In 1734 there had been a fiercely contested General Election, and Thomas
Pitt had been returned for both Okehampton and Old Sarum. He elected to
sit for Okehampton, and nominated his brother, William, together with
his brother-in-law, Nedham, for the other borough. So, on February 18,
1735, William was returned Member for the notorious borough of Old
Sarum; an area of about sixty acres of ploughed land, on which had once
stood the old city of Salisbury, but which no longer contained a single
house or a single resident. The electorate consisted of seven votes.
When an election took place the returning officer brought with him a
tent, under which the necessary business was transacted.[91]
To such a constituency it was superfluous, and indeed impossible, to
offer an election address, or an exposition of policy. But William's
politics could not be other than those of his brother and nominator,
though it would seem that Thomas conformed to William rather than
William to Thomas. We have seen some indications in his letters to Ann
that Thomas had been favourable to Sir Robert Walpole, and that so late
as November 1734. But it seems probable that William, who was united in
private friendship with Lyttelton and the Grenvilles, was drawn to them
by political sympathy as well, and was thus in agreement with the
fiercest section of the Opposition. By the time that William was
elected, Thomas, who was connected with the same group by marriage, must
also have thrown in his political lot with it, or he would not have
nominated his brother. For William, though only a cornet of horse, was
known to be an enemy, and a redoubtable enemy, to the Minister. On this
point we have clear evidence in a remarkable statement by Lord
Camelford, which will be quoted later.
William's political opinions were then, we may safely suppose, the
result of family connection, for through his brother and his own
friendships he was closely united with that band of politicians who met
and caballed at Stowe, the stately residence of Lord Cobham. There he
was a visitor for the first time this year (1735). His stay lasted not
less than four months, from the beginning of July to the end of October.
He could scarcely have remained so long without being enrolled in this
small but important group, even had he not been enlisted already. But he
was probably a recruit before his visit began. His brother, as we have
seen, had married Christian Lyttelton, Cobham's niece; George,
afterwards Lord Lyttelton, was her brother, and Cobham's nephew, as well
as William's intimate friend; Richard and George Grenville, the first of
whom is better known as Lord Temple, and the second as a laborious but
intolerable prime minister, were Cobham's nephews; Richard, indeed, was
his heir. A family connection was thus formed, which, at first held up
to ridicule under the nickname of 'Cobham's cubs,' or 'The Cousins,' or
'The Boy Patriots,' was to be for the next thirty years a notable factor
in political history, and a sinister element in Pitt's career.
So it may be well here to turn aside for a moment to consider these
Grenvilles, who exercised so singular and baleful an influence on Pitt,
and indeed on public affairs in general. For from the moment that Pitt
became their brother-in-law, he was adopted as one of the brotherhood
and choked in their embraces. From this mortal entanglement he
emancipated himself too late. It was then patent how different his
career would have been had he had a man of common-sense at his elbow, or
at least an unselfish adviser. George Grenville, however, complained on
his side that the connection had been fatal to the peace and happiness
of the Grenvilles.[92]
Who was the chief of this combination? Richard Temple, Viscount Cobham,
best remembered as the 'brave Cobham' to whom Pope addressed his first
Epistle and as the founder of the dynasty and palace of Stowe, was not
merely a soldier who had served with distinction under Marlborough, but
a fortunate courtier on whom the House of Hanover had heaped constant
and signal honours. He was created first a Baron, then a Viscount,
Constable of Windsor Castle, Governor of Jersey, a Privy Councillor,
Colonel of the First Dragoons, and was afterwards to become a Field
Marshal and Colonel of the Horse Guards. He had, hints Shelburne, some
of the Shandean humour of Marlborough's veterans, but his portrait shows
a keen, refined, perhaps sensitive countenance; he was also something
of a bashaw.[93] Sated with military honours, and always a staunch Whig,
he had now taken to conspicuous politics and splendour; politics
exacerbated by a personal slight, and splendour displayed in sumptuous
hospitality, princely buildings, and lavish magnificence of gardens.
These, laid out under the supervision of Lancelot Brown, extended at
last to not less than four hundred acres. Here he erected pavilions and
shrines in the fashion of those times; the most daring of which was one
to commemorate his friendships, with which politics had made sad havoc
before the temple was completed. Here he kept open house in the spacious
and genial fashion of that time, and entertained Pope, Congreve,
Bolingbroke, Pulteney, the wits as well as the princes of the day. From
these pleasing cares he had recently been diverted by one of those
needless affronts which seem so inconsistent with the robust and genial
character of Walpole, but to the infliction of which Walpole was
singularly prone. On account of his opposition to the Excise Bill,
Cobham had been deprived of his regiment, the same, by-the-bye, in which
Pitt was a subaltern. Stung to political ardour by this insult, he had
begun to form a faction of violent opposition, of which his nephews and
their friends were the nucleus. Thus began that formidable influence
which had its home and source at Stowe for near a century afterwards,
and which for three generations patiently and persistently pursued the
ducal coronet which was the darling object of its successive chiefs.
Cobham, then, founded the family, and, so long as he lived, directed
their operations, with too much perhaps of the spirit of a martinet.
When he died his fortune and title passed to his sister, afterwards, as
we shall see, Countess Temple in her own right, the mother of the
Grenvilles with whom we are concerned.
There were originally five Grenville brothers: Richard, George, James,
Henry, and Thomas. Three of these, however, are outside our limits.
Thomas, a naval officer of signal promise, was killed in action off Cape
Finisterre in May 1747. James and Henry were cyphers, not ill provided
for at the public charge. Both seem to have broken loose at one time
from the tyranny of the brotherhood: James at first siding with Richard
against George in 1761; and Henry, whom we find Richard anxious, on
opposite grounds it is to be presumed, to oust from the representation
of Buckingham in 1774. James, who, says Horace Walpole, 'had all the
defects of his brothers and had turned them to the best account,' was
Deputy Paymaster to Pitt; and Henry was a popular Governor of Barbadoes,
as well as Ambassador at Constantinople for four years, after which both
subsided into the blameless occupation of various sinecures.
Never, indeed, was family so well provided for during an entire century
as the Temple-Grenvilles. Although the system by which the aristocracy
lived on the country was not carried nearly as far in Great Britain as
in the France of the fourteenth Louis and his successor, yet it had no
inconsiderable hold. Even the austere George, though averse in Burke's
expressive language to 'the low, pimping politics of a Court,' did not
disdain, when Prime Minister, to hurry to the King to announce the
death of Lord Macclesfield and secure for his son, afterwards Marquis of
Buckingham, the reversion of the Irish Tellership of the Exchequer thus
vacated;[94] nor, a few months later, to obtain the grant of a
lighthouse as a provision for his younger children.[95] The Tellership,
held as it was under the unreformed conditions, was a place of vast
emolument; it is not now easy to compute the amount.[96] Nor is it
necessary for the purpose of this book to follow up these details.
Cobbett reckoned from returns furnished to the House of Commons that
this Lord Buckingham and his brother Thomas, the sons of George
Grenville, had in half a century drawn 700,000_l._ of public money, and
William, another brother, something like 200,000_l._ more. These
figures, of course, are open to dispute, but they indicate at least that
the revenues from public money of this family of sinecurists must have
been enormous. Of English families the Grenvilles were in this
particular line easily the first. Had all sinecurists, it may be said in
passing, spent their money like the younger Thomas, who returned far
more than he received by bequeathing his matchless library to the
nation, the public conscience would have been much more tender towards
them.
Nor was it need that drove them thus to live upon the public, for the
private wealth of the family was commanding; it was the basis of their
power. Richard by the death of his mother was said to have become the
richest subject in England.[97] And, as time went on, his possessions
swelled and swelled. The estates of Bubb[98] devolved upon him.
Heiresses brought their fortunes. There seemed no end to this
prosperity, and it was all utilised steadily and ceaselessly to extend
the political influence of the family.
So all the brothers, even the sailor Thomas, were brought into the House
of Commons; and, with their connections and their discipline, so long as
this was preserved, formed a redoubtable political force. They were not
only a brotherhood but a confraternity. What is really admirable indeed
is the pertinacity and concentration of this strange, dogged race, and
their devotion, indeed subjection, to their chief; they were a political
Company of Jesus. Their objects were not exalted, but from generation to
generation, with a patience little less than Chinese, they pursued and
ultimately attained what they desired. They were of course unpopular,
because their scheme was too obvious; but they knew the value of
popularity, and attempted it with pompous and crowded entertainments.
They were not brilliant; but in every generation they had a man of
sufficient ability, two prime ministers among them, to further their
cause. They built, no doubt, on inadequate foundations, but these lasted
just long enough to enable the structure to be crowned. It is a singular
story; there is nothing like it in the history of England; it resembles
rather the persistent annals of the hive.
The career of Pitt is concerned with only two of these Grenvilles,
Richard and George. These two men had this at least in common, an
amazing opinion of themselves. They were in their own estimation as good
as or better than any one else. They resented the slightest idea of any
disparity between themselves and Pitt. On what this prodigious estimate
was founded we shall never know; we can only conjecture that it was the
combination of fortune and family with some ability that made them deem
their position at least equal to his. When Pitt had raised Britain from
abasement to the first position in the world, when he was indisputably
the greatest orator and the greatest power in the country, the
Grenvilles considered themselves at the least as Pitt's equals, and him
as only one and not the first of a triumvirate. In 1769, when Pitt was
reconciled to them, Temple trumpeted the 'union of the three brothers'
as the greatest fact in contemporary history. As the alliance of a man
of genius with great parliamentary influence and powers of intrigue it
was undoubtedly a political fact of note. But any disparity between the
three personalities never occurs to Temple. In 1766, he writes: 'If a
lead of superiority was claimed (on the part of Pitt) it was rejected on
my part with an assertion of my pretensions to an equality.' And again:
'I claimed an equality, and have no idea of yielding to him ... a
superiority which I think it would be unbecoming in me to give.' Poor
forgotten Temple! With such superb scorn did he reject the offer of the
First Lordship of the Treasury, with the nomination of the
Chancellorship of the Exchequer and the whole Board of Treasury, when
offered by the first man in Europe. An hallucination of the same kind
was observed in the brothers of Napoleon. But in that case it was only
noted by cynical contemporaries, in this it was proclaimed on the
housetops.
Of Richard, the eldest, who became, as will be seen, Earl Temple, a
competent and laborious critic has said that he was one of the 'most
straightforward, honest, and honourable men of his age.' The age, no
doubt, was not famous for public men of this type; but it was not so
barren as this judgment would imply. And indeed it is difficult to
discern the grounds on which it is based. To the ordinary student
Temple, we imagine, will always appear a selfish and tortuous intriguer,
who hoped to utilise his brother-in-law's genius and popularity for
practical objects of his own. But he had other resources of a more
questionable kind. He delighted in the subterranean and the obscure.
'This malignant man,' says Horace Walpole with truth and point, 'worked
in the mines of successive factions for over thirty years together.' He
was in constant communication with Wilkes, whom he supplied with funds.
He was an active pamphleteer. So well were his methods understood that
he acquired the dubious honour of a candidature for the authorship of
Junius. It is almost certain at any rate that he was one of the few
confidants of that remarkable secret. But his wealth and strategy and
borough power were all concentrated on selfish and personal objects. As
head of the Grenvilles, his design was that the Grenvilles and their
connections and all other influences that he could bring to bear should
co-operate for the elevation of the family in the person of its chief.
For this purpose his brother-in-law, Pitt, was a priceless asset. But
all the family had to serve. All of them were put into the House of
Commons; and, it may be added, into the Privy Council, except Thomas,
the sailor, who was prematurely removed by death. George, who under Pitt
and Temple only enjoyed subordinate office, was for a time lured from
the family allegiance by Bute with the offer of a Secretaryship of State
and the reversion of the headship. But George himself was eventually
brought into line.
Temple's aims were simple and material; from the first moment that we
discern him he is pursuing them with persistent but intemperate ardour.
Hardly was Cobham's body cold, Cobham, his uncle and benefactor, to whom
he owed everything, when we find Temple urging that his mother, Cobham's
sister and heiress, should be made a Countess in her own right, with
descent, of course, to himself. Cobham died on September 13; on
September 28 Temple applied for this title. Even Newcastle, the most
hardened of political jobbers, was shocked at his precipitation, and
suggested a postponement, on the ground of common decency. Temple
brushed this objection aside with contempt. He wished the thing done at
once, and done it was.
Hardly had he thus been ennobled when we find him signalising his new
rank by a filthy trick more suited to a barge than a court. At a
reception in his own house, presided over by his charming and
accomplished wife, Lord Cobham, as he was now styled, spat into the hat
which Lord Hervey held in his hand. This feat Cobham had betted a guinea
that he would accomplish. Hervey behaved with temper and coolness.
Cobham took the hat and wiped it with profuse excuses, trying to pass
the matter off as a joke; but after some days of humiliation he had to
write an explicit apology with a recital of all his previous efforts to
appease Hervey's resentment.[99] Such diversions, Lady Hester Stanhope
declares, were common at Stowe. She narrates one scarcely less
nauseous.[100]
Having obtained the earldom, his next object was the Garter. George II.
detested him, and refused the request with asperity. So Pitt had to be
brought in. Pitt was then all-powerful, for this was the autumn of 1759.
He wrote a note full of sombre menace to Newcastle, and demanded the
Garter for Temple as a reward for his own services; but still the King
refused. Then the last reserves were brought into play. Temple resigned
the Privy Seal on the ground that the Garter was denied. Pitt had at the
same time a peremptory interview with Newcastle. The King had to yield,
but could not repress his anger. He threw the ribbon to Temple as a bone
is thrown to a dog. But delicacy, as we have seen, did not trouble
Temple in matters of substance, and he was satisfied.
Having obtained these two objects of ambition, he now played for a
dukedom. This ambition, suspected presumably in Cobham, had been the
subject of epigram so early as 1742.[101] It was avowed, according to
Walpole, in 1767, and, indeed, no other explanation seems adapted to his
various proceedings at critical junctures. Thus, when in June 1765,
George III. and his uncle Cumberland tried to form a Pitt ministry, but
found that an absolute condition of such a ministry was that Temple
should be First Lord of the Treasury, Temple refused on various flimsy
pretexts. When these were surmounted, he declared that 'he had tender
and delicate reasons' which he did not explain to the King, or,
apparently, to Pitt.[102] That this unwonted delicacy and tenderness
were concentrated on the superior coronet appears from the negotiation
carried on by Horace Walpole in 1767, when Lord Hertford assured him of
the fact that Lord Temple's ambition was now a dukedom.[103] It is not
doubtful that this had now become the central preoccupation of his life,
and the hereditary object of the family combination. At first sight it
would seem improbable that Pitt was aware of it, for the simple reason
that he would probably have made efforts to obtain it from the King. On
the other hand, it is unlikely that Temple, in the affair of the Garter,
having found the inestimable value of Pitt's pressure on George II.,
could have foregone the effort to exercise it on George III. On the
whole, the most plausible conjecture appears to be that Pitt was
unsuccessfully sounded by his brother-in-law. All that we know is, that
when Pitt finally determined to undertake the ministry without Temple,
they had a heated interview, which seems to have left deep marks on
Pitt's nerves and health, but whether it turned on Temple's particular
ambition or not can now only be matter for surmise.
The death of Temple made no difference to the family ambition. His
nephew made violent, even frantic, but ineffectual efforts to obtain the
title through Chatham's son. Nor were other means of aggrandisement
neglected. By marriage there accrued the fortunes of Chambers, Nugent,
Chandos, and, by some other way, that of Dodington. Acre was added to
acre and estate to estate, often by the dangerous expedient of borrowed
money, until Buckinghamshire seemed likely to become the appanage of the
family. Borough influence was laboriously accumulated and maintained.
Nor were nobler possessions disdained. Rare books and manuscripts,
choice pictures, and sumptuous furniture were added by successive
generations to the splendid collections of Stowe. Finally, in the reign
of George IV., and in the time of Temple's great-nephew, the object was
attained. Lord Liverpool acquired the support of the Grenville
parliamentary influence by an almost commercial compact, Louis XVIII.
added his instances, and Buckingham became a duke. From that moment the
star of the family visibly paled. Eight years afterwards the duke had to
shut up Stowe, and go abroad. Less than twenty years from then the
palace was dismantled, its treasures were dispersed, the vast estates
sold, and the glories of the House, built up with so much care and
persistence, vanished like a snow-wreath.
But all this is beyond our narrative. At this time all these ambitions
are concealed, there is nothing visible but cordiality, the genial flow
of soul, and brotherly love. Pitt's early letters to George Grenville
are among the easiest and most human that he ever wrote: he wrote
nothing more unaffectedly tender than two letters he sent in September
and October 1742, to George, then abroad for his health. Richard and
George Grenville, Lyttelton and William Pitt, with their set, form one
of those engaging companionships of youth, when high spirits, warm
affections, and the dayspring of life combine to animate a friendship
without guile or suspicion.
Then come separation, marriage, new interests, new ambitions, and the
paths diverge, perhaps till sunset. So it was with these young men. They
all at times quarrelled, even the kindly Lyttelton was driven to
separation. Later, again, they all came together again in some fashion
or another, with the exception, perhaps, of George, whose obstinate
self-love when wounded could never be healed.
But now all was dawn and blossom and smiles. The friends are full of
banter. Their politics are half a frolic. Life is all before them. Its
conditions will harden them presently, and they will wrangle and snarl,
and have their quarrels and huffs. But that is not yet; not even a
coming shadow is visible. Still, even now, it is necessary to indicate
the nature and consequences of Pitt's absorption into the cousinhood.