Accession of George the Second-Sir Spencer Compton-Expected
Change in Administration-Continuation of Lord Townshend-and Sir
Robert Walpole by the Intervention of Queen Caroline-Mrs. Howard,
afterwards Countess of Suffolk-Her character by
Swift-and by Lord Chesterfield.
The unexpected death of George I. on his road to Hanover was
instantly notified by Lord Townshend, secretary of state, who
attended his Majesty, to his brother Sir Robert Walpole, who as
expeditiously was the first to carry the news to the
successor and hail him King. The next step was, to ask who his
Majesty would please should draw his speech to the
Council. "Sir Spencer Compton," replied the new monarch. The
answer was decisive, and implied Sir Robert's dismission. Sir
Spencer Compton was Speaker of the House of Commons, and
treasurer, I think, at that time, to his Royal Highness, who by
that first command, implied his intention of making Sir Spencer
his prime-minister. He was a worthy man, of
exceedingly grave formality, but of no parts, as his conduct
immediately proved. The poor gentleman was so little
qualified to accommodate himself to the grandeur of the
moment, and to conceive how a new sovereign should address
himself to his ministers, and he had also been so far from
meditating to supplant the premier,(99) that, in his distress, it
was to Sir Robert himself that he had recourse, and whom he
besought to make the draught of the Kin(,'s speech for him. The
new Queen, a better judge than her husband of the
capacities of the two candidates, and who had silently watched
for a moment proper for overturning the new designations, did not
lose a moment in observing to the King how prejudicial it would
be to his affairs to prefer to the minister in
possession a man in whose own judgment his predecessor was the
fittest person to execute his office. From that moment there was
no more question of Sir Spencer Compton as prime-minister. He
was created an earl, soon received the garter, and became
president of that council, at the head of which he was much
fitter to sit than to direct. Fourteen years afterwards, he was
again nominated by the same Prince to replace Sir Robert as first
lord of the treasury on the latter's forced
resignation, but not -.is prime-minister; the conduct of
affairs being soon ravished from him by that dashing genius the
Earl of Granville, who reduced him to a cipher for the little
year in which he survived, and in which his incapacity had been
obvious.
The Queen, impatient to destroy all hopes of change, took the
earliest opportunity of declaring her own sentiments. The
instance I shall cite will be a true picture of courtiers. Their
Majesties had removed from Richmond to their temporary palace in
Leicester-fields(100)on the very evening of their receiving
notice of their accession to the Crown, and the next day all the
nobility and gentry in town crowded to kiss their hands; my
mother amongst the rest, who, Sir Spencer Compton's designation,
and not its evaporation, being known, could not make her way
between the scornful backs and elbows of her late devotees, nor
could approach nearer to the Queen than the
third or fourth row; but no sooner was she descried by her
Majesty than the Queen said aloud, "There, I am sure, I see a
friend!" The torrent divided and shrunk to either side; "and as
I came away," said my mother, "I might have walked over their
heads if I had pleased."
The preoccupation of the Queen in favour of Walpole must be
explained. He had early discovered that, in whatever
gallantries George Prince of Wales indulged or affected, even the
person of his Princess was dearer to him than any charms in his
mistresses; and though Mrs. Howard (afterwards Lady Suffolk) was
openly his declared favourite, as avowedly as the Duchess of
Kendal was his father's, Sir Robert's sagacity
discerned that the power would be lodged with the wife, not with
the mistress; and he not only devoted himself to the
Princess; but totally abstained from even visiting Mrs.
Howard; while the injudicious multitude concluded. that the
common consequences of an inconstant husband's passion 'for his
concubine would follow, and accordingly warmer, if not public
vows were made to the supposed favourite, than to the Prince's
consort. They, especially, who in the late reign had been out of
favour at court, had, to pave their future path to favour, and to
secure the fall of Sir Robert Walpole,
sedulously, and no doubt zealously, dedicated themselves to the
mistress: Bolingbroke secretly, his friend Swift openly, and as
ambitiously, cultivated Mrs. Howard; and the
neighbourhood of Pope's villa to Richmond facilitated their
intercourse, though his religion forbade his entertaining
views beyond those of serving his friends. Lord Bathurst,
another of that connexion, and Lord Chesterfield, too early for
his interest, founded their hopes on Mrs. Howard's
influence; but astonished and disappointed at finding Walpole not
shaken from his seat, they determined on an experiment that
should be the touchstone of Mrs. Howard's credit. They persuaded
her to demand of the new King an Earl's coronet for Lord
Bathurst. She did-the Queen put in her veto, and Swift, in
despair, returned to Ireland, to lament Queen Anne, and curse
Queen Caroline, under the mask of patriotism, in a
country he abhorred and despised.(101)
To Mrs. Howard, Swift's ingratitude was base. She,
indubitably, had not only exerted all her interest to second his
and his faction's interests, but loved Queen Caroline and the
minister as little as they did; yet, when Swift died, he left
behind him a Character of Mrs. Howard by no means
flattering, which was published in his posthumous works.
On its appearance, Mrs. Howard (become Lady Suffolk) said to me,
in her calm, dispassionate manner, "All I can say is, that it is
very different from one that he drew of me, and sent to me, many
years ago, and which I have, written by his own
hand."(102
Lord Chesterfield, rather more ingenuous-as his character of her,
but under a feigned name, was printed in his life, though in a
paper of which he was not known to be the author-was not more
consistent. Eudosia, described in the weekly journal called
Common Sense, for September 10, 1737, was meant for Lady Suffolk:
yet was it no fault of hers that he was
proscribed at court; nor did she perhaps ever know, as he
never did till the year before his death, when I acquainted him
with it by his friend Sir John Irwin, why he had been put into
the Queen's Index expurgatorius.(102) The queen had an obscure
window at St. James's that looked into a dark passage, lighted
only by a single lamp at night, which looked upon Mrs. Howard's
apartment. Lord Chesterfield, one Twelfth-night at court, had
won so large a sum of money, that he thought it imprudent to
carry it home in the dark, and deposited it with the mistress.
Thence the queen inferred great intimacy, and thenceforwards Lord
Chesterfield could obtain no favour from court- and finding
himself desperate, went into opposition. My father himself long
afterwards told me the story, and had become the principal object
of the peer's satiric wit, though he had not been the mover of
his disgrace. The weight of that anger fell more disgracefully
on the king, as I shall mention in the next chapter.
I will here interrupt the detail of what I have heard of the
commencement of that reign, and farther anecdotes of the queen
and the mistress, till I have related the second very
memorable transaction of that era; and which would come in
awkwardly, if postponed till I have despatched many subsequent
particulars.
(99) Sir Spencer Compton, afterwards Earl of Wilmington, was so
far from resenting Sir Robert's superior talents, that he
remained steadfastly -,attached to him; and when the famous
motion for removing Sir Robert was made in both Houses, Lord
Wilmington, though confined to his bed, and with his head
blistered, rose and went to the House of Lords, to vote
against a measure that avowed its own injustice, by being
grounded only on popular clamour.
(100) It was the town residence of the Sidneys, Earls of
Leicester, of whom it was hired, as it was afterwards by
Frederick, Prince of Wales, on a similar quarrel with his
father. He added to it Savile House, belonging to Sir George
Savile, for his children.
(101) Mr. Croker, in his biographical notice of Lady Suffolk,
prefixed to the edition of her Letters, thus satisfactorily
confutes this anecdote: "On this it is to be observed, that
George the Second was proclaimed on the 14th of June 1727, that
Swift returned to Ireland in the September of the same year, and
that the first creation of peers in that reign did not take place
till the 28th of May 1728. Is it credible, that Mrs. Howard
should have made such a request of the new King, and suffered so
decided a refusal ten or eleven months before any peers were
made? But, again, upon this first
creation of peers Mrs. Howard's brother is the second name. Is
it probable that, with so great an object for her own
family in view, she risked a solicitation for Lord Bathurst? But
that which seems most convincing, is Swift's own
correspondence. In a letter to Mrs. of the 9th of July 1727, in
which, rallying her on the solicitation to which the new King
would be exposed, he says, - 'for my part, you may be secure,
that I will never venture to recommend even a mouse to Mrs.
Cole's cat, or a shoe-cleaner to your meanest domestic.'" Vol. i.
p. xxv-E.
(102) "This," says her biographer, "is a complete mistake, to
give it no harsher name. The Character which Swift left
behind, and which was published in his posthumous works, is the
very same which Lady Suffolk had in her possession. If it be not
flattering, it is to Swift's honour that he 'did not condescend
to flatter her in the days of her highest favour; and the
accusation of having written another less favourable, is wholly
false." Ibid. vol. i. p. xxxviii.-E.
(103) "It certainly would have been extraordinary," observes Mr.
Croker, "that Lord Chesterfield, in 1137, when he was on terms of
the most familiar friendship with Lady Suffolk,
should have published a deprecatory character of her, and in
revenge too, for being disgraced at court-Lady Suffolk being at
the same time in disgrace also. But, unluckily for
Walpole's conjecture, the character of Eudosia (a female
savant, as the name imports,) has not the slightest
resemblance to Lady Suffolk, and contains no allusion to
courts or courtiers." Ibid. vol. ii. p. xxxiii-E.