confirm the Duke in his attitude. He spoke against the Government,
not only in the House of Lords, but in the City of London and in
the country; and in the following year, returning to the question
of the South Sea Company’s affairs, he attacked Lord Stanhope in so
brilliant and bitter a speech that the latter, rising in a passion
to reply, broke a blood-vessel, from the effects of which he died on
the following day. It was somewhat later that the Duke attacked Lord
Chancellor Macclesfield, suspected and eventually found guilty of fraud
in connection with the South Sea Company’s affairs, not only by word of
mouth, but also in a satirical ballad entitled “An Epistle from John
Sheppard to the Earl of Macclesfield”:
“Were thy virtues and mine to be weighed in a scale,
I fear, honest Thomas, that thine would prevail,
For you break through all laws, while I only break jail.
Which nobody can deny.
When curiosity led you so far
As to send for me, my dear lord, to the bar,
To show what a couple of rascals we were.
Which nobody can deny.
You’ll excuse me the freedom of writing to thee,
For all the world then agreed they never did see
A pair so well matched as your lordship and me.
Which nobody can deny.
At the present disgrace, my lord! ne’er repine,
Since fame thinks of nothing but thy tricks and mine,
And our name shall alike in history shine.
Which nobody can deny.”
Having established his fame as an orator with his speeches on the South
Sea question, Wharton gained yet further distinction by his impassioned
defence of Bishop Atterbury, but what reputation he gained as a speaker
he lost in honour, for he had obtained the material for his oration by
a mean trick. The day before he spoke he went to Sir Robert Walpole,
told him he was sorry for his opposition to the Government and intended
to reinstate himself in favour at Court and with the Ministry by
speaking against the Bishop, and he begged the Prime Minister to give
him some assistance in preparing his arguments. Walpole went carefully
over the ground with his visitor, and showed him the strong and the
weak points of the case. The Duke expressed his thanks, spent the night
in a drinking bout, and, without going to bed, went to the House of
Lords and spoke _for_ the Bishop, making use most effectively of the
information he had obtained on the previous day. Then, when sentence of
banishment was pronounced on the Bishop, he saw him off, and, returning
home, wrote and published some verses on “The Banishment of Cicero,”
in which, of course, the Bishop was Cicero, and George I. Clodius,
concluding:
“Let Clodius now in grandeur reign,
Let him exert his power,
A short-lived monster in the land,
The monarch of an hour;
Let pageant fools adore their wooden god,
And act against their senses at his nod.
Pierced by an untimely hand
To earth shall he descend,
Though now with gaudy honours clothed,
Inglorious in his end.
Blest be the man who does his power defy,
And dares, or truly speaks, or bravely die!”
In the meantime the Duke had reverted to his dissipated habits in
private life, and it amused and annoyed many of his contemporaries
that in public he, the President of the Hell-fire Club, should, on the
ground of morality, inveigh against various measures. Wharton, however,
paid little or no heed to those who held the view that a profligate is
not the proper person to preach virtue; but when the King in council,
on 29th April 1721, issued a proclamation against “certain scandalous
clubs or society, who in the most impious and blasphemous manner insult
the most sacred principles of our holy religion, and corrupt the minds
and morals of one another,” Wharton, as President of the Hell-fire
Club, rose in his place in the House of Lords, declared he was not,
as was thought, a “patron of blasphemy,” and, pulling out a Bible,
proceeded to read several texts.
He went occasionally to his seat in Westmoreland, and was a frequent
visitor to the seat of his kinsman, Sir Christopher Musgrave, at
Edenhall, where was preserved the great crystal goblet, supposed to
have been seized by some earlier Musgrave from a fairy banquet, and
known as “The Luck of Edenhall.” The legend ran:
“If this glass do break or fall,
Farewell the luck of Edenhall!”
but in spite of this warning the Duke, out of sheer devilment, would
toss the goblet high in the air, and once, but for a wary butler, it
would have fallen to the ground and have been smashed to atoms. It was
at Edenhall that the Homeric drinking match took place, which Wharton,
its proposer, celebrated in verse in the form of “An Imitation of
Chevvy-Chace.”
“God prosper long our noble king,
And likewise _Eden-Hall_;
A doleful Drinking-Bout I sing,
There lately did befal.
To chace the Spleen with Cup and Can
Duke _Philip_ took his Way;
Babes yet unborn shall never see
Such Drinking as that Day.
The stout and ever thirsty Duke
A vow to God did make
His pleasure within _Cumberland_
Three live-long Nights to take.
Sir _Musgrave_ too of Martindale,
A true and worthy knight,
Eftsoons with him a Bargain made
In drinking to delight.
The Bumper swiftly pass’d about,
Six in a Hand went round,
And with their Calling for more Wine,
They made the Hall resound.”
So began the ballad, and it goes on to tell how the news of the battle
spread, how others then hastened to the board, and fell, man by man,
overcome by their potations.
The Duke, however, did not care for his place in the north, and was
more frequently to be found at Twickenham, a fact duly noted by Horace
Walpole in his “Parish Register” of that village:
“Twickenham, where frolic Wharton revelled,
Where Montagu, with locks dishevelled,
Conflict of dirt and warmth combin’d,
Invoked,--and scandalised the _Nine_.”
It was not by accident that Walpole put these names in juxtaposition,
for there was a great intimacy between the two, and it was said,
probably with reason, that it was the Duke’s attentions to the lady
that turned Pope’s affection to hatred and caused the historic breach
between them. But though Lady Mary “Worldly” Montagu, as Philip called
her, may have been attached to the Duke, she was never in any doubt
as to the worthlessness of his professions of love. “In general,
gallantry never was in so elevated a figure as it is at present,” she
told Lady Mar. “Twenty very pretty fellows (the Duke of Wharton being
president and chief director) have formed themselves into a committee
of gallantry. They call themselves _Schemers_; and meet regularly three
times a week, to consult on gallant schemes for the advantage and
advancement of that branch of happiness.”
Wharton’s gallantries, or, to give them their proper though less
euphonious name, profligacies, were carried to such excess that they,
together with his political infidelities, disgusted even his far from
strait-laced contemporaries; and it was only his great talents that
enabled him to hold his own with them. But his marvellous gift of
oratory and his ingenious but always sound reasoning were appreciated
even by, or, perhaps, it should be said, especially by, his enemies;
while his occasional outbursts of humour made it difficult for anyone
to keep a straight face. Who could help laughing when a certain Bishop
in the House of Lords rose to speak and remarked he should divide what
he had to say into twelve parts, and Wharton, interrupting, begged
he might be permitted to tell a story that could only be introduced
at that moment: “A drunken fellow was passing by St Paul’s at night,
and heard the clock slowly chiming twelve. He counted the strokes,
and when it was finished, looking towards the clock, said, ‘Damn you,
why couldn’t you give us all that at once?’” There was an end of the
Bishop’s speech!
But not great talents, combined with a keen sense of humour, could save
a person as volatile as the Duke. He founded in 1723 an Opposition
paper, _The True Briton_, written by himself, issued twice weekly,
which secured a large circulation, and for publishing which, Payne,
indicted for libel, and found guilty, was heavily fined; but this may
be regarded as a legitimate political move. As he was known to be in
correspondence with the Pretender, it is not easy to see how he escaped
impeachment, unless it was that the Government was reluctant to proceed
against a young man, the son of a valued supporter and an old friend of
Sir Robert Walpole, and the godson of the two preceding sovereigns of
Great Britain.
The Government, however, was soon relieved from any anxiety on this
score, for the Duke’s extravagance in money matters had been so great
that his creditors had, for their own benefit, obtained a decree of
the Court of Chancery placing his estates in the hands of trustees
until his liabilities had been liquidated. These trustees allowed his
Grace an income of twelve hundred pounds, upon which, deciding it was
impossible in this country to support his dignity on that sum, he left
England, thus bringing to a close the first act of his wasted life.
Before the Duke went abroad he had been careful to make his peace with
the Pretender, for the latter, writing in 1725 to Atterbury, then at
Paris, says: “I am very glad you were to send into England ... for
everybody is not so active as Lord Wharton, who writes me often and
wants no spur.” The Pretender had not yet discovered the danger of a
follower so wayward and unreliable as this young man, who did more
harm than good to any cause he espoused; and so, when the Duke arrived
on the Continent in May 1725, he sent him as envoy to Vienna to do
his utmost to promote a good understanding between his master and the
Emperor Charles VI. In this Wharton was not altogether unsuccessful,
and when he reported the result of his mission the Chevalier de St
George, then resident at Rome, rewarded him with the empty title of
Duke of Northumberland and the Order of the Garter.
In the following April the Duke was sent to Madrid, where his folly
became notorious. “The Duke of Wharton has not been sober, or scarce
had a pipe out of his mouth, since he came back from his expedition
to St Ildefonso,” wrote Mr (afterwards Sir Benjamin) Keene, British
Ambassador at Madrid. “He declared himself to be the Pretender’s Prime
Minister, and Duke of Wharton and Northumberland. Hitherto, added
he, my master’s interest has been managed by the Duke of Perth and
three or four old women, who meet under the portal of St Germain’s.
He wanted a Whig, and a brisk one too, to put them in a right train,
and I am the man. You may now look upon me, Sir Philip Wharton, knight
of the Garter, and Sir Robert Walpole, knight of the Bath, running a
course,--and, by heaven! he shall be pressed hard. He bought my family
pictures, but they shall not be long in his possession; that account is
still open.” In spite of the Duke’s follies, the Court of Spain did not
show itself so unfriendly to him, and to the cause he represented, as
Keene thought it should; and he warned his Government. The reply from
England came in the form of a summons under the Privy Seal to the Duke
to return at once to his own country--a summons which, it is needless
to say, was ignored by the recipient.
While at Madrid Philip learnt that his wife, whom he had left in
London, had died, and forthwith he proposed to Maria, the daughter of
Colonel Henry O’Beirne, a lady-in-waiting to the Queen of Spain. Her
Majesty raised various objections, but was eventually persuaded to
consent to the alliance, which took place in July 1726, after the Duke
had embraced the Roman Catholic faith, a step he took in spite of the
fact that on 17th June he had written to his sister, Lady Jane Holt,
assuring her he would never forsake the religion in which he had been
born and bred.
It is probable that the Duke changed his faith to win his bride, but
there may have been at the back of his mind the thought that it would
please his master. If this was so, it was an entirely mistaken idea,
because his conversion--occurring at the same time as that of Lord
North, who had also left England and abjured the Hanoverian cause--gave
the impression that to be in favour with the Chevalier de St George
it was necessary to be of his faith, which in English eyes was a
fatal objection. This, indeed, the Chevalier had realised, as may be
gathered from a letter of the Duchess of Orleans, so far back as 10th
September 1712: “Our King of England, I mean the true one, no longer
dislikes Protestants, for he has taken many of them for his servants.”
What Atterbury thought of the Duke’s action, he said very clearly in a
letter to the Pretender: “The strange turn taken by the Duke of Wharton
gave me such mortifying apprehensions that I have forborne for some
posts to mention him at all. You say, Sir, that he advised with few of
his friends in this matter. I am of opinion he advised with none. It is
easy to suppose you were both surprised and concerned at the account
when it first reached Rome, since it is impossible you should not be
so; the ill consequences are so many, so great, and so evident, that I
am not only afflicted but bewildered when I think of them. The mischief
of one thing you mention is, that he will scarce be believed in what he
shall say in that occasion (so low will his credit have sunk), nor be
able effectually to stop the mouth of malice by any after declaration.”
In England nothing that the Duke of Wharton could do created any
astonishment, such was the estimate in which he was held in his own
country; and popular opinion was expressed by Curll in an epigram:
_On the Duke of Wharton Renouncing the Protestant Religion_
“A _Whig_ He was bred, but at length is turn’d _Papist_,
Pray God send the next Remove be not an _Atheist_.
“_N.B._--To believe _every Thing_ and _Nothing_ is much the same.”
After his marriage, the Duke paid a visit to his master at Rome, but
he “could not keep himself within the bounds of the Italian gravity,”
and the Chevalier ordered him and his wife to return to Spain. There he
volunteered to serve with the Spanish army in the siege of Gibraltar.
Hitherto there had been some suspicion of his courage, but that slur
he now wiped off by exposing his person freely; indeed, the story goes
that one day he walked from the Spanish camp to the very walls of
Gibraltar, and, when challenged, declared his identity, and sauntered
back leisurely, the soldiers, unwilling to kill a great nobleman of
their own nationality, holding their fire.
After the siege, the Duke returned to Madrid, where he was given
the rank of Colonel-Aggregate to the Irish regiment, Hibernia, in
the Spanish service, commanded by the Marquis de Castelar; and then
proposed to settle for a while at the Pretender’s Court. That royal
personage, however, had by this time realised that his adherent’s
gifts were so handicapped by various undesirable qualities that he
showed very plainly that he wished any intimate connection should
cease: he did, indeed, consent to grant a last interview at Parma, but
he neutralised the effect of this favour by taking the opportunity to
refuse to allow the Duke to reside at his Court.
The Duke took the rebuff in good part, wrote to the Chevalier
reiterating his great and enduring devotion to the Jacobite cause, and,
journeying with his wife to Paris, in that city at once made overtures
to Horace Walpole, the British Ambassador. “I am coming to Paris, to
put myself entirely under your Excellency’s protection, and hope that
Sir Robert Walpole’s good nature will prompt him to save a family,
which his generosity induced him to spare,” he wrote in May 1728. “If
your Excellency would permit me to wait upon you for an hour, I am
certain you would be convinced of the sincerity of my repentance for
my former madness; would become an advocate with his Majesty to grant
me his most gracious pardon, which it is my comfort I shall never be
required to purchase by any step unworthy of a man of honour. I do not
intend, in the case of the king’s allowing me to pass the evening of
my days under the shadow of his royal protection, to see England for
some years, but shall remain in France or Germany, as my friends shall
advise, and enjoy country sports till all former stories are buried
in oblivion. I beg of your Excellency to let me receive your orders
at Paris, which I will send to your hotel to receive. The Duchess of
Wharton, who is with me, desires leave to wait on Mrs Walpole, if you
think proper.”
Horace Walpole received him, listened to his assurances of future
loyalty, and conveyed his protestations of good behaviour to the Duke
of Newcastle, who replied on 12th July:
“Having laid before the King your Excellency’s letter, giving an
account of a visit you had received from the Duke of Wharton, and
enclosing a copy of a letter he wrote to you afterwards upon the same
occasion, I am commanded to let you know that his Majesty approves of
what you said to the Duke, and your behaviour towards him; but that
the Duke of Wharton has conducted himself in so extraordinary a manner
since he left England, and has so openly declared his disaffection to
the King and his government, by joining with and serving under his
Majesty’s professed enemies, that his Majesty does not think fit to
receive any application from him.”
It is unnecessary to give in detail the subsequent actions of the
Duke: how, incensed by the King’s refusal, he printed in _Mist’s
Journal_ a bitter satirical attack on George II. and his ministers;
how he was tried for high treason for having taken up arms against his
country, found guilty, outlawed, and deprived of his property; how at
the eleventh hour unofficial overtures were made to him from England,
which he refused to entertain unless unconditional pardon was granted
him; how he stayed awhile in a monastery, a fervent devotee, and after
a few weeks returned to the world to plunge into greater excesses; how
he publicly proclaimed his attachment to the Pretender and the Catholic
religion.
His estates being sequestrated, he was now penniless, and reduced to
most miserable straits. “Notwithstanding what my Brother Madman has
done to undo himself, and everybody who was so unlucky as to have the
least concern with him,” wrote a friend who journeyed with him from
Paris to Orleans at the beginning of June 1729, “I could not help being
sensibly moved at so extraordinary a vicissitude of fortune, to see
a great man fallen from that shining light, in which I have beheld
him in the House of Lords, to such a degree of obscurity, that I have
observed the meanest commoner decline his company; and the Jew he
would sometimes fasten on, grow tired of it; for you know he is but
a bad orator in his cups, and of late he has been but seldom sober.”
Eventually, after overcoming great difficulties, the Duke arrived in
Spain, where he joined his regiment, and endeavoured to live upon his
pay of eighteen pistoles a month, and sums of money sent to him by the
Pretender. He devoted his leisure to reading and to the composition of
a play based on the tragic story of Mary Queen of Scots, and, after
an illness of some months, he died on 31st May 1731, at the age of
thirty-two, in the shelter of the Franciscan monastery of Poblet.
Such is the story of the life of Philip, Duke of Wharton, which,
surely, arouses feelings of pity rather than anger. “Like Buckingham
and Rochester,” says Horace Walpole, “he comforted all the grave
and dull by throwing away the brightest profusion of parts on witty
fooleries, debaucheries, and scrapes, which may mix graces with a great
character, but can never compose one.” He had, indeed, genius, wit,
humour, eloquence, rank, wealth and good looks, but because he lacked
stability and principles, all his great talents went for nothing. Never
was there a character more fitted to point a moral, and if the writers
of Sunday school prize-books have not taken him as their text, this can
only be because they are unacquainted with his history. “The great
abilities of the Duke of Wharton are past dispute,” Atterbury wrote
to the Pretender, in September 1736; “it is he alone who could render
them less useful than they might have been.” And this was kindly put,
for Atterbury might well have said that as an adherent to any cause so
unreliable and faithless a person was an open danger.
For every man some excuse can be found, but while excuses for the Duke
of Wharton there must be, it is, indeed, not easy to find them. His
early training may have been unsuitable for a character so mercurial,
and the early death of his mother and father probably removed any
change of controlling him. That he was mad is a theory practical
enough, for this would explain many sudden changes of opinion, and
many instances of unfaithfulness, which had not even self-interest to
explain them; and it seems certain that he was intoxicated with vanity.
This last assumption is supported by the testimony of Pope, who has for
all time put on record a character sketch of the Duke, which, in spite
of the poet’s bias, must unfortunately be accepted as a portrait all
too true:
“Wharton, the scorn and wonder of our days,
Whose ruling passion was the lust of praise:
Born with whate’er could win it from the wise,
Women and fools must like him or he dies;
Though wondering senates hung on all he spoke,
The club must hail him master of the joke.
Shall parts so various aim at nothing new?
He’ll shine a Tully and a Wilmot too,
Then turn repentant, and his God adores
With the same spirit that he drinks and w----;
Enough if all around him but admire,
And now the punk applaud, and now the friar.
Thus with each gift of nature and of art,
And wanting nothing but an honest heart;
Grown all to all, from no one vice exempt;
And most contemptible, to shun contempt:
His passion still, to covet general praise,
His life, to forfeit it a thousand ways;
A constant bounty which no friend has made;
An angel tongue, which no man can persuade;
A fool, with more of wit than half mankind,
Too rash for thought, for action too refined:
A tyrant to the wife his heart approves;
A rebel to the very king he loves;
He dies, sad outcast of each church and state,
And, harder still, flagitious, yet not great.
Ask you why Wharton broke through every rule?
’Twas all for fear the knaves should call him fool.”
_Index_
Alvanley, William, Lord, 41, 53–55, 64, 67, 69, 99, 223
Anglesea, Lord, 19, 99
Archer, Lady, 86
Arden, Sir Pepper, 54
Argyll, Duke of, 48
Armitstead, Mrs, (Mrs Charles James Fox), 241, 245
Ashton, Hervey, 48
Atterbury, Francis, Bishop of Rochester, 266, 272, 275, 281
Aubrey, Colonel, 90
Beauclerk, Topham, 89, 226
Beckford, William, of Fonthill, 189–215
Bligh, Robert, 84
Brummell, George Bryan, 48, 55–74, 84, 85, 253
Buckinghamshire, Lady, 86
Burke, Edmund, 230, 231
Carlisle, Lord, 89, 227, 256
Carlisle, Countess of, 240
Carlyle, Dr Alexander, 173, 178
Chatham, Lord, 194, 197, 231
Cholmondeley, Lord, 90
Damer, Colonel Dawson, 48
Dashwood, Sir Francis, 168, 170
Dashwood, Sir C., 175, 176
De Ferretti, Bailli, 91
De Ros, Henry, 48
Devonshire, Duchess of, 240
D’Orsay, Count, 74, 78, 99
Draper, Daniel, 132, 136, 137, 155
Draper, Mrs Elizabeth, 129–157
Drummond, George Harley, 63
Dudley and Ward, Lord, 48, 51
Fife, Lord, 77
Fitzpatrick, General, 89
Foley, Lord, 47
Fox, Charles James, 13, 47, 57, 79, 81, 87, 89, 219–249, 253
Fox, Stephen, 224, 227
Francis, Sir Philip, 86, 87
Garland, Squire, 173
George I., 263, 264, 267
George II., 279
George III., 56, 85, 93, 107, 108, 121, 233, 235, 236, 239
George, Prince of Wales, Regent (afterwards George IV.), 13, 15, 17,
19, 23–25, 34, 47, 51, 55, 56, 58, 59, 62–66, 69–72, 82, 83, 93,
113, 121, 122, 237, 241–243, 248, 249
Gifford, Lord, 49
Gilbert, 173, 175
Gordon, Lady Margaret (Mrs Beckford), 203, 204
Greville, Charles, 54, 72, 80
Gronow, R. H., 56, 59, 74, 82, 92, 97, 223
Hall-Stevenson, John, 161–185
Hall, Colonel George Lawson, 173
Hamilton, Sir William, 202
Hanger, George, 13, 19–33
Hanger, William (“Blue”), 25–28
Henley, Rev. Samuel, 205
Hertford, Lord, 47, 89
Hewett, William, 171, 172, 177
Holland, Lord, 219, 224, 227, 229
Holmes, Martha, Duchess of Wharton, first wife of Philip, Duke of
Wharton, 255, 262, 272
Holt, Lady Jane, 274
Hood, Admiral, 240
Hughes, “Golden Ball,” 76, 77, 97
Irvine, Andrew (“Paddy Andrews”), 173, 176
James, “The Old Pretender,” 256–260, 263, 272–277
James, Mr and Mrs William, 133, 134, 135, 138, 139, 140, 151
Johnson, Dr Samuel, 14, 16, 17
Keene, Sir Benjamin, 273
Knighton, Sir William, 49
Lade, Lady, 17, 18
Lade, Sir John, 13–19, 95
Lascelles, Rev. Robert (“Panty”), 170, 174–176
Lee, Charles, 173
Lettice, Rev. John, 195, 196, 197, 201
Mackinnon, Dan, 48
Marsh, Charles, 25
Mildmay, Sir Henry, 64
Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley, 262, 270
Montrond, Count, 91
Moore, Zachary, 169, 170
Morris, Charles, 80, 81
Mozart, 195
Musgrave, Sir Christopher, 268
Nash, “Beau,” 253
North, Lord, 232, 234, 236
O’Beirne, Maria, Duchess of Wharton, second wife of Philip, Duke of
Wharton, 274
O’Connell, Morgan, 55
Petersham, Lord, 47, 50, 51