, my fair, I love you more Than ever man loved fair before." Mason, too, in his then recently pub- lished Heroic Epistle, alluded more or less openly to those he calls the plunderers of the age (Too numerous far for this contracted page), The Rigbys, s, Mungos, Bradshaws there, In straw-Btuft effigy shall kick the air." In the anonymous lines above there is one individual not mentioned by hia surname, "Long Tom." This was long Sir Thomas Robinson, of Eokeby, whose length served to distinguish him from his namesake, Sir Thomas Robin- son, created Lord Grantham in 1761. Chesterfield, being asked by the Baronet to write some verses upon him, imme- diately produced the epigram, " Unlike my subject now shall be my song, It shall be witty, and it shan't be long." Long Sir Thomas is mentioned more than once with ridicule in Walpole 's letters. At an early period of his life he filled the office of Commissioner of Excise, and as Governor of Barba- does he acquired a reputation for libe- rality which is denied him by the anonymous minstrel. The measure of his ability, however, may be arrived at by remembering the fact that, when our King had not yet dropped the folly of calling himself also King " of France," and it was customary at the coronation of an English sovereign to have ficti- tious Dukes of Aquitaine and Nor- mandy to represent the vassalage of France, Sir Thomas was selected to fill the second mock-dignity at the corona- tion of George III. the last occasion on which the foolish phantoms ap- peared. Churchill alludes to the cir- cumstance in his 'Ghost;' but he assigns a wrong dukedom to Sir Thomas : " Could Satire not (though doubtful since Whether he plumber is or prince) Tell of a simple knight's advance To be a doughty peer of France ? Tell bow he did a dukedom gain, And Robinson was Aquitaiu ?" '' Long Tom " died in 1777. D. o 2 196 LAST JOURNALS OF HOE ACE WALPOLE. APRIL, resent, lest it should revive the troubles about Wilkes, did however set the authority of the House of Commons in the most contemptible light. At the same time arrived a representation of the Assembly at Boston to their Gover- nor, in which they peremptorily denied the jurisdiction of the Parliament of England ; nor of this did the Ministers dare to take notice ; so low was the Crown sunk in the midst of all its pretensions, and of all its corrupt influence, having no credit but what it purchased day by day ! When the House met after the Easter recess, the Speaker acquainted them with the receipt of Wilkes's letter, and said, if any man desired it, he would read it : nobody desired it. 2\st. At a time when many believed an alliance con- cluded with France, and with good reason, for France, not- withstanding the want of money there, had agreed to pay a very large sum to our East India Company, which had been thought desperate, a fleet of twelve or fifteen ships of the line was suddenly ordered out, and Colonel Boyd, Deputy-Governor of Gibraltar, was remanded to his post. The Ministers gave out that these preparations were de- signed against, at least to watch, France and Spain, a fleet being fitting out at Carthagena, and another being ready to sail from Marseilles for the Mediterranean, where it was supposed France intended to intercept the Russian navy, or to proceed to oppose the Russian attack of Constanti- nople, the French having prevailed on the Turks to con- tinue the war. The stocks fell greatly ; but everybody was not credulous ; and the most jealous apprehended that our fleet would at last join, at least not impede the opera- tions of, the French squadron. 23rd. Sir Charles Saunders, a brave and popular Admi- ral in the Opposition, was named to the command of the 1773. MOTION TO HEAR WILKES AT THE BAR. 197 fleet, and bounties were ordered to encourage sailors to enlist. Still, even many attached to the Court could not believe any hostilities would follow. 26th. This being the day appointed for the call of the House, Wilkes went to the Crown Office and demanded his writ, which was refused to him by the deputy clerk. Thence he went attended to Westminster, though without any riot : yet it being apprehended, the Guards were held in readiness. Serjeant Glynn acquainted the House that he had a paper in his hand wherein Mr. Wilkes desired to be heard at the bar by way of complaint against John Frewer, Esq., Clerk of the Crown. The resolution of the House, said Glynn, had been illegal ; the people would not be easy till their rights were restored ; nor need he tell them in what derision Parliament was held. He then moved to call Wilkes to make good the matter of his complaint on the refusal of his certificate. Alderman Sawbridge seconded the motion, and said he had the same abhorrence of their proceedings that he had ever had. Dyson replied, that it was unusual to hear a complaint that had never been made, but could have no objection if the Serjeant chose the motion should go with all its imper- fections on its head. Glynn answered, that he had no intention to make the motion ineffectual : if Dyson would state the question, he would second it. Dyson replied he had not said the motion was irregular. It was then re- jected on a division of 227 to 124. Sir George Saville then moved the question he had formerly proposed, for a bill for more effectually securing the right of electors with regard to the eligibility of per- sons to serve in Parliament. Dowdswell seconded the motion ; he said the notoriety of the injustice shown on the Middlesex election called for prevention of such prac- 198 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. APRIL, tices any more. If the nation was at the eve of a war, what a situation would the country be in with the minds of the people alienated in the manner they were ! As soon as the sheriffs had summoned Wilkes, it went forth that the House was not to be called over. As soon as his letter was mentioned, the House was struck with a panic, and the order of the day was called for to prevent any discussion on Wilkes. Had the order for apprehending the printer of his letter been put into execution ? Were not speeches printed daily, and did the House dare to take notice of them ? No ; they had made too free with their constituents. Lord North said it would be misspending the time of the House to enter into arguments that had been so often talked over ; but he rose to inform the honourable gentleman (Dowdswell) that the armament of the French was laid aside. The people at large were not to be judged of by the Livery and Common Council of London, nor by the company that had attended Wilkes down to the House that morning, nor by the majority of those that chose the minority of the House. Members went down to be re-elected with the additional crime of having taken a place, and yet succeeded in their elections. Newgate would be a reward to Wilkes. The liberties that had been taken with Government were owing to the mild and cautious behaviour of the Administration. T. Townshend said he thanked the noble Lord for his good news, though he still thought a war not very distant. He believed his Lordship had had a mind to laugh away the question. Burke added that the climate of the House was changed as soon as the name of Wilkes was men- tioned ; the doors were barricaded, and strangers were refused admittance. Sir G. Saville's motion was rejected by 201 to 151. Lord North acquainted the House that, 1773. FEAR OF WAR UNFOUNDED. 199 in a few days, he hoped to lay before them regulations of the East India Company. The war with France thus vanished on the sixth day / of its appearance. Could any sober man believe it had been even in contemplation ? Orders for fitting out our fleet had been given on the 19th, or 18th at soonest. They were published on the 21st. The command had been given to Sir Charles Saunders on the 23rd, and on the 26th it was declared that France had already promised to lay aside her armament. Supposing we had made a serious remonstrance against their fleet sailing, it must have been very few days, if any, previous to the orders for equipping our own fleet, or an answer would have come sooner. Or was France so terrified with our menaces (menaces from so pacific a Court !) that she did not take an instant to deliberate, but obeyed our mandate almost sooner than the courier could return? Was our Court grown so very vigorous, so very martial, that no man could come up to their spirit but the most determined anti-Frenchman in the navy, and he in the Opposition, and favourite of Lord Chatham ? Was it to that Lord that they wished to point and direct the eyes of the nation ? Had France offered to pay a great sum to our East India Company on no conditions ? Had they made us no overtures of alliance, given not a single hint from whence we could conjecture, before last week, that she did not look tranquilly on the renewal of the war between Russia and the Turks? Or was France indeed so sunk, that, having rekindled that war, she was glad to plead to the Turks, whom she had promised to support, that we inti- midated her ? What had given them such terror of our King, or Administration ? Was it the pusillanimity with which we had made peace, and sacrificed such important 200 LAST JOURNALSJDF HORACE WALPOLE. APRIL, conquests to purchase? Or was it the authority with which the House of Commons supported itself against the sheriffs and Wilkes ; or the phlegm with which the Parlia- ment heard its jurisdiction denied and contemned by the people of Boston ? When Lord Mansfield predominated in the Cabinet, when his nephew was Ambassador at Paris, and Lord Chatham was in disgrace and in the country, he must be credulous indeed who can believe that we meant war, or that France feared we would make it ! 30th. At a meeting of the freeholders of Middlesex, summoned by the Sheriffs at Mile End, strong resolutions of adhering to Wilkes's election were voted, and thanks returned to him, the Sheriffs, to Serjeant Glynn, and to Sir George Saville, for their late behaviour ; but great altercation and reproaches broke out between the factions of Wilkes and Home, 2 the latter of whom was treated with much indignity by the adherents of the for- mer. Vide Home's account in the London Chronicle of May 1st. The same day at a General Court of Proprietors of East India stock, the Duke of Richmond persuaded them to petition Parliament against the arbitrary resolutions of the House of Commons that affected their territorial rights, and to desire that those rights might be previously settled. 3 " Brentford, the bishopric of Parson Home." Heroic Epistle. D. 1773. THE SPEAKER AND THE SHERIFFS. 201 SUPPLEMENT. London, April 14th, 1773. The Speaker of the House of Commons having sent the Sheriff of Middlesex the following letter : From the House of Commons, 7th April, 1773. SIR, I am commanded by the House of Commons to acquaint you that you are, immediately upon be receipt of this, to summon the representatives of your county, and boroughs within the same, to attend their^ service in Parliament on Monday, the 26th day of this instant April ; the House of Commons intending to proceed with the utmost severity against such of their members as shall then neglect to attend the service of the House. And you are to give me an account of the receipt of this, and what you have done therein, upon pain of incurring the displeasure of the said House. I am, Sir, Your humble servant, FLETCHER NORTON. The Sheriffs, in pursuance thereto, yesterday summoned the several representatives for London, Middlesex, and Westminster, and sent the following letter to the Speaker : SIR, In consequence of your direction to us in the name of the House of Commons, we have given the proper notice to Sir Robert Ladbroke, Knt., the Eight Hon. Thomas Harley, and Barlow Trecothick, Esq., representatives of London. John Wilkes, Esq., and John Glynn, Esq., Knights of the Shire for the County of Middlesex. And to Earl Percy and Sir Robert Bernard, Bart., representatives of Westminster. We have the honour to be, Sir, Your most obedient humble servants, RICHARD OLIVER, WATKIN LEWES, R> ) 01 -jr \ Sheriffs. 202 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. APRIL. London, April 21st, 1773. The printer, by order of Mr. Wilkes, gives the following letter to the public from an attested copy. To the Right Honourable Sir Fletcher Norton, Knight, Speaker of the House of Commons. (COPY.) SIR, Prince's Court, April 20th, 1773. In pursuance of your orders to the Sheriff of Middlesex on the 7th of this month to summon the representatives of this county, I have received a letter from Eichard Oliver, Esq., and Sir Watkin Lewes, requiring my " attendance in the House of Commons on the 26th day of this instant April," with a declaration " that the House of Commons intend to proceed with the utmost severity against such of their members as shall then neglect to attend the service of the House." The two gentlemen, Sir, as well as every man of sense and prin- ciple in the kingdom, could not entertain a doubt that the legal members for Middlesex were Mr. Glynn and myself, the persons who were chosen into Parliament by a majority of the freeholders. The summonses in consequence issued to us by their express direc- tions. The sentiments, however, of the House of Commons appear to me very different, and not less in direct opposition to every idea of justice than to the rights of the people. It is too evident they mean a continuation of their former injuries to the county of Middle- sex and the nation at large, by their still suffering Mr. Luttrell to sit in Parliament, the pretended representative of freeholders who voted against him. In this spirit of injustice they intended the summons should issue to a gentleman who has no pretence to a seat in the House of Commons, but finds his usurpation supported by their fraud and violence. I have not been remiss, Sir, on this occasion in duty to my worthy constituents and to my country. I neglected no opportunity of de- manding the seat to which I was so honourably chosen, nor have I failed to protest frequently, both to the Parliament and nation, against this injustice done to the freeholders of the county of Mid- dlesex, as being suffered to be represented only in part by Mr. Glynn, although with the highest reputation to himself, and the most essential benefit to the public. On the 27th of January, 1769, I demanded, in person, at the bar of the House of Commons, to bo 1773. WILKES'S LETTER TO THE SPEAKER. 203 admitted and sworn in as one of the knights of the shire for this county. In a letter to you, Sir, as Speaker, on the 20th March, 1771, I declared : "In the name of the freeholders of Middlesex, I again demand my seat in Parliament, having the honour of being freely chosen, by a very great majority, one of the representatives for the said county. I am ready to take the oaths prescribed by law, and to give in my qualification as knight of the shire." I now to you, Sir, as Speaker, renew the same claim in the strongest manner, for the injured people of England, and my constituents, the freeholders of the county of Middlesex. I will never cease to sup- port with spirit the clear right I derive from them by all constitu- tional modes of redress, till every the most minute trace of the late flagitious proceedings be utterly done away, and the guilt fully expiated. The people, Sir, are anxious that the House should embrace the opportunity, which now naturally offers, of reviewing their conduct, of doing a necessary piece of justice by rescinding that arbitrary resolution of May 8th, 1 769, which virtually repeals the Great Charter and the Bill of Rights in the important point of the freedom of election, " that Henry Lawes Luttrell, Esq., is duly elected a knight of the shire for the county of Middlesex." \\hile this resolution remains in the Journals of the House, I assert that the House of Commons, in the person of one man illegally deprived of his seat in Parliament, have disfranchised all the people of England, and, in the person of another, have assumed to themselves the right of nominating to any county, city, or borough, in defiance of the legal electors. The right of election is in the people, which they hold absolutely independent of the House of Commons, who are only the guardians of that and every other less sacred right. The present majority have betrayed their trust, and given up those invaluable privileges which they were chosen to defend and protect. Our ancestors held the freedom of election, subject only to the law of the land, to be of the essence, as well as the nobler part, of the franchise. Their posterity have been robbed of this first, this distinguishing and favourite honour of Englishmen, by a venal senate hitherto with impunity. It is scarcely possible to imagine a precedent more fatal to the free constitution of any state, or more alarming to the members themselves, who, indulging in supine ease and luxury amid the cries of the starving poor, unfeeling as unrepenting, now glory in the rich spoils of this ignoble victory over their bleeding country, and, per- haps, their posterity. I wish to awaken them by a sense of their own danger, since they are deaf to the voice of truth and liberty. Should the resolution I have mentioned not be rescinded, the pre- 204 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. APRIL, cedent is at hand to justify the further violence of any minion or minister against themselves, on the slightest act of disobedience or neglect. It is not necessary to call in a jury of our countrymen to try the fact on oath. A complaisant and corrupt majority may be induced, after a mock examination of two or three witnesses not sworn, to vote any man, obnoxious to a despotic court or ministry, guilty of a libel, even against a profligate peer, to expel him the House, and adopt in his room some forward slave of power, who will court and kiss the base chains forged by a tyrant, without any appeal having been made by the party pretending to be aggrieved by the libel either to the laws of the land or of honour. Such a pre- cedent is now on record, the most admired page in the thirty folio volumes of the Journals, and engraven on the cankered hearts of our modern courtiers and ministers. The reverence I have for Parliaments, Sir, has induced me to state the mischiefs with which we are threatened should the resolution not be rescinded. By the servile and iniquitous conduct of the present House of Commons, the regard of the people to that part of our con- stitution is visibly weakened. The majority of the members are abhorred as the instruments of ministerial tyranny, not revered as the protectors of the rights of the nation. They are become odioxis as well as criminal ; for, from the meanest and most interested motives, they have totally subverted the constitution, and effected an absolute dissolution of that fair and equal system of power by which we have hitherto been, and alone can be, legally governed. They have fallen into the lowest state of humiliation and contempt. If, however, they persevere in the violation of our fundamental rights, if they continue actuated by the same spirit of usurpation and lawless violence, one hope still remains, the wisdom and virtue of a future independent Parliament, which cannot fail soon to give vigour and success to the honest efforts of all real patriots for the restoration of the constitution, and to pour just vengeance on their guilty predecessors. I am, Sir, your most humble servant, JOHN WILKES. Right Honourable Sir fletcher Norton, Speaker of the House of Commons. 1773. SPEECH OF LORD CL1VE. 205 MAY* 3rd. PETITION of the Court of Proprietors presented to the House, and ordered to lie on the table. Lord North moved for leave to bring in a bill to regulate the affairs of the Company at home and abroad, and he stated the chief correctives he had in view. Lord Clive then spoke for two hours and a half on his own case, and was heard with the utmost attention, and, though he did not convince, astonished and gained the admiration of all his audience. It was not a piece of regular and set oratory, but the artful effusions of a man, master of his cause, of himself, and of the passions of others, which he raised, interested, or amused, as he found necessary. He was bold and seemingly frank, rather than apologising ; and as secure of having gained sufficient support, or above danger, from his credit or the timidity of his judges, or impotence of his adversaries, he dealt his censures liberally, nay, seemingly without discrimination ; and though he appeared to have gained wealth enough to indemnify him, he assumed great merit from having acquired no more, attributing to mode- ration what probably had been the effect of his prudence. His allusions and applications were happy, and when he was vulgar he was rarely trivial. Scorn of his enemies and even of his judges escaped, yet did but make him more formidable; and while the Ministers and the Parliament sunk before him, he shone eminently as a real great man, who had done great things, and who had the merit of not 206 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. MAY, having committed more (perhaps not worse) villanies, when it appeared that he had known how to be more guilty, even with impunity. Little reply was made, and some even flattered him. It was notorious, however, that he owed his indemnity neither to innocence nor eloquence. Lord North was an upright man, but of no decisive rigour. The Opposition / were disposed to court Lord Clive rather than arraign him. It was suspected that he had had recourse to private cor- ruption of some of the secret junto at Court, and it came out before the Secret Committee that in 1766 he had obliged the Great Mogul, his tool, to write a letter to the King, telling his Majesty that he had sent him a rich present of diamonds. " I may write the letter," said the Mogul, "but you know I have no diamonds." "Do you write the letter," said Clive, "and I will find diamonds." He did : he plundered a Nabob. One of the diamonds j was alone worth 12,000/. Thurlow, a proper blood- hound to pursue such a tiger, offered to take up Lord Clive, as Attorney-General, and made out the charge. Wedderburn, the Solicitor-General, no honester than the accuser or the criminal, was a warm advocate for the latter, and had better interest with the ruling cabal. Lord North wavered and inclined to middle measures. Thurlow dis- dained to lend himself to modified proceedings. Men of more virtue were afraid of retrospects and laws ex post facto, and saw too much promiscuous criminality to think it just to select a single though capital delinquent. Lord Clive had urged that he had had opportunities of making I the vastest fortune that could have been acquired since the fall of the Roman republic. His case proved the simili- tude of the times. With the frankness of Julius Csesar he promised himself an escape like ^ ^ erres. The innocent 1773. BURGOYNE'S ATTACK ON CLIVE. 207 alone do not escape in such times. The public are the victims, when great men dare, and when Government is timid, and good men tender. On the IQth the scene began to open, or rather the drama to proceed, and its outset was indeed extraordinary, both from a revolution in opinions unprecedentedly preci- pitate, from the magnitude of the object determined, and from the inconsideration with which it was decided. Lord North had kept himself clear from acting as a party ; yet . it was suspected that he had privately encouraged General Burgoyne (become an enthusiast against Lord Clive) to proceed. The Bedford party 1 at least showed themselves his enemies without reserve. Lord North, however, had taken his measures so loosely that he checked Thurlow from bearing a part in the debate I am going to mention till late in the day, changed his own opinion, at least his conduct, in the course of the debate, had consulted no members previously at a meeting, and with his usual indif- ference slept during some of the most interesting parts of the discussion. General Burgoyne began his attack with bitter invectives on Olive's most glaring crimes, particularly on his enormous bribe to Omichund, the Nabob's minister, to procure the assassination of his master. He recapi- tulated other treacheries and perfidies in which Clive had almost gloried, at least only palliated as necessary strokes of policy. Burgoyne then read three resolutions he pro- posed to move : First, that all acquisitions made under the I influence of a military force, or by treaty with foreign force, do of right belong to the State. Second, that to appro- priate acquisitions acquired under the influence of a 1 Rigby particularly hated Lord Clive ever since Mr. Grenville's Administra- tion, when they had saved Governor Walsh's election, Clive's friend; and the moment the election was safe, Lord Clive had turned against them. 208 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. MAY, military force, or by treaty, &c., to a private use, is illegal. Third, that great sums of money have been obtained by such means from the Sovereign princes in India. These were great questions indeed. The first pronounced on the capital point, the point of Sovereignty ; a question eagerly contended for by Lord Chatham, denied by the East India Company, claimed and ambitioned by the Crown, staved off by Lord North, and that ought certainly to be settled on the most mature deliberation. The second declared crimes which, from the novel nature of the war in India, could scarce come under any known law, it being in fact a war of invasion on an amicable power, though metamor- phosed by military merchants into a war with rebel Nabobs, who had usurped the dominion of provinces committed to their government, and which those our martial merchants had converted into an empire for themselves. The third question condemned unnamed persons of peculation, on the mere report of the Select Committee headed by Burgoyne, without producing any evidence but the narrative, or speci- fying the accused, or hearing them in their defence, though they would yet be entitled to trial. Wedderburn, with all the arts of his profession, and all the resources of oratory, exposed in a long deduction the vague and dangerous im- propriety of the motions, especially of the first, and made such sensible impression on the House, that he assumed triumph on the victory gained for his client. He did not, he said, advise dereliction of the prosecution, but demanded time, suspense, and sober correction of so large and im- portant a question, for which reason he moved for the previous question ; casting out at the same time threats of recrimination on Burgoyne, who, he hinted, ought to reform his own character ere he commenced reformer. Lord North alleged the question was too ill digested, and Dyson 1773. DEBATES ON CLIVE'S PROCEEDINGS. 209 stated the informalities of it ; and though Dunning, Corn- wall, and others, bore hard on Clive, the tone of the House ran irresistibly for delay and temper. Lord Clive said little, and with arrogant haughtiness, that did not conceal strong dismay, referred to his great services, to the approbation of the King and the public, and to the insolent defences he had already made ; as if services covered all crimes, as if the public did not always re-echo the first shouts of victory, as if the honours bestowed by the Crown had not been at least as much a retainer for private services as the reward of merit, and as if avowing plunder and assassination were an adequate apology. At last, while Dyson was labouring to find milder and more technical terms, Thurlow rose, answered Wedderburn's arguments, and in a moment revived and heightened the odium against Lord Clive. This was at past ten at night. Still nobody doubted but that the matter was to be post- poned ; but no new words being found, and the Speaker being appealed to, what question was to be proposed, it appeared that Wedderburn's motion for the previous ques- tion, or order of the day, I forget which, had not been seconded and could not therefore be put, and there re- mained none but Burgoyne's, which had not been mitigated or corrected. Young Mr. Cavendish, however, said he seconded Wedderburn's motion, but being a very absurd man, he only drew ridicule on what had no other support. It happened too that the House was exceedingly crowded. It would have been unpopular to exclude many who might be proprietors of India stock, and unpolite, as many ladies were present too. Yet the heat was intolerable, and the younger men, who .had gone away to dinner and returned flushed with wine, growing impatient as the interesting part of the debate was over, they roared impetuously for VOL. i. p 210 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. MAY, the question. 2 There was no question ready but Bur- goyne's, for Wedderburn's was not attended to ; and thus, without almost a negative, Burgoyne's momentous resolu- tion, that had been abandoned, was, before eleven at night, voted as the general sense of the House of Commons. In so tumultuous a manner was the Sovereignty of three Im- perial vast provinces transferred from the East India Company to the Crown ! so rashly did one House of Parliament decide ! and in such a labyrinth had the Minis- try involved itself, a clue through which the wisest man cannot see. And though Lord North declared the resolution should not deprive the Company of the posses- sion for the six years which had been promised to them, still the right was transferred, and a limit set to their enjoyment of dominion. A proof of the change appeared in two days, for the stock fell three per cent. Nor could Lord North foresee the embarrassments into which he had plunged. The second question passed like the first ; and though the third was postponed to the 1 4th, here were criminals denounced ; and when victims are pointed out to a turbulent nation, a Minister runs the double hazard of sacrificing or screening them ; and a line of prosecution was marked out, without precedent to follow, or any system of proceeding digested. Lord Chatham had been deemed, and was, absurd, to preclude the Duke of Grafton, First Lord of the Treasury, and Charles Townshend, Chancellor of the Exchequer, from conducting the business of India through the House. In his vapouring way he had con- signed it over to vapouring Beckford, crying, " Throw it into the House of Commons and it will find its way. 2 Walpole in a letter to Mason, May 15, 1773, says the House was so very hot, " the young members thought it would melt their rouge and wither their nosegays." D. .773. WEDDERBURN AXD BURGOYNE. 211 Lord North and all sober men had condemned so un- systematic, so unwise a method the method adopted now, martially and without the same gigantic though rash ideas. [t will be seen whether Lord North will creep with more success than Lord Chatham flew ; or whether he can fly without wings where Lord Chatham's wings melted. Nor was this singular day without an interlude almost is singular. Towards night, General Burgoyne took up ;he hint of recrimination thrown at him by Wedderburn. Phe latter avowed it, and said he had seen, in a paper sailed JuniuS) complaints of an election carried by military force. 3 A charge, he said, might be brought into the House on such foundation. " I am now personally marked," said Burgoyne, " and rejoice in the opportunity. I have long groaned in secret for an occasion of venting myself against those scandalous aspersions ; and if that wretch Junius is lurking here in any corner of this House, I now tell him to his face he is an assassin, a liar, and a coward." v But what excuse for Wedderburn! The Court, Lord Mansfield in courts of judicature, every man almost had pronounced the writings of Junius libels. The Attorney- General first, the Solicitor-General next, are the prose- cutors of libels. Here was the Solicitor-General ranking the aspersions of that writer against the tender honour of an officer, an officer that had distinguished himself, and that was countenanced by the Crown, as matter for parlia- mentary charge against a member of Parliament ! Would Wedderburn plead against the author and printer ? would 3 It was Burgoyne's at Preston, for i the Earl of Derby, was indignant at the which he had been fined. In the same j match, for the penniless young officer paper Burgoyne was treated as a game- was the natural son of Lord Bingley. ster and sharper. [Burgoyne was quartered at Preston when he married Lady Charlotte Stanley. Her father, p 2 The parties, however, were soon recon- ciled. D.] 212 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. MAT, he condemn the paper, and yet make use of it ? would he rather, what would he not do ? He had been against Wilkes, had drawn up the remonstrance of the county of York in behalf of Wilkes, and is Solicitor-General ! 14th. The Court of East India Proprietors voted, 319 to 149, not to agree with the Government's plan. They were chiefly led by the Duke of Richmond and Governor Johnston, though these two did not agree, the latter even telling the Duke that he hoped his Grace did not mean to make the India Company an engine of party. Lord North, though so routed in his measures, affected to talk in a high strain, and threatened to force the Com- pany to pay their debt to the Government, since they would not accept the latter's terms. I must return to the history of the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester, which became very important. The servility of all who looked up to the Court, and the timidity of the Opposition, who, though with little hopes, looked up thither too, had, after the first demonstrations of respect from no considerable number, left the Duke and Duchess pretty much abandoned a foul reflection on an independent nation ! The nobility of France had recently testified attachment to a fallen minister, 4 and continued to resort to him, even to braving their all-puissant Monarch. The nobility of England shrunk from the King's own brother. And on what pretence ? for having matched with a woman of their own rank ! Some had gone to her, repented, and went no more. Some made paltry excuses. The Duke refused to receive any more who should not visit the Duchess as well as him. Lord and Lady Waldegrave, 6 her first husband's brother, and sister-in-law, whether to 4 The Due do Choiseul. * John, Earl Waldegrave, and Lady Elizabeth WalJegruve, his Countess. 1773. DUKE AND DUCHESS OP GLOUCESTER 213 insult or soften her, after their neglect, would have visited her daughters. She very properly refused to allow of such a visit. The Countess of Powis, 6 niece to the Duchess and to Lord Waldegrave, and who had been the warmest assertor of the marriage, sent her daughter (her lord dying at that very time) with unusual ceremony to make excuses for not paying her duty till she quitted her weeds. The Duchess, in acknowledgment of the attention, sent her daughters to visit the young lady : but Lady Powis, by an excess of absurdity and meanness, though in the most affluent circumstances, thought better on it, and neither went herself to the Duchess, nor suffered her daughter to return the visit of her cousins, though they were children of a senior Earl I am sorry such trifles are characteristics of the debased spirit of the English peerage. They are worthy of being recorded too, as the King and Queen descended to court such sacrifices. Their vengeance now broke out in more glaring colours ; and passions let loose are sure to appear in their true complexion, and almost as sure to be accompanied by folly, as folly is by mortifica- tion. The ensuing scene began with the blackest circum- stances, and ended with pusillanimity and discomfiture. The Duke had, so early as December 7th of the pre- ceding year, acquainted the King with the pregnancy of the Duchess. No notice had been taken of it. She reckoned at the end of May, or beginning of June. At the beginning of May a great cold brought on the Duke a violent attack of his asthmatic complaint, and reduced him to such extreme danger that Dr. Jebbe demanded another physician. In that weak and perilous state, and torn with 6 Barbara Herbert, daughter of Lord Edward Herbert, brother of the Marquis of Powis, and widow of Henry Arthur Herbert, Earl of Powis ; her mother was Lady Henrietta Waldegrave, who after- wards married Mr. Beard, the singer. 214 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. MAY, apprehensions for his wife, and a child ready to be born, whose state and provision were unprovided for, his Royal Highness sent a letter by Legrand to the King, warning him of the Duchess's approach to her term, and beseeching his Majesty to send the great officers of the Council to the delivery a demand not only reasonable, but prudential, as the Duchess of Bedford and Lord and Lady Walde- grave had had the spiteful insolence to publish that the Duchess of Gloucester was not with child. Lady Walde- grave said, that it would prove like the Duchess's false pregnancy after her husband's death, by which she had kept his brother nine months out of the title and estate. The fact was this : the Duchess of Gloucester, at her first husband Lord Waldegrave's death, had a disorder in her breast, which was attended by other circumstances which made her believe and declare herself with child. At the end of six months, finding herself not pregnant, she ordered her man-midwife, Dr. Hunter, who had told her she was not, to acquaint Lord and Lady Elizabeth Waldegrave that they might be out of their suspense, and assure them- selves they would enjoy the title and estate. Dr. Hunter advised her not to send such a message, as he might be mistaken. She followed his advice but he himself went and acquainted Lady Elizabeth Waldegrave with the very secret, that he might have the merit of betraying it, instead of letting his patient act in the generous and friendly manner she had intended. She underwent a terrible operation of several minutes, which she bore with her usual constancy, at her father's house, and which entirely removed the gathering in her breast. The King put the letter, addressed to him by the Duke of Gloucester, into his pocket without vouchsafing to read it. A week passed without an answer. The Duke's 1773. THE KING AND THE DUKE OF GLOUCESTER. 215 anxiety increased, and the bad effects it had on his health alarmed the very few to whom he imparted his distress. It was not to be borne on the 12th he wrote again. Cold silence was still the return. The Prince then sent Colonel Rainsford to Lord Rochford, Secretary of State, to press for an answer. The King said to the Secretary of State, " My brother presses me very hard !" " Alas !" said the Duke, when he was told of that complaint, "I wrote first in December, and had no answer, and the King complains now in May that I press him !" Lord Rochford i promised to bring an answer the next day; but wrote to say the King wanted time for more mature deliberation ; but would send an answer on the day following. On the 17th Lord Rochford waited on the Duke with the following message in writing, which he delivered to his Royal Highness : " Lord Rochford is ordered by the King to acquaint your Royal Highness that his Majesty has received both your letters, but that in an affair of this con- sequence he could not send an answer until his Majesty had given them mature consideration ; and has ordered me to acquaint your Royal Highness, that, at a proper time after the delivery of the Duchess, your marriage, as well as the birth of the child, shall be properly inquired into, in order that both may be authenticated. The King has ordered me to say farther to your Royal Highness, that it would be right to have some of your principal | servants present as witnesses to testify the event; and this is the only part his Majesty can take with propriety, for he can be no otherwise concerned than as to the legality of the proceeding, as he cannot but disapprove of the mar- riage. May 17th, 1773." Let me stop for a moment, and remark this memorable message, accompanied with some brutal circumstances, 216 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. MAY, which I will mention presently, when I come to relate the conversation the Duke had with Lord Rochford after he had delivered his message, which conversation his Royal Highness repeated to me afterwards. The cruelty of such treatment, when three lives were at stake, the Duke's, the Duchess's, and the child's, is the first glaring feature that strikes and makes one shudder. Was the Duke's crime so heinous that a fond brother did not hesitate to plunge three poignards in his heart? Was it designed to expedite all three? But, without diving into hearts, let us weigh the atrociousness of the message ; and let the dictator, or advisers, answer to pos- terity for the legacy of a civil war, the possibility of which at least they seemed to be laying a foundation for. Was this the legacy of the father of his people ? What were the friends that suggested, or the ministers that acquiesced in, such a plan? Are the words too strong? compare them with the message. " After the delivery of the Duchess the marriage shall be properly inquired into." What ! and suffer a dubious heir to the Crown to be born, after the pregnancy had been notified six months ! authen- ticate the marriage after the delivery ! Three lives ! ten thousand lives might have been involved in those words. What a thunderstroke to the Duchess, at the eve of child- birth, to tell her her marriage would be questioned, her child's legitimacy must be examined ! Her fortitude bore the shock, and her anxiety for the Duke's sufferings made her command her temper, and act with cheerfulness a merit far superior to phlegm. The Duke, as haughty as the proudest of his race, was roused by such injurious treatment. It awakened all the feelings and faculties of his soul, and called forth a fund of sense and capacity that had dozed under respect for 1773. THE KING AND THE DUKE OF GLOUCESTER. 217 a brother he, till that hour, tenderly loved. With a mixture of wisdom and dignity he sent Lord Rochford the next day the following message in writing : "The Duke of Gloucester desires Lord Rochford will present his humble and most respectful duty to the King, and acquaint his Majesty that he has considered the very important message which he received yesterday by Lord Rochford, as maturely as the shortness of the time would admit. The Duke desires that Lord Rochford will repre- sent that, lest the want of an authentication of his marriage should produce a disinclination to direct the attendance of the Privy Council at the Duchess's delivery (which is his very earnest and humble request), it is the first object of that request that he may be permitted to authenticate his marriage as soon as may be in any manner that shall be thought requisite." The King had not expected either such quickness or firmness. The Duke's extreme decency and respect had always bordered on fear of his brother ; and perhaps it was so when in the King's presence ; but that awe was unfelt at a distance, resentment had succeeded, and the Duke was too shrewd not to have observed that magnanimity was not in the list of his Majesty's own great qualities. Of this remark the Duke made artful use, and the King bent as fast as the Duke pushed him. Lord Rochford wrote this answer to Colonel Rainsford : " Lord Rochford presents his compliments to Colonel Rainsford, 'and desires he would acquaint his Royal High- ness the Duke of Gloucester that Lord Rochford cannot have the honour of bringing his Royal Highness an answer from the King to his Royal Highness's message until to-morrow evening, as the King has thought fit to defer giving it to Lord Rochford until to-morrow, but 218 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. MAY, that at any hour to-morrow evening that shall be most convenient to his Royal Highness Lord Rochford will have the honour of waiting on him. May 19th, 1773." On the 20th Lord Rochford went accordingly to the Duke, and acquainted him that the King would appoint the Archbishop of Canterbury, 7 the Lord Chancellor, and the Bishop of London to inquire into the marriage, and to report their opinions to him, which he would have entered into the Council books. Of the rest of that con- versation and the preceding, I shall give an account presently and together, not knowing them precisely se- parate, as the Duke blended them in his narrative to me, and forgot some which he told to the Duke of Richmond and the Bishop of Exeter, with whom I compared the notes I had taken, till I had them accurately. The Duke of Richmond was sent for by the Duke of Gloucester on that evening of the 20th. His Royal Highness told the Duke the whole, and acquainted his Grace with what till then had been secret, that he had been married to Lady Waldegrave, on the 6th of Sep- tember, 1766, by her own Chaplain, at her house in Pall I Mall ; that no witnesses had been present, and that the I Chaplain was dead. He added that his brother Cumber- land had often put questions to him on his marriage, and that, not being satisfied by him, the Duke of Cumberland had guessed that all the common forms had not been observed ; and the Duke of Gloucester had heard that his brother Cumberland had boasted of his own marriage being more regular in the ceremonial than his brother Gloucester's. This the Duke suspected had reached the 7 Dr. Comwnllis ; the routs given at I.;iinli< Hi Pulucc by his elegant and fiiHhionable wife called forth a spirited remonstrance from George III., fit Hie instigation of Lndy Huntingdon. D. 1773. LEGALITY OF DUKE OF GLOUCESTER'S MAKEIAGE. 219 King's ears, and inspired him with the idea of inquiring , into the marriage. Thus did the Duchess of Gloucester taste the fruits of the indiscreet dislike she had expressed for the Duchess of Cumberland. The Duke had already seen Dunning, who assured him the marriage was indis- solubly valid and legal. He had many corroborative proofs, as will appear, and had made several wills in her favour, avowing her his wife. The Duke had also com- municated the transaction with the King to Lord George Germaine and Sir William Meredith. The Duke of Richmond begged his leave to inform Lord Eockingham and me. The Duk.e replied that he meant his Grace should tell it to Lord Rockingham : for me, he would consult the Duchess. He went, and returning said the Duchess had answered he could not tell me unless he told her father too, and that one of us would be timid ; which Richmond interpreting of me, assured the Duke he did not know me if he thought I was timid ; and from his great friendship for me added many encomiums I did not deserve. It would not have surprised me if an ambitious woman, whose projects of aggrandizement I had vehemently opposed, ascribed it to apprehensions. Alas ! I had but too well foreseen the distresses into which she would plunge herself; and I now saw with what intre- pidity she had done it. I started when the Duke of Richmond told me she had had no witnesses to her marriage. It is so common to have them that I had concluded them necessary, and I cried out, when he showed me the words in Lord Roch ford's message of the Kings disapproving the mamage (for the Duke of Rich- mond told me the whole at midnight, though the Duke desired him to defer it till next day), " My Lord, those words are dictated by Lord Mansfield ; I know him ; he 220 LAST JOURNALS OF HOEACE WALPOLE. MAY, inserted in the preamble of the Royal Marriage Bill last year, that anciently the marriages of the Royal Family were dependent on the prerogative ; and he will now urge that assertion against my niece." The Duke of Richmond assured me that Dunning said he would maintain the legality of the marriage against Lord Mansfield in every court in England ; that the common law required no witnesses ; that the declaration of the parties was sufficient ; and that the Court of Delegates had pronounced in favour of Mrs. Hervey but last year, though she could not remember even the month in which she was married, and though her husband denied the marriage ; but having often acknowledged her as his wife, and she claiming him, the notoriety had been deemed sufficient. The Duke too had been excepted by the clause in Lord Hardwicke's Marriage Act which exempted the Royal Family from the new law. I was satisfied. I saw too the springs of the Duchess's conduct. She had determined to be a princess and to preserve her virtue. She satisfied her ambition and her conscience, and left the rest to chance and the Duke's honour she ought not to have trusted him. He owned to the Bishop of Exeter 8 that he was so afraid her vanity would hurry her to disclose the marriage, that he would not let her have witnesses, that she might not be able to prove it. He knew, he said, that he could and should do her justice ; how did she know he would ? Lord Rockingbam observed that, should the marriage by any chicane be set aside, the King would be free not to make any royal provision for either the Duchess or the child. Richmond proposed to the Marquis that they 8 The Bishop was the Duke's brother- in-law ; l.i- wife Lauru bein# tin- M* r lister of the Duchess. She died in 1813 ; having survived her Lusbaiid tliirly six years. D. 1773. INTERVIEW WITH DUKE OF GLOUCESTER. 221 should go to the Council and protest against a breach of the marriage, but Lord Rockingham was not so eager. On the 2Ist the Duke of Gloucester sent the Bishop of Exeter to my brother Sir Edward Walpole and to me, to make excuses for not having acquainted us sooner with what had passed between the King and his Royal High- ness, but the Duke said he had determined the Court should not have it to say that he had been governed by the Duchess's relations and had not acted from himself. In the evening I went to his Royal Highness, when, taking me into another chamber alone, he gave me a long account of his two conversations with Lord Rochford, in which, though the latter submitted to execute a most indecent commission, yet he professed so much respect for the Duke, that he even talked of resigning the Seals and voting for the validity of his Royal Highness's marriage. The Duke only laughed to me at zeal so divided to both sides ; and as he knew the weakness and prating disposition of Lord Rochford, he had encouraged him to talk away, checking him only when it was necessary to give firm answers to the King. The Earl had begun by telling him in so many words from the King, that he had asked for the Privy Councillors only out of pride what accents for a brother to send ! and for a minister to arti- culate! "Out of pride!" said the Duke; "my Lord, the Privy Council can do me no honour ; I demand their attendance, for the satisfaction of the King and the nation. The King may, if he pleases, forbid their coming, but I will summon them, and they shall answer it at their peril to the nation if they refuse. But the King advises me to summon my chief servants ; that is not his Majesty's busi- ness ; they are my servants, and every one of them shall attend. On my part, my Lord, let me tell your Lordship, 222 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. MAY, and the rest of the King's Ministers, that none of you shall dare to tell the King that I am hostile to his Majesty. I married like a boy, but I will defend my marriage like a / man. Out of respect to the King I concealed it ; to satisfy him and the nation I must now authenticate it ; and if his Majesty does not forthwith take the necessary steps for verifying it, I myself will summon the House of Lords, will go thither myself, and in person beseech the House to press the King for despatch." This last sentence was uttered in the first conversation, and alarmed so much, that in the second, the King having stooped, as he was wont to do after bullying, to cajoling, Lord Rochford vaunted the King's kind intentions, and that he would pre- fer him in the army. This was the most pitiful piece of all regal craft. 9 He was determined never to make the Duke Commander-in-Chief ; having the first regiment of Guards, he could not go higher; the whole of that paltry offer could consist but in a government that could not be worth a Prince's acceptance ; so far from it, the Duke rejected the tender with scorn, and bid the Earl tell the King that he would not keep his regiment unless he found more justice. I told the Duke that Lord Hertford had been with me that morning, and I suspected by command ; that he had said to me, if anything sinister happened to the Duke, he dared to say the King would ' A similar instance happened not long after. Mr. Adair the surgeon offered hia Majesty a portrait of the Duke of Gloucester . The King thanked him extremely, and ordered his dear brother's picture to be hung in his own bedchamber. This was taking after his father. When Frederick Prince of Wales had taken the Princess from Hampton Court, though in labour, and in tin- most insulting manner to the King and Queen, the Queen wont the next morning to see the Princess at St. James's. The Prince led her down stairs without speaking to her, but when he came into the street, and be- fore the mob, ho knelt down iu the dirt and kissed her hand. [Walpole has antedated the above incident. It was not on the " next morning,' but on the second visit, nine days later. Caroline and her son, whom she hated, never met again in this world. D.] 1773. INTERVIEW WITH DUKE OF GLOUCESTER. 223 take care of the Duchess and the child, but would go no farther ; that is, would never receive her at Court. The Duke said, he believed there was foundation for this report, for he had had the same intelligence another way. In truth I trusted to it so little, or to any Royal promises, that I had pressed my brother, the Bishop of Exeter, and others about the Duke, to persuade him to make submissions to the King, and get to Court, even without the Duchess, for, the Duke once pardoned, the King could not avoid making a proper settlement on the Duchess and the issue. My brother asked me if I would have the Duke make mean submissions ! I replied, " The King is his King as well as his elder brother. If you had quarrelled with me, even without a cause, I would ask your pardon as you are my elder brother, though I would ask pardon of no other gen. tleman in England." The Bishop told me it would be in vain to try to persuade the Duke to humble himself. He would at first have consented to waive the acknowledg- ment of the Duchess at Court, but that the case was altered now ; that she was bringing him a child, whose mother should not be affronted, and that he vowed he would not go to Court, but leading the Duchess by the hand. Still I urged this to him myself at the conversation I have been mentioning ; and though no man could more abhor the cruelty and duplicity with which he had been treated, I did not think it right to exasperate the quarrel, but to endea- vour to allay it. He showed me the written messages : I spoke severely on the inquiry after the birth. " Nobody," said the Duke, " but has started at that word as well as you ; but," continued he, " I am as much offended at the word dis- approve." u I beg your Royal Highness's pardon," replied I, " but I cannot, Sir, agree with you. There is no man but will justify the King's displeasure at your marriage. Your 224 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. MAY, Royal Highness has been pleased to say you married like , a boy, 1 and therefore, Sir, I may repeat the word ; you did marry like a boy, and I do not wonder the King was \/offended ; we all feel the same in the same case." " Oh ! " said the Duke, "it is not in that sense that I dislike the word disapprove. No, it is because I think it is meant to imply that my marriage is not valid without the King's ap- probation." He told me that on his coming over he had interceded warmly for his brother Cumberland, and that he had meant to give the King that loophole for not quarrel- ling with him himself. I commended his whole conduct extremely, as indeed it deserved ; I told him he had been in the right to consult nobody but himself, and that, having found the excellence of his own judgment, I hoped he would not trust to that of others. 2 " I am sure, Sir," said I, " you will not consult younger men." " No," said the Duke. " Then, Sir," said I, " pray do not consult older, whose hearts you will find worse than your own." He smiled. I commended his throwing all the blame on the Ministers, who were responsible for all that had passed, though Lord Rochford had owned to him that the King had ' dictated the message himself in Council, and corrected the expressions himself. Still I urged him to charge all on the Ministers, which would give him room to distinguish, and profess the more deference for the King. I said, I wished to see them reconciled, and that I should always preach moderate measures : that I thought, when he should have proved his marriage, he had done enough for the Duchess and our family; that he ought then to think of himself. He told me, he knew the King better than I did, and that 1 He was twenty-three years of age when ho married Lady Waldegrave, in 1766.-D. 3 There was not one of his servants or confidants that had common sense. 1773. INTERVIEW WITH DUKE OF GLOUCESTER. 225 firmness was the best method of dealing with him : and so it proved. He spoke with indignation of the Committee of three Lords appointed to inquire into his marriage. ' He called them a Court of Inquisition, and said, some persons had advised him not to allow of their commission (Dunning and Lee, I knew, had treated their authority with much contempt, and declared it not worth a straw). He told me that, Lord Rochford having mentioned the marriage of the Duke of York with Lord Clarendon's daughter, he had replied, " My Lord, I wish the King my brother would act like Charles II. ! the Duke of York, of whose character I will say nothing now, wanted to disown his marriage, but Charles II. forced him to acknowledge her. He spoke with more resentment far of the King than the Ministers, except where I thought he pointed at Lord Mansfield. I told him, I would promise him never to tell him any ill to hurt anybody with him ; but I would tell him of anybody that wished him well, and named the Duchess of Argyle, 3 who had told me she had asked Lord North when they should see his Royal Highness at Court ;again ; Lord North replied, "Madam, I wish it as much as iyou do ; I only wait for the King's giving me an opportu- inity of pressing it." The Duke said he believed Lord North was well disposed to him ; he had heard that Lord 'North had even spoken in his favour, but had been told by ithe King that it was a private family affair, and that his Lordship had nothing to do with it. "Then, Sir," said I, my inference is, that Lord North is not First Minister." The Duke said that Lord Rochford had told him all the / King meant was to prove the marriage for form's sake, and br the sake of the child. I said, I wished his Royal High- 3 Formerly the handsome Miss Gunning, and wife of the Duke of Hamilton. D. VOL .1. Q 226 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. MAY, ness would write down those words, and take memorandums of the whole transaction. He answered, that he had a good memory, and had not loaded it, but he ordered me to make notes of all he had told me. If the Duke had acted thus far with resolution and dig- nity, in the ensuing scene he displayed an equal portion of quickness and solidity, assuming a tone of authority that was at once the expression of his innate loftiness, and proved the extent of his understanding. He was aware of the imbecility of the Lords Commissioners ; he suspected the mischievous views of those who had selected them, and he knew that by inspiring them with awe he should convey the same impressions to the King and Lord Mansfield, who rarely abandoned mischief but from cowardice. Dr. Corn- wallis, the Archbishop, was an honest, good man firm when convinced, but inclined to decency and moderation ; and yet more likely to fear being imposed upon, in a deli- cate case, by those who persecuted than by those who were the objects of persecution. This temper was fortunate to" the Duke's situation. The Chancellor 4 was a wretched animal, disposed to be insolent, but so improperly, that the probability lay for his serving those he meant to hurt, by over-officiousness. Indeed he hurt himself most by the meanness of his conduct and intellects. Dr. Terrick, Bishop of London, was no less devoted a tool. Plausibility was his highest merit : it served him instead of virtues, learn- ing, and instead of art and understanding. As he alone could rise higher, and was supposed a wiser man than his associates, I concluded the Court's secret would be in- trusted chiefly to him ; but whether they had reserved the management of their meditated mischief to other hands, or 4 Lord Bathuret; "raised to bo exposed." (Sir C. II. Williams.)!). 1773. INQUIRY INTO DUKE OF GLOUCESTER'S MARRIAGE. 227 whether the Bishop, who sighed for the primacy, expected that the Royal brothers would be reconciled, and that it , would not be wise to raise an enemy in the first Prince of the Blood, Terrick behaved with his wonted civil supple- ness, and by decency towards the Duke, and by deference for his superiors the Archbishop and Chancellor, he avoided taking any farther part than expressions of reverence for his Royal Highness. Most of the Court did not expect, like Terrick, a reconciliation. The little measure they kept, in speaking of the Duke, showed the security of their bold- ness. On the 23rd the Archbishop waited on the Duke to settle the method of proceeding, and said he and the two Lords would come in the evening and take his Royal High- ness's declaration, and then go up to the Duchess. " Hold, my Lord ! " cried the Duke ; " this is my house, and I will \ direct in it. The Duchess shall be present, and all my servants." The Prelate said it would give her Royal Highness too much trouble, and the servants would be j unnecessary. " No, my Lord," said the Duke ; " the bu- siness is too important to consider trouble : she shall be present, and so shall my family. It is a national con- cern, and cannot be too public." At seven in the evening the three Lords arrived, and were received by the Duke and Duchess, attended by their chief officers, the Bishop of Exeter, and by Dunning, late Solicitor-General, and Lee, another able lawyer. The Chancellor opened the scene by presenting to the Duke a declaration to sign. The Prince, with an indig- nant smile, cried, " A declaration, my Lord ! What, do you bring me a declaration ready drawn, without knowing' what I shall declare ? " The Chancellor, abashed, pleaded that it was done to save time. *' How can that be ? " said Q 2 228 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. MAY, the Duke. " If you have not guessed right in the dark, the declaration must be written over again. Come, my Lords, the shortest way will be to take notes of what I , shall depose." He then told them he had been married on 1 such a day to the Dowager Lady Waldegrave, at her own house in Pall Mall, by her own chaplain Dr. Morton, who was now dead; "and, my Lords, we had no witnesses." " Sir," said the Chancellor, " was your Royal Highness married by a licence ? " The Duke, smiling again from contempt, replied, " My Lord, I thought your Lordship ,/had known that it was a clandestine marriage." The Duke then said that if it would not be improper he should desire to take a solemn oath to the truth of what he had uttered. The Bishop of London told him politely that the / word of his Royal Highness was as satisfactory as his oath ; but the Duke insisted on being sworn, and was sworn in the most solemn manner. He then said, " I have done, my Lords : I will now leave the Duchess in your hands, that you may examine her at liberty and ask her what questions you please, she and you not being under any influence from my presence." His Royal Highness retired. The Duchess made her declaration and swore to it, and then the Duke returning, his Royal Highness acquainted the Lords that he had other witnesses to corroborate the truth of his marriage. " Your Lordships remember," said he, " that I was at the point of death at Florence. Here I j was even believed dead. At that awful moment I called for Colonel Rainsford. I told him I was married to the Dowager Lady Waldegrave, and I told him the circum- stances. I then enjoined him, on his duty to a dying master, as soon as he should have closed my eyes, to hasten to England and to repair to the King, falling on his knees before whom I charged him to declare my marriage, 1773. INQUIRY INTO DUKE OF GLOUCESTER'S MARRIAGE. 229 and to say that my last request was that his Majesty would allow a small pittance of what he had allowed me to the widow of one who, among so many brothers, had always been reckoned his favourite brother. I ordered Colonel Rainsford, my Lords, to repair next to the Prin- ) cess my mother, and beg she would intercede with the King my brother in favour of my widow. My Lords, Colonel Rainsford took notes of what I said : he has them in his pocket, and shall read them to your Lord- ships. My Lords, I have another witness here. I called Colonel Heywood to me, but, not having strength to repeat , what I had said to Rainsford, I referred him to the latter for the particulars. Colonel Heywood was to have the melancholy office of attending my corpse to England ; but he took notes of what passed, and will swear to them. And now, my Lords," said the Duke tenderly, " your Lordships will not wonder that the last thoughts of a dying man turned on the woman he loved." The Colonels Rainsford and Heywood made their deposi- tions upon oath. " I have yet another witness," said the I Duke, ** who is here present. I will beg my Lord of ! Exeter to acquaint your Lordships with what he knows of I my marriage with Lady Waldegrave." The Bishop of Exeter advancing said, "My Lords, Lady Waldegrave never trusted the secret to her father, her / sisters, or any of the family. The first time I knew it certainly was last year. There was a remarkable bill depending in Parliament, which your Lordships may well remember ; it was called the Royal Marriage Act. I thought it a bad bill, and intended to come and vote against it ; but reflecting that Lady Waldegrave might be interested in it, I thought it right to question her first. She was then with my wife and me at the Deanery at 230 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. MAT, Windsor: it was on the 1st of March, 1772. The Duke of Gloucester was then absent in Italy. I went into the Lady Waldegrave's room, and, telling her my reasons for inquiring, I asked whether she was married to his Royal Highness or not? She burst into a flood of tears, and cried, ' I am ! I am married ! ' and then falling into a greater agony, she wrung her hands and exclaimed, ' Good God ! what have I done ? I have betrayed the Duke, and broken my promise to him of never owning my marriage without his leave.' ' Of these circumstances the Bishop made a deposition on oath ; and the Duke desired the three Lords to observe that accident had naturally drawn from him and the Duchess, when they were parted and there could be no concurrence between them, the same confession. Dunning, stepping up to the Chancellor, said, " My Lord, did you ever hear anything so clear ? " " Oh ! " replied the Chancellor, " as clear as possible." The Duke, then addressing himself to the three Lords, 5 recommended to them to press the King to send the Privy Council to the birth of the child for the satisfaction of the nation at least, if not Privy Counsellors, to beseech his Majesty to send any private Lord or Commoner, or more if he pleased. ' ' And, my Lords," added the Duke, " the time presses : look at the condition of the Duchess your Lord- ships, I dare to say, have all heard the ill-natured reports of her not being with child." Then having asked each separately if they were satisfied, and each declaring himself perfectly satisfied, the Duke dismissed them. They no doubt made their report ira- 6 Tho Chancellor often interrupted tho Archbishop when speaking ; but the Duke as constantly reprimanded him, saying, "Pray, my Lord, 1< ( tin; Archbishop finish what he was saying." 1773. INQUIRY INTO DUKE OF GLOUCESTER'S MARRIAGE. 231 mediately to the King ; but his Majesty, notwithstanding the urgency of the occasion, would not summon the Council till the 26th, the day on which, being the next levee day, it was usual to hold it. The next day, to colour over the malice that had been aimed at the Duke of Gloucester's marriage, the same three Lords Commissioners were sent to inquire into the Duke of Cumberland's marriage. The examination took up little time. Miss Luttrell, the Duchess's sister, had been witness, the clergyman who had married them was living, and the Duchess produced the certificate. This marriage and the evidence was likewise entered in the Council-books at the same time with the Duke of Gloucester's. On the 25th Lord Hertford sent for me, and after dis- course on some family business, which he made the pretence for having desired to see me, he dropped, as if inad- vertently, that notice had been left at his house that the Council appointed for the next day was put off for a week. It alarmed me exceedingly. I concluded that they were determined to shift off the verification of the marriage till after the delivery, or were machinating some plot for con- troverting the marriage itself. I suspected too that Lord Hertford had acted by order, and wanted to sound me how the delay would be taken. He was very cool, and I apt to be frank and unguarded ; but I turned the tables on him, and even overacted the concern I really felt. I lamented what was doing, and, intimating how much the Duke would be offended, I spoke pathetically on the ex- tremities to which such treatment would drive him. I magnified the sense and firmness he had already shown, and said I knew he was determined at any rate to have his marriage authenticated without delay. Lady Hertford, who was present, asked with terror what he would do ? I 232 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. MAY, would not name his design of going to the House of Lords, that they might not be prepared for it, but, shaking my head mysteriously, I said I knew he had very rash coun- sellors, and was desperate enough to embrace the most determined. Then, to rouse Lord Hertford's political fears, which I knew were as great as his wife's personal appre- hensions, I hinted that the Duke would find well wishers even in the Court, and that not even all the Ministers would stick by the King in such violences : and then, affecting confidence for his own sake, I acquainted him that even Lord Gower, the President of the Council, had, though on so important a business, withdrawn into the country, rather than preside at a Council in which the Duke might be insulted. It was true, and the Duchess had told me so herself; but she had laughed at it, and said she was persuaded it was a little dirty finesse of Lady Gower, who had sent her husband out of the way, to make some amends for her own impertinence. Lord Hertford was struck, I saw, and I left him ; but I wrote immediately to the Duke to acquaint him with what had happened, and he took my intelligence very kindly. At night I went to the Duchess. The Duke took me aside immediately, thanked me for my letter, but told me Lord Rochford had just sent him word the Council would be held. Perhaps what Lord Hertford had learnt from me had occasioned the summons being again issued but that is more than I know. 6 6 Sir Edward Walpole, who seldom went out of his own house, wrote to the Duke of Gloucester, condoling with and congratulating him on what was passing. The Duke returned this very si !! -i l.lc and pathetic answer : "DEAR SIR, " I agree entirely with you that our talking over together the subject of this last week's transaction would be too affecting for either of us to have chosen. I am, therefore, sincerely obliged to you for having taken this method of casing your mind, which gives me so good an opportunity of doing the same. Now I have had a little time to recover myself from the various feelings I have 1773. COUNCIL ON DUKE OF GLOUCESTER'S MARRIAGE. 233 The Lady Gower just named had been intimate with the Duke of Gloucester and had affected much friendship for the Duchess, but, instead of visiting them on the decla- ration of their marriage, she had contented herself with writing a most familiar note to the Duchess, which began, My dear Madam, and ended with only inquiring after the Duke's health. Lady Gower was a daughter of Stuart, Earl of Galloway, a man indecently Jacobite. She had been Lady of the Bedchamber to the Princess Augusta, and, being of the most interested and intriguing turn, she had, even before her marriage, obtained three pensions by different channels. After her marriage her life was a series of jobs and solicitations, and she teazed every Minis- ter for every little office that fell in his department She made a thousand dependants and enemies, but no friend. The Council was held on the 26th, and was very full; the King present. The three Lords made their report, expressed their satisfaction, and the King ordered all the depositions to be entered in the Council-books, not the least objection being made to the validity of the marriage ; but as the Duke afterwards told me, Lord Camden ac- quainted him with a very wicked circumstance. It had been intended to register the marriages and specify that they were legal, but somebody had persuaded the King to omit that word. There can be no doubt but that Lord been agitated by for a long time past, I i a debt due to my country, my Duchess, can reflect again upon the real joy you ' myself, and to posterity. must feel in seeing the character of my amiable Duchess has shone through the cloud I myself was forced from duty to the King to permit to hang over my | bation, as an honest man, "of my* con- own wife for so long a time. And yet I have the secret satisfaction to believe, that, when his Majesty considers the variety of events that had happened during my last absence from England, he must allow that my public declara- tion of my marriage at my return was "Your compliments to me upon my management I would thank you for if I felt I deserved them ; but your appro- bation, as an honest m duct, I feel grateful for. " I am, dear Sir, " Yours, " WILLIAM HKNRY. ' Gloucester House, "May 25, 1773." 234 LAST JOUBNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. MAY, Mansfield was that adviser, and the person Lord Camden meant. It was a gratification to a Jacobite born 7 to leave even a shadow of suspicion on the legitimacy of a Bruns- wicker, but even that squint was effaced by the Duke's quickness and resolution, which drew even from the King himself an avowal that not a cavil remained against the marriage. It happened thus : The Duke being informed the next day that some per- sons had misreported the transactions in Council, as if doubts had arisen on the legality of his marriage, the Duke, though late at night, hurried to the Archbishop, and finding the Bishop of London with him, who would have retired, the Duke stopped him, and with a tone of authority told him he should not leave the house till he had received his orders. His Royal Highness then told the two prelates what he heard, and therefore enjoined them by their function, by their duty to their country, and by the testimony they had borne to the validity of his mar- 1 Junius, in a special note, in 1772, upon the Jacobitism of Lord Mansfield (Murray), says : " This man was always a rank Jacobite. Lord Kavens- worth produced the most satisfactory evidence of liis having frequently drunk the Pretender's health upon his knees." On the occasion alluded to by Junius, Fawcett, a Newcastle solicitor, was really the accuser (in 1753) of Murray, the Solicitor-General, and Stone, sub- preceptor to Prince George, after- wards George III. The accusation was disproved, but Walpole, moved by his antipathy against Murray, frequently repeated it. Lord Chesterfield (to Dayrolles, March 13, 1753) says : - " As nobody is unprejudiced on either side, but, on the contrary, warm and violent on each, one hears no undis- guised truth on either." The charges which Junius recorded, which Wal- pole repeated, and which Chesterfield affected neither to believe nor reject, Churchill vehemently asserted in poetry. He did not name the alleged offender, but he took care that he might be easily identified : a figure came, Whom Justice would but dare not name. Hard times when Justice, without fear, Dare not bring forth to public ear The names of those who dare offend 'Gainst Justice, and pervert her end 1 Mm If the Muse afford me grace, Description shall supply the place. In foreign garments he was clad. Sage ermine o'er the glossy plaid Cast rev' rend honour ; on his heart, Wrought by the curious hand of Art, In silver wrought, and brighter far Than heavenly or than earthly star, Shone a White Ilose, the emblem dear Of him he ever must revere. What if to that Pretender's foes . His greatness, nny, his life he owes ; Shall common obligations bind, And shake his constancy of mind ? Scorning such weak and petty chains, Faithful to James he still remains, Though he the friend of U Gorge appear: Dissimulation 's virtue here." D. 1773. VERIFICATION OF GLOUCESTER'S MARRIAGE. 235 riage, to go that moment to the King, and tell him that, though he himself was satisfied with the proofs, yet, if his Majesty had any douhts remaining, the Duke was willing to do anything his Majesty should require to have his mar- riage confirmed. The Archbishop said it would be im- possible to see the King at that late hour. " My Lords," cried the Duke peremptorily, " ye shall not lay your heads on your pillows till ye have seen him I will have an answer to-night." They obeyed, and returned with a message that the King, though satisfied himself with the proofs of the Duke's marriage, would consent to the Duke's being married again if he chose it. The Duke afterwards told Mr. Keppel, that, if the King sent the Archbishop to marry him over again, he would lock the door and admit no witnesses, to show that the first marriage was as good as the last. He was extremely averse to the repeti- tion of the ceremony, which he was aware would weaken rather than corroborate his marriage, and he had the prudence to go to Dunning and made him draw up a proper answer, which he sent, and was as follows : The Duke of Gloucester desires the Lord Archbishop of Canter- bury and the Lord Bishop of London to present his humble duty to the King, accompanied with the sincerest acknowledgment of his Majesty's goodness in declaring in the terms they communicated to the Duke this morning his Royal satisfaction in the validity of the Duke's marriage, after which he will not believe that any other will presume to doubt of the veracity or sufficiency of the evidence that has been produced upon that subject. It can, therefore, be no object wjth the Duke to go a second time through the ceremony ; but that, or any other mark of obedience to the King, the Duke will cheerfully yield, if it should be thought that it can be of any use, and the King's consent with the other necessary preparatory steps 8 can be gone through before the Duchess's delivery ; after which such a ceremony would be obviously improper. 8 The preparing a sign manual. It could not have been ready, for the Duchess was delivered the next day. 236 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. MAY, On the 17th the Duke received from the Archbishop this full and satisfactory answer, which removed all ground of cavil, assured the indissolubility of his marriage arid the rights of his child, and took away all pretence for doubt, even from those who wished for a handle, or might still pretend they doubted, though women only, who make no scruple of repeating the same thing twenty times after con- futation, had the confidence to surmise that there was still some imperfection, though they did not know how or where. Here is the Archbishop's letter : SIR, Upon the receipt of your Royal Highness's letter, the Bishop of London and I immediately waited on his Majesty, and acquainted him with the contents of it. His Majesty was pleased to say, that, as your Royal Highness was satisfied with the proofs of the vali- dity of your marriage, and did not desire to have it farther authenticated, his Majesty, not having heard any objection to the validity of it, does not think it necessary to take any farther steps in it. I have the honour to be, Sir, With the greatest respect, Your Royal Highness's Most obedient humble servant, FRED. CANT. Lambeth, May 27th, 1773. 11 o'clock. The next day the Archbishop waited on the Duke, when his Royal Highness told him that as the King was satisfied he desired he might hear no more of the matter. At night the Duchess lent me the Archbishop's letter, which I returned the next morning, but wrote to beg she would never let it go out of her hands again, as it was of the highest importance to her and the child. Thus ended this memorable transaction, with the com- pletest triumph to the Duke, and to the signal credit of his 1773. DISINGENUOUSNESS OF THE KING. 237 sense and character. The King through the whole showed so much pride, illnature, duplicity, and pusillanimity, that one may almost conclude the whole had been concerted and conducted by himself, the Queen, her women, and a man as silly as her women Lord Rochford. The pusilla- nimity would include Lord Mansfield, but the conduct was unworthy of his abilities. Still, satisfactory as the Arch- bishop's letter was at last, I soon learnt that the avowal had been wrung most reluctantly from a mind that had harboured disingenuity to the last moment, as I shall mention presently, and which, as deceit pursued to its inmost retreat never pardons, his Majesty resolved not to forgive ; the Archbishop himself owning to Bishop Keppel that the King was angry with the three Lords for their full avowal of satisfaction, and had told him, the Archbishop, that, whatever he might have thought before of being reconciled to his brother, the Duke had now so pushed him to the wall that he could not forgive him. The Duchess had scarce surmounted the anxiety of this / cruel situation, which she bore with an heroic cheerfulness that seemed to improve her natural beauty, which had never glowed with more lustre than at this moment, but she was taken with labour-pains at three in the morning of May 29th, and at eight of the clock in the evening she was delivered of a Princess. There were present the Dukes of Richmond, 9 Manchester, 1 and Dorset, 2 the Earls ofThanet and Cholmondeley, Lord Nuneham, eldest son of the Earl of Harcourt, Lord Beaulieu, 3 Sir William Meredith, Captain Boyle Walsingham, 4 the Countess Dowager of 9 Charles Lenox, third Duke of Richmond. 1 George Montague, fourth Duke of Manchester. 3 John Sackville, third Duke of Dorset. 3 Sir Edward Hussey Montague, Lord Beaulieu. 4 Brother of the Earl of Shannon, and Member of Parliament, a seaman. 238 LAST JOUKNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. MAY, Albemarle, 5 Mr. T. Townshend, jun. ; and of the Duke's family, the Colonels George West, 6 Coxe, Rainsford, Heywood, Captain Jennings, 7 Mr. Deval his chaplain, Le- grand his old governor, Colonel Folke, Colonel Craggs, groom of the bedchamber to the Duke of Cumberland ; and the Duchess of Gloucester's own bedchamber women, Mrs. Heywood, Mrs. Cox, and Mrs. Swanton. The men, ( by the man-midwife, Mr. Ford, giving the sign too soon, entered the room even before the child was quite born. The Duke and Duchess of Cumberland had been sent for, but, being out of town, did not arrive in time. The Duchess's father, sisters, nor I were present, that no management might be imputed to the family. Lord Cholmondeley, 8 a second cousin, was the only relation there. As soon as the Duchess was delivered, the Duke sent word of the event to my brother and me. I went directly to wish him joy. He called me into his closet, appeared very happy, and said he was only sorry for the Duchess's dis- appointment in not having a son. He told me he had sent Legrand to tell the King, with orders not to stay if not called in ; but he would send in more form, which he would not do if he lived in friendship with his brother. The etiquette was to acquaint the Lord of the Bedcham- ber ; but this delivery was so serious an affair that he would notify it to the Secretary of State. He added that the King had sent to him to desire he would waive insist- ing on the presence of the Privy Council ; and that he had 6 Lady Anne Lenox, daughter of the first Duke of Richmond, widow of William Anne, Earl of Albemarle, and mother of Dr. Keppel, Bishop of Exeter. Brother of Earl Dclawar, and had been groom of the bedchamber to the Duke. 7 Of the Duke of Cumberland'* family. 8 George Earl of Cholmondeley, son of Lord Malpas, eldest son of George Earl of Cholmondeley, by Mary sibte) of Sir Edward Walpofo. 1773. EAST INDIAN AFFAIRS. 239 given it up by a message carried by Colonel Rainsford to Lord Rochford ; that the Earl, at that visit, had taken occasion to advise Rainsford to persuade the Duke to be remarried, but not to say it was his advice ; that for himself, he was going out of town, and would wash his hands of it. The Duke expressed himself with the greatest warmth as he repeated this double dealing, and said he did not know whether Lord Rochford had acted from folly or wickedness ; I believe from neither, but from di- rections. " Good God ! " said the Duke, " marry again ! I desire everybody may know I never had such a thought." And happy it was he had not; the Duchess was deli- vered before the ceremony could have been performed, which is what the Court had sought a future civil war was indeed very harmless revenge ! The blind acrimony with which they endeavoured to render the child's legiti- macy doubtful proved the means of authenticating both its birth and the marriage. I must now return to the trans- actions in Parliament. I have related the precipitation with which the House of Commons had voted away the sovereignty of three pro- | vinces from the East India Company; and the breach of their agreement with the Government, which the Duke of Richmond had chiefly effected. Lord North, though he held a firm language out of the House, and though on the 17th of May he declaimed in a menacing speech against them, was not a man to push matters to extremity, nor to avail him- self, as worse and more daring ministers would have done, of the rash vote by which one House of Parliament had in a manner voted three provinces to the Crown. Lord North probably wished to procure some pecuniary advan- tages to the King, in lieu of an additional revenue of 200,000^. which he had declined asking of Parliament for 240 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. MAT, his Majesty a refusal, no doubt, heavily felt, and which contributed to draw on the defeat which Lord North re- ceived in the course of the India business : but he meant so well, and was so moderate, that neither the rapacious or ambitious views of the Court, nor the intemperate servility of members of Parliament, tempted him beyond reasonable bounds. This moderation, perhaps, contributed to carry his bill of regulations through, though much pains were taken to inflame the City of London against him as the destroyer of all corporate rights. In the mean time pro- ceeded the attack on Lord Clive. On May 18th much altercation happened, and many censures were passed on the precipitation of the former day, several persons declaring that the right of sovereignty over the three provinces could not be intended to be taken away by general and indefinite resolutions. This debate put off General Burgoyne's charge till the next day, the 19tfA, when he opened his accusation of Lord Clive, and went through the catalogue of his crimes, as his ficti- tious treaties, the assassination of Surajah Dowlah, and the immense presents he had obtained by military influence, to the amount of 234,000/. besides his jaghire. I shall say little on these facts, or of the debate. I was not in Par- liament myself, nor much conversant in Indian affairs. The details, and even many of the speeches, are to be found in books, pamphlets, and newspapers, particularly in the London Chronicle. All I shall touch is the complexion of the debate, which turned towards more favour for the cri- minal. His friends seemed to attempt delay, and did obtain leave to produce witnesses for him. This arose from Sir Richard Sutton, one of the Committee of Inquiry, complaining that, when Lord Clive was before them, he had been forced to answer questions that tended to accuse him- 1773. ATTACK ON LORD CLIVE. 241 self Such compulsion was illegal, and to bring his own confession against him not less so. The forms of justice therefore favoured his escape ; but his confession, and his voluntary confessions in the House, proclaimed the crimes of the man. Whether his merits balanced them was an- other consideration. A moralist would condemn, a poli- tician (I mean a politician in the worst sense of the word, in opposition to all morality) would absolve him. The Bedfords, as I have said, Colonel Barre, Charles Fox, and, above all, Burgoyne, Sir W. Meredith, and Thurlow, were hot on the pursuit ; Sawbridge, Burke, Stanley, and the junto protected him ; and it was carried at last by 119 to 81 to hear his witnesses. The hostile part pushed for going on the next day, but the Speaker with his blunt and unce- remonious frankness told them it was too much fatigue for him, and that they should not have his company ; on which it was postponed till the 21st, after Lord Give, in an artful, though seemingly desponding speech, had lamented, him- self, that after enjoying his fortune for sixteen years he \ must look on himself as a bankrupt, who had nothing left but a family estate of five hundred pounds a year, which his ancestors had possessed for several generations. " But," said he, " it is easy to stoop to this ; it requires more resolu- tion to bear prosperity than adversity." For what he had / gotten, it was nothing new ; presents had been coeval with the Company ; Eastern Princes always make presents ; every Governor for these hundred years had returned with a fortune : he could have wished General Burgoyne had sifted with as much accuracy the hardships, sufferings, and services of the former part of his life, as he had of the latter part- and then, as if inadvertently wandering into the I subject, he drew an interesting picture of his campaigns and conquests. After winding up their passions to admiration VOL. i. R 242 LAST JOUENALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. MAT, and applause, as if recollecting himself, he returned to the severe lot he expected ; but charged them with dignity, when they should decide on his honour, not to be forgetful of their own. On the 2lst arrived the important day which was to determine the fate of this every way great criminal. It began with peevish altercation on forms of proceeding, and then, one Beecher being examined, and Lord Clive's own evidence at the Select Committee, which he admitted as evidence against him, being read, he himself rose, and told the House he had little to say ; if the approbation he had received from the Company, and from his country, were not sufficient, he had nothing to say. He had been accused as the cause of all the misfortunes that had fallen on the Company of that he would leave the House to judge. All he entreated was, that they would leave him his honour, and take away his fortune. Having said which, he walked out of the House. General Burgoyne then made the following motion : " That it appears to this House, that Robert Lord Clive Baron of Plassey in the kingdom of Ireland, about the time of the deposition of Surajah Dowlah, Nabob of Bengal and the establishment of Meer Jaffier on the Musnud, 9 did, through the influence of the powers with which he was intrusted as member of the Select Committee 1 and Com- mander-in-Chief of the British forces, obtain and possess 80,000 roupees as member of the Select Committee, i farther sum of two lacs as Commander-in-Chief, and a farther sum of 16 lacs, or more, under the denominator | of private donation, which sums, amounting together to 20 lacs and 80,000 roupees, were of the value in Englisl 9 The tlironc or power. ' In India. 1773. ATTACK ON LOKD OLIVE. 243 money of 234,000, 2 and that in so doing the said Eobert Lord Clive abused the powers with which he was intrusted, to the evil example of the servants of the public." Sir William Meredith, the Attorney-General Thurlow, Charles Fox, and Barre, supported the question with great acrimony. Fox said, Lord Clive was the origin of all plunder, the source of all robbery. Barre drew a parallel between him and Major Monroe, who had refused a present of 300,000?. ; Lord Clive's lacs, he supposed, had not been j given him for his beauty. 3 Were he acquitted, the House ' ought to punish Monroe. Whom could it punish, if the principal was acquitted ? On the other hand, the services of the criminal, an enjoyment of his wealth for sixteen years, the applause, the honours, the trust conferred on him by the Crown, the Company, the Parliament, and the nation, pleaded in his behalf. So did Wedderburn, the Solicitor-General, with much ability, Conway with candour, Admiral Saunders with rough naval indignation that spoke more forcibly than eloquence, and by a home application of the case of Sir Walter Raleigh. Burke, as Thurlow told him, showered a bright confusion of ideas on his defence, and told the House he hoped that what Indian gratitude had bestowed, British ingratitude would not take away; that they could not compound honour and disgrace ; and that he knew not what called out heaven- born genius ; he did know what suppressed it ingratitude. But the person whose arguments were most serviceable to the accused was Lord George Germaine. He was allowed to have surpassed himself, and to have compressed into a few pithy manly sentences the sum of all that could possibly be said in alleviation or excuse, in justice or policy. 2 'This was independent of his jaghire. 3 Lord Clive was a remarkably ill-looking man. R 2 244 LAST JOUENALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. MAY, One image was particularly admired it was a picture of the doubts Lord Clive must have fluctuated between, if at the' onset of the battle of Plassey he had had the Attorney- General on one hand, and the Solicitor-General on the other, prompting him to conduct directly opposite. Lord George Germaine certainly made great impression in Lord Olive's favour; but more than his nervous compactness, more than Burke's desultory imagery and good-humoured wit, more than Wedderburn's legal subterfuges, and more than the inveteracy expressed against him, which too operated in his favour, more than all this was done for him by very inferior advocates, and by the irresolute conduct of one who ought to have taken the lead : in short, the appearance on Lord Olive's side of those flimsy and con- temptible men Lord Barrington and Jenkinson carried the tide of Court favour along with them ; and the pusil- lanimous, uncertain, contradictory variations and inde- cision of Lord North, who wavered from censure to encomium, 4 who aimed at punishment and held out recompense, and who at last, almost in terms, proposed to take away his fortune, and then restore it, turned the scale. But why do I say turned the scale ? Lord North only contrived to make his own defeat appear merited. It had been determined before ; Lord Clive had bought the Court it was past a doubt ; and the Court was glad too to show both Lord North and the Bedfords together, thatj they were nothing if the rays of the Crown did not shine,' on them. At four in the morning the House divided, and; the motion was rejected by 153 to 95. To complete Lord; Clive's triumph, and its own shame, the House voted next at the instigation of the Solicitor-General, "that Robrr 4 He said Lord Clive had virtues enough to balance his faults. 1773. BILL OF KEGULATIONS. * 245 Lord Clive had rendered great and meritorious services to this country." That is, after having stated by vote that presents acquired by military influence were illegal, they acquitted and thanked the man who had confessed and gloried in the facts of which he was accused. Some of his friends drove to Lord Olive's at five in the morning to congratulate him. He was in bed ; but his wife and family received them with acclamations from the windows of his house. Twenty other plunderers exulted no less, but more secretly. Lord North went home with very different sensations, and wrote immediately to the King, complaining how he had been abandoned by his Majesty's creatures. His Majesty, as usual, soothed him with pro- mises and he deserved the treatment, by once again submitting to be soothed. The same day the Proprietors of India Stock passed a vote for petitioning Parliament to be heard by counsel against Lord North's Bill of Kegulations. That bill took up the remainder of the session, and, though it was stiffly opposed, was carried successfully by the predominant influence of the Crown. It was heavily censured for its violation of the charter, and for reducing the just rights of the proprietors to vote for 500. stock, which was now fixed at 1000/. Great faults were found in the bill itself; but was it not easier to find faults than to draw at once a bill which should both correct and give law to a country so little known and so different from our own? The most impartial found Lord North's bill inadequate to any great purpose ; and, perhaps, that was to his praise. Neither his subservience to the Crown, his contradictions from the Opposition, nor his provocations from the Company, could drive him to a high exercise of power. His regulations were moderate, and the limitations confined to a short 246 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. MAY, season. It was rather an essay than a plan of government. He endeavoured to awe the Company into submission, by forcing them to pay their debts, which they were unable to do ; but the Duke of Richmond wrought the Company up to enthusiasm of resistance, and threw every possible difficulty into the way of Government, whose measures created many real enemies, for enemies, wounded in their property, are in earnest. On the 25th the Duke persuaded the Company and Proprietors to seek union with the great corporations, in which they were met eagerly by the Common Council ; but the flame spread no farther. The bill was debated for many days in the House of Commons, which often sat late on it, but even Lord Clive supported the Regulations. 1773. AFFRONTS TO THE KING. 247 JUNE. ON the 8th happened another disagreeable affair for Lord North, and it did riot come single. General Monckton, 1 whose services in the late war had been brilliant, had been named by the East India Company to the command of their forces. Lord North made a different choice, or had it imposed on him. He recommended General Clavering, a man that was a favourite too with the army. To this preference Lord North had added slights. He was apt to offend by not answering letters, for he had no grace, even if he conferred favours. Monckton first complained to the King, and at last presented a memorial to the House of Commons. Lord North was abashed, and defended himself awkwardly, pleading that Monckton had been offered the command in America. The House, however, determined as the Minister directed. The Company adhered to Monckton ; and the feuds increased. $th. Wilkes, to affront the King, moved the Common Council to congratulate his Majesty on the increase of the Royal Family by the delivery of the Duchess of Glou- cester. 2 Some urged that the King had not acknowledged 1 See Walpole's ' Memoirs of George III.,' vol. i. p. 143. Monckton was one of the most liberal as well as the most popular generals in the army. He died in 1782, when Governor of Portsmouth and Colonel of the 17th Regiment. D. s This was not the only affront dealt at Royalty by the ultra-democratic party in London. In Wilkes's ' Letters to his Daughter,' vol. i. p. 121, men- tion is made of the presentation to the City of a silver cup embossed with a representation of the death of Caesar. Some persons saw an insult to the Court in the revival of Hamlet a few months before the period treated of in the text. Walpole (to Mason, Jan. 9, 1773) expresses his surprise that so good a courtier as Garrick should have committed the impropriety of bringing out an old play, with "an adulterous Queen of Denmark " for a heroine. D. 248 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. JUNE, her, and almost all objected to the impropriety of the motion, and it was easily quashed. llth. On the India Bill, Sir William Meredith and Charles Fox, though then unprovoked and unfounded by the debate, made such philippics against Lord Olive, that he quitted the House with anger or shame. In that debate 3 many friends of Andrew Stuart had intended to move that he might be nominated one of the new super- visors in India, and Lord North had promised not to oppose it. He now deprecated the motion privately with earnest dismay, saying he should lose his bill if Andrew Stuart was named : Stuart himself, on some engagement, it was said, that he should be indemnified, wrote a letter to beg the question might not be moved. The secret was this : Lord Mansfield, from hatred of Lord Camden, had ! opposed a like bill in the Duke of Grafton's adminis- tration, and did now, out of the House, inveigh against this. Hearing of the intended advancement of Stuart, whose book against him has been mentioned in the month of January, Lord Mansfield, with ungenerous rancour, threatened to oppose the bill if Andrew Stuart was to \ be benefited by it. The injury was cruel, and had already produced the book ; for when Stuart had can- vassed for the place, many urged that a man represented in such black colours as he had been on the Douglas cause by Lord Mansfield, could not be a proper person , for so important a trust. He wrote his book to vindicate I and avenge himself, but experienced the fate of those who dare scribere contra Eum quipotest proscribere. The bill went to the Lords, and in spite of all the Duke of Richmond's efforts (and he was allowed even by * In one of the debates on this bill Dowdswell spoke for two hours and forty minutes. 1773. HIGHWAY ROBBERY. 249 his enemies to make a great figure) was easily carried through, though attended with a warm protest. 4 Lord Mansfield did not attend it. Lord Gower, affecting candour, said he should vote for all the evidence which the Duke of Richmond demanded from the Commons, because he had, in his former opposition, voted for like lights ; but he escaped from this delicacy by hearing the evidence would be proposed to be read if it was to be of any use, he was not so conscientious. The Duke of Richmond joked on the King's journey to Portsmouth ; and when the Ministers pressed the bill forwards, that it might be over before the journey, he said he supposed they were afraid of trusting Lord Sandwich , alone with the King, and that indeed he did not think ' him a man fit to be so trusted. 12th was printed in the Public Advertiser a very bold paragraph on the King's paying for his own statue in Berkeley Square, telling him it was from the appre- ; hension that posterity would erect none to him, and advising him to build his own mausoleum for the same reason/ 14th. Lord North opened the Budget, and in the con- clusion made a peroration on himself and his own situa- 4 Signed by the Dukes of Richmond, Devonshire, and Portland, the Marquis of Rockingham, and the Lords Fitz- william, Milton, and Besborough. 5 With equal boldness the papers of the day maintained that the wages of the servants of the King's household were greatly in arrear, that then- families were in exceeding distress, and that the servants themselves were clamorous to be paid. Distress was not confined at this time to the servants of the palace, in whose vicinity highwaymen plied their vocation. In the February of this year the two daughters of Admiral Holborn were stopped by a robber as their carriage was conveying them across St. James's Square from the opera. The highwayman deliberately robbed them or their watches, jewels, and rings. The prevailing distress was aggravated by the counterfeit coin in circulation. A few months later than the period in the text, one hundred f pounds' worth of silver was examined, Only ten pounds' worth came from the Mint ; the remainder was " Brumma- gem." D. 250 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. JUNE, tion, in which, after mentioning the reports of his intend- ing to resign, he vaunted his own firmness in the cause of the public, vaunted his merit in having undertaken the burthen in so critical a situation, when tempted neither by avarice nor ambition ; and he vowed with tears to persist in sustaining his part till he should have perfected his plans. His emotion rather bespoke the want of firm- ness to resign than firmness in remaining. As his mea- sures were successful, it could only be the uneasiness of his situation in the Cabinet that called forth tears; and this scene he had repeated too often. 18th. The East India Bill of Regulations was read in the House of Lords for the last time, and was passed by a large majority. The Duke of Richmond combated it to the utmost, speaking near twenty times. Lord Shelburne, whether having brought his schemes of reconci- liation with the Court nearer to maturity, or whether apprehending Lord North's fall at hand, and a new scramble for places approaching, undertook the defence of the bill, and executed it with applause : the Duke of Richmond complimented him ironically on his conversion. The next day the chiefs of the minority entered a new protest, couched in the most respectful terms, on the servility, adulation, corruption of the peerage. The same day was passed by the House of Commons another bill, obliging the East India Company to accept the loan which they had agreed with Lord North to take from Govern- ment, and which they had since voted they would not receive. About the same time arrived from Boston, resolutions voted by the town of Gorham on their grievances, in which in the most open terms they disclaim the authority of the Parliament of Great Britain to tax them, cry out, 1773. THE KING'S JOURNEY TO PORTSMOUTH. 251 as all men did, on the corruption of that assembly, and with reason, and declare their option of risking their lives and fortunes in defence of their rights civil and religious, rather than dying by piecemeal in slavery. Corruption smiled, and was not afraid of swords at such a distance. The town of Gorham was as little formidable to a senate of pensioners as a protest of twelve peers. On the 22nd the King set out for Portsmouth, and returned on the 27th. The Ministers attended him and dined with him on board the fleet in their turns, as did several other lords and gentlemen, Monsieur de Guisnes the French ambassador, and the Duke de Lauzun. The mob were unbounded in those exultations which the first sight of a king always excites in a distant province. Mistaking giddy joy for affection, he said : " I do not mind abuse, I am grown accustomed to it ; but I own these sentiments of applause touch me." It was a pity he did not reflect that the silent suffrages of approbation founded on merit were the only testimonies of affection that are lasting and worth coveting. 21th. The Duke of Gloucester's daughter was christened Sophia Matilda. Sir Edward Walpole had suggested the name of Sophia, the foundress of the Brunswick line, and which, though the Queen bore, she had disclaimed, preferring her other name of Charlotte. The name of Sophia too facilitated the use of the appellation the Princess Sophia* which the Duke wished should be given to his daughter, rather than the Lady Sophia ; his father for popularity had affected to call his daughters the Lady Augusta, the Lady Elizabeth, &c. ; but the late King had never approved or admitted that appellation, and it had 6 By having been familiar. 252 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. JUNE, been dropped by tbe Princess herself after her husband's death. The Duke and Duchess of Cumberland were sponsors, and the Queen of Denmark by proxy. The Duke had written to ask her to be godmother, but no answer had come. However he chose to suppose her consent, rather than admit a gossip of rank and blood not royal. He had in the first place invited the King, and intended the Queen, but, the former refusing, the latter was not asked. Nor was any occasion of mortifying the Duke omitted. The King refused to review his regiment. The Duke sent to Lord Rochford to press the verification of his child's birth, which the King had promised, but now declined. They saw, however, that the Duke was prepared and determined to take every advantage the King's passionate folly should present to him. 1773. CONDUCT OF GENERAL MOYSTON. 253 JULY. 1st. THE Parliament was prorogued. The Lords chose to swallow the stigma of servility fixed on them by the protest of the dissenting Lords rather than spread the notoriety by expunging it. 7th. Miller, printer of the 'London Evening Post,' was tried, by a special jury, before Lord Mansfield, for accusing Lord Sandwich of selling a place, was found guilty and fined 2000/. The East India Company voted not to employ General Clavering. 8th. Lord North was installed Chancellor of Oxford. 12th. General Moyston, a brave but insolent and corrupt man, Governor of Minorca, was cast in the Common Pleas in damages of 3000. to Mr. Fabregas, a v native merchant of that island, whom he had arbitrarily imprisoned and then transported to Spain without trial, after many instances of barbarity, for having refused to j sell his wine, the product of his own estate, at the price the General had despotically imposed. Lord George Lenox had been exceedingly ill-used by the same mer- cenary bacha for having interposed in favour of the com- mon soldiers, whom Moyston obliged to purchase wine dearer than they could have bought it themselves, and for which grievance Lord George could obtain no redress from the Governor or the War-Office. In this month the Duke of Cumberland wrote a very respectful letter to the King, asking leave to go to Italy for some time, which was readily granted, and the King, it was given out, was pleased with his behaviour. The 254 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. JULY, Duchess of Cumberland was certainly very sensible ; and though she had not the parts and wit of the Duchess of Gloucester, no more than the lustre of beauty, was greatly more mistress of her passions and more artful. Since she had married the Duke he had committed no folly or in- discretion, which, as before he committed every week, could be attributed only to her influence. She saw her- self totally neglected by all sides, while the Duchess of Gloucester was courted by part of the Opposition and had several persons of consideration attached to her. She saw too that the spirit of the Duke of Gloucester and the warmth of the Duchess had and would offend and frighten the King and keep open the breach as well as had widened it. Hence the Duke of Cumberland was tutored to act contrition, and took opportunities of ex- pressing to such of the Court as he could meet, his sorrow for the King's anger and his resolution of withdrawing and never giving him any occasion of dislike. The King, whose joy and talent lay in fomenting division in all con- nections, was charmed with these overtures, and affected to favour his contemptible brother whom he had always hated in order to mortify and affront his favourite brother, for folly and demerit never wanted his Majesty's coun- tenance if they were but abject enough. Sense and virtue might awe him, but were sure of his aversion. The Court, about the same time, made another conquest which it seemed little worth their while to buy so dear, unless from the intrinsic satisfaction of corrupting a fair character. Cornwall l quitted the Opposition for a pension of five hundred a year for life. He was a reputable and specious man and a decent speaker, but not being acri- 1 Ho was brother-in-law of Jcnkinson. (See Walpole's ' Memoirs of Keign of George III.,' vol. iii. p. 211.). D. 1773. DISCONTENTS IN AMERICA. 255 monious seemed little formidable, for how could a shame- less Parliament dread moderation when they braved every insult ? but, when hypocrisy was the religion of the Court, prostitution was the symbol of a convert. This month came an account of new uneasinesses at Boston. Some letters of their Governor Hutchinson had been discovered and laid before the Assembly, by which it appeared that he had sent over inflammatory informa- tions against the colonies, in one even using this expres- sion, so foul in the mouth of an Englishman : " There must be an abridgment of what is called English liberty." General Moyston had acted what Hutchinson recom- mended. 2 * Perhaps few circumstances gave more surprise to Franklin when he was in London seeking justice for the op- pressed colonies than to be informed that the grievances of which he com- plained, and the coercion which he de- precated, formed a course of policy re- commended not only by certain English officials but by native American gentle- men exercising offices of great dignity and responsibility. Franklin, at least, professed to doubt this, and a " Member of Parliament," according to Bancroft (Hist. Americ. Eev., vol. iii. pp. 480-1), who had learned the alleged fact from John Temple, Lieutenant-Governor of New Hampshire, undertook, with the privity of Temple, to procure the docu- ments which would prove the assertion. These documents consisted of letters from Hutchinson, Oliver, and Paxton, " written to produce coercion," and ori- ginally " addressed to Whately " Secre- tary to the Treasury), " who had com- municated them to Grenville, his patron, and through him to Lord Temple." Bancroft finds his account with respect to Grenville receiving from Whately details of his correspondence with Hutchinson confirmed by the Grenville Papers, iv. 480. Franklin, by transmitting copies of the letters to America, made himself the public ac- cuser of men whom the colonies now looked upon as traitors. The excite- ment in America and England was very great ; and in the latter country a duel was fought between a brother of the deceased Secretary Whately and the Lieutenant-Governor Temple. Whately was dangerously wounded. After the duel Franklin published a letter, in which he stated that he alone obtained the letters, which had never been in the hands of the last-named Whately, from whom they could not therefore have been taken by Temple. Accord- : ing to Bancroft, the letters were pro- cured for Franklin by " a Member of Parliament." I find another person mentioned as having rendered this ser- vice to Franklin. In Dr. Francis's ' Old New York,' p. 97 (published 1858), there are some details of a remarkably methodical physician of New York, named Hugh Williamson, who was in v England in 1773. Dr. Francis says, " Hosack affirmed, on the testimony of Bishop White, John Adams, President of the United States, General Keed, and John Williamson, that Hugh William- son was the individual who, by an in- genious device, obtained the famous Hutchinson and Oliver letters from the ) British Foreign-office for Franklin ; and I can add that John Williamson, the brother of the Doctor, communicated to me his concurrence in the same tes- timony." D. 256 LAST JOUKNALS OP HOEACE WALPOLE. AUG. AUGUST. THE beginning of this month the Duke and Duchess of Cumberland went to Weymouth on their way to Italy. Before they set out they went to dine at Gloucester Lodge. The Duke of Cumberland behaved there in the most cold, silent, and particular manner, and went away abruptly without taking any leave. His Duchess, whether the cause of it or not, was distressed and confounded, and, as she followed him, turned, and in a low voice said to the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester, " I do not know what is the meaning of all this ; he did not apprise me." It was said that he often treated her very rudely ; still she certainly had had no reason to be pleased with the little cordiality shown to her by the Duchess of Gloucester. 22nd. Died at Hagley, of an inflammation in his bowels, George Lord Lyttelton, aged sixty-four. He had entered into life with the highest reputation for parts, which, however, were not bright nor answered expectation, though he had sense and uncommon learning for a peer. His ignorance of mankind, want of judgment, with strange absence and awkwardness, involved him in mistakes and ridicule, and drew him into many political errors. 1 When he arrived at being a minister, he maintained a reputation of parts and of spirit with temper, though he appeared 1 See a pretty just character of Lord Lyttelton, agreeing with this and a former one in the ' Memoirs of 1751 ' (except in his Lordship's being a great man and a good poet, which he was not), in the ' London Chronicle ' of Jan. 15th, 1774. 1773. DEATH OF LORD LYTTELTON. totally unequal to his office. His slighter works were marked with neither genius nor novelty, but his ' Reign of Henry II.,' so long laboured and expected as a great and profound work, disappointed all mankind ; and though it evinced how deeply he had endeavoured to inform him- self, it neither instructed the learned nor amused the idle, being in truth a tedious, turgid, empty, uninteresting per- formance. As he had fluctuated between parties rather than betrayed them, as he really had a good heart and with inveterate gravity affected sanctimonious manners, the world esteemed him very much as a wise and upright man, which was greatly increased by compassion and com- parison with the detestable character of his only son, who, with more natural parts, was devoid of every principle and sentiment that become a man, and whose ingratitude, profligacy, extravagance, and want of honour and decency, seemed to aim at nothing but afflicting his father, shocking mankind, and disgracing himself. 2 Toward the end of the month the Pope, vanquished by the perseverance of the King of Spain, published the bull for the suppression of the Jesuits. * See a correct appreciation of Lyttel- tou's character by Sir Denis Le Mar- chant, in Walpole's ' Memoirs of the Reign of George III.,' vol. ii. p. 27. D. VOL, I. 258 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. SKPT. SEPTEMBER. \Jtli. THE Duke and Duchess of Cumberland, and the Duchess's sister Miss Luttrell, went to Calais on their way to Italy. Our Ministers abroad were instructed not to visit them, but to be as useful to them as they could underhand, while every method was used at home to dis- courage attention to the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester, 24th. On the 24th died at Bath of the palsy Evelyn Pierpoint, Duke of Kingston and Knight of the Garter, in whom the title extinguished. He had for many years publicly kept, at a vast expense, the famous Miss Chud- leigh, maid of honour to the Princess Dowager, and theii affairs had become singular enough to enter into history Miss Chudleigh had a most beautiful face, her person was ill-made, clumsy, and ungraceful. She aimed at infinite art, but her beauty aided it more than her understanding for her art was gross, ill-judged, and more supported bj assurance than address. She had very early been pri vately married to Augustus Hervey, brother of the Ear of Bristol, and had two children by him, and before theii marriage was known the Dukes of Hamilton and An caster and the Earl of Hillsborough offered her their hands As the wedded pair were both poor, extravagant, anc gallant, they were soon weary of their chain, though, 01, confessing their case to the Princess and her son the King, I the bride was retained as maid of honour, though he character soon became as inconsistent with her office 8 both were with matrimony. After some adventures ( 1773. THE DUCHESS OP KINGSTON. 259 noise she engaged the Duke of Kingston, a very weak man, of the greatest beauty and finest person in England. She built an expensive house at Knightsbridge, plundered the Duke, lived with the utmost profusion, while connived at by a pious Court as an object of charity, and was so silly as to wear well-known jewels of the Kingston family, , and pretend to have found them in a chest of her mother, who lived on a pension. At length, the children by her husband and the witnesses of her marriage being dead, and hearing the clergyman who had married them was dying, she went down to him, forced the register from him in his agony, tore it, went to Doctors' Commons and for- swore her marriage, and publicly married the Duke, with all the affected pretences to virgin modesty, but she had first taken care to silence the opposition of Hervey by a bribe of fourteen thousand pounds. Triumphant and lost to shame, she was presented at Court as Duchess of Kingston, and, as if she had bribed the King and Prin- cesses too, they, the Queen, and whole Court wore the favours she had sent to them on her marriage, nay, even Lord Bristol himself did, though he went about declaring that she herself had long before acquainted him, that she was his brother's wife ; and the Bishop of Deny, his brother and next in succession to Augustus, protested against the second marriage. Augustus himself, as if loosened, offered his hand to a physician's daughter at Bath, with whom he was in love, but the physician was too conscientious to consent. Still the Duchess was baulked. All London, who had resorted to her balls and entertainments while she was a kept mistress, had the decency to abandon her on her new dignity, and she was reduced to retire with the Duke into the country. On his death the scene was completed. To secure her plunder s 2 260 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. SEPT. she was forced to act moderation ; and her timidity pre- vailing over her rapine, as her interest did over her pride, it appeared by the Duke's will that she had contented herself with his own personal estate for ever, and with his real estate (computed at 17,000/. a year, charged with a debt of 70,000/.) only for her life, while, to exclude Hervey's claim, it was given in trust for her ; and to identify the person beyond cavil all her names were spe- cified, and she described as Duchess of Kingston, alias Elizabeth Chudleigh, alias Elizabeth Hervey l the first instance of a Duchess recorded in a Duke's will as a street- walker is indicted at the Old Bailey, and a clear confession that she was guilty of bigamy. The estate, by disinherison of the eldest son Evelyn Meadows, with whom the Duke had quarrelled, was given, after the Duchess, to the second son of the Duke's only sister Lady Frances Meadows, who had long been mad, to his heirs, then to the other nephews and their heirs, and after them to the second son of the Duke of Newcastle, Lord Thomas Clinton. The well- known Wortley Montagu, son of the more deservedly famous Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, the Duke's aunt, succeeded to 1200/. a year, settled on him by his grand- father the first Duke of Kingston. The Duke and Duchess of Cumberland had landed at Calais. The two first nights they went to the play. The next morning a deputation of the players waited on them to thank them for the honour and to be paid. The Duke sent them but three guineas. Disappointed, and meaning 1 This is not true ; she is only called my dear wife in the Duke's will. There are other errors in the above statement. The notorious lady did not marry the Duke before an Ecclesiastical Court had disallowed her marriage witl Hervey. It was the reversal of the Ecclesiastical Court decree by thi House of Lords that subjected her t< the charge of bigamy. D. 1773. DUKE OF CUMBERLAND AT CALAIS. 261 to affront, they had the insolence to despatch a dirty candle-snuffer with a bouquet for the Duchess ; the fellow very properly was caned. Still the comedians did not desist : they sent a letter after the Duke to St. Omer, to ask if it was really true that his Royal Highness had given but three guineas, the company suspecting their comrades of having sunk part of the gratuity. The French magis- trates now interposed, and, to punish such insults, com- mitted the last messenger to prison and banished the players from Calais. The Ministry, having formed a plan or a shift for East Indian affairs, determined not to let the Parliament meet till after Christmas, a delay very agreeable to Lord North's indolence. 262 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. OCT. OCTOBER. THERE was again a great contest for the election of a Lord Mayor. On one side stood Wilkes and Bull, on the other Sawbridge and Oliver; the two former were chosen by a majority of the livery, and Wilkes by a very large one, as it appeared after a poll demanded by Saw- bridge. Townshend, the late Lord Mayor, as active an enemy of Wilkes as the Scotch, was very ill-treated by the mob at each meeting. Sawbridge accused Wilkes of anonymous slander, who made a very bold speech of defi- ance against him, and published it in the papers. There was another gross correspondence of the same kind be- tween Wilkes and one Lovel, chairman of the Committee. On the report of the Court of Aldermen, they preferred Bull for Lord Mayor by Townshend's casting vote. This proscription of Wilkes, though for two years together he was first on the poll, did but serve to revive his popu- larity from the injustice done him, and in this instance did not hurt his power, Bull being entirely his creature, and the odium on Townshend, Home, Oliver, and Saw- bridge increasing. The two first were knaves, and the latter weak men. Wilkes was the only man, except Ministers, who preserved credit in spite of character. Great discoveries were made from the papers of the Jesuits, 1 which exceedingly enraged the Pope, who had 1 In their Noviciate was found by the examiners the plan of the Gunpowder Plot. The Pope made it be published, and even sent an account of it to be j.i iiit.-d in the Florence Gazette ; but though Sir Horace Mann, our Envoy at Florence, sent home an authentic ac- count, the temper of the Court was too favourable, even to Jesuits, to let it be made public here. 1773. AFFAIRS OF IRELAND. 263 temporised in their favour as long as possible. Counter- briefs, in the name of their General, were found, annulling all that the Pope had enacted against their order, and denying not only his authority but even the legality of his election. The King of Prussia, by a silly affectation rather than from policy, protected the Society. I must now turn to Ireland, the only part of our dominions which seemed to threaten any disturbance, nor that unless it should happen to be combined with circum- stances in England. Lord Harcourt, 2 an empty man, devoted to the Court, but diffident and complaisant, had determined to act upon a sort of general plan, for which he was not much qualified, to court all parties and to employ no managers. Managers implied either the officers of State or the best speakers in Parliament, who were not yet retained, though willing to be so. This impartiality, still more than hatred of his predecessor Lord Townshend, 3 drew attention and civility towards him from all parties, the leaders of all being sensible that he could not govern alone, and being unwilling to be neglected by disobliging him. Even the Duke of Leinster, who was dying, was among the first to pay his court. Ponsonby, the late Speaker, was far from hostile; Perry, then actually Speaker, was favourable ; and Hutchinson, Prime Ser- jeant, wished to be solicited to be so. Among the inferior speakers, who by having less parts had less hopes, several were active in opposition, and at the opening of the session hostile motions were made by calling for numerous accounts, partly to display the flagrancy of Lord Towns- hend's corruption by proofs, and partly to ground the 2 Simon, Earl of Harcourt, Lord Lieutenant 1772-1777. D. 3 Lord Lieutenant 1767-1772. D. LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. OCT. proposal of a new tax. The Marquis of Kildare, eldest son of the Duke of Leinster, told the House of Commons he hoped they would declare the late Viceroy an enemy to that country. Some few who had been gained by that Minister provoked more philippics by injudicious pane- gyrics on their patron. 4 Still the new Lord-Lieutenant appeared predominant, and the first motion for papers was defeated by the number of 88 against 52. Lord Harcourt had even ingratiated himself with the country by obtaining from England abolition of the additional and unpopular Boards of Customs. But the great object of expectation was the tax on absentees, loudly called for by the popular party. In short, between the profusions of the late Viceroys to gain votes, the want of specie which was spent in England by the great proprietors of estates, the consequential decrease of trade and farms, which in their turn produced emi- grations, the revenue was almost gone, and necessary cash did not remain either to carry on government, com- merce, or common traffic ; hence the patriots had deter- mined to propose a tax of two shillings in the pound on the estates of all who should not reside in Ireland. Lord North, sensible of the necessity and of the abuses, had promised Lord Hafcourt that if the bill should be sent from Ireland he would use all his power to have it con- firmed by the King and Council here. It happened that some very great Lords 5 here had the greater part of their property in Ireland, Even some of the chiefs of the English Opposition were in that predicament, especially * The Octennial Bill was proved to have been only parted l>y Lord Towns- hend, but to have been the act of Lord Chatham. * Particularly the Earl of Hertford, Lord Chamberlain, who was warm against the tux. 1773. PROPOSED TAX ON ABSENTEES. 265 the Marquis of Rockingham, 6 who, forgetting their patriot- ism in both countries, grew very clamorous against the project, and found countenance from some of the Court, who had various reasons for joining the cry, which was grounded on plausible as well as interested causes. Several great Irish proprietors and peers were also peers of Eng- land, and obliged to attend Parliament here, which clashed with their residence in Ireland. Some were of English families to whom Irish estates had fallen without any other connection in that country. It was immediately intimated in the English papers that the scheme was an act of revenge against Lord Rockingham, and, at the same time, a leading step towards a land-tax in that country. The cry, however, made no sensation here. Could the people of England care whether Irish lords were taxed or not ? Lord Rockingham exerted himself in vain. At last, having summoned a meeting of those concerned, he could assemble but four besides himself, Lord Shelburne having been invited to sign their remonstrance, refusing, and adding, that if they had called him to sign an impeach- ment of a Minister he would have concurred a vaunt of hostility only calculated to disguise his wish of being pur- chased by the Court. Lord Shelburne had affirmed that the tax on absentees would be a robbery, and that the Minister who should advise it would deserve to be hanged. When pressed on all he had said, he pleaded to Lord Rockingham and Lord Besborough that Lord Chatham approved the tax, and he had long determined to be governed in everything by Lord Chatham. " Pray," said the two Lords, "what reasons has Lord Chatham given your Lordship for the tax?" "He has given me 6 See ' Memoirs of the Marquis of Rockingham,' vol. ii. pp. 227-234. D. 266 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLB. OCT. none," said Shelburne. " And is your Lordship con- vinced without reasons" said Lord Besborough, "when you would have hanged the Minister who should propose it ? " Yet the very next day Lord Shelburne went to Edmund Burke, and pressed him to write against the tax, saying Burke might save him some thousand pounds in his pocket. Burke told him he had never written but two political pamphlets, one of which his Lordship had much condemned, and that he would write no more. The Duke of Richmond told me these facts, which he had from Lord Rockingham himself. The five Lords signed and sent a letter, supposed to be drawn by Edmund Burke, to Lord North, requiring to know if he intended to confirm the tax in case it should be sent over. He answered, if it came in the shape it had been proposed to him, as an individual he would in council vote for it. This answer was more commendable for its frankness than dignity, nor was it a wise precedent to answer a ques- tion on a measure of government asked by five private indi- viduals of whom four were in Opposition. The five were the Duke of Devonshire, 7 the Marquis of Rockingham, the Earls of Besborough 8 and Ossory, 9 and Lord Milton. 1 The Duke had inherited a large estate from his maternal grandfather the Earl of Burlington, and, with all his indif- ference to money and party, was persuaded by his family and Lord Rockingham, glad to dip him in any opposition, to concur in this demand. Lord Besborough was an Irish- man, and his fortune lay in that country. He was a peace- 7 William Cavendish, fifth Duke of Devonshire. 8 William Ponaonby, Earl of Bos- iNirough, elder brother of the late Irish Hiwiikor, and, by hit* wife, uncle to the Duke of Devonshire. 9 John Fitzpatrick, Earl of Upper Ossory, nephew of the Duchess of Bed- ford and Earl Gower. 1 Joseph Damer, Lord Milton. IIo married Caroline Sackville, only [third D.] daughter of Lionel Duke of Dorset. 1773. PARTY INTRIGUES. 267 able man, was sorry to be involved against the Court, but understood and loved his interest. Lord Milton, heir of Swift's old miser and usurer Darner, was the most arro- gant and proud of men, with no foundation but great wealth and a match with the Duke of Dorset's daughter ; his birth and parts were equally mean and contemptible. Lord Ossory's junction was more surprising. Of the most ancient Irish blood, and with a large Irish estate, he was firmly attached to the Court, and, though a young man of strict honour and good sense, strongly connected with his near relations the Bedfords. He was not likely, on an abrupt summons from Lord Rockingham, to take so uncommon a step. Probably he knew it would not displease his con- nection, if some of them had not even instigated him. In fact, the Bedfords were at least not contented. Lord Gower had not lost sight of the Treasury ; Lady Gower 2 thirsted for that source of jobs and preferments. Lord Weymouth was undone, as well as out of place, since the blunder he had made in resigning the Seals. Even Rigby, though possessed of the most lucrative post in England, in which he was rapidly raising a fortune, 3 had the vanity of sometimes wishing to be First Minister, though, being a very timid politician, however insolent when his circumstances were desperate, he trembled to gaze steadily on the object he coveted. Two trifles that touched his vainglory and rapacity happened at this time to meet and tempt him. The King, either afraid of his weight with the Bedfords, * Lady Susan Stewart, daughter of the Earl of Galloway, third wife of Granville Leveson, Earl Gower, Lord President of the Council. 3 Rigby, the sou of a linendraper, was Secretary to the Duke of Bedford when the latter was Lord-Lieutenant of Ire- laud, 1757-61. Rigby 's post was a bine- cure, bringing liim 40 have changed his maxims." Lord 1773. DALRYMPLE'S 'HISTORY OF CHARLES II.' 287 ening the heroes who withstood the enemies of Protestantism and liberty ! The attempt was received with due abhor- rence, and to the great mortification of the Scotch, whose unpopularity was doubled by so infamous an aspersion. Men saw the Court could have no meaning but to sap all virtuous principles, and to level the best men to the worst a plot more base and destructive than any harboured by the Stuarts. Nor was it crowned with success. Who could trust to evidence either furnished from Versailles, or coined as if it came from thence ? And who could trust Sir John, who was accused, I know not how truly, of having at- tempted to get his own father hanged, and who had been turned out of a place by Lord Rockingham for having accepted a bribe a charge he endeavoured to deny, and from the weight of which Charles Yorke had saved him, but which Lord Rockingham would never disculpate him from. His bullying vindication in the public papers did but hurt his cause, and the Court grew ashamed of their champion, in spite of his flattery to the Prince on the throne. But here let me leave him : a refutation of his calumnies will appear in Mrs. Macaulay's next volume. At the end of this year died a singular man, Thomas Hollis. He was a gentleman of ample fortune, an antiquary, collector, of most virtuous morals, and the most bigoted of all republicans, 3 to a degree of being unwilling to con- verse with men of other principles. He spent much money in procuring and distributing fine prints of the heroes of his Macaulay truly says that " in our time a public man would be thought lost to all sense of duty and of shame who should not spurn from him a temptation which conquered the virtue and the pride of Algernon Sidney." D. 3 So he was thought during his life. An account of him has been since writ- ten and printed in two pompous volumes in quarto, and thence it does not appear that he was positively a republican. It does appear that he was a very weak man, and thence it is no wonder that his principles were not very clear. 288 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. DEC. party and friends of liberty, at the head of which were the most virtuous of men, as Milton, Locke, Algernon Sidney, Andrew Marvel, &c., and in reprinting pompous editions of such works as support the cause of freedom. These ,f editions, richly bound and stamped with the emblems of liberty, Mr. Hollis made presents of to those who loved the cause. He sent them all to me ; yet as I was not quite republican enough for him, he would neither admit me into his house nor enter mine, and once he wrote angrily against me for having in the ' Anecdotes of Painting' ridiculed the Presbyterians on their demolition of arts ; so that my impartiality and love of truth offended both the friends and enemies of the Stuarts. Mr. Hollis, however, whose virtue was far superior to his understanding, retained regard for me, and once sent me a fine drawing by Isaac Oliver, which I knew had cost him ten guineas. I sent it back, adding that I had accepted his books and prints, as he had given them to many other persons ; but that I could not receive a valuable obligation from a gentleman who would not condescend to converse with me. He was onffeded ; but his humanity soon forgave me, and he sent me more of his publications. Disgusted with the servility of the times, he had retired to Lyme, in Dorsetshire, where Lord Chatham made court to him, and it was supposed* 4 It was confidently asserted that, a little before his death, which happened very suddenly in his garden (on New- Year's day, 1774), Mr. Hollis had sent to Lord Chatham for the Christian names of all his children, but, dying of an apoplexy, his estate, by a will made long before, came to a distant relation, Thomas Brand, of the Antiquarian So- ciety. [Walpole evidently misunderstood good Thomas Hollis, whose only bigotry wA manifested in his dread, hatred, and in tolerance of Popery. The eccentricities of this amiable scholar and antiquary were many, but they were partly assumed, in order that idle and ignorant visitors might not intrude on his valuable time. He was a highly accomplished and ti wealthy gentleman, skilled in the know- ledge of many languages, addicted to M-ii-ntific pursuits, and enlightened :md refined by the exercise of acute observa- tinii in his various extended travels. His great ambition was to become a representative of the people in Pailia- 1773. DUEL BETWEEN WHATELY AND TEMPLE. 289 expected his estate ; but Lord Chatham could not be re- publican enough for Mr. Hollis, who died suddenly as he was walking in his garden. Before the conclusion of the year Sandwich, who had resisted all manner of applications from Miller, the printer, to be forgiven his fine of 2000/., and who had vowed never to forgive it, but to bestow it on some charity, privately compounded it for 500/. and his own costs. 5 SUPPLEMENT. To the Printer of the Public Advertiser. SIR, Great George Street, 18th Dec. 1773. When the malice of my enemies, by falsely impeaching my character, had put me to the hazard of my life, I flattered myself it would have rested silent and satisfied ; but as I understand they are still busy with my reputation, and are endeavouring by a thousand misrepresentations to destroy that good name which to me is inestimable, I am compelled to trouble the public with a mcnt, but he turned away from the object of his ambition when he found it I was to be secured only by bribery, and at the cost of independence of thought and action. He was a great collector of books and medals, and profusely gene- rous in parting with any of them to indi- viduals and institutions who could turn them to good purposes. For himself, lie had method and purpose in all his transactions. His collection of medals preserved the eifigies of men who had withstood tyranny, and thereby kept up he memory of freedom and its cham- liuiis. He thus at once illustrated art (Hid patriotism. Nor was he a mere col- lector either of books or medals : his Inethodical, elaborate, and curious diary lone might serve to prove his claim to VOL. I. be considered a " literary man." He edited various works with the care of a scholar, to whom the labour is a delight ; and the medals designed and struck by himself are said to have established his fame as an artist. Throughout life he acted on the principle that to give was better than to receive ; and no man could desire better epitaph than the one contained in the summing up of his cha- racter by a writer in the ' St. James's Chronicle,' wherein it ia said that in him " Liberty lost her champion, Humanity her treasurer, and Charity her steward." D.] 9 Lord Sandwich repented of, or was persuaded out of, this lenity, and sent Miller word he would remit no part of the fine. U 290 LAST JOURNALS OF HOEACE WALPOLE. DEC. detail of those circumstances which obliged me to appeal to the sword. I hope to show that my conduct in so doing was proper, as far as complying with a custom, the tyranny of which, I confess, I have not fortitude to resist, can be justified. It is with, infinite regret I find myself obliged to mention Mr. Whately, and that sometimes in terms of censure. The part he took in the question made me feel myself aggrieved by him. He answered me in the field like a man of spirit and a gentleman. It is with pleasure I do this justice to his character. When Mr. Whately was apprised of some original letters from ,/ gentlemen in America to his late brother having been sent over and made public at Boston, he called upon me, read part of a letter from Mr. Oliver complaining of the publication of his letters, and men- , tioned that he had given me access to some of his brother's letters from his correspondents in America. He accompanied this with a declaration that he had not the least suspicion of me, and did not know that those published letters were ever in his possession ; but he wished I would authorise him to say I had them not from him. I gave Mr. Whately every assurance that a gentleman could give that I had not taken any one letter, nor a line of one, from among those he showed to me, but such as he saw and gave me leave to take, and which were all written by my brother and myself. I did this repeatedly, and in the most explicit terms. Mr. Whately appeared perfectly satisfied, and I own I did not expect he would 1 have mentioned that transaction again in any manner that could throw a possibility of suspicion on my character. For in my appre- hension, when a gentleman has pledged his honour to another, to insimiate or countenance a suspicion of him afterwards leads in- evitably to the consequences which have attended this transaction. Some time after this explanation between Mr. Whately and myself several paragraphs appeared in the newspapers highly injurious and dishonourable to me. I was held forth as a monster of ingratitude and as a villain, who, under the cover of friendship, watched for an opportunity when Mr. Whately 's back was turned to rob him of papers which were in confidence put into my hands. Of these things I took no public notice, not because they gave me no uneasi- ness, but because I knew not how to redress myself. A search after the authors of them 1 conceived would be vain. Such malevolent attacks could have been made by none but cowards, who would take care to conceal themselves. It seemed impossible that Mr. Whately could have had any knowledge of the authors, or could have given any countenance to such aspersions, after the solemn assurances wind) 1 had given him ; nor should I have troubled him on the subject ii 1773. DUEL BETWEEN WHATELY AND TEMPLE. 291 his name had not been used as an authority to support these false and malicious assertions. These writers artfully suppressed three very material circumstances in their representations : that Mr. AVhately did not know the letters sent to Boston were ever in his possession ; that of those which he put into my hands none appeared to be missing, which could not have been the case if seventeen letters, and some of them very long, had been taken away ; and that I had given him every assurance which a gentleman could require or receive that no such letters had been taken by me. Without the use of Mr. \Vhately's name the charge would have had no effect upon the public. That gentleman suffered the unfair and injurious representations, under the sanction of his name, to pass unexplained. I did expect, when he saw the purpose to which the men who gained intelligence from him were applying it, that he would in justice to truth, and to me, have stated the whole as above. If he had done so, I appeal to the judgment of the public whether any suspicion would have rested upon me, or any serious consequences followed. I did not ask this of him, because I thought he ought to have done it unasked. There is an indelicacy in urging a gentleman to do that which is his duty, and owes its merit to its being voluntary. The suspicion against me upon so unfair a state of facts, aided, I suppose, by the private slanders of those who raised it, secretly gained ground ; and on the 8th of this month a writer, under the signature of Anterior, renewed the accusation of me by name, vouching it with a conversation which he seems to have him- self held upon the subject with Mr. \\hately. Under so direct a charge I thought it would not become me to be any longer silent. I went with the paper to Mr. Whately, and received from him, as I imagined, a satisfactory denial of those pre- tended facts which materially supported the suspicion. This I made public ; Mr. \\hately then came forward with his name. He omitted to state what was solely essential, that he did not know the letters in question were among those he put into my hands, and that none of those with which he had intrusted me appeared to be missing, but related the matter in such a manner as strongly to corroborate the anonymous charge, and gave me, to my understanding, the lie direct. They who have any feelings of honour will not wonder that I was impatient under such an imputation, and thought every mo- ment miserable till I had called upon him, from whom I received such an affront, for honourable amends. The public is acquainted with the sequel ; but the circumstances of that affair have been so falsely represented to my dishonour, that I am obliged to beg a moment's indulgence till I state that transaction fairly. u 2 292 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. DEC. The gentleman who waited upon Mr. W 7 hately with my invita- tion told him he would attend me as a second if Mr. Whately would have one on his part. Mr. Whately declined having any second, and therefore I brought none. He appeared at the place appointed with a sword only. I gave him one of my pistols. We discharged them mutually ; mine being, at his request, the first, without effect. If his was not directed at me it escaped my observation. I then drew my sword and approached him, who had also unsheathed his, with a persuasion, grounded on his coming with a sword only, when the choice of weapons was in him, that I was to encounter an adversary much superior to myself in skill. I soon found my mis- take ; and, as far as I could reason in such a situation, determined, by wounding him in the sword arm, to end the business without a fatal stroke. But my skill was not equal to my intention ; it soon became a struggle, instead of a regular combat, and I could only avoid making a full lunge, which probably would have wounded him mortally. The contortions of my antagonist's body, during the struggle, exposed parts which, in a regular encounter, could never have been touched. When he turned himself to seize the blade of my sword with his left hand, I supposed he received the wounds in his left side, and in some violent effort his shoulder must have been exposed. The extreme smallness of the wound in that part, being, as I am well informed, a mere puncture, proves it to have been acci- dental. Had my purpose been unfair, I should have taken the life that was in my power ; had it been mortal, every wound would not have been superficial, and one only dangerous, not from its depth, but its direction. I understand it lias been said he was down. In such circumstances it is as impossible to account for everything that happens as to remember everything that passes. But of this I am very sure, that, though he slipped once, he never fell. It is proper to apprise the reader that I am unfortunately very deaf. If any words of accommodation, as has been represented, were really used by Mr. Whately, I did not hear them. They who ex- pect coolness in the midst of such a conflict, and deliberation in the moment of a deadly point being at one's breast, require too much. It is well that the passion which rises fast on such an occasion did not alter imperceptibly my general determination not to push so forcibly as to make a deep wound. It is with confidence I can affirm I was not guilty of any unfair action, because I never had an unfair thought ; nor of a cruel one, because my purpose was the reverse. I have received no bodily wound ; but they whose minds can feel for consequences which they could not with honour avoid will 1773. DUEL BETWEEN WHATELY AND TEMPLE. 293 understand me when I say that I have felt those wounds which far surpass in anguish every bodily pain. The anonymous assassins who have been really the cause of this mischief remain unknown, but time, I trust, will drag them forth to the punishment they deserve. Of those to whom I am unknown, the candid and honourable are, I hope, convinced that the injurious charges which have been brought against me are totally without foundation. With those to whom I am known I flatter myself the constant tenor of my life has rendered a defence of my conduct unnecessaiy. I have but a few words more to say upon the subject. As Mr. Whately's narrative tends to confirm the suspicion of my having taken from him the letters which were sent to Boston, I do again most solemnly affirm that I neither took from him those, nor any other letters, but such as were written by my brother and myself to the late Mr. Whately, and that with his knowledge and consent ; nor had I any concern, directly or indirectly, in procuring or trans- mitting the letters which were sent to Boston. J. TEMPLE. Mr. Whately afterwards published an account of the duel, which proved Mr. Temple still more in the wrong. Dr. Franklin having presented a memorial to the Privy Council against Messrs. Hut- chinson and Oliver, founded on their letters to the late Mr. Whately, I the Council asked Dr. Franklin how he got those letters ? to which < he refused to -reply. Whoever wishes to know more of this aflfair j may consult the books of the Privy Council for the month of January, 1774. 8 6 See also the note to the last entry for July, 1772. ( 294 ) 1774. JANUARY. 10th. THE Duke and Duchess of Gloucester went to the play at Covent Garden for the first time in ceremony. They were received with excessive shouts of applause, which confounded the Duchess not accustomed to it. She turned pale, and then coloured ; as she was evidently with child, the spectators, for fear of affecting her, suspended their acclamations ; but, won by her modesty, confusion, and beauty, redoubled their claps and huzzas. 1 A few days before, as the King was riding, he met their child, the Princess Sophia, in its nurse's lap in the coach. Thinking it was the Duchess and child, he pulled off his 1 The bills of the day simply express that the play for the evening was "by particular desire." The performances consisted of Jane Shore and Harlequin Sylph. The tragedy perhaps was se- lected as an illustration of the evils of dishonourable connections between princes and ladies of inferior state. Bensley played Shore, and Smith en- acted Hastings. The latter, a short time after, carried off the Jane Shore of the evening brilliant Mrs. Hartley. Two nights after the triumphant recep- tion of the Duke and Duchess at Covent Garden, the King and Queen went in atate to Drury Lane, where the School for Wives was given. Both pieces con- tain lines that party spirit could easily apply, according to its bias. It will be ot>served in the text that Parliament met on the 13th, the day after the latter visit to the theatre. Five days pre- viously, Saturday, January 8, Charles Fox and other public men of less note closed their vacation pleasures by the performance of a tragedy and farce at Winterslow House, near Salisbury, the seat of the Hon. Stephen Fox. The play was the Fair Penitent, in which Charles Fox acted Horatio to the Lo- thario of his lively friend Fitzpatrick. The afterpiece was High Life below Stairs, in which Fox played, with great spirit, that capital low comedy part, Sir Harry's servant. The night's enter- tainment was followed by a very serious drama* for before Sunday morning dawned Winterslow was burned to the ground. With the session now opening, Fox may be said to have seriously com- menced his career as a public man. D. 1771. MEETING OF PARLIAMENT. 295 hat. He met it again in two days, being in the chaise with the Queen, but then took no notice which proved it was her Majesty that prevented his reconciliation with his brother. \3th. The Parliament met. The Earl of Northing- ton 2 and Lord Willoughby de Broke 3 moved the Address in the Lords ; Lord Guernsey 4 and Mr. John St. John 5 in the Commons. There was not a breath of opposition in either House ; only Mr. Prescott, a very rich banker, com- plained, in the Commons, of the late regulation of the gold coin, by which, he said, there was not a banker in England that had not lost 500/. Lord North laughed, and made the House laugh, at him, by saying he was glad the loss had fallen on those who were the best able to bear it. But though Parliament was so tame, one man alone kept the whole power of Government in check by his spirit, abilities, and industry. This was the Duke of Richmond. On the eve of the Parliament he had defeated all the efforts of the Ministers at the India House, and carried a material question against them by 68 voices to 26. On this the Court party endeavoured to throw the whole once more into confusion, that it might be necessary to apply again to Parliament, where they could carry what- ever they pleased. 18th. General Graeme, angry at not succeeding Andrew Stone as Treasurer to the Queen, resigned his posts of Secretary and Comptroller to her ; the former of which * Henley, second Earl of Northington. 3 John Peyto Verney, Baron Wil- loughby de Broke, a Lord of the Bed- chamber. * Finch, eldest eon of the Earl of Aylesford. 5 Youngest brother of the Lord Vis- count Bolingbroke. LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. JAN. was immediately conferred on Mr. Harris of Salisbury, author of ' Hermes,' and other tracts. 6 This week came accounts of very riotous proceedings at Boston, where the mob broke into the ships that had brought teas, and threw above 340 chests into the sea. 7 About this time Dr. Law, Bishop of Carlisle, had the honesty to write against subscription to the Thirty-nine Articles, so popishly upheld by the rest of his brethren. On the 25/i came on the great day of expectation at the India House on the ballot for the Instructions of the Board of Directors and those of the Proprietors, when the former, 8 Soon after the period when Char- lotte, Princess of Mecklenburgh Stre- litz, became Queen Consort, she be- stowed on Colonel Graeme the " prettiest bit of preferment " in the possession of the wife of a Bang of England, the Mastership of St. Catherine's Hospital. This appointment was popularly de- scribed as the Colonel's reward for the exercise of his office of love's emissary, when he went from court to court in Germany in search of a princess qualified to share the throne of Great Britain with George III. The gallant soldier happened to meet, at the salutary springs of Pyrmont, with the Princess Dowager of Strelitz and her two daugh- ters. His report of the younger of the Litt'T is stated to have been so favour- able that it led to the offer of marriage subsequently made and promptly ac- cepted. When Harris succeeded the Colonel in the office named above he was member for Christchurch. He re- tained his seat and his office till the day of his death, in 1780. Mr. Harris was the father of the first Earl of Malmes- bury (the diplomatist), and was, un- doubtedly, a great scholar, but not so " universal " as he was accounted dur- ing the best period of his honourable and useful life. D. 7 The Americans signalised the early occurrences of the outbreak by using very loyal tunes, to which, however, they adapted words which wore ac- counted very undutiful here. Tims, to the air of ' Kule Britannia ! ' was chorused a hymn of liberty of many verses, from which I take one, as a sample of the half-arguing, half-defy- ing, colonial minstrelsy : " Let us, your sons, by freedom warm'd, Your own example keep in view, 'Gainst tyranny be ever arm'd, Though we our tyrant find in you. Rule Britannia ; Britannia rule the waves ; But never, never make your children slaves ! " Whitehead, the laureate, whose grand nonsense was pronounced " insupport- able " by Johnson, took occasion of a temporary " lull " in the American ex- citement, a few months later than the period named in the text, to proclaim in a Birthday Ode the repentance of the colonists who incited to rebellion by putting new words to old tunes. Thus sang the son of the wealthy Cambridge baker : " The prodigal again returns, And on his parent's neck reclines, With honest shame his bosom burns, And In Ins eye affection shines ; Shines through tears, at once that prove Grief and joy and filial love." Before Whitehead could write an- other Birthday Ode to the King the " prodigal " had struck his " parent " that blow at Lexington which sermnl proof of anything but "grief and joy and filial love." And then, as Bancroft remarks of the opening of the conflict, " Kings sat still in awe, and nations turned to watch the issue." D. 1774. CITY PETITION. 297 by the superior influence of the Administration, were car- ried by a majority of 98, and the Duke of Richmond at last defeated. 26th. The City petition in favour of Roberts against the Lord Mayor was at last presented to the House of Com- mons. Lord North was not inclined to it, and the Speaker Norton advised its not being carried into the House : but Alderman Harley and the Scotch party prevailed, and, after being referred to the Attorney and Solicitor Generals, it was presented by Alderman Hopkins. Sawbridge said it ought not to be heard there. Charles Fox supported it, and, by Rigby's instigation, abused George Grenville's Select Committee for hearing Elections, which had really restored some credit to Parliament, and which the Court disliked as impartial and destroying the weight of a majority when petitions were tried there, since a small number would not expose themselves to the odium of injustice as a whole party would. T. Townshend, observing that Charles Fox sat near the bar, as his father had used to do when he managed elections, said, the young gentleman seemed to think he had, and wished to recover, an hereditary right of managing elections. Rigby, to court Fox, made a panegyric on Lord Holland, whom he had used so very ill, and abused Grenville's bill. Townshend, with his usual quickness, replied that, had he been the friend of Lord Holland or Grenville (as Rigby had been and deserted both for interest), he should not have forfeited their friend- ship. The petition was referred to the Committee. 29th. Dr. Franklin was again heard by counsel before the Privy Council. 8 Wedderburn, Solicitor-General, made a most bitter and abusive speech against him, which was 8 This event, a capital one in giving date to the American war. 298 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. JAN. much admired. He made no reply. The Council advised a rejection of the memorial he had presented against Hutchinson and Oliver, and justified those persons as not being to blame for the letters complained of. The Minis- ters determined to turn Franklin out of his place of post- master of America, which could but incense him and drive him (a man of vast abilities) on farther hostilities, and recommend him as a martyr to the Bostonians. This place was all he had, and it was taken away. At the end of the month happened the disgrace of Dr. Dodd, a precise, affected, and popular preacher, an enemy, but mimic, of the Methodists, Director of the Magdalens, and chaplain at Court, from his hypocrisy and popularity. He had been tutor to the young Earl of Chesterfield, and had married a cast mistress of Lord Sandwich; yet so many titles not advancing his fortune in proportion to his wishes, on a prospect of the rich living of St. George's falling into the gift of the Lord Chancellor, Dr. Dodd contrived to have a letter written and conveyed to Lady Apsley, the Chancellor's wife, in which she was offered 3000J., and 500 a year out of the living, if she would ! procure it for a person that should be named to her. The lady carried the letter to her husband, who, on making in- quiry, discovered that it had been penned by a clerk in an J office, but dictated by Mrs. Dodd. The Doctor immediately denied being privy to the negotiation, and laid it on the officious zeal of his consort ; he then owned he had of- fended, begged delay that he might retire and hide himself abroad. The Chancellor was obdurate, and made formal I complaint to the King, who ordered the Lord Chamberlain to strike the Doctor off the list of chaplains. He again solicited for delay, but persisted in ignorance of the trans- 1774. DISGKACE OF DR. DODD. 299 action ; and when Lord Hertford told him no indulgence would be granted, complained of the hardship of the usage. 9 ' Dodd was at this time forty-five years of age. His wife, a Miss Perkins, was a handsome woman, the daughter of one of Sir John Dolben's servants. When he made his equally impudent and imprudent offer to Lady Apsley he was at the height of his popularity as a preacher. The right to appoint to St. George's was claimed by Lord North, the Bishop of London, and the Lord Chancellor respectively ; but that of the latter was established, and he appointed the Rev. Dr. Smythe, a nephew of the ex-Chancellor, Lord Camden. D. 300 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. FEB. FEBRUARY. 1st. LORD Buckingham l moved the House of Lords to address for copies of papers relative to the disturbances at Boston, on the teas. The Ministers pleaded that they had not yet obtained sufficient information, but would produce it as soon as they could. The Earl of Stair, 2 a recent peer of the sixteen, who had never opened before, surprised the House by a strange, theatric, and angry declamation, in which he declared he was attached to and obliged to no man. He censured a long series of measures, both in the past and present reigns, complained bitterly of the oppres- sion his country laboured under by the Union (while the English repined as much at the partialities showered upon them), censured the debility of the Government, and con- cluded with prognosticating all kind of evils from it. Lord Buckingham withdrew his motion. 5th. The day for ballotting at the India House for General Clavering as commander in India ; the Duke of Richmond endeavoured to avoid it by putting the previous question, but was beaten by a great appearance of courtiers as proprietors, after a long debate, and the ballot was again fixed for Tuesday, the 8th ; but on the 7th the Duke, having gained a majority of the Board Sir John Hobart, second Earl of ' had been elected of the sixteen, when Buckinghamshire, formerly Ambassador the Administration could not carry the to Russia, now out of place. His motion election for the Earl of Dysart, and tlio was supposed to tend to the vindication | Ministers had only preferred Lord Stair of Mr. Grenville, his patron, author of i to the Earl of Ureadalbane, who had the Stamp Act. been set up by the opposing Peers of * John Dalrymple, Earl of Stair. He Scotland. 1774. CITY PETITION. 301 of Directors, carried a question by a majority of one, that, as tranquillity prevailed in India, it was not necessary to appoint a commander-in-chief. Yet on the 8th the Court-proprietors carried the command for General Clavering, as on the llth they prevailed to send Colonel Monson with him as an eventual successor ; and there ended the Duke of Richmond's Indian campaign, in which his spirit, address, insinuation, and application had greatly distinguished him, and acquired a large number of adherents, by whom he had so long balanced the power of Government, at a moment when Opposition had in a man- ner given up the contest in Parliament. 3 The City petition, indeed, threatened a little storm. Mr. Roberts, the petitioner, in order to detect illegal votes, had demanded examination of the books of the Glovers' Company, and the House sent a warrant for that purpose. The Company, in the interest of Wilkes, had a mind to refuse them, and consulted Serjeant Glynn. He told them that, as a member of Parliament, he could not advise them to resist the orders of the House, and, as a friend, counselled them to obey ; which they did : but the City petition had been presented with a deeper view in the Court. Mr. Grenville's Act for Select Committees to try Elections, enacted as an essay for only seven years, proved the most effectual bar to corruption that had ever been devised, and was a tacit confession of the iniquity of de- cisions in Committees of the whole House, for the whole parties and majorities would brave any general shame. 3 The Duke gave great offence to the Court just before the meeting of Parliament, by stating at the India House that his inclination and duty would prompt him rather to attend at the latter place than at the former, al- though the King was there to address the assembly on the opening of the ses- sion. D. 302 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. FEB. Thirteen specific men, chosen by ballot, bound by a solemn oath, and whose names were divulged, would not stand the test of odium of flagrant injustice and perjury. Yet it was not to do impartial justice that the Ministers promoted the City petition. No ; what they hoped was, that the danger of offending Wilkes and his mob would deter most men from appearing in the House when the Committee should be chosen. Thirteen names were to be ballotted for out of an hundred ; if an hundred members were not present, no committee could be appointed ; and, as an election committee was to take place of all other business, the House could not proceed on any business till the Committee should be chosen. The experiment was pre- viously made on the contested election at Worcester prior to that for the City of London. The Administration used as much solicitation to prevent members going to the House as they commonly used to fill it, and it was past three o'clock before there were an hundred members on the day appointed for choosing the Committee. The event was correspondent to the object of the bill. Mr. Rous, the Court member, was convicted of bribery, and the election was declared void. It had cost him 12,000/., and two more to support himself against the petition of his an- tagonist, Sir Watkin Lewis, one of Wilkes's adherents. This was a stunning blow to corruption, and highly satis- factory to country gentlemen and family interests, who daily saw themselves attacked by adventurers, strangers, commissaries, and nabobs. Sir Edward Astley had often promised the House to move for the perpetuity of Gren- ville's bill, and on the IQtk, by persuasion of Lord Rockingham, acquainted the House that he should propose it. Lord North said he would be as frank, and declared that he should be against 1774. THE ' HEROIC POSTSCRIPT.' 303 making the Act perpetual a fair warning ; but he thought he knew to what a mercenary crew he announced his in- tention of making them vote by immediate pay against their permanent interests ! The same day was published ' An Heroic Postscript to the Heroic Epistle ' a severe satire on the King, and a declaration of asserting the liberty of the press, 4 which the very next day grew in danger from the rash- ness of its friends and the designs of its enemies; in- sinuations having been thrown out in the autumn that the King would in this session send a message to both Houses to demand some correction of the licentiousness of the press. On the llth appeared in the 'Public Advertiser' a most daring attack on the Speaker, Sir Fletcher Norton, for notorious 4 The satire against the King is con- fined to the few lines referring to the naval review that had occurred since the publication of the ' Epistle," when George III. went to Spithead, where, as Mason remarks, a monarch might see " as other folks have seen, That ships have anchors, and that seas are green, Should own the tackling trim, the streamers fine, With Sandwich prattle, and with Bradshaw dine, And then sail back, amid the cannon's roar, As sale, as sage, as when he left the shore." In a subsequent portion of the brief ' Heroic Postscript ' the author does not so much assert the liberty of the press as threaten to employ it : " If real danger threat fair Freedom's reign, If hireling peers, in prostitution bold, Sell her as cheaply as themselves they sold ; Or they who, honour'd by the people's choice, Against that people lift their rebel voice, And, basely crouching for I heir paltry pay. Vote the best birthright of her sons away, Permit a nation's inborn wealth to fly In mean, uiikingly prodigality If this they dare, the thunder of his song, Rolling in deep-toned energy along, Shall strike with Truth's dread bolt each mis- creant's ii. inn 1 , AV1><>, dead to duty, senseless e'en to shame. Betray d hU country," &c. All satire on Bradshaw was acceptable to Walpole, who never spares the friend or follower of the Duke of Grafton. Just a year previous to the appearance of the * Postscript ' the launch of the Defiance was to take place at Chat- ham, in presence of the Duke of Gloucester and Captain Boyle. The moment had nearly arrived for the event, when a message from the Admi- ralty reached the builder of the vessel, with Bradshaw's compliments, and a request that the launch might be post- poned for an hour or two, as he (Brad- shaw) was setting out with two ladies, but would be at Chatham as soon as possible. The Duke of Gloucester is said to have laughed heartily at the idea of a ' Sea Lord ' being ignorant that time and tide waited for no man. Tlu'a ben trovato story had great success ; but in despite of that and similar stories circulated by men who took Walpole's view of Bradshaw, the latter possessed many good qualities which would have been looked for in vain in those who either censured or laughed at him. D. 304 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. FEB. partiality in preventing the presentation of a memorial in behalf of one William Tooke, 5 a Norfolk gentleman, op- pressed by Mr. De Grey, brother of the Chief Justice, who was soliciting a bill for enclosing a common in which the said Tooke had property, and to which enclosure Tooke would not give his consent. Tooke set his name to the publication, but it was said to be written by Parson Home, 6 and contained a representation of the Speaker's injustice, which, however, appeared by the testimony of many present to have been no more than his slovenly hurry in doing business, and to have been more owing to Sir Edward Astley's ignorance in presenting two counter- petitions at the same time. The Speaker, as soon as the House met, made his complaint, and said all he desired was to be acquitted of partiality. The members on whom he called disculpated him, and then Lord North, Rigby, and Charles Fox called for the Orders of the Day, and the matter had like to have ended there ; but Mr. Herbert 7 went up to Lord North, and asked him if he did not mean to vindicate the dignity of the Speaker and of the House. Lord North, with his usual indolent indecision, replied he had not determined, he must have time to think of it ; * This was Mr. Tooke, of Parley, in Surrey. Tooke, in his difficulty, con- sulted " Parson Home," as he was called, though he had just resigned the incum- bency of New Brentford, and given up the church for the study of the law. Home advised Tooke to publish a libel against the Speaker, of which he offered to be the author, as a sure means of promoting his views. This libel brought Homo before the House ; but it also led t) such a modification of the bill so strenuously objected to by Tooke, that the latter, out of pure gratitude, ap- pointed Home heir to a great portion of his estate. It was on this account that the name of Tooke was subsequently added to that of Home. D. 6 Mr. Tooke was a very wrongheaded man, and had long had a quarrel with Mr. De Grey : he once proceeded so far as to pull down a large quantity of Mr. De Grey's pales, who sent him a chal- lenge. Tooke hasted to London and prosecuted De Grey for the challenge in the King's Bench. Lord Mansfield gave Tooke but two shillings damages, and indecently made a speech in defence of duelling. 7 H. Herbert, first cousin of the Earl of Pembroke. 1774. LIBEL ON THE SPEAKER. 305 but Herbert did not give him time, and moved for ven- geance on the printer. This set the House in a flame, and many cried that now was the time to assert the honour of the House against the insolence of the press. Lord North himself took up spirit, and spoke well, as he always did when he took his part ; and he drew a ridiculous pic- ture of a former transaction, to mortify Sawbridge and the City patriots. He said, if they sent for the printer, the Lord Mayor would refuse to obey their order : the magis- trate would think it his duty, like one of his predecessors, to be sent to prison, would have the comfort of martyrdom, and would probably meet with the same gratitude from his fellow-citizens as his predecessor had done. The conclu- sion would have been very artful in the mouth of Burke or Dowdswell, as a leader of Opposition, as tending to excite the citizens to show more gratitude. Dowdswell, not quick enough to catch such an idea, yet put Lord North in mind that Wilkes might avow himself the author of Tooke's letter, and then what would his Lordship do ? He remem- bered, he said, how often the Ministers had shrunk from the charge when it had been necessary to question and encounter Wilkes. Woodfall, the printer, was ordered to attend. Sawbridge declared that, should the business come before him, he would dismiss the printer. 14th. Woodfall appeared at the bar of the House. He declared he had received the offensive paper from Parson Home, but in the hurry of business had not perused it ; only, seeing two petitions, he concluded the paper related to the common affairs of the House; and submitted himself, hoping allowance would be made for his having exercised his profession for twenty years without ever having offended the House before. This behaviour greatly softened the House, and Mr. Herbert moved for his being VOL. i. x 306 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. FKB. only committed to the Serjeant-at-Arms ; but Charles Fox, prompt to be violent and to disgust, and assuming the Minister, moved to commit Woodfall to Newgate, in de- fiance, he declared, of the City and the Sheriffs, and was seconded by General Burgoyne ; but many others objected to the punishment as too severe, and the courtiers them- selves were against extremities, as Herbert, Sir W. Meredith, and others were for not violating the liberty of the press. Lord North at last said the offence was too great to be slightly passed over ; but, wishing to avoid a quarrel with the City magistrates, preferred the Gatehouse, which was out of their jurisdiction, to Newgate. However, if a precedent of milder punishment could be found, he would yield to it ; if not, he must tread in the steps of our ancestors, who had been more watchful over the privileges of the House than the present generation were ; and he indiscreetly owned that the House was got into a scrape, must avoid it if they could, at least ought not to provoke it. A tedious debate then ensued, everybody trying to procure unanimity and moderation. At last Dowdswell pointed out a case in the Journals exactly parallel, only stronger, as it extended to abuse on both Houses, when Meres the printer was committed to the Serjeant-at-Arms. This brought over several to the milder side ; and Lord North confessed that the case was in point, and that he must submit to it, if Charles Fox, with whom he had concurred for imprisonment, would let him off, though he had bound him to the stake : but Charles Fox, with most indecent arrogance, stuck to his point, and declared he would take the sense of the House, and Lord North was so weak as to vote with him ; but they were beaten by 152 to 68. 17^/4. Yesterday complaint was made to the House of a letter printed in the * Public Advertiser ' of yesterday, 1774. VIOLENCE OF THE PRESS. 307 and the same letter printed in the ' Morning Chronicle,' signed " A South Briton." " Resolved, that the said letters are a false, scandalous, and seditious libel upon the constitution of this country, tending to alienate the affections of his Majesty's subjects from his Majesty and the Royal Family." " Ordered, that his Majesty's Attorney-General do forth- with prosecute the publishers of the said libel." " The order of the day being read for the attendance of the Rev. John Home, he not attending according to order," " Ordered, that the said Rev. John Home, having been guilty of a breach of privilege of this House in not obeying the said order, in contempt of the authority of this House, be taken into the custody of the Serjeant-at-Arms." The paper complained of above was an impudent in- vective on the Revolution. Indeed the printers of news- papers seemed to be trying whether they could not pro- voke the Legislature to persecute them. The ' Morning Post ' had for a twelvemonth been the grossest vehicle of all manner of scandal. In the same paper was a virulent satire on Lord Lyttelton, and a barbarous story of a young lady of quality, of unblemished character. The printer made an apology the next morning, charging the fault on his servants a poor alleviation of such scandalous injuries ! Such enormous licence could not be borne, and the friends of the press trembled lest they should lose the benefit of it by the excess of the abuse. It was Charles Fox who complained of the Jacobite paper on the IJth; his reason was, that, if he should com- plain on his own case, he might be reproached with indif- ference to the interests of the Crown and Constitution. T. Townshend took the occasion of teazing and flinging x 2 308 LAST JOUKNALS OF IIOEACE WALPOLE. FEB. in Lord North's teeth the pensions bestowed by the King on those notorious Jacobites Dr. Johnson and Dr. Sheb- beare, 8 the latter of whom had even been sentenced by the King's Bench for his flagrant writings. He also re- proached Lord North with the patronage given by the Court to that scandalous writer Sir John Dalrymple. Lord North was grievously hurt, and denied the latter, though the King had paid for transcribing the French papers. Townshend, seeing his Lordship did not defend the pen- sions to Johnson and Shebbeare, which were given before his time, and by Lord Bute, took care to renew the charge, which he did with wit and asperity ; and few could help smiling at what almost all supported, so weak and dis- graceful a Government ! On the 18th the Administration were ridiculously dis- comfited. Lord North, who had concluded that Parson Home, \vho seemed to be running a race with Wilkes for popularity, would take refuge in the City, and that the magistrates there would protect him against the officers of the House, was not at all prepared to act, though Home 8 At the ago of forty-five, Shebbeare, the not bad-hearted but irascible son of a Devonshire attorney and cornfactor, after failing as a medical practitioner, commenced life, in the year 1754, as a public and political writer. In novels, pamphlets, and other publications, he mercilessly assailed the administrational system under George II. He was deter- mined, he said, to write himself into a post or on to the pillory. His Letters to the People of England' procured for him the latter distinction at Charing Cross; but lii.s t'rii 'inl ;mil admirer, Beaitt- merc, the Under-Slierifi', permitted him to stand on the platform in front of (lie pillory itself, where ho remained the usual time, comfortably IK -m -nth un um- brella held over him by an Irish chair- man hired for the occasion. Having thus far succeeded under George H., lie became still more fortunate under George III. Shebbeare did not indeed obtain a post, but he gained the next best, if not a better, thing in the eyes of such a man, namely a pension, in return for which he defended all the measures of government with all the means in his rough power. Like the Tory Johnson, ho published pamphlets in strong sup- port of the course taken by ministers against the American colonies. He ilied in August, 1788, and would have been entirely forgotten now, had not Smollett depicted him as Ferret in 'Sir Lmmci lot (n nves,' itnd Ilog.-irth given him im- mortality by fixing him for ever, one of a group in the third print of ' The Elec- tion.' D. 1774. HORNE AT THE BAE OF THE COMMONS. 309 had surrendered himself, and was now to appear at the bar of the House. As he was brought by the Mace, it was the form that nobody could interrogate him but the Speaker. Sawbridge pleaded that he might be first heard, as he was charged with contempt. The Speaker said the House had already determined the contempt, on which Sawbridge cried out scornfully, "Go on and prosper!" Home was then called in. He was pale, but well made, and had a sensible countenance was neatly and decently dressed in grey, but without his gown. He spoke with affected respect, and much deliberation, and with as much firmness. He promised to pay all proper respect to the House said the rights of the people had always been defended by such enthusiasts as himself desired a patient hearing meant nothing disrespectful or offensive. He declared he should have obeyed the first summons had it not been so worded as to condemn him as guilty of a libel. The crime would have been established an action would have been brought against him as confessing the charge. He professed his ignorance of the forms of the House when they were acting in a judicial capacity. He then requested to be discharged out of custody, that he might make his defence in which demand he was supported by his friends Oliver, the late Lord Mayor Townshend, and Sawbridge ; but the Solicitor-General Wedderburn opposed it, and he was ordered to answer the information against him. He then, well instructed to baffle so idle and thoughtless a Ministry, asked modestly whether the minutes that had been read to him were a charge or the evidence ? The Speaker inconsiderately replied, a charge. Home replied shrewdly, then there was either a charge without evidence, or evidence without a charge. Wedderburn soon saw the difficulty, and endeavoured, but in vain, to prove that 310 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. FEB. Woodfall was a competent evidence, which was strongly denied, as having been the original person accused, and to clear himself had accused Home. On this ground he was artfully and ably defended by Dunning, who seemed to have been his adviser ; and it is probable that Lord Shel- burne and that faction, finding their treachery to Wilkes not rewarded by the Court, had laid this new plan for con- fusion ; and though Wilkes tried to gain Woodfall by offering him the protection of the City against the House, he remained firm to Home. Colonel Barre taunted the Ministry with the case of Algernon Sydney, which he said would be revived if they adjourned, as they proposed, to seek for fresh evidence against Home, and which Dunning pronounced contrary to the custom of all courts of law, though they affected to copy those courts, whereas, on such occasions, the House had formerly been accustomed to sound high the law of Parliament but Parliament was grown contemptible! and Home himself affected to laugh in their faces, though, as if unwilling to be disrespectful, he lifted up his hat to his face when the laugh had escaped him. Woodfall was then called and confronted, and alleged receiving the MSS. from Home, and showing him the proof-sheet, and Home's allowing him to give him up as the author. Still there was no witness to these trans- actions, and yet some were essential. Woodfall was asked if any of his servants had been privy. He said they had printed the paper by his orders, but none of them had been present at his conversations with Home. Mr. Herbert moved to call three of Woodfall's servants, whom he had named, the next day as witnesses ; and Lord North said it would be ridiculous not to push the inquiry as far as it would go; but such an inquisitorial sentence was violently* contested, though at last carried by 132 to 44. The day 1774. HORXE AT THE BAE OF THE COMMONS. 311 did great credit to Home's address and parts, and exposed the House and the Administration, who knew so little how to extract advantage from so gross an affront and violation of their Speaker and their privileges ; and who, while half the public was complaining of the abuses of the press, and themselves wishing to abridge its just rights, contrived to flatter the most scandalous authors and printers with im- punity, and could not save themselves from a defeat by a profligate and infamous parson. In fact, the nation was so servile, and abilities so rare, at this time, that an able Minister would have riveted our chains, or an able Oppo- sition have demolished so weak an Administration. The next day, the 18M, was still less prosperous. Home being again brought to the bar, the three witnesses, Wood- fall's men, were examined in his presence. 9 They all denied any acquaintance with him, or knowing that he was author of the libel in question. Home was then informed by the Speaker that that was the proper time for making his defence. He replied, " My only defence will be thanks to this House for great personal tenderness. A wise man 1 (whom I never knew mistaken) has said, that truth had never yet so many friends in the world as to carry it through anywhere by vote. I rely in this instance on finding my old friend mistaken and so I leave my de- fence." Mr. Herbert then, to show his impartiality, said that, as the evidence had not proved Mr. Home guilty, he moved to discharge him. Mr. Phipps 2 seconded him, with severe reflections on the injustice of the proceedings, and ridicule on Lord North's false prophecy that Home 9 Vide 'London Chronicle' of Feb. 19, 1774. 1 Lord Bacon. * Constantino Phipps, eldest son of Lord Mulgrave. He was lately returned from an expedition to discover the North- west Passage. 312 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. FEB. would not appear, and the consequential blunders. They expected nothing but violence, said he not moderation, and a man of sense. Charles Fox, struck with Lord North's insufficient behaviour, and impatient to aggrandise himself at his expense, cautioned the House, the next time they should be concerned in such a business, not to ascribe any particular merit to a printer in giving up his author ; and he rudely blamed Lord North for his imprudence in promising Woodfall indemnity for betraying Home. He declared too that he thought printers more culpable than authors, and that the chief punishment ought to fall on the former. Colonel Barre was still more pointed, and drew a picture, with much wit, of Lord North, counselled on one hand by Wedderburn, and on the other by the prudence of the youngest man in the House, Charles Fox, both whom he painted well, and extolled ironically. Mr. Home's being a clever fellow, he said, had not been guarded against. What the honour of the House meant he did not know. Had the House not suffered Mr. Wilkes's answer to the Sheriffs, upon their summoning him to attend his duty in Parliament, to pass unnoticed, though signed with his name, and would they now go about searching for libellers ? They had better address the Crown to pay Mr. Home's fees ; and for himself, as he had been a soldier, and used to disposing troops, he would advise the noble Lord to place the young gentleman on the right who had recommended to him not to be rash, and the faithful Achates, his learned friend, on the left, and then he would find common sense on one side, and law on the other. Sawbridge moved that Home should be discharged without paying his fees, but that amendment was overruled, and he was ordered to be at liberty on paying his fees. Her- bert said he should move to have Woodfall prosecuted. 1774. DISMISSAL OF FOX. 313 2lst. A debate on the ordinary of the Navy, in which an increase was made, and ill defended by the Ministers. It was remarkable that Cornwall, their late pensioned convert, gave up their bad defence, and censured it, and that Captain Phipps, generally an opponent, made a high panegyric on Lord Sandwich, who, it was thought, had sent him, from pique, on his late unprosperous and im- probable search of a north-west passage. The next day the House of Lords gave sentence against the permanent right of authors and their assigns to the property of their works. 24th. Charles Fox was dismissed, for his late behaviour to Lord North, from being a Lord of the Treasury. Mr. Temple was also turned out for the affair of Whateley's letters. At night the Queen was delivered of another prince. 3 It was not entirely presumption and ambition that had driven Charles Fox on hostilities towards Lord North. Edmund Burke had great weight with him ; and Burke, tired of a hopeless opposition, of desperate fortune, and apt to deal in moneyed projects, had, in concert with Garrick the actor, engaged Fox in soliciting Lord North for a grant of lands in America. If it succeeded, Burke and Fox would have sold their shares ; if it miscarried, Fox would be a great acquisition to the discontented. Lord North refused the grant Fox attacked him, and was turned out. The same day Mr. Phipps presented a very submissive petition from Woodfall, begging to be discharged on paying his fees ; but it was rejected. 2oth. Sir Edward Astley, who had put off for a week 3 Adolphus Frederick, Duke of Cambridge. D. 314 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. FEB. his motion for making Grenville's Select Committee Bill perpetual, now made that motion. 4 Lord North had ori- ginally opposed it, and had now, by persuasion of Rigby and Fox, declared against making it immediately perpetual a part lightly embraced, and which he took no pains to support till it was too late, not having even taken the pains to inform himself whether it would be palatable or not. Many circumstances concurred to recommend the bill. The recent examination of the contested election at Worcester, which had been set aside for bribery, and the news that arrived the morning of the discussion, that Mr. Lechmere had been chosen there on his natural interest as a neighbour and country gentleman, opened the eyes of all who had natural interest, and wished not to see themselves opposed by weight of money. Many who usually con- curred with Government were attached to the bill, as having been friends to Grenville, its author; and the Opposition were glad to take that side, as the bill was detrimental to the Court. Yet, till the day before, Lord North did not suspect his power of stopping the prolonga- tion of the term. With his usual hurry after indolence, he turned out Charles Fox, as a threat to those who might incline to desert, but without effect. The King warned him that he would be defeated ; but though he took some pains the morning of the debate in closeting a few whom he suspected, it was too late ; and he even prejudiced his cause in the debate itself by affecting to approve the bill, 4 It will be remembered that this bill, ! cessor of Lord Rockinglmm is not un- posscd in 1770, was for the trial of con- tested elections. It is one of the two bills for which the parliamentary history of this eminent minister was remarkable. The other was his bill of 17f>7, for the more regular payment of the navy. Orenvillo died in 1770, and the predc- worthy of the lines written on him by gentle Jumes Hammond : " lie, formM alike to serve us and to please, I'olite with honesty, mid learn'd with ease ; With heart to act. with genius to retire ; Ol>cn, yet wise ; though gentle, full of fire." D. 1774. SELECT COMMITTEE BILL. 315 though he pretended it was too early to decide on its utility, at least without amendments. His approbation confirmed the bill, authorised those who liked it, and left no argu- ment to its opposers, as it would never be too late to correct it if inconveniences should appear. Indeed no bill was ever carried by so much argument for, and with so little against. Even Lord Mansfield, in private, had expressed his good opinion of the Act. Sir Edward said that when he first came into Parlia- ment he had fancied himself member of a corporation, so indecently had he been solicited for his vote on contested elections ; that it could be no act of private friendship that could induce gentlemen to be for making the bill perpetual ; that, in truth, Rigby and Fox had opposed it manfully ; and that the younger, who would be in other Parliaments, would scarce believe in how infamous a manner elections had formerly been decided ; 5 that, should the Act be made perpetual, it would be more to Mr. Grenville's honour than sculptured monuments, or the poet laureate writing his epitaph. Sir John Molesworth seconded him, and said the Act had, did, and would for ever speak for itself; that the conduct of those gentlemen who had been of the new Committees had done them immortal honour; that it was the most constitutional bill that had passed in the last century : it had amended the constitution, and had put an end to the baneful influence that prevailed before, when the House was filled by corruption. Nobody, he concluded, could be an enemy to the bill but who was a friend to venality and corruption. Lord North rose to 5 There is no bad illustration of elec- ] is Newry, and the writer there say.--, tion matters in a paragraph which was i " Our election goes on with the greatest extracted from a private letter, and spirit ; . . . last night a poor fellow was quoted by all the papers, two montlis | killed ; four or five persons are in con- previous to the above date. The locality ! fluement for the murder." D. 316 LAST JOURNALS OF HOHACE WALPOLE. FEB. give the word. He said he had never come thither by corruption, yet was against making the Act perpetual at that time, though he was a friend to the bill. The gentle- man who had framed it was wise and just, nor did he himself want veneration for his memory. He revered him living, and honoured him dead was joyful that such tribute had been paid to his memory which had been denied to him in office. Virtuous conduct would always prevail at last ; but the present proposition was contrary to Mr. Grenville's original intentions. He had treated the bill as an experiment 6 let the House not treat it contrary to his intentions ! After what had been said, it would stand confessed that this was the best Parliament that ever was, notwithstanding all the remonstrances that had passed. Laurels had been strewed on Mr. Grenville's tomb, but petitions for counties had not yet been tried by the new Committees. There had as yet been but five determina- tions. That could not be called a proof of the bill. What good could possibly arise from making the bill perpetual ? It will not prevent a possibility of its repeal. The best respect to Mr. Grenville's memory would be to subject the bill to a trial. He might, he said, have moved the pre- vious question ; his opposition to it was only of the same nature. James Grenville the younger, an amiable and ingenious man, who had improved parts, and a most pleasing manner, said he would not pretend to contradict the noble Lord's assertion that the author of the bill never intended it should be perpetual ; it would not become him to assert the contrary, as he had not had the good fortune to con- * It is true tlrnt Grenville was in Op- position when ho moved it, which it is not probable he would have done if in place. 1774. SELECT COMMITTEE BILL. 317 verse much with his worthy relation ; 7 but he saw an honourable gentleman 8 who had had that advantage. Mr. Grenville probably would not grasp at too much ; he knew he could not at first make the bill perpetual, and therefore took it on the terms the House would pass it. The good it had done, the petitions for Shoreham and Worcester sufficiently proved. How many Acts against bribery, how many nostrums and anathemas were produced by the House, and how fruitless were they till brought into force by the Act in question ! He hoped a negative on that day would not be a prelude to the repeal of the bill, though no power of the House could weaken the popularity of it. Yet it would be wise not to trust to the spirit of the times to come ; the next generation would be worse than the present. Mock trials of elections disgraced the annals of Parliament. If the question were to be lost then, a future Minister might natter himself on some other occa- sion of obtaining a repeal. Stephen Fox called himself a friend to the bill, yet pro- fessed believing that it had been intended for a perpetual Act. T. Townshend laughed at him, and at the tender years of his brother Charles ; and with compliments to Lord North, whose wit he commended, told him with how much more propriety he would have used argument. The noble Lord, said he, cries, " Die ! and then we will adore you then the bust and marble rise to the Right Hon. Gentleman who planned the Bill ; but do not make it per- petual; let us have it from seven years to seven years yes, and then every seven years there will be an oppor- 7 He was nephew of George Grenville, who had been at variance with his bro- ther James, the father, during the quar- rel between George and Lord Chatham. 8 Alex. Wedderburn, Solicitor-Gene- ral, had assisted Mr. Grenville in draw- ing the bill and carrying it through the House. 318 LAST JOUENALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. FEB. tunity of crushing it ! Mandates even now had been sent out from the Treasury to oppose it. Himself had sat twenty years in Parliament, and remembered the duration of the petition for Oxfordshire. It could not have lasted so long a time with the new mode of trial. Whoever should support that mode would be handed down to pos- terity as attempting to restore the only mode of trying elections." Sir George Younge, in behalf of the bill, told a story very much to the purpose. That as he came to London he stopped at a borough town (Andover), and observed some cockades in hats. Upon talking with the landlord of the inn, the latter told him that there had been canvassing for votes against the next election for some time ; but that the determination of the Committee on the Worcester petition was a sad business, and as soon as it was known had knocked up the whole canvass. 9 Jenkinson commended the bill, but affirmed that Gren- ville himself had not intended it to be perpetual ; that he was not only a wise but a bold Minister, 1 and would not have desisted if he had thought it right to make it per- petual ; he had only meant it as an experiment to be tried at the general election. The present mode must be altered whenever it should be necessary to try an election for a county. This was farther urged by Penton, who said the mode would not serve for a concourse of elections, as the 8 This reminds mo of a saying of George Selwyn's, elicited by a report circulated at tliis time, to the effect that Sir Joshua Reynolds was to stand for Plympton on the next occasion of an election. The maccaronics, club-men, and " gentlemen " generally, laughed at the idea of an artist, or of a literary man, presuming, or having a chance, to get into the House of Commons. " He IB not to be laughed at, however," said Selwyn : " ho may very well succeed in being elected, for Sir Joshua is the ablest man I know, on a canvas ! " D. 1 But he was not Minister when he moved the Act. [In 1754 he was First Lord of the Treasury ; in 17G3 Chan- cellor of the Exchequer ; in 17(Jf> ho resigned, and was succeeded by Lord llockingham. The Act for trying con- tested elections was passed in 1770. -D.] 1774. SELECT COMMITTEE BILL. 319 bill allowed but one Committee at a time. (This indeed was the sole argument used against the bill, and which could easily be obviated by corrections.) Penton declared he should be for the bill's perpetuity if amended. Colonel Barre said, if the objection was a true one, different Committees could not sit at the same time, for which there seemed to be no reason. The opposers, said he, speak handsomely of the bill ; they had better join with its supporters, rivet the bill, explain and amend it afterwards. Mr. Grenville, politically speaking, had been his enemy had done him a private injury, 2 but had made him ample amends by giving this bill to his country. But how could any gentlemen oppose it ? could they hesitate ? were they tired of being honest ? Hottentot-like, would they return to their gar- bage ? The noble Lord was likely to remain in office let him make office honourable. He needed not give sanction to the repeal of this bill ; would he not have the means of winning the affections of members after they were chosen ? The House, he hoped, would expiate their sins, in voting for this motion. He hoped there were no crane- necked consciences (who can turn in a moment) connected with Government. The Act he looked upon as the pal- ladium of liberty. General Burgoyne, a classic scholar, who had more reading than parts, made a set and florid declamation in favour of the bill, and concluded with pronouncing that, in the Roman manner, it would be named Grenville's Bill to latest posterity. De Grey, the Chief Justice's son, was one of the few that dissented. He called it not a proper time, and questioned the practicability. " It was the introduction of an innovation into the constitution, and 3 Grenville, when Minister, had taken away Band's commission. 320 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. FEB. humiliating to the House to be bound by oaths when honour would not do ! " After the debate, George Selwyn said to Charles Fox, " Charles, for the future I will fast and eat salt fish on the day you was turned out. You shall be my Charles the Martyr now. I am tired of the old one, your great- grandfather : his head can never be sewed on again ; but as yours can be, I will stick to you." Fox was infinitely hurt at his disgrace, and had reasons enough. Besides the desperate situation of his affairs, his disappointment of the job he had aimed at, and the mortification of not having at least contrived to be turned out on some point that would make him popular, he had still more cause of vexa- tion. When Lord North complained of Charles's flip- pancies to the King, his Majesty, who hated him, said, " Why don't you turn him out ? you may, if you will." He had even been the dupe of Burke. The latter, in pushing him on asking for an enormous grant in St. Vincent's, 3 had a two-edged view ; if it succeeded, Burke would have gained thirty thousand pounds without an obligation to Government, and would have been still free to make his own bargain, as the favour would have been granted to Fox. If refused and resented, Fox would be an acquisi- tion to the Opposition, as it proved. The suit indeed was most improbable of success. The purchase of lands on the \ Ohio, though the most beneficial bargain of the sort made by Government, had been represented against by the Board of Trade; and though overruled by the Privy 3 It would have been worth an hundred thousand pounds. The exact cose was 1 1 1 i : The third Burke, who, as I have before said, was at St. Vincent's, had purchased a large tract of ground from the Caribs for a trifling sum. The Go- vernment did not allow it to be a good purchase. To secure it by his interest, the Burkes admitted Charles Fox into a share ; and yet he could not persuade Lord North to favour his bargain. L774. CHARLES FOX. 321 Council, and the money paid, Lord Dartmouth's scruples were so great that it was a year before he could be pre- vailed on to pass the patent. It was not likely he would have more facility on a flagrant job. Fox knew not where to turn, yet his presumption did not abandon him. At first he said he would study the law. His character was so decried that the mob believed he was turned out for rob- bing the Treasury. The Cavendishes hated both his father and him, and his uncle, the Duke of Richmond, had the worst opinion of him. He had played his game so ill in every light, that, if he did not make the greatest figure possible, he was sure of making a silly one. I do not mean that he must shine only by speeches in Parliament : he could scarce outdo what he had done, and his ex- treme youth had augmented the surprise. To make a figure essentially, it was necessary that he should retrieve his character by reforming it ; and by industry and appli- cation, by courting, instead of defying, mankind, should assemble such a party about him as might balance, if not overturn, the Administration at least make himself so grievous and so necessary as to force himself and his con- nexion into a much higher situation in Government than he had fallen from. To make his peace soon, for some subordinate and common place would rivet his insigni- ficance. Some rashness was more to be expected ; and lis mind was so drunk with vanity and profligacy, which thought superior intelligence, that one trait, the quint- essence of his frenzy, will scarce be believed, though on ,he authority of his own brother. Charles directed his Tiend Mr. Hare to keep a list of the annuities he had old, by his brother Stephen's advice, as the latter told a riend, and for this reason : " Charles," said Stephen, " if ou do not keep a list, you will have somebody come VOL. I. Y 322 LAST JOURNALS OF HOEACE WALPOLE. FEB. and claim an annuity that you have not sold." "Damn them," replied Charles ; " I had rather pay them for their impudence than those I have really sold annuities to." Yet though he took the advice, and bade Hare keep the register, he forgot five thousand pounds a-year in annuities when he gave in a list of them to his father ! I return to the debate, but make no excuse for the detail, which is infinitely more curious. Mr. Drake, junior, spoke eagerly for the bill, and said, " Esto perpetua!" Phipps agreed with him: said former trials had been committees of affections, not of elections; that the bill was a just surrender of their privileges ; and he dropped some severe reflections on Charles Fox. Sam- brooke, Freeman, and Aubrey spoke on the same side ; so did Dunning, though, he said, men of his profession had cause to complain of the bill : great sums of money had used to accrue to lawyers before a general election. It was not to be conceived what a quantity of quo warrantos were carried formerly into Westminster Hall now there was not a single information. Ellis talked of the bill not being yet brought to a state of perfection, though he owned the principle of it deserved approbation. Lord George Germaine painted the high importance of the bill, and the necessity of making it perpetual then. If its chief enemy j (Mr. Rigby) should come into Lord North's place, what chance would there be of the bill's remaining in force? If the bill had any faults, why were they not stated? Lord North had mentioned remonstrances ; for himself, he would never remonstrate, because he knew it would never have any effect. He asked if gentlemen did not remember the old method of soliciting when petitions were depending ; and he described with much wit petitioners standing on each side the door of the House, and their 1774. SELECT COMMITTEE BILL. 323 various ways of applying to members as they entered, according as the latter were of the same party or not. Sir Gilbert Elliot spoke the best against the bill, and ridi- culed the exaggerations of the other side. He had ori- ginally disliked the bill for being a departure from the constitution (a part even courtiers could take when to prevent the constitution being amended). Burke was as keen on the Ministers, and laughed at the inaction of Lord North's troops, though his Lordship had come forth and put himself at the head of them. He sounded the praises of the bill in the loftiest, rather in bombast, terms. Soli- citation, he said, ended when the judges were not known. Sooner would the pillars of heaven fail than that bill. It was superior to the power of abilities and resolution, though, as he excellently expressed it, there were gentle- men in that House whose whole souls were a previous ques- tion, and their lives a question of adjournment. John St. John and Stanley declared against the bill ; Sir W. Meredith and Thomas Pitt for it. Wedderburn also strongly defended it, and ably. No compromise, he said, would be accepted. No right of judicature was taken from the House, unless it had the right divine of doing wrong. Should a petition come before the new Committee against a young member chosen under the age of twenty- one, did anybody think his election would not be set aside ? yet, according to former experience, it would have passed unnoticed. (This had recently been the case of Charles Fox ) The bill had been no experiment : neither did the ^author originally intend it as such. If made perpetual it :would annihilate borough-jobbers. Thurlow, Attorney- General, was as warm against the bill ; and in answer to the panegyrics on Grenville, and the use that had been made of his name, said, it was not his own method to construe Y 2 324 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. FEB. Acts of Parliament by anecdotes. . That it was impossible to suppose that the bill did not take from the power of the House. Suppose a clergyman were elected, not the House at large, but a Select Committee, would have it in their discretion whether he should sit. Yet no jealousies would arise when the House at large would be to blame. Yet it was not a committee that was elected, but a court of justice : and, still, where was a difference between a manager of elections, an office now so much condemned, and a nominee after the new mode ? Lord John Caven- dish disclaimed such privileges as those contended for, and showed the improbability of justice being well administered by a multitude ; and then Rigby, with that bold defiance of discretion, and of deference for prejudices, which he affected, launched out against the bill, and endeavoured to possess the members with the inconveniences they would experience in their own future elections if bribery were so rigidly prohibited. He asked the mover, Sir Edward Astley, whether he expected that his voters would go for him from Lynn to Norwich without being treated with a pot of beer ? and yet by the Act of King William the new Committee must find this bribery after the test of the writ. He sowed seeds too for making the bill unpopular without doors, by urging that, however the elected might like it, the electors must grumble at it. He ridiculed the discordance of the Committees on the Shoreham and Wor- cester petitions. The voters at Worcester had been sent back to vote; those at Shoreham had been disfranchised. He attacked Th. Pitt for having sold his seat for Old Sarutn, and endeavoured to alarm the possessors of burgnge tenures. Some, he said, had talked of gentlemen being in leading-strings ; for his part, he had never found any incon- venience from his, and hoped at least they would not crack 1774. SELECT COMMITTEE BILL. 325 that night. The profligacy of his speech was far from hurting the bill on the contrary, gained it some friends, who had been disposed to vote against it, when they heard the cause of corruption avowed as an argument against it. Sir George Saville, Dowdswell, Sir Robert Fletcher, Ser- jeant Glynn, and Governor Johnston, all took up the cause of the bill against so coarse an attack ; the latter particularly showed what Rigby's practice would be if ever Minister. Rose Fuller, Charles Turner, Mr. Field, and Colonel Jennings all followed in the same key, and no- body said a word more against the bill but Sir William Dolben, a bigoted Tory, who, however, reflected on Charles Fox, and observed that he talked as if the fate of/ Caesar and of Rome depended upon his conduct. He was tender in years, he said, but tough in politics, and, if he v did not mistake, had already been twice in and twice out of place. At twelve at night the question was put for bringing in a Bill to make the Act perpetual, which was carried by 250 voices to 122, even all the Scotch but two voting for the Bill. On the 2Sth Mr. Roberts desired to withdraw his peti- tion against the election for the City. 326 LAST JOURNALS OP HORACE WALPOLE. MARCH, MARC H. 1st. WOODFALL again petitioned the House to be dis- charged. Kose Fuller moved that he should be repri- manded on his knees, which was condemned and overruled. Charles Fox censured Lord North's irresolute conduct, which was defended by Lord Clare. Woodfall was ordered to be discharged on paying his fees. Lord North's defeat on Mr. Grenville's bill, and the popularity of it, had been so great, that the Court thought it vain to dispute it any further, unless some stand could be made in the House of Lords. It was brought into the House of Commons and passed rapidly in five days, nemine contradicente, Rigby alone giving a negative on the first reading. On the 4th it was carried to the House of Lords, attended by a vast concourse of members. To raise a party against the bill, it was suggested that, though it would indisputably give the greatest weight to the landed interest, yet it would be equally pernicious to the moneyed an argument of no force with the lovers of the constitution. The moneyed men are a far more fluctuating body and more venal than men of estates, who must be more affectionate to a govern- ment that secures the lasting welfare of their families. Most old families of country-gentlemen had been rooted out and their estates sold by the weight of taxes, and by the ruinous expense of contesting their elections against upstarts who had risen to sudden fortunes. 1774. NEW PROMOTIONS. 327 The Lord Mayor and Sheriffs went with an Address to the King on the birth of the young prince. Neither of the sheriffs would kiss the King's hand : one excused him- self civilly ; the other said he never kissed any hand but a woman's. 9th. The following persons kissed the King's hand on their new promotions : Mr. Dyson, as Cofferer, in the room of Mr. Stanley, and privy councillor ; Lord Pelham, as Chief Justice in Eyre, in the room of the Duke of Leeds, to whom a pension was given ; Sir William Mere- dith, 1 that fluctuating patriot, who had broken with all parties, and at last had dropped anchor at his own interest, as Comptroller, in lieu of Lord Pelham, and privy coun- cillor ; Lord Beaucharnp, 2 and the late patriot Mr. Corn- wall (who had taken a pension for life only as a retaining fee) as Lords of the Treasury, in the room of Charles Fox and Dyson : the latter, a tailor's son, had not ambitioned the office of Cofferer so much from interest as vanity, the Cofferer's place giving him the rank of privy councillor. Stanley was neither turned out from, nor resigned without reward, his post of Cofferer. His government of the Isle of Wight was confirmed to him for life and, it was said, with an additional pension. That of the Duke of Leeds, and the preferment of Lord Pelham, I believe, were owing to Lady Holderness's favouritism with the Queen, Lord Pelham having brought about the match between Lord Holderness's only daughter and the only son of the Duke 1 Sir W.Meredith being complimented on his promotion, and told that Lord North would derive great strength from him and Cornwall, replied, " Good God ! how is it possible for a man to derive strength even from the whole world, if he will not know his own mind for a quarter of an hour together ? " a Francis Seymour Conway, eldest son of the Earl of Hertford. [Combe thus hits off his character : " Without one virtue that can grace a name, Without one vice that e'er exalte to fame." D.] 328 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. MARCH, of Leeds, after Lord Caermarthen, the bridegroom, had broken off his engagement. 3 Two days before these promotions, namely, on the 7^, Lord North delivered a message to the House of Com- mons on the American papers. 4 In answer to which, Mr. Rice, seconded by Lord Clare, moved an Address of thanks. Rice said, the claims and pretensions of the Ame- ricans had gone beyond all example, and that the question now was whether the colonies were any longer to belong to Great Britain ; that the best blood of this country had been sacrificed in their defence, and yet that the expected advantages were not to be maintained without asserting our sovereignty. Lord Clare added, that if the measures to be proposed met with opposition, whatever should be the violences of North America, they must be submitted to. Dowdswell, almost alone, objected to the conduct of the Administration, whose wise heads, he said, had brought to a crisis the trial for power between this country and America. He and his friends at least had acted on a system. Edmund Burke desired the clerk might read the answer to the Address in 1 768, and the Speeches from the Throne in 1769 and 1770, and the Journals of the 9th of January, 1770. The clerk, on searching the Journals, reported there was nothing to be found on the subject in question. " What ! " said Burke, " are our Journals, then, mutilated ? There ought to be a hue and cry after your * This marriage was, after all, an un- happy one. It took place in 1773, and was dissolved by Act of Parliament in 1779. Amelia D'Arcy, sole daughter and heiress of the last Earl of Holder- nesse, brought with her into the family of the Duke of Leeds the barony of Conyere. This lady remarried with a Mr. Byron ; and on her death, in 1784, the eldest son of Lord Gaermarthen suc- ceeded to the title of Lord Conyers. The last-mentioned nobleman was the sixth, and father of the present, Duke. D. 4 Vide the votes. Tin's day was the era of the American war. 1774. AFFAIRS OF AMERICA proceedings ; but no, nothing had been done, though the House had promised to exert their utmost endeavours to settle America." Wedderburn said, Burke's epigram had not been short ; but that nobody ought to consider what part he had hitherto acted upon American questions : it would be base to say, such a man did this, and such that ; the question was now, whether America was to be ours or not. The declaratory clause for binding America had passed almost without a dissenting voice. The right of taxation had been established ; but their joy on the repeal of the Stamp Act had been too riotous too ostentatious their triumph. The question was now, whether you would maintain them as subjects, or retrench your expenses in their defence. Burke replied, firmly, that he meant to revise the conduct of individuals, nor would he be told that it was base to do so. The people would expect success from Administration when it had been trusted with full power so long. Colonel Barre said, if the Bostonians were so guilty as they had been represented, we ought to make war on them ; there could be no middle measures. A plan, it was said, was to be brought : let America appear at the bar with all her imperfections on her head, with all her sins, and all her merits and blessings to this country. If factious, still bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh. He was ready to follow any leader in that business that had determination, nor meant to make a captious opposi- tion ; our establishments in that country were of too great consequence. Lord North said, the proper papers would be ready on the following Friday ; on which the Attorney- General Thurlow said, so loud as to be heard by Lord North, " I never heard anything so impudent ; he has no i I plan yet ready" Lord George Germaine said, he agreed there was no use in entering into the calamities that had 330 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. MAHCH, been brought on America, it had been owing to the dif- ferent conduct of different ministers (the consequence of the King's changing them so often). The wisdom of Par- liament was now requisite. It would not be right to let America steal a constitution they had no right to. The mischiefs were owing to the repeal of the Stamp Act and want of uniformity in the proceedings of Parliament. Their laws must be revised, their charters looked into ; they did not mind the Declaratory Act. General Con- way said, the Parliament ought to assert its rights ; and he saw the necessity of subordination ; our salvation depended on it. He had lamented that there was no plan, and that there had been two opinions on America; yet he had thought the repeal of the Stamp Act right, and thought so still, and ever should ; as maintaining it would have lost America. One word he would say for the colonies, that, short of taxation, they were and would be loyal and dutiful subjects. The Address was voted without a division. Such an outset prognosticated ill for the Bostonians. The friends of the Stamp Act encouraged all manner of severity, and filled the papers with philippics against them, which served the other purpose of promoting prerogative^ On the other hand, the Buckingham party was cold ; Burke was suspected of fearing to make his interest in St. Vincent's more desperate ; Meredith had deserted ; Barre' seemed wavering; and Lord Shelburne was supposed, as well as he, to have made their peace. Conway was hurt that the violence of the Bostonians gave the friends of the Stamp Act room to triumph. Lord Gower advised to make them pay the East India Company for the tea; Rigby, the cancelling their charter. Lord Temple was bitter against Franklin, and for whatever could revive the 1774. SELECT COMMITTEE BILL. 331 Stamp Act. Thurlow ancTWedderburn, who had hitherto agreed in no one point, concurred in drawing a bill, with severity, for removing the custom-house from Boston, which Lord North had sent to them awkwardly drawn by Cooper, Secretary of the Treasury; and, lazy as his Lord- ship was himself, he readily adopted vigorous measures when he found even the Opposition passive ; yet, from the same dilatoriness, he used no activity in pushing on the several bills of punishment, which gave time to the Bos- ton ians to take their precautions, if they were not prepared to submit. On the 8th Grenville's Election Bill was read for the last time in the House of Lords. The Duke of Grafton, Lord YVeymouth, and Dr. Hinchcliffe, Bishop of Peter- borough, spoke against it, the first and last wishing to have it further tried before it was made perpetual, and Grafton even paying compliments to Grenville, parent of the bill. Lord Mansfield, who supported the bill, was as flattering to Lord Weymouth ; but the current ran in favour of the bill. Lord Suffolk, the Duke of Richmond, Lord Lyttel- ton who praised the other House for having sent it to their Lordships, Lord Dartmouth, and even Lord Gower supported, the last paying so much homage to Rigby as to say he should, if of the House of Commons, have opposed it, though every Lord must be for it ; and, in truth, the greatest danger apparent from the bill is, that it will add weight to the engrossing property of the Peers. Lord Temple returned the Duke of Grafton 's compliments to his brother. The bill was then passed the best I remember to have seen in my time, and a most unexpected mound against corruption, though, the more utility it shall have, the more arts will be employed to undermine it. The Duke of Richmond, Governor Johnston, Lord 332 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. MARCH, Pigot, and their friends, continued to endeavour to clog the new Instructions of the East India Company ; but the Treasury's influence, conducted by Robinson the Secretary, and now openly by Lord Sandwich's activity and presence, secured a complete victory to Lord North's measures, and by great majorities. 14th. Lord North moved for leave to bring in a bill for the immediate removal of the custom-house from Bos- ton, and for discontinuing the landing or lading of goods, &c., at that port, with an intended clause in the bill to prevent restitution of the custom-house there till an ade- quate compensation should be made for the loss of the teas. The present disorders at Boston were one point, he said, to be attended to ; the second was, to secure a proper dependence of the colonies a consideration for another day. Even this bill was little resisted. Governor John- ston asked where the custom-house was to be placed ? Lord North answered, according to the language of the | time, that was to be left to the Crown. Dempster cavilled a little ; Sawbridge spoke out, and said the Americans had been treated like slaves ; their money was taken from 7 them without their consent. Phipps spoke well, not hos- tilely ; said the repeal of the Stamp Act might be wrong ; but it had been foolish to lay those trifling taxes after- wards, not meant to bring in a revenue, and only serving to put the Americans out of humour; that he liked Lord North's motion for its moderation ; that he should vote for it, not pledging himself to approve the subsequent measures. Lord John Cavendish doubted the efficacy of the measure : he and Dowdswell had nothing better to propose, and did not deny the necessity of doing some- thing. Colonel Barre, in very different language from 1 what he had been accustomed to use, declared the Ame- 1774. BOSTON CUSTOM-HOUSE BILL. 333 ricans ought to be punished for their ingratitude. He v would co-operate with Lord North in this measure. Moderation he had not expected ; nor could expect perfect wisdom ; but, even short of that, they should have his sup- port. He went as far as to say, he had not lent himself to Administration : if preferment came to him as an atone- ment for unmerited and repeated injuries, it might not be unwelcome. John Calvert, instigated by Rigby, called for taking away charters. Charles Fox, without heat, left himself at liberty to take what part he should please. The bill was ordered in, without a division. The next day it was reported (from the courtly overtures in Barre's speech) that Lord Shelburne was to be Lord-Lieutenant of Ire- land, and Barre his Secretary. In truth, many enemies of the Stamp Act seemed to be canvassing for places at the ( expense of the Americans. Cornwall 5 was compared to a chimney-sweeper who had been let down the chimney to open the door to thieves. The bill was still dallied with, as if in hopes that the Boston ians would offer a composition, at least, that they might prevent by submission the attack on their charter, which was threatened. The bill, however, was at last presented on the ISth, and read for the first time, but without any debate ; and on the 23rd the House went into a Committee on it, filled up the blanks, reported it. It was immediately read again, with slight opposition for about three hours, and with no division, all sides seeming to agree that the conduct of the Bostonians could not be defended. Rose Fuller, indeed, 5 Afterwards Speaker, from 1780 to 179-t . See Walpole's ' Memoirs of the Reign of George III.,' vol. iii. p. 211. D. 334 LAST JOURNALS OF HOEACE WALPOLE. MARCH, proposed to begin with a fine of fifteen or twenty thousand pounds, and that the bill should not take place till a specified day, that the refractory town might have time to comply, as it could not be carried into execution but by a military force, which would revolt all the other colonies. Mr. Herbert said he was glad attention was called towards the independent views of the Americans. Lord North said he was known to be no enemy to lenient measures ; but this was not the first offence of the Bostonians ; they had been guilty for three years past ; censure and warning had no effect. A measure of this sort alone could make them think this country in earnest. The general sense of the nation was with the House. He proposed to remove the port to Salem, seventeen miles from Boston. It would be in their power to shorten the operation of the bill. The danger of fresh affronts was not to be risked. The incon- venience England would undergo must be borne, When the Stamp Act was repealed, the Americans did not pay their debts ; but, if their debts were to be an argument against our taking any measures, they were our masters. j Four or five frigates would carry this measure into execu- tion. He was free to confess that he would use even the military, if necessary. The militia of Boston were no match for the force of this country. Lenient measures were at i an end. Whether they were in rebellion or not he could not say ; nor was he answerable for the consequences. At least it would be clear to the world that the Bostonians brought on the rebellion themselves. Bamber Gascoyne 6 said the Bostonians had prepared twelve pieces of cannon ; that a fine would only give them time for farther preparations. That they had been factious Set* Wulpole'b ' Memoirs of the Reign of George III.,' vol. i. p. 115. D. 1774. BOSTON CUSTOM-HOUSE BILL. 335 ever since 1701, when Mr. Prior was at the Board of Trade. The next who spoke was Mr. Montagu, 7 the younger son of Lord Sandwich, recently chosen into Parliament. He had wit, more vivacity, and consummate confidence. The youths of this period, who had any parts, came out full blown, and wanted none of the apologies that had formerly been made for the graceful disadvantages of diffi- dence and modesty. Montagu had been such a reprobate boy, that at school he had acquired the appellation of Devil Montagu ; but he was a genuine son of his father, and set the beauty of character as sturdily at defiance as the new Lord Lyttelton had done or Charles Fox, with still greater intrepidity of countenance. He dealt his judgments and censures liberally, was extravagant in his expressions, and made them more ridiculous by his con- fidence, though he set out by calling himself a virgin orator. What, he said, would the rising generation think of the present, if America were given up ? This country would be left with nothing but a load of debts ; though when America had wanted our support we had given it cheerfully. America must be part of this constitution ; two , souls could not animate the same body. It would be as ' absurd to expect it in politics as in religion. Passing the Declaratory Law was acting the part of bullying cowards. If there were any Members who from factious views opposed the present measures, they ought to be looked upon as " so many protuberances feeding on the excrement of opposition !" George Byng as warm from principle as Montagu from 7 William Augustus. He died unmarried, at Lisbon, in 1778, in the twenty-fifth year of his age. D. LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. MARCH, want of it, and with much less abilities, protested against the bill, which he said was to prevent the importation of English goods into North America. Dempster said, if unanimity was desired, why not imitate the repeal of the Stamp Act ? Disorders had arisen from attempts at taxation. Jenkinson broke out in the true spirit of the Court, and, full of prerogative and vengeance, called on all / the friends of the Stamp Act to join in humbling America, and in vindicating that bill, in which he boasted to have taken great part* and for which he called for as loud applause to Grenville's memory, as for the bill for trying elections. He turned particularly round, and, looking at Conway, showed how impatiently the Butists had borne the triumph, the short triumph, of the Whigs in the year 1766. Conway rose with his usual coolness and temper, and with much humour and contempt ridiculed Jenkinson's then unprovoked but long-hoarded passion, and Montagu's impertinent bombast. He would not debate, he said, for there was no question before the House ; nor could he imagine what had put the honourable gentleman into such a passion ; he never had seen warmth so little called for. The whole House laughed at so proper a rebuke to Jenkinson's flimsy flippancy, but he had been called up by a very young man, who had given hard names to the De- claratory Law and who was hardly born at that time, at least did not exist politically. "Alas ! " said he, " it concerns me very little to hear that they who supported that bill are said to have acted the part of bullying cowards. I am sure they had no such motives for their conduct. For my part, I will say, punish the Americans for the insult they have committed." Charles Fox declared he thought the JeiikinBon was believed to huvo devised the Stomp Act. 1774. BOSTON CUSTOM-HOUSE BILL. 337 power of restoring the port ought to be in the Parliament, not in the Crown, which Phipps denied, as mercy was one of the King's prerogatives. 9 Charles Fox pressed to know what the Ministers meant to do farther, as this would be but a feeble exertion, worse than none at all ; but Lord North, without satisfying him, promised to be consistent without obstinacy. Fred. Yane 1 thought building forts at Salem would cost large sums, yet he pronounced of Boston that Carthago delenda. This expression, and Lord North's, Colonel Barre took up, which last thought the ground had been ticklish at first, but the measures now were vengeful. He would give his support to this first measure, but to this only. America he found was no , longer to be the bon ton. Lord North had declared an ! end of lenient measures, but he would say, God forbid ! better repeal the odious taxes and keep your hands out of their pockets. It was the effectual way of making rebels, to call them so. A foreign enemy might take us in the midst of our operations. The next American measure, he v believed, would be of a deeper and darker hue. On the 25th a petition was presented from the province of Massachussets Bay in behalf of the said colony ; but that, and all intercession for their being heard in their own defence before they were condemned, was rejected, and the bill was read for the third time. Dowdswell called it a bill of pains and penalties; Ellis said, that if England could not impose taxes, it could give no laws whatever to the colonies. They had resisted the teas because inter- A vulgar error. It is erroneously supposed that the Sovereign can save a life tluit has been declared forfeit by the law; but the Sovereign's sign manual to a pardon is of no effect unless it be countersigned (that is, sanctioned) by a VOL. I. responsible minister. D. 1 I believe this speech was not made by Mr. Fred. Vane, but by Mr. Van. Vide London Chronicle ' of March 29. My notes were blotted at thia name. 338 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. MARCH, faring with smuggled teas. Edmund Burke made one of his painted orations, and said that, though he had not yet opposed the bill, he would mark his heartfelt sorrow for it in that its last stage. The House had refused to hear the agents of the colonies : the Ministers had had their songs of exultation, not even before victory, but before battle. A combination of all the colonies would ensue. Acts of rigour were at first always received with joy : they flatter the person in power. But would the House proscribe Phila- delphia ? Were there ships and men enough to carry on universal proscription? The Act was diabolical, and Ellis had expressed too much reverence for (the King) GOD'S IMAGE, to call him so. The House had been told that Salem was but seventeen miles from Boston ; but justice was not an idea of geography. Governor Pownall and T. Townshend were much softened in their language ; approved the bill, and left men to suspect them of being in the treaty with the Administration. Lord John Cavendish and Sawbridge were more firm to their prin- ciples, and the latter told Lord North that he skulked behind the laws and came to Parliament, when he might have done the business himself by giving proper directions. This attack Lord North answered with much humour and wit, and ridiculed the complaint of a Minister being so arbitrary as to complain to Parliament rather than exert despotic power. Governor Johnston said he had warned the East India Company before they sent out their teas, and had foretold what had happened since. The Minister ought to have opened the whole of his plan ; it should have been known before this bill was assented to. The sum of indemnification ought to have been specified, that the Bostonians might know when they have expiated their crime. The House was sowing seeds of rebellion in that country ; the dispute between Spain and the Dutch pro- 1774. BOSTON CUSTOM-HOUSE BILL. 339 vinces had grown in the same way. Rose Fuller declared he would vote against the bill unless the Administration would promise to repeal the tea duties. The bill, however, passed without one division on it. On the 2Sth the bill was read in the Lords. The Duke of Richmond and Lord Camden attacked it with much more warmth than had appeared in the Commons, the latter condemning the tea duties as a mischievous Act. This Lord Gower took up shrewdly, and to Lord Camden's confusion, reminding him that he had been Chancellor when that Act passed. If he had foreseen the mischief, why did he not oppose it ? if he had been absent, he had not had the sagacity to discover the probable inconve- niences. Lord Temple was as vehement for the bill, and yet against the Ministers, as his languid fire would admit. Lord Lyttelton was more animated, and fine, and hostile to the Duke of Richmond, who begged his pardon for thinking the bill too important for him to regard personal attacks. Lord Dartmouth palliated a little the case of the Bostonians, would not believe they were in actual rebellion, and showed that he was the real cause of any lenity, any temporizing being admitted. He was both a conscientious and mild man, and not a little checked by consciousness of his apostacy to the Court. But it was Lord Mansfield who discovered himself the true instigator of violence, which he first endeavoured to colour with all the obscure chicanery of law, and at last avowed, declaring that the bill was as decisive as passing the Rubicon. Rigour was his characteristic when personal safety was out of the question ; no mob at Boston could reach him. The House did not divide. 2 8 Lord Shelburne spoke well against the bill, which, as well as Col. Barre's last speech, seemed to imply that they had not made their bargain with the Court. z 2 340 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. MAECH, On the 2Sth arrived the unexpected account of what was called a new conquest in the East. Our troops, I know not on what foundation or pretence, had taken and plundered Tanjour. A second General Smith had seized for his own share 150,000^. The escape of Lord Clive the last year and the approbation of his conduct by the House of Commons was a vote of sanction to any sub- sequent enormities. The Gaulish ambassador's saying that the Roman Senate appeared" to him an Assembly of Kings might with more truth be applied to the English Parliament. It indeed seemed an Assembly of Kings by the tyranny and injustice it countenanced. The same day Lord North moved for leave to bring in a bill for regulating the government of Massachussets Bay. This was the prelude of the attack intended on charters. His Lordship said, there must be something radically wrong in the constitution of the Massachussets Bay, when the civil magistrates could not act on any occasion. He ' wished to take away the executive from the democratic part, and lodge it in officers appointed by the Crown, and to have justices of the peace ex officio. He would have the Governor name the Judges, &c., belonging to the courts of justice, and all to be removeable, except the Chief Justice and Judges of superior Courts, and then not without a sign manual : and no town meetings to be held without leave of the Governor. Charter rights would be sufficiently entered into in the course of the bill. George Byng disapproved of the motion, as heaping provocation on provocation. Sir Fletcher Norton, the Speaker (for the House was in Com- mittee), desired to know whether it was the intention to leave the province with a Council and Assembly or not? Lord North replied, he meant nothing that would affect the Assembly or election of the Council. Stephen Fox 1774. MASSACHUSETTS BAY BILL. 341 approved vigorous measures, but said the disorders had arisen neither from the Stamp Act nor its repeal ; but that all colonies, as they acquire strength, look with a jealous eye on the mother country. Lord George Sackville Germaine made a much admired speech in favour of the motion and of himself. It was impossible, he said, to understand the purport of the bill at the first opening. He would ask if this was all that was to be done this session? As far as it went, he had no objection. The present Council in the Massachussets was a council of control, not of advice. He would put that council on the same foot as in other royal governments abroad. It was absurd to let the people choose the Council. , The intended bill ought to prevent their having a power of ' calling their town meetings, which were now only political. Lord North had expressed doubts as to the alteration of juries perhaps the House did not know that their grand juries were appointed with a salary and chosen annually : the petty juries were elected by the different townships. The sheriffs was also a lucrative office. What a situation were the army and navy in, triable by such a jury ! God forbid those juries should be trusted, when Scotch juries were not suffered to try the rebels, nor Sussex juries the smugglers ! But it would be said, Will you bring them hither to be tried ? perhaps not, but he would not have them tried on the spot. He would bring the constitution of that country as near to our own as he could. It was perpetually asked in the House, Would you infringe their charters ? He would answer, he would not only assert the power of this country in words, whilst they were counter- acting us with deeds. 3 8 There was much sense and foresight I the colonies by those Acts, and yet take in this speech. It was idle to provoke | no precaution against their resistance. 342 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. MAECH, Nothing could be more artfully laid than this scene. Lord Mansfield was the promoter of prerogative, and the soul of the intended exertion against the colonies. Lord North had drawn the first bill for removing the port from Boston so badly, that Wedderburn and Thurlow had been forced to draw a new one, though, as Thurlow said, they two had never agreed before in a single point. Lord Mansfield and Wedderburn were the intimate friends of Lord George Germaine, and the latter had secretly nego- ciated his defection from Opposition with Lord North, and Cooper, the latter' s favourite Secretary of the Treasury. Lord Mansfield had never failed attacking juries, the palladium of the constitution. Lord North might not care for the odium of beginning to undermine them in America. To have the proposal come from the mouth of a supposed opponent would give less alarm, and his Lordship would seem to adopt candidly a measure recommended by Opposition itself. He 4 accordingly rose, and said how much this country was obliged to the Noble Lord B that what he had said highly deserved attention. His opinions agreed with his own, particularly in relation to juries and the military ; but was not certain there would be any pro- position. Yet he did not intend to close the Committee with this proposal. The charter rights were certainly not \ of a magnitude to withhold Parliament. Governor Pownall Lord North certainly lost a whole year, and thence the most important one, by bullying, provoking, and temporising. It is probable that Lord Mansfield and the Junto encouraged his dilatorincss ; for if vigorous measures had checked the revolt early it might have gone no farther ; but by these hostile acts, ac- companied by procrastination, time was given to the other colonies to join in the revolt, which the Junto flattered them- selves they should be able to master by force, and then they might take away charters, give military codes, as Lord Mansfield was prepared to do, and re- duce all North America to slavery and the power of the Crown. Governor Hutchinson waa recalled, and General Gage, who had long com- manded in America, was appointed Go- vernor of Boston in his room. 4 Lord North. 8 Lord George Germaine. 1774. LORD GEORGE GERMAINE. 343 owned the mob governed in the Massachussets, but that they were sober, religious, and fond of government. The bill was ordered in without a division. However, nothing farther was done then, except ordering a Committee to inquire into the proceedings of the colony ; and the Houses adjourned for Easter on the 3\st. Lord Germaine's apostacy was immediately known. He had in truth been driven into Opposition by Lord Chatham, who had sacrificed him to Prince Ferdinand; and con- tinued in it partly from being driven out again with Lord Rockingham, and partly from resentment to Lord Bute, to whom he had been attached, and who had given him to Lord Chatham on his second expulsion. From that anger he had voted against Sir James Lowther, Bute's son-in- law, who had repaid the desertion by instigating Johnston to affront him, which ended in a duel by which Lord George had partly wiped off the imputation of cowardice. The folly and weakness of Lord Rockingham's opposition must have made Lord George, who was still exceedingly aspiring, and who had persisted to act in public till the uncommon excellence of his abilities had surmounted the load of contempt under which he had lain, wish to get quit of his associates. Whether he had so great sagacity as to discover, contrary to the discernment and practice too of almost all England, that attachment to the Duke of Gloucester would rather advance a man's fortune than prejudice it, certain it is that he and his wife had been most assiduous in paying their homage at Gloucester House. Lord George had at least by the event judged right. The King hated nobody who paid court to his brother 6 so much as he hated his brother, and was dis- 6 The Opposition members used to meet at Gloucester (now Grosvenor) House every Sunday evening. D. 344 LAST JOUKNALS OF HOEACE WALPOLE. MARCH, sembler enough to reward the first when his brother would be the person punished. I had early got wind of Lord George's approaching defection, and before the Parliament met this winter had warned the Duke not to trust him ; but the sudden desertion of Sir W. Meredith, 7 supposed a man of more principle, had now taught his Royal Highness what to expect. The greatness of the reward offered to Lord George Germaine bespoke great hatred of his brother in the King ; or the zeal for making converts when the Court was overstocked, when it could only gain converts by making removals of other zealots at the expense of pensions and places for life, as in the cases of Cornwall, Stanley, and the Duke of Leeds, implied that the King had very great or very little views to carry, for Opposition was re- duced so low that the Administration could want neither votes nor speeches in their favour. If Cornwall was not gained on some great view, he was very dearly bought by a pension for life and a Lordship of the Treasury; if Meredith and Germaine were gained only to mortify the Duke of Gloucester, the object was pitiful indeed. One must hope it was, that no great blow may be preparing yet why should not royal revenge be the first pursuit? What a bribe had been heaped on Lord North to win his support to the Royal Marriage Act! Other little reasons may have concurred to the treaty with Lord George. Lord North, who had been lazy or averse to business, or had acted till he had persuaded the King that he would always be a tractable tool, might be silently gathering a party round him attached to himself. He, or the King, might be plotting to get rid of the Bedford s, and therefore, the more Opposition was weakened, the less considerable See Walpole's Reign of George m.,' vol. i. p. 350. D. 1774. LORD GEORGE GERMAINE. 345 the Bedford faction would be, if driven to join it. Cooper and Robinson, the Secretaries of the Treasury, were known foes : the latter belonged to Lord Bute ; the former had connections with Wedderburn, who hated Thurlow, the creature of the Bedfords. All these causes and little passions might have smoothed the way for Lord George's advancement. His mind was no sooner known than he was at once offered the reversion of the Cinque Ports, of which Lord Holderness was Warden for life, and which Lord George had long wished, as being useful to his Kentish boroughs, and as his father the Duke of Dorset had held that post. In this instance the tenderness of the King's heart again appeared. Lord Holderness was a younger man than Lord George Germaine, but the former had been dying, and, though a little recovered, was not likely to live ; yet though a favourite, as his wife was with the Queen, they had learnt that his Majesty, on a prospect of the Earl's death, had announced his intention of appointing Lord Bristol Governor of the Prince of Wales ; and now repeated the blow by offering the Cinque Ports to Lord George. How was mankind astonished to hear that such an offer did not satisfy! how much more were they astonished that Lord George demanded to be re-established in the army, and even aspired to be Master-General of the Ordnance, a post that had been pressed on the brave General Conway, from which he had been cruelly driven, and so recently bestowed on Lord Townshend, whose character for valour was not indeed much higher than Lord George's ! Even this was listened to, and Lord Townshend was sounded to know whether he might not be contented with a compensation ? He bounced and refused. In the mean time, as I was aware how much Conway would be hurt by such a preference of an unworthy rival, 346 LAST JOURNALS OF HOKACB WALPOLE. MARCH, and who he suspected had always been his enemy, I wished, if I could, to prevent it, though I admired Lord George's sound abilities, and had always lived on civil terms with him. But I neither liked to see him decked with Mr. Conway's spoils, nor was pleased with his sacrificing the Duke of Gloucester, nor was glad to see so masterly an understanding in the service of high prerogative. I dis- covered the transaction, while still very secret, to Lord Waldegrave, with whom Lord George might come to com- petition for the first rank in the army, and to General Fitzroy, who had been aide-de-camp to Prince Ferdinand, and the very man who had carried the fatal orders at Minden, which Lord George had not obeyed. 8 Through these channels I knew the Bedfords, who did not love Lord George, would be inflamed, and possibly the rest of the army. I also acquainted the Duke of Gloucester. He made a great panegyric on Lord George's talents, and was so true a soldier as to approve his wishing to recover rank in the army. I hinted my real fears that, if Master of the Ordnance, Lord George might afterwards become Commander-in-chief^ to his Royal Highness's prejudice. ** Oh ! " said the Duke, " if any man is preferred to that service, I will instantly go into the Imperial or Russian service." The Duchess was present, and said not a word to such a denunciation, though I saw how it struck her but she always submitted to his will. In the same conversation On the 1st August, 1759. Prince Ferdinand (who with the allied infantry had compelled the French to retreat) sent an order to Lord George Sackville to advance with the English and Ger- man cavalry, of which he was the com- mander, and complete the rout. The order was not obeyed ; perhaps it was misunderstood ; and the French thereby recovered an advantageous post previ- ously held by them. Lord George was punished by being ejected from all hia offices, military and civil ; but he was restored to them, and promoted to higher employments and dignities, under George III., at which tune he had as- sumed the name of an aunt whose pro- perty he had inherited. He died Vis- count Sackvillo in 1785. D. 1774. CONVERSATION WITH DUKE OF GLOUCESTER. 347 the Duke told me that the King hated his brother-in-law the Hereditary Prince much more than Prince Ferdinand : that the former knew it so well that he had not accom- panied his wife to England on the last illness of the Princess of Wales, nor ever would come hither again, unless he was offered the command of the army ; but had said, " The King might have me much cheaper than my uncle Ferdinand, for he likes the pay, and I want only the honour." The Duke told me too that Colonel Loyd, who had been in the Russian service, told him the Czarina had said to him, " I do not talk from your newspapers and party papers, but I am certain mind, I say I know that two persons of your country took money from France for the last peace ;" and Loyd added, " Sir, if ever I see your Royal Highness out of England, I will tell you their names ; but I dare not name them here." As Loyd did not name them, I suspect that one of them was the Princess of Wales. 348 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. APRIL, APRIL. THE Houses reassembling on April llth, an attempt was made on the \2th in the House of Commons to throw the Administration back into their difficulties on the election for Middlesex ; but the bomb was fired by too unwelcome a hand. Colonel Luttrell, brother of the Duchess of Cum- berland, was both a hotheaded and an interested man, and hitherto had always made the rashness of his head subser- vient to the lucre that reigned in his heart. He had but the very last year extorted a job from the Court on threats of vacating his seat in Parliament, on acknowledgment that there was something wrong in his election. He now me- naced, accusing Bradshaw, the favourite agent in all dark work, of having seduced him to stand for Middlesex; but the more Luttrell had profited by his own venality, the less formidable his threats became. They being now despised, he made a formal complaint to the House against itself of its having suffered the Sheriffs to summon Wilkes, instead of him, to serve the duty in Parliament, and he moved to order the Sheriffs to answer it at the bar. 1 The Ministers could not comply without quarrelling with the City ; by rejecting the motion they seemed tacitly to approve the behaviour of the Sheriffs in favour of Wilkes; yet this 1 Luttrell, although Wilkes, at the Middlesex election, had polled a far greater number of votes, had been de- clared by the House to be the properly elected member : his opponent was held incapable of sitting, as he was under sentence of expulsion for having written various seditious, libellous, and obscene matters. How Wilkes ultimately tri- umphed I need not here narrate. D. 1774. LUTTRELL'S COMPLAINT OF THE SHERIFFS. 349 ignominy, when they had borne so many insults, they pre- ferred and so far were secure ; for as the Opposition con- demned the intrusion of Luttrell, they could not become his partizans. When Luttrell ceased, a long and dead silence ensued. At last Lord Beauchamp moved for the Orders of the Day, which, nobody seconding Luttrell, would have been called for. After another pause Charles Fox rose and said Colonel Luttrell should not want a second ; and then poured out a torrent of invective against Lord North for his pusillanimity, and for what he called his impudent and shameless silence. Lord North, with great quickness and humour, replied, that he had never before heard of impudent silence ; that he had, indeed, seen gen- [ tlemen on their legs whose shameless impudence had shocked all mankind. The laugh of the whole House applied the likeness to the original it was drawn for. Thomas Towns- hend said he should be for the Orders of the Day, not from fear of a quarrel with the Sheriffs or from dread of giving them importance, as Lord North had urged, but because his opinion was totally different from that of Lord North on the Middlesex election. Nobody else espousing Luttrell, the Orders of the Day were read. Saturday, \Qth. Yesterday, after some private busi- ness being done, and the House being pretty full, Sir Charles Whitworth presented the bill for the better regu- lating the Government of the Province of the Massachussets Bay, in North America, and, after a short debate, the bill was read a first time, and ordered to be read a second time ! next Friday. Lord North then presented to the House several more papers relative to the present state of some of his Majesty's colonies in North America, which was i read by the Clerks of the House, and took up near an hour reading. 350 LAST JOURNALS OF HOE ACE WALPOLE. APRIL, The Order of the Day was then read to take into further consideration his Majesty's most gracious Message, together with the papers which had been presented to the House by Lord Nortli on the 7th and llth of March last, and those presented yesterday, when the House resolved itself into a Committee, Sir Charles Whitworth in the Chair ; when Lord North proposed another bill relative to the indemni- fication of persons who may act towards the preservation of the peace, when, after a long debate, the Committee came to the said proposition without a division, and Sir Charles Whitworth reported the same to the House, and the bill was ordered in accordingly. The speakers were Lord North, Solicitor-General, General Conway, Mr. Dowds- well, Governor Pownall, Captain Phipps, and Mr. Burke. General Conway was the only man who spoke out on these bills, which he did with firmness, though without bitterness. He said the Administration had boasted of sending a sword in one hand and the olive in the other : he saw the sword, but could not discover the olive-branch. They were going to take away juries from Boston, though Colonel Preston, in the midst of a town exasperated at the deaths of eleven persons, had had a fair trial, and had been acquitted. There was one peaceable measure sure of suc- cess, and that was not tried, repealing the Tea Bill : he would second Mr. Rose Fuller in moving for such repeal. 19/A. Rose Fuller moved for the repeal of the tea duty, and was seconded by Mr. Pennant. Conway voted for it, and Phipps, the two Foxes, Edmund Burke, T. Townshend, Frederick Montague, Colonel Barre, and Dowdswell, spoke for the motion. It was opposed by Lord North, Rice, Cornwall, Wedderburn, Lord Beauchamp, Lord Clare, and Buller, and was rejected at eleven at night by 182 to 49. Burke spoke for two hours with the highest ap- 1774. AMERICAN TEA DUTIES. 351 plause, gave a detail of taxation and of late Ministers, in which he drew portraits of George Grenville, Lord Chat- ham, and others. Of Grenville his portrait was, at least, as favourable as he deserved ; but blaming his obstinate ad- herence to forms, and with the littleness of a lawyer and man of business. He commended Lord Chatham's great talents, but ridiculed his latter administration and perse- verance in governing when the gout had disordered his understanding, and his deputies were not at liberty nor had abilities to do anything. 2 Lord North himself applauded this oration. Wedderburn answered it in defence of G. Grenville, and said it was new to hear a Minister condemned for being a man of business. "To be sure," he added, " an ignorant young man (Lord Rockingham), governed by a visionary (Burke himself) who is generally in the third heaven, is fitter to be at the head of affairs !" Burke's speech was excessively admired. It was a year of fine harangues : Wedderburn 's against Dr. Franklin, Lord George Germain e's on the colonies, and this of Burke, besides those of the lawyers on literary property, were the most extolled. The very next day old Glover, author of * Leonidas,' a bombast and turgid orator when in Parlia- ment, was not less approved on a matter of trade. 3 About this time, on a new ballot for Directors of the East India Company, there were three parties that of the 8 He spoke highly of Conway, who, I when Secretary of State, had firmly re- sisted the influence of Lord Bute and liis creatures, but in other parts was ! severe on his irresolution. 3 This was in a Committee to inquire into the state of the Linen Trade in Great Britain and Ireland, Sir Thomas Clavering in the chair. Mr. Glover is said to have spoken in " a most pathetic and extraordinary manner," concluding with hoping that the House would not lay any more duty upon the foreign linens, as it would be the means of putting a stop to that branch of trade. He spoke at the bar of the House for near two hours and a half. Several of the mem- bers, as they left the House, told Glover ' that " they often heard him when he sat in the House, but they never heard any- thing to exceed this performance be- fore." D. 352 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. APRIL, House or old Directors, that of the Administration, and that of the Duke of Richmond. The last lost two of their best friends ; the Ministers were little more successful, the Directors themselves choosing most of the list. Lord North's agents prepared against another year, and it was pressed on the friends of the Court to become proprietors of India Stock to qualify themselves for voting. 22nd. The Committee sat on the second reading of the Bill for regulating the Civil Jurisdiction in America. Rose Fuller said the bill was a new proof of the Americans being condemned without being heard. Sir George Saville said he had trembled at every step that had been taken on the affair of Boston : he had argued ill from the time the House had \l refused to hear Mr. Bolland, agent for that colony, and till now had withdrawn himself from that whole business. Ellis affirmed that the King, Lords, and Commons have a right to alter charters given by the Crown. General Conway said, that, though it had been alleged that the | Americans had no right to be heard at the bar of the House, yet it had been the universal practice, on alteration of charters, to hear the party, and in matters of right it could not be refused. Delays might be disagreeable, but. were of no weight in matters of right. The question now was, whether the Americans should be heard or not, before the charter was broken into for our convenience. He would not attempt to stem the torrent he knew it would be ineffectual ; but he would say that we were the aggressors and innovators upon them, and had been so for the last ten years. They had held one line of duty to us, whilst we had teazed and vexed them with a variety of contradictory laws : first, with Admiralty jurisdiction, Stamp Act duties, i now, with duty of taxation. Putting all together, we were the aggressors. We carried our ideas of pride and dignity 1774. AMERICAN CIVIL JURISDICTION BILL. 353 too far upon these abstract sophisticated notions. We had no right to tax even Ireland. These measures, he thought, would involve those who had the conduct of them in such '' difficulties as they would not get the better of* Lord North replied, that it was fit in courts of law to hear the parties ; but charters were the regulations of the Crown, and under ' the control of Government. Was it the idea that we should send over to summon them to attend their rights, which did not exist, whilst they go on plundering your merchantmen, and tarring and feathering 5 your subjects ? Were we, in that state, to take no steps to restore government ? He was persuaded they would send word they would not appear at the bar. This measure was a political necessity, not a political convenience : this measure must be pursued, unless any gentleman would point out a more proper method. Conway had said we were the aggressors and therefore what ? Were we to let them go on, because the provoca- tion was on their side ? Had they not burnt our sloops and rescued our seizures ? Our friends in America had doubted whether we should support them. If we were not f ready to part with our colonies, some steps must be taken. Did anybody conceive that the facts which had appeared rom the correspondence laid before the House were not rue? Sir George Yonge and Governor Johnston blamed the njustice of Administration. The latter complained that the lew bill would make the Governor of the Massachussets ab- olute, and the Americans become the slaves of Ministers. The latter had better speak out and say at once that they { neant to establish despotism all over the empire. King, * A prophecy verified. * The Bostonians rolled those who ought teas, naked in tar and then in feathers. An account was arrived the day before of a new cargo of tea de- stroyed. VOL. I. 2 A 354 LAST JOURNALS OF HOEACE WALPOLE. APRIL, Lords, and Commons could not take away the rights of the people, who would be authorised to resist for the cause of liberty. What proceedings had been seen here, and what had been done, in consequence of mobs in this country ! Had not Majesty itself been insulted, and the Minister 6 nearly torn in pieces ? Had he not fortunately been saved by Sir William Meredith ? The Americans would resist like Englishmen. Jenkinson and Harris supported the bill. Sir Edward Astley and Governor Pownall argued against it : the latter said there was an end of opinions it would come to action with the Americans. They would immediately hold a Congress of the different provinces ; they would unite, and consider how they should proceed most to their advantage. They no longer trusted any letters to their common post ; they had couriers of their own in every province. Rigby said, what had dropped from Pownall was very serious : he had told the House that America was now in rebellion, for as yet they could know nothing of what had been done here. They had then a private post, not for serious matters, not because of their correspondence, but to regulate their future transactions; but America was in the right to rebel, for, it seemed, we were the aggressors ! yet, if he did not mistake, the honourable gentleman (Con- way) had this year been for taking away the port from Boston. For himself he had never varied his opinions; but was astonished to hear a man, who had brought in the Declaratory Bill, say that we had been the aggressors. If he himself had thought so, he would not have voted for the Boston Port Bill, but would have moved for the repeal of his own Declaratory Law. But this country had a right to 6 Lord North. 1774. AMERICAN CIVIL JURISDICTION BILL. 355 tax even Ireland, though it would not be expedient to do it, as the Irish have a Parliament of their own. How were we to make requisitions to the North-Americans ? Was this House to send over cap in hand ? Himself had not the least varied. Had not the Administration been changed in 1765, the Stamp Act would have been enforced as easily as the land-tax is here. We had clearly a right to tax < them, though perhaps it would not be expedient. He would wait till the flame had subsided. Charles Fox said Eigby's politics were very distinct; how wise, was another question. He would tax the Ameri- cans when they are quiet would tax them, as a boon for , their submission. But we were now fighting for taxation.' We might speculatively have a right to tax Ireland. In this country a dispensing power had once been contended for : the moment it came to be exercised, nobody would bear it. It was contrary to fact that the Stamp Act would have passed without opposition. We were irritating the Americans without a power to force them : whoever would govern a country without its consent, insured resistance. Sir Gilbert Elliot endeavoured to palliate the grossness of :Rigby's positions, who, he affirmed, had not said he would \tax them by way of reward, but when their situation would lad m it of it ; yet he allowed we could tax them only by force : and he himself had never varied in his opinion of taxing that country. Sir Richard Sutton said a levelling ^principle prevailed in that country : he would give the House an idea of it. He knew a gentleman who went to a merchant's house at Boston, and asked the servant if his , master was at home ? " My master ! " replied the servant ; ; I have no master but Jesus Christ : John Such-an-one ! {naming his master) is at home, if you want him." Sir Richard concluded with declaring he approved regulations, 2 A 2 356 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. APRIL, as he thought them necessary. The bill was then read a second time without a division, and ordered to be committed. In the Committee, Dowdswell declared he would reserve his opposition for the last reading. The regulations were contested in different debates the following week, 7 but with no divisions nor anything memorable. The attendance, too, was very small. 7 See the 'London Chronicle' of April 30th on a new petition from Mr. Bolland. There was much insolence and confidence in Lord North's assertion that the plan was only to reduce Boston to a footing with the other colonies ; whereas one of the new bills enacted that criminals might be brought over to Eng- land to be tried, which had not been the case in the other colonies. 1774. MASSACHUSSETS BAY BILL. 357 MAY. ON the 2nd Sir George Saville presented a petition from several inhabitants of North America, then resident in London, praying to be heard against sending troops against them, and against the proceedings then carrying on in Par- liament. All the favour shown to that petition was to suffer it to lie on the table. Insolence was now the language of the Court ; and some of its emissaries went so far as to call in the newspapers for the names of those who interfered for the Americans, that they might be exposed to public vengeance so easily did despotism espouse measures of which they had so loudly complained in their opponents. The same day was read, for the third time, the Bill for regulating the Massachussets, and a very long debate, though not a very new or lively one, ensued, which lasted till past two in the morning, when the bill was carried by 239 to 64. Before I mention any of the speeches, it will be neces- sary to premise some circumstances relative to it. I have spoken of Colonel Barre's change of tone at the outset of these bills, and of the expectation it had raised that both he and Lord Shelburne were coming into place, as well as Lord George Germaine. The latter continued to support the bills, though nothing more was heard of his (supposed) intended preferment. Colonel Barre', on the contrary, had retracted his complaisance, and had distinguished himself against the new regulations. It was known that Lord Shelburne had received a letter from Lord Chatham dis- approving the rigour used towards Boston : the consequence 358 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. MAY, was, that Lord Shelburne, Barre, and Dunning, who had been long ill and whose faculties were said to be impaired, though it did not appear on this occasion, took a warm part against the Court. Lord Chatham himself, so long for- gotten in his solitude at Pynsent, had now passed through London and fixed at Hayes, and it was thought would appear in the House of Lords. It was then given out that he was only come to fix marriages for his son and daughter. It was then said he had the gout, and the Court reported that he had changed his opinion on America. The truth I believe was, that he hoped the disorders of America would prove useful to him ; but as the stream ran the other way, and the Rockingham party resolved to take no notice of him, he found the times not yet ripe. He and Lord Temple visited, but in the coolest manner- Lord Temple affecting to be the representative of George Grenville's inveteracy to America, which only made him of still less consequence than Lord Chatham, for the Court did not want tools, much less a chief without a party. Lord Cam- den, Lord Chatham excused himself from seeing, yet received the Sheriffs, who were creatures of Wilkes. These hints will explain parts of the subsequent debate. Dunning opened the attack and spoke above two hours. He begged indulgence, as he found his organs of speech considerably impaired. He wished never to hear the bill read again wished to stem the torrent of prejudice that had taken possession of the House. He would consider all the bills together as forming one system, which put the Crown and Minister on a different foot from what they were when the charter was given. The repeal of the tea duty would have quieted the Americans : he thought that repeal had been kept in reserve. The fatal secret was now out : it was not the olive-branch, but war and resent- 1774. MASSACHUSSETS BAY BILL. 359 raent. The language was, Resist and we will cut your throats acquiesce and we will tax you. In the whole busi- " ness there was nothing of a plan : the Minister was deter- mined to do something, without knowing what, only it was to be violent, 1 though not warranted to say America was in rebellion. The town guard at Boston was meant for pro- tection ; but if there was treason there must have been traitors. He would not suppose Lord North was Minister, therefore did not blame him ; neither did he know who was Minister, nor even of what sex : and were he to describe the Minister in the phrase of his own profession, he should say, he, she, or they. The Stamp Act had passed before he was in Parliament. He would give his opinion on the right of taxing the colonies, though there were shades in his opinion that made him differ from those he revered most (Lord Camden). He thought Parliament competent to tax Ireland and America, in cases of necessity ; but first they , ought to make requisitions. In every country there must exist a supreme law here, it was in King, Lords, and Com- mons. Sir W. Meredith, the new apostate Comptroller, con- demned General Conway's pronouncing England the ag- gressors, which he affectedly called a " flippancy declared."; He said the statute of the 25th of Charles II. and the Act of Navigation had laid a similar tax to that on tea. Who com- pelled the Americans to buy the tea ? Stanley denied the two bills being the same, and that any person might con- jsistently vote for the one and against the other. While Europe should maintain its superiority, it was impossible for America to submit without depending on some European power. There had been a radical error in the formation 1 This observation agrees with what I have said before in this Journal, viz. that the Ministers waited for the rest of the colonies to rebel before they sent any forces to America. 360 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. MAY, of the American constitution. Was it extraordinary that levellers, who settled there first, should choose that form that was most like no government at all ? Colonel Barre said the question was, whether to reconcile the colonies by sober means or drive them to despair ? We had been the aggressors, and oppressors never forgive those they have injured. Lord North had declared he would see America at his feet, and then would repeal the tax. Two other gen- tkmen of high description (Sir Gilbert Elliot and Kigby) had said, We will see America at our feet, and then we will V tax them ; and those two men he believed could, if they pleased, not leave Lord North a casting vote in the Cabinet. They said they would tax : it was now to the Americans, "Stand and deliver!" The great Minister who had go- verned this country so long and so much to his credit (Lord Chatham) had no other idea than of going cap in hand to the Americans and making requisitions. If the scabbard was thrown away, we must point the whole weight of the British empire against the American colonies : for his part, the blood of the Americans would not lie at his door. The young Lord Caermarthen, whose voice and person recommended him, as well as his rank and favour at Court by his late marriage, spoke with great applause. He said, when he saw a systematic opposition established in America, he should never think a particular tax the cause. He had never heard that Lord Chatham was famous for going cap in hand towards the execution of his measures : he had heard, but time would show, that, were his Lordship well enough to attend his duty in Parliament, he would not be for adopting the cap-in-hand measures towards the Ameri- cans. George Byng spoke, as he did always, warmly against the bill, and, calling Rigby by his place the Irish Master of the Rolls, took notice how indecent it was in him 1774. MASSACHUSSETS BAY BILL. 361 of all men to declare for taxing Ireland. Rigby, with im- pudent frankness and parts, avowed the satisfaction he had in holding that place, and said it had been thought that he had not been well founded in his assertion; but in the statutes of George I. there was a law to bind Ireland in all cases whatsoever. The Declaratory Law had been the most nonsensical that ever was. Another had said, it was now Stand and deliver : it was very true, and he thought it as much his duty to say so as to enforce the land-tax, when voted. As to the cap-in-hand Minister, he certainly made this country very great, and too great at last to hold him- self: witness his retreat to Marlborough. When gentlemen had a mind to have a fling at him (Rigby), they called him a Minister ; but he never was nor ever should be one. Had he any power, which he had not, he assured the House it should be at Lord North's service, and used for his support. If he was upon his oath, he would vote for the bill. General Conway said he had been accused of declaring we had no right to tax America or Ireland ; but he had never gone so far. The statute of George I. was in precise words the same as the Declaratory Law, which was dignified with the epithet of ridiculous. We were now running into difficulties there would be no end to : the flame could never b e laid, the expense could not be maintained. He had thought there was to be something lenient ; but where was the olive-branch ? Was it in the breach of the charters ? Soldier as he was, he did not wish to see the military exempted from the laws of their country. There had been a variety of innovations. He would ask, had the repeal of the Stamp Act had a fair trial ? It was a law of rule and justice to hear the parties. He lamented that he could not prevent these measures, nor stem the torrent. Violence in LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. MAY, Parliament was like zeal in religion. His maxim was, Peace with our colonies, and war with all the rest of the ^ world. If once engaged in a war with America, we should see no end to it. The Americans, he hoped, would have . / temper to wait for better times. Lord G. Germaine said, these bills had been called wicked ; he thought them necessary. The military were subject to law by the bill, but not to partial trials. Was there a single magistrate that dared to act in that country ? Where were the Judges ? The courts of justice were shut up, and the Chief Justice retired into the fort. Supremacy must be maintained upon the ground of taxation. This claim of the Americans was no new one. Depart from your tax, there was an end of you. Conway had said, Peace with your colonies, &c. What! peace with your colonies, by submission ? Would that peace be long ? Charles Fox said, Lord George thought repealing the tea- duty would be giving up the Constitution was the tea- duty part of the Constitution ? the most absurd point of honour that ever was ! If taxation was intended, their charters must be annihilated, and could only be maintained by military force. The Attorney-General said, he would tax them to make 'them pay their own Judges to execute the laws of Great Britain. Edmund Burke, who was ill heard from the lateness of the hour, produced a letter 2 from Lord Hillsborough, when Secretary of State for the Colonies, in which the King and Ministers had declared they did not mean to tax America for the purposes of raising a revenue. From this, he said, they could not depart, and this argument he would make his shield and buckler. Lord North denied that Burke '* This was a capital ingredient in the American war. 1774. GOVERNMENT OF CANADA. 363 had stated facts fairly, yet waived the plea, saying, that when the proper time for taxing America should come he did not know, but was sure this was not a proper time for repealing a tax. Sir George Saville again protested against / the violence of condemning the Americans without hearing them. On the 4th Sir William Meredith, affecting not to have changed his principles by selling himself, renewed his former motion for reviewing the Thirty-nine Articles. Sir Roger Newdigate, too obstinate a simpleton to change foolish principles, supported the Articles as usual. Burke, with much wit, ridiculed Sir W. Meredith and his apostacy; but defending the Articles with as much bigotry as Newdi- gate, whether to mark the reality of his apostacy from Rome, or being so little a convert that he still was pre- judiced to popish tenets. No division was attempted. On the 5th there was another debate and slender division on the Bostonian Bills. On the discussion of these Acts the doors of both Houses were carefully locked a symptom of the spirit with which they were dictated. About the same time the King at last gave a govern- * ment to Canada, 3 as indulgent to the Roman Catholics as to Royalty ; and as Parliament was now the instrument of despotism, the King, who might have imposed the new code by prerogative, permitted it to take its rise in the House of Lords. An hundred thousand Catholics 4 in v Canada were a good resource for the Crown against the ' independence affected by the Protestant colonies. In the midst of this triumphant career the Court was thunderstruck with an account of Louis XV., King of 8 Another remarkable event in the American quarrel. 4 General Gage, who commanded the troops against Boston, was son of Lord Gage, who had turned Protestant, but died a Catholic in 1754. 364 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. MAY, France, being seized with the smallpox. His resolution of going no more to war had authorised our Ministers to make an essay of the Crown's power by persecuting the Americans. A new King in France was as likely to go to war with us, perhaps to encourage, if not assist, our colonies. On the 6th the Duke and Duchess of Cumberland landed at Dover. The Pope had treated them with the highest distinction, and supplied them with galleys richly furnished on purpose to convey them from Civita Vecchia to France. On the \\th the Bostonian Bill was agitated in the Lords. i Bolland, the agent, petitioned to be heard, and was rejected, as by the Commons, on a division of 57 to 20. The Duke of Richmond spoke warmly for Boston ; said they would be in the right to resist, as punished unheard, and, if they did | resist, he should wish them success. Lord Camden spoke out too, though more moderately, saying he loved this country so well that, though in the wrong, he should wish it success. He then more warmly attacked Lord Mansfield, whom he treated as author of the bills and of all the present measures. Lord Mansfield, in a speech of an hour and a half, very artful but very timid, returned no attack, but purged himself of the bill, which he protested he had never seen till printed a falsehood too gross and incredible for any art to palliate. Lord Sandwich and Lord Lyttelton defended the bills, and the latter, as usual, attempted to provoke the Duke of Richmond. The House sat till eleven, when the bill was voted by about the same number as had rejected Bolland, but, to colour the violence with more names, proxies were produced. The next day eleven lords protested. That night arrived an express that the King of France 1774. BOSTONIAN AND QUEBEC BILLS. 365 was at the extremity on the 8th at eleven at night. The dismay of the Court here was notorious. Louis XV. died at three in the afternoon, May 10th, aged sixty-four years. Accounts that the people of Boston had made warm speeches at Liberty-tree and were laying in provisions of gun- powder. They did not then know of the proceedings going on against them. The Ministers here were so ill-informed in all they were doing that they passed the Quebec Bill in the Commons with so material a blunder that they were farced to add 16 clauses to correct it. Captain Phipps, who had been in America, asked such necessary questions, which the Ministers could not answer, that they stopped the debate while they sent about the town to get proper information. The Bostonian and Quebec Bills were disputed to the last by the small minority under the Duke of Richmond, rather than Lord Rockingham, who, however, spoke well on one of those debates. Lord Gower, Lord Sandwich, and Lord Dartmouth defended them, and Lord Mansfield till the last reading of the Quebec Bill, when, with his usual poltroonry, he absented himself on Lord Camden's having described him as the real Prime Minister. The Duke of Richmond reproached Lord Dartmouth with supporting these bills after having been one of the protestors against the Stamp Act. The Duke, being reproached by Lord Gower for dissenting from the majority and venting his opinions, answered, with just severity, that in the last rebellion no man had been questioned for speculative prejudices, though they might have had one foot in the stirrup to join the Pretender the case of Lord Gower 's father. Lord Hillsborough, all courtier as he was, op- posed the Quebec Bill, and, glancing at Lord Dartmouth, said it must have been the work of a child in politics. LAST JOURNALS OP HORACE WALPOLE. MAY, The latter answered, that was the objection of an old dotard. The dissenting Lords protested again. At the same time appeared a very sensible pamphlet, called * Considerations on the Present Measures,' said to be written by Lord Camden. I doubt it. Amidst the horror of these impolitic proscriptions no- thing was more shocking than the King's laughing and saying at his levee " that he had as lief fight the Bostonians * as the French" 6 It was only to be paralleled by James II. sporting on Jefferies's campaign in the west. The next thing remarkable was the complaisance of the Bishops, who lent themselves to those cruel bills and made no objections to the indulgences shown to the Roman Catholics in Quebec ! On the 18th Lord North opened the Budget, and was, as usual, ministerially admired and spoke with much wit. He went into and denied Colonel Barre's prosperous state of the finance of France, and then lamented the late pacific King and commended the new economic King, adding that it would be very unwise in us to provoke an economic king a timidity,, however prudent, very unbe- coming the dignity of a British Parliament ! His lamenta- tion was so dolorous that Burke told him he had thought ' his Lordship was going to move an address of condolence. T. Townshend and Burke were severe on the apostacy of Cornwall and Meredith, and on an additional pension to the Deputy Paymaster of 500/. a year, when the poor clerks in the office could not obtain a small addition. 6 Wliitoheod, the poet-laureate, in the Birthday Ode this year gave the King credit for higher principles, repro- Bentmg him as a prince whose sole ob- ject was " To guard, and not Invade, the world's repose." D. ' There were at this time on the pension-list a number of ex-royal wet- nurses, whose pensions amounted to 1600Z. per annum. These officials, after the expiration of their period of service, received 100Z. a-ycar, if they had nursed the younger children of the Royal family. The retiring pension of a nurse to the Prince of Wales or the Princess Royal amounted to 400?. a year. D. 1774. LORD CHATHAM. 367 I have said that Lord Chatham had instigated Lord Shelburne and Barre to oppose the American bills. He himself, on the prospect of the troubles arising in the colonies, had removed from Somersetshire to Hayes, still flattering himself that the Court or Opposition or the Americans would apply to him, but keeping a great re- serve towards Lord Shelburne and declining a visit from Lord Camden, who, though he combated some parts of the American bills, accused Lord Mansfield of being the arti- ficer of all, and instigated Dunning and everybody he could to oppose them, was so provoked by Lord Chatham's coldness and so willing to be Chancellor again, that on one of those debates he professed himself connected with no- body a declaration commonly understood to mean that the person who makes it is to be bought single, and will insist on nobody's being promoted but himself. It did not look much as if the Court were desirous of Lord Chatham's services, or asked them ; 7 and for the Rocking- ham party, they had a meeting in which they determined to take no notice of Lord Chatham's approach to town. This neglect made him at first have recourse to his old mummery of acting the gout ; 8 and though his presence was often threatened, he still delayed appearing. At last the death of the King of France roused him perhaps alarmed the Court enough to make some advances towards him and other circumstances concurred to put him in motion. Lord Temple, acting the same dignified retire- ment from the same dereliction by all mankind, had, 7 Lord Caermarthen said in the House of Commons that he heard Lord . Chatham approved of the Bostoiiiau bills, which Lord Holderness's son-in- law would not liave said had there been any treaty. 8 His eldest son, Lord Viscount Pitt, had just commenced his unlucky mili- tary career, at the age of eighteen, by proceeding to Quebec as ensign in the 47th Foot D. 368 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. MAY, though in town, not gone to the House of Lords. He breathed nothing but his late brother George's vengeance against America very ineffectually, for he had no influ- ence but over his nephews. Lord Chatham's former patronage of the Americans made them incompatible ; mutual insignificance and equal ambition now brought them together once more. Lady Chatham, Lord Temple's sister, had gained great weight over her husband during his long recess in the country. She was a blameless woman, strongly attached to her husband, and who could but wish to recommend her children to her brother, who was rich and childless. She and Thomas Pitt, Lord Chatham's nephew, who hated his uncle and had as cor- dially hated Lord Temple, and was too flimsy a speaker to rise again by his own weight, though he did not want parts, brought about a reunion of two chiefs without troops. The champion of America and Lord Temple, the repre- sentative of its persecutor Grenville, met on a kind of compromise that was a mere juggle of words, or rather of deliberate falsehoods, that could deceive nobody. This private treaty was no sooner sealed than Lord Lyttelton, the nephew and cousin of the two allies, went, by Lord Chatham's order, to Lord Gower in the House of Lords, and said Lord Chatham desired some day might be fixed for a debate on one of the American bills ; that Lord Chatham, who agreed on many points with Lord Temple (that was with the Ministry on those bills), might come and give his attendance. The day, as may be believed, was graciously settled for the 26?A, on the third reading of the Bill for Providing Quarters for the Officers and Troops in North Ame- rica. The two languid chiefs, worn out in constitution and fame, accordingly made their appearance. Lord 1774. LORD CHATHAM. 309 Temple spoke with animosity, but threw in two palliatives in compliment to Lord Chatham, neither of which were fully true, and which I shall mention presently. Lord Chatham, who was a comedian, 9 even to his dress, to excuse his late absence by visible tokens of the gout, /had his legs wrapped in black velvet boots, and as if in mourning for the King of France he leaned on a crutch covered with black likewise. He made a long feeble harangue, in which on one side he blamed the violence of the Bostonians, and on the other every step that had pro- voked them or been taken to chastise them. He talked high for the sovereignty of this country, but condemned the taxes : the result of all which he meant to insinuate was that he alone could assert the authority of England, and compose the differences in America. With the same intention he wandered into a vague detail on the state of Europe, was struck with the death of the Trench monarch, and, while he intimated it would produce a war, hoped that he alone would be thought fit to conduct one. Every- thing he saw deplorable, if not desperate, till he turned his eyes to a noble Lord who reminded him of the glorious state into which his Lordship had put the fleet. This was true, but nobody credited the sincerity of the compliment. Lord Sandwich (the person alluded to) was apt to ridicule Lord Chatham's rhapsodies, and had done so in the House ' of Lords. He was remarkably well too with the King, and it was an intimation that their Lordships would not be incompatible should Lord Chatham return to power. It was at least to deprecate Sandwich's opposing his return. Never did an oration make less sensation. The generality 9 Chase Price used to say that, at the levee, Lord Chatham was accustomed him could see the tip of his booked nose , between bis legs. D. to bow so low, that the persons behind VOL. I. 2 B 370 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. MAT, looked on it as a poor attempt at a little popularity as the Americans were now unpopular or perhaps at a little more pension. As the scope was" a recommendation of himself, he pleased nobody. It condemned the Ministers, and neither flattered the Opposition or the Americans. Lord Camden^ was not present. The Chancellor had by mistake sent him word that the debate was appointed for the 27th, instead of the 26th ; but though Lord Camden knew to the contrary, as the occasion was very public, he was so offended at Lord Chatham's coldness i and shuffling that he affected to believe he did not discover the Chancellor's mistake till it was too late. Lord Chatham himself explained the collusion between him and Lord Temple to my cousin Thomas Walpole, who was much connected with Lord Camden, and made Lord Chatham a visit two days afterwards. He found him in bed with affected fatigue or gout, and described to me the masquerade in which he found him, and which spoke that pride and madness which had reigned so strongly in his last administration. He was sitting up in bed, with a satin eider-down quilt on his feet. He wore a duffil cloak, without arms, bordered with a broad purple lace. On his head he had a nightcap, and over that a hat with a broad brim flapped all round. It was difficult not to smile at a figure whose meagre jaws and uncouth habili- ments recalled Don Quixote when he received the Duenna to an audience after he had been beaten and bruised, and was wrapped up in serecloths. Pretending to Walpole to adhere to his favourable sentiments towards the Ameri- cans, he said he had been comforted to hear Lord Temple declare that he had never positively given his approbation to the Stamp Act, and that Lord Temple had said too in the House of Lords that Mr. George Grenville had first proposed to make a requisition to the Americans. Both 1774. LORD CHATHAM. 371 were fallacies on both sides. Lord Temple had dropped these declarations as a seeming approach to Lord Chatham, they were nothing but words settled between them a shallow contrivance that Lord Chatham, if restored, might pretend to begin with a requisition of taxes to save their credit, and then to tax them whether they yielded or refused. But Lord Temple had never formally approved the Stamp Act ; but had he not embraced all the violences of his brother on that subject ? had he not joined him on the repeal ? did he not vote against the repeal ? had he not acted ever since was he not acting now on the same plan ? What wretched evasions, and what liars are politicians ! T. Walpole questioned Lord Chatham on the other point, and that proved as hollow. Mr. Grenville, he could only say, had talked to the agents of the colonies, and had asked them if the provinces would on requisition tax themselves ? The agents replied they must consult their principals ; but Mr. Grenville had gone no farther, and had passed the Stamp Act without making any requi- sition. When age and debility can stoop to such subter- fuges, what excesses are blameable in youth ? How should the parts and passions of a Charles Fox not precipitate him into loss of character when the dregs of ambition can dictate such meanness ? But though Lord Chatham was in general not hostile to Administration, the Duke of Richmond took advantage of one part of his disapprobation, and, dividing the House, drew him into the minority, which, I think, was too great a compliment to him. At the end of the month a ship arrived from Boston, and, it was said, reported that the Bostonians, having ! received advice of the intended severities, meant to stand on their defence. 2 B 2 372 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. JUKE, JUNE. 2nd. A BILL, which had passed the Commons, to relieve booksellers who had bought property in copies, was thrown out by the Lords by 2 1 to 1 1 . The impudent Sir John Dalrymple had impudently pleaded at the bar of the other House against the booksellers, and, like a Star Chamber tool, arraigned newspapers. The counsel on the other side urged his not only having sold his book for 2000/., but produced a letter under his own hand in which he had pleaded strongly the cause of the booksellers. This was the wretch who had traduced Virtue and Algernon Sidney. 3rd. The City of London presented a strong petition against the Quebec Bill, but it was only ordered to lie on the table. The Opposition, however, prevailed to have witnesses examined, which the Lords had not done ; but though great evidence appeared of the bad consequences the bill would have, the tight majority overruled all convic- tion. Dr. Harriot, Advocate-General for Quebec, though he had given his opinion against the bill, evaded shame- fully giving the House satisfaction. 1 It was proposed to examine General Murray, who was present, and Lord North consented ; but the General stepping out of the House, Lord North would not let him be sent for. T. Townshend reproached him so warmly with his shuf- fling, that Lord North fell into the most ridiculous passion. 1 Vide the debate in the ' London Chronicle ' of June 4th. 1774. QUEBEC BILL. 373 9 ' for which he was eeverely handled by Townshend, and with much humour by Charles Fox ; yet the obsequious majority of 90 to 36 supported Lord North even in this paltry refusal. The House continued to sit day after day, and till late at night, on the same bill, every step of which was hotly contested and some points were altered. On the 7th, Lord North persisting at past eleven at night to go on with the bill, Burke made an angry speech and complaint of the heat and fatigue, and left the House, followed by others of the Opposition. This alarmed Lord North, and he suffered the House to break up. It was time to grow alarmed, for accounts had been just received that New York had taken almost as warm a part as Boston, and had seized and sent away a cargo of tea. The example of so great and potent a province was likely to have great influence on the other colonies. At the same time came advice that at Philadelphia they had burnt the effigies of Alexander Wedderburn, Solicitor- General, for his aspersing Dr. Franklin ; and of Governor Hutchinson for his evil intentions. On the Sth the bill was again warmly fought and the dangers of it exposed, as well as the objections to it detailed, particularly the extension of the limits of the province so as to involve many Protestants under a Roman Catholic jurisdiction. Indeed it was evident that the Court was preparing a Catholic army to keep the colonies j in as great subjection as they had been when Canada had been in the hands of the French. 2 Much was said too on the production of the bill so late in the session, when some 1 Choiseul justified the surrender of ! trouble to this country, be the ruin , Canada to England on this strange j of the latter in less than a century. 1 ground, that the colony would, by being D. a constant drain on and an increasing 374 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. JUKE, years had been taken to concoct it. Nobody, strong as the Ministers were, would, however, venture to own himself the parent ; and Lord Mansfield, who nobody doubted was the author, disavowed it. Still the Opposition could carry no point, though scarce anybody spoke in its behalf, but left the whole burthen on Lord North, who proposing to adjourn the last reading to the 10th, because Lord Stanley was to give a great entertainment on the 9th, 3 T. Towns- hend and others ridiculed him severely, and told him the Pretender's birthday, the 10th of June, was a proper festi- val for finishing a bill of so Stuart a complexion. It was finished on the 10^ and sent to the Lords, who on the 17 th completed it. Lord Chatham, who had pro- bably expected that he should be sent for to Court on the tender he had made of his services in his last speech, and was disappointed, came in a very different mood, and bit- terly arraigned the bill in every part, especially on the taking away of juries and the protection of the Roman Ca- tholic religion. He said the bill was a breach of the Reform- ation, of the Revolution, and of the King's Coronation Oath ; and he put it home to tlwse scandalous tools, the Bishops, who had denied security to the Presbyterians on a law which the Church owned itself ashamed to execute, how they could countenance so gross a violation of the Protest- ant religion. But what availed it to apostrophize men so hardened to shame and infamy ! Do they not, if a Peer 3 The entertainment was given at the Oaks, near Epsom, in honour of Lord Stanley's intended bride, the I^ady Betty Hamilton, only daughter of the late Duke of Hamilton, whose widow was then Duchess of Argylo. This splendid and fantastic affair was con- ducted by General Burgoyne, who, fur- ther to celebrate the occasion, com- posed expressly his once popular piece, the ' Maid of the Oaks.' It was in this piece that Mra Abington set the Inwu mad with delight by her inimitaMo performance of Lady Bab Lardoon ; a character which, subsequently, was vainly attempted by Mrs. J5ull Irv. Mrs. Pope, and Miss Wallis, and in which even Mrs. Jordan was inferior to MIC sparkling, rattling, und unapproach- able original. D. 1774. CONDUCT OF THE BISHOPS. 375 is tried for murder, excuse themselves from voting, as they dare not meddle in cases of blood? and had they not boldly voted in the recent instance of sending an army to cut the throats of the Bostonians ? Yet a few had shame, though no conscience. The Bishop of London, Terrick, who had in private condemned the present bill, and one or two more Bishops, did withdraw on Lord Chatham's remonstrance. Bishop Shipley 4 alone voted against the bill, and had the courage to preach and publish a sermon against using violence with the Americans ; but Terrick, after thus compromising the matter between God and the King, pretended to excuse himself for retiring, by saying he was to have company to dinner an excellent excuse for a Bishop when the interests of Protestantism were at stake ; and a falsehood too, for Bishop North was to dine with him, who, Terrick was sure, would stay out the debate and vote for Popery ; and Terrick was too well-bred a courtier to go to dinner without the Minister's brother. Terrick and the others who withdrew were too good courtiers and too bad Christians to vote against the bill. Dr. Cornwallis, the ^chbishop, too inoffensive a man to give such scandal, walked out to vote at the head of the majority, and was followed by Bishop North, the Minister's brother, who was also waiting for the Archbishopric of 4 Shipley, Bishop of St. Asaph, was j for publishing a libel. It was at this at this time sixty years of age. His ; memorable trial that Erskme made his hostility against those who were for i glorious stand against the tyrannical taking extreme measures against the principle that a jury was not competent Americans is supposed to have pre- to say whether the alleged publication vented his attaining any further pre- was libellous or not ; the only office of ferment. His daughter married Sir that body being to pronounce on the William Jones, whose harmless little fact of publication of what was already pamphlet, ' Dialogue between a Gentle- declared to be a libel. Erskine never man and a Farmer,' brought the Bishop's was so great as when he first fought son, the famous Dean of St. Asaph, into for a principle which he ultimately es- great tribulation in 1784. For publish- tablished, and which honourably con- ing this useful tract within the diocese nected his name with the then popular of St. Asapb, the Dean was indicted one of Shipley. D. 376 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. JUNE, York for Dr. Drummond was dying, and for Canter- bury too, when he saw the Bishop of London retire. Lord Chatham, at the close of his speech, went so far as to say that the mask icas now thrown off, and arbitrary power openly aimed at. Lord Lyttelton answered him, and Lord Dartmouth, for the Court had gained both the \ most profligate and the most pious. Lord Temple was out of town. The Court, notwithstanding, had been able to muster but twenty-five Lords to countenance so flagrant an act. The opponents were but seven, at the head of whom was the Duke of Gloucester. His Royal Highness had till now had the decency never to vote in a direct question against the King. It was judicious in him in so religious a cause to let it be seen that at least one Prince of the House of Hanover had the Protestant cause at heart. 5 Without doors the bill gave much offence, yet did not make half the noise that a thousand points of infi- nitely less importance used to make. Many things con- curred to this indifference. The eyes of mankind were much opened, and there was much less credulity both in Papists and Protestants than in tfce last century, conse- quently their animosity was less, and zeal always increases or decreases in proportion to opposition. The only zealous were \ the Methodists, and their teachers were either favourers or copyists of Popery. Even the Duke of Richmond had been less warm against this bill than usual. His principle was toleration, and even to serve the cause of his country he would not contradict his opinion. But the capital reason why the establishment of Popery in so large a 6 This severe article appeared in the ' Public Advertiser ' on this occasion : " Tin said that a great pursonni" IKI-- taken an additional disgust at another great personage's dividing with the minority on Friday last. This is the second heinous offence the latter Im* Id-en guilty of; the first committing matrimony, and now professing a Protestant." 1774. THE CLERGY. 377 portion of the empire made no more noise was certainly this: The Clergy of the Established Church, whose duty- it was to oppose it, are not only too apt to connive at V Popery when countenanced by the Crown (as they did no- toriously in the reigns of James I. and Charles I.), but were now interested both by temporal and bigoted reasons, which are always weighty with priests, to wink at the en- croachments and evil designs of the Court. The Presby- terians and a few of the moderate Clergy were striving to have the penal laws against the former mitigated, and the nonsensical Thirty-nine Articles not made essential to | taking orders. Though justice and common sense de- manded these conscientious alleviations, the higher Clergy could not bear to hear of them, and therefore took care not to offend a Court that favoured Popery rather than the f Presbyterians and the conscientious. In the reign of James II. the English Clergy were honester men in all these respects, and softened towards the Dissenters rather than towards the Papists. Perhaps the Presbyte- rians were a little like our Clergy, and would not clamour against Popery, hoping the King would imitate James II. , in favour to Dissenters as well as to Roman Catholics. For j the present Bench of Bishops, they had neither piety enough to care about their religion, sense enough to see the danger of the constitution, nor virtue enough, if they saw the danger of both, to care about either. There was yet another reason that weighed with the Bishops to fall in with the views of the Court. They had long sighed to erect bishoprics in America, and they v could not doubt but, when a Popish Bishop was tolerated in Canada, the Crown, if predominant in that continent by the sword, would establish the hierarchy there. Thus the war in the eyes of the Clergy became a religious war 378 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. JUNK, against Dissenters. Vide Mr. Hollis's Memoirs, in which it appears that the Archbishop, who had been bred a Presby- terian and died a freethinker, had been earnest in the scheme of planting Episcopacy in America. The indifference manifested towards the bill, mentioned above, is not the worst omen of what may be attempted. What may not be attempted when in one bill Parliament abrogates juries and establishes Popery ! James II. lost his Crown for such enormities : the Prince that wears it to the prejudice of that family is authorised by a free Parlia- ment to do what James was expelled for doing! A Prince cried up like Charles I. for his piety is as favour- able to Papists as Charles was ; and has a bench of Bishops as unjust to the Presbyterians, as propitious to Papists, as Charles had. And George III. has an army, which Charles had not, and has no able and honest men to oppose him as Charles had. He has too a Scotch Chief Justice abler than Laud, though not so intrepid as Lord Strafford. Laud and Strafford lost their heads Lord Mansfield would not lose his, for he would die of fear if he were in danger, of which, unfortunately, there is no prospect ! This nation has had many escapes : Heaven can work them for us when there is no prospect. O Liberty, thou first of blessings, may Heaven preserve thee in this almost only country in which thou dost exist! Shall a Prince whose family was brought hither to defend thee shall servile Peers, venal Members of Parliament, and Bishops, who in this country are allowed to have the com- fort of posterity, sacrifice thee and their posterity for titles and pay that are equally a reproach to them ? A Prince may be punished by obtaining his own object Despotism ; for no man is exposed to so much danger as an absolute monarch. The slaves who lift the yoke on their necks 1774. PETITION AGAINST QUEBEC BILL. 379 deserve no pity ; but the innocent unborn, the happy merchant and husbandman, deserve compassion. The thought is so shocking, the prospect so gloomy, I am almost tempted to burn my pen and discontinue my Journal. I will continue it in hopes of better days. The City of London, by the influence of the Lord Mayor and Sheriffs, who were governed by Wilkes, voted a strong petition to the King not to pass the bill, in which they taxed him plainly with a breach of his coronation oath if he passed it, and told him he had no right to the Crown but as protector of the Protestant religion. When they arrived at Court, the Lord Chamberlain told them that, as they brought a petition against a bill that had passed both Houses, he could give them no answer and did not. The King went immediately to the House of Lords, as it was the last day of the session, passed the bill, and prorogued the Parliament, 6 but only to the 4th of August, to be ready against bad news from America. Those that were actually received were not entirely satis- factory : though General Gage had been quietly received at Boston, the inhabitants had assembled in Council, and voted to invite the other colonies to unite with them in stopping all trade with England. The Court were certainly alarmed, and Lord Mansfield very much so. It was published in the papers that the King, who had received General Moyston very graciously, and even had the indecency to joke with him at the levee on his trial, had now read the trial, and was so much offended at Moyston's conduct, that he had forbidden the Attorney-General to plead for him on his appeal for a new 6 . This was on June 22nd : the mob I the cry of ' No POPERY ' was re-echoed were very clamorous in his passage. ! from every quarter, and the noisy ex- " His Majesty was much insulted in his pressions of displeasure were greater way to the House of Peers yesterday ; than his Majesty ever yet heard." 380 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. JUKE, trial. Lord Mansfield too, who had abolished juries in Quebec, now made a canting panegyric in favour of Eng- lish justice, on behalf of some Armenian merchants who had come from India to complain of Governor Varelst. So little spirit and address was there wanting to terrify the Court out of their worst designs ! The whole colour of the reign, and glaring in the conduct of both the King and Lord Mansfield, was a mixture of despotism, cowardice, and hypocrisy. The Anti-Court party in the City had intended a pro- cession to affront and go before the King to the House, and had prepared to carry figures of the Pope and the Devil ; but the Government getting wind of the design, it was laid aside. The mob, however, was very abusive, and some persons, dressed at least like gentlemen, held out their fists at the King, and cried out " Remember Charles I. ! Eemember James II. ! " The mob also cried out, "Long live the Duke of Gloucester! " The King was so hurt and alarmed, that when he came to the Lords he trembled, he faltered, and could scarcely pronounce his Speech. On the 24th the Duchess of Gloucester was delivered of a second princess. 7 The flame against the Quebec Bill, though it offended all serious men, did not spread; and though the insults it drew on the King had been so open, they appeared rather to have been raised by Wilkes than by general odium, to carry the election of Sheriffs, which came on immediately after the recess of Parliament. Wilkes set up two obscure men, Williams and Greive ; and to excite disaffection they published this extraordinary advertisement : Caroline. This priucoea died March 14th, 1775. D. 1774. ELECTION OF SHERIFFS. " To the Worthy Independent Protestant Livery of London. GENTLEMEN, June 28. The favour of your Interest and Poll is most earnestly re- quested for JOHN WILLIAMS, ESQ., Citizen and Needle-maker, and GEORGE GREIVE, ESQ., Citizen and Frame-work-Knitter, to be Sheriffs of this City and County of Middlesex, for the year ensuing ; they being gentlemen most firmly attached to the princi- ples of our glorious and invaluable Constitution, and determined enemies of the Romish religion, as now by King and Parliament established. The numbers at the close of the poll yesterday were : For John Williams, Esq 198 George Greive, Esq. . . . .197 William Plomer, Esq. , . . -. 579 John Hart, Esq. . ... -t . 580 The poll will begin this day at nine o'clock, and close at three. i^T The friends of Mr. Williams and Mr. Greive are desired to meet this morning at ten o'clock (and every morning during the poll) at the Paul's Head Tavern, Cateaton Street, in order to proceed from thence in a body to Guildhall to poll for these gen- tlemen." The Court candidates were, however, declared ; but the Wilkites demanded a poll, but were so much outnumbered that in a very few days Williams and Greive declined the poll, and Aldermen Plomer and Hart were declared sheriffs. This was a great blow to Wilkes, 8 and showed how much he was fallen ; new evidence of the folly of the Opposition, and partly the consequence of Lord Shel- burne's treachery, of which at this moment he probably 8 Crosby and Sir Watkin Lewes, his I occasion. See the ' Public Advertiser ' warm friends, betrayed him on this | of July 14, 1774. 382 LAST JOUKNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. repented, though his friend Alderman Townshend had embarked so deeply against Wilkes that he joined in sup- porting the Court sheriffs. Wilkes had set up these candi- dates, that Reynolds, his favourite agent, might be under- sheriff, and he be more sure of the returning officer against the general election. Accounts from Virginia that they had refused to join with Boston in cutting .off trade with us, urging that Boston had broken the former agreement. This was foreseen here, as the islands could not subsist without trade. Go- vernor Gage in his speech at Boston hinted that the port might soon be restored to them. 29th. Died Dr. Pearce, Bishop of Rochester. 9 9 Zachaiy Pearce was the son of a distiller in Holborn, where he was born in 1690. He passed with credit through Westminster School and Trinity College, Cambridge, and had the good luck to find a patron in Lord Chancellor Mac- clesfield. So great was the influence of the latter that he procured the appoint- ment of Pearce to the rectory of St. Bartholomew's, London, after Dr. Claget had kissed the hand of George I. on the same appointment. In 1748 he was, to his great regret, created Bishop of Bangor, and six years later was raised, against his will, to the see of Rochester. A subsequent offer to ele- vate him to the see of London, was at once and for ever declined by him. In his old age, this commentator onLongi- nus, Cicero, and Milton, the opponent of Woolston, and the upholder of Water- land, in vain sought for permission to withdraw from the episcopate, "lest" (he said) " I might chance to outlive my faculties, and the church suffer by my infirmities." He acquired a large fortune by marrying the daughter of another Holborn distiller ; and when a widower and childless, he bequeathed munificently to public charity. It was not in allusion to his matter but to his manner that Churchill (who managed, when flinging mud at another man, to kick the Bishop also) said : " In lawn he whispcr'd to a sleeping crowd, As dull as Rochester, and half as proud." The Bishop had a proper sense of pro- fessional and also of self-dignity, hence the sarcasm of Churchill. D. 1774. DEATH OF LORD HOLLAND. 383 JULY. 1st. DIED Henry Fox, Lord Holland. He expired easily, quite worn out in mind and body. (Lord Holland left everything to his wife, and 400,000?. of public money. She paid all the debts of her two eldest sons : so Stephen remained possessed of 10,000?. a year; Charles with a place of 600?. a year, an estate of 200?. and 10,000?. in money ; Henry, the youngest, had 20,000?. and 900?. a year. It was certain that Lord Holland died still much richer than he had pretended, but how much was not known. I have since doubted of Lord Holland's riches ; at least, when his son Stephen died, it was but a moderate estate that came to the grandson.) New accounts that they had proclaimed a solemn Fast in Virginia in behalf of Boston : and that at a meeting in Maryland they had determined an association against trading with England, or paying their debts to us. Vide ' Public Advertiser ' of July 5. Very treasonable papers, abusing the King, his father's mother, and threatening him with assassination for the Quebec Bill, were affixed at St. James's, the Mews, and other public places, and on all or most of the churches in London. 1 1 This epigram was printed in the 1 Public Advertiser,' July 29. " One of our monarchs (probably not King George II.) is said to have been ex- ceedingly offended on finding the fol- lowing lines, written with a pencil, in one of the pavilions of Kichmond gar- den. They seem intended for a parody of the famous epitaph upon King Charles, by Wilinot, Earl of Rochester : God bless our bishop-making King ! But send us soon a new one, To do perchance a grievous thing, And sometimes speak a true one. Jfei-lin." 384 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. JULY, At the beginning of the month the Duchess of King- ston returned to England, on advice that the Meadowses, nephews of the Duke, had got proofs of her former mar- riage with Captain Hervey. Her lawyer, however, had written to warn her not to come, as he found they thought of prosecuting her for bigamy. She arrived at ten at night, but he waited for her, and persuaded her to de- camp, which she did at three in the morning, and at nine the officers of justice, as it was said, went to her house to seize her. 22nd. Duke of Gloucester's second daughter christened Caroline Augusta Maria; the Duchess herself, and the Prince and Princess of Brunswick, were sponsors. 24A. Lady Holland died of an internal cancer after many months of dreadful sufferings. For some weeks she had taken 500 and 600 drops of laudanum every day. 2 2 When Lady Georgina Caroline Lenox, eldest daughter of the Duke of Richmond, married, in 1744, Henry Fox (afterwards first Lord Holland), a man of rather humble descent, the sur- prise at the lady's condescension was very general, and yet Lady Georgina was only great-granddaughter of a natural son of Charles II., by his " Ca- tholic " mistress, the French " Duchess of Portsmouth." Her family saw with ill-will her liking for Henry Fox, and announced to her the coming of another wooer ; but she rendered an introduc- tion to him impossible by previously cutting off her eyebrows. Ere they had quite grown again she had married the dashing commoner, Henry Fox. She was the sister of Lady Sarah Lenox, who is said to have won the young affections of George III. ; and who subsequently married Sir Thomas Bun- bury, and afterwards Mr. Napier. The first Lord Holland died in his 70th year. His widow was only fifty-one years of age. When she cut off her eye- brows for the sake of Henry Fox she was only twenty-one years old, and the lover for whom she made the temporary sacrifice was her senior by nearly a score of years ! D. 1774. AFFA1HS 01' DUKE OF GLOUCESTER. 385 AUGUST. THE month opened with very unpromising news from , America. The assembly at Boston was very firm, and, declaring against making composition for the teas, was dissolved by General Gage. So was that of New Hamp- shire by Governor Wentworth. Several towns entered into a solemn league and covenant not to trade with Great Britain, unless the majority of the colonies should think it necessary. General Gage issued a proclamation against this covenant, declaring it illegal and hostile. At New York they burnt the effigies of Lord North, Wedderburn, and Governor Hutchinson ; but what was more to their ) purpose, they persuaded 500 of the new landed soldiers to desert, an event that had been foretold here. On this it was resolved to send over more regiments. I must interrupt the events of the year to return to the affairs of the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester. They were exceedingly embarrassed in their affairs and greatly in debt. On the 27th of January the Duchess sent for me, and told me the Duke had ordered her to speak to me on their situation ; that he intended to apply to Parliament ; but she expressed herself so mysteriously that I did not clearly understand whether his Royal Highness proposed to ask for a settlement on her or for an additional income for himself I thought the latter, and spoke only on that. She added, that the Duke wished I would prevail on the Duke of Richmond to move it. I was much struck with the extreme impropriety of so ill-advised a measure, that VOL. i. 2 c 386 LAST JOUENALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. AUG. was totally hopeless of success, and that only could tend to widen the breach, and draw a parliamentary approbation of the King's rigour. I saw it would draw ruin on the Duchess herself; and I loved the Duke of Richmond too well to embark him in a step that would not only be a personal affront to the King, but would be universally con- demned, and thence become universally ridiculed. I told the Duchess I would certainly obey the Duke and acquaint the Duke of Richmond, but that I must beg leave to express my total disapprobation of a measure that I saw would prove so fatal to both their Royal Highnesses. I said, I had always and would always dissuade any hostile steps in the Duke towards his Majesty ; and that in the present case I must remonstrate how highly improper it would be to apply for increase of income to Parliament, before the application had been made to the King; and that, in one word, I thought the Duke ought, previous to all other conduct, to ask his Majesty's pardon. " The King," continued I, "is not only, Madam, his Royal High- ness's King, but elder brother, and I advise nothing but what I would practise. I would not submit to ask pardon of any other man living, but of my brother ; and you know, Madam, that I have asked pardon of your father, when he has been the person in the wrong, only because he is my elder brother. I would have the Duke ask the King's pardon, and then entreat the Bench of Bishops to be media- tors, and urge to his Majesty's piety the duties of forgive- ness and reconciliation. You know, Madam, that what I say is not from affection or to pay my court ; but when the Duke does me the honour to consult me, I must and will give him my opinion freely and honestly.'-' The Duchess took what I said in good part, but did not seem to think the Duke would take my advice. At night, 1774. AFFAIRS OF DUKE OF GLOUCESTER. 387 having well considered the affair, I wrote her the following letter, in hopes that it would open the Duke's eyes on the imprudence of his plan, when he saw how very strong the arguments were against it : MADAM, The most proper mark of respect that I can show to the Duke or to your Royal Highness on a subject of such momentous importance, is to use as few words as possible. I am not wise enough to advise, much less to decide upon it, nor do I know a man in England who I think could advise the Duke upon it with good effect. All I can do is to suggest what comes into my mind on the most intent thought and coolest reflection ; submitting my sentiments with the utmost deference to his Royal Highness's judgment. No man living has a higher opinion of the Duke of Richmond's unequalled honour and integrity than I have. I respect his spirit and abilities, and am as sure as I can be of anything that he is incapable of an unworthy action. Still I should not recommend him for the mover, if the question is resolved upon. The Duke of Richmond 1 is particularly unwelcome to his Majesty ; and the measure will be thought the more hostile if proposed by his Grace. The question itself seems to me most unlikely of success. The Ministers will plead that when the King, however necessitous, does not ask for an increase of income, from the present distressed situation of the country, it cannot be reasonable to augment the revenue of his brothers. An increase of the King's own revenue might be supposed to include the charge of his own children ; but an addition to that of his brothers would not lessen the burthen of his own issue. And it would infallibly be urged that so numerous a progeny as his Majesty's makes it imprudent to establish a precedent of such large revenues for each Prince of the Royal Family. 1 In all the previously printed copies of this letter, instead of " the Duke of Richmond," we have "the Duke of K ," evidently a mistake of the printer, for B. All Walpole's editors have overlooked the error, although the writer of the letter was concluding his paragraph with reference to the same man and the same matter with which it was commenced. D. 2 c 2 388 LAST JOURNALS OP HORACE WALPOLE. AUG. In any case, so great is the power of the Crown, and so infamous the servility of Parliament, that there cannot be the shadow of hope that an increase could be obtained for the two Royal Dukes against the King's inclination. But a question moved and lost, as undoubtedly this would be, could only make his Royal Highness's case worse, if possible, than it is at present. His Royal Highness's father, though Heir-apparent to an old King, could not obtain an increase of income, when parties ran high, and were almost equally divided. His Royal Highness the Duke of Gloucester can hold out neither hopes nor rewards ; and in the very low ebb of Opposition, would obtain scarce any support. When so few pay common respect by waiting on him, though not discountenanced for it, would they vote for him ? no, not all that now pay their duty to him. The question moved and lost would change the state of the case to his Royal Highness's disadvantage. His treatment may now be thought hard. When he should have had recourse to Opposition, which a parliamentary application would be called, the courtiers would term it a hostile measure, and thus claim a sanction for their servility, by affecting to support offended Majesty. The King himself would then too plead that he only acted by the opinion of Parliament, who did not think it reasonable to increase the income of the two Princes. And the most moderate Ministers, if any such there are, who may have wished a reconcilia- tion between the King and his brothers, will then oppose it, as concluding that, by voting against them, they have made the two Royal Dukes their personal enemies. Thus every door to a reconciliation in the Royal family would be shut, and no advantage gained. On the contrary, his Royal Highness would only let the world know how few friends stand by him. When so few even of the Opposition wait on him, I doubt whether they would be heartier friends to his interest. These seem to me insurmountable difficulties. It is still more arduous for me to chalk out an alternative. I presumed to tell your Royal Highness, Madam, when you first mentioned this great point to me, that I thought the first step in wisdom to be taken was to engage the favour of mankind to the Duke's cause by showing he had done everything rather than act in what might be called a hostile manner. His Royal Highness 1774. AFFAIRS OF DUKE OF GLOUCESTER. 389 will, I flatter myself, forgive me, if I use even an improper term. A\ ill it be too free-spoken in so important a moment to say, that, previous to an application to Parliament, which should in prudence be the last resort, it would recommend even that application if the Duke could show he had tried every method of softening his Majesty's displeasure ? Nobody knows so well as his Royal Highness how to mix dignity with propriety. Could not his Royal Highness, Madam, blend those two in a representation of his youthful error, of his concern for having afflicted an affectionate brother and King, of tenderness for a wife and a sweet little innocent Princess, calling on his Majesty's piety for forgiveness, and by touching his heart on his own conjugal and parental affec- tions ; and above all by stating his own anxious cares on the incertitude of the fate of persons so dear to him as your Royal Highness and the infant Princess his daughter ! These, Madam, are noble motives, and would justify a tender and fraternal appli- cation to his Majesty's heart, and would distress it far differently from a question in Parliament. They would engage the com- passion of the disinterested world; and in the last resort would corroborate in the strongest manner all arguments in Parliament, where it would certainly be asked if his Royal Highness had used any intercession with the King his brother. When the Duke had tried all other methods in vain, such application would not be con- demned : and the preference of all softer methods first would redound to his Royal Highness's honour. Having said this much, Madam, I think my conscience and duty oblige me to add, that I think it indispensably incumbent on those who have the honour to be related to your Royal Highness to give you no advice but such as may tend to repair the breaches which the Duke's tenderness for you has occasioned in the Royal Family. The good of his Royal Highness calls on you and on us to consult his welfare in the first instance. You have always told me how desirous you are of sacrificing yourself for him. I know the up- rightness of your heart, Madam, and I know you spoke truth. Advise him to whatever is most for his benefit and credit. Do your duty by him, and trust to a just God for reward. In the presence of that God I have given you the best advice in my power. I am sure I have not displeased you by my free- dom : 1 hope I have not offended his Royal Highness ; but I declare on my conscience and honour that I know not what 390 LAST JOURNALS OF HOEACE WALPOLE. AUG. better advice to give, and I sign it with my name, as the firm opinion of Madam, Your Royal Highness's most faithful and devoted humble servant, HOKACE WALPOLE. January 27th, 1774. To this letter I received no answer. The next time I saw the Duchess she told me she had given the Duke the letter, who said I had mistaken the affair, and he would explain it to me. This intimated that he meant to ask a provision for her and the child, rather than for himself yet my arguments were equally good against both ; and though the Duke never said a word to me on the business more, it was plain he thought so too, for he laid aside his design. I believe, however, that he did not like my free- dom, though for some time he treated me with more regard. I showed the letter to the Duke of Richmond, who entirely agreed with my sentiments, and had no mind to be made the instrument, for he knew even his own friends, Lord Rockingham and the Cavendishes, would not have sup- ported him in the motion, which would have left him single in a wrongheaded measure, though he said he would obey if the Duke of Gloucester insisted on it. But the latter did not attempt it farther, knowing he was not likely to persuade the Duke of Richmond against my opinion. I had wished his Royal Highness would write such a letter to the King as I had suggested ; but he was too haughty to stoop. Still he did not drop the plan of a provision for the Duchess and her children, and in the beginning of May, desiring Lord Rochford to notify to the King that the Duchess expected to be brought to bed in less than two months, he added his request that a provision might be 177-t. AFFAIRS OF DUKE OF GLOUCESTER. 391 made for her and his children ; adding, that he did not desire an immediate answer. Accordingly he received none in a week, and then a very cold and evasive message. " Then," said the Duke angrily, " I must take care of my- self." Lord Rochford replied, " Your Royal Highness did not go so far as this last year." " No," said the Duke, " I had a mind to save the King's credit, but, seeing he does not, I must." Lord Rochford, in a fright, said he hoped his Royal Highness would not apply to Parliament. " No," said the Duke, " I am not going directly to Parlia- ment, but I will see what friends I have." Even this threat terrified, and the next time they met in the House of Lords Lord Rochford told the Duke he had been in such distress the last time he spoke to his Royal Highness, that he had forgot half his message, and that the King had ordered him to say he had not yet thought of his own children. On this opening, the Duke sent for Lord Roch- ford to his own palace, and said, he did not put his children on a foot with the King's, they would certainly be taken care of. " So will your Royal Highness's," interrupted Lord Rochford. "Yes," said the Duke, " very shabbily ; but tell the King I ask it." Lord Rochford returned with answer, that the King would have nothing to do with them. The Duke, justly provoked at so brutal an answer, replied with spirit, "This is manly but I will try what I can do, though I know it will not succeed." Lord Rochford, who again executed but half his message, had been commis- sioned, after bullying, to pacify with hopes, possibly to de- ceive with hopes not meant to be realized. He added then, that he had spoken to Lord North of himself ; and that the latter had told him the King could go on no longer himself without money, and whenever he asked it for himself lie could not avoid mentioning his brothers ; and that he (Lord 392 LAST JOUENALS OP HORACE WALPOLE. AUG. North) looked on the Duke's children as children of the Crown, and that they must be provided for. This was exactly the spirit of the Court, to do injustice and endeavour to soften it with -declarations and promises. At this very time the Duke tasted of the King's deter- mination to persecute him when he dared. Sir W. Meredith, one of the Duke's particular friends, probably to debauch him from the Duke as well as from patriotism, had been enrolled in the Court with a white stick. He was to have been a Commissioner of the Treasury ; but as George Onslow, one of that board, had been suffered to go to Gloucester House, they could not prohibit Sir W. Meredith, if in the same station, and therefore they made him Comptroller, and then forbad him, as a domestic servant of the King, to go to the Duke. Some said, Sir William officiously asked whether he might go thither, and was told not. He himself said he received orders from Lord Eochford; however, he still professed strong attachment to the Duke, and took all opportunities of speaking to the Duke in public ; but if he had had that attachment, he would not have deserted him at all. Poor George Onslow made a still worse figure. On hearing of Sir William's prohibition, he, though connived at, took panic, and sent the Duke an excuse for waiting on him no more. When interest and servility were so gross, was I in the wrong to counsel the Duke not to hope anything from Parliament, where dirt was most glaring ? General George Howard, and John Blaquiere, Secretary of the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, were created Knights of the Bath. Neither were men of any parts. The latter had exercised a successful ministry, being the acting agent for dispensing the sums which were requisite to regain the willing proselytes whom Lord Townshend's absurdities 1774. RUMOURED DEATH OF LORD LYTTELTON. 393 had unwillingly driven into Opposition. Ireland was once more tranquillized ; but grew a heavy burthen on the Government, for it is impossible to corrupt men, and keep \ them moderate. When all men took money, it was not ' easy to find money enough. If that fails, recourse must be had to the army, and the King, Lord Mansfield, and the Scotch, seem to be preparing against that necessity. The experiment is begun in America. The accounts from America continued unfavourable. The Bostonians, on being threatened, grew more zealous to take the solemn League and Covenant; and the spirit of breaking off commerce with England seemed to spread in the other colonies. General Gage in his private letters encouraged the Ministers to be firm, and that, if they would be so, they would prevail. 16^. Advice came of peace being concluded between the Russians and Turks. It was said to be occasioned by the whole Turkish army, consisting of 140,000 men, refusing to fight. 2 29M. Died Thomas, the new Lord Lyttelton, who had surprised the world with the badness of his heart, and with the dazzling facility of his eloquence ; and who had not had time to show whether his parts were sound and deep, nor whether the reformation he had but partially 2 This was not the case. Suwarrow defeated the Turks, 25,000 strong, in fair fight at Kozlidje, and the Russians then advanced upon Shumla, where the 8000 men under the Grand Vizier were in a state of disorganization. The peace which followed, as eagerly de- sired by the Russians as the Turks, gave renown to the famous treaty of Kainardji. The Turks had commenced the war in order to assist Poland ; but in the treaty the Poles were not once mentioned. By the terms of the treaty, Russia acquired great extent of terri- tory, and ample opportunity, whenever it suited her, to embroil Turkey by questioning the interpretation of clauses left purposely obscure. This charac- teristic shuffling did not altogether succeed. It led to those future felonious acts on the part of the Czar which were chastised by the Turkish triumph over the Muscovites at Oltenitza, by the disgraceful repulse suffered at Silis- tria, by the humiliation at Eupatoria, by the destruction of Sebastopol, and by the premature death of Nicholas, whose heart broke, before all the disas- ters enumerated had descended on his head. D. 394 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. AUG. affected since his father's death was sincere, or only the momentary effort of very marked ambition. Nothing had given it the colours of shame. The Bishops, whose prostitution he had defended, would no doubt have given him absolution. 3 Great variance between the Emperor and the King as Elector of Hanover, on the latter siding with the King of Prussia, and traversing him, as the Emperor said, in Germany. Lord Mansfield went to Paris, on a visit, as he pre- tended, to his nephew Lord Stormont, our ambassador there, probably to endeavour a nearer alliance with France in our present situation, the difficulties in the colonies increasing, and the power of the Emperor with his sister the Queen of France threatening us. Such kings and such ministers as ours were apt to court France when they meditated subversion of the Constitution at home. Lord Mansfield might wish to fathom the new views of the French Court, having lost there a congenial subverter of the government of a country. Lord Mansfield cer- tainly set out very privately, and tried both at Dover and Calais to pass by the name of Dr. Murray, but so many persons knew him that he found it impossible. I mention it only as a conjecture ; but who can doubt but Lord Mansfield went to endeavour to persuade the French Court not to interfere in our differences with America? to procure which he might promise all submission on our part to other views of France. It was the very conduct which Charles II. and James II. had held. That very 3 There was no truth in the report of Lord Lyttclton being dead ; nor was it a mere accidental rumour, but a false- hood propagated by himself. Ho hod mode his own steward send the news, in the name of his sister Lady Valcntia, to his first cousin and intimate friend, Captain Ayscough, with an account of his will, and of a large legacy to Hint cousin. This lie afterwards preU'iidi <1 to have done to try his cousin's affec- tion. [Ho died in 1779. D.] 1774. RELATIONS WITH FRANCE. 395 embassy of Lord Mansfield might confirm France in her design of supporting the Americans, as the more we feared it the more we should hear of it. It is now time to say a few words of the new French monarch Louis XVI.'; but this must be deferred to the end of the year, for at the latter end of September an extraordinary step was taken, which will very properly serve as an introduction to a new period. The share I took in the consequences, and the characters of some of the actors, will not only not be foreign to the matter, but illustrate it. 396 LAST JOURNALS OF HOKACE WALPOLE. SEPT. SEPTEMBER. I WAS at Strawberry Hill, almost desponding of the liberty of this country, from the abandoned profligacy and indif- ference of every higher order of men, and from the great stride which the Court, grown presumptuous on such passive obedience, had lately taken. I saw no chance of a free spirit arising, unless in America, and the accounts thence did not make me sanguine. The colonies had appointed a general meeting on the 3rd of this month, to consider of measures that might oblige this country to revoke its arbitrary and penal laws against Boston ; but there seemed more caution, diffidence, and irresolution in their councils than warm patriotism ; and it was much to be apprehended that Scotch governors, interested mer- chants, and local necessities would defeat unanimity. They professed great loyalty, which might be equivocal, and copied from the Parliament of 1641, for indeed many of the colonists were Puritans and republicans ; but the Government here affected to publish assurances that they would submit, denied the desertion of the troops, 1 did send no reinforcements, and asserted that the American mer- chants were providing themselves with such quantities of English commodities, to supply themselves during the contingent non-importation, that this country would be 1 Soldiers arc always tempted to do- the colonies would naturally tempt Bert, hut , do seldom in Kn^hind, because them with the ofl'or of settlement*, it it i an iHliiud, and they cannot eauily could scarce be doubted but they would escape to any other protection. The prefer such emoluments to fighting wide continent of America was more, nay quite, secure for deserters ; and as aguhibt their countrymen. 1774. INTENDED DISSOLUTION. 397 little affected by it from such anticipation. They also hardily maintained that all the unfavourable accounts in the public papers were qoined here by Dr. Franklin 2 or Wilkes. With so little hopes, and amidst such carelessness in the public, I determined to remain quiet in the country, awaiting the issue of this contest, but ready to give any assistance in my power if a dawn of spirit should appear. I should mention that, when I broke off almost all my political connections, I had still had the precaution to keep up a very sure and excellent channel of intelligence. It was from that source that, in the midst of this political slumber, I received certain information, on the 27th, that the Parliament was to be suddenly dissolved in four days, viz. on October 1st, and the new writs immediately issued a step indeed hardly premature, for interest was openly making in all parts, even in Scotland, though from interested not party motives there. My father, Sir Robert Walpole, had been advised by Bishop Sherlock, after his triumphant defeat of the motion for removing him in 1740, to take advantage of his popularity and choose a new Parliament a year before the term ; but he, too brave, and too secure, and averse to measures of authority, slighted the advice, and fell by not taking it. Mr. Pelham, much more timid, but really more secure by the quietness of the times, imitated the advice afterwards to disappoint Frederick Prince of Wales, and succeeded. The Marquis of Rockingham was likewise advised in 1766 to take the same step, in order to remove Lord Bute's creatures, and secure a strong party in a new Parliament, 5 Dr. Franklin after his disgrace re- mained in England, giving out that it was to prove that he did not go to did stay here ; the Ministry asserted it was to spread the flame here, depending on the colonies and his friends there for merica to inflame the contention, and keeping up the spirit, ht even talked of going to Italy, but 398 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. SEPT. even in case he himself should soon be removed. But Lord Rockingham, and that Administration, would do nothing that had even the air of being irregular, and lost the moment of securing a set of men in Parliament who would be true to the constitution. Unhappy delicacy ! I knew that Lord Mansfield this very spring had repeated the same advice to the King ; but Lord North, really I believe from having no bad intentions, and from his indo- lence, which prompted him to keep off so much trouble, resisted, and prevented the dissolution then. I knew too that Lord Gower had lately renewed the advice to dissolve to Lord Suffolk, 3 and he to the King ; and since that, I had made observation that at the last prorogation of the Parliament no mention had been made as usual, when adjourned to November, that it was then to sit for busi- ness. I did not doubt my intelligence, and these I guessed were the reasons: 1st. Very arbitrary measures to be taken against America. 2nd. The pressing cry of the 'King's debts, and his eagerness for an addition to his revenue, which could not with a shadow of decency be proposed in the last and shortest session of a Parliament, and when most of the members must be absent in securing their re-elections. 3rd. A probability of a war with France, Spain, or the Emperor, during which it was never safe to I have the nation distracted with the disturbances, drunken- ness, and thoughtlessness of a general election. The King 3 Lord North, who vras averse to the nistration without the odium of having demand of an additional royal revenue, i increased the revenue. I knew, too, and only retained his post till some of that Lord Gowcr was ambitious of the great Exchequer places should full, and he could secure them for his children, might wish to protract the approach of a new Parliament, when he inii-t make the demand ; and if he being First Minister himself, and the rest of the Bedfords were jealous of Lord North. By giving this advice Lord Gower pleased the King and Lord Mansfield, the real Prime Minister ; and should bo HO fortunate to stcure one of should it miscarry, Lord North would thus, places, he might quit the Admi- be the victim. 1774. REASONS FOR THE DISSOLUTION. 399 of Spain, from the time we had bullied him when King of Naples, 4 and from his ill-success in the late war, had retained an invincible aversion to England. He was now meditating an invasion of Portugal, and probably of us, if we should support Portugal. He had lately called on the new King of France for support, agreeably to the Family Compact. France had answered coolly, though not refusing. As for the Emperor, he was very angry at this time with the King as Elector of Hanover. 4th. I apprehended that Lord Mansfield might be gone to Paris to negotiate some treaty pernicious to this country, which his timid foresight would know it was more prudent to have ratified by a new Parliament than by an expiring one. I no sooner got to London than I discovered that, if all these were ingredients in the dissolution, at least there had been two others that had prompted adoption of the measure with so much rashness, that, between Lord North's indolence and the shortness of the time, the Administra- tion had not taken full precautions to secure several re- elections. They had no candidates ready to set up for either Westminster or Middlesex, though, after all the King had suffered from the latter, it was amazing that county had not been the first provided for. The two rea- sons I hinted at were these : The advices from America, . though industriously concealed, were so bad, that great clamour was foreseen from the American merchants and * Of the two sons of Philip of Anjou who, after the War of Succession, was acknowledged in 1713, by all the powers of Europe, as King of Spain, the elder, Ferdinand VI., succeeded him in that title at Philip's death. In the last-named year, that of the Treaty of Utrecht, Spain surrendered Sicily to Victor Amadeus, Duke of S,i\uy. Seven years later the Duke gave up Sicily for the island of Sar- D. dinia, which had long been a Spanish possession. The second son of Philip of Anjou (Charles) subsequently be- came King of the Two Sicilies ; and, on the death of his brother Ferdinand, obtained the crown of Spain as Charles III. He made over the Crown of the Two Sicilies, or Naples, to his third son, Ferdinand, who thus founded the younger reigning branch of Boiirbon. 400 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. SEPT. trading towns in particular. The Ministers did not doubt but that clamour would be adopted by the Opposition and by Wilkes as the cry to influence the future elections ; and they knew, from experience of past times, that in the last session of a Parliament the Court loses many votes even of its friends, who then are forced to please their constituents by voting against any unpopular measures. The other reason was, that a meeting had already been held of Wilkes's friends, for the re-nomination of him and Serjeant Glynn to serve the county ; and both the candi- dates had subscribed and sworn to a set of articles which they were to endeavour to obtain by Act of Parliament, the most striking of which was the repeal of the late Boston and Quebec Bills. The Court apprehended that this list would be adopted in most other places of election, and hurried to dissolve the Parliament to prevent it, which could scarce be executed before a new and capital obstacle arose before their eyes. Mr. Grenville's bill, of which I have said so much in the beginning of this volume, now hung out all its terrors. They who had not been pre- pared did not dare to hurry down to their boroughs laden with money. The least barefaced bribery would vacate their seats and a new method of corruption had not yet been invented, from the want of foresight of its being so soon necessary. If money was no longer to decide the choice, courtiers and placemen had the worst chance of being popular. Either the country gentlemen who live nearer, and more with their electors, were most likely to succeed, or noisy factious candidates. England had not much the better prospect from this change of scene. Country gentlemen were either Tories, or lulled asleep by threats of the Court, by the little care taken by the Whig Opposition to open their eyes, or liable to be seduced by 1774. GENERAL CONWAY. the clergy, in general favourers of the Court. Factious candidates would probably be poor, and thence easily to be corrupted. In fact, the Court flattered itself that, how- ever ill several elections might go, they should still be able to buy the members themselves, though they were restrained from buying the electors. The dissolution happened very unluckily just now from the peculiar bad- ness of the season. September, commonly the dryest month of the year, had been incessantly raining. The floods were out, and, though most of the wheat was in, the barley and oats were rotting on the ground ; and as there was not a fair day till October, when the weather mended, all attention would be diverted from the harvest to elections. For my own particular, I was soon struck with the interests of my friend General Conway. He had been chosen for Thetford by the Duke of Grafton, not only from Lady Hertford's being the Duke's aunt, 5 but by their Dolitical connection when Ministers. I have formerly given an account of the prejudices sown in the Duke's mind against him by his mistress at the instigation of Rigby. They were augmented by his new Duchess's family, when he had married a niece of the Duchess of Bedford. 6 The poverty of the Duke's parts and virtues was ill-suited to the abilities and integrity of Conway ; and when the Duke had stooped to be an insignificant part of an Administration of which he had been the most insuffi- cient head, and had even abandoned that signal act of his joint Administration, the repeal of the Stamp Act, his and Conway 's politics differed as much as their morality. i ' Isabella, youngest daughter of ! Henry. (Charles Fitzroy, second Duke of Graf- i 6 Consult index, ' Memoirs of George 'ton, and sister of Lord Augustus III.' D. (Fitzroy, father of Duke Augustus ' * VOL. I. 2 D 402 LA'ST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. SEPT. Indeed, it is just to the Duke to say that he was partly excusable and partly had cause of dissatisfaction. Though he had joined with Lord Rockingham in repealing the Stamp Act, the tea duty, which provoked the outrages of the Bostonians, had been laid during his own Adminis- tration ; yet he had not the sense to make this excuse which I make for him, but sunk into the common tacit acquiescence of those who had for places deserted their American principles. Conway had boldly adhered to them, and necessarily had voted differently from the Duke, who had brought him into Parliament, and even on the Royal Marriage Bill, on which Conway could plead no former agreement with the Duke. His Grace seemed, however, to excuse this defection with much generosity which generosity proved to have been only an inability of revenge at the time. I, who knew the Duke and the Bedfords better, did not doubt but I should now see the winding up of his Grace's forgiveness. Yet some circum- stances might stagger me a little. His Grace, though the dissolution had been talked of, had not dropped a hint of intending to elect Mr. Conway no more. He had even in the spring, on the death of the other member, Mr. Drum- mond, chosen his first cousin, Lord Peterham, 7 for Thet- ford, with a declaration that he would not be bound for the ensuing Parliament; and this salvo Lord Hertford had interpreted so favourably to Mr. Conway, that he had ordered Lady Hertford to thank her nephew for it. But if this omen was good, an augur so quick-sighted for a friend as I, saw one at least as unpropitious, and more be depended upon, as adapted to the entrails of the beast 7 Eldest son of W. Stanhope, second Earl of Harrington, by Lady Caroline l'l' t daughter of Charles Duke of Grafton, and sister of Lord Augustus, father of Duke Henry. 1771. THE DUKE OP GRAFTON. 403 inspected. Mr. Con way was at this time absent in Ger- many ; and the Duke of Grafton was not such a hero but I concluded he would like better to do a hurt to an absent man than to his face. Generosity would have bidden him re-elect Conway, from the very circumstance of his absence and ignorance of the conjecture, when he could not seek a new seat for himself. The Duke might plead intention of notifying to Conway, before the general election, that he must provide himself with another borough ; and as the Duke was not privy to the dissolution, it could not strictly oblige him to re-elect Conway, when he had intended the contrary. Another promise too dispensed with him, and the danger of losing another borough. 8 Yet when he made that promise was the just season for acquainting Conway ; and though the Duke might have had all these excuses, he contrived to prove that he or his instigators had meant that his revenge could not be bounded by casting off Conway himself, but went to shutting him entirely out of Parliament. A proceeding so unlike a gentleman, that one would think his Grace imagined Mr. Conway would never return to resent it. The total exclusion was what, I concluded immediately, was intended. It certainly was, I had reason to think so ; and yet the confidence in my own sagacity made me turn every circumstance so entirely to that point, that it equally ! misled my judgment and my passions, and hurried the i latter into very extraordinary lengths, hurting Mr. Conway, as I often did, by giving my enemies opportunities of wounding him, that they might wound me: a reflection that constantly made me as eager to indemnify him, and punish them, in both which I had hitherto succeeded, and soon saw a prospect of succeeding again. 8 Bury. 2 D 2 404 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. SEPT. I immediately wrote to Lord Hertford, earnestly pressing him to sound the Duke of Grafton on his brother's situation immediately, and telling him, if the Duke was adverse, that I depended on his finding a borough for his brother : but thinking him in Suffolk, as he was, I ordered the servant to deliver the letter to Lady Hertford, who was warmer in zeal, and had more weight with her nephew than her husband had. I also wrote to Lady Ailesbury to insist on Lady Hertford's despatching a messenger immediately, which she did. On Thursday, the 29th, I went to town myself, and the first thing I saw was Rigby at the Duchess of Grafton's, who lay in ; and the next I heard that he had sent the Duke notice of the dissolution on the 27th. This told me I had guessed right. At night at Lady Hertford's the surprise was great that I had learnt the dissolution a day sooner than many of the Ministers or than all London, for Lady Ailesbury, whom I had not warned to keep the secret, had divulged it, and I alone was quoted for making it public. Lady Hertford had been intrusted with it but an hour before my messenger arrived, by Colonel Keene, 9 by Lord North's permission. Colonel Keene took me aside, and with much importance questioned me about it. As I knew and was prepared for his curiosity, instead of being angry at his taking so much liberty, I laughed it off, and said I had 9 Colonel James Whitshed Knene was an Irish officer of no fortune, and Lad served in Portugal. He then went to Paris, and attached himself to Stephen Fox, but soon became ac- quainted with Lord Hertford, then ambassador, became his master of the horse, by degrees his intimate de- pendent, and was mode by him secre- tary to the Lord Chamberlain. Ho married a homely maiden-sister of Lord Dartmouth, and, by the marriage of their father and mother, a kind of sister of Lord North. He had very little sense, but was a great politician, and, by no bashfulness in asking ques- tions, screwed himself into being much trusted by Lord North, which liurt them both in the estimation of man- kind, though Colonel Keene's faults were owing to his head, not his heart. Ho was made one of tho Board of Trade. 1774. ELECTIONEERING TOPICS. 405 heard the news at Twitnam. He asked me if it was George On slow, who was a notorious blab, had told me? " Oh ! no," said I, " for then I should not have believed it, he tells so much false news." Charles Fitzroy was there ; I asked him if his brother would re-choose Mr. Conway ? He answered very doubtfully; "for," said he, " my brother will have an opposition to me at Bury, 1 and must keep Thetford open." I said very indiscreetly, I feared the Bedfords had been doing Mr. Conway hurt. Lady Hertford chid me for talking to her nephew, and said he was the worst person in the world to talk to about it, for he was jealous about his own election. I owned I had been in the wrong ; but though Fitzroy was very rattling, I thought him zealously attached to Mr. Conway, forgetting that he had since lived eight or nine years at Court. What affected me much more was to find that Lord Hertford, who was to have been in town that night, had put off his journey for two days. I began to fear he was privy to some plan with the King to get the Duke to leave his brother out of Parliament. This sunk deep. 30^. Lady Hertford came to me ; I said, " Madam, I see all is over." She said "No, not quite," and showed me the Duke's answer, which began with a falsehood, for j it said her letter had brought him the first notice of the I dissolution, and Rigby had told Fitzroy that he had ] acquainted him twenty hours before. The latter said he iwas in great embarrassment, had no plan laid beyond choosing the two Fitzroys, his brother and uncle, 2 and had 1 The Duke of Grafton did actually lose Bury this time. 2 Charles Fitzroy the elder was natural son of the late Duke of Grafton, , and was Memher for Heytesbury, which ; borough the Duke of Marlborough having got, it is probable that the Bedfords, under colour of preventing a quarrel between the Dukes of Grafton and Marlborough, now cousins by the Duchess of Grafton, had suggested to old Mr. Fitzroy to apply to hia nephew for a seat, and the Duke had promised it. It was then thought in honour to have declared off with Mr. Conway. 406 LAST JOURNALS OF HOEACE WALPOLE. SEPT. a great esteem for Mr. Conway 's character. This, Lady Hertford thought looked well, and I ill. Fitzroy came in, just setting out for Bury. He said Mr. Conway should, before he went abroad, have asked the Duke to bring him in again, and that the Duke had mentioned his silence with surprise. Lady Hertford said it was delicacy in Mr. Conway. She told Fitzroy he must tell his brother to send a positive answer directly ; it would be unhand- some behaviour to keep it in suspense; yet the answer never came till Monday the 3rd, when Fitzroy was gone. Lady Hertford and I talked on what could be done for Mr. Conway, if the Duke should not choose him. She said her Lord had no seat but Oxford and Coventry for his own three sons, and could not prefer his brother to them. To this I said not a word ; it was not decent for me to propose it, and yet I thought Mr. Conway of much more consequence than the two younger sons, who never spoke in Parliament. She said her Lord could ask Lord North to bring in General Conway, though she fancied all boroughs were full. To this likewise I made no answer, knowing Mr. Conway would not like to be brought in by the Minister. She was displeased I would not speak ; at last I said it was too delicate to say anything between two brothers. She started, and cried it was not between two brothers, they were one ; that we all thought alike ; and pressed me to speak, but I would say nothing else, for I was persuaded Lord Hertford would drop his brother, who would take it ill, and then it would certainly be an affair -between two brothers. We parted both dis- satisfied. Lady Hertford 3 was an extraordinary person. She had 3 Lady Isabella Fitzroy, youngest I of Grafton, by a daughter of the Duke daughter of Charles, the second Duke of Beaufort. She was married very 1774. LADY HERTFORD LADY AILESBURY. 407 been very beautiful, but never gallant ; of strong passions, but they centered in her own family ; proud of her birth and rank, yet void of all pride in her behaviour, which was simple and natural. Her temper was uneasy, though infinitely good-natured and forgiving; her mind uncul- tivated, but full of strong sense, particularly on emer- gencies, when her reasoning was exquisitely close and just, even when most disturbed with anger. Though naturally timid and nervous, she had an heroic fortitude when the lives or persons, the interests or characters, of her family were at stake ; on those occasions she always presented herself to ward danger from them. Yet she was without pretensions, and in common occurrences no woman was more a woman. Her own interest or applause to herself seemed to her contemptible. She was a heroine without knowing it, and scorned to be a philosopher. From her I went to Lady Ailesbury, 4 of a very dif- ferent character. She too had been extremely handsome, and preserved her beauty much longer. She was mild, gentle, and of a temper unsusceptible of strong, at least of lasting impressions. She had read much, was fond of music, and had a wonderful genius for needlework. She seldom thought on politics, and understood them less ; nor, though she lived in the happiest union with her young to Francis Seymour Conway, second Lord Conway, afterwards Earl of Hertford, by whom she had eleven children Francis Lord Beauchamp, her favourite ; Henry Eobert, an officer ; Edward, high in the sea service ; Wil- liam ; and George ; Anne, married to the Earl of Drogheda ; Sarah, to Mr. Stuart, in Ireland ; Gertrude, to Lord Villiers, only son of the Countess of Grandison ; Frances ; Elizabeth ; and Isabella. All the eleven were fine figures or handsome; Lady Fran- ces and Lady Elizabeth very hand- some. Henry had very uncommon parts. 4 Lady Caroline Campbell, only daughter of John Duke of Argyle, then Colonel Campbell, had been married >ung against her will to old Thomas ord Bruce, Earl of Ailesbury, to whom she was third wife, and by whom she had no children but Mary Duchesa of Richmond ; as by her second husband, General H. Seymour Conway, she had only one daughter, Anne, married to John Darner, eldest son of Joseph Lord Milton. 408 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. SEIT. husband, did she make any right judgment on the fre- quent difficulties of his situation. Dress and female amusements occupied her most, and except being a pleas- ing woman she was not superior to many of her sex. I found her quite unalarmed at her husband's position, and had difficulty to make her conceive why the King or Lord Hertford could wish Mr. Conway out of Parliament ; yet when I mentioned the excessive delicacy of her son-in-law the Duke of Richmond, who, though he would have been happy to see Mr. Conway in Opposition, had had the generosity to advise him to quit Parliament lest he should hurt his fortune there, she cried out, " Oh ! the Duke of Richmond is so violent !" I said, " Madam, if he was so violent, he would have given just the contrary advice." Her daughter Mrs. Darner came in, who, though very young, pretty, and much in fashion, and who had never thought on politics before, yet understood at once what I said to her, for she was passionately fond of her father, had as good sense as he, and as much decision in her way of thinking as he had little, and expressed it at once in the fewest and most expressive words. An instance of which she gave next day on the following occasion : There was a man whom no words can paint truly with- out seeming superlatively exaggerated, so wrongheaded, so brutal he was, so ill-natured, ill-tempered, and untame- able a savage : this was General Sir Robert Rich, who, with a pleasing person, interesting address, and good breeding, had a vindictive obstinacy in his temper, on which decency, the customs of the world, or principle could make no impression. He had been half cut to pieces in the Rebellion, had lost both hands, for his bravery was equal to his fury, and yet his insolence to superiors and inferiors was so great, that his sufferings did but just save him from being cast out of the army for his insupportable 1774. SIR ROBERT RICH. 409 pride and arrogance. He had long been at variance, after a friendship, with General Conway, who had suc- ceeded to Sir Robert's father's regiment, the arrears due to which for clothing, &c., Sir Robert had stopped, for his avarice was in proportion to his other bad qualities. Conway, as cool and temperate as the other was impe- rious, had, from regard to him and his sisters, 5 whom, however, Sir Robert treated still worse, tried all methods of compromise ; and when reduced to bring the matter before a court martial, found authority had as little weight with the savage as reason and patience. Sir Robert had been condemned, and had had recourse to every delay that forms or passions could suggest ; and even when at last the King ordered him, after amazing and unjust indulgences, to pay the money, he refused. The matter had been in agitation at least four years. Conway was now abroad, and had been distinguished by the Emperor and King of Prussia with the most uncommon marks of notice and esteem. 6 Lord Hertford had shown all Con- way's letters to the King ; and whether his Majesty was jealous of the King of Prussia's attentions to Conway, whether ashamed of having twice ill-used so brave, so virtuous, so able an officer, whom he saw all military princes admired ; or whether, as I suspected, his Majesty was desirous of soothing him while he wished to exclude him from Parliament, at this very moment Sir Robert Rich was dismissed from the King's service for disobe- dience, his government was taken away, and the profits sequestered till General Conway 's demands should be satisfied. 5 Elizabeth Kich, Lady Lyttelton, was to his reviews ; and when there, at his the intimate friend of Lady Ailesbury. only three levees, talked only and a Mary Kich died unmarried. great deal to him. The Prince Royal 6 When he first went to Berlin, the invited him to drink tea, and to sup King told him, as he was come to see with him tete-a-tete, and repeated the armies, he gave him leave to follow him King his uncle's high opinion of him. 410 LAST JOUKNALS OF HOKACE WAKTOLE. OCT. OCTOBER, ]st. THE Parliament was dissolved by proclamation, and writs issued for a new one to meet the 29th November. It was on this very day that the King sent Lord Bar- rington to Lady Ailesbury, to acquaint her with the justice he had (at last) done to her husband. She was charmed but Mrs. Darner, who had more penetration, t said, " Pho ! this is only a sugarplum." I saw it in the same light; and as Lord Barrington, who was one of those men who betray the truth by colouring it over with falsehood, told Lady Ailesbury he concluded General Conway was to be rechosen for Thetford, my suspicious temper persuaded me that he was privy to the treachery of the message. And here let me stop to make a reflection, which all Kings " ought to make. What can be so miserable as a King whose duplicity has made such impression on his people, that, even when he does justice or kindness to one of his r subjects, it is received as a token of an injury ! Knowledge of the world and experience might make me distrustful of Court favours ; but a young inexperienced woman, who saw favour to her own father but in the light of treachery, proves that the insincerity of the King was known to the most unthinking. On talking again on this subject, Mrs. Darner compared the King's word to the bad guineas just decried, and said, " The King's impress and name ought to pass as sterling." The same day Colonel Keene came to me, and said that, seeing Lord Hertford's difficulties, he himself had proposed 1774. ELECTIONEERING TOPICS. 411 to Lord North to bring Mr. Conway into Parliament, and had found him very well disposed whenever there should be a vacancy. This, I learnt afterwards from Lord Hert- ford, who pleaded it as a proof of his zeal for his brother, had been suggested by him from the country. I said, " Mr. Keene, even to serve Mr. Conway, I will not deceive Lord North or you. I cannot answer that Mr. Conway will always vote as Lord North may expect, and therefore I make no answer to you ; take notice, I tell you I wash my hands of it." Mr. Keene said, Lord North was ap- prized of Mr. Conway 's determination to be independent ; that he loved him, and would not mind his scruples. I said it was handsome, and that leaving him to himself would be the most likely way of binding him. I stated to Mr. Keene all Lord Hertford's obligations to his brother, and showed him that, if his brother had not saved him and made him a Minister, he would never have gotten the borough of Oxford. Keene was struck as I expected, and said, " Upon my word I think " I stopped him, and for fear he should not say all I wished, and what I could not say myself to Lord Hertford, I determined to put my own words into his mouth. I said, " Sir, I know what you are going to say, but I will not let you. When you are kind to me, I will not be so unjust as to let you say what is not proper for you to say. You are Lord Hertford's friend, not Mr. Conway 's. I know you was going to say Lord Hertford ought to bring his brother into Parliament out of gratitude, rather than one of his own sons : I don't wonder you think so, but you must not say so to me." He owned he had had some such thought, and I did not doubt but he would repeat it to Lord or Lady Hertford, as he certainly did, and told them he believed that was what I had meant, but that I never would say so. He then 412 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. OCT. returned to my early knowledge of the dissolution, and wanted to get out the secret ; but I would not tell him. I said it might hurt somebody or other. My informant might have learnt it at one of the offices. " Oh ! " said he, " that was my reason for wishing to know ; if Lord North has any indiscreet or unfaithful servant he ought to know it, or be on his guard against him." Colonel Keene had little sense to think I would preclude myself from knowing; and I must have had as little sense to have told him. At eight that night Lord Hertford arrived, and an hour after I went to him, but was struck by his porter telling me his Lord was busy and could not possibly see me, but carried me up to Lady Hertford. Lady Ailesbury and another lady were playing at cribbage in her room. She said her Lord was writing to Coventry, which he should lose, and had Lady Powis's agent with him. I thought his brother's impending danger as important as a borough lost, or as Lady Powis's boroughs. My suspicions redoubled. After some time Lady Hertford said she would go and ask my Lord if he would see me. She returned, and said not a word. I carried her into another room, and said, " Good God, Madam ! what is my Lord afraid of that he will not see me ? I have told your Ladyship I would say nothing that can be disagreeable to him till the answer comes from Euston." She protested he was so busy writ- ing, that on looking into his room he had scolded her, and that he would soon come upstairs. A little after, Colonel Keene came up, and she asked him if her Lord was still writing ? he said Yes. This offended me still more, that Colonel Keene was admitted when I was not, though wanting to speak on his brother. Soon after their son Henry came and asked for more pens; his father had 1774. POLITICAL COMEDY. 413 used all below. This seemed a shallow art to impose upon and delay me. I grew very much out of humour, and showed it on purpose, that I might force my way to my Lord. Twelve o'clock came, and my Lord sent word he had not time to sup. This struck even Lady Ailesbury, and by signs I made her understand my anger. After supper, at which I had not spoken a word, Lady Ailesbury called for her chair, and I asked for one. Lady Hertford saw my uneasiness and sent her son to ask my Lord if he would see me : I said drily, " Madam, I will not trouble my Lord ; I have nothing to say ;" and walked out of the room with Lady Ailesbury. On the stairs I trembled so with passion that I had like to have fallen from the top to the bottom, and I said to Lady Ailesbury, "I will never set my foot in this house again." This frightened her, and she said, " Pray don't say so." Mr. Conway (the second son) met us on the stairs, and said his father would see me ; but I thought without showing great resentment I should not force him to bring in his brother, and therefore would not go to him, but repeated " I will not trouble him ; I have nothing to say." When we were in our chairs and a \ little way from the door, I stopped Lady Ailesbury and told her my sentiments. The porter came out and said his Lord desired to see me, but I persisted, only repeating the same words. I carried Lady Ailesbury to my own house ; she was in tears and as angry then as I, and said it was shocking in Lord Hertford not to see her, when she was going to Paris in two days. I said, " Madam, he wants you gone, and me out of town, till it is too late to find a borough for your husband, and then he^will plead the lapse of time as an excuse :" and I added a great deal of very intemperate invective on him. I told her, however, what was true, that, angry as I was, it was a right measure 414 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. OCT. to be so, and necessary to make it impossible for Lord Hertford to desert his brother. I slept very ill, and early in the morning wrote a very passionate letter to Lord Hertford, telling him of the indig- nity he had shown to his brother, his brother's wife, and me, and breaking off all intercourse with him ; which, how- ever, I did not intend to execute, but to make a seat for his brother the terms of reconciliation. I had the patience, however, to wait and see, before I sent my letter, whether my Lord or Lady would not come or write to me. As I expected, Lady Hertford wrote, said Lord Hertford had been angry at her not telling him I wanted to speak with him, and that, seeing his distress, and that there was no hurry, as the answer was not come from Euston, she had deferred telling him, thinking his business would be over ; but that it had lasted till half-an-hour past two. She added, " As soon as he comes from church, he goes to Kew, and will call on you when he comes back." I did not believe the excuses, though with regard to Lady Hertford they were pretty true. But that, in such business, he had time to go to church, seemed not very probable, or made me not believe in the business. His going to Kew before he saw me appeared indubitable evidence of a plot, and that he did not dare to see me till he had seen the King, and knew what answer to give me. I sent a very civil note to Lady Hertford for all her goodness to me, but telling her that, after the indignity with which her Lord had treated both his brother and me, I could never enter his house again or have any friendship with him. I now thought the quarrel would be very serious. I was satisfied it would be honourable to undo myself for my friend, and thought myself too old to disgrace a life of dis- interestedness by giving up him to save my own fortune. 1774. POLITICAL COMEDY. 415 In this unalterable resolution I went to Lady Ailesbury, but had scarce been there a minute before Lady Hertford, who had been at my house, followed me thither, and sent for me down stairs alone. I found her very angry ; she entirely acquitted her Lord, taxed me with pride, ingrati- tude, and injustice ; and swore how much her Lord loved both his brother and me ; and said if I quarrelled with him she desired no compliments from me, nor ever would speak to me again. I was charmed with her behaviour, and treated her with the utmost respect. I stated to her all the strong circumstances that had raised and confirmed my suspicions, and told her, that to show her it was not pride on my own account, but on Mr. Conway's, I was ready to ask my Lord's pardon for myself, or would black his shoes, but that I would not desert his brother, nor see him injured in his absence. She asked me what she should say to her Lord. I said, whatever she pleased, except that I would give up his brother : I could not be his friend if he deserted his brother. Her I entirely acquitted. She said she would not be excepted, and that my suspicions were unjust ; that I was always suspicious of the Bed- fords. I said, " Madam, I name nobody." She replied, that was worse ; I left my suspicions at random to be fixed on anybody. I said, " Madam, I will name nobody with- out proofs but my suspicions went high." " What, " said she, " do you^uspect Lord North ?" " No, Madam," said I, " but I will name no more." She would fain have reconciled me, but I did not think it ripe yet. I persuaded her to go up to Lady Ailesbury, who seemed very angry, and complained of Lord Hertford's treatment of her. We had both a passionate and tender scene, during which Lady Hertford's character appeared in the most amiable light. She told us Lord Hertford would give up his third son, 416 LAST JOUKNALS OF H011ACE WALPOLE. OCT. Robert, to bring in his brother, but said, " Robert is the proudest of his children, and probably will quarrel with his father on it." I said, " Madam, Lady Ailesbury and I cannot hear of that, nor would Mr. Conway bear to be the cause of a family quarrel between a father and his son." Indeed this circumstance showed me it was in vain to push that any farther, nor would I, from friendship to Mr. Con- way, do so abominable a thing as make that quarrel. I insisted it should not be, and afterwards, when Lord Hert- ford proposed it to me again, I made him give it up. He then told me what was greatly to the honour of his second son Henry, who, on his father's mentioning it, said, " My Lord, you had better give me up ; I am cooler and more reasonable than my brother Robert." Lady Hertford pressed me again to tell her whom I suspected. I said, " The King." She, who was all honesty, instead of denying 1 it, smiled, and said, " Indeed, people do think the King very double." I reconciled her and Lady Ailesbury, and the former pressed me to see my Lord. I said frankly, " Madam, you are sensible with what respect and patience I have borne all your Ladyship's reproaches, even almost without a word of defence : if you will give me leave to say what I please to my Lord, I will see him at six o'clock." These terms produced a new embarras, though all I meant was to press on him his obligations to his brother. She said he could not come to me so soon as six^it was church time. I smiled inwardly at this extreme devotion in so busy a politician, and we parted the best friends in the world. After evening prayer, the Earl came to me, but to my surprise brought his son Henry with him, Lady Hertford having reported my words so faithfully that he had con- cluded I should speak too plainly, and had therefore for precaution brought his son. He entered smiling, shook 1774. POLITICAL COMEDY. 417 me by the hand, and tried to treat my anger as too excep- tions and to laugh it off, pretending he had not suspected my having been earnest to see him. I was very cold and would scarce utter a syllable. When he pressed me to speak, I said it should be with great circumspection ; that I looked on myself as on my trial, and had no witness, whereas he had brought one ; that I was persuaded his son would misrepresent nothing, and yet could but be partial to his own father. Mr. Conway said I spoke as if they were come to bully me. I said, No, but I was certainly afraid of him ; that I knew he was a young man of great parts ; that he was very cool, and that I was provoked, and therefore should be upon my guard what I said. Young men, I said, were apt to laugh at those much older ; that I had been thinking what I should do, and had deter- mined to tell them honestly that I could not speak so freely before him, with whom I was little acquainted, as to his father alone, with whom I had been brought up from a boy. Upon this the son got up and went to the door. I said I begged his pardon ; that I was sensible I was doing a very rude thing in turning him out of my ?wn house ; and yet that we should sooner understand one mother if he retired, which he did with great good hu- nour. I then talked over the whole affair with Lord Hert- ford with cordiality and better temper. He protested his innocence ; excused the King, though not to my satisfac- :ion ; and offered absolutely to give up his third son. This [ would not hear of. At last he promised to lay down any sum to bring his brother into Parliament : and we parted 'ery good friends. 3rd. Lord Hertford sent for me. I guessed the cause, tnd guessed right, that the Duke of Grafton had de- lared, without any softening, that he should not bring VOL. i. 2 E 418 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. OCT. General Conway into Parliament. As this would bring the burthen on him, Lord Hertford was very much hurt ; owned he now believed all the mischief of which I had accused the Bedfords ; and in his vexation discovered to me a most black treachery of the Duke some time before, and which, leading to his present behaviour, showed he had long meditated getting rid of Mr. Conway. The borough of Thetford is entirely governed by three persons, the Mayor, the Recorder, and one other ; Lord Hertford was Recorder ; the Duke of Grafton engaged General Conway himself to ask Lord Hertford to resign that office, who had done so unwillingly : it is not necessary to add any stroke to this feature of the Duke's character. Lady Hertford was still more hurt and provoked at her nephew's behaviour, which showed how little influence she had over him and diminished the number of her husband's votes. But I had better materials to work with than this anger. I had that morning learnt that very bad news had arrived from America; 1500 men were in arms, and General Gage had sent to implore more men and ships. I made full use of this to imprint on Lord Hertford's mind his brother's import- ance ; and to do him justice, he was quick enough in see- ing it himself. I painted to him the necessity there would be of the King's calling Mr. Conway to council, and I gave Lord Hertford a hint that a change might very pro- bably happen, and his brother be again in a situation to save him. He felt this, and almost told me in plain words that the King had thoughts of taking Mr. Conway into the Ministry; he said, some temperate man must be s called in. I wanted no more than this hint to assure me Lord Hertford would soon find some way, if possible, to bring his brother into Parliament. On my side, as I meant to keep them well together, I wrote by Lady Ailes- 1774. POLITICAL COMEDY. 419 bury, who went next day to Paris, a very moderate letter to Mr. Conway, did justice to Lady Hertford, excused Lord Hertford, said nothing hard of the Duke of Grafton, and took all the blame I could on myself. I had put everything on the best foot I could, considering the cir- cumstances, for Mr. Conway, and was very willing to appear to all the family to be the person in fault, for I really wished them well ; they were my near relations and friends ; and if I had gone too far, it was for a right end, and, so far from being for my own sake, I had risked doing infinitely more hurt to myself than to any other per- son living. In this conversation I told Lord Hertford what I foresaw ; viz. that Rigby would get it suggested to the King to send Conway to command in America, to ruin him. Lord Hertford was struck with the probability, and said it must be prevented, for Conway had declared so explicitly for the Americans that he would refuse to go. " Then," said I, " he will be ruined as an officer, and that very alternative will make Rigby press it." " What is to be done?" said Lord Hertford. I said, "I protest I do not foresee at once, but I will suggest the first thing that comes into my mind : tell the King that, if your brother refuses to serve against the Americans, the example will spread and be followed." " No," said he, " the King will 1 never bear that ! I should tell him my brother has scruples; , land irresolution will hurt the service." I allowed this was a better thought than mine. Lord Hertford said, the King had the highest opinion of Mr. Conway, and had really never taken anything seriously ill of him but his voting against the Royal Marriage Bill. I have said that the Court was not prepared with can- didates for London, Westminster, or Middlesex. Pre- vious to those elections, came on that of a Lord Mayor. 2 E 2 420 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. OCT. Wilkes entirely governed Bull, the actual Mayor, and made him decline the chair a second time. The Court on one side, and Alderman Townshend on the other, meant to gain or give the preference to any man over Wilkes. They set up two insignificant Aldermen, Eisdale and Kennet, as competitors, not having been able to pre- vail on Sawbridge to stand for it again. Wilkes had re- gained him by promising to bring him into Parliament for the City. Wilkes and Bull had the majority of hands, . and, after a poll which was demanded for Eisdale and \ Kennet, Wilkes and Bull were returned to the Court of Aldermen, 1 who at last did declare Wilkes Lord Mayor. Thus, after so much persecution of the Court, after so many attempts on his life, after a long imprisonment in a gaol, after all his own crimes and indiscretions, did this j extraordinary man, of more extraordinary fortune, attain the highest office in so grave and important a city as the capital of England, always reviving the more opposed and oppressed, and unable to shock Fortune, or make her laugh at him, who laughed at everybody and everything. 2 The duration of his influence was the most wonderful part ) of his history. Massaniello, a fisher-boy, attained the su- f prerne power of Naples, but perished in three days. Rienzi governed Rome, but lost it by his folly. Sacheverel balanced the glory of Marlborough in the height of his victories, but never was heard of more. Wilkes was seen through, detected, yet gained ground : and all the power of the Crown, all the malice of the Scots, all the abilities of Lord Mansfield, all the violence of Alderman Townshend, all the want of policy and parts in the Opposition, all the 1 Eleven aldermen scratched for Wilkes ; Townshend and Oliver for Bull. 2 In the triumph of his heart Wilkes aid, " If the King had sent mo a pardon and a thousand pounds to Paris, I should have accepted them, but I am obliged to him for not having ruined me. 1774. SIR JOHN HAWKINS. 421 treachery of his own friends, could not demolish him. He equally baffled the King and Parson Home, though both neglected no latitude to compass his ruin. It is in this tenth year of his war on the Court that he gained so signal a victory ! The moment the poll was over, the Livery proceeded to the nomination of members for the county. Wilkes had set up his backsliding friend Crosby, his late enemy Sawbridge, his trusty friend Bull, and one Hayley, his brother-in-law. A company of Middlesex Justices, at- tached to the Court, entered, and one of them, Sir John Hawkins, seized the chair, while the livery cried out to Sawbridge to take it. Sir John was originally bred a lawyer, 3 in which profession he did not succeed. Having married a gentlewoman who, by her brother's death, proved a considerable fortune, he bought a house at Twickenham, intending to give himself up to his studies and music, of which he was very fond, and had already published the life of a German musician. He now com- menced a justice of peace; and being a very honest moral man, but of no brightness, and very obstinate and contentious, he grew hated by the lower class, and very i troublesome to the gentry, with whom he went to law both ' on public and private causes ; at the same time collecting i materials indefatigably for a History of Music. His wife 3 He was the son of a builder, and born in 1719. When a young man he wrote for the periodical press ; he was the friend and executor of Johnson, of whom he wrote a memoir which brought upon him the castigation of Peter Pin- dar and a host of critics. At the time Walpole here speaks of him he had been chairman of the quarter sessions ten years; he had been knighted in the year 1772. He contributed notes to Johnson and Steevens's ' Shakspeare,' edited Walton's ' Angler,' wrote a pam- phlet on the Highways, and secured a respectable name in literature by his ' History of the Science and Practice of Music.' He died in 1789. Sir John was famous for a drawl, which has been immortalized in his epigrammatic epitaph : " Hera lies Sir John Hawkins, Without his shoes and ttawkint." His house is now occupied by the emi- nent Dr. Diamond. D. 422 LAST JOUKNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. OCT. disliking so retired a life, he, uneasy from the uneasiness he gave his neighbours, sold his house, quitted Twicken- ham, and settled in London, pursuing his duty, in which he was very useful, and his History, when his want of judgment, and his zeal and obstinacy, drew him into the imprudent step I have mentioned. Such confusion fol- lowed the seizing of the chair by Sir John, that the meeting broke up in disorder; but on the next day but one, 10M, the majority of hands were held up for Wilkes's nominees. A poll was demanded and entered upon, after much riot occasioned by the extravagant inso- lence and pride of Alderman Townshend, who, being hissed and hooted by the citizens, clapped on his hat, and turned his back on them in contempt. He set up his convert Oliver. Baker, son of the late Alderman, and Alderman himself and in Opposition too, stood like- wise, but refused to sign the self-denying oath which Wilkes's four candidates had taken, and gave in print good reasons against it. Oliver refused too to sign that one article which promised to obey implicitly the direc- tions from the constituents. Roberts, the last year's Court candidate for the mayoralty against Wilkes, now stood likewise for the City. The city of Westminster was in equal danger of being lost to the Court. Lord Percy, son of the Duke of North- umberland, was only more welcome to them than a nominee of Wilkes ; but he was in America, a penurious undignified young man, 4 and his father connected with 4 " When Lord Percy was in Ireland with his regiment, the 5th Infantry, he consented, after much consideration, to give a dinner to the officers in garrison at Limerick. The gallant but cautious Earl ordered tho repast at a tavern, specifying that it should bo for fifty persons, at eighteen pence per head. The officers heard of the arrangement, and they ordered the landlord to pro- vide a banquet at a guinea per head, promising to pay tho difference, iii the 1774. WESTMINSTER ELECTION. 423 Lord Chatham. The Earl of Lincoln (now Duke of Newcastle), 5 as penurious as Lord Percy, had promised to set up his second son, but repented and refused. Earl Stanhope, a determined republican, was just returned from Geneva, where he had long resided.' He made his son (Lord Mahon) offer himself to the citizens of West- minster by an advertisement in which the young Lord engaged to promote all popular causes, and to vote against all the late American Acts ; and he declared for all Wilkes's self-denying articles in their largest latitude. Humphrey v/ event of their entertainer declining to do so. When the banquet was served there was but one astonished and un- comfortable individual at the board, and that was the Earl himself, who be- held a feast for the gods, and heard himself gratefully complimented upon the excellence of both viands and wines. The astonished Earl expe- rienced an easily understood difficulty in returning thanks when his health was drunk with an enthusiasm that bewildered him ; and on retiring early he sought out the landlord, in order to have the solution of an enigma that sorely puzzled Jiim. Boniface told the unadorned and the unwelcome truth ; and the inexperienced young Earl acknowledged his mistake, and dis- charged the bill with a sigh on him- self, and a cheque on his banker." ' TahU Traite, and something on them.' D. 5 Henry, ninth Earl of Lincoln, suc- ceeded to the dukedom of Newcastle- under-Line in 1758. He died in 1794. D. 6 Philip, the second Earl : he died in 1786, aged seventy-two. His eldest son, Charles (the third earl), married Lord Chatham's eldest daughter, Hester Pitt, of which marriage was born the eccentric Lady Hester Stanhope. Both the above Earls were exceedingly liberal in their political opinions, and both were excellent mathematicians : the first was so in spite of his guardian, the celebrated Earl of Chesterfield, who prohibited him when a boy from the pursuit of his favourite study. He was also an accomplished linguist, a sound classical scholar, with so reten- tive a memory that he could repeat the whole of the Iliad and Odyssey by rote. Earl Philip was a munificent patron of learning and of learned men. As a statesman, he was one of the most inde- pendent of his day ; that day was one of splendid extravagance, but Earl Philip did not follow the mode. On one of his occasional visits to the House of Lords (from Geneva), a new doorkeeper, seeing him about to pass into the House in a dress of 'extreme simplicity, impeded his entrance with the remark, " Now then, honest man, go back ! You can have no business in such a place as this, honest man !" Earl Philip died in 1786. His son Charles, at the period of the election above referred to, was twenty-one years of age. He was a more advanced republican than his father, and when the French Eevolution burst forth he laid aside all the external ornaments of the peerage. But he is remembered for better things than this. When a young man he gained a prize, from the Society of Stockholm, for a Memoir on the Pendulum. He was, perhaps, too universal a genius to be very useful to mankind ; and among his projects, rather than his achievements, may be mentioned, his arithmetical machine, his plan for securing build- ings from fire, his new printing-press, his monochord for tuning musical in- struments, and his designs for a vessel to sail against wind and tide. Earl Charles died in 1816. D. 424 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. OCT. Cotes, the associate of Wilkes, presented himself likewise, but met with no encouragement. He was a broken wine- merchant, and of no repute. Sir Robert Bernard, one of their late members, and a patriot too, was another candidate ; but the popular cry was for Lord Mahon, and another Lord till then unknown to the English public. This was Lord Mountmorris, a young Irish patriot, of a very slender estate, and wrongheaded, who had been a very active opponent in the Irish Parliament. He greedily embraced all the political tenets of Wilkes ; and being well received by the populace, at their desire was joined with Lord Mahon, and both were enrolled of all Wilkes's City clubs. Such success alarmed the Duke of Northumberland, who instantly quitted the North, where he was deeply engaged in contested elections, and posting to the Duke of Newcastle prevailed on him to set up his son Lord Thomas Clinton ; while his own son, Lord Percy, as if Irish Lords had the chief influence in Westminster, was recommended by the Earl of Kerry, a simple young Irish peer, 7 who had married an elderly Irishwoman that had been divorced on his account, and had wasted a vast estate in the idlest ostentation. On the 12th came news of the death of the Pope Ganganelli, called Clement XIV., an artful sensible man, but too old and timid to support the tottering tiara under its depressure and the intrigues of the Jesuits. He had bound himself, as the condition of his exaltation, to sacri- fice that order to the obstinacy of the King of Spain, delayed it as long as he possibly could, yielded at last to the necessity, and perished by his complaisance. They 7 Francis Thomas, Earl of Kerry, was at this time in his thirty-fifth year, and had bucn married about seven years to Anastasia Daley, sister of the Countess of Louth. The Earl died childless in 1818, when the title fell to his cousin the present Marquis of Lansdownc. D. 1774. DEATH OF CLEMENT XIV. 425 not only spread doubts on the validity of his election and published books against it, but threatened his life, so that he did not dare to stir abroad unless doubly guarded. When- they had intimidated and broken his spirit, they employed an old woman to foretell the nearness of his death, and even set a celebrated Madonna at work to menace him with it. This fraud he detected, and ordered the Inquisition to prosecute ; but it was too late : the panic had sunk deep, and carried him off. The public, however, soon learnt that the Jesuits had not trusted to the panic alone. Clement thought himself poi- soned, and declared so. The symptoms appeared clearly before his death. His belly swelled extremely, and was of a very bad colour ; and the suspicions were so strong, that the Ministers of the House of Bourbon insisted that the body should not be opened without the assistance of surgeons and others whom they should appoint for that purpose. But, though the dissection was made the very day he died, the putrefaction was so rapid that the surgeons had great difficulty to perform the operation. As soon as they touched the head, the hair fell off, and all the teeth fell out : the bones of the body crumbled away ; and the flesh upon the least touch of the knife did not divide, but came away in pieces. They were forced to embalm the body twice, in order to transport it to the Vatican ; but the face was so disfigured, that it was neces- sary to cover it with a mask of wax. The bowels at the dissection were put into a strong earthen pan ; but the fermentation was so great that it broke it. The body was deposited the first night in a private chapel, in order to be consigned in form the next morning to the Great Chapter of St. Peter's ; but in the removal of it for that purpose the head detached itself from the body. It was 426 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. OCT. supposed that a slow poison had been given to him in the last Holy Week. His confectioner was taken ill at the same time with the same symptoms, and, when the letters came from Borne, was at the point of death. For some months past great numbers of ex-Jesuits had resorted to Rome ; and letters had been received there from Germany and France, inquiring if the Pope was poisoned. These particulars I received in the following letter from Sir Horace Mann, Envoy to Florence, dated from Naples, Sept. 29th, 1774 : You will have heard of the death of the Pope, but do not know, perhaps, that there is every reason to believe it was hastened by the Jesuits, who poisoned him in the Sacrament. He himself declared his suspicions before he died, and the belief of it is so general, even in these Catholic countries, that the Ministers of France and Spain insisted on being present at the opening of his body, his belly having swelled extraordinarily, and being strangely discoloured, even before he expired. The corpse putrified so suddenly, that the surgeons could hardly go through the opera- tion; and, as soon as they touched the head, the teeth fell out, and all the bones of his body crumbled away, and the flesh came away in pieces. They were forced to embalm the body twice before they could carry it to St. Peter's ; and instead of exposing his face as is usual, they covered it with wax, and in the transport the head separated from the body. His confectioner is dead in a manner little less horrid, and with the same symptoms his Holiness had. The late Jesuits, not content with their diabolical practices, had the impudence and folly to foretell his death, and crowded to Rome, asking all the way if the Pope was not yet dead. The Ministers of the two Crowns, and the College of Cardinals, sit day and night in taking informations. Several of the Ignatian Society are seized and clapped up ; but, as the gates of Rome are shut and strictly guarded since this detestable scene has come to light, I can tell you no more particulars at present, but you shall hear farther in a post or two. It is thought here that this shocking assassination will precipitate the fall of the other monkish 1774. THE ELECTIONS. 427 Orders, who are but too like the Jesuits, in stopping at no crimes v for the interest of their Church. Wilkes's triumph in the City was not complete ; of his four nominees, Bull, Halsey, Sawbridge, and Brass Crosby, he carried but the three first. Alderman Oliver, now the creature of Alderman Townshend, was the fourth elected ; but Alderman Harley was not only driven out there, but, standing for Herefordshire, the native county of his family, he was not only rejected, but insulted, so that he narrowly escaped with his life. At Dover, Wilkes carried one member ; and on the 20th he himself and Sergeant Glynn were elected for Middlesex without an opponent, though Alderman Towns- hend had threatened to stand, and the Court and the justices of the county had used every endeavour to get candidates, but no man would venture. Had he been permitted to sit quietly in the House of Commons five years sooner, he had sunk to nothing, having no oratorical talents. Now he forced his way triumphantly, and came vested with the insignia of the first magistracy in England, and supported by half a dozen members of his own nomi- nation. Alderman Harley, brother of Lord Oxford, and who had made the firmest stand against him, now took fright, abandoned the City, and stood for Herefordshire, but lost it, and was both exceedingly ill-treated by the populace, and frowned on by the Court, as Wilkes him- self owned that Harley, had he stood for London, would have been the first on the poll. Sir Joseph Mawbey, Wilkes's candidate for Surrey, was as unsuccessful there. However, the Court lost several members in different places before a month of the electing time was over. On the 22nd the Court issued a proclamation against exporting gunpowder. This was levelled at the North 428 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. OCT. Americans, and was a proof that the Government expected they would take up arms. General Gage had seized the powder at Boston, which had actually occasioned an insur- rection. Colonel Lee, a brave but very wild man, who had been disobliged, was actually gone to America to offer his services to the discontented. The King had broken a promise to him, but afterwards, having an audience on bringing a letter from the King of Poland, the King began to excuse his former behaviour ; but Lee stopped him short by saying, " Sir, I will never give your Majesty an oppor- tunity of breaking your promise to me again." The Govern- ment had about 10,000 men in Boston. On the 26th the poll for Westminster ended, and Lord Percy and Lord T. Clinton were returned ; the first had 4994 votes, and the second 4744. Lord Mountmorris had but 2531, Lord Mahon 2342, and Humphrey Cotes 130. Wilkes went one day to support the losing candidates, and could amass but 15 voters. The Duchess of Northumber- land sat daily at a window in Covent Garden making interest for her son. 1774. ABUSE OF WILKES. 429 NOVEMBER, 1st. THE Court and Scotch faction, enraged at Wilkes's success, abused him in the grossest and most outrageous manner. This occasioned the appearance of the following excellent satire in the 'Public Advertiser' to-day, the author of which I know not : An Answer to all past, present, and future Abuse of Mr. Wilkes, on the score of Morals. I have hitherto given my best support to the Lord Mayor elect, from an opinion that the man had some virtues blended with his vices and follies ; nay, to own a weakness, I confess I regarded him as a very exalted character, whose public services and inflex- ible attachment to the laws and the people had for a course of years drawn upon his head the whole weight of a tyrant's oppres- sion, and rendered him obnoxious to all the slaves, sycophants, and ministerial prostitutes in the kingdom. I begin now to be much stag- gered in my opinion of his character. For how can he be otherwise than the collected mass of all moral turpitude who is reviled without ceasing for his treachery by Mr. Home ? for his cruelty by Alderman Toivnsliend ? for his callous conscience by Sylva the Jew, for his impudence and disloyalty by Dr. Shebbeare ? for his abuse of the Scotch by Dr. Johnson ? for his impiety by Lord Sandwich, and his infidelity by the Bishop of Gloucester f for his prodigality by Charles Fox? his mercenary, time-serving principles by Lord Mansfield and Wedderburn? for his luxury by the ministerial Aldermen? his profligacy by Rigby and Townshend? his hypo- crisy, selfishness, and ingratitude by the whole Scotch nation ? and, finally, for his black revenge and dark designs upon his country by , the best of Pr s ? TOBY. Wilkes being told that, on his presentation, the Lord 430 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. Nov. Chancellor Apsley intended to signify to him that the King thought the City had made a very improper choice, Wilkes said, " If he does, I shall inform him that I am at least as fit to be Lord Mayor as he is to be Lord Chancellor." By accounts from America it appeared that the spirit of the colonies rose and spread. At Boston they made strong representations against fortifying the town, and the Presbyterian ministers were at the head of all mutinies. The General sending to New York for 800 blankets for the soldiers, and for transports to bring more troops from Quebec, not a merchant of New York would sell him a blanket, nor would the town lend him their transport vessels. Edmund Burke was elected for Bristol, with one Cruger, both preferably to the two old Court Members. On the 7th died suddenly Thomas Bradshaw, that low but useful tool of Administration. His vanity had carried him to great excesses of profusion, and, being overwhelmed with debts, he shot himself. The King gave his widow so great a pension as 500/. a year, and 300/. a year for the education of the children. The Duke of Athol was drowned in his own pond about the same time. 1 l<2tk. Very bad accounts from America; many letters stopped. The Court affirmed that the General Assembly would have restrained themselves to a simple petition to the King for redress against the Boston bills, but that Dr. Franklin had privately despatched a sloop to invite more violent measures. On the dissolution of the Parliament Dr. Johnson, one 1 On tho 4th. This was the Duke who, in 17G5, sold his sovereignty of the Isle of Man to Government for 70,000?. D. 1774. DEATH OF LORD CL1VE. 431 of the venal champions of the Court, published a short piece called * The Patriot,' tending, according to the prac- tice of renegades, who are always most virulent against those they have deserted, to show that all patriotism is instigated by interest. Dr. Shebbeare, another pensioned writer, and who had been pilloried for libels, published another, one of the most profligate and outrageous ever penned. It was called * An Answer to Queries,' and contained the grossest abuse on King William and Queen Mary, on the Reformation, the Revolution, the Whigs, and all lovers of liberty and the Constitution. It defended the Papists, and called for persecution of all Dissenters, and for proscription of the Americans ; and was more extravagant than the writings of Garasse and the Jesuits at the time of the League. He avowed himself the King's pensioner ; and the rank invec- tive on King William was a worthy monument of the gra- titude of the fourth Prince of the House of Hanover to the great, wise, and heroic Monarch who called that line to the Crown ! The Scotch Peers, on the death of the Duke of Athol, made a stand against the mandate of the Court not a majority of them. 2 k 2nd, died that extraordinary man, Robert Lord Clive, aged fifty. His fatigues of body and mind had greatly impaired and broken his constitution. He was grown sub- ject to violent disorders in his bowels on any emotion, and they often were attended by convulsion. He was at Bath, but being suddenly sent for to town by Varelst, one of his Indian accomplices, on what emergency was not known, he was seized with violent pains. Dr. Fothergill, his physi- cian, gave him, as he had been wont to do, a dose of lau- danum in the evening. It did not remove his anguish, and 432 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. Nov. he demanded more laudanum. Some said Fothergill told him if he took more he would be dead in an hour ; others, that more was administered. It is certain that he took more without or with the privity of the physician, and did die within the time mentioned : but he certainly cut his throat. So many recent suicides gave the more weight to the belief of this. He was in his forty-ninth year. The printers of the * South Briton ' and of the libel on Charles Fox were tried and sentenced. 2 See this Journal in the preceding month of February, and in the * London Chronicle.* The new elections were now all over, and certainly to appearance less favourable to the Court than they had expected from the surprise. Lord North said he was sure of 327, and that 30 were quite doubtful. If 200 were surely in Opposition, it would, without the 30, be formid- able ; but there was no union amongst them. Lord Rock- ingham's was the greater party ; the rest were small, detached squadrons of Lord Chatham's, Lord Shelburne's, and Wilkes's all disunited. The Rockinghams were so low and inactive that they saw they had no chance till affairs, especially in America, should grow much worse; and accordingly they came not to town till the very instant of the Parliament opening, and even then found the merchants asleep and not disposed to stir on the griev- ances of America. The Dissenters, still more threatened, were as supine. Wilkes was squabbling in the Court of Aldermen with Ilarley and Townshend, and attended to nothing else. He had recently played Burke a very offen- sive trick. Having offered to set up the latter for West- They were fined and imprisoned. 1774. DEATH OF STEPHEN LORD HOLLAND. 433 minster, Burke said he would subscribe no engagement to his constituents. Wilkes promised it should not be asked of him ; and then, on Lord Mountmorris starting, sent him word he must subscribe on which he did not stand. This was the meaning of his obscure speeches at Bristol. Lord Shelburne had gone abroad for two years, but returned suddenly on the dissolution. The Ministry were extremely alarmed on America, and it was suspected that Cornwall, who was a thorough rogue, and brother-in-law of Jenkin- son, was in connivance with the Court junto, meditating a removal of Lord North and introduction of Lord Shel- burne, and, by his means, of Lord Chatham, in hopes of the latter being more agreeable to the Americans. In the mean time the Court agents were going all lengths in inflaming the nation against the Americans and reviving all the old exploded doctrines of the Stuarts. Mr. Burke told me he heard a sermon at Bristol in which the parson said the King owed the Crown neither to King William nor to the people, but enjoyed it by indefeasible hereditary right. 27 'th. Died of a dropsy, Stephen, Lord Holland. Charles Fox, his brother, succeeded him as Clerk of the Pells in Ireland, by virtue, of a patent for three lives given to their father in the late reign, and which Princess Amelia told me she heard the late King give him on condition of his never asking a peerage. I do not think that promise could bind him beyond the late King's life, who had no right to tie up a man after his own life. 29/i. The new Parliament met. Lord Beauchamp 3 and Lord Guernsey 4 moved for Sir Fletcher Norton to be re- chosen. When Lord North proposed to him to be Speaker s 4 Eldest sons of the Earls of Hert- I mistake, Lord Beauchamp moved the ford and Aylesford. N.B. This was a | Address to the King. VOL. I. 2 F 434 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. Nov. again, lie said, " And is that all ?" intimating he expected a bribe for taking so great an office. Dr. Johnson, Bishop of Worcester, had a fall from his horse in the streets of Bath on the 24th or 25th, and it was thought had fractured his skull. The King immediately named Dr. North, Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry, his successor; but on the 26th news came that Johnson was still alive, which made the precipitation ridiculous ; how- ever, he died of the hurt. 30^. The Lords went on the King's Speech. Lord Hillsborough moved the Address in a very long and severe speech on the colonies. The Duke of Richmond answered him and read a letter of Lord Hillsborough to Governor , in which he assured the colonies that the whole Cabinet Council disapproved of taxing them, and that the King was of the same opinion. Lord Shelburne spoke warmly and well, and tried, in vain, to provoke Lord Mansfield to rise. Lord Camden spoke finely on the same side. He said he knew no sovereignty but that of God ; and drew a pathetic picture of the colonies, who were fighting for everything that was dear to them, while we were only contending for the empty name of sovereignty. But what were we to get by it? The Legislature might proclaim war on them, but the executive power, the Crown, must wage it, and would alone be advantaged by it. But so it had been in every- thing. The Legislature had conquered Canada, and then it had been given to the Crown. The charters had been con- demned as too loose and ill-drawn ; they had been corrected and subjected to the Crown. The arms of the Legislature had acquired three provinces in India, but, the Company not being able to manage them, they had been thrown into the Crown. Lord Dartmouth was the only Minister who vouchsafed, or, from not knowing what part they should 1774. DEBATE ON THE ADDRESS. 435 take, who ventured to reply, and he chiefly confined himself to wishing the colonies would submit. Lord Talbot was more moderate than ordinary. Lord Lyttelton made an admired declamation. The Duke of Richmond had moved to correct the Address, that the House might be involved by no declaration without lights, but it was overruled by 63 to 13. The next day nine Lords protested ; Lord Camden for the first time. Lord Chatham was expected, but was confined with the gout. Lord Lyttelton, vain of his own oratory, said he would move on the following Tuesday to open the doors to strangers. 2 F 2 436 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. DEC. DECEMBER, 5th. THE Members being now all sworn, the House of Commons went on the King's Speech, and Lord Beau- champ and Mr. De Grey, son of the Chief Justice, moved the Address. The first was pretty warm for pursuing measures of authority against the Bostonians, and presumed that dissension among the colonies would facilitate the business, North Carolina and Georgia having sent no Deputies to the Congress. Lord John Cavendish, and Frederic Montagu proposed corrections, as had been done in the other House, till better information should arrive ; but the current ran strongly against the Americans, and the new Parliament, on which it had been supposed the Court had rather lost, seemed more submissive even than the last. Charles Fox, Mr. Hartley, 1 Colonel Barre, the Burkes, and T. Townshend, were very warm on the views and late measures of the Court, and Colonel Barr6 said the Ministers were going to blooden the new members with blood of the Americans. Lord North disclaimed having ever given out, as he was taxed, that the Quebec Bill was designed to let loose Papists on the colonies ; Wedderburn made a figure on the same side ; but even some who used to be opponents, as Sir W. MayneandSir Philip Jennings, appeared converts ; and at ten at night, on a division, there appeared but 73 in Opposition and 264 Courtiers. A majority of 191 had been little expected by either side; 1 Mr. Hartley, much versed in finances, and friend of Lord Rocking- ham, had written several political tracts, and was now in Parliament for the first time. 1774. AMERICAN AFFAIRS. 437 but the inactivity of the Opposition, the vigilance of the Court, and the prejudice taken against the Americans, made nothing surprising. Lord North had said the Court would have 327, 30 were doubtful, so the Opposition ought to have consisted of 200. Such a disparity might lead the Court to embark more rashly; but the firmness of the Americans had struck a panic, and Lord Beauchamp told me the next day, with concern, that he saw the disposition was to give way. Certainly it was not the disposition of the King and junto it might be Lord North's, who had been driven to extremes against his inclination ; and it might be that of the Bedfords, who were always the first to prompt violence, and the first to be alarmed. Sir W. Mayne said he had been told by a person in the lobby that a ship was come which had brought advice that the Con- gress had not only voted the non-importation, but the non- exportation also. For Charles Fox, Rigby had been negotiating his peace -with Lord North, but Charles's demands had been rejected as too extravagant, which had fixed him in Opposition, and Burke had even carried him to Lord Rockingham's meetings. But the most extraor- dinary event of that day was, that young George Grenville voted against the Court in effect, against his own father's famous Stamp Act. He was just returned from his travels, and newly chosen into Parliament, but had not even been at Court. His being greatly in the power of his uncle, Lord Temple, explained the phenomenon. Since the Court had not called Lord Temple to superintend the enforcement of the Stamp Act, he had found or made evasions for oppos- ing it ; and though he pretended to abandon politics himself, he hoped to re-enter or revenge himself by his nephew, who had sense, political warmth, and nothing of the dissolute character of his contemporaries. 438 LAST JOURNALS OF HOEACE WALPOLE. DEC. 6th. Lord Lyttelton moved to open the doors of the House of Lords. Lord Weymouth, a little impatient at waiting so long ere he was called into the Administration, supported him, and they made such a breach, that the Court maintained the seclusion but by 36 to 28. The motion being again renewed soon after, the Lords yielded to admit the Commons, and that each Lord might intro- duce a private person. On this the Commons re-admitted the Lords. In a more momentous point the Court was disappointed. Rigby and his connection, hurt at the impartiality of Gren- ville's Select Committees for trying Elections, had comforted themselves that they could prefer the hearing of those they favoured, and postpone those to which they were adverse ; but Rose Fuller proposing unexpectedly that the petitions should be drawn out by ballot, the whole House adopted the method, and it was ordered to be made a rule. On the days of voting the army and navy there were lively debates, for the navy being lessened, and no new supplies being asked, though appearances were so hostile on both sides in America, the Opposition presumed that some large after-demands would be made : and Lord John Cavendish hinting that he wished the Ministers would a little open their plan to the House, Lord Beauchamp im- prudently (for Lord North was absent by a fall) said he had passed two hours the preceding evening with the noble Lord (Lord North), and could assure the House his Lordship had no plan. This was exceedingly ridiculed, and deservedly, as it was very true. Burke made a great figure those two days, ridiculing with the highest wit and humour the inconsistency of the Ministers, their violent attack on America, followed by the contemptible inactivity 1774. AMERICAN AFFAIRS. 439 of Gage, cooped up and besieged in Boston which he was sent to punish ; and he exposed Sir W. Meredith egregi- ously, who attempted to defend those measures. Burke was not less severe on the violence used against Wilkes in the last Parliament, and the placid admission of him into this. New edge was given to these attacks by the arrival of the long-intended sloop with the result of the American / Congress, which far outwent the utmost the Ministers had feared. They had flattered themselves, at least given out, < that the colonies would submit : then that the Bostonians would offer compensation. At last they had hoped the colonies, at least the deputies, would disagree, and that at most a non-importation would be voted and not observed. Now the contrary of all this appeared. They had been unanimous, had voted non-importation, non-exportation too, and non-consumption ; had voted to sell cargoes of ships bringing goods from England ; had determined to support by arms such of their brethren as should be attacked ; insisted on repeal of all late Acts against America, and not to submit till that was obtained. They sent over a petition to the King, a fine recapitulation of their griev- ances ; an address to the people of England (intended against the general election, not knowing it was over) ; and they had invited the people of Canada to join with them against the Quebec Bill. This intelligence threw the Administration into the utmost dismay and consternation, as well it might. This panic of the Administration may seem to, but does not at all, contradict my former hypothesis, of there having been an intention of driving all or many of the colonies into rebellion. That plan I impute to Lord Mansfield and Jenkinson, and their secret junto, who, though really the 440 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. DEC. confidential Ministers, were very distinct from the Admi- nistration. Lord North's indolence might well be alarmed at seeing the storm he would have to combat ; but even the junto might act panic, to disguise their own plan, and to excite the nation against the Americans. But could it be extraordinary that even the junto should be alarmed ? Lord Mansfield was very capable of giving pestilent advice, and of then trembling at the consequences. Nor was in- consistence at all out of character for the whole mass of junto and Ministers. What could be more contradictory than their whole conduct during the war ? how often did , they bully, provoke, seek to conciliate, sue for peace ! v They went to war with America, France, Spain, and Holland, rejecting all offers for maintaining the peace, and negotiating for it the moment war was proclaimed. The Commissioners, Lord Carlisle, Johnston, and Eden, sent to New York to offer peace ; the despatch of Cumberland to Spain ; the negotiations kept up with Holland through Count Welderen and Sir Joseph Yorke from the moment the rupture was made ; and the constant various channels opened and kept open in France, was one tissue of insolence, timidity, obstinacy, and indecision. The rashness of the Administration had lighted up a civil war in America, in which it might be equally fatal to advance or recede. In order to extend the prerogative, they had taught the nation to be warm for the sovereignty over America, and now *J many of them were ready to give up America rather than push the contention any farther. The Butists were for driving on, Lord North for compromising, the Bedfords for either, to save their plans. Some of the underlings advised to withdraw our pensions from the Indians, that they might fall on the colonies a horrible idea, and not a new one, as will appear hereafter. In this distraction the 1774. NATIONAL DEBT. 441 Parliament adjourned for the holidays, and the year ended, though not till the American merchants had advertised for a meeting ; and even those of Glasgow were mutinous, though Lord Frederic Campbell had been commissioned to reside there, to keep them quiet. Before the end of the year 11,000^. a year was saddled on Ireland in additional pensions to Members of Parliament, except 3000/. a vear to the Queen of Denmark. 2 8 The national debt at this time amounted to 128.524.332Z. 7s. Id., the interest to 4,543,2 1 Zl. 4. 3d. The debt was less than it had been in 1767 by nine and a half millions. D. 442 ) J AN 1775. JANUARY. 3rd. A REMARKABLE Advertisement. " For the ' Public Advertiser.' Intelligence Extraordinary. We hear that the candidates to succeed the late Mr. Bradshaw as K 's friend are Messrs. Pinchbeck and Macreth, Sir William Meredith, Mr. Cornwall, Dr. Hunter, man- midwife and tittle-tattler to her M y, and Mademoiselle Kromm, the nursery-maid. It is thought Mr. Pinchbeck has the least chance, having long had a promise." 4th. The American merchants, instigated chiefly by Hayley, Wilkes's brother-in-law, one of their number, met, and determined to petition Parliament against the late mea- sures of Administration, which had brought their trade into such danger. They chose three merchants for each colony to be a committee. 10th. Was published Mr. Burke's famous speech on the proposed repeal of the tea-duty, in the last Parliament. This speech will illustrate and prove the character I have given of his eloquence in former pages. It also remark- ably confirms the characters and account I have given, in my Memoirs, of George Grenville and Charles Townshend, and of Lord Chatham's last Administration. With the quickest conception and amazing facility of elocution, with great strength of argumentation, and with all the powers of imagination and memory, the speech I refer to lias 1775. BURKE'S SPEECH ON THE TEA-DUTY. 443 great defects. The redundancy of images, the pursuit of wit, even to puerility, the want of judgment and sobriety, and the still greater want of art to touch the passions, rank this great composition (which was the greater, as it was spoken unpremeditated) but with the species of imperfect eloquence. The occasion was too serious for so much levity, and an orator who, when he should persuade or deprecate, makes his audience only wonder or smile, shows he had rather shine than gain his cause, and cannot touch his hearers when he discovers that he himself is unaffected by his subject. The part the Ministers were taking could but be of the last importance to Britain. It aimed at sub- jecting the colonies, and it risked the ruin both of them and of the empire itself. Was that a moment for Cicero ' to be as profuse of playful metaphors and fancy as Ovid ? Yet Burke did not want views in this oration. His con- cealed objects were to represent Lord Chatham as debili- tated by age, to misrepresent Conway as corrupted and swerved from his patronage of the Americans, and thence, if the Ministry should be overturned, to hold out Lord Rockingham as the sole tutelary saint of America. Thence the principal part that Conway had held in the Stamp Act was but stated as official, while all the firmness of the measure was ascribed to Lord Rockingham ; and that in- capable nervous puppet was held up as the only Saviour, that Burke, his prompter and tutor, might govern in his name. Yet, while all the measures, and violences, and timidity, and inconsistency of Administration were su- premely ridiculed, the last pages of the oration stated such high and despotic principles, that Burke both left himself a subterfuge for acceding even to the views of the Court, or showed that, whatever attacks he made on Ministers from disappointed or eager ambition, he did not essentially differ 444 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. JAN. in his maxims from the most arbitrary system. His false imputation on Conway's most disinterested and indomitable virtue was still more profligate in a man who had been so deeply immersed in stockjobbing at the very moment that, as a senator, he ought to have anathematized the practice ; and who but last year had shrunk from the poor oppressed Caribs, because, as guilty as their oppressors, he had coveted, and bought from their ignorance, for a trifle, a vast tract of their land, and had admitted Charles Fox, then a Minister, to a participation of the intended profits, I in hopes of obtaining by his interest a confirmation of his purchase. Con way was generally irresolute from excess of conscientious scruples ; when Burke deserted his party it was from high tenets, as on the subscription to the Thirty-nine Articles, or to secure a good bargain in a ^/ fraudulent acquisition ; but both in his stockjobbing and his purchase his judgment proved as erroneous as in his oratory and in his politics. / The American merchants were very temperate. Some thought that Lord North himself had promoted the meet- ing, hoping the merchants would be mediators between the Parliament and the colonies. It is certain that all the Administration was in the greatest consternation, and Lord North was much inclined to recede. Some of his friends wished him to give up the obnoxious bills ; and some went so far as to propose to give up the colonies themselves, and make a perpetual treaty of alliance and commerce with them. But, on the other hand, Lord Mansfield and the junto, of whom Jenkinson and Cornwall had most weight, suggested violent measures, and it was proposed to refrain the presents to the Indian nations, that they might fall on the colonies. Lord Mansfield, underhand, gave hot advice as long as he could secretly, and as not responsible ; and ITT.'. AMERICAN AFFAIRS. 445 the probability was that Lord Mansfield would advise rashness and prevail to have it employed, and that Lord North would dissuade it, submit, and execute it ill or poorly. The Bedfords were not less alarmed, and wavered between both opinions. Lord North, naturally indolent, would go out of town at Christmas, instead of attending Councils and determining on measures. In the mean time bad news poured in. Glasgow itself, where Lord Frederic Campbell was kept to prevent violent resolutions in the merchants, could hardly be restrained from protesting against the conduct of the Government. The West Indian merchants voted a petition, with only nine dissenting voices, who were all Scotch. Accounts came of vast de- sertions of the soldiers at Boston, and that three officers of Lord Percy's regiment there were amongst the mutinous. The King wept to General Howe on these notices, and said he had never been so much distressed before ; yet his favourites kept up his spirits, and he and they prevailed over salutary councils. Lord Bute himself was not of the number. Lord Beauchamp, 1 who had married the sister of Lord Mountstewart's wife, and who was for pacific mea- sures, complained to me that Lord Mansfield would sur- mount Lord North's temperate wishes; "for," said Lord Beauchamp, " if there is any secret influence, it is Lord Mansfield's." At the very eve of the meeting of the Parlia- ment the warlike part of the Cabinet prevailed, and four more regiments were ordered for Boston. 19th. The Parliament met. Lord North laid extracts from a great quantity of American papers before the House, and moved to have them considered on that day sevennight. 1 Francis Lord Beauchamp, son of Lord Hertford, and Lord Mountstewart, son of the Earl of Bute, had married the daughters and co-heiresses of the Lord Viscount Windsor. 446 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. JAN. Burke observed there were none from Maryland, to which no satisfactory answer was given. 20#A. Lord Chatham, after notifying in the public papers that he would make a motion on that day, appeared in the House of Lords, and kept his word ; but, being above communicating with or consulting those whom he yet ex- pected to support him, and not being at all fortunate on such occasions in choosing his measure with judgment, he crudely and absurdly proposed an Address to the King to recall the troops from Boston, giving no tolerable reason for so precipitate and premature a step, but that it would be an earnest of pacific intentions. It would, indeed, have been a good deal more total submission to America without any stipulations. The rest of his speech was very hostile, not only to the Ministry, but to the Secret Junto, whom he treated, as well as the Ministers, with proper contempt. He said Whig measures must always pre- vail in this country ; that there were three millions of Whigs in America, and all Ireland was Whig; and many in England, though some of our great Lords temporised for places : but if there were any remains of such Tories in the Cabinet as had cost the Stuarts the Crown, they would be pulled out when they had made the Crown sit uneasy on the King's head. The Ministers, he said, had shown their incapacity, were checkmated, and had not a move to make. But he would knock at the door of Administration till they heard him. He .arraigned, too, the late dissolution. Lord Suffolk, who spoke better than ordinary, defended the dissolution, and said he had advised it ; that the Ministers had determined on coercive measures, and would lay their plan before the Houses on Thursday. Lord Shelburne supported the motion, and talked of the bodies of people that would appear against 1775. LORD CHATHAM'S MOTION. the present measures. Lord Lyttelton declaimed against Lord Chatham, and, not much to the satisfaction of the Court, against General Gage. Lord Camden spoke with great energy on Lord Chatham's side, against involuntary taxation and the Declaratory Law, which, he said, he would maintain against any lawyer in England ; but the lawyer both he and Lord Chatham aimed at was pitifully absent, pretending it was usual to summon the Lords on any unusual motion. It was positively said just now that he had declared he would give no farther advice, he knew not what to advise. Lord Townshend was warm and empty for the Court. Lord Gower urged the propriety of the troops remaining at Boston to encourage and protect the friends of Government ; and, indeed, the Court could so justly show the unseasonableness of the motion, that all who wished to pay court had a better excuse for it than they generally cared whether they had or not ; the waver- ing went after them, and even the Opposition could scarce bring themselves to swallow either Lord Chatham's haughtiness or absurdity. The Duke of Richmond told me that for two hours he could scarce resolve to vote for the motion ; and when he did, after some few feeble sen- tences from Lord Rockingham, the Duke, leaving the question, attacked the Ministers on the base and timid conduct of the Court on the affair of Falkland's Island, it having just appeared in the Defence of M. de Guines that we had offered to disarm first? Lord Rochford intre- 1 Though Lord Rochford had the confidence to deny this, solemnly, it was proved in the month of April following, by the publication of the correspond- ence between the Due d'Aiguillon and M. de Guinea, on the latter'a cause. It appeared there that Lord Stormont had desired to have some expressions in those letters altered; and from two of the letters that we had absolutely offered to disarm first. 418 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. JAN. pidly denied it, said both Courts had agreed to disarm on the same day, and France and Spain had begun to disarm first. But was it probable that M. de Guines had without any reason published a false fact, or that Lord Rochford, pressed and attacked, affirmed a direct falsehood? The Duke asked if we had made no promise of restoring the island ? Lord Rochford denied that too : yet we had re- linquished the island ! Lord Weymouth said a few words against the motion, but with so many compliments to Lord Chatham, that he seemed to think the latter would still be Minister once more. At eight at night the motion was thrown out by 68 votes and 9 proxies to 18. The Duke of Cumberland voted in the minority; Lord Coventry and Lord Gros- venor, usual followers of Lord Chatham, in the majority. A few others of the Opposition retired without voting. Lord Temple, who had again veered to the Stamp Act, was absent. 23rd. Hayley presented to the House of Commons the petition of the merchants of London trading to America, and moved to have it referred to the same Committee as the American papers, but the Ministerial party moved to refer it to a Committee only; which, after debating till six, was carried by 197 to 81. Then Burke presented a like petition from Bristol, which had the same fate; as another from Bristol had, presented by Cruger. The chief speakers for the petition were Burke, Charles Fox, T. Townshend, Lord John Cavendish, and Captain Lut- trell ; against, Lord North, Sir Gilbert Elliot, and Lord Clare. The merchants, angry at the cold reception of their petition, met again, and voted to recall it, which they did, 1775. PETITIONS FROM AMERICAN MERCHANTS. 449 by pleading it would hurt them to have their affairs so publicly exposed, and desiring to withdraw their petition. 3 ~2Qth. There was a debate in the Commons against ob- serving the 30th of January, but it was maintained by 138 to 50. Wilkes said he should certainly vote against keeping that day as a fast, having always observed it as a festival. Mr. Eden, a young hopeful lawyer, 4 just brought into Parliament by the Duke of Marlborough, and who had written a sensible book on the law, opened first in this debate, but with no success. The same day Alderman Hayley presented a petition from another body of merchants, praying it might be read with the American papers ; this occasioned a long debate, and the request was rejected by 250 to 89. Lord George Germaine (who, by his friendship with Lord Mansfield and Wedderburn, was now much consulted by the Cabinet as he was warm against the Americans 5 ) distinguished himself much on this occasion. He defended all the Acts of the last session, except the Quebec Bill, which, he said, he had not attended, and with parts of which he found fault. He said, too, that if the Americans had petitioned, he would willingly have presented their petition; but if they resisted for what they called their rights, he would treat them with a Roman severity. Charles Fox attacked Lord 3 These merchants had also other grounds of dissatisfaction, as may be gathered from the following paragraph in the 'Middlesex Journal' for Janu- ary 5 : "No less than five ships arrived in the river last week from America ; but the mouths of every soul on board are locked up, and Lord North has got the key of them. This has alarmed the merchants concerned in the American 4 Mr. Eden (the first Lord Auckland, 1793), third son of Sir Robert Eden, Bart., was at tliis time Member for Woodstock, and was thirty-three years of age. He became a correct, fluent, and argumentative speaker, an able writer, and a skilful diplomatist. He died in 1814. D. 5 He was severely treated in the pub- lic papers on this account. trade very much." D. VOL. I. 2 G 450 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. JAN. North violently, who replied that, though the gentleman had blamed all his administration, yet he had defended and supported much of it ; nor did he know how he had deserved his reproaches. Fox started up, and said he would tell the noble Lord how by every species of false- v hood and treachery. Fox was called to order ; he rejoined that he saw the House would hear all invectives only from I one side. Sir G. Saville told the Ministers he saw they were determined to make war on the Americans, but assured them they would be beaten. Barre spoke well, and with much ridicule on the last Parliament, which, he said, I had died in the Catholic faith, and left us a rebellion for a legacy. On this debate, the Marquis of Caermarthen, only son of the Duke of Leeds, and son-in-law of those favourites Lord and Lady Holderness, and himself much caressed by the Court, was the first to start up and go out on the division with the minority. It was said he had been refused some favour he had asked. Lord George Gordon, brother of the Duke, also voted on that side. Sir James Lowther, son-in-law of Lord Bute, dissatisfied also, had reconciled himself to his great enemy the Duke of Port- land, and was gone over to the Rockingham party, with seven or eight members he commanded. A petition from Mr. Lee, Dr. Franklin, and Mr. Bolland, agents from the colonies, desiring to be heard on the petition \ from the Congress to the King, was presented, but rejected ' by 218 to 68. 1775. LORD CHATHAM'S CONCILIATORY BILL. 451 FEBRUARY. 1st. LORD CHATHAM, pursuing his own ideas, and still flattering himself that he could prevail, as in the height of his popularity, presented a bill (which he boasted of having communicated to nobody) to the House of Lords, calling it a Bill for Conciliating America. Its tendency was to abrogate the Declaratory Act, but declaring a supremacy over the colonies in all cases but for taxation ; allowing a Congress to meet at Philadelphia in May next, in which they should acknowledge the restricted supremacy, and grant a benevolence to the King under the disposition of Parliament. He spoke better than he had done of late. Lord Dartmouth owned himself willing to admit the bill for some future consideration ; declared his own wishes for peace, though still ready to maintain the supremacy. Lord Sandwich declared warmly for rejecting the bill, which the ' Ministers agreed to reject. As a reason for immediately reducing the colonies to obedience, he urged that they would soon be plentifully supplied, as ships were loading for them in the Dutch and French sea- ports. It is remarkable that, not a month before this, the Court had published in the public papers an order from the Court of France to their merchants not to supply our colonies, an order, as our Ministers pretended, obtained at their intercession ; the French Court adding that we should seize such cargoes. This was ridiculed in the news- papers some days after. Lord Gower quoting some words used long ago in the House of Commons by Lord Chatham, 2 G 2 452 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. FEB. the latter complained of such unfair proceeding, and flatly denied the words, as he had been used to do in the House of Commons. Lord Gower apologised for his unfairness, but maintained the truth of his quotation. Lord Lyttel- ton, though against the new bill, would have received it from respect for the author. Lord Temple professed the same respect, but lamented the mischief the introduction of the bill would do ; said the Ministers had been right in all former measures against America, and had not sinned till last year by their intemperate bills and manner of passing them. 1 The Duke of Grafton said he differed from all sides, had a plan of his own, and would propose it ; complained of Lord Chatham's manner of hurrying on his bill; to which the latter replied, his old friend the Duke seemed as eager to hurry it out. Lord Camden, the Duke of Richmond, and Lord Shelburne, the last with strong invectives on the weakness of the Ministers, supported the bill ; but it was rejected at ten at night by 68 to 32. Lord Weymouth was absent out of compliment to Lord Chatham, and Lord Mansfield from poltroonery, on which, when the King was told at night, he joked openly before all his servants. 2 The same day Sawbridge renewed his motion for triennial parliaments, to which the Ministers did not vouchsafe an answer. Wilkes supported the motion, and a young Mr. Moysey, son of a physician at Bath, for the first time, and very well. The motion was rejected by 195 to 104. . ' The last Congress, he said, had been plainly rebellious. * " For the Public Advertiser.' EPIGRAM on Lord Mansfield's declaring in the House of Lords that the Rubicon was passed, and then appearing there no more : " ' The Rubicon Is pass'd,' great Julius cried ; Mansfield, ' The Rubicon la pass'd,' replied : Caesar press'd on, came, saw, and won the day ; But what's become of Mansfield? Run away 1" 177r>. AMERICAN AFFAIRS. 453 2nd. Lord North, who had in vain hurried on the supplies before Christmas to prevent reinforcements being sent to America, now being overborne by the Secret Junto, and not having resolution or honesty enough to adhere to his own opinion, produced part of his plan for carrying on the war. The most memorable topics of his speech, which was larded with violence and moderation, as his own humour or the plan that had been given him took their turn, were these : that jurisdiction must be kept up with legislation ; that it was essential at present not to repeal the Acts of the last session, as it was necessary to maintain authority, which was well worth all the exertion of everyforce in this country. The non-importation and non-exportation agreement, he maintained, was not likely to be observed. That the nation must contribute to relieve the distresses of its traders, should there be any. When, he asked, was the time when foreign powers would not take ad- vantage of our difficulties? We had tried our strength elsewhere in the last war, though not against the Americans. Should we be defeated, we should but be where *we were now. But would they come to accommodation ? sheathe the sword but was anybody authorised to say they would ? If they would grant supplies by requisition, he would not go to war. He would move an Address to the King to take all proper means of reducing America, but would acquaint the House that he had other measures to propose on a future day. It was determined to reinforce General Gage ; four regiments were to go, and his army to be in- creased to 10,000 men. There would also be regulations with regard to their trade. If they would not trade with us, it was just they should not trade with others. The object was great, the attempt honest ; no better means had LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. FEB. been proposed. He meant to prevent the refractory colonies from fishing in our seas. Dunning answered him, and complained of the mariner in which the papers had been garbled in order to make bad appear worse, the effect of bad measures. He asked if the wealth of this country was to be employed on bankrupt merchants ? and were the lives to be lost to be counted for nothing? He believed the noble Lord was overborne by the violence of others in the Cabinet, whom he would pledge himself to impeach. He would take upon himself to say there had been no illegality in the meeting of the Congress. He hoped the authors of these evils would be known. 3 The Attorney-General replied, that, while Government existed, Acts of Parliament must be obeyed. Five thou- sand men were in arms at the town of Worcester in New Hampshire, which he had given his opinion was an act of high treason. Colonel Grant, a Scot, who had served in America, said it was his opinion the Americans would recede ff we showed spirit ; that their army, if they had one, must perish in the field. He said he had served there all the last war ; that in their conversation they said, those heathens of regular troops, yet they w d and drank as much themselves. Yet his opinion was that there should be a person appointed to treat with the North Americans. Charles Fox entered into the whole history and argu- ment of the dispute with great force and temper, and made the greatest figure he had done yet, in a speech of an hour 3 Mr. Dunning bade the country gen- tlemen take notice that Lord North would saddle them with the bankrupt merchants and ruined manufacturers ; and he bade them observe too that by consenting to this war they agreed to that proposition. 1775. AMERICAN AFFAIRS. 455 and twenty minutes. He said the greatest folly of his life was in having supported Lord North, with which his Lordship was always upbraiding him. He threw some reflections on George Grenville as author of the Stamp Act, which drew up the latter's son, who had not yet opened. He defended his father both with spirit and decency, and gained great favour with the House by his pleasing manner. Yet he would not, he said, blame those who had repealed the Stamp Act, and owned the Charter Bill had united all America against us. He would not let go the rein since we could not hold it tight enough. If he gave his vote for the Address, it would be that the Americans might not think they were encouraged. Yet he did not vote, which, with his vote on the first day, showed that, though Lord Temple's factious discrepancy held him back, his heart was against the Court; and it was said he bitterly resented the King's treatment of his father. Lord Stanley spoke for the Address, and Lord Luniley, son of the Earl of Scarborough,' for the first time, against it ; both without any weight. Mr. Powis stated the difficulties on both sides in a sensible manner, and did not divide with either. Some other young men spoke, and Burke a few words ; but the time spent by the young men, and the heat of the House, and the ignorance of thfe leaders in Opposition of the measures to be proposed, put an end to the debate much sooner than was expected, so that be- fore twelve a division arrived on an amendment proposed by Charles Fox, which tended to leave out all the substance of the Address, which was carried, and it was a vote for a civil war, by 304 to 105 ; so that this Parliament appeared to be even more corrupt and servile than the two last. 4 The want of policy in the Opposition was not less 4 Commencement of the war. 456 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. FEB. notorious. This was the day on which they should have made their principal stand and protest against the tyranny of the Court, but they had neither information, nor policy, nor union. x Lord North, by his lazy dilatoriness, had given time, after venting his hostile intentions, to apprise the Americans of those intentions a fortnight before Ad- ministration took a single step. The agents and friends of the colonists probably despatched intelligence, but Op- position did nothing : it did not even unite. Lord Chatham was vain and empty ; Lord Rockingham empty, and as dilatory as Lord North. Wilkes was broken and tired of the struggle. Yet Lord North, with all his faults, was capable of one still greater though wishing and professing moderation, he was capable of lending himself to all the injustice of the Court if his own professions should dupe the Americans into submission.\ When the Address was put, the numbers were 296 for it, 106 against it. 6th. The Address was reported and fought till three in the morning, but with no more spirit than the preceding day. Burke made a long pathetic speech, and drew a picture of the Smithfield preparing for the American martyrs. Barre spoke with more fire, and lamented the fate of the brave officers who were to be sent against their own countrymen, and he taunted the Court with neglect and ill-usage of the Admirals Saunders and Keppel, whom, however, they called out if any real service was to be done. He seemed to intimate that he despaired of doing any good, and would try no longer. Many of the Opposi- tion were disposed to secede a very silly measure but the Duke of Richmond withheld them. Lord North affected still great disposition to peace. Wedderburn went farther, and said an amnesty would be published if 1775. AMERICAN AFFAIRS. 457 the Americans submitted, with few exceptions. This was v severely taken up the next day in the House of Lords by the Duke of Richmond. The Address was carried by 288 to 105. In this debate first appeared another admired young speaker, Sir Robert Smith, who fully possessed himself, like his contemporaries, and showed his confidence not only by beginning with a reply to Burke, but by laughing at his metaphors ; yet falling into the same fault himself, and perceiving that the House observed it, he came off adroitly by saying the example had spoiled him, for evil communications corrupted good manners. 7th. The Address was communicated to the Lords, but a dispute arrived whether Lord Dartmouth, who was to open it, should begin, or Lord Rockingham, who offered a petition from the merchants, who being rejected by the House of Commons had applied to them ; but this was postponed, on which several Lords protested, and the mer- chants resolved to petition the King. The Address was much more warmly fought there, though Lord Chatham was not present, being or pre- tending to be ill ; but Lord Mansfield was, and the whole fire fell on him, the Duke of Richmond and Lord Shel- burne, in the most personal manner, accusing him of being the sole author of the war and the confidential Minister, and threatening him with impeachment. He was exceed- ingly agitated, and tried to disculpate himself; but, after confessing he had been in all secrets in the last reign, and had often been called to council in this, he pleaded having begged to be dispensed with, denied any share in the Duke of Grafton's administration on the tea-duty, on which he laid the whole cause of the present war, and affirmed that he had seen none of the late bills nor read 458 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. FEB. the despatches till before the House. It was much more remarkable that he made no answer to the Duke of Rich- mond, who reproached him with his late journey to France ! under the name of Dr. Murray, nor to Lord Shelburne's accusing him of his being the confidential Minister, though the latter again pressed it upon him, after calling out aloud to one part of his denial " That is a falsehood." He was still more hurt by the Duke of Grafton, who, being offended at the attack of the tea-duty, said he supposed i Lord Mansfield laid the whole blame on that to excuse himself from, everything else he had advised. The Duke of Richmond urged the insufficience of the fleet, and urged their bad manoeuvres at the royal review at Portsmouth, where he allowed Captain Barringtori had shone. Lord Sandwich gave a very satisfactory account of the fleet ; and though he confessed Barrington's merit, said, in the words of ' Chevy Chase,' he hoped he had forty as good as he. Lord Camden spoke with great weight, and was attacked by Lord Lyttelton as encourager of the American rebellion, but, attempting to reason, the last succeeded poorly. The debate lasted till two in the morning a most unusual sitting for that House when the Address was carried by 104 to 29. The 8th, eighteen Lords signed a protest, drawn up by Lord Camden 5 and Edmund Burke. The House of Lords had gotten into a new scrape which loaded them with signal disgrace and showed the Court's timidity in a new instance. Lord Lyttelton had promised, when they opened their doors to strangers, that he would complain if their debates were published. They were published, and he did complain. Their Lordships Not only Lord Camden now con- versed with the Rockingham party, but Lord Chatham himself went to visit Lord Rockingham, stayed with him two hours, and promised to make no more motions without consulting them. 1775. AMERICAN AFFAIRS. 459 sent their serjeant, Sir Francis Molesworth, to take up the printer. He went, but the man was not at home. Next day, by Wilkes's instigation, the printer wrote to Sir Francis to tell him at what time he would be at home, and would expect him, but the Lords did not dare to send their messenger again, as Wilkes Lord Mayor, would have committed their serjeant to prison, the printer living within the liberties of the City, and then the Lords must have committed Wilkes himself to the Tower, which they did not dare to venture. / The whole object, indeed, of the Court seemed to be to subdue America first : for this though sure of so very servile a Parliament the King, though overwhelmed with debts, yielded, to waive application for payment of them and for increase of his civil list, though sure to obtain both if the expense of the war had not intervened. But when he waived so much, and the House of Lords bore so much, it was plain what despotism they flattered them- selves would follow from the conquest of America. That war, averse as Lord North was though more criminal by supporting it against his opinion was eagerly pushed. They had offered a peerage and everything else he could ask to Sir Jeifery Amherst to take the command, and for a week they thought he had consented, but his wife dissuaded him, and he gave for answer that he could not bring himself to command against the Americans, to whom he had been so much obliged. General Howe was not so grateful. On Arnherst's refusal the Court resolved to continue Gage 6 in the command, though they had blamed him, and, by the application to Amherst, affronted him ; 6 General Gage was not only very I rican, and, it was supposed, betrayed all insufficient, but his wife was an Ame- | his orders to her countrymen. 460 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. FKB. but they sent three major-generals to serve under him Howe, Burgoyne, and Clinton. The Duke of Richmond artfully in the Lords complained of the cruelty of sending Howe to command against Boston, when the first object he would behold there would be the monument they had erected there to his brother slain in the last war. Howe was one of those brave and silent brothers, and was reckoned sensible, though so silent that nobody knew whether he was or not. Burgoyne had offered himself to / this service; he was a vain, very. ambitious man, with a half understanding that was worse than none ; Clinton had not that fault, for he had no sense at all. When this resolution was taken it was said that they also sent orders to Gage to seize and send over the chief leaders of the Americans. / 10th. Lord North moved for leave to bring in a bill for putting the trade of America with England, Ireland, and the West Indies under temporary restrictions, and for re- straining the refractory provinces from fishing on the banks of Newfoundland. As this bill was founded on the sup- posed rebellion of the Massachussets, the evidence of such rebellion was much contested by Dunning, Burke, Glynn, T. Townshend, Lord J. Cavendish, and Sir George Saville, and maintained by the Attorney and Solicitor General, and Sir Fletcher Norton the Speaker. The rest of Lord North's arguments, and the foolish conduct of the Ad- ministration, were well exposed, and are as well and more shortly summed up in an account of that debate in the * London Chronicle' of Feb. llth. Leave was granted to bring in the bill at twelve at night by 261 against 85. Lord North's temporising or dilatoriness appeared in the manner of conducting this bill. It was moved for but on February 10th, was sure of occasioning many contests in 1775. AMERICAN AFFAIRS. 461 both Houses, so it could not at soonest arrive in America before the end of March, by which time the fishing season would be over, and the bill, which, if it took place, would starve the Massachussets, could have no effect till a full year should be expired. 13th. The Ministry asked the 200Q seamen of the House of Commons which they had refused before Christ- mas. The proposal was rather debated than opposed, without a division, for about three hours. Temple Luttrell, brother of the Duchess of Cumberland, a wit and a poet, spoke against the motion in a style both turgid and flat. He printed his speech in the newspapers, which was much abused, as was Lord Chatham's very ill-worded return to the thanks of the Common Council for his conduct. But in the midst of the highflown measures of Adminis- tration against the colonies, On the 19M the town was astonished to hear that Lord North intended the very next day to offer terms of pacifi- cation to America. Had this been done before he had seduced the Parliament into the utmost violence, it might have worn some show of moderation. Now it appeared a sudden panic, and probably was so, though, to palliate it, it was given out that very favourable accounts were arrived from General Gage of the more moderate persons endea- vouring to stem the rage of their countrymen, and at- tempting associations to oppose the resolutions of the Con- gress. Many suspected that alarming intelligence of the Spaniards arming was come. That Lord North, biassed by Lord Dartmouth, should seize any moment of insinu- ating more temper was not surprising. He had, contrary to his opinion and indolence, been hurried by the Scotch part of the Cabinet, and by Lord Gower and Lord Suffolk, into extremities. It was still more probable that Lord Mansfield was frightened, and that Lord Gower, alarmed 462 LAST JOURNALS OF HOftACE WALPOLE. FEB. by the offensive conduct of his brother-in-law the Earl of Dunmore, Governor of Virginia, and lately of New York (of which more will be said hereafter when that scene of iniquity shall come forth), had also inclined to some show of moderation. There were reasons for thinking so, for Rigby, a blustering but very timid politician, who took no open part this winter, and affectedly kept out of town some days in every week, happening to go on the preced- ing Thursday, Lord Gower had promised Lord North to communicate the intended motion (which had been very privately settled by a very few) to Rigby, and yet neglected it, Rigby learning it only on the very day of the motion on his return to town by a letter from Eden, 7 the new confiden- tial agent of Lord North in the House of Commons ; and when Rigby blamed the motion, Lord Gower could find no better excuse to plead for it than that it would please the Duke of Grafton, who had been originally on the side of America. It did appear that the Cabinet was broken into factions, and that the crisis had suggested to their fears to shift for themselves. Rigby and Lord Weymouth (the latter not in place) leant towards Lord Chatham ; Lord Gower, by his wife's means, was courting Lord Rocking- ham. All of them hated or were jealous of Lord North. Lord Mansfield was connected with Lord Gower, Lord Suffolk, Lord George Germaine, and Wedderburn. The latter was enemy of Thurlow, the creature of Lord Wey- mouth. 8 Whatever, or whichever of these little factions, directed the motion, r Eden was the creature of Wetlder- burn, and had been recommended by Lord Suffolk to Lord North to replace Robinson, Secretary of the Treasury, who managed all the business of elec- tions, and the corruption of Members. Bobtnnn hod been disabled by a stn>l/ and your family to the sword. He would support the supremacy of this country when founded in justice and in general principles of liberty like his own. He con- cluded with avowing that he followed the line of Lord . Chatham. This speech and declaration were a great disappointment to the Court. Lord Mansfield, whose wife was sister of the Duchess of Somerset, Lord Granby's grandmother, who had educated him, had flattered himself he should govern Lord Granby, and had even answered for him to the Court. Lord Chatham was artful enough to write him a long letter of thanks on this declaration. Lord North said his sincerity had been doubted in the Conciliatory Bill ; that he did wish peace, yet would not 3 Grandson of the Duke of Rutland, and eon of John Marquis of Granby, the late idol of the people and soldiers. 1775. CONCILIATORY BILL PASSED. 483 give up everything to obtain it. The bill was not a proposition to starve the colonies, but to force them to open their trade, and not starve our West-India Islands, and to obtain adequate supplies. He had been accused of popery, persecution, and resentment on their rejecting the teas. No measures had been taken last year, till the smugglers gave offence. The nation could not have main- tained its rank if no notice had been taken of that offence. As yet they had not offered submission. Instead of it they had held a Congress. Our violence arose from theirs; the cause was too great to be given up. The question was no longer of taxation, but sovereignty. T. Townshend reflected severely on Eigby (who, from timi- dity of the event, had taken no part all the winter on any American question), and ridiculed his consistence, putting him in mind of his abandoning Grenville to get his present place.* The gentleman might blush, he said, but he had lost Grenville's friendship. The bill passed by 192 to 46, Con way voting in the minority. Lord Hertford was much hurt at it, though, when the Court had been so terribly alarmed at the unprosperous accounts of the Con- gress, he himself had said to me, ** My son Beauchamp said to me this morning, It is very lucky my uncle has taken part for America, it will save our family." The one brother voted as his conscience directed him, the other considered only how his brother's vote would affect the interest of the family ! Wth. The Livery of London had voted a very strong remonstrance to the King against the new American bills ; and this day Wilkes presented it. This completed the 4 Townshend might well recollect that, for the place had been taken from him for Rigby. 2 i 2 484 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. APRIL, triumph of the latter over the Court, and mortified the King was to be forced to submit. He affected to be in high spirits, and read his answer with firmness, which was a reproof to their justifying the Bostonians. He might well be firm : he had summoned a great appearance of his devotees ; the Americans were not popular ; and Wilkes not only aimed at no affront, but behaved with so much re- spect, that the King himself owned he had never seen so well-bred a Lord Mayor. Many thought even that Wilkes was bought off; at least, his whole conduct aimed at no hostilities, nor at more than maintaining some ascendant over the mob. A few days after, the Lord Chamberlain wrote to ac- quaint Wilkes that his Majesty would receive no more remonstrances from the City, on the Throne, but in their corporate capacity. This was a mean act of haughtiness, levelled at the Livery as distinct from the Court of Alder- men. He had not dared to reject Wilkes, and by receiving him had established a precedent for what he now pro- / scribed. Even of this handle for incensing the Livery, Wilkes made no use. llth. The Duke of Gloucester, alarmed by the King's ill-usage (of which more will be said hereafter), entered the proofs of his marriage, his own and the Duchess's arms, and the births of his children, in the Journals of the House of Lords, that the record of his marriage in the Council Books might not be destroyed ; and thus authenticated the validity of his marriage in the most solemn and irrefragable manner. 1 2th. The Lords in Opposition, in scorn of the violence of the Court, and convinced of the inutility of resisting, gave a silent vote against the latest American bill, and entered a protest against it without giving their reasons. 1775. MOTION TO SELL SOMERSET HOUSE. 485 Lord North, to hook a little popularity out of these bills, moved for an examination into the Irish Fisheries, as if intending to favour them on the ruin of the American Fisheries. This produced a most melancholy representa- tion of the ruinous state of Ireland from Mr. Burke and Mr. Conolly, and to which Lord North could only reply, that all he meant now was to consider the fisheries. Ire- land was in a worse state than America, by the neglect of the Administration, and by the country being plundered by pensions. Lord North also moved to sell Somerset House, and to settle Buckingham House on the Queen in lieu of it, which easily passed. He added, that he should next year move for paying the King's debts, 5 and even for an additional revenue ; and that he should not be ashamed to avow that part of the King's debts had been contracted by his advice to advance several sums. This delay seemed to imply that he might be out by next session and avoid the odium, and at the same time he laid in for favour by the declaration. 13th. The Houses adjourned for Easter. 20th. The Generals Howe, Burgoyne, and Clinton sailed for Boston. 25th. The Parliament met again. * The salaries of the Bang's house- hold were one year in arrear ; but those of the Queen's were paid up. The project of applying for an addition to the King's revenue was very distasteful to a people who found themselves uneasy under eight millions of taxes, which was said to be forty times more than was paid in Elizabeth's time, but it was only sixteen times as much, for the revenue then collected by taxa- tion was not more than half a million. It is now, in round numbers, fifty-five millions. D. 486 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. MAY, MAY. ALL the accounts from America grew more and more unfavourable. The ministerial party had been totally de- feated at New York,, where they had flattered themselves with most success, and it had been carried highly to send deputies to the approaching Congress. At Philadelphia, Galloway, 1 a chief patriot, angry that his plan had not been adopted, had written a book that gave great offence, and had moved for an Address to the King ; but it was rejected, and the Quakers were unanimous for supporting the general cause of freedom, as were their brethren here. It was said that on General Gage receiving orders to seize and send over hither the chief patriots, he had returned for answer, that should he attempt to do any such thing, that \ would be the last letter they would ever receive from him, for he should be knocked on the head. Apprehensions were felt that the Spaniards, who had a large fleet ready to sail, were meditating some blow. Lord Grantham, our ambassador there, 2 was under a cloud. A person unknown had gone on a holiday to the East India House and Secretary's Office, and, being admitted, had ex- amined all the papers, retired and could not be discovered. 1 Galloway, I think, had married the daughter of Delancey, the chief man at New York, which was divided into two parties. Delancey, I have heard, was inclined to the American cause ; but the head of the opposite faction taking that part, Delancey was forced into the Royalist scale, and became a dreadful sufferer by it. Galloway came over, and turned a virulent writer in the newspapers against General Howe and the Opposition. J Thomas, the second Lord. Ho died in 1786. D. 1775. RAMSAY, THE KING'S PAINTER. 487 Lord Grantham was suspected, and none of the grandees would converse with him. 3rd. Lord North opened the Budget very heavily. Ses the particulars in the ' London Chronicle.' 5th. Wilkes published a strong answer to the Lord Chamberlain's letter to him. The Hindoti affair was put off till next Session, but it was ordered that no writ should be issued till then. George Grenville moved that the Attorney-General should prose- cute some of the persons concerned in the corruption, which was voted. Ramsay, the King's painter, who had been a Jacobite and had set out to join the rebels, though he arrived too late, had left off painting, and was a constant scribbler for the Court in the newspapers. He had last year published a letter to and against Lord Chatham, which not selling, he had written another to Lord Lyttelton in the papers, ascribing it to him, which gave it some sale. He now published another, and likewise attributed that to Lord Caermarthen, for which he was severely handled in print. 3 3 Allan Ramsay, of whom Walpole his patrons and his own inclination." here speaks so much evil, was the son It was sufficient that Ramsay was a of the poet. lu the spirit in which | Scot, more than sufficient that he was Walpole censures the former, Churchill | patronized by Bute, that Walpole should sneered at both father and son. Shower- i strike at him. That Ramsay was ap- ing his satire on Scotland, he says in his pointed portrait-painter to the Court, ' Prophecy of Famine :' 1 Thence came the Ramsays, names of worthy note, Of whom one paints as well as t'other wrote." But poet and painter were above the was reported to be such a favourite with George III. that he painted pic- tures in the King's drawing-room, sat down to finish the mutton and turuips left by his Majesty, and was intrusted censure of Walpole and the satire of j with the Crown jewels and regalia at Churchill. When the younger Allan I his own house, where he was finishing went to Rome in 1736, then twenty- i the portrait of Queen Charlotte, with a three yeara of age, it was to study an guard round the dwelling, more for art which his father said he had been j security than honour this was enougn following, like Raphael, from the time he i to excite the scorn of Walpole. As an was twelve years old : " He sets out for \ artist Ramssfy painted with such skill the seat of the Beast beyond the Alps, to j as to stimulate the fears and exertions be away two years." " I'm sweer (loth) j of Reynolds ; he painted with such sue- to part with him, but canna stem the i cess, as to reputation and wealth, that current which flows from the advice of , Hogarth hated him ; but Johnson 488 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. MAY, A remonstrance had been sent from New York, couched \j in very decent terms, but arguing against the Declaratory Act. Burke was to present it to the House ; on which j Lord North called a private meeting of the chief members, and they resolved not to receive it: Lord Beauchamp I argued much for accepting it, yet in the House voted | against it. Lord Barrington too was for receiving it, and stayed away from the House ; which was noticed, as his Lordship was not subject to conscientious scruples, and therefore it was suspected that the King was meditating some change. The petition was presented on the 1 5th, but the Court threw it out by an amendment that was carried by 186 to 67. General Conway voted for the reception, but did not speak, as it attacked the Declaratory Act. Cruger, Charles Fox, T. Townshend, T. Walpole, Governor Johnston, and Serjeant Adair, supported the re- ' monstrance ; Lord North, Cornwall, Jenkinson, and others spoke against it. The Bishops, who had voted for so many bloody Acts, protested against a playhouse at Manchester, for which Lord Radnor protested against them. praised him for the grace and instruc- tiveness of his conversation : Sir Joshua even ranked him among the most skilful artists of his day. Wulpole has, elsewhere, borne testimony that if Ramsay was not " first-rate," it was not for want of genius but of subjects. Northcote gave him on one occa- sion a crown that ho refused to Van- dyke ; and Fuseli has alluded admir- ingly to his love of classic lore, his genius, and his learning. His visits to Italy were made for the sake of im- provement in the art ; but even there he boldly asserted the merits of the English school of painters. In his leisure hours he was a general writer, history, politics, criticism, and the exposure 01 individual imposition, occu- pying his time. He was so fond of learn- ing that, like Cato, he mastered Greek in his old age. His humaneness of spirit was not a theory, but was carried into action ; and he was a thoroughly sober man a "teetotaller " in fact, when to be sober as a rule exposed a man to ridicule and reproach. He was in every sense of the word "a noble fellow," who out of the fruits of his labour paid his father's debts, and provided for his family and kinsfolk. Ho was not one of those great geniuses who spend all they earn on themselves, and leave their wives and families to the eleemo- synary mercies of the public. He was an honest man, and died as an honest father deserved to do, in the arms of a gallant son, Major-General Ramsay, in the yar 1784. D. 1775. MOTION FOR REPEAL OF QUEBEC BILL. 489 On the 18th came advice of the death of Caroline Ma- tilda, Queen of Denmark, the King's youngest sister, 4 at Zell, where she and some of her attendants died in a very few days of a putrid fever. About the same time came out a pamphlet, by Strange the engraver, complaining of bitter persecution from Lord Bute, and of ill-treatment by the Royal Academy. Strange was a vehement Jacobite, and having early in this reign been applied to by Ramsay the painter to engrave two pictures which the latter had done of the King and Lord Bute, the latter of which the Earl or the painter had had the folly to desire should be done first, Strange, from Jacobitism as Ramsay said, refused ; and Lord Bute, with still greater folly, had declared that we (he and the King) would never forgive him. 5 On the 19M Lord Camden moved for a repeal of the Quebec Bill, and made a great figure, as Lord Mansfield, who defended it, made an artful one, pleading that it was better to have that bill than no constitution at all there. Lord Shelburne spoke finely too, and Lord Lyttelton with applause, and (for that reason with much applause) with most indecent abuse of Lord Camden, whom he taxed with Republicanism and Jacobitism ; but printing his speech immediately afterwards, as was grown a custom, it was so wordy and void of argument, that he fell greatly in the public opinion. He had the assurance too to taunt 4 She was the posthumous child of Frederick, Prince of Wales, and at her death was only twenty-four years of age. D. 5 The Jacobitism of Strange was no- torious enough, for he had borne arms for the Pretender, suffered exile with him, and obtained Isabella Lumisden for a wife, only because of his Jacobitism ; but his refusal to engrave the portrait of the King, it is said, was founded on the assertion of the artist that it was an unworthy picture as a work of art. Strange, despite his Jacobite tendencies, submitted to be knighted by George III. in 1787. He died in 1792; and the letters of his widow, so recently published, show that her stout Jacobite heart never thoroughly digested the honour conferred on her husband by " the Elector of Hanover." D. 490 LAST JOURNALS OF H011ACE WALPOLE. MAY, Lord Camden with Lord Chatham's absence and discoun- tenance, though he himself was apt to attack Lord Chat- ham too. The chief part of the debate turned, however, on the great military preparations and fleets assembling in Spain, which Lord Lyttelton called on the Ministers to declare the intent of, as did the Duke of Richmond ; and even Augustus Hervey, the new Earl of Bristol, who, though he had been a creature of Lord Sandwich, now aimed at the Admiralty. Lord Rochford said, no Lord had a right to call on him, yet declared the Court of Spain had given assurances of having no hostile designs j against us ; but Lord Sandwich succeeded worse, for it came out that we had but 17 ships at home, and they wanted 4000 men. The Quebec Bill was upheld by 88 to 28. The next day Sir George Saville moved the same repeal in the House of Commons, supported admirably by Charles Fox, but with no better success. Mr. Burke printed his speech and plan for the pacifica- tion of America. It was much more sober, judicious, and chaste from flights than the former. 24th. The Duchess of Kingston, who was returned from Italy to answer the charge of bigamy, appeared unex- pectedly in the King's Bench, and surrendered herself. Lord Mansfield treated her with great respect. She gave bond in 5000/. for her appearance to her trial, and was bailed in 1000/. each by the Duke of Newcastle, whom she had got named in the Duke of Kingston's will, Lord Mountstewart, son of Lady Bute, first cousin of that Duke, Sir Thomas Clarges, and M. La Roche. The charge was then read, which she heard with amazing intrepidity of countenance, and then was dismissed on her bail. 1775. VICTOKY OBTAINED BY THE AMERICANS. 491 26th. The Parliament rose : the King's speech was very temperate. The same day the Prince of Masserano returned to his Embassy, which served the Ministers to confirm their assertions of Spain having no hostile intentions. 28th. Arrived a light sloop sent by the Americans from , Salem, with an account of their having defeated the King's troops. General Gage had sent a party to seize a magazine belonging to the provincials at Concord, which was guarded l by militia of the province in arms. The regulars, about 1000, attacked the provincials, not half so many, who repulsed them, and the latter retired to Lexington. Gage sent another party under Lord Percy to support the former ; he, finding himself likely to be attacked, sent for fresh orders, which were to retreat to Boston. The country , came in to support the provincials, who lost about 50 men, ' and the regulars 150. The advice was immediately dis- persed, while the Government remained without any intel- ligence. Stocks immediately fell. The provincials had behaved with the greatest conduct, coolness, and resolution. ' One circumstance spoke a thorough determination of resist- ance : the provincials had sent over affidavits of all that had passed, and a colonel of the militia had sworn in an affidavit that he had given his men order to fire on the King's troops, if the latter attacked them. It was firmness, indeed, to swear to having been the first to begin what the Parliament had named rebellion. Thus was the civil war begun, and a victory the first fruits of it on the side of the Americans, whom Lord Sandwich had had the folly and rashness to proclaim cowards. \ 492 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. JUNE, JUNE. IT was said that Gage had but two days before the engage- ment received any hostile orders ; but that I doubt. The Sukey, the sloop he sent, did not arrive till a week after the account by Captain Darby, who being sent for by Lord Dartmouth refused to go to him. Gage commended much Lord Percy's behaviour. Parson Home by ad- vertisement opened a subscription for our brethren in America. The action at Concord flew like wildfire, and threw the ^ whole Continent into a flame. The mob rose at New York, seized, unloaded, and destroyed the cargoes of two ships lying there with provisions for Gage ; and then seized a fort garrisoned by an hundred invalids. Troops from every quarter marched towards Boston, and 18,000 men invested the town. Ten thousand more were said to be on the march from Rhode Island. The King's friends were driven out of New York, and Lord Dunmore 1 was told he should be treated civilly, but was desired to leave Virginia. The Administration was thunderstruck : spirit began to appear, and bitter invectives were published every day against the governing party, while they endeavoured to recriminate and to lay all the blame on the repealers of the Stamp Act. 1 The father of Lady Augusta Murray, the first wife of the late Duke of Sussex. Lord Dunmore died in 1809. Another of his daughters, Lady Virginia Murray, was so named at the request of the people of the colony in which she was born, and of which Lord Dunmore was Governor." D. 1775. REGATTA ON THE THAMES. 493 But while the prospect was so gloomy, equal dissipation continued : on the 23rd the clubs at the S9avoirVivre, Almack's, White's, and Guthrie's, gave a new diversion invented by Lord Lyttelton, or rather borrowed from the Venetians, a race of boats called a Regatta. Lord Lyttelton and Temple Luttrell, one of the Duchess of Cumberland's brothers, were the chief managers. It began from Westminster Bridge at half-an-hour after seven in the evening, but it was ill-con- ducted, the evening rainy and unfavourable, and, though all London was on the river or shores, few saw the race : thence the company proceeded to Ranelagh, where was a supper and ball, as ill-managed too. The Americans sent over an address to Wilkes, who now openly espoused their cause. At the election of Sheriffs he set up his brother-in-law Hayley, and one Newenham: the Court was for Rawlinson and Thomas, two elder Aldermen, but the show was exceedingly in favour of the former ; and though a scrutiny was demanded, the Court Aldermen were forced to give it up, pleading that order did not yet prevail. At the same meeting a strong Remonstrance to the King in favour of America was voted with scarce a negative, and voted that it should not be delivered unless to the King on his throne ; complaint being there made of Lord Hertford's letter, and a vote passed that whoever advised that letter was an enemy to his country. The meeting also voted thanks to the Earl of Effingham, 2 who had quitted the army rather than go and fight against the Americans. The Earl was a wild sort of head, yet had 2 Thomas, Earl of Effingham. He died in 1791, at Jamaica, a few weeks after the death of his Countess at New York. The title became extinct in 1816. D. LAST JOUKNALS OF HOEACE WALPOLE. JUNK, made a very sensible speech in the House of Lords on that subject. The Sheriffs went to know when the King would receive the Address, and not finding him at St. James's, followed him to Kew. He sent them word he was not ready with his answer, but would give it at St. James's. Bad news poured in from America. The New Eng- landers would not supply Newfoundland with provisions, and the Ministers, afraid of their being starved, had thoughts of diverting part of the supplies designed for Gage. The i Quakers in Philadelphia had determined to take up arms, 1 and were training all their young men to exercise. The American forces had also taken Ticonderoga and Crown Point. The Ministers were aground : they first thought of sending Hessians, 3 Hanoverians, and even a large body of Russians but found it would be too expensive or too un- popular. They were offered 3000 Highlanders, but did not dare to accept them. At last they thought of recalling Gage and the troops, and it was said to be carried in council but by one voice that they should not. At last, after several consultations, the Ministers determined to prosecute the war, and sent to General Carleton at Quebec march with 6000 Canadians to the back of the Colonies. Still they had little hopes of making any impression this campaign, but waited anxiously for the result of the General Congress, in hopes it would propose some terms of accommodation. In the mean time the Duke of Richmond, thinking the Ministers could not stand it, had gone to Lord Chatham, 3 The Hessians were ultimately pur- chased. There was nothing unusual in the process. Hollis states in his Mrmoirs, that the Elector of Saxony sold a regiment of dragoons to the King of Prussia for forty large blue and wliito metal jars. D. 1775. VIOLENT RESOLUTIONS IN THE CITY. 495 and told him that, as it was likely they should be sent for, it would be necessary to settle some plan of Administration. Lord Chatham allowed it, and said his Grace and Lord Shelburne must be Secretaries of State, and greatly com- mended the Duke's zeal and activity. " Ay, my Lord," said the Duke, " but who is to be at the head of the Treasury ?" Lord Chatham would not name anybody, but described the Duke of Northumberland on this the Duke of Richmond left him abruptly, as he had not agreed to Lord Rockingham having the Treasury. This disagree- ment encouraged the Ministers, whose sole safety indeed depended on not resigning. Yet all America went in : they declared that all that were not with them were against them, and were starving Newfoundland, which was a new and heavy difficulty on the Ministry. Lord Dunmore had acted with spirit and seized some provincial powder, and they submitted to be paid for it but the violence was so great and universal that Dr. Franklin was said to have left the Congress : it was thought Lord Dunmore had settled a plan of accommodation with Dr. Franklin. The Scotch party here continued to preach up rigour, and to throw all blame on the repealers of the Stamp Act, and were in general more popular than the Americans but Wilkes and his faction now threw off all moderation. The Sheriffs insisted on the King's receiving . their Remonstrance on the throne he told them he was judge where he would receive it ; on which they voted to publish but not to present it, with several other violent resolutions, which they entered on their books, with orders to the Members for the City to impeach the Ministers the next Session, and which Resolutions without the Remon- strance the Sheriffs presented to the King on the 5th of July. 496 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. JULY, JULY, 5th. THE same day came an account of another skirmish between Gage's men and the Provincials at Hogg Island, whence the latter had gone to drive away the cattle which supplied Gage. They were attacked by a party from Boston, supported by a schooner and a sloop ; the former of which was burnt by the Provincials, and the party beaten back. \4th. The Mayor and City in their corporate capacity presented a Remonstrance to the King, which he did re- ceive on the throne, as it was in their corporate capacity, and gave a moderate though firm answer. This seemed rather a submission in them, but they could not help doing it, to satisfy the Americans on their address to them. At this time the shipwrights in all the dockyards refused to work unless their wages were increased. They grew so mutinous at last that horse and foot guards were sent to restrain them. The officers in half-pay were not paid, which has never happened even in time of war but all the money went in corruption, or to the American war. Of the former were these instances : Mrs. Bradshaw had a pension of 800/. a year ; Lady Margaret Fordyce, wife of that infamous banker who had ruined so many, and driven two or three persons to make away with their own lives, had a pension ; just now the widow of Nuttal, Solicitor of the Treasury, who had embezzled 19,000/., had a pension of 300/. a year to induce her to give up her husband's papers, who had 1775. GENERAL GAGE'S PROCLAMATION. 497 been engaged in many election matters ; and at last the Court purchased of Charles Fox his place of Clerk of the Pells in Ireland * * * * that it might be given to Jenkinson for life, who already had the rever- sion of Clerk of the Pells in England. This was given him for his secret services, and that he might give up his place of Vice-Treasurer of Ireland, the purchase of Flood, the Irish orator. 17 'Hi. News from America. Lord Dun more had been forced to take refuge on board the ships. General Gage had issued a Proclamation, offering pardon to all who should immediately lay down their arms, excepting only Samuel Adams and John Hancock ; and ordering martial law to be exercised throughout the province. The effect of this Proclamation was only to enrage the colonies still more. In the mean time the Scotch aspersed Gage as inactive. 21st. A motion was made in the Common Council for sending an answer to the Committee at New York, with a copy of the Remonstrance and the King's answer, but the motion was rejected by 64 to 50. The Luttrells had last year negotiated with Lord North, and the father, Lord Irnham, was to have an Irish Earl- dom, and Temple Luttrell had a pension of 700. a-year ; but the family all quarrelling among themselves the Duchess of Cumberland and the two younger brothers and sister with the father, and all with the Colonel the Earldom was stopped, and Temple Luttrell continuing in warm Opposition, his pension was taken away. 24th. The Duke and Duchess of Gloucester, and their daughter the Princess Sophia, set out for Italy the Duchess three months gone with child. The story of this Prince during the last winter will be inserted hereafter. The Duke and Duchess were received with proper respect VOL. i. 2 K 498 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. JULY, at Calais by order of the French Court, and escorted to Lisle. The King of France invited them to Versailles, but they excused themselves, which was ill-judged, as it would have been of great use to the Duchess to be owned there. The greatest honours were paid to them all through France. The officers reviewed their regiments before the Duke ; and at Nancy the Princess Christina, daughter of the King of Poland, and sister of the late Dauphiness, after hesitating, made the Duchess the first visit. M. de Castries asking the Duchess who were the Knights of the Garter, and she naming Lord North as one, M. de Castries said, with sur- i prise, " Is he one ? for what ? for having lost America ? " In France, whither I went now, I did not find a single per- son who did not condemn our conduct towards America, . our folly and cruelty. The Bishop of Mirepoix said to me, " Vous etes devenusfotts, vous y perdrez"\ An account of a considerable action near Boston had been brought by the 'Cerberus,' and had arrived on the 19th, but was concealed by the Administration ; but on the 25th, an account unfavourable to their side being pub- lished, they owned partly to the advices they had received, and called it a victory. The Regulars, under Howe, had attempted to drive the Provincials from a neck of land, and a settlement at Charles Town, but were repulsed and sent for a reinforcement under Clinton. They did burn Charles Town, but had 1 700 killed and wounded, out of which was a vast proportion of officers, amongst whom were Colonels Pitcairn and Abercrombie. The Provincials lost I not a quarter of the number. Many of the wounded died, having nothing but salt provisions and scarce any hospital preparations, and the distress in Boston was inconceivable. Dr. Warren, a minister, was killed in the Provincial army. The Regular troops were such novices that half of the King's troops that were killed were shot by their own friends. 1775. FOOTE AND THE DUCHESS OF KINGSTON. 499 ' The Ministers now saw America was lost, or not to be recovered but by long time and vast expense ; yet, not daring to own their miscarriage, pushed on ; ordered more ships, sent five regiments and clothing for 6000 Canadians. Hanoverians were ordered to replace the garrisons of Mi- norca and Gibraltar. Gage was recalled, on whom they laid all manner of blame, and the command given to Howe. Burgoyne, disgusted, or not liking the service, had desired to be recalled. The Congress at Philadelphia took the most resolute measures. They named Washington, a very able officer, General-in-Chief. They voted him 2000 a-year and 51. a-day for his table : he would accept only the latter. | Colonel Ward was second, Colonel Lee third, and Major Horace Gates Adjutant-General. The great Spanish armament, on which attention had hung so long, had at last attacked Algiers and was repulsed with great loss ; it retired. Foote had written a play in which he had introduced the Duchess of Kingston. She heard of it, and complained to Lord Hertford, who stopped it. Foote was enraged, and published a severe letter to Lord Hertford in the papers, and went to the Duchess, who offered him money to sup- press his play, but he would not. She then wrote the most vulgar, coarse, stupid, and blackguard letter to him that was possible, and printed it with her name in the papers. He answered it with as much delicacy as humour and severity. The Provincial Congress determined on defence, formed an Union of the Twelve Provinces, chose Hancock their president, made Dr. Franklin postmaster, and sent over a firm but decent petition to the King, to which no answer was given. 2 K 2 500 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. AUG. AUGUST. I WENT to Paris August 16th, and returned October 17th. Short notes of events during my absence. 23rd. The King issued a Proclamation declaring the Americans rebels, and forbidding to assist them. The Opposition made no noise on this stretch of power. Wilkes let nobody but the common crier attend the Proclamation, and would not lend any horses to the heralds. The Ministers ordered prosecutions of printers who had printed Home's advertisement, but did not dare to attack him. The London Association determined to sub- scribe for supporting the printers, and censured Sir J. Dalrymple and Macpherson, though not by name. Five memorials from the Congress. 31st. The Cabinet sent to Russia to borrow 20,000 Russians. This was soon known in France, where it was said we were to give Georgia to Russia, and make it a maritime power. The Government declined offers made to them of raising Highland regiments, but attempted to raise a regiment of Irish Catholics, but these would not list, nor could they in the whole summer get above 400 recruits in England. In the mean time ships and stores were sent without end to Boston, but with so much negli- gence and ignorance that at the end of October many of the transports were not sailed. Letters between General Burgoyne and General Lee. See Chronicle, August 29th. 1775. ADDRESSES. 501 The Guild of Merchants at Dublin thank Wilkes, Lord Effingham, and the English Peers who opposed the Ame- rican war. SEPTEMBER. THE quarrel with the shipwrights was composed, and they were taken again. Major Rogers, who had come from America to be preferred, being neglected, returned, took on with the Americans, and did great mischief to the King's cause. Account of Admiral Greaves at Boston being beaten with his own sword by an officer of the Revenue. On this, Greaves was recalled. Insurrection of sailors at Liverpool, who had been dis- charged by the merchants, suppressed by the military, but several lives lost. A remonstrance to the King against the war, from the Common Council of Dublin, stopped there by the Mayor and Aldermen. The London Association send letters to Worcester and other places, inviting a league against the war, but without success. 6th. The Court procure by money an Address to the King from the Jacobites of Manchester, 1 advising him to 1 " For the ' Public Advertiser.' EXTEMPORE. Oil Reading the List of the Manchester Subscriptions. i. " When Manchetter people subscribe The Government plans to support, We may venture to swear that a bribe Is never unwelcome at Court. H. " How strangely, in thirty good years, May politic changes arise ! Those who felt for their Iteadt, or their eart, Begin now to open their eyet. MASON." 502 LAST JOUENALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. SEPT. prosecute the war. This was immediately followed by Liverpool, and Lancaster, and Leicester ; which being trading towns, the Addresses must have been dearly bought. They were followed by Poole, Coventry, War- wick, Exeter, Beverley, Gloucester, Suffolk, Taunton, Dover, and Devonshire, and with a very ill-attended one from Yarmouth. Lynn was said to have addressed, but Crisp Molineux, one of their members, published a letter denying it, saying he and his colleague T. Walpole had presented none, had both always opposed the war, and it was against the sense of the town. 2 Leith and Montrose, in Scotland, addressed, but Edinburgh and Glasgow re- fused, nor could all the interest of their member Lord Frederick Campbell obtain one there. The Mayor and Aldermen of Bristol addressed, but near a thousand of the merchants there soon presented a counter-Address, but so cool an one, that Burke, who drew it, displeased them, and it was plain he was, as usual, unwilling to dis- please the Court. The Opposition were so weak as to try at getting no counter-petitions, though Lord Rocking- ham might have got one from the whole county of York. Still the Administration did themselves as much hurt as good by the Addresses, as they inflamed the spirit of contest and party in every place whence the Addresses came, and had as bad effect by exciting counter- Addresses in London and Middlesex. 16th. Died Allen Lord Bathurst, aged 91, father of the Lord Chancellor Apsley. 2bth. The freeholders of Middlesex assembled at Mile End, and voted instructions to their members, which were 3 For the real names and substance of the addresses consult the ' Gazette,' as this list may not be exact. 1775. ADDRESSES. 503 couched in the strongest terms ; also thanks to Lord Effingham. The Middlesex Justices presented a counter-Address. Wilkes the Lord Mayor receives a letter to him and the livery from Hancock and the Provincial Congress, which he read to the Common Council, which they or- dered to be entered in their books, and published. They also ordered a letter to the electors of Great Britain, inviting them to discourage the war ; and published it. 29th. The Livery return Wilkes and Sawbridge for Lord Mayor ; the Court of Aldermen choose the latter. The merchants of London present a decent but very strong Address against the war. Wesley, the artful patriarch of the Methodists, to court \/ his patron Lord Dartmouth, published a calm Address to the colonies, where he knew it had no chance of being seen. He probably hoped for a deanery or bishopric. 504 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. OCT. OCTOBER IQth. IRISH Parliament meet: Address opposed, but car- ried by 92 to 52. At my return I found everything in great confusion. The Ministers had made many blunders, and the Ameri- cans had not made one ; but conducting themselves with j equal address and vigour, spoke the language of respect, I decency, and conciliation, while they had prepared every resource, parried every art, and employed every one to encourage and confirm the peopleX The Scotch Royal party at home had attended to nothing but perpetuating the blindness of the nation, and keeping up the stocks. The keeping up of the stocks was the inexplicable pheno- menon of the year, and which, it is just to say, the Govern- ment managed with great address. In the first place, they applied the large sums of trust money in Chancery to buy into stock, which they sold out again, and repeated this manoeuvre. In the next the stagnation of the American trade induced people that had money to buy into the stocks rather than let it lie dead. The non-exportation from America had not yet taken place, and the Ameri- cans, not to make things quite desperate, had paid several of their debts. Some prudent men in America, averse to the troubles, had remitted their fortunes hither, and large sums had been expended by the Russian fleet on their return from Constantinople. The Ministers averred that the trade with Russia, Germany, and Poland, since the pacification of the first and last, yielded as much as the 1775. THE MINISTERS. 505 American trade ; but this was fictitious or temporary, as Poland had been so distracted that for three years it had made no demand. The Americans, foreseeing the storm, had laid in treble quantities of goods; and many merchants, concluding the war would not last, had kept their manufac- turers at work against a new and vast demand on a peace. But all these resources would fail in a year or two if the war should last ; and it had already cost three millions, as much as had been pretended, and but pretended, to be paid of the national debt after twelve years of peace ; for Lord North had only borrowed with one hand to pay with the other, and in reality we had paid off but a year and a half. How the Government kept all the American merchants from being more clamorous is still more inconceivable. The Scotch party at Court were also busy in keeping up animosity against the Americans, leaving the management of the war to the Ministers, who had applied little to it. Lord North, of astonishingly gay indolence, had taken his pleasure in the country ; and the other Ministers, who began to foresee a storm, had dispersed themselves with less carelessness, to avoid the imputation of having meddled much. Lord North had neither devised the war nor liked it, but liked his place, whatever he pretended. Lord Mansfield trembled and worked more in the dark than in daylight ; and he and the Scotch were still more busied in keeping up the spirits of the King, as they knew, if he flinched, the nation would soon turn and pursue them. On the bad success at Boston they had all recurred to a great effort in spring, which made them neglect proper supplies and vigilance, and the Americans availed them- selves of their negligence. As the Parliament grew near, the inferior Ministers began to apprehend that so much money and lives wasted, so much money to be asked, so 506 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. OCT. little done, and such total miscarriage of all their schemes, must begin to open the eyes of men. This put them on procuring Addresses, to authorise their demands to Parlia- ment, and to secure the Parliament ; for they justly flattered themselves that, while they were secure of the Parlia- ment, even the loss of America and repeated disgraces would not shake them at home, so weak was the Oppo- sition, and so corrupt the nation.\ Still, however, in their vexation, almost every one endeavoured to throw the blame off himself, and all to throw it on Lord North. Lord Gower was sometimes desponding, sometimes violent from rage. E-igby kept out of sight as usual. The Attorney- General, Thurlow, declared that it required the utmost effort of charity to suppose the Ministers had any under- standing. But he had more reasons than conviction for holding this language : Lord Weymouth his patron, was still looking to better himself by a change, and Thurlow himself got a deanery for a near relation, to silence his criticisms. But there was another Thurlow-like man who gave them a greater alarm. Whether the fears of the Bed- fords had alarmed the Duke of Grafton seriously, and he had a mind to veer about towards his old friends the Rockinghams, who must come in on a change, whether his pride was hurt by an incident 1 am going to mention, or that he had a mind to have his murmurs hushed by some bribe, in autumn he wrote to Lord North, finding much fault with what was doing or not doing. Lord North, who was a man of neither ceremony nor civility, made him no answer. The Duke, forgetting or remem- bering how many hours he had made Lord North wait when under him in the Treasury, could not brook this con- tempt, but having been a patriot, or intending to be so again, he veiled resentment under public good, and at his 1775. TIIE DUKE OF GEAFTON. 507 own table at Newmarket broke out openly, and before Charles Fox, on the mismanagement and errors of the war. Charles posted to town and proclaimed the conversation. The town rung with the news that the Duke would begin the session in Opposition. Rigby in a panic asked Fox if he might tell the Duke what he had heard. Yes, said Fox jollily, he did not say it to me in confidence, but publicly. The Bedfords immediately lectured the Duke, who, being frightened, and, as cowards always do, beginning with bullying, wrote to Fox that he was sure the latter had not misrepresented his words, but concluded that others had misrepresented Fox's. Charles, who was very stout, made no answer, but went to the Duke at Newmarket, and, before his Grace could hammer out a palliative, said, " My Lord, I will save your Grace trouble, and will repeat what I have said." The Duke did not like so much greater firmness than his own, but did not dare to contra- dict it, yet still had recourse to evasion. He said, " Sir, you have repeated my words more exactly than I could do myself; still I desire not to be thought out of humour: Lord North (this was false) and the 'Ministers have been very civil to me ; I only disapprove of all their measures." The public was impatient to see how he would flounder \ through these tricks and contradictions. Just as the Parliament was ready to open, new difficul- ties fell on the Ministers. They learnt that two separate bodies of Provincials were marched to attack Quebec, where General Carleton, who was to have retaken Crown Point and Ticonderoga, and to invade New York with the favourite Roman Catholics, could raise none, had but 600 men, and was obliged to send home his wife for safety, who landed a few days before the Parliament met ; and, on the 508 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. OCT. 22nd, intelligence came that the Provincials had seized Nova Scotia and Halifax, and made themselves masters of 7000 stand of arms, a train of artillery, stores, and pro- visions, all which by marvellous negligence had been guarded but by 50 men. The Ministers denied having any information of it, but Lord Hertford owned to me that the Ministers knew the Provincials were gone thither, and must take it as totally unguarded ; and added, " The Americans will soon be masters of all the strong posts in America." These were the Provincials that Lord Sandwich and Colonel Grant had so wisely proclaimed cowards to a man. The loss of Halifax was the greater blow, as it was one of the places that the Administration had destined for the retreat of the troops from Boston. At this minute transports for Boston with cattle were lying wind-bound in the river, and the cattle was dying daily. This was a very different situation from that time twelvemonth, when I had almost despaired of liberty. At least now it did not seem in great danger in America. I have mentioned the bravado of the Proclamation, and the prosecution of printers. On the 23rd the Minis- ter, to wear an air of vigour in consequence of those threats, or to throw out a tub that might make men forget the hopeless situation of their affairs in America, or to intimidate Wilkes and Sawbridge from provoking im- prisonment from Parliament by denying the Americans I were in rebellion, took a step that was much more likely to inflame than terrify them ; and conducted the matter as sillily as it was contrived. On the oath of one Richardson, an American and an officer, who swore that Sayer, a late patriot and banker of bad credit, had corne to him in the Tower, and, taking him into a private room, had offered him 1500/. to assist him in seizing the Tower, and the 1775. PANIC OF MINISTERS. 509 King as he went to the House of Lords, and then force him to call a new Parliament, they held a council and sent for Lord Mansfield and the Attorney-General ; the first was afraid to appear, and the latter would not, laughing at the folly of the charge, as everybody did the moment they heard it. They could get nobody but blind Justice Field- ing and his clerk. However, on so absurd an allegation, supported but by one witness, Lord Rochford sent messen- gers the next morning to Sayer's house, who, for fear he should escape, told a lie, and said they had got a forged note of hand to talk to him about. He came to them, and they seized him and carried him before Lord Rochford, where he behaved very civilly, but first sent for Reynolds, Wilkes's lawyer, for his counsel. As he had been Sheriff, they pretended that in compliment to the City they com- mitted him to the Tower, allowing nobody but his wife to have access to him. Richardson the evidence proved to have a very bad character. The Ministers, it was sup- posed to justify their proceedings, had intercepted trea- sonable letters of Sayer to America. That this man and one Labelic, a poor mad enthusiast to liberty, whom they likewise took up, had talked indiscreetly, was probable, for one Nugent, another officer, said he had heard con- versation about seizing the Tower, in a coffee-house two days before Sayer was committed. On this Nugent was taken up too, but, refusing to name the person whom he had heard talk of it, was after two days released. The Ministers likewise issued warrants for apprehending one or two dissenting Divines. The same day thousands of incendiary papers were dis- persed, inviting the people to rise and prevent the meet- ing of the Parliament. On this the guard was trebled, and their muskets loaded, and thirty-six rounds of powder 510 LAST JOUENALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. OCT. delivered to them. At the same time papers telling the people how well the Court was prepared, signed by Sir John Hawkins, Chairman of the Bench of Westminster Justices, were spread abroad. These rumours gathered an immense multitude of people together on the 26tk ; but everything passed very quietly, and the King opened the session with a very extraordinary speech, in which were three or four gross falsehoods: the first, that the Americans designed to establish an independent em- pire ; this was strongly contradicted by Lord Shelburne ; and second, that Foreign Powers had offered us assistance ; if this meant Russia, it was false, for they had been begged, not offered ;* and if it alluded to little Princes in Germany, they could not with propriety be called Foreign Powers ; the third was, pleading the conciliatory plan of last winter as indication of disposition to peace, whereas it was true that that plan had been only carried by Wedder- burn's declaring that nothing serious was intended by it. But the most striking part was the King's notification of a design of sending Commissaries to treat with any provinces that should wish to return to their duty. Whoever knew anything of America could but laugh at this scheme, as there was not the least probability that the Americans would treat with the present Administration. To others it seemed to imply that the Ministers began to be alarmed, and wished to treat. Many of them for fear of their places looked that way ; but there was a secret motive to this known a few days afterwards, that set the whole in the most ridiculous, mean, and contemptible light possible. 1 It was said that wo had asked for 20,000, that the Empress said she could not lend HO many, but spoko very fair. Tlu; meeting of Parliament was deferred to the 26th, as it was said the final answer might come on the 22nd, but nothing now was said on it ; only some affirmed that the French Ambassador at St. Petersburg!! had protested against lending us those troops. It is certain the demand had been spread in France by the beginning of September. MEETING OF PARLIAMENT. 511 The Addresses, moved in the one House by Lord Townshend (very ill), and by Mr. Ackland 2 and Governor Lyttelton 3 in the other, were warmly attacked in both, after Lord Camden had presented a petition from the City for peace, to which the Chancellor opposed one, con- temptible from the insignificance of the petitioners as under command, from Nova Scotia. A like was presented to the House of Commons. The Duke of Grafton, who two days before had ac- quainted the King with his dissent from the measures of Government, after Lord Gower on Bigby's authority had assured his Majesty that the Duke would not disagree, openly condemned both the Speech and measures. It was known that Lord Camden, voluntarily or invited, had en- tered into counsels with him in the summer ; and as Hinch- cliffe, Bishop of Peterborough, now took the same part, and influenced his former pupil, Mr. Crewe, to take the same part in the Commons, much of his Grace's disgusts was imputed to the Bishop, who was a sensible fine gen- tleman, and a Whig, though he had the last year, when the prospect was more promising for the Court, gone much with the stream of favour. Lord Shelburne was not less hostile ; Lord Buckingham took part, and the Duke of Bichmond as ably and with more applause than usual : even Lord Lyttelton, now gone into Opposition, because Lord North had offered him a lucrative place, and not one of power or show, attacked the Ministers warmly, and told Lord Sandwich, who he thought had hinted censure at Lord Chatham, that he had not dared to attack that great Lord if present. Lord Chatham was indeed con- * Eldest son of Sir Thomas Ackland, and married to a daughter of Lord Ilchester. 3 William Lyttelton, brother of George Lord Lyttelton, and late Minis- ter at Lisbon. 512 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. OCT. fined, and had long been in a despondent situation. The young Lord Ferrers, 4 eldest son of Lord Townshend, a most excellent young man, declared he should oppose all the measures of the Court, though out of respect to his father he would not begin that day. The Ministers made a most disgraceful figure, *Lord Gower alone defending them tolerably. Lord Rochford did as well as his capacity would allow him that was, wretchedly. He said he would take on him to affirm that there was a design to raise a rebellion here and overturn the Government ; an assertion not only ridiculous from what had been discovered, but very inconsistent with the boasts of the Ministers that the whole nation was with them. Lord Sandwich, whose parts his own friends thought impaired, behaved so inde- cently, arrogantly, and contemptuously, that he was often called to order, and did own he had been deceived in the number of ships wanted in America, and yet that, if more had been asked, many Lords would have opposed their being g anted. Lord Weymouth did not speak, nor the Law Lords Camden and Mansfield, who seemed to wait to reply to each other. The House sat till eleven, after two divisions : the first on a proposed amendment in which the Duke did not vote, and which was rejected by 69 to 29 ; the second against the whole Address, which was carried by 69 to 33. The Earl of Jersey, Lord of the Bedchamber, but attached to the Duke of Grafton, voted with him in the minority. In the Commons Lord John Cavendish and Sir James Lowther moved to correct the Address, and were briskly 4 George, afterwards second Marquis of Townshend, was at this time twenty- one years of age. His mother, Char- lotte, the only daughter of Compton, fifth Earl of Northampton, was in her own right Baroness Compton and Ferrers of Chartley. On her deatli in 1770 her eldest son George succeeded to the titlo, and by it was subsequently sum- moned to the House of Peers in his father's lifetime. He died in 1811. D. 1775. DEBATE ON THE ADDRESS. 513 seconded by the Lord Mayor Wilkes, Hopkins, a clerk of the Green Cloth and friend of the Duke of Grafton, Temple Luttrell and the Colonel his brother, Governor Johnston, Sir Edward Astley, General Conway, Colonel Barre, Burke, Charles Fox, Dunning, T. Townshend, and Turner. For the Court spoke Rice, Sir Richard Sutton, Lord Stanley, Sir William Meredith, Jolliffe, Sir Adam Ferguson, Freeman, Lord George Germaine, Lord Bar- rington, Lord North, and the Attorney and Solicitor Generals. General Conway spoke with the highest spirit and universal applause, even from the Courtiers and his rival Lord George. He said, they talked of the King's * dominions in America ; where had he any left there ? was Montreal any longer his ? was Quebec ? was Halifax ? who would answer him ? He professed great respect for his Majesty, but said, looking full at Rigby, he never would be bound down to act with one set of men and say black was white, and what was called upon system. The Solicitor-General having said he augured well from our ill success, as the late war had begun ill, and ended so gloriously, Burke took this up to ridicule, but lost him- self in a torrent of images and copiousness, as he often did. Charles Fox took it up better, and said the late war had not turned to success till the Ministry had been changed forgetting Lord Chatham had come in, and his own father had been of the former Administration ; but with his usual quickness he soon recovered that slip and J said, Lord Hardwicke had been a great lawyer but a wretched politician ; and when he gave place to Lord Chatham, all had prospered; "but," continued he, rising in energy, " not Lord Chatham, not the Duke of Marl- borough, no, not Alexander nor Caesar, had ever con- \ quered so much territory as Lord North had lost in one VOL. i. 2 L 514 LAST JOURNALS OF HOKACE WALPOLE. OCT. campaign." 5 Lord North made a poor defence ; and Saw- bridge declaring that he had received the orders of his constituents to impeach the Ministers, and certainly would, Lord North's voice was observed to falter. The House sat till past four in the morning, when the Address was carried by 278 to 108. The next day the Duke of Eichmond, having drawn a strong protest for the dissenting Lords, found the Ministers had adjourned the House before the usual hour, to disap- point it a poor refuge, as they could protest on that step and enter their former reasons, and could always print them. The Commons sat again till twelve at night on the Report of the Address, the debate turning on the garrison- ing Gibraltar and Port Mahon with Hanoverian troops, which the Opposition cried out against as a glaring breach of the Act of Settlement. Lord North said he did not believe that measure not having the consent of Parliament was illegal, but, if it was, there might be an Act of In- demnity ; on which Colonel Barre advised him to insert all the crimes and blunders of the Ministers. Adam, nephew of the Scotch architect, and a rising speaker, said, that, though wishing so well as he did to the measures of Administration, he was sorry the noble Lord's inherent indolence, which he had so often confessed in that House, should so far unfit him for being First Minister, but hoped his Lordship would not suffer it to be said in history that V in the year 1775 he had lost America. Lord North said, 1 "For the ' Public Advertiter.' On the Loss of North America in one Campaign. " Of two Columbusea let Europe boast ; America one found, and t'other lost. " On the Same. " O'er Katt and Wett Pitt spread the British reign, Curb'd envious France, and humbled faithless Spain. North, with rash ignorance and wasteful cost, In one campaign a continent hag lost. What stigmas, ribands, stars how foul a blot, When North a garter hat, and Chatham iit '.'' 1775. DEBATE ON THE ADDRESS. 515 he confessed his indolence, and still more his inability ; that / he had been forced into his present situation, and kept in it, and, while there was a storm, would stand firm. He owned he had not apprehended so general a revolt, and said he should propose a bill for empowering the King to call out the militia if there should be any rebellion ; and he added this savage sentence, " If we suffer from the war, we shall . at least have the satisfaction of making the Americans suffer more" Barre ridiculed Lord North admirably on his deference to Adam, a Scot, and said that accent had always weight, and even its reproofs were called candid ; but. his Irish brogue did not meet with the same favour, and was always construed into invective. Rigby rejoiced at Lord North's resolution, but owned the last campaign had not answered his hopes, and did think the fault must lie somewhere, whether in the sea or land department he could not say. Hartley, G. Byng, Sir G. Yonge, and Dempster were strong for the illegality ; Cornwall, the Lord Advocate, with violence, for it ; Sir Gilbert Elliot for trying both war and peace. The Report was carried by 176 to 72. Sir Matthew Ridley, a country gentleman, always with Administration, owned he began to fear the ex- i pense of the war. Governor Johnston said he should hereafter lay open the true secret reason for sending the Commissaries ; and he told some people that very day, that it was Lord Mansfield who had insisted on that measure, that his darling bastard Sir Thomas Mills might be one of them ; a man notoriously too inconsiderable for the office, and a strange^instance of interested selfishness or cowardice in the author of the war. 28th. Sayer was carried by Habeas Corpus before Lord Mansfield, whose dastardly spirit again displayed itself by his profuse civility to Sayer, whom he allowed to be bailed. 2 L 2 516 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLK OCT. 31s/. Colonel Keene, Lord North's brother-in-law, told me that he had heard me say I wished my place in the Custom-house were for my own life, not for my brother's, and that Lord North would be very glad to give it me for my own. I replied, " Sir, to be sure a place for one's own life is more agreeable than for another person's ; but I beg to explain myself to you : though I do think so, and have very likely said so, still it was with no intention of asking to have it so ; and I must tell you that I might have had it so. Lord Holland, when I lived with him in great intimacy, offered to make my place for my own life, but I would not accept it." " No ?" said Colonel Keene, " I am amazed at that! why not? " " Because, Sir," said I, '* it. is a greater favour than I will ever accept from any man." " To be sure," added he, " it would be more difficult to give it you now, as even the reversion is granted." "Yes, Sir," said I, " and I will explain that to you too. Lord Bute, after Lord Holland's life, would have been overjoyed to have given me my place for my life ; but I would not accept it ; and so the reversion was given to Jenkinson." I was much pleased with this offer, as I knew it was made in hopes of my persuading Mr. Conway to vote with the Ministry against America, and gave me the opportunity of showing him how disinterested my sen- timents were, and as it proved to me how much they were hurt by his opposition. It was silly too, as everybody knew it was impossible to corrupt me ; and having refused to accept the place twenty years before from Lord Holland i when he wanted to buy me to approve his gieasures, and rejected all overtures from Lord Bute, and withstood Grenville at the hazard of my fortune, and advised Mr. Conway to resist all overtures, and offers, and threats, it was not probable that at fifty-eight I would disgrace my 1775. VOTE OF SEAMEN. 517 whole life, character, and principles, for a lucrative offer that I could flatter myself with few years' enjoyment of ; and what a mean creature must Lord North be, if he could hope I was mean enough to accept a favour from him after his brutal behaviour to my nephew the Duke of Glouces- ter but the last winter ! NOVEMBER. SEVERAL Lords protested against the Address. 1st. 28,000 seamen proposed in the House of Commons. Lord North had changed his pacific language, and was now for vigorous measures. Burke, Charles Fox, and General Conway, all spoke ably against the measures ; though the latter approved the number of seamen, that the country might not be left defenceless. He upbraided Lord North for his obstinate silence on the Conciliatory Commission, or Commissioners, who, he said, could not be sent without con- sent of Parliament ; but all their measures were wrapped up in darkness, nor, indeed, would the Ministers give any lights of any sort. This was a parliamentary war, and yet even Parliament was trusted with nothing ! If concessions were to be made, they would come best from Parliament. * Everybody had given up taxation, and yet the war con- tinued. The seamen were carried without a division. In the Lords the Duke of Manchester moved for a cen- sure on employing the Hanoverians without consent of Parliament, and the Duke of Grafton supported the motion, but it was rejected by 53 to 32. 518 LAST JOURNALS OF HOEACE WALPOLE. Nov. 2nd. The same motion was made in the House of Com- mons by Sir James Lowther, but after a very long debate it was rejected by a previous question. 3rd. The bill for indemnifying the Ministers on em- ploying the Hanoverians was read and occasioned another late debate. Dunning was very severe on the indirect measures by which the Court had procured Addresses. He represented the indecency and danger of a battalion of the Devonshire militia addressing the King for war, and taxed Lord North with correcting that Address, and with pro- curing one from the University of Oxford, in whom, as tutors of youth, it was shocking to promote bloodshed. This was carried by 203 to 81. The same day the Duchess of Kingston petitioned the House of Lords for her trial. 4tk. Pitt and Mr. Pownall arrived from Quebec, sent by General Carleton (for their personal safety as it was thought) to give an account of 200 Provincials having made an attempt on Quebec and being repulsed. They had certainly made the attack with too few men and too little artillery. It began to be said that the attempt on Halifax had failed likewise, being guarded by a man-of- war. 7th. Temple Luttrell made a motion for pacification with America, but little notice was taken of it, nor fol- lowed any division. 8th. The army moved for in the House of Commons. Lord Barrington said it was not designed against all the provinces, as some few were for peace. This was a stale trick to sow divisions in the colonies. Sir Robert Smith and Mr. Powis, who both generally voted with the Court, declared they could not vote for the army unless the Ministers would open more of their plan. General Con- 1775. MINISTERIAL CHANGES. 519 way supported them, and said it was the opinion of many officers that the war would be better carried on by sea alone. The House sat till near eleven, when the army was carried by so great a majority as 227 to 73. 9th. A very violent speech was published of Wilkes, on his giving up the mayoralty to Sawbridge. It was full of invectives and insult on both Houses, particularly the House of Lords. The same day the Privy Seal was taken from the Duke of Grafton, which he intended to resign. This dismission produced several other changes, and indeed gave a new complexion to the Cabinet. The memorable Lord George Sackville Germaine became a Minister, a proof at least of his political courage. The Scotch faction was outrageous at Lord North's indolence, and were for pushing on the war with the utmost violence. The Earl of Suffolk, 1 as ambitious as if he had parts, was, though an absolute cripple, eager to act a more considerable part, and was governed by Wedderburn and Lord George, the latter of whom was as active and determined as Lord North was the reverse. The Earl of Dartmouth had conquered his own conscience, but not his scruples : he had lent himself to all the worst acts of the eager, but had not grown eager himself. He now was persuaded to show that he had acted against his principles for pay, not for power, and gave up the provinces to Lord George and took the Privy Seal. Poor Lord Rochfbrd, who had made so silly a figure in Sayer's affair, and as silly in Parliament, was dismissed with a pension. 2 Lord Weymouth succeeded him. Lord 1 Henry, second Earl of Suffolk and Berkshire. He died in March 1779, childless, but leaving his widow enceinte. The presumptive heir was Henry Bowes, the late Earl's uncle, who waited in suspense till August 1779, when the widowed Countess gave birth to a son, but the little Earl lived but two days, when his great-uncle suc- ceeded to the title and estates. D. 2 It amounted to 3320J. a year. D. 520 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. Nov. Ashburnham, a Court cipher, was made Groom of the Stole ; Lord Pelham, another of the same class, succeeded him in the great Wardrobe ; and the infamous Lord Lyttel- ton, who had terrified this martial Ministry by one speech, was made Justice in Eyre, in the room of Lord Pelham, and that very day made a more violent oration against the Americans than that he had made for them a fortnight be- fore on his bargain being refused. When these new Ministers were taking the oaths in Council, the King called Rigby aside, and expressed his obligations to Lord Weymouth for taking the Seals ; and added " Thurlow (the friend of Weymouth and Rigby) is my lawyer" This was notable insincerity, for Wedderburn, Thurlow's particular rival, was really the King's lawyer, and had the greatest share in this change. In the Commons, Jenkinson, on the army, as the mouth of the Court, declared for more vigorous measures. \Qth. The Duke of Richmond engaged the House of I Lords to examine Governor Penn, who had brought over the proposal from the colonies. Penn told them the colonies had neither lost their loyalty to the King nor affection to this country, but would if we did not make V peace soon. Being asked if Lord Dartmouth had asked him any questions, he said, " None at all " (see the ' London Chronicle ' of November 1 1). The Duke then com- plained of the Ministers doing nothing, and yet vaunting that 70,000 men were to be sent to America, of which I 30,000 were to be Russians, the carrying of whom to America would cost 500,000/. ; and he moved that the petition of the Congress afforded matter for conciliation. Lord Dartmouth and Lord Sandwich opposed the motion, and the latter went into a vain rant on his own merit in the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle. This was well ridiculed by 1775. AMERICAN AFFAIRS. 521 Lord Shelburne, who put him in mind that he was the only man who had ever stipulated for the disgrace of */ sending hostages to France ; and he challenged the Mi- nisters to answer whether they did not know that they , could not have Russians, and that France had insisted we '' should not have them. No answer was made to this, but the motion was rejected by 86 to 33. 14th. General Gage arrived from Boston. Whatever accounts he brought were sedulously concealed. All that was learnt was that the troops could not get out of Boston, were to winter there, and were fortifying themselves as strongly as they could, and had few fresh provisions. L5th. The Duke of Grafton, having summoned the House of Lords, moved for a state of the forces in America, in order to ground advice to the King. This was objected to as likely to convey intelligence to the Pro- vincials. Lord Camden and Lord Mansfield spoke long on their different sides. Lord Denbigh blabbed that the Court reckoned that the manufacturers would enlist when ' out of employment. The motion was rejected without a division. The same day, in the Committee for empowering the King to call out the militia in case of rebellion, Lord John Cavendish (in the House of Commons) moved that the said power should not extend beyond the continuance of the present rebellion. This also was rejected by 140 to 55. Another striking evidence that the Court was driving at arbi- v trary power by a standing army. \Qth. Mr. Burke made his conciliatory motion, and spoke for three hours and a half in general ill. It was remarkable that in his proposed repeal he did not mention the Quebec Bill another symptom of his old Popery. Lord Camden and Lord Shelburne were so offended at 522 LAST JOUKNALS OF HOEACE WALPOLE. Nov. this omission that neither Dunning nor Barre attended. (Lord Shelburne was as jealous of the Duke of Grafton as Lord Rockingham, and both feared that on a change Grafton would be preferred to them, for preferment was uppermost in all their thoughts. I had written a strong letter in the summer to Lord Camden, begging him, if sent for, not to accept till the King was so reduced, and the nation so provoked, that the authors of the late mea- sures might be punished, and a total end put to the plan of despotism. I sent the letter by a messenger, but Lord Camden pretended to be afraid of answering it even that way. But as he even did not come to me on my return from France, I saw he was displeased at my advis- ing him to hesitate a moment about accepting the Seals.) Lord Ossory and Richard Fitzpatrick, nephews of Lord Gower, but won over by Charles Fox, now declared them- selves in Opposition. The elder brother spoke sensibly and well, the younger very well. Charles Fox outshone him- self, made a very pathetic eulogium on the two brothers, and a very humorous description of the Treasury Bench. Wedderburn shone too. Lord George Germaine 3 now opened as Minister, and was at first much flustered. The House sat till four in the morning, when the conciliatory plan was rejected by 210 to 105. Just before the division Lord North, half asleep, owned that New York might have been saved if a few regiments had been sent in time. 4 20tk. Lord North had given notice that he should soon make some motion of great consequence. He made it now : it was for a bill to repeal the Boston and Massachus- 3 Governor Johnston, wlio had for- merly fought him, now very brutally and unhandsomely again reflected on Lord George's courage. 4 Some excellent papers signed " Valence," I don't know by whom, were published about this time in the ' London Evening Post.' 1775. MILITIA AND INDEMNITY BILLS. 523 sets Acts, as not extending to all the provinces, and to empower the King's subjects to seize and destroy all Ame- rican vessels ; and the language now was to maintain the j right of taxation. T. Townshend censured the severity of this new bill, and commended Lord Effingham ; so did General Conway warmly, and said, though against a foreign enemy an officer must obey all orders, yet in a civil war, where he thought the Constitution concerned, conscience' was ever above honour, as the Comte de Fende thought at the massacre of Paris. This was severely arraigned by Thurlow, but Conway explained himself still more fully. Sawbridge, the Lord Mayor, went farther and drew a bitter parallel between Lord Effingham and Lord George Ger- maine, who, he said, had turned pale at the head of squadrons. The bill was ordered in by 192 against 62. The rest of that week were several very late debates in the House of Commons on various bills as the Militia and Indemnity Bills, &c. The Court did at last submit to confine the King's power over the militia to seven years. In one of the debates on the militia, Charles Fox saying it was not fit to be trusted in hands who could petition the King for pushing the war against America, Mr. Ackland, 5 his cousin, a hot Tory, warmly resented it, and said it was in fitter hands than in those of men who had ruined themselves by the most scandalous vices. This person- j ality, unprovoked by any, gave offence. Fox replied : he confessed his errors, and wished he could atone for them. This week died that voluminous writer and compiler, Sir John Hill. 6 5 Son of Sir Thomas Ackland, a very ( he was very far from being the fool that rich western knight. The son was i his enemies said he was. He was one married to a daughter of the Earl of of the most industrious beings that ever Ilchester, Fox's uncle. lived, and had essayed many callings 6 Sir John Hill was a vain man, but in order to obtain a living ; depending 521 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. Nov. 17th. Alderman Oliver, by former directions of the City, moved to address his Majesty to know who had advised the war. This motion, as the times were not ripe for it, was very injudicious, and was supported only by Wilkes and Sawbridge. Charles Fox endeavoured to prevent a divi- sion, but the Ministers, knowing their strength, forced it on . to assure a negative, after Lord North had avowed that he and various Ministers had given the advice. Not above ten were for the motion. Accounts from Ireland that Sir John Blaquiere had acquainted the House of Commons that the King desired they would admit of his sending 4000 men of that esta- blishment to America, and that, if they desired it, he would >/ replace them with 4000 Hessians and Brunswick ers, as soon as that House would enable him to do so. 29^A. Some feeble opposition was given to the Nova Scotia Bill, but it was carried by 91 to 12. 30th. On the last reading of the Indemnity Bill, Lord Rockingham, alone, moved to have it thrown out: Lord Weymouth seconded that, and it was rejected. This bill, only on himself, for his father, an old clergyman, could give him no aid. Hill kept an apothecary's shop, managed a botanical garden, appeared as an actor, went back to his shop in St. Martin's Lane, and in the back parlour there edited ' Theophrastus on Gems,' and gained thereby some money and repu- tation. He aspired, on the strength of his successful editorship, to enter the Royal Society, but, being rejected, he took revenge in foolishly satirizing that learned body. He pursued authorship with great zeal, and did what many more able men were unable to do, namely, made 15001. in one year by his own compositions. On setting up as physician, with the diploma of M.D., ho declined to follow in the old paths of professional routine, and was conse- quently denounced as a quack. His self-estimation erred in an opposite direction ; and his impertinence in public, where he was for ever figuring, once brought upon him a horse-whip- ping at Rauelagh. He founded tlie 'British Magazine' and 'Inspector,' wrote many volumes and papers on Natural History and Pliilosophy, and was knighted by the King of Sweden, in acknowledgment of a presentation of Hill's seven folio volumes on ' Vege- table History ' a work of very consi- derable merit, which gained no Eng-. lish honours for the author. An epi-| gram ascribed to Garrick, who would not accept a farce by the medical che- valier, is as good as it is severe : " For physic and farces his equal there scarce it : His farces arc physic ; his physic a farce is." D. 177.". ADDRESSES AND PETITIONS. which had taken up three long days in the other House, had been brought in to please Sir W. Bagot and the Tories, who, from their old hatred of Hanoverian troops, had de- sired to have that bill, that spoke their not being constitu- tional. Lord Buckingham triumphed in his success, though it was plain that the Ministers, more arbitrary than the Tories themselves, were proud of having the deed stand on the King's authority, and were not afraid of being called to account hereafter from want of indemnity for that Act. All this time Addresses and a few Petitions continued to be presented. One was remarkable. The Earl of Hard- wicke (formerly a friend to the repeal of the Stamp Act, now an eager anti-American) joined with Lord Sandwich, ' formerly his competitor for the High Stewardship of Cam- bridge, to procure an Address, which they carried by sur- prise, before the Duke of Grafton, the Chancellor, and the Bishop of Peterborough, Master of Trinity College, could assemble their friends. Still, however, the Bishop, and Dr. Law, Bishop of Carlisle, opposed it so much, that it was carried by a small majority, and was so whittled down, that the King could not be pleased. About the same time Earl Cornwallis, a good sort of man, who had a wife and children that he loved, and who at the time of the Stamp Act had been one of five who voted for the repeal in the House of Lords, was now be- come so good a courtier, that, as troops were going to the southern colonies, in hopes of countenancing some resist- ance on the part of the King's friends, he asked to go j thither with his own regiment, and it was granted. /The month ended triumphantly in Parliament for the Ministers, 7 not only from the corruption of that assembly, ^ 7 It was the witty remark of Selwyn that Ministers grew less by elevation, like little statues placed on lofty pedea- y tals. D. 526 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. Nov. from the predominance of Toryism, and from the frenzy of the nation against America, but from the want of abili- ties and from the factions in the Opposition. The Duke of Richmond, whose health was bad, disgusted with ill suc- cess, had been gone a fortnight into the country : so was the Duke of Grafton, and many other young men, for their hunting and sports attached them more than their prin- ciples ; and as Lord Camden said well, it was impossible \ to command an army of volunteers. Formerly the obsti- nacy of the Jacobites and Tories had kept them together better than the troops of the Court ; now, the activity of the Scotch, and the incapacity of Lord Rockingham, the Cavendishes, and Burke, and the factions in Opposition, reduced them to nothing. Lord Shelburne, Barre', and Dunning were so dissatisfied with the Rockinghams, that they declared it should be long before they voted with them again. Wilkes obstinately pursued his own ideas, and was therefore shunned by all those lordly leaders. Charles Fox, the only active man in Opposition, would not give up his : dissolute life, sat up all night, and was seldom out of bed before two in the afternoon. The sense and spirit of the Americans was all that threatened the Court, for Spain was certainly afraid of the example of the revolt, and France, if she supported the Americans, did it in a small degree and very secretly. If this nation is saved, Provi- y dence or chance must save it ; I see nothing at home in its favour, for the indolence of the Administration was now likely to be quickened by the activity of Lord George Germaine. 1775. BILL FOR CAPTURING AMERICAN SHIPS. 527 DECEMBER. 1st. THE bill for making captures of American ships de- bated till eleven at night. It having been reported, on their secession, that Lord Shelburne, Dunning, and Barre (the latter of whom was ill at Bath with the gout in his stomach) were gone over to the Court, Dunning appeared in the House and spoke warmly against the bill, alleging as the cause of his late absence that he had been ill. T. Townshend attacked the Ministers violently on the late message to Ireland, as most disrespectful to the Par- liament of England, as, though so civil to that of Ireland, the King engaged that the Parliament of England should pay the foreign troops. Jenkinson, to excuse his ancient patron Lord Harcourt, pleaded that the speeches and messages of the Lords-Lieutenants were always drawn by the Lord Chancellor there ; but Lord North, seeing that was no excuse, said the English Ministers had not autho- rized that message, and that, as Townshend spoke only from newspaper information, it might not be true, and the House must wait for better authority. Townshend pledged himself to take it up if true. The bill was voted by 107 to 55, and was much debated in the Committee. On the 1th, the last day of the Committee, Sawbridge again abused Lord George Germaine in very gross terms. Sir George Saville the same day made a fine pathetic pane- gyric on the Admiral Sir Charles Saunders, who died that morning. Sir John Blaquiere, Lord Harcourt's Secretary, who f>28 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. DEC. governed his principal with no more abilities than the principal himself possessed, had proposed to the Irish House of Commons to allow the King to send to America 4000 of the 12,000 men which his Majesty had given his royal word to maintain there. The venal majority allowed the monarch to break his word when he desired it. Sir John then offered them 4000 Hessians and Brunswickers, and the House, as if a breach of promise were security, rejected the offer by a great majority. This seemed an Irishism ; but the truth was, the Secretary had privately engaged his friends to oppose the offer, though he did not vote against it himself. What was the true meaning of this finesse I do not know. It might be to make the leaving the country so naked the option of the country itself; it might be that the King could not get the foreign troops in question, or that he did not care to be at the expense of them. The manoeuvre was paltry, though it spoke the dependence of the Ministers on the promises of i France and Spain that they would not attack us. \\th. The bill for destroying the American shipping was passed in the House of Commons by 1 12 to 16. The Op- 1 position had so deserted (gone to the country) that this was all the force they could muster. I and others had advised their not coming to Parliament, but protest against the measures. There had been some dignity in this, but they could neither assemble nor retire with propriety, and this neglect could but dishearten the Americans. On the other hand, Lord George Germaine, as was foreseen, set out with spirit, seizing two chests of letters that were going by a common ship to Virginia. On the death of Sir Charles Saunders ' Lord Sandwich, 1 Sounders hnd passed through a I fercnco to the ' Lives of the Admirals.' glorious career, as may be wen by re- | His glory and usefulness commenced 1775. LORD NORTH'S PERPLEXITIES. 529 before he was buried, got Palliser, his favourite, made Lieutenant-General of the Marines, though Lord North had promised it to Lord Howe, who came to town and claimed Lord North's promise. The latter chose to plead forgetfulness, rather than confess that Lord Sandwich had clapped in Palliser by surprise. Lord Howe said he would go directly to the King and resign all his employ- ments, and that his brother, the General at Boston, he was sure, would resign too. Lord North beseeched him to have patience, and, to quiet him, offered a pension of 30001. a year to Admiral Forbes to resign the post of General of Marines to Lord Howe. This was not settled at the end of the year. Major Stuart, a younger son of Lord Bute, was preferred over the heads of some officers who had served at Bunker's Hill. A ship going to America, Lord George Germaine sent and seized two parcels of letters going thither, though not contrary to law. The \Vhite Boys continued to commit great ravages in Ireland, on so few troops being left there. \5tli. The American Shipping Bill carried in the Lords by 78 to 19. See 'London Chronicle' of 16th. On the last reading of that bill Lord Mansfield, en- couraged by the accession of Lord George Germaine to the Ministry and by the absence of Lord Camden, who was at Bath, broke out violently in support of the war, and said, no matter who was the author of it, it must now when he became lieutenant to Anson I dered his name highly popular, and in the famous expedition to the South i obtained for him the lieutenant -gene- Seas. As one of Hawke's captains, he ralcy of the Marines. He closed his was remarkable for "pluck;" and as long and brilliant career, a contented commander of the naval part of the though a childless man ; his marriage enterprise against Quebec, he exhibited \ with the only daughter of a banker a zeal, foresight, and bravery which mi- (Miss Back) being without issue. D. VOL.. I. 2 M 530 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. DEC. be pursued. The Duke of Richmond defending the Americans, Lord Denbigh said we had traitors among us. The Duke, alluding to Lord Denbigh's former Jacobitism, said he thought there were no longer any traitors in Eng- land. Lord Townshend, as if the King's army had been successful, said he wished Hancock and Adams would fly N/ to Switzerland, that we might not be obliged to punish them. These exultations 2 seemed to be occasioned by boasted feats of Lord Dunmore, who, the Scotch said, though retreated on board his own ship, had landed with 80 men and put to flight 300 Provincials, and taken or spiked several cannon. The Court, to justify their naming him one of the sixteen, published, in the Gazette of the 23rd, a lying account of his having taken all the artillery of the province (though only a few privateer guns that had been left on the shore as useless), and made prisoner Robinson, a Deputy of the Provincial Congress. To this, in the same Gazette, was added assurances that Canada was perfectly safe. The very next day all these triumphs were contra- dicted. It was proved that there was no such person as Robinson, and accounts arrived that the Provincials under General Montgomery, an Irishman, had defeated General Carleton, who was fled to Montreal, and had summoned the fortress of St. John, which had capitulated. The safety of Canada had been pretended, because the Ministers on the last bill had been reproached with the danger of our West India Islands, and had pleaded that Canada would supply them. This news threw the Ministers into the greatest con- - It was said at this time that Eng- land offered a mutual guarantee of their American dominions to France and Spain, which those Courts rejected. 1775. MONTREAL TAKEN BY PROVINCIALS. 531 sternation, except Lord North, who would have gone to his villa at Bushy, but Lord George Germaine would not let him. Lord George went to the Admiralty, where he found only Palliser (for Lord Sandwich and the other Lords were gone into the country for Christmas), and said he must have four ships to send to Quebec. Palliser said they could not get into the river, which was frozen, and it was given up. On the 28th, accounts came that Carleton had deserted Montreal, which the Provincials took, and had shut him- self up in Quebec, having but 700 men, all they had kept for the guard of that whole province, and the Canadians, whom he could not trust, for the Canadians, in spite of ( the restoration of their religion, leaned towards the Pro- vincials. General Howe had wished to send 1000 men from Boston, but Admiral Greaves, who still commanded there, though he had had his sword broken over his head, called a council of war, who agreed with him that he must not dare to risk the King's ships. The same day arrived General Burgoyne from Boston, on his private affairs, as he said. Thirty prisoners of the Provincials, sent over, were lodged in Pendennis Castle ; the Ministers were very sorry they were sent : they did not dare to try them, as the Provincials had far more \ prisoners of ours. Accounts came of attempts by our ships to burn 3 the towns on the coasts ; all were said to be condemned, but the first attempts had miscarried. In the meantime the Provincials had taken a rjch storeship of ours with 5 hundredweight of powder. The loss of Canada was a particular blow to Lord 3 This was agreeable to Rigby's idea, growing independent, they must be pnt who said, to prevent the colonies from back fifty years. 2 M 2 532 LAST JOUHNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. DEC. George Germaine, whose plan, it was thought, was to make war thence on the back settlements. A Fellow of Emanuel College, preaching at St. Mary's, Cambridge, declared he hoped, from the piety of the King, that the Convocation would be allowed to sit and the clergy recover the tithes they had lost and the power of correcting vice. I promised to give an account of the Duke of Gloucester's illness and motives for retiring out of England. The slights he received from all the higher ranks of people, the perse- cutions of his elder brother, the narrowness of his income and weight of his debts, but, above all, his anxious uncer- tainty on the fate of the Duchess and his child, had preyed so much on his mind, that no wonder it augmented the infected state of his blood and brought him to the point of death. As the humour his mother had brought into the family had in his youth found a vent in his face, the Princess, it was said, wounded by so plain an indication of the contagion she had spread through her children, had obliged him to use a remedy for the eruption, as the King was supposed to have done for the same reason, and it had turned in the Duke of Gloucester to an asthma. In the winter of this year he was given over by his physician, Dr. Jebbe ; yet on the evening that he was at the worst the King and Queen had most indecently gone to the play, though Dr. Warren, the other physician, daily warned the King of his Royal Highness's danger. In this extremity nothing afflicted the dying Duke so much as the situation of his then only child, the young Princess Sophia, 4 of whom he was dotingly fond, of which he gave a moving proof. He was sitting on his bed, with nobody in the room but the 4 This Princess, Sophia Matilda, died November 29, 1844. D. 1775. THE DUKE OF GLOUCESTER'S ILLNESS. 533 Duchess and the little Princess. He thought the latter, who could but just walk, was going to fall, and attempted to rise to save her. His extreme weakness would not allow it ; he sunk back and said, " Oh ! Sophia, you are my death ! " In this agony of grief and illness he had resolved in his mind every measure he could think on to obtain some provision for his family, and, from despair of touching the King's heart, he had fixed on ordering his few friends to attempt a Parliamentary provision. I, with infinite pains, had diverted him from this rash and fatal step, on which, as a negative would infallibly pass, I apprehended it would preclude any good-natured motion in favour of his widow and child, in case he should die. I once had intended, if the Duke could not be dissuaded from his purpose, to try to prevail on him to write to the House of Lords, stating his danger, and entreating them, if he should fail, to inter- cede with the King for his family ; but his Royal High- ness, abandoning his purpose, sent for me and told me he had changed his mind, and would write to the King himself. He had ordered another person to draw a sketch of a letter, but it was far from being a conciliatory one, and the Duke's own good sense had rejected it ; and, weak as he was, he had drawn another himself, which he showed me. Nothing could be more sensible, decent, or proper, though not per- fectly correct, which I would not, however, remark, that the King, who knew his genuine style, might perceive it was not fashioned for him. One thing alone I found wanting, to ask pardon of the King for his marriage, which, even if fruitless, would have doubled the feeling of the public in his favour. I laboured to obtain this addition with all the arguments and persuasion I could use not that I believe even that condescension would have softened the King's obduracy. The Duke said to me, " Sir, I know 534 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE. DEC. the King better than you ;" and he has told me at other times that nothing could operate on his brother except fear. But an instance of his Majesty's nature 5 the Duchess gave me in the Duke's presence during the illness lam speaking of. A few years before, when the King styled the Duke his favourite brother, the humour in their blood had fallen on the Duke's arm, and the physicians had thought it necessary for it to be cut off; but the humour dispersing itself suddenly, and the Duke recovering, the first moment he was able to visit the King, his Majesty only stared on this favourite brother, and said coolly, " I thought you had lost your arm." The Duke sat up most part of the night, ill as he was, to digest and send his letter ; and the next day, sending for Lord North as a witness to his desperate condition, de- livered his letter to him, and commanded it to be delivered immediately to the King. Shall I venture to relate the sequel ? will it be believed if I do ? The letter was con- signed to Lord North on the Thursday the answer might have imparted life or death to the writer, the Duke. His impatience and anxiety were as great as such a moment could demand. On Friday night his Royal Highness received a letter from Lord North a feeling reader will shudder as he figures the Duke reading his fate (again I must implore faith in my solemn veracity) Lord North's answer cannot enter into the compass of conjecture. With the coolest indifference he told the Duke that he had received his Majesty's answer, but this was on the Friday night- supposed it would be the same to his Royal High- ness if he deferred bringing the answer till the following Monday ; for this first Prince of the Blood, this dying 1 Sir John Pringlc, the King's physi- cian, though a Scot, had no reserve in tiilkiii}* of the King's unfeeling dis- position. 1775. STORY TOLD OF LORD NORTH. 535 Prince, was to suppose his Lordship chose to go and divert himself at Bushy, according to custom, for the intervening Saturday and Sunday ! Such insolent impertinence, such inhuman carelessness, were never equalled. The brutality of such a message, even if laziness or ignorance of decency were the motives, was not the less brutal for such palliatives ; but the gross insensibility of the servant announced the savage response of the master, and spoke the mimic inso- lence of the lowest rank of servants, who copy every pre- sumptuous sally of the superiors they belong to. The King, in answer to the Duke's supplication for a provision for his wife and daughter, verbally bade Lord North tell his favourite dying brother that he would have nothing to do with them ; nor, when Lord North at last brought that answer, did he spare an accent of the contents. The con- / sequence to the Duke was a relapse ; but resentment or nature surmounted his illness, and he quitted the country, as I have said before. It will be no improper supplement to this picture of Lord North to relate the following story, which happened at the end of this year : Mr. Foley, member for Herefordshire, an opulent Tory, had long had a promise of a Peerage, and, as a creation of Peers was approaching, a seat for that county would be vacant. Alderman Harley, a favourite tool of the Ad- ministration, had missed a seat in Parliament at the last general election by the success of Wilkes in the City, and by pusillanimity of his own, which the Ministers had inter- preted treachery, though he had again reingratiated himself in their favour. Young Foley, eldest son of the future Peer, was ambitious of representing his native county ; but being already a member, applied to Lord North for the Chiltern Hundreds to vacate his seat. Lord North refused 536 LAST JOURNALS OF HORACE WALPOLE, DEC. that usual boon, to prevent so formidable a competitor to Harley. Foley would not give up his point ; but, being on the eve of marriage with Lady Henrietta Stanhope, thought it would be no disgrace to act in any capacity under his future father-in-law, and desired Lord Harrington, who had a troop of horse, to make him his agent an employ- ment that vacates a seat in Parliament, and, having obtained it, acquainted Lord North. The latter, as insolent as if sole Minister and not the. official tool of the cabal, replied, without management, " If Lord Harrington makes you his agent, his troop shall be taken from him ! " Foley, in love with the lady, could not sacrifice her father to such an I object, and desisted. He did set up another candidate, but was defeated. A menace in such Royal terms, and against an old general officer of such rank as the Earl, was unheard of. I must mention here that Mr. Foley, the father, would not consent to his son's marriage unless he could obtain a barony, which had long been promised. Lord North, either to make amends for his brutality, or to secure the son's interest, as the father was dying, did obtain the peerage \ for him, and the young people were married ; but the son ' never gave a vote for Lord North, of which the latter 's friends complained loudly ; nor was Foley to be excused. 6 /A nature so capable of outrage as Lord North's was, under the veil of uncommon good humour and idleness, recalled to mind a picture drawn of him early by one who knew him well : 8 The Foleya wore descendants of Paul Foley, the opponent of William III.'s Ministry. Paul was the son of an eminent iron-master, became Speaker of the House of Commons in 1695, and gave his name to Foley Place. The older burony of Foley, created in 1711, expired in January, 1766. In May of tliut yi'ar the new barony was er<:it