The Scotch Bill--Speeches of the Duke of Bedford and the Lord
Chancellor, Lord Bath, the Duke of Argyle, and the Duke of
Newcastle--Character of Archibald Duke of Argyle--The King
goes to Hanover--History of the Factions in Ireland--Divisions
among the Instructors of the Prince of Wales--Account
of the Pretender’s Family and Court at Rome--German
Alliances unlucky--Dissensions in the Prince of Wales’s
Household--Appointment of Lord Waldegrave as Governor, and Dr.
Thomas as Preceptor, to his Royal Highness.
March 10.--Lord Bath moved for an account of the produce of the
Window-tax in Scotland. It had not, since first laid, brought in
one shilling.
The Scotch Bill had hitherto only raised some warmth in particular
men, who either did not love that nation from prejudice, or from
resentments contracted against them during the late Rebellion.
It now took a more serious turn. The Duke, who had conquered
the Scotch like an able General, who had punished them like an
offended Prince, and whose resentments were not softened by the
implacability of their hatred to him, was not a little disgusted
at seeing measures of favour to them adopted, and himself totally
unconsulted upon those measures. Yet he could not, as they were
concerted by the King’s Ministers, openly oppose them. It was
almost as difficult for him to blow up any opposition against them
underhand. The discontented in the House of Commons were either
the refuse of the late Prince’s party, or the Jacobites; and even
these latter could not be supposed heartily eager against favours
being showered on their never-failing allies, the Scotch. In the
other House, the only phantom of opposition consisted in half a
dozen Jacobite Lords, and in the person of the Duke of Bedford,
between whom and his Royal Highness a coldness had arisen, as has
been mentioned. In this dilemma the Duke lighted upon a measure,
which had ample effect. Lord Sandwich was too much connected with
him, and too much detached from the Duke of Bedford, to make it
expedient to offer any overtures directly through him: but the Duke
sent him to a person[216] who had private connexions with the Duke
of Bedford, and who he knew would not be sorry to traverse Mr.
Pelham’s measures, to offer him very extraordinary anecdotes on the
Scotch affairs, which he might impart to the Duke of Bedford. It is
strange how this train caught! That person persuaded the Duke of
Bedford to accept and make use of the information, without knowing
from whom it came; and it must appear amazing, that a man who could
make so distinguished a figure as his Grace did, by the management
of the materials, should have submitted to be put in motion so
blindly!--but that was his character; when he shone in public with
most energy, he perhaps acted the least upon his own motives--but
it is proper to enter into a deduction of the Debate.
17th.--The Bill was read in the House of Lords. The Duke of Bedford
began with showing the impracticability of the measure, from
the difficulties both of maintaining a colony on the forfeited
estates, and of procuring people to settle on them. Troops can
be of no service to support them in winter, unless forts are
built; an expense that would far exceed the views of this Bill.
English would not go thither; Irish cannot be spared, for you
must not weaken the Protestant interest in that island; Scotch
Highlanders will not remove thither from their own fastnesses;
_Germans_ indeed will migrate--but not to _worse_ countries. But,
he asked, had the Ministry permitted the disloyal inhabitants to
remain upon these estates for six years since the Rebellion, and
did they now propose to banish them? Would they engraft cruelty
upon their negligence? and that in a case which decides the
inhumanity, as it would punish the oppressed, yet not derive any
benefit to the public,--the only justifiable pretence for national
severities: for what benefit will the public reap from the change
of Lords, under whom these Highlanders are to be placed by this
Bill? Indeed, he said, he feared such encouragement was given
to that country, by this and some other Bills, as would, even in
our time, produce a new Rebellion--Glasgow--the great Lords, have
received such sums, such means of new commotions, as they could
have obtained no other way--and though particular towns and persons
are pretended to be relieved, money is, through their channels,
circulated over the whole country, and we deprive ourselves of
the advantages that might accrue even from treason, when the
disaffected have contributed to despoil and impoverish their own
country. He feared Rebellion would grow a national malady! Danger
is even to be apprehended from the method of putting this Bill in
execution: should the Commissioners not act, it is a needless,
an useless Bill--if they do, what is to encourage them? power
and interest? and into what hands are you going to trust those
formidable enemies? Are you not taking the same method you took
with Lord Lovat? Will you empower more Lord Lovats to nurse up more
Rebellions? He was a single instance, and the subsidy to him a
trifle in comparison: this is a plan for the most formidable power
ever attempted hitherto to be established in that country.
He then told the House, that he was but too well founded in his
apprehensions of new commotions, both from the countenance showed
to the disaffected, and the discouragement given to the loyal. He
told them that he had in his hands a long and crying catalogue of
facts, which would prove both his assertions, and which facts
he was ready to prove. As a sample, he mentioned two cases; the
first of one John Cummings, who at the time of the late Rebellion,
being Collector at Montrose, assisted the Rebels in seizing
the Hazard sloop, for which service the titular Duke of Perth
appointed him Collector for the Pretender. This Cummings, on the
Duke’s arrival in Scotland, was imprisoned by his Royal Highness’s
command, and carried into Inverness; from thence he escaped, was
again imprisoned, but at the desire of Lord Milton was released
by Mr. Bruce, who had a power at that time to continue or to
release prisoners. This Mr. Cummings is now Collector of Excise at
Aberdeen; a place worth almost double of what he formerly enjoyed
at Montrose!
The other was the case of Hume of Munderson, a man engaged in the
former Rebellion, or, as the Scotch call it, in the _fifteen_. His
brother was executed for the last Rebellion; but he himself has
been made a General Supervisor of Excise. “My Lords,” continued
the Duke, “these are among many flagrant instances of the favour,
I may truly say, of the rewards conferred on Rebels. I can, if I
am called upon, produce many more equally striking, and of what
perhaps is still more alarming, of punishments inflicted, or
permitted to be inflicted on the well-affected to his Majesty’s
government and person. I will not now recapitulate them, nor dwell
even on the fate of Mr. Davidson, Minister of Navar, above Brechin
in the Braes of Angus, who with sixty of his parishioners was
persecuted after the Rebellion, for making bonfires on the Duke’s
birth-day, under the pretence of wilful fire-raising!”
After a pause, he said: “My Lords, these, and facts like these,
call for inquiry: what I have more to say, strikes directly at the
Bill itself, which various circumstances concur to evince, is but
a more extensive job. Such is the impropriety of the time, the end
of a session, to offer a Bill of this nature, when, so far from
having leisure to examine it, we have barely time to pass it; and
that this must have been the effect of design is evident, since the
Report of the Barons of the Exchequer, who were to examine into the
nature and state of these forfeitures, was given in so long ago as
December, 1749. The money to be raised is a most unjust burthen
upon England: the Commissioners at least, who ought to see this
Act put in execution, ought to be English. If they are not, we are
grounded to suspect that this money will be as much perverted as
other taxes have been fallaciously collected. Let us cast our eyes
but on the produce of the coach-tax in that part of the United
Kingdom; to what does it amount? for the first year to one thousand
pounds!--for the second, to what? to nothing. Must we suppose that
this burthen was so heavily felt, that the whole Nobility and
Gentry of Scotland at once concurred to lay down their equipages?
In those years England paid on the same account 60,000_l._,
58,000_l._ If such are their partialities, is it not allowable for
Englishmen to have some? Be that as it may, my Lords, let us know
what grounds there are for these complaints, for these accusations.
I move your Lordships to put off the farther consideration of this
Bill, till we have had time to inquire into facts.”
It required more art than the Chancellor possessed, to efface
the impression made by this speech. To dispute the facts would
be admitting that they ought to be examined. He thought the most
prudent method was to admit their authenticity, but to endeavour
to show that the previous examination of them was not necessary,
either in that place, or before the conclusion of the Bill. This
method he followed; it served to palliate the resolutions of a
majority of which he was secure; but had that bad effect for the
Ministry, that the Duke of Bedford’s assertion of the facts, and
the Chancellor’s admission of them, or at least his not disputing
them, left the world persuaded of their reality, and of the
timidity, indolence, or wickedness of the Administration.
The Chancellor, therefore, in a very long and elaborate speech,
said, that if what had been advanced against the Bill was true, it
was one of the worst Bills on the best plan that ever was formed.
That indeed the Bill was only a part of the plan formerly concerted
of buying the jurisdictions of the great Lords into the hands of
the Crown; and that it fell in naturally enough to that plan, as
these estates must necessarily be sold. That the only blame he
should have expected was that this Bill had not been brought in
sooner. Formerly the complaint had been that forfeited estates
were restored and given back from the Crown. That indeed he did
believe many of the claims upon these estates were fictitious:
however, they must be determined in Scotland; here is the last
place where they must be examined. That this Bill alone can
enable you to have fair purchasers; and that if the claims are
fraudulent, it is an additional reason for passing such a Bill;
otherwise, the original proprietors might re-acquire their estates
for nothing. That the great view of the Government was to destroy
clanships; his own great wish, to see the King a great Highland
landlord: that one of the chief benefits to arise from this scheme,
secondarily to the extension of loyalty, is the improvement of
the linen manufactures, an establishment at once so useful to our
trade, and so inconsistent with arbitrary principles, that there
had been but three single men of those manufacturers engaged in
the last Rebellion. That with regard to the difficulty of finding
colonists, he did not doubt but some English might be prevailed on
to settle there, probably some Lowlanders too, nay, some Irish,
if they can be spared. He believed, indeed, that the greater part
of the old inhabitants must remain at first; but that some of the
well-affected clans might be induced to transmigrate to those
settlements; and that he did not despair of reclaiming even the
present tenants, at least in the next generation of them, if they
were once emancipated from dependence on their chiefs. That the
danger from distributing money among the disaffected, formerly so
impolitic a measure of King William, must not be considered here
in that light; this is not money to bribe traitors, but to pay
lawful creditors; and that he had rather even fraudulent creditors
should enjoy this money than have the estates revert to their old
proprietors. That even the position laid down of encouragement
given to Rebellions by largesses to that country, was not true; it
was the restitution of forfeited estates which had hardened them to
attempt new commotions; but that if we were still to see repeated
insurrections, every Rebellion cuts off so much strength from the
faction. That indeed, as to the article of the Commissioners,
he wished those words, _without fee or reward_, were not in the
Bill; that he must own he saw many just grounds of complaint,
but could not approve national reflections. That to the honour
of that country he must say, the linen manufactures were carried
on by Directors who received no salary. If these Commissioners
should prove less meritorious, or more blameable, they are not for
life; they are removable. That now he must take a little notice of
the heavy accusations enforced by the noble Duke; but previously
he must observe, that it is not proper in a Debate, to raise
objections from particular facts, which people cannot be prepared
to answer. That Cummings’s case was so flagrant, that if it was
inquired into, he did not doubt but it would be remedied. But what
did this and the other instances prove, but the want of the Bill?
That another view of the Bill was, to raise towns and villages and
stations _for_ troops; not that it would take away the want _of_
troops: that the money, supposing it a large sum, was but little in
comparison of the benefits it was calculated to purchase: is it not
a little sum, if it prevents only one Rebellion?
If it was true, as the Duke of Bedford had asserted, and as he
believed it was, that the Lowland share of the forfeited estates
was not mortgaged to the full value, and that therefore they ought
to be sold altogether, and the overplus go towards the purchase,
for his part he believed nobody would advise his Majesty to sell
those estates. That he did not believe the claims would be allowed
to the extent given in; that the King, of his grace, may give the
overplus towards the purchase, but that he should not advise it: he
should rather advise that the distribution should be made to reward
loyalty; for instance, could a nobler use be made of it, than in
rewarding Sir Harry Monroe, who and whose family had done and had
suffered so much for the service of the Crown? That the last thing
of which he should take notice, was the insufficient manner in
which the taxes had been collected in that northern quarter of the
Kingdom: some method, to be sure, should be taken to make Scotland
pay her taxes; but could any Ministry ever hit upon that method?
it is not _vitium temporis_ that the Ministers have not done the
impossible thing. One good effect the very proposal of this will
have, if it points out, or leads to a remedy for the nonpayment of
these taxes.
The young Marquis of Rockingham entered into a Debate so much above
his force, and pertly applied the trite old apologue of Menenius
Agrippa, and the sillier old story of the Fellow of a College, who
asked why we should do anything for Posterity, who had never done
anything for us!
Lord Bath then joined the Duke of Bedford’s opposition, after
first reflecting on that Duke himself, who he said had entered
his complaint both ways, that the Bill had not been brought in
soon enough, and had been brought in too late. That for himself,
he could not but think the proposal of examining the claims first
very material. Should he, would any man, purchase an estate, before
he had examined the nature and validity of the incumbrances? That
on the first face of the account, he could descry false claims
and misprision. On one little estate of thirty pounds a year he
observed a mortgage of four thousand pounds. Who, he asked, had
been in possession of these 16,000_l._ per annum since they had
been forfeited? If the Government, where is the receipt? who
accounts for it? If the creditors, why is not so much struck off
from their claims? What must England say, if Scotland pays nothing
towards four million of taxes? What must she say, when the weight
of these taxes has been increased by Rebellions raised in Scotland?
But who is it, must he ask, who takes upon them to remit taxes?
Kings had been driven out for arrogating a dispensing power! where
will these partialities end? He concluded with proposing a Bill to
be enacted for punishing any frauds relative to forfeitures.
The Chancellor replied, that the Bill had been prepared as soon as
possible, and had been brought in soon after Christmas. That the
time for sale would lapse, and the estates fall to the mortgagees,
if the Bill should now be postponed. That the mortgages, though
real, could not extend beyond the value of the estates, which, he
said, was a case frequent enough in Chancery.
Then rose a man, on whom all eyes had turned during the Debate--the
Duke of Argyle. How was every expectation disappointed! As his
power was uncontrolled in Scotland; as partialities could only be
exercised under his influence, or connived at by his intrigues;
as the Bill was known to be a sacrifice made to his ascendant;
as its practicability had been questioned; who but himself was
answerable, for favour to Jacobites, for tyranny to the loyal,
for the necessity, for the utility, or for the feasibility of the
regulation in question? He looked down, seemed abashed, spoke low
and but a few words, then contemptuously, and at last said nothing
to refute the charge of partialities, or in defence of the Bill.
He only said, “What would have happened if any Scotch Lord had
spoken against it? it would have been said, they are for keeping up
their old barbarity and power. Whereas, the clans are to transfer
their allegiance to Commissioners appointed by the King during his
pleasure. If any man suspected him to be so low, as to have private
views in this, God forgive him! That with regard to taxes, such
difficulties there had been on the old tax on houses, that it had
never been paid: few counties had even named their Collectors. That
the window tax, if paid, would raise but 6000_l._, and ninety-nine
Collectors would have but fifteen shillings a piece. That on
the coach tax there was no deficience. For himself, he despised
reports.”
Lord Tweedale spoke after him, and with passion; but as nobody
expected any great lights from him, so he disappointed nobody.
The Duke of Newcastle, _flustered_ by the Duke of Bedford’s
attack, and confounded by the Duke of Argyle’s no defence, seemed
to speak only to mark his own confusion, and to enforce what the
Duke of Bedford had urged. He said he had taken minutes of the
names mentioned by his Grace, and hoped such recommendations would
be taken no more. That he had already sent the King’s orders to
apprehend some Rebels still resident in Scotland; but as yet they
could not be taken.
Thus much effect followed: Cummings and some others in the Duke
of Bedford’s list were removed. The Bill passed; but though one
great argument for driving it on had been the danger of the estates
lapsing, neither English nor Scotch Ministers chose to have it
discussed any further in Parliament. The Duke of Cumberland, who
was present, did not vote. The Court Lords were fourscore; the
minority only twelve: the Dukes of Bedford and Kingston; the Earls
of Bath, Chesterfield, Sandwich, and Macclesfield; with six Tory
Lords, the Duke of Beaufort, the Earls of Lichfield and Oxford,
and the Lords Wentworth, Ward, and Maynard. Mr. Pelham was enraged
beyond measure at the Duke of Argyle; the King charmed with the
Duke of Bedford; and both these sensations were heightened by the
Duke giving his father a list of sixty Jacobites, who had been
preferred in Scotland since the Rebellion.
26th.--The King put an end to the session; and the Speaker, in his
speech to him, launched out in invectives against the management in
Scotland.
I shall conclude the history of this Bill with the character of its
patron, not its defender, the Duke of Argyle.
Archibald Campbell, Earl of Isla, was younger brother of the
admired John, Duke of Argyle, whom he succeeded in the title,
and with whom he had little in common, but the love of command.
The elder brother was graceful in his figure, ostentatious in
his behaviour, impetuous in his passions; prompt to insult, even
where he had wit to wound and eloquence to confound; and what is
seldomer seen, a miser as early as a hero. Lord Isla was slovenly
in his person, mysterious, not to say with an air of guilt in his
deportment, slow, steady where suppleness did not better answer
his purpose, revengeful, and if artful, at least not ingratiating.
He loved power too well to hazard it by ostentation, and money
so little, that he neither spared it to gain friends or to serve
them. He attained the sole authority in Scotland, by making
himself useful to Sir Robert Walpole, and preserved it by being
formidable to the Pelhams. The former had disgusted the zealous
Whigs in Scotland by throwing himself into the arms of a man of
such equivocal principles: the Earl pretended to return it, by
breaking with his brother when that Duke quarrelled with Sir
Robert: yet one chief cause of Walpole’s fall was attributed to
Lord Isla’s betraying to his brother the Scotch boroughs entrusted
to his management in 1741. It must be told, that Sir Robert Walpole
always said, he did not accuse him. Lord Isla’s power received a
little shock by Lord Tweedale’s and Lord Stair’s return to Court
on that Minister’s retreat; but like other of Lord Orford’s chief
associates, Lord Isla soon recovered his share of the spoils of
that Administration. He had been ill with the Queen (of whom he
knew he was sure while he was sure of Sir Robert Walpole) from his
attachment to Lady Suffolk: he connected with Lord Granville,
while Lord Granville had any sway; and as easily united with the
Pelhams, when power was their common pursuit, and the humiliation
of the Duke and the Duke of Bedford the object of their common
resentment; for common it was, though the very cause that naturally
presented them to the Duke of Argyle’s hatred, their zeal and
services, ought at least to have endeared them to the brothers.
By a succession of these intrigues, the Duke of Argyle had risen
to supreme authority in Scotland: the only instance wherein he
declined the full exertion of it was, when it might have been
of service to the master who delegated it; in the time of the
Rebellion: at that juncture he posted to London: the King was to
see that he was not in Rebellion; the Rebels, that he was not
in arms. But when this double conduct was too gross not to be
censured, he urged a Scotch law in force against taking up arms
without legal authority; so scrupulously attached did he pretend
to be to the constitution of his country, that he would not arm
in defence of the essence of its laws against the letter of them.
In his private life, he had more merit, except in the case of his
wife, whom having been deluded into marrying without a fortune, he
punished by rigorous and unrelaxed confinement in Scotland. He had
a great thirst for books; a head admirably turned to mechanics;
was a patron of ingenious men, a promoter of discoveries, and one
of the first great encouragers of planting in England; most of
the curious exotics which have been familiarized to this climate
being introduced by him. But perhaps too much has been said on
the subject of a man, who, though at the head of his country for
several years, had so little great either in himself or in his
views, and consequently contributed so little to any great events,
that posterity will probably interest themselves very slightly in
the history of his fortunes.[217]
31st.--The King set out for Hanover: the Duke of Newcastle, who
attended him, would not venture himself in any yacht but the one in
which Lord Cardigan had lately escaped a great storm.
While the King was absent, a scene was opened in a remote part
of his dominions, which had not been accustomed to figure on the
theatre of politics. Ireland had for many years been profoundly
obedient to the Government. The Roman Catholics were too much
overbalanced by the power of the Protestants to be formidable: the
latter were too certain on any change of Government, to meet with
no quarter from the professors of a religion, by whose plunder
they were enriched, not to be inflexibly attached to the Prince
on the Throne. Yet the insolence or wantonness of two men, new to
power, contrived in a minute to throw that kingdom into a flame,
and to create factions, who soon imbibed all the inveteracy of
party, except disaffection. The internal councils of Ireland were
chiefly guided by Mr. Boyle, the Speaker of the House of Commons,
and Chancellor of the Exchequer, and during the absence of the
Lord-Lieutenants, one of the Lords Justices. He was vain and
popular, and as the idols of the people and of themselves generally
are, a man of moderate capacity. It had been the unvaried practice
of the Lord-Lieutenants to court this man, and to govern the House
of Commons by his interest: the steadiness of his principles was
unquestionable. Lord Harrington, the last Governor, had been much
disliked, but conforming himself to this maxim, some discontented
persons[218] had in vain attempted to give disturbance to the
King’s affairs.
He was succeeded by the Duke of Dorset, who was a man of dignity,
caution, and plausibility, and who had formerly ruled Ireland to
their universal satisfaction. But he then acted from himself; he
was now in the hands of two men most unlike himself, his youngest
son, Lord George Sackville, and Dr. George Stone, the Primate of
Ireland. The former, a man of very sound parts, of distinguished
bravery, and of as honourable eloquence, but hot, haughty,
ambitious, obstinate. The Primate, a man of fair appearance,
of not inferior parts, more insinuating, but by no means less
ambitious, had with no pretensions in the world, but by being
attached to the house of Dorset, and by being brother of Mr.
Stone, been hurried through two or three Irish Bishopricks up to
the very Primacy of the kingdom, not only unwarrantably young, but
without even the graver excuses of learning or sanctimony. Instead
of attempting to conciliate the affections of a nation offended
at his promotion, he thought of nothing but governing by the same
influence by which he had been raised. Lord George, as little
disposed to be controlled, would not stoop to the usual management
for Mr. Boyle; and he was not likely to be persuaded to observe any
attentions by the Primate, who had shaken them off himself. The
Speaker, who had not lost his taste for power by being accustomed
to it, was soon alarmed, and had an opportunity of revenge offered
to him almost as soon as the offence.
The Duke of Dorset had recommended to the Parliament to provide
more barracks for the soldiers, and to inquire into the
late abuses of the money destined to that service. This was
obliquely aimed at Lord Harrington, and intended, by casting
odium on his Administration, to heighten the popularity of the
new Lord-Lieutenant; but it had different and much further
consequences than the junto had foreseen. The money was voted; but
the Parliament, in prosecution of abuses, fell upon one Neville
Jones, a creature of the Primate, and determined to express
their aversion to that Prelate, by sacrificing his tool. When it
is told that, till the era in question, no Opposition had been
able to unite above eight-and-twenty voices in the Irish House of
Commons against the Government, it will appear surprising that the
contagion of new discontents should in a few weeks have infected
even the majority there. Faction is as capricious as Fortune:
wrongs, oppression, the zeal of real patriots, or the genius
of false ones, may sometimes be employed for years in kindling
substantial opposition to authority; in other seasons, the impulse
of a moment, a ballad, a nickname, a fashion can throw a city into
a tumult, and shake the foundations of a state. Spain, which surely
must sometimes produce some heroic, some patriot natures, has
groaned for centuries under tyranny and the Inquisition: the poor
fisherboy of Naples, Massaniello, could, in the space of two days,
set at defiance, overturn, a haughty, an armed, an established
Government. It is certain that no innovation, no unwonted exertion
of power, had provoked the Irish: but they thought themselves
contemned: they saw the channel of power totally diverted from the
natives: the indiscretion of the rulers presented a colour to the
keenest invectives that a faction could wish to employ.
The Speaker furnished himself as chief to the faction; but they had
wiser heads to direct both them and their chief. Of these were,
Carter, the Master of the Rolls, Sir Richard Cox, and Malone.
Carter had always been a Whig, but had as constantly fomented
every discontent against the Lord-Lieutenants, in order to be
bought off: an able, intriguing man, of slender reputation for
integrity. Sir Richard Cox was a patriot, and the first deviser
of the linen manufactures, which have been of such essential
service to his country. He and Malone were distinguished orators,
and had both been gained by Lord Harrington, but were neglected
by the new Court at the Castle. Malone’s family were Popish, and
his own conversion suspected. But the Speaker was for some time
the only ostensible idol of the party’s adoration: to a confessed
integrity and loyalty he united a romantic readiness for single
combat, so much to the taste of his countrymen. The Castle were
desirous of raising Mr. Ponsonby, a son of Lord Besborough, and
son-in-law of the Duke of Devonshire, to the chair. The Parliament
of Ireland, unless specially dissolved, sits during a whole reign,
and the Speaker’s dignity is of the same duration. Lord George’s
measures were apt to be abrupt: he directly offered the Speaker
a Peerage and a pension of 1500_l._ a year. The Speaker replied,
“If I had a Peerage, I should not think myself greater than now
that I am Mr. Boyle: for t’other thing, I despise it as much as
the person who offers it.” This, and some indirect threats equally
miscarrying, and the Castle finding that their creature Jones
must be the first victim, endeavoured to defer what they could
not prevent. The Speaker’s party moved for a call of the House
for that day three weeks; Lord George Sackville moved to have it
that day six weeks--and was beat! Whoever[219] has seen the tide
first turn in favour of an Opposition, may judge of the riotous
triumphs occasioned by this victory. The ladies made balls, the
mob bonfires, the poets pasquinades--if Pasquin has seen wittier,
he himself never saw more severe or less delicate lampoons. The
Address that was soon after sent over to the King, applied directly
to him, and not as was usual to the Lord-Lieutenant; and they told
his Majesty, in plain terms, that it was from apprehension of being
misrepresented. This was an unpleasant potion for the Duke of
Dorset to swallow--but we must adjourn the further account of these
dissensions to their proper place in order of time, and proceed to
open a new scene of division at home, in which one of the principal
actors was intimately connected with the Court-faction in Ireland.
In the former part of these Memoirs, it has been mentioned, that
the young Prince of Wales, on the death of his father, was placed
by the King under the care of the Earl of Harcourt, as Governor;
of Dr. Hayter, Bishop of Norwich, as Preceptor; and of Mr. Stone
and Mr. Scott, as Sub-governor and Sub-preceptor. The two former
were favourites of Lord Lincoln, the ministerial nephew: Stone
was the bosom-confidant of the Duke of Newcastle: Scott, as well
as the Solicitor-General, Murray, and Cresset, the favourite of
the Princess, were disciples of Lord Bolingbroke, and his bequest
to the late Prince. Stone, in general a cold, mysterious man, of
little plausibility, had always confined his arts, his application,
and probably his views, to one or two great objects. The Princess
could answer to all these lights: with her, he soon ingratiated
himself deeply. Lord Harcourt was minute and strict in trifles; and
thinking that he discharged his trust conscientiously, if on no
account he neglected to make the Prince turn out his toes, he gave
himself little trouble to respect the Princess, or to condescend
to the Sub-governor. The Bishop, thinking himself already Minister
to the future King, expected dependence from, never once thought
of depending upon, the inferior Governors. In the education of the
two Princes, he was sincerely honest and zealous; and soon grew to
thwart the Princess, whenever, as an indulgent, or perhaps a little
as an ambitious mother, (and this happened but too frequently),
she was willing to relax the application of her sons. These jars
appeared soon after the King’s going to Hanover: and by the season
of his return, they were ripe for his interposition.
The English Court at Rome was as little free from intestine
divisions as the Hanoverian Court at London. The Cardinal of York,
whose devotion preserved him from disobedience to his father
as little as his Princely character had preserved him from
devotion, had entirely abandoned himself to the government of an
Abbé, who soon grew displeasing to the old Pretender. Commands,
remonstrances, requests, had no effect on the obstinacy of the
young Cardinal. The father, whose genius never veered towards
compliance, insisted on the dismission of the Abbé. Instead of
parting with his favourite, the young Cardinal with his minion
left Rome abruptly, and with little regard to the dignity of his
Purple. The Holy See, which was sunk to having few more important
negotiations to manage, interested itself in the reconciliation,
and the haughty young Eminence of York was induced to return to his
father, but without being obliged to sacrifice his Abbé. As I shall
not often have occasion to mention this imaginary Court, I will
here give a cursory picture of it.
The Chevalier de St. George is tall, meagre, melancholy in his
aspect. Enthusiasm and disappointment have stamped a solemnity
on his person, which rather creates pity than respect: he seems
the phantom, which good-nature, divested of reflection, conjures
up, when we think on the misfortunes, without the demerits, of
Charles the First. Without the particular features of any Stuart,
the Chevalier has the strong lines and fatality of air peculiar
to them all. From the first moment I saw him, I never doubted
the legitimacy of his birth--a belief not likely to occasion
any scruples in one whose principles directly tend to approve
dethroning the most genuine Prince, whose religion, and whose
maxims of government are incompatible with the liberty of his
country.
He never gave the world very favourable impressions of him: in
Scotland, his behaviour was far from heroic. At Rome, where, to
be a good Roman-catholic, it is by no means necessary to be very
religious, they have little esteem for him: it is not at home
that they are fond of martyrs and confessors. But it was his
ill-treatment of the Princess Sobieski, his wife, that originally
disgusted the Papal Court. She, who to zeal for Popery, had
united all its policy, who was lively, insinuating, agreeable,
and enterprising, was fervently supported by that Court, when she
could no longer endure the mortifications that were offered to her
by Hay and his wife, the titular Counts of Inverness, to whom the
Chevalier had entirely resigned himself. The Pretender retired to
Bologna, but was obliged to sacrifice his favourites, before he
could re-establish himself at Rome. His next Prime Minister was
Murray, nominal Earl of Dunbar, brother of the Viscount Stormont,
and of the celebrated Solicitor-General. He was a man of artful
abilities, graceful in his person and manner, and very attentive to
please. He had distinguished himself before he was of age, in the
last Parliament of Queen Anne, and chose to attach himself to the
unsuccessful party abroad, and for whose re-establishment he had
co-operated. He was, when still very young, appointed Governor to
the young Princes, but growing suspected by the warm Jacobites of
some correspondence with Sir Robert Walpole, and not entering into
the favourite project of Prince Charles’s expedition to Scotland,
he thought fit to leave that Court, and retire to Avignon, where,
while he was regarded as lukewarm to the cause, from his connexion
with the Solicitor-General here, the latter was not at all less
suspected of devotion to a Court where his brother had so long been
First Minister.
The characters of the Pretender’s sons are hitherto imperfectly
known; yet both have sufficiently worn the characteristics of the
house of Stuart--bigotry and obstinacy and want of judgment. The
eldest set out with a resolution of being very resolute, but it
soon terminated in his being only wrong-headed.
The most apparent merit of the Chevalier’s Court is the great
regularity of his finances, and the economy of his exchequer.
His income before the Rebellion was about 23,000_l._ a year,
arising chiefly from pensions from the Pope and from Spain, from
contributions from England, and some irregular donations from other
Courts. Yet his payments were not only most exact, but he had saved
a large sum of money, which was squandered on the unfortunate
attempt in Scotland. Besides the loss of a Crown, to which he
thought he had a just title, besides a series of disappointments
from his birth, besides that mortifying rotation of friends, to
which his situation has constantly exposed him, as often as
faction and piques and baffled ambition have driven the great men
of England to apply to or desert his forlorn hopes, he has, in the
latter part of his life, seen his own little Court and his parental
affections torn to pieces, and tortured by the seeds of faction,
sown by that master-hand of sedition, the famous Bolingbroke,
who insinuated into their councils a project for the Chevalier’s
resigning his pretensions to his eldest son, as more likely to
conciliate the affections of the English to his family. The father,
and the ancient Jacobites, never could be induced to relish this
scheme. The boy and his adherents embraced it as eagerly as if the
father had really a Crown to resign. Slender as their Cabinet was,
these parties divided it; and when I was at Rome, Lord Winton was a
patriot at that Court, and the ragged type of a minority, which was
comprehended in his single person.
In September, the Margrave of Anspach, nephew of the late Queen,
and to whom on that relation the King had given the Order of the
Garter, wrote a circular letter to the Princes of the Empire, to
dissuade them from holding a Diet of Election, till it was declared
necessary to have a King of the Romans. The King was unlucky in
his German alliances. The Landgrave of Hesse, and the Duke of Saxe
Gotha, the one father-in-law of the Princess Mary, the other,
brother of the Princess of Wales, declared themselves against the
election.
With these disappointments, the King returned to England, and
arrived at St. James’s, November 18th. The Princess appeared
again in public, and the King gave her the same honours and place
as the Queen used to have. He was not in the same gracious mood
with others of the Court. The calamity of Lord Holderness, the
Secretary of State, was singular; he was for some days in disgrace,
for having played at blindman’s-buff in the summer at Tunbridge.
To Lord Harcourt, the King said not a word. In the beginning of
December, the Chancellor and the Archbishop sent to Lord Harcourt
that they would wait on him by the King’s command: he prevented
them, and went to the Chancellor, who told him that they had orders
to hear his complaints. He replied, “They were not proper to be
told but to the King himself,” which did not make it a little
suspicious, that even the Princess was included in his disgusts.
The first incident that had directly amounted to a quarrel, was,
the Bishop of Norwich finding the Prince of Wales reading Père
d’Orleans’s _Revolutions d’Angleterre_; a book professedly written
by the direction, and even by the communication, of James the
Second, to justify his measures.
Stone at first peremptorily denied having seen that book in thirty
years, and offered to rest his whole justification upon the truth
or falsehood of that accusation. At last it was confessed that the
Prince had the book, but it was qualified with Prince Edward’s
borrowing it of his sister Augusta. Stone acted mildness, and
professed being willing to continue to act with Lord Harcourt and
the Bishop: but the sore had penetrated too deep, and they, who
had given the wounds, had aggravated them with harsh provocations.
The Bishop was accused of having turned Scott one day out of the
Prince’s chamber, by an imposition of hands, that had at least
as much of the flesh as the spirit in the force of the action.
Cresset, the link of the connexion, had dealt out very ungracious
epithets both on the Governor and Preceptor; and Murray, by an
officious strain of strange imprudence, had, early in the quarrel,
waited on the Bishop, and informed him, that Mr. Stone ought to
have more consideration in the Prince’s family: and repeating the
visit and opinion, the Bishop said, “He believed that Mr. Stone
found all proper regard, but that Lord Harcourt, the chief of the
trust, was generally present.”--Murray interrupted him, and cried,
“Lord Harcourt! pho! he is a cipher, and must be a cipher, and was
put in to be a cipher.” A notification, however understood before
by the world, that could not be agreeable to the person destined
to a situation so insignificant! Accordingly, December 6th, Lord
Harcourt had a private audience in the King’s closet, and resigned.
The Archbishop waited on his Majesty, desiring to know if he would
see the Bishop of Norwich, or accept his resignation from his (the
Archbishop’s) hands. The King chose the latter.
The Junto did not find it so easy to fix new ciphers as to
displace the old. Dr. Johnson, the new Bishop of Gloucester, was
the object of their wishes for Preceptor; but his education with
Murray and Stone, and his principles, which were undoubtedly the
same as theirs (whatever theirs were), proved obstacles they could
not surmount. The Whigs were violently against his promotion; the
Archbishop strongly objected to him. It was still more difficult
to accommodate themselves with a Governor: the post was at once
too exalted, and they had declared it too unsubstantial, to leave
it easy to find a man, who could fill the honour and digest the
dishonour of it. Many were named; some refused it. At last, after
long waving it, Lord Waldegrave, at the earnest request of the
King, accepted it, and after repeated assurances of the submission
and tractability of Stone. The Earl was very averse to it; he was
a man of pleasure, understood the Court, was firm in the King’s
favour, easy in his circumstances, and at once undesirous of
rising, and afraid to fall. He said to a friend, “If I dared, I
would make this excuse to the King; Sir, I am too young to govern,
and too old to be governed.”--But he was forced to submit. A man
of stricter honour, or of more reasonable sense, could not have
been selected for the employment; yet as the Whig zeal had caught
flame, even this choice was severely criticized. Lord Waldegrave’s
grandmother was daughter of King James; his family were all
Papists, and his father had been but the first convert.
The Preceptor was not fixed till the beginning of the new year, but
I shall include his promotion here, not to interrupt the thread
of the narration: it was Dr. Thomas, who during the first civil
war of Leicester-house, had read prayers to the present King: it
was not till within two years of this period that the King had
found an opportunity of preferring him, and then made him Bishop
of Peterborough. He was a man of a fair character, esteemed rather
a Tory in his principles. It may not be unentertaining to mention
another instance of the King’s good fortune in being able to
promote an old friend. General Legonier one day went and offered
his Majesty the nomination to a living in his gift. The King
expressed the greatest joy and gratitude, and said, “There is one I
have long tried to make a Prebendary, but my Ministers never would
give me an opportunity; I am much obliged to you, I will give the
living to him.”
FOOTNOTES:
[216] The Author of these Memoirs.
[217] Archibald Campbell, [Earl of Isla, and, on the death of his
brother,] Duke of Argyle, died suddenly in his chair after dinner,
at his house in Argyle Buildings, London, April 15, 1761.
[218] Headed by one Lucas, an apothecary, who was soon after
banished from that kingdom, and turned physician in London, where
he wrote controversy in his own profession.
[219] The Author could judge a little of this, by what he had seen
himself at the conclusion of his father’s Ministry.
1753, AND PART OF 1754.
_Vernon._
Then for the truth and plainness of the case,
I pluck this pale and maiden blossom here,
Giving _my_ verdict on the _white rose’ side_.
_Lawyer._
Unless my study and my books be false,
The argument you held, was wrong in you;--(_To Somerset_)
In sign whereof _I_ pluck a white rose too.
_Shakesp. first Part of Henry VI._