Our ministers and court favourites, as well as those on the Continent,
practised a very impolitical custom, and one likely to be repeated,
although it has never failed to cast a popular odium on their names,
exciting even the envy of their equals--in the erection of palaces for
themselves, which outvied those of their sovereign; and which, to the
eyes of the populace, appeared as a perpetual and insolent exhibition of
what they deemed the ill-earned wages of peculation, oppression, and
court-favour. We discover the seduction of this passion for ostentation,
this haughty sense of their power, and this self-idolatry, even among
the most prudent and the wisest of our ministers; and not one but lived
to lament over this vain act of imprudence. To these ministers the noble
simplicity of Pitt will ever form an admirable contrast; while his
personal character, as a statesman, descends to posterity unstained by
calumny.
The houses of Cardinal Wolsey appear to have exceeded the palaces of the
sovereign in magnificence; and potent as he was in all the pride of
pomp, the "great cardinal" found rabid envy pursuing him so close at his
heels, that he relinquished one palace after the other, and gave up as
gifts to the monarch what, in all his overgrown greatness, he trembled
to retain for himself. The state satire of that day was often pointed at
this very circumstance, as appears in Skelton's "Why come ye not to
Court?" and Roy's "Rede me, and be not wrothe."[115] Skelton's railing
rhymes leave their bitter teeth in his purple pride; and the style of
both these satirists, if we use our own orthography, shows how little
the language of the common people has varied during three centuries.
Set up a wretch on high
In a throne triumphantly;
Make him a great state
And he will play check-mate
With royal majesty----
The King's Court
Should have the excellence,
But Hampton Court
Hath the pre-eminence;
And Yorke Place[116]
With my Lord's grace,
To whose magnificence
Is all the confluence,
Suits, and supplications;
Embassies of all nations.
Roy, in contemplating the palace, is maliciously reminded of the
butcher's lad, and only gives plain sense in plain words.
Hath the Cardinal any gay mansion?
Great palaces without comparison,
Most glorious of outward sight,
And within decked point-device,[117]
More like unto a paradise
Than an earthly habitation.
He cometh then of some noble stock?
His father could match a bullock,
A butcher by his occupation.
Whatever we may now think of the structure, and the low apartments of
Wolsey's PALACE, it is described not only in his own times, but much
later, as of unparalleled magnificence; and indeed Cavendish's narrative
of the Cardinal's entertainment of the French ambassadors gives an idea
of the ministerial prelate's imperial establishment very puzzling to the
comprehension of a modern inspector. Six hundred persons, I think, were
banqueted and slept in an abode which appears to us so mean, but which
Stowe calls "so stately a palace." To avoid the odium of living in this
splendid edifice, Wolsey presented it to the king, who, in recompense,
suffered the Cardinal occasionally to inhabit this wonder of England, in
the character of keeper of the king's palace;[118] so that Wolsey only
dared to live in his own palace by a subterfuge! This perhaps was a
tribute which ministerial haughtiness paid to popular feeling, or to the
jealousy of a royal master.
I have elsewhere shown the extraordinary elegance and prodigality of
expenditure of Buckingham's residences; they were such as to have
extorted the wonder even of Bassompierre, and unquestionably excited the
indignation of those who lived in a poor court, while our gay and
thoughtless minister alone could indulge in the wanton profusion.
But Wolsey and Buckingham were ambitious and adventurous; they rose and
shone the comets of the political horizon of Europe. The Roman tiara
still haunted the imagination of the Cardinal: and the egotistic pride
of having out-rivalled Richelieu and Olivarez, the nominal ministers
but the real sovereigns of Europe, kindled the buoyant spirits of the
gay, the gallant, and the splendid Villiers. But what "folly of the
wise" must account for the conduct of the profound Clarendon, and the
sensible Sir Robert Walpole, who, like the other two ministers, equally
became the victims of this imprudent passion for the ostentatious pomp
of a palace. This magnificence looked like the vaunt of insolence in the
eyes of the people, and covered the ministers with a popular odium.
Clarendon House is now only to be viewed in a print; but its story
remains to be told. It was built on the site of Grafton-street; and when
afterwards purchased by Monk, the Duke of Albemarle, he left his title
to that well-known street. It was an edifice of considerable extent and
grandeur. Clarendon reproaches himself in his Life for "his weakness and
vanity" in the vast expense incurred in this building, which he
acknowledges had "more contributed to that gust of envy that had so
violently shaken him, than any misdemeanour that he was thought to have
been guilty of." It ruined his estate; but he had been encouraged to it
by the royal grant of the land, by that passion for building to which he
owns "he was naturally too much inclined," and perhaps by other
circumstances, among which was the opportunity of purchasing the stones
which had been designed for the rebuilding of St. Paul's; but the envy
it drew on him, and the excess of the architect's proposed expense, had
made his life "very uneasy, and near insupportable." The truth is, that
when this palace was finished, it was imputed to him as a state-crime;
all the evils in the nation, which were then numerous, pestilence,
conflagration, war, and defeats, were discovered to be in some way
connected with Clarendon House, or, as it was popularly called, either
Dunkirk House, or Tangier Hall, from a notion that it had been erected
with the golden bribery which the chancellor had received for the sale
of Dunkirk and Tangiers.[119] He was reproached with having profaned the
sacred stones dedicated to the use of the church. The great but
unfortunate master of this palace, who, from a private lawyer, had
raised himself by alliance even to royalty, the father-in-law of the
Duke of York, it was maliciously suggested, had persuaded Charles the
Second to marry the Infanta of Portugal, knowing (but how Clarendon
obtained the knowledge his enemies have not revealed) that the
Portuguese princess was not likely to raise any obstacle to the
inheritance of his own daughter to the throne. At the Restoration, among
other enemies, Clarendon found that the royalists were none of the least
active; he was reproached by them for preferring those who had been the
cause of their late troubles. The same reproach was incurred on the
restoration of the Bourbons. It is perhaps more political to maintain
active men, who have obtained power, than to reinstate inferior talents,
who at least have not their popularity. This is one of the parallel
cases which so frequently strike us in exploring political history; and
the _ultras_ of Louis the Eighteenth were only the _royalists_ of
Charles the Second. There was a strong popular delusion carried on by
the wits and the _Misses_ who formed the court of Charles the Second,
that the government was as much shared by the Hydes as the Stuarts. We
have in the state-poems, an unsparing lampoon, entitled "Clarendon's
House-warming;" but a satire yielding nothing to it in severity I have
discovered in manuscript; and it is also remarkable for turning chiefly
on a pun of the family name of the Earl of Clarendon. The witty and
malicious rhymer, after making Charles the Second demand the Great Seal,
and resolve to be his own chancellor, proceeds, reflecting on the great
political victim:
Lo! his whole ambition already divides
The sceptre between the Stuarts and the Hydes.
Behold in the depth of our plague and wars,
He built him a palace out-braves the stars;
Which house (we Dunkirk, he Clarendon, names)
Looks down with shame upon St. James;
But 'tis not his golden globe that will save him,
Being less than the custom-house farmers gave him;
His chapel for consecration calls,
Whose sacrilege plundered the stones from Paul's.
When Queen Dido landed she bought as much ground
As the _Hyde_ of a lusty fat bull would surround;
But when the said _Hyde_ was cut into thongs,
A city and kingdom to _Hyde_ belongs;
So here in court, church, and country, far and wide,
Here's nought to be seen but _Hyde! Hyde! Hyde!_
Of old, and where law the kingdom divides,
'Twas our Hydes of land, 'tis now land of Hydes!
Clarendon House was a palace, which had been raised with at least as
much fondness as pride; and Evelyn tells us that the garden was planned
by himself and his lordship; but the cost, as usual, trebled the
calculation, and the noble master grieved in silence amidst this
splendid pile of architecture.[120] Even when in his exile the sale was
proposed to pay his debts, and secure some provision for his younger
children, he honestly tells us that "he remained so infatuated with the
delight he had enjoyed, that though he was deprived of it, he hearkened
very unwillingly to the advice." In 1683 Clarendon House met its fate,
and was abandoned to the brokers, who had purchased it for its
materials. An affecting circumstance is recorded by Evelyn on this
occasion. In returning to town with the Earl of Clarendon, the son of
the great earl, "in passing by the glorious palace his father built but
a few years before, which they were now demolishing, being sold to
certain undertakers,[121] I turned my head the contrary way till the
coach was gone past by, lest I might minister occasion of speaking of
it, which must needs have grieved him, that in so short a time this pomp
was fallen." A feeling of infinite delicacy, so perfectly characteristic
of Evelyn!
And now to bring down this subject to times still nearer. We find that
Sir Robert Walpole had placed himself exactly in the situation of the
great minister we have noticed; we have his confession to his brother
Lord Walpole, and to his friend Sir John Hynde Cotton. The historian of
this minister observes, that his magnificent building at Houghton drew
on him great obloquy. On seeing his brother's house at Wolterton, Sir
Robert expressed his wishes that he had contented himself with a similar
structure. In the reign of Anne, Sir Robert, sitting by Sir John Hynde
Cotton, alluding to a sumptuous house which was then building by Harley,
observed, that to construct a great house was a high act of imprudence
in any minister! It was a long time after, when he had become prime
minister, that he forgot the whole result of the present article, and
pulled down his family mansion at Houghton to build its magnificent
edifice; it was then Sir John Hynde Cotton reminded him of the
reflection which he had made some years ago: the reply of Sir Robert is
remarkable--"Your recollection is too late; I wish you had reminded me
of it before I began building, for then it might have been of service to
me!"
The statesman and politician then are susceptible of all the seduction
of ostentation and the pride of pomp! Who would have credited it? But
bewildered with power, in the magnificence and magnitude of the edifices
which their colossal greatness inhabits, they seem to contemplate on its
image!
Sir Francis Walsingham died and left nothing to pay his debts, as
appears by a curious fact noticed in the anonymous life of Sir Philip
Sidney prefixed to the _Arcadia_, and evidently written by one
acquainted with the family history of his friend and hero. The chivalric
Sidney, though sought after by court beauties, solicited the hand of the
daughter of Walsingham, although, as it appears, she could have had no
other portion than her own virtues and her father's name. "And herein,"
observes our anonymous biographer, "he was exemplary to all gentlemen
not to carry their love in their purses." On this he notices this secret
history of Walsingham:
"This is that Sir Francis who impoverished himself to enrich the state,
and indeed made England his heir; and was so far from building up of
fortune by the benefit of his place, that he demolished that fine estate
left him by his ancestors to purchase dear intelligence from all parts
of Christendom. He had a key to unlock the pope's cabinet; and, as if
master of some invisible whispering-place, all the secrets of Christian
princes met at his closet. Wonder not then if he bequeathed no great
wealth to his daughter, being _privately interred_ in the choir of
Paul's, as _much indebted to his creditors_ though not so much as our
nation is indebted to his memory."
Some curious inquirer may afford us a catalogue of great ministers of
state who have voluntarily declined the augmentation of their private
fortune, while they devoted their days to the noble pursuits of
patriotic glory! The labour of this research will be great, and the
volume small!