But with this Government we have nothing to do. We have reached our
limits. The youth of Pitt has passed, his apprenticeship is over, he has
now his foot in high office, he is soon to be supreme. The weary period
of proscription and conflict has come to an end, he is henceforth to
command where he has obeyed, and he is to raise his country to a
singular height of glory and power. That splendid period is beyond the
scope of this book, which only records the ascent and the toil; the
lustre of achievement and reward require a separate chronicle. The next
scenes require a broader canvas and brighter colours.
But before we leave him let us try and realise his appearance. When we
read about any one we naturally wish to know what manner of man he was
in the flesh. In this case we seem but scantily provided with portraits.
We have glanced at the one by Hoare, to the accuracy of which Pitt
himself bears emphatic testimony. Of this one Hoare painted several
replicas, one of the worst of which, very bilious in colouring, is in
the National Portrait Gallery. There is another at Orwell which seems to
have more force in it; it could not have less. The original represents a
comely, graceful and elegant being without a symptom of anything but
comeliness, grace and elegance, and might be the portrait of any man of
fashion of the time. Great men have sometimes piqued themselves on being
dandies, and it may have been this air which recommended the picture to
its subject. This portrait, of which the large engraving, containing
only the head, is infinitely better than the original, duly arrived at
Stowe. Thence at the dispersal of that great collection it passed to
Drayton, having been purchased by Sir Robert Peel, and has lately found
a final home at Pittsburg.
There is another portrait by Hoare, at full length, in the coronation
robes which Pitt never can have worn, which was painted for the
Corporation of Bath ten years after that for Temple. It leaves no
special impression. There was a portrait by Reynolds at Belvoir. But
that, alas! disappeared with so much else in the great fire which
ravaged that noble structure. Towards the end of his life (in 1772) he
was painted in peer's robes by Brompton. The engraving of this is at
full length, but the picture itself is a kitcat, so that it was probably
cut down. This picture is at Chevening, and Lord Sidmouth, if we are not
mistaken, owns a replica or another version of this picture. Pitt's
grand-daughter, Lady Hester Stanhope, who was brought up with it, says
that it is the best portrait of him. As she was only two years old when
he died, her testimony, though given with confidence, has no personal
value; but she had relations who may have told her. She piqued herself
on her resemblance to him. But no value is to be attached to the
utterances of this vain and crazy woman, unless one can believe, which
is difficult, that she repeated faithfully what more trustworthy people
had told her. However, this portrait may well be the best, where the
other is so poor. It is in itself impressive, representing a solemn,
noble, melancholy figure, such as Chatham must have been in his last
cheerless decade.
There are more busts. There is one of him in youth, perhaps at
five-and-twenty, handsome, bright, alert, with a smile that is almost
saucy. The original of this was, it is believed, also at Stowe; also,
perhaps, purchased by Sir Robert Peel. There is more than one by Wilton.
One, dated 1759, grim and masterful, with a touch of scorn, the man
himself at his time of power. There are others of him in old age, with
less expression, ponderous and saturnine; they are posthumous, and dated
1781. One of these is at Dropmore, another at Belvoir, another at
Lowther.
There are probably other portraits or busts, but these are all that are
known to the present writer.
His appearance at his best must have been extremely attractive. Tall and
slender, 'his figure genteel and commanding,' he had cultivated all the
arts of grace, gesture and dramatic action. 'Graceful in motion,' says
his reluctant nephew, 'his eye and countenance would have conveyed his
feelings to the deaf.'[391] All authorities dwell on the magic of his
eye. His eyes, said his grand-daughter, presumably on family tradition,
were grey, but by candlelight seemed black from the intensity of their
expression. When he was angry or earnest no one could look him in the
face. No one indeed seems to have been able to abide the terrors of his
glance.
Of his manners and conversation in private life we know singularly
little. Chesterfield gives us perhaps the best glimpse. 'He had manners
and address; but one might discern through them too great a
consciousness of his own superior talents. He was a most agreeable and
lively companion in social life, and had such a versatility of wit that
he could adapt it to all sorts of conversation.' Of his early powers of
fascination we have an authentic instance. He was seen walking with the
Prince of Wales in the gardens at Stowe, and Cobham, watching them with
anxiety, expressed some apprehension of Pitt's persuading the Prince to
adopt some measures of which Cobham disapproved. A Mr. Belson said that
the interview could not be long. 'You don't know Mr. Pitt's power of
insinuation,' said Cobham. 'In a very short quarter of an hour he can
persuade anyone of anything.'
Butler, 'the Reminiscent,' who had this anecdote from Belson himself,
goes on to say that 'as a companion in festive moments, Mr. Pitt was
enchanting.' He also quotes Wilkes, who was a good judge of social
qualifications. 'Mr. Pitt, by the most manly sense and the fine sallies
of a warm and sportive imagination, can charm the whole day, and, as the
Greek said, his entertainments please even the day after they are
given.' But, after all, these must have been rare occasions, as Pitt
does not seem to have seen much of society, for his health kept him a
recluse; and as years went on he seems to have found it both irksome and
impolitic to see much of mankind. We fancy that he was a man, like his
son, of small and intimate companies; partly from a haughty aloofness,
partly because he could not partake of the pleasures of the table.
'As a private man,' says Lord Camelford, 'he had especially in his youth
every talent to please when he thought it worth while to exert his
talents, which was always for a purpose, for he was never natural. His
good breeding never deserted him unless when his insolence intended to
offend. He was, however, soon spoilt by flattery, which gave him the
humours of a child. He was selfish even to trifles in his own family and
amongst his intimates to the forgetting the preferences due to the other
sex, of which I have heard many ridiculous instances; but this was much
owing to a state of health which made him fretful, at the same time that
it called his attention to his own person. When I first saw him he was
intemperate towards his servants full as much as my own father, but it
is to his honour that when he owed a better example to his children he
got the better of that habit. His first and only friendships were with
Lord Lyttelton and his sister Ann.' In a later passage he adds: 'He
lived and died without a friend.'
Camelford, it will be observed, speaks with confidence about Pitt's
youth, of which he can have known nothing except from tradition, and
Pitt's family traditions were not likely to err on the side of
benignity. What he says about early friendships is obviously inaccurate;
he is quoting Pitt's impulsive note of Oct. 24, 1734.[392] The
Grenvilles, the other Lytteltons, and Gilbert West at once occur to one
as friends to whom Pitt in youth was tenderly attached. We may indeed
take it for granted that this curious piece refers to Pitt's middle
life, which Camelford knew personally; but it is too interesting to be
omitted here.
His great and singular power lay in his eloquence, and yet even there we
are left largely to the recollection and testimony of his
contemporaries, for there was in those days no reporting as we
understand it, and therefore no reports. There are, of course,
professed reports, but to these little credence can be attached. Dr.
Johnson and a Scottish clergyman named Gordon wrote a great number of
them, based on very inadequate materials, if any materials at all. Men
carried away some noble outburst or some striking metaphor tingling in
their ears, and repeated it. Others would be able to recall the line of
argument, if indeed there was an argument to follow. But the result is
scarcely authentic. Pitt the younger must have known, and he declared
that no specimens of his father's eloquence remained. Butler says that
the person to whom he made this remark (no doubt Butler himself) begged
him to read slowly his father's speeches on the Stamp Act, and endeavour
as he did so to recall the figure, look and voice with which his father
would have delivered them. Pitt did so, and admitted the probable effect
of the speech thus delivered. But it is to be observed that he did not
admit the accuracy. Almon, who knew something of this matter, says that
none of the reports of Pitt's speeches before 1760 can be depended upon.
In 1766 Almon began reporting the debates himself, and so would claim
greater exactness, and may easily have attained it.
One is in fact thrown back on the impressions and the descriptions of
those who heard him. Horace Walpole, who at this time admired Pitt as
much as he could admire anybody, gives us striking glimpses, some of
which we have already quoted; one of which, that of the answer to Hume
Campbell, is exquisite in felicity of phrase. Chesterfield says that
Pitt's 'eloquence was of every kind, and he excelled in the
argumentative as well as in the declamatory way. But his invectives were
terrible, and uttered with such energy of diction, and stern dignity of
action and countenance that he intimidated those who were the most
willing and the best able to encounter him. Their arms fell out of their
hands, and they sank under the ascendant which his genius gained over
theirs.' In a note Chesterfield tells us that the last phrases allude to
Murray and Hume Campbell. 'Mr. Pitt,' he says elsewhere, 'carried with
him unpremeditated the strength of thunder and the splendour of
lightning.' These extracts convey the impression made by Pitt on one of
the acutest judges of the time, himself an orator of eminence, and no
friend to his subject.
Bishop Newton gladly avails himself of the same familiar metaphor: 'What
was said of the famous orator Pericles, that he lightened, thundered,
and confounded Greece, was in some measure applicable to him.' 'He had,'
says the Bishop, 'extraordinary powers, quick conceptions, ready
elocution, great command of language, a melodious voice, a piercing eye,
a speaking countenance, and was as great an actor as an orator. During
the time of his successful administration he had the most absolute and
uncontrolled sway that perhaps any member ever had in the House of
Commons. With all these excellences he was not without his defects. His
language was sometimes too figurative and pompous, his speeches were
seldom well connected, often desultory and rambling from one thing to
another, so that though you were struck here and there with noble
sentiments and happy expressions, yet you could not well remember nor
give a clear account of the whole together. With affected modesty he was
apt to be rather too confident and overbearing in debate, sometimes
descended to personal invectives, and would first commend that he might
afterwards more effectually abuse, would ever have the last word, and
right or wrong still preserved (in his own phrase) an unembarrassed
countenance. He spoke more to your passions than to your reason, more to
those below the bar and above the throne than to the House itself; and,
when that kind of audience was excluded, he sunk and lost much of his
weight and authority.'[393]
Grattan's testimony, as that of a famous orator, cannot here be passed,
though it refers to a later period. 'He was a man of great genius, great
flight of mind. His imagination was astonishing.... He was very great
and very odd. He spoke in a style of conversation, not however what I
expected. It was not a speech, for he never came with a prepared
harangue. His style was not regular oratory, like Cicero or Demosthenes,
but it was very fine and very elevated, and above the ordinary subjects
of discourse.... His gesture was always graceful. He was an incomparable
actor. Had it not been so he would have appeared ridiculous.... His
tones were remarkably pleasing. I recollect his pronouncing one word
"effete" in a soft charming accent. His son could not have pronounced it
better.... His manner was dramatic. In this it was said that he was too
much the mountebank; but if so it was a great mountebank. Perhaps he was
not so good a debater as his son, but he was a much better orator, a
better scholar, and a far greater mind. Great subjects, great empires,
great characters, effulgent ideas and classical illustrations formed the
material of his speeches.' Grattan gives examples, and even notes of one
of his speeches, but they are all outside our period.[394]
These notes on Pitt's oratory cannot well be omitted, though they are
almost too familiar to quote. But there is one, never yet published,
which is written by an intimate but merciless critic. Lord Camelford was
only nineteen at the time when our narrative terminates, but he must
already and for some years afterwards have been steeped in his uncle's
eloquence, so that his description is of peculiar interest.
'In Parliament he never spoke but to the instant, regardless of whatever
contradictions he might afterwards be reduced to, which he carried off
with an effrontery without example. His eloquence was supported by every
advantage that could unite in a perfect actor. Graceful in motion, his
eye and countenance would have conveyed his feelings to the deaf. His
voice was clear and melodious, and capable of every variety of
inflection and modulation. His wit was elegant, his imagination
inexhaustible, his sensibility exquisite, and his diction flowed like a
torrent, impure often, but always varied and abundant. There was a style
of conscious superiority, a tone, a gesture of manner, which was quite
peculiar to him--everything shrunk before it; and even facts, truth and
argument were overawed and vanquished by it. On the other hand, his
matter was never ranged, it had no method. He deviated into a thousand
digressions, often reverted back to the same ground, and seemed
sometimes like the lion to lash himself with his own tail to rouse his
courage, which flashed in periods and surprised and astonished, rather
than convinced by the steady light of reason. He was the very contrast
of Lord Mansfield, his competitor in eloquence, who never appealed but
to the conviction of the understanding, with an arrangement so precise
that every sentence was only the preparation for the force that the next
was to obtain, and scarce a word could be taken away without throwing
the whole argument into disorder; the other bore his hearers away by
rapid flights into a region that looked down upon argument, and opposed
the transport of feeling to conviction.'
This appears to be a description as accurate as it is vivid, and perhaps
none gives the personality and manner of Pitt with more effect. The
style of conscious superiority, peculiar to him, before which everything
shrank; the way in which the orator worked himself into wrath, like a
lion lashing himself with his own tail; the eye and countenance which
would have conveyed his meaning to the deaf; these are touches which we
feel to be accurate, and which seem to explain much of the effect of
Pitt's oratory. Let us here note that Cradock gives a curious account of
an oratorical failure of Pitt's in later life and of his consequent
irritation, eminently comforting to humbler speakers.[395]
We value sketches like these much more than any professed reports of
Pitt's speeches, which cannot be accurate reproductions. But, even if
they were, they would, we are told, be but pale shadows of the reality,
for so much depended on the soul and grace with which they were uttered;
for the majesty of his presence, his manly figure, his exquisite voice,
his consummate acting, his harmonious action, and above all the
lightning of his eyes inspired reluctant awe before he uttered a word.
We can fancy him rising in the House, which subsides at once into
silence and eager attention. On not a few faces there will be
uneasiness and alarm; on the ministerial bench some agitation, for it is
there probably that the thunderbolts may fall. His opening is solemn and
impressive. Then he warms to his subject. He states his argument. He
recalls matters of history and his own personal recollections. Then with
an insinuating wave of his arm his voice changes, and he is found to be
drowning some hapless wight with ridicule. Then he seems to ramble a
little, he is marking time and collecting himself for what is coming.
Suddenly the rich notes swell into the fullness of a great organ, and
the audience find themselves borne into the heights of a sublime burst
of eloquence. Then he sinks again into a whisper full of menace which
carries some cruel sarcasm to some quivering heart. Then he is found
playing about his subject, pelting snowballs as he proceeds. If the
speech is proceeding to his satisfaction it will last an hour or perhaps
two. Its length will perhaps not improve it, but no one can stir. There
may be ineffective, tedious, obscure passages, but no one knows what may
be coming, these vapours often precede a glowing sunburst. So all
through the speech men sit as though paralysed, though many are heated
with wine. He will not finish without some lofty declamation which may
be the culminating splendour of the effort. If any effective replies are
made, he will reply again and again, heedless of order, vehement,
truculent, perhaps intemperate. And as he sits down perhaps with little
applause, the tension of nerves, almost agonising in its duration and
concentration, snaps like a harpstring; the buzz of animated
conversation breaks forth with an ecstasy of relief. The audience
disperses still under the spell. As it wears off, hostile critics begin
to declare that it is all acting; the fellow acts better than Garrick.
Garrick, indeed, himself declared that had Pitt originally preferred the
stage of Drury Lane for that of St. Stephen's, he would almost have
annihilated the stage by distancing all competition.[396] He was,
without doubt, an incomparable actor, for no less a power would have
enabled him to engage in some of his most famous flights with effect, or
without reaction or ridicule. His action, his inflections, his vehemence
are no doubt at least as good as Garrick's. But these are merely the
accessories which to the shallow or cynical observer seem to be the
heart or the whole of the matter. One might as well say that it is the
varnish that makes the picture, or the goblet that makes the vintage.
The orator is probably unconscious or at most half-conscious of what
seems dramatic, he is moved by an irresistible blast of passion which
carries him as well as his audience away. The passion may have been
stirred beforehand, but at the moment of outpouring it is genuine
enough. Pitt no doubt had trained himself to be graceful in animation,
had studied and enhanced the beauties of his voice, so that when excited
his tones were always musical, and his action harmonious. He may in
earlier days have rehearsed speeches in private, though he probably
delivered something different when the time came. But to imagine that
when he spoke he was acting a prepared speech is to ignore the main
features of his oratory, the force coming from an internal impulse which
was for the moment irresistible. It should be remembered too, that in
one sense he was always acting in the common business of life; when he
chipped an egg, or talked to his gardener, or mounted his horse, he was
acting. He might not, indeed, study his gesture at the moment, but that
was because he had been studying gestures half his life. He had
appropriated the dramatic way of doing things till it had become a
second nature to him; thus, what would have been acting in others was
natural to him. And indeed, he had so adjusted and prepared and schooled
himself, that all his emotions were effectually concealed. The fierce
character of the man would sometimes be irrepressible, but even then it
would be vented with an awful grace. And so when he was said to be
acting in the House he was natural, for acting had become a second
nature to him. When this is so, acting has ceased to be acting. Mrs.
Siddons would give her orders at dinner in the awful tones of Lady
Macbeth. This was not acting but nature, trained but unconscious nature.
So it was with Pitt. He would not laugh, because it was undignified to
laugh. If he had a book or a play to read aloud and came to a comic
part, he passed it to another to read and resumed the volume when the
humorous part was over, lest, we may presume, he should smile or become
incidentally ridiculous. His countenance was, so to speak, enamelled
with such anxious care, that a heedless laugh might crack the elaborate
demeanour. And so he lived in blank verse, and conducted himself in the
heroic metre. We should surmise, though not with certainty, that some of
his more famous flights, such as the comparison of the Rhone and the
Saone, were prepared to some extent, but that there was nothing
written. This is only guesswork, for of his method of preparation we
know nothing. But his diction was habitually perfect. To improve it he
had twice read through Bailey's Dictionary, and had plodded through
masses of sermons, particularly those of Barrow, Abernethy, and 'the
late Mr. Mudge of Plymouth.'[397] 'Every word he makes use of,' said
Chesterfield as early as 1751, 'is the very best, and the most
expressive that can be used in that place.' That was the result of
constant and familiar effort. Like Bolingbroke he had trained himself to
spare no pains in ordinary conversation to attain accuracy of
expression, so as to be sure of himself in public. 'It would not be
believed how much trouble he took to compose the most trifling note.' He
told Shelburne that a phrase he had used in one of his speeches could
not be taken exception to, as he had tried it on paper three times
before employing it in public. Assiduous study of words, constant
exercise in choice language, so that it was habitual to him even in
conversation, and could not be other than elegant even in unpremeditated
speech, this combined with poetical imagination, passion, a mordant wit
and great dramatic skill, would probably seem to be the secrets of
Chatham's oratorical supremacy. And yet it is safe to predict that a
clever fellow who had mastered all this would produce but a pale
reflection of the original. It is not merely the thing that is said, but
the man who says it which counts, the character which breathes through
the sentences. Mirabeau would, as we know, take a manuscript speech
produced by a laborious friend, in itself a dull thing, and read it from
the tribune with such energy of inspiration that it would carry the
Assembly by storm. This is the more marvellous when we remember that a
man who reads the best possible speech with the most effective elocution
is heavily handicapped. And so it may safely be assumed that imitation
of Pitt would be doomed to disastrous failure. The secret of oratory
like this evades the most anxious student: its effect both on the
immediate audience and on posterity seems beyond definition or adequate
explanation.
Some orators impress their audience, some their readers, a very few
posterity as well. The orators who impress their audience rarely impress
their readers, and those who impress their readers are usually less
successful with their audience. Few indeed are those who reach posterity
or indeed survive a year. Pitt, if any one indeed can be said to have
read his speeches, combined all three forms of supremacy. More than
this, his utterances with a sort of wireless telegraphy seemed to thrill
the nation which neither heard nor read them. In the century which
followed Chatham's death there was an illustrious succession of orators
and debaters. And yet none of these eminent men with all their
accurately reported speeches have left so deep an impress of eloquence
as the elder Pitt, who was not reported at all. We cannot doubt that it
is better for his fame that he was unreported. Sheridan never did
anything wiser than when in his need he refused the most splendid offers
to revise his Begum speech for publication. Pitt's speeches would have
lost half their force without the splendour of delivery. His unreported
eloquence has become matter of faith, and so it is likely to remain.
Mr. Lecky, from whom it is difficult to differ, thinks that his
speeches were deficient in pathos and wit. As to this last, the
testimony of his contemporaries is emphatic the other way, and they are
loud in extolling Pitt's piercing wit. We have seen how Walpole and
Murray concur in extolling his powers of ridicule. 'He can turn anything
into ridicule,' Murray had said. 'He can tickle to death with a
feather,' was Walpole's description. Nor should we imagine he was
defective in pathos; not perhaps in youth, for youth is not the season
of pathos, but certainly in later years. The speeches, for example,
delivered in the garb of an invalid, abounded we should surmise in
pathos, to which the costume was preliminary and accessory. But pathos,
which has something of humility in its tenderness, was, it must be
admitted, alien to the haughty superiority which Pitt asserted and
assumed.
One word more of fascinating conjecture. Would he have been a great
popular orator at mass meetings and the like? We cannot imagine Pitt a
platform speaker, yet we can scarcely imagine a better. His graceful
appearance, his terrible eye, the winning and majestic modulations of
his voice, his spontaneity, his magnetic power, his wealth of ridicule,
his poignant personalities, his dramatic force, his variety and
unexpectedness constituted the most formidable equipment for platform
oratory ever possessed by mortal man. And yet we cannot regret that he
never was tried.
Pitt's life marks itself out with singular distinctness into definite
periods. From 1708 to 1734 is the period of obscure youth, on which this
volume should throw some light. From 1734 to 1745 is the period of
reckless and irresponsible opposition, when he is trying the temper of
his weapons. From 1745 to 1754 he remains in the shadow of subordinate
office. From 1754 to 1756, though still partly in office, he emerges as
an independent figure of extraordinary and irresistible force. From 1756
to 1761 is the period of power, four years of which are unrivalled in
the annals of Great Britain. From 1761 to 1770 is the period of
detachment, or attempted detachment, from party. It includes some tenure
of office, much obscurity and illness, some actual insanity. And from
1770 till his death in 1778 he appears sometimes to be attempting to
make his peace with the party system, having found it impracticable to
stand alone; sometimes he seems to be retiring once more into his cell.
Few careers can be marked out so clearly; few have such a glamour. But
the glamour and the glory are yet to come; they lie beyond this book.
Already indeed there are confidence and hope, confidence in his vigour,
his honesty, and his uprightness; but this is due rather to others than
to himself. Every one else has failed, this may be the man of destiny.
And yet up to this time the career of Pitt has been, eloquence apart,
not unlike that of other ambitious and not very scrupulous politicians.
He begins by attacking Sir Robert Walpole. Why? He has no particular
objection to Sir Robert Walpole; in after years he acknowledges that he
was a great statesman. It was partly a freak of youth. Who is the
biggest man to attack, the man by combating whom one can acquire the
most honour and reputation? Obviously Walpole. So tilt at him. He is
asked to an important house; for the first time he finds himself in the
great world. He is caressed, perhaps flattered; for he has a school
renown, and is a lad to be secured. He is with his Eton friends, and
they think all the world of Cobham, his wisdom, his courage, his
magnificence; they all in a measure depend on him. Thus he is allured
into the charmed circle, and they form much the same group as that which
was in our own days called the Fourth Party.
So they enter the House of Commons in high spirits, and lay about them
with reckless intrepidity. Pitt is soon marked out for martyrdom by the
Minister. But in a short time he is conspicuous for other reasons. He
towers from the waist above his comrades as a bitter, incisive speaker.
Walpole begins to take notes of his speeches; he is the coming man, and
is at once secured for the faction of the Prince of Wales. Then Walpole
falls. There is a great crash, and the spectators expect to see the
world in ruins. But when the dust has cleared away it is seen that
things are much as they were; Wilmington, scarcely visible, in Walpole's
seat; Newcastle rooted in his own; Walpole, with Pulteney his
protagonist, seated smug and dumb among the distant peers. There is no
room for Pitt among our governors; the only new figure that strikes one
is Carteret, he is evidently the moving spirit of the piece. As the
prominent Minister, and as an object of hatred to Cobham, he is
obviously the man for Pitt now to attack, and he trounces Carteret as
recklessly as he had Walpole; only Walpole was able to reply, and
Carteret cannot; for he sits where Walpole sits. Carteret, again, he
mainly attacks for his eminence. He calls Carteret execrable now, but,
when the battle is over, takes pride in declaring that to his patronage,
to his friendship, to his instruction 'I owe whatever I am.' Still, the
business of party must be done, and so Carteret must be assailed. Then
Carteret disappears, and Pitt is without a target. But the young man
has to realise that in his reckless onslaughts he has incidentally but
mortally wounded the honour of the King. Walpole and Carteret are off
the scene; and the stage is now occupied, so far as he is concerned, by
a monarch who is an incarnate veto as regards him, and who can never
forgive him. This produces a new situation. Pitt is as strenuous to be
pardoned as he was to offend; he is all milk and honey in public, but
apprises the Pelhams, who are now in sole possession of the
administration, that he is not disposed to be long-suffering, and that
the ordinary rewards of political warfare are overdue. They are fully
alive to the situation, and attempt to mollify the Sovereign. But their
labour is in vain, and so, with more subtlety than patriotism, they
produce a ministerial crisis when civil war is alive in the island. The
King has to yield, and, in angry submission, receive Pitt. The new
placeman, having achieved office, subsides into a long silence. Pelham
dies at last, and the great inheritance has to be divided. Pitt is ill
and absent; his rival is at once preferred (though alienated); while
Pelham's brother attempts to guide, with the help of the Master of the
Great Wardrobe, what Pelham could not control. The result is easily
foreseen. The rivals unite to tear the Master limb from limb, and one of
them has to be bought off. That one is not Pitt. And now something,
pique or patriotism or marriage, one cannot analyse it now, perhaps he
could not have analysed it himself, lifts him into new splendours of
eloquence. His rival seems cowed by the harness without the confidence
of office. Pitt stands alone, no one dare face him. Meanwhile he
receives new authority from disaster. In every region where Britain is
interested calamity follows calamity. The country is roused to a passion
of wrath and vengeance. It demands victims. Byng in prison remains an
open wound to remind the nation of its miscarriages. They are resolved
to shoot him, at any rate; they would not be unwilling to hang others
whom they hold responsible for his miscarriage, who are perhaps corrupt,
and who are certainly incapable and untoward Ministers; failing that,
they will at least get rid of them. They look round and see no one but
Pitt. He has been persecuted, he has been ignored by these Ministers,
and yet his eloquence, commanding in itself, has the true note of energy
and patriotism. He shall be tried; and they call for him with as much
energy as the French once called for Necker, but with a truer instinct.
Strangely enough, there is so far little vigour in Pitt except in his
speeches. Half his life is spent in prostration and seclusion, under the
martyrdom of gout. As we have seen, on the very brink of his Ministry,
he assured Fox that his health would not allow him to hold office. And,
indeed, in the whole life of this singular man there is nothing more
remarkable than this, that in the glimpses we obtain of himself, apart
from great speeches and the result of victorious policy, we almost
always find him prostrate with illness. It is generally the gout or its
allies which disable him; but later it is disorder akin to if not
identical with insanity. Not unnaturally, even among those less prone by
profession to suspicion than the expert politician, his ill-health is
often supposed to be an assumption or a screen. But in this calmer
generation we can see that it was not, that the man never enjoyed
health, as it is ordinarily understood, for a moment. He was always
distempered, irritable, or hysterical, when not in pain. His public life
was scarcely more than the intervals between fits of gout or nervous
collapse. We are reminded of the sufferings of his son, as he approached
the end of a long ministerial career, struggling against constant
sickness and a wrecked constitution, when we contemplate the lifelong
contest between the elder Pitt and hereditary disease.
Heredity counts for much, for more than we reckon in these matters. We
breed horses and cattle with careful study on that principle; the prize
bull and the Derby winner are the result. With mankind we heed it little
or not at all. With Pitt it was everything or almost everything. From
his ancestors, most probably the Governor, who, we infer, was a free
liver in a tropical climate, he derived the curse of gout. From the same
progenitor he inherited a nervous, violent temperament, and some taint
of madness. All this told partly for him, partly against him. The gout
drove him to study and reflection, but it constantly disabled him. His
temperament roused him to great heights of energy and passion both in
eloquence and politics, but it also alienated his fellow-men, and made
him sometimes eccentric, and sometimes turbulent. We cannot in such a
matter hold the balance. What is genius? None can tell. But may it not
be the result in character of the conflict of violent strains of
heredity, which clash like flint and steel, and produce the divine
spark?
This takes us beyond our limits, more especially those of time; for
within those limits the genius of Pitt has only been displayed in the
barren gift of eloquence. But when we consider his disabilities of
heredity and of accident we deem him already heroic. Everything has been
against him. He has contended against poverty and disease and contempt.
He has been wounded in the house of his family. He has been constantly
betrayed. He has had to suffer for long years in silence. He is
forty-eight when he at last attains anything like power. From this point
of view his career is pathetic. It seems such a waste of time and
opportunity. But through these long impatient years he was being
trained, hardened, one may almost say, baked in the furnace. In silence
and bitterness the force was being accumulated that was to electrify the
Empire.
Still the dazzling result must not blind us to the facts as they stand
at the moment when we are surveying and taking leave of them. Much in a
man's life obviously depends on life: much too depends on death. 'Felix
opportunitate mortis' is a pregnant saying. How many village Hampdens,
how many Miltons have passed away, inglorious because mute, and mute
from premature death. Had Caesar or Marlborough died before middle age
their military reputation would have been slender indeed. For how many
men, on the other hand, has death come too late. What would have been
the place in history of Napoleon III., had Orsini been a successful
assassin? What that of Tiberius, had he died at sixty? The authors who
have survived themselves are as the sands of the sea; indeed the
exceptions are those who have not. The politicians in the same case are
less conspicuous, for they crumble into the House of Lords. Historians
and rhetoricians have vied with each other in setting forth the glories
of Pitt's supreme years. What we have to consider is his position in
1756, when we part from him in professed ignorance of what is to come.
How would Pitt appear to us had he died when he was still forty-seven?
He was forty-eight the day before Devonshire, in his name, assumed the
government. That is a respectable age. The younger Pitt never reached
it, though he had been Prime Minister for near a score of years.
Napoleon closed his career at forty-six. It is needless to detail
examples. But at forty-seven the elder Pitt could only claim that he had
been Paymaster of the Forces, and had cowed but not persuaded the House
of Commons by his oratory. He had, too, the faith of the people,
unearned except by vague echoes of purity and eloquence. Otherwise his
career had been much like other careers, denouncing, or coquetting and
even pressing for office, equable in expectation, and vindictive if
refused. Pride was his besetting sin; yet he had stooped, to conquer.
All seems to depend on this point, so difficult to decide: was there
patriotism in all this alloy? Was the anxiety for office the mere
craving of the politician for reward, or was it the real consciousness
of capacity, purity, and inspiration? It may well in earlier days have
been the more vulgar ambition, vulgar but not reprehensible; for office
is the legitimate end and object of the public man; and Pitt had earned
it a hundred times over by ordinary standards, while compelled to stand
aside and see his inferiors promoted. But at the period which we have
reached we think the nobler sentiment is unmistakable. He will not hold
out a finger, he spurns all assistance, he builds without any foundation
but himself. Had he wished only for the snug and secure possession of
office he would have welcomed the co-operation of Newcastle and Fox,
invaluable allies in their different ways. But at this time he will have
none of them, he dreams of a government which free from taint or
suspicion shall appeal for the confidence of the country on the highest
and purest grounds.
Here we feel, and feel with relief, that we can give a clear verdict.
The rest matters little. The path of the statesman rarely skirts the
heights, it is rough, rugged, sometimes squalid, as are most of the
roads of life. We are apt to make idols, to ignore shadows, and to fancy
that we see stars; not too apt, for it is an illuminating worship. But,
that being so, let not those who have to scrutinise therefore condemn.
All careers have their blots. The best and happiest are those in which
the blemishes are obscured by high achievement. That was supremely the
case with Pitt. His upward ascent was much like other ascents, neither
better nor worse. But when he reached the summit, and acted in full
light and freedom, his triumph was so complete that none deem it worth
while to scan his previous record. None should care now, were it not a
healthy propensity to seek to know as much as possible of the lives of
great men. It is preposterous to depict Pitt as an angel of light. But
yet, judged by the standard of his day, the only proper standard to
apply, and indeed by the standard of any day, he must be held even in
his darkest hours not to have compromised his historical future.
Whatever his failings may have been, his countrymen have refused, and
rightly refused, to take heed of them. They have refused to see anything
but the supreme orator, the triumphant Minister of 1757-1761, the
champion of liberty in later years at home and in the West. With Pitt,
as with Nelson, his country will not count flaws. What do they matter?
How are they visible in the sunlight of achievement? A country must
cherish and guard its heroes.
We have climbed with him in his path to power. We have seen him
petulant, factious, hungry, bitter. And yet all the time we have felt
that there was always something in him different in quality from his
fellow-politicians when they aired the same qualities, that there was an
imprisoned spirit within him struggling for freedom and scope. At last
it bursts its trammels, he tosses patronage and intrigue to the old
political Shylocks, and inspires the policy of the world. Vanity of
vanities! Twenty years after his epoch of glory, three years after his
death, Britain has reached the lowest point in her history. But still
she is the richer for his life. He bequeaths a tradition, he bequeaths a
son; and when men think of duty and achievement they look to one or the
other. It will be an ill day for their country when either is
forgotten.
INDEX
Aberdeen, Lord, 145
Abernethy, Dr., sermons by, 501
Achilles, 332
Addison, Joseph, 'Cato' referred to, 154
'Additional MSS.' referred to, 196, 248, 281, 287, 301, 306, 313,
316, 332, 337, 349, 351, 374, 380, 458, 461, 464, 467, 468, 472,
483, 485
Aix-la-Chapelle, Peace of, 169, 395;
Treaty of, 213;
debate on Treaty of, 277, 278
Aldborough Election, 313, 323, 332, 349
Allen, Ralph, 112, 303
Allworthy, Squire, see Fielding, Henry
Almon, John, 300, 301, 493
Althorp, Lord, 21, 262
Alsace, Austrian armies in, 209
'Ambulator, The,' 308
Amelia, Princess, 280
America, smuggling invasion of, 165;
hostilities in, 350-1, 372, 395, &c.
Angel Inn, Oxford, Chatham at, 363
Anne, Empress of Russia, death of, 202
Anne, Queen of England, 222
Anson, Lord, 341, 351
Anstruther, General, 330
Antwerp, French enter, 212
Argyll Buildings, Chatham's marriage at, 356
Argyll, Duke of, 343, 452
'Army, History of the British,' see Fortescue, J.W.
Arundel, Mr., 439
Ashbourne, Lord, 355
Ashburnham Park, 305
Ashley, ----, 261
'Assembly of Notables,' 479
Astrop Wells, Chatham's visit to, 304, 350
Austria, House of, 286
Austrian Netherlands, French in possession of, 212
Austrians, War of the Succession, 202, 402;
defeated at Molwitz, 203;
defeated at Chotusitz, 206;
victorious in Bohemia, 207, 209;
in Flanders, 211
Aylesbury, dispute over the Assizes at, 271-5, 289;
purchase of manor of, 275
'Aylesbury, History of,' see Gibbs
Ayscough, Dr., 54, 57, 58, 62, 66, 69, 78, 291, 356
Bailey's 'Dictionary,' Pitt's study of, 501
Baldwin, Lord Chief Justice, 275
Ballantyne, Archibald, 'Life of Lord Carteret,' quoted, 146, 179
Baltimore, Lord, 178
Bampton, 84
Banquier, Alexandre, 45, 69
Barnard, Sir John, 148
Barre, Isaac, 268
Barrington, Viscount, 249, 363, 424, 426, 435, 444, 483
Barrow, sermons of, 501
Bath, 8, 29, 38, 57-9, 63, 66, 97, 99, 104-6, 112-16, 234, 303, 313,
348, 355
Bath, Earl of, see Pulteney, Sir William
Battle Abbey, 305
Bavaria, protests against the succession of Maria Theresa, 202;
seized by General Khevenhueller, 205;
taken by Frederick II., 209
Bavaria, Elector of, see Frederick II.
Bave, Dr. Charles, 57, 60
Bays, Mr., 79
'Bedford Correspondence,' 154, 478, 480-2
Bedford, Duke of, 236, 237, 246, 248, 249, 279, 280, 282, 300, 388,
412, 428, 439, 477, 480, 482, 486
Bedlam, 8
Beckford, Alderman William, 166, 428, 440
Bellamy, a frame maker, 80
Belleisle, Marshal, 204, 205, 207
Belson, Mr., 491
Bentinck, Lord George, 190
Bentley, Richard, Walpole's letter to, 344
Bergen, 3
Berkeley of Stratton, Lord, 252
Berkshire, land purchased in, 6
Berlin, 202, 210;
Treaty of, 206
Besancon, 45, 68, 69, 352
Best, Mr., 24
Bland, Dr., 28
Blandford, 5, 58
'Blandford,' a man-of-war, 400
Blandford, Vicar of, see Pitt, John
Blount, Martha, 79
Boconnoc, 3, 6, 14, 23, 24, 43, 54, 56, 58, 61;
Chatham's early life at, 43;
his reasons for living at, 58, 59
Bohemia, Frederick II. proclaimed king in Prague, 205;
taken by Frederick II., 209
Bolingbroke, Lady, 85, 86
Bolingbroke, Lord, 132, 144, 148, 176, 235, 258;
nicknamed the Pitts, 54;
called the 'intellectual Samson of Battersea,' 328;
accuracy of expression of, 501;
his newspaper, 'The Craftsman,' 163;
'Remarks on History of England,' 328
Bolton, Duke of, 252
Boone, Mr., 252
Boscawen, Admiral, 399
Boswell, James, 303
Bourchier, Colonel, 44
Bourbons, extravagance of the, 195;
union of the, 208
'Boy Patriots, The,' 131
Braddock, General, 397, 398
Breda, peace negotiations at, 212
Breslau, Peace of, 206
Brest, 226
Bridport, Lord, 353
Bright, John, 262
Bristol, 104, 105
Broad-Bottom Administration, 239
Broglie, Marshal, 204, 205
Bromley, 310
Brompton, Richard, portrait-painter, 489
Browne, Lancelot, 132
Broxom, 79
Brussels, French enter, 212
Bubb, see Dodington, George Bubb
Buchan, Lord, 39
Buckhurst, 305
Buckingham, the representation of, 133;
dispute over the Assizes at, 271-5, 289
Buckingham, Duke of, see Grenville, Richard Temple, Earl Temple
Burchett, Will., 28, 29
Burdett, 261, 262
Burke, Edmund, 21, 133
Burleigh, Lord, 427
Burton-Pynsent, 124, 125, 307
Bute, Earl of, 21, 87, 116, 121, 122, 125, 126, 138, 292, 296, 386,
387, 410, 441, 454, 458, 465, 483, 484
Bute, Lady, 126
Butler, 'the Reminiscent,' 359, 364, 491, 493
Byng, Admiral, 450-2, 507
'Cabinets, History of,' see Torrens, W.T. McC.
Cadogan, Charles, 2nd Baron, 452
Calcraft, John, letter to Digby, 359
Camden, Earl of, see Pratt, Sir Charles
Camelford, Lord, see Pitt, Thomas, 1st Baron Camelford
'Camelford MSS.' referred to, 85, 256, 412, 490
Campbell, Hume, 430, 432, 434, 435, 439, 493, 494
Canning, George, 160
Canons, Palace of, 257
Cardigan, Lady, 84
Cardross, Lord, 39
Carlisle, 154
Carlisle, Frederick Howard, 5th Earl of, 159;
'Papers' referred to, 159
Carlyle, Thomas, 'Frederick the Great' referred to, 202, 402
Caroline, Princess, 153, 370
Caroline, Queen, 53, 197
Carteret, John, Earl Granville, 255, 408, 409, 436;
statesmanship of, 144;
ability and distinction of, 148, 178;
secret negotiations of, 176;
Pitt's animosity to, 178, 187, 190, 218, 219, 280;
Pitt's admiration of, in later years, 220;
his relations with George II., 196;
ability recognised by George II., 245;
his knowledge of the classics, 179;
as a linguist, 180;
his contempt for money, 180;
Chesterfield's opinion of, 182;
supports the Earl of Bath, 216;
downfall of, 229, 235-9;
Administration against, 248;
Secretary of State, 250;
President of the Council, 300, 472;
Walpole's distrust of, 315;
on North American affairs, 350, 351;
on subsidies, 380;
Fox's enmity against, 384;
Newcastle's negotiations with, 389;
his forty-eight hours' Ministry, 409;
Fox's resignation, 461-3;
attacks of Pitt upon, 505, 506;
'Life of Carteret,' see Ballantyne, A.
Chaillot, 99
Chambers, 140
Chandos, Duke of, 140;
Dukedom of, 257
Charleroi, taken by the French, 212
Charles II., 393, 423
Charles III., 205
Charles VI., 202, 203, 213
Charles VII., 209
Charles Edward, 'the Young Pretender,' see Stuart
Chatham, Lady, see Grenville, Lady Hester
'Chatham MSS.' referred to, 50, 51, 92, 99, 254, 455, 485
Chatham, William Pitt, 1st Earl of, parentage, 1, 8, 11;
birth, 26;
death, 126, 312;
appearance and characteristics, 421, 488-90;
at Eton, 27;
at Oxford, 31;
father, 8, 12, 14-16, 38, 48;
mother, 12, 14, 26, 38-46;
Governor Pitt's regard for, 11, 26;
sisters, 48-128;
quarrels with his sister Ann, 53, 83, 85-8, 115, 116, 256;
family quarrels, 19, 22, 50, 83, 509;
affected by gout, 28, 30, 39, 46, 96, 98, 117, 234, 298, 303, 304,
313, 315, 316, 318, 332, 483, 486, 507;
military service, 43-7, 60, 63, 130, 132, 157, 158, 160, 163;
marries Lady Hester Grenville, 97, 98, 102, 253, 352, 356;
letters to Hester Grenville described, 355;
lives and dies at Hayes, 103, 110, 312, 454;
birth of children, 111, 455, 456;
legacy of Duchess of Marlborough to, 233, 234;
anecdotes of, 307, 308, 363;
recommends Bolingbroke's works, 328;
'History of Chatham,' see Thackeray, Francis
Correspondence--with his father, 29, 34;
to his mother, 38-46;
sister Ann, 56-84, 88-93, 101, 104-112;
sister Mary, 96;
Duke of Newcastle, 97, 329-32, 335;
Sir George Lyttelton and Grenville, 316-18;
Chancellor Hardwicke, 324, 325, 337
Appointments--Groom of the Bedchamber, 162, 240;
Paymaster, 85, 133, 254, 475, 510;
Privy Seal, 125;
Secretary of State, 103, 480;
Vice-Treasurer of Ireland, 253, 261, 265
Parliamentary Career--Begins at Stowe, 77;
represents Old Sarum, 129, 270, 313;
elected for Seaford, 270;
chosen for Aldborough, 333, 349, 486;
represents Okehampton, 486;
his first session in Parliament, 143, 157;
George II.'s regard for, 108, 157, 196, 245, 249, 250, 252, 262,
341, 349, 377, 465, 478, 486, 506;
his regard for the King, 242, 465;
Order of the Garter for Temple, 139;
member of the 'Junto,' 236;
forcing his hand, 247;
wields power through the people, 358, 475;
views and plans on political situation, 316, 321;
apologies from Duke of Newcastle, 335, 348;
exclusion from Government, 338, 415;
American War, 350;
his finest speeches, 293, 357-8;
strong remarks on Sir Thomas Robinson, 360;
distrust of, and attitude to Fox, 352, 365, 370, 474, 476, 478;
Parliamentary intrigue, 370;
as Leader of the House, 376;
eulogises Legge for a position, 377;
pecuniary awards to, 410;
and Newcastle Ministry, 460-5, 471;
negotiations with Hardwicke, 468;
co-operation sought with, 475;
fails to form a Ministry, 483-6;
connection with Leicester House, 353, 386-8, 404, 454, 475, 481,
485;
his oratory, 357-8, 492-503;
periods of his life, 503, 504;
effect of his life's mission, 512
Speeches, extracts of--On royal marriage, 157;
reduction of army, 164;
convention with Spain, 167;
denounces Walpole's administration, 184, 505;
subsidies for foreign powers, 209, 237, 379, 380, 434;
transfer of Hanoverians, 241, 242, 410;
Bucks Assizes, 274;
compensation of Glasgow, 276;
peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, 278, 416;
opposes navy reduction, 289, 419;
opinion on Regency Bill, 292, 293;
Jews' Naturalisation Act, 299;
relief of Chelsea pensioners, 356;
on election petitions, 358;
tenure of sheriff-deputyships, 392, 394;
against the Newcastle Ministry, 404;
seamen's prize money, 422;
army estimates, 424;
Militia Bill, 428, 469;
reprimands Hume Campbell, 430-3;
foreign treaties, 433-8;
attacks Budget, 440, 447;
on Swiss auxiliaries, 441;
criticism on army grant, 445
Chesterfield, Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl of, and Ann Pitt, 54, 65;
statesmanship of, 144;
his ability and distinction, 148;
his opinion of Pulteney, 176;
quotations from his Letters, 182;
character of George II., 198;
opposed to the Hanoverian vote, 225;
bequest to, by the Duchess of Marlborough, 233;
member of Opposition Committee, 236;
Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, 240;
letter from Newcastle, 248;
resignation of, as Secretary of State, 279;
eulogises Pitt and Murray, 302;
on the reconstruction of the Ministry, 390;
on the character of Pitt, 490, 491, 493;
on Pitt's study of words, 501
Chevening, residence of Stanhope, 3, 126, 307
Chippenham Election, 172
Cholmondeley, Lord, Vice-Treasurer of Ireland, 253, 439
Cholmondeley, Mrs., death of, 97
Cholmondely, Charles, 14
Chotusitz, Battle of, 206
Clement XII., Pope, death of, 201
Climenson's 'Mrs. Montague' referred to, 303, 304, 309
Clive, Lord, 395
Cobbett, William, 134;
'Parliamentary History' referred to, 165, 167, 168, 183, 186, 187,
188, 218, 219, 220, 225, 241, 242, 243, 271, 275-8, 285, 287, 443
Cobden, Richard, 261, 262
'Cobham's Cubs,' 131
Cobham, Lord, see Temple, Sir Richard, afterwards Lord Cobham
Cobham Party (The), 217
Colchester, Petition for, 360
Colebrooke's 'Memoirs,' 296, 346
Cologne, Elector of, 286
Compiegne, Council at, 400
Congreve, William, 132
Conway, a cousin of Walpole's, 160, 289, 481
Corbett, Mr., marriage of, 49
Corbett, Sir William, 49
Cornbury, Lord, 84
Cornwall, 6, 16, 43, 58, 61
Cornwall, Duchy of, 17
Cornwall, Duke of, 18
Cotton, Sir John Hinde, 224, 236-7
'Cousins, The,' 131
Coxe, William, 'Memoirs of Henry Pelham' quoted 249, 250, 278, 282,
286;
'Memoirs of Sir Robert Walpole' quoted, 166, 168, 172, 216, 369
Cradock, Joseph, 'Literary Memoirs' referred to, 497
'Cranford,' see Gaskell, Mrs.
Cresset, Mr., 87, 115, 116
Cricket, played at Stowe, 80
Crowhurst, Colonel Pelham's place at, 305
Culloden, Battle of, 269, 398
Cumberland, Duke of, Grenville's hatred of, 21;
attempts to form a Pitt Ministry, 139;
George II.'s affection for, 387;
defeated at Fontenoy, 210;
and at Lauffeld, 212;
projected marriage of, 229;
awarded a pension, 269, 270;
objections to, as Regent, 293;
a member of the Regency Council, 370;
his devotion to Fox, 294, 352, 365, 380, 384, 388;
alliance of Newcastle with, 389;
plan of campaign, 398;
influence of, 475
Darcy, Sir Conyers, 439
Dashwood, Francis, Baron, 414
Delamere, Lord, 14
Delaval, John, speech at Berwick, 358
Delany, Mrs., 'Memoirs of,' referred to, 52, 125, 126
Denbigh, Lord, 249
Derby, Prince Charles Edward marches on, 244
Dettingen, Battle of, 214, 218;
George II. at, 193, 194;
Pitt's view of the, 222
Devonshire, land purchased in, 6
Devonshire, Duke of, 339, 379, 380, 462, 467, 476-86
Devonshire House, assembly at, 479
De Witt, Jan, 443
Diamond, transaction of the Pitt, 3, 4
Dickins and Stanton, 'An Eighteenth Century Correspondence'
referred to, 134
Digby, Lord, 359, 459, 461
Disraeli, Benjamin, 172
'Divinity Pitt,' 54
Dodington, George Bubb, 135, 140, 155, 224, 236, 237, 292, 346, 349,
350, 370, 373, 380, 383-6, 388, 443, 459, 479, 480, 483
Dorsetshire, lands purchased in, 6
Dover, Lord, 156
Dresden, occupied by Frederick II., 210;
Peace of, 246
'Dropmore Papers' quoted and referred to, 8, 13, 26, 56
Duffell, Dr., 126
Dundonald, Lord, 'Autobiography of,' referred to, 134
Dunkirk, 277
Dupleix, 395
Dupplin, one of the Paymasters, 455, 472
Duquesne Fort, 398
Dutch Expedition up the Thames recalled, 226
Dutens, Louis, reception by the Pitts, 50, 51;
'Voyage' referred to, 174
East India Company, 2
Education, Chatham's letters on, 20
Edward III., 179
Egmont, Earl of, 277, 284, 292, 373, 406, 472
'Eighteenth Century Correspondence,' see Dickins and Stanton
Election expenses, 143
Elizabeth, Empress of Russia, 206, 207, 400, 402
Elizabeth, Queen of England, 423
Ellis, Welbore, 410, 415, 460, 461
Enfield Chase, 308
England, indifference of George II. and William III. to, 198, 199;
pledged to the Pragmatic Sanction, 203;
'Remarks on the History of,' see Bolingbroke, Lord
Epsom, 154
Eridge, 305
Erskine, Sir Henry, 39, 441, 467
Erskine, Thomas, 39
Esmond, Will, 13
Essex, Lady, see Pitt, Essex
Esther, name given to Chatham's wife, 356
Eton, 11, 27-30, 160
Eugene, Prince, 438
Excise scheme, 287, 288
Fairly Farm, 305
Falmouth, Lord, 18
Fane, Lord, 360
Feilding, Charles, amiability of, 61, 73
Fielding, Henry, on Lord Chatham, 27;
'Squire Allworthy' referred to, 112, 303;
'Tom Jones' referred to, 27
Finch, Edward, 248, 252
Finch, William, 248, 252
Fitzgerald, Hon. Edward Villiers, 26
Fitzmaurice, Lord, 'Life of Shelburne' referred to, 27, 47, 49, 166,
172, 176, 467, 501
Flanders, British troops in, 188, 205;
military operations in, 211, 223, 224
Florence, 49, 50
Fontainebleau, Treaty of, objects of the, 208
Fontenoy, Battle of, 210, 214, 243, 246
Foote, Samuel, 174, 298;
'Table Talk' referred to, 499
Fort St. George, 3, 9
Fortescue Family, nickname of the, 58
Fortescue, J.W., 'History of the British Army,' quoted, 221
Fox, Charles, illness of, 340
Fox, Henry, at Eton with Chatham, 27;
temperament, 230, 294-7;
sketch of his character, 294-7;
regarded as odious, 327;
peerage endowment from Paymastership, 257, 296, 314;
candidate for Secretaryship of State, 279, 282;
the Buckingham Assize dispute, 272;
the Marriage Act, 305;
admitted to the Cabinet, 367, 368, 370;
member of the Council of Regency, 367, 370;
Newcastle's choice between Fox and Pitt, 388;
stipulations for promotions of friends, 390;
position on Provisioning Bill, 394;
as leader of the House, 330, 335, 402, 410, 415, 417-20;
opposes Bill for war prizes, 423;
his challenge accepted, 428;
vetoes an appointment, 430;
defends Hume Campbell, 434;
no voice in Treasury appointment, 439;
questions of dictatorship, 445;
parliamentary intrigues and position, 458-67;
mistakes concerning--resume of parliamentary life, 474-84;
on Ann Pitt, 50;
prospects of the Young Pretender, 244;
George II.'s inclination to, 318, 341;
gratified with Chatham, 218;
opposed to Chatham, 268, 292, 294, 349, 350, 365, 407, 416-20,
430, 436, 440, 445;
visits Chatham, 326;
placed over Chatham, 330;
agreement with Chatham, 352;
description of Chatham's outburst with Newcastle, 357;
meets Chatham at Holland House, 370;
sends apologies to Hardwicke, 341;
hatred of Newcastle, 374, 389;
and Newcastle's disgrace, 452, 453, 471, 472;
rivalries referred to, 283;
his enemies, 384;
metaphors used by, 407;
letters quoted, 343, 359, 364;
Walpole on, 442
'France, Histoire de,' see Martin
France, Wars of, 204, 205, 207, 209, 212, 226, 233, 395, &c.
Franche-Comte, 69
Francis, Duke, 72
Frankfort, 207, 209
Frederick II. (the Great), accession of, 201;
in Silesia, 202, 203;
proclaimed Emperor at Frankfort, 205;
his claim of Silesia, 395;
War of Austrian Succession, 206, 209, 400-02;
subsidy to, 286-7, 289
'Frederick the Great,' see Carlyle, Thomas
'Frederick II. and his Times,' see Raumer
Frederick, Prince of Wales, heir apparent, 148-51;
marriage of, 151, 157;
his character and conduct, 149, 150;
banished from Court, 152;
expelled from St. James's, 161;
Dr. Ayscough adviser to, 54;
father of George II., 195;
friendship with Thomas Pitt, 17;
at the General Election, 171;
Carteret a favourite of, 180, 219, 237;
congratulates Walpole, 228;
quarrels with Pitt, 256;
negotiations with Pitt, 291, 293;
decline of affection for Lady Hamilton, 352;
overtures to Fox, 365;
death of, 261, 292
Frederick William, of Prussia, death of, 201
Free Trade, 231
Gage, Mr., M.P., 270
Gainsborough, Thomas, portrait by, 353
Gambier, Lord, 'Memorials,' 305
Garrick, David, 499
Gaskell, Mrs., 'Cranford' referred to, 352
Gay, John, 54
'Gazetteer, The,' newspaper, 163
'Gentleman's Magazine, The,' 188
George I., 156, 163, 200, 387
George II., his dual personality, 192, 204, 207, character of, 192;
his political character, 194;
Lord Hervey's unworthy portrayal of, 197;
his courage, 220, 221;
with Lady Yarmouth at Richmond, 193;
devotion for Hanover, 195, 198, 446;
as Elector of Hanover concludes a treaty with the French, 204;
on the security of the Electorate of Hanover, 286;
placed under arrest by his father, 150;
his hatred of his son the Prince of Wales, 162, 387;
the Dutch War, 212;
in Hanover, 53, 54, 399, 402;
at Dettingen, 207;
at Oudenarde, 194;
signs the Treaty of Worms, 208;
the Treaty of Berlin, 206;
speech in Parliament, 1755, 403-4;
gives Premiership to Pelham, 216, 217;
his aversion to the Earl of Bath, 217;
his anger with Newcastle, 458;
dismissal of Carteret, 229, 238;
Pitt's first visit to, 63;
his hatred of Pitt, 108, 157, 179, 190, 191, 253, 482;
reason for this hatred, 157;
Pitt's apparent loyalty to, 424, 425;
Pitt's desire for reconciliation with, 459, &c., 465-72;
testifies to Walpole's bravery, 146;
discourteous treatment of Temple, 484;
repugnance to Legge, 481-2;
the execution of Admiral Byng, 451
George III., as a lad, 292;
compared with George II., 200;
in the Lords, 430;
and Mr. Fox, 342, 365, 367, 459, 474;
endeavours to form a Pitt Ministry, 139, 140;
Newcastle refuses a pension offered by, 174;
on Pelham's death, 313;
treaties with Hesse-Cassel and Russia, 371
'George III., Memoirs of the Reign of,' see Walpole, Horace
George IV., extravagance of, 195;
compared with George II., 200
Georgia, 167, 208
Germaine, Lady Betty, 107
Germany, 109, 165, 194, 206
Gibbs' 'History of Aylesbury' referred to, 275
Gibbon, Edward, 47
Gibraltar, proposed restoration to Spain, 208
Gladstone, Rt. Hon. W.E., 230
Glasgow and the Jacobite occupation, 276
Glatz, ceded to Frederick II., 206, 210
Glenfinnan, the Young Pretender at, 243
Glover, Richard, 176, 177, 236, 237, 259, 346
Gordon, Rev., 493
Gower, Granville Leveson, 237, 247, 248
Grafton, Duke of, 264
Grandison, Catherine, Viscountess of, 26
Grandison, Lord, 12, 15, 41, 46
Granville, Earl, see Carteret, John
'Grattan, Life of,' referred to, 85, 86, 495
Gray, Sir James, 70
Gray, Thomas, lampoon on Fox, 297
Grenville, Family of, Pitt united to the, 17, 130, 131, 389
'Grenville Papers' referred to, 86, 131, 132, 134, 234, 277, 316,
319, 321, 327, 333, 465, 482
Grenville, George, opposed the war in Flanders, 223;
the Buckingham Assizes, 272;
speech on unrest with Spain, 167;
offices held by:--
Prime Minister, 130;
Lord of the Treasury, 239, 486;
Chancellor of the Exchequer, 346;
Paymastership, 467;
Secretaryship of State offered to, 138;
congratulated by Pitt, 348;
Bill _re_ vessels captured before declaration of war, 423;
position and reasons for his hatred of Pitt, 21, 131;
opposition to Pitt, 268;
letters from Pitt to, 141, 260, 276, 277, 455;
Letters from Lyttelton to, 317, 327;
visit to Bath, 328
Grenville, Henry, 133
Grenville, Lady, inherits Boconnoc, 24, 133
Grenville, Lady Hester, 410, 411;
wife of Chatham, 53, 102, 352, 353, 356;
letters of, and reference to, 99-102, 105, 110, 112-15, 124, 125,
311, 312;
her character, 355;
pension to, 124
Grenville, James, 133, 139, 311, 372, 467
Grenville, Richard Temple, afterwards Earl Temple, 81;
resigned Privy Seal, 139;
proposed as Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, 467;
proposed as First Lord of the Admiralty, 479;
refused to be First Lord of the Treasury, 136, 139;
Order of the Garter, 139;
his ambition a Dukedom, 140;
application for title, 138;
his bet, 138;
apologises to Hervey, 138;
cold reception at Court, 484-5;
visits Chatham at Bath, 348;
voted against the Hanoverians, 254;
pensioned, 410;
the Buckingham Assizes dispute, 272, 290;
Letters to, 319-21, 326-7, 332;
'Letters of Junius' ascribed to, 136
Grenville, Thomas, killed in action off Cape Finisterre, 133
Grenvilles, the, 130, 137, 465, 483;
public money drawn by, 134;
friends of Pitt, 492
Grub Street, 298
Guernsey, 80
Hagley, Lord Lyttelton's seat at, 306, 307, 313
Hague, Embassy to the, 240
Halifax, Earl of, 472
Hamilton, Duke of, 6, 390, 404, 477
Hamilton, Lady Archibald, 352
Hamilton, Lord Archibald, 178
Hampden, Lord, attack on Pitt, 268, 290
Hampden, Richard, estate of, 233, 234
Hampshire, land purchased in, 6
Hampton Court, 84, 151, 198
Hannan, John, 52
Hannan, Sir William, 52
Hannibal, 191, 438
Hanover, Pitt's contempt for, 178, 186;
George II.'s devotion to, 188, 189, 195, 198;
his visit to, 194;
his ideas for safeguarding, 286;
Convention signed at, between Britain and Prussia, 210;
George III.'s visit to, 371
Hanoverian Guards substituted for English Guards, 218
Hanoverians, allies of Britain, 211;
English hatred of the, 218;
vote for maintenance of the, 224, 225;
transferred to Maria Theresa, 241, 242
Hapsburg, House of, 204
Hardwicke, Philip Yorke, Earl of, letters to, 259, 324, 325, 333,
337, 350, 351, 458;
letters from, 351, 380, 381;
on the alienation of the Prince of Wales from his parents, 156;
as Newcastle's mentor and counsellor, 175, 314, 315;
on Pitt's popularity in the Commons, 185;
on Pitt's acrimoniousness, 219;
and George II., 238, 239;
on the foreign military policy, 246;
his treatment of Newcastle, 279;
supports Newcastle, 340;
supports Pitt, 371-3;
antagonism over Marriage Act, 305;
as the brains of the Cabinet, 315-16;
political unrest and intrigue of 1755-6, 386-90, 453, 464-5,
467-73, 476;
'Life of Hardwicke,' see Harris, George
Harrington, Earl of, 240, 246, 251
Harris, George, 'Life of Hardwicke' referred to, 152, 464, 465, 471
Harrison, Mr., 74, 75
Hartington, Lord, 289, 341, 343;
Letters from Fox to, 359, 364
Hastings, 305
Hawke, Lord, 174
Hawkins, ----, 390
Hay, Dr., 467
Hayes, 103, 110, 111, 113, 114, 125, 306, 310, 311
Hedges, William, quotations from, 2
Hell-fire Club, 275
Henley, Robert, 155
Herrenhausen, 198
Hertford, Lord, 140
Hervey, Lord, 138, 153, 160, 164, 197, 413;
'Memoirs' referred to, 153, 162, 164
Hesse, Landgrave of, 209
Hesse-Cassel, Treaty with, 371, 374, 378, 379
Hessians, allies of Britain, 211
Hillsborough, Lord, 369, 439
Hoare, William, portrait of Pelham, 314;
portraits of Pitt, 488, 489
Hochkirch, Battle of, 106
Holdernesse, Lady, 115, 116
Holdernesse, Lord, 282, 300, 397, 410, 411, 479, 482, 483
Holland, 40, 41, 199;
the Dutch as allies, 211;
guarantee of assistance to, 246, 247
Holland, Lady, 'Journal' quoted, 24
Holland House, meeting of Chatham and Fox at, 370
'Holland House MSS.' referred to, 296, 340, 342, 343, 350, 410, 431,
454, 459, 460, 476, 477, 479, 480-3, 486
Hollins, ----, 63
Holyrood, Prince Charles Edward at, 243, 244
'Homer, Original Genius of,' see Wood, Robert
Hood, Admiral, 353
Houghton, Walpole at, 147, 228;
his burial at, 229
Howard, Frederick, see Carlisle, Earl of
Howe, Captain Lord, 399
Hungary, Queen of, 202;
subsidy voted to, 205
Hurstmonceux, 305
Hyde, Lord, 462
Impiger, 332
India, Governor Pitt's progress in, 2, 3
Innes Family, 7
Iracundus, 332
Irwin, Lady, 159
Italy, war in, 213
Jacobinism, Governor Pitt on, 10
Jamaica, position of the Governorship of, 5
James I., 432
James II., 243, 276, 393
Jenkins' Ear, story of, 166
Jews' Naturalisation Act, 298, 299
Johnson, Dr., 257, 413, 493
Kaunitz, adviser of Maria Theresa, 400
Kensington, 82, 114-16, 118, 198
Khevenhueller, General, occupies Munich, 205
Kielmansegge's 'Diary,' quoted, 303
Kildare, Lord, 459
'Kildare, Narrative to,' quotations from, 476, 478, 479, 482
King, Mr., 305
Land's End, 226
Lanoe, Colonel, 58, 60
Lauffeld, Battle of, 212, 214
Leadam, quoted, 208
Leasowes, Shenstone's house at, 307
Lecky, W.E.H., 502
Lee, Dr., 155, 255, 268, 272, 275, 373
Legge, Henry Bilson, 330, 336, 380-2;
letter to Chatham, 308, 309;
Chancellor of the Exchequer, 346, 349, 405, 410, 411, 467, 480, 481;
a Lord of the Treasury, 486;
Pitt's Ministry, 483;
the King's repugnance to, 482;
proposed Peerage for, 479;
on Chatham's speech, 360;
refused to sign the Hesse-Cassel Treaty, 374;
distrusted by Newcastle, 374;
in praise of Walpole, 423
Leicester House, 115, 155, 291-4, 318, 353, 368, 370, 371, 383,
386-8, 404, 456, 475, 481, 483-5
Lifeguards escort George II., 193
Ligonier, General, 212
Limerick, Lord, 184, 185, 187
Lincoln, acts as mediator between the Pelham brothers, 291
Linz, Archduke proclaimed in, 205
Liverpool, Lord, 141
'London Magazine, The,' 188
Londonderry, Lord, 1, 5, 6
Loo, 198
Lothian, Lord, 439
Loudoun, Lord, 441
Louis XIV., 133, 192, 193
Louis XV., 193, 208, 209, 212, 400;
'Louis XV. et la Renversement des Alliances,' see Waddington,
Richard
Louis XVIII., 141
Louisbourg, 113, 243
Low Countries, 188, 212
Luneville, 45, 71, 72
Lyndhurst, Lord, 443
Lyte, Sir Henry, 'Dunster,' quoted, 6;
'History of Eton' referred to, 29
Lyttelton, Christian, marriage with Thomas Pitt, 17, 41, 130;
her character, 17
Lyttelton, Sir George, afterwards Baron Lyttelton, Pitt
correspondence referring to, 28, 41, 42, 49, 54, 58, 63, 77, 78,
317, 318, 321-4, 329, 331, 348;
his companions in youth, 141;
friendship with William Pitt, 130, 492;
supports Pitt, 289;
quarrel with Pitt, 407;
reconciliation, 414;
private secretary to Prince of Wales, 162;
return to Parliament, 159;
and standing army, 164;
and Spanish War, 167-8;
influence over Pulteney, 177;
secret terms with Walpole, 177;
policy concerning war in Flanders, 223-4;
a Lord of the Treasury, 236, 237, 239;
arranged coalition between forces of Stowe and Leicester House, 291;
Cofferer, 346, 347;
attempts reconciliation between Newcastle and Bedford, 412;
Chancellor of the Exchequer, 412;
his Budget, 440;
War supplies, 446-8;
Joint-Paymaster of the Forces, 455;
character, 414;
couplet, 158;
works, 413;
'Memoirs and Correspondence of,' see Phillimore, R.J.
Lyttelton, Molly, 74, 353
Lyttelton, Sir Richard, 111, 130, 327, 423, 467 473
Lyttelton, Sir Thomas, 16
Lyttelton, William, 306
Macaulay, 31, 214
Macclesfield, Lord, death of, 134
Madras, 11
Maestricht, siege of, 278
Magyars appealed to by Maria Theresa, 205
Mahon, Lady, 126
Maillebois, Marshal, 204
Mainz, Elector of, 286
'Malta, Knights of,' see Porter
Mann, Sir Horace, 'Letters to Horace Walpole,' 50, 126, 138, 234, 253
Mansfield, Lord, see Murray, William, Earl of
Marchmont, Earl of, Duchess of Marlborough's bequest to, 234
'Marchmont Papers' quoted, 155, 168, 180, 224, 234, 235, 240
Maria Theresa, the War of Austrian Succession, 202-5, 208, 210,
213-15, 221, 222, 241, 242, 246, 247, 286, 395, 400;
her character, 214, 215
Marlborough, Duke of, 131, 170, 343, 366, 477
Marlborough, Sarah, Duchess of, death and bequests of, 21, 233, 234
'Marlborough, Duchess of, Life of,' see Thomson
Marriage Act, 305
Marseilles, 45, 70
Martin's 'Histoire de France,' quoted, 208
Martin, Mr., 357
Martyn, Mr., 46
Mayo, Mr., 39
Mediterranean, English fleet in, 205
Medmenham, Brotherhood of, 272
Meehan's 'Famous Houses of Bath,' quoted, 303, 304
Meredith, Sir William, 431
Middlesex, Lord, M.P. for Old Sarum, 270
Milan, 208
Miller, Mr. Saunderson, 307
'Ministry, The New,' a collection of songs, &c., 139
Minorca, 208, 294;
fall of, 450-1
Mirabeau's power of oratory, 501
Mirepoix, Duchess of, 109
Mirepoix, Duke of, 399
Mohawks, 23
Mohun, Lord, sells Boconnoc, 6
Molinox, Mr., 63
Molwitz, Austrians defeated at, 203
Monmouth, Duke of, at Sedgemoor, 187
Mons, capture of, 212
Montagu, Duke of, 428
Montagu, Mrs. Elizabeth, 52, 54;
'Letters' quoted, 305, 306, 309, 353
Montcalm, General, 457;
'Montcalm and Wolfe,' see Parkman
Montespan, 192
Montpelier, 45, 71
Morayshire, 7
'Moreau, Souvenirs de,' referred to, 398, 400
Mudge, Mr., 501
Mug, Matthew, 299
Murray, William, Earl of, formerly Lord Mansfield, oratorical powers,
302;
precision of, 496-7;
eminence of, 340;
Solicitor-General, 223, 318;
Attorney-General, 453-5;
his chance of promotion, 338;
_re_ new Cabinet, 380;
changes in the Cabinet, 389;
_re_ Jacobites, 392;
_re_ subsidy treaties, 431-4, 436;
attitude towards Pitt, 268, 421;
Pitt's attack on, 359, 360, 363-5;
on Pitt's powers of ridicule, 503;
enemy of Fox, 384;
coolness towards Newcastle, 430;
correspondence regarding, 54, 335, 336
Mutiny Bill, 276
Namur, capture of, 212
Naples, 195, 205
Napoleon I., 136, 215, 269
Napoleon III., 509
Navy, proposed reduction of the, 289
Necessity Fort, surrender of, 350
Nedham, Mrs. Catherine, see Pitt, Catherine
Nedham, Robert, his marriage with Catherine Pitt, 49;
nominated for Old Sarum, 129
Nevers, 98
Newbury, 46, 74
Newcastle, Sir Thomas Pelham, afterwards Duke of, his character, 138,
173-4;
an incident at his uncle's death, 138;
refuses a pension, 174;
contempt of George II. for, 150, 196, 245;
supports Henry Pelham, 216, 217;
blunder in the Lords, 227;
supports the Dutch cause, 247;
the Ministerial crisis of 1746, 248, 249, 252;
the Seaford election, 270;
his jealous nature, 279;
his dislike for Bedford, 279, 280;
views on the Hanoverian question, 286;
Pitt's enmity with, 422, 427, 453, 471, 481, 486;
profession of gratitude to Pitt, 290, 291;
Fox's vengeance on, 296;
his jealousy of Fox, 439;
Fox's hatred of, 482;
the Jews' Naturalisation Act, 298, 299;
letters and correspondence, 97, 139, 281, 313, 316, 329-33, 347,
351, 386, 461-2;
Secretary of State, 319, 321, 323;
his appointments, 340;
words with Chatham, 357;
his power in the Commons, 361, 382;
negotiations with Fox, 368-9;
Prime Minister, 388;
formation of Cabinet, 389;
councils of war, 397;
and Hanoverian treaties, 409;
attempted negotiations between Newcastle and French Ambassador, 399;
loyalty of Commons to, 410;
Pitt's suspicions of, 411;
attempted reconciliation between Newcastle and Bedford, 412;
his opinion of Lyttelton, 412;
political unrest, 430, 441, 453-5, 458-70;
_re_ execution of Byng, 451, 452;
deserted by his friends, 471-5;
resignation, 485
'Newcastle MSS.,' 316, 328, 349, 351, 374, 474, 486
Newdigate, Sir Roger, 363
Newton, Bishop, 'Works' referred to, 176;
metaphor of, 494
Niesse ceded to Frederick II., 206
Nivernois, M. de, 121
Noailles, 400
Norfolk, election expenses in, 143
Norfolk House, 162
North, Lord, 265
Northampton, 43, 60, 64, 65, 234
Nugent, Robert, Earl, 140, 272, 275, 363, 428
Nuthall, Thomas, 312
Okehampton, 5, 75
Oliver, Dr., 106, 113
Onslow, Rt. Hon. Arthur, Chatham's appeal to, 359
Orange, House of, returned to power, 212
Orford's 'George III.,' see Walpole, Horace
Orleans, Regent of, 4
Orsini, 509
Orwell, portrait at, 353
Oswald, James, 292
Oswego, fall of, 457
Oudenarde, Battle of, George II. at, 194
Oxford, 10, 30, 31, 54, 119, 363
Pall Mall, 5, 26, 35
Pan, Temple of, 309
Paris, 45, 68, 109, 181, 182
Parkman's 'Montcalm and Wolfe' quoted, 396, 398, 457
Parliamentary History, see Cobbett, William
Parma, proposed reconquest of, 208
Paulett, Lord, 112
Peel, Sir Robert, 172, 224, 489, 490;
a comparison, 230, 231
Pelham, Colonel, 305
Pelham, Rt. Hon. Henry, effect of his death, 96, 97, 301, 313-15, 506;
the King's regard for, 196, 251, 313;
eager for peace, 212;
becomes Premier, 216, 217, 314;
Chatham's support, 227, 291, 394;
Carteret's support, 227, 291, 394;
Carteret's dismissal, 235, 245;
assistance to the Dutch, 246;
refuses office perquisites, 256-8, 269, 314;
on Aix-la-Chapelle Treaty, 277;
eulogy of Chatham, 278, 315;
seeks retirement, 283;
foreign policy, 289, 447;
'Memoirs of Henry Pelham,' see Coxe, William
Pelham, Sir Thomas, see Newcastle, Duke of
Pembroke, Lord, 1st Dragoon Guards, 43, 76
Penshurst, Chatham visits, 305
Peter the Great, 147, 207
Philip, Don, designs on Milan, 208
Phillimore, R.J., 'Memoirs and Correspondence of Lyttelton' referred
to, 140, 306, 324, 325, 338
Phillips, Mrs., 57, 63
Phillipson, Mr., 477
Pitt, Dr., 117
Pitt, Ann (sister to Lord Chatham), friendships, 41, 49, 53, 54;
State appointments, 53, 87;
nicknames, 55;
correspondence with her brother, 55-84, 88-125, 492;
quarrels with Chatham, 83, 85-7, 115, 256;
retires to France, 92, 95;
returns to England, 102-4;
health and mental condition, 107, 115, 116, 120;
income increased to, 121;
resides at Kensington, 125;
grief at death of brother, 127;
under restraint, death, 126
Pitt, Betty (sister to Lord Chatham), history and description of,
49-52
Pitt, Catherine (sister to Lord Chatham), afterwards Nedham, 49, 84,
95, 96-8
Pitt, Clara Villiers, see Pitt, Betty
Pitt, Elizabeth, see Pitt, Betty
Pitt, Essex (daughter of Governor Pitt), marriage, death, 12, 14, 96
Pitt, George (of Strathfieldsaye), 26
Pitt, Harriot, wife of Robert Pitt, see Villiers
Pitt, Harriot (sister of Lord Chatham), matrimonial designs on, 41,
42, 44;
her character, 48;
marriage of, 49;
illness, 60, 70, 74
Pitt, Hester, wife of Chatham, see Grenville
Pitt, John (great-grandfather of Chatham), Vicar of Blandford, 1
Pitt, John (son of Governor Pitt), disposition, 6, 12, 13
Pitt, John, a Dorsetshire kinsman, 305, 327
Pitt, John (eldest son of Lord Chatham), 455, 456, 477
Pitt, Lucy (daughter of Governor Pitt), marriage, death, 12-14
Pitt, Mary (sister of Lord Chatham), referred to, 95, 102, 103, 106,
107, 110, 113, 115;
described, 49, 52;
letter to Lady Suffolk, 102
Pitt, Robert (son of Governor Pitt, father of Lord Chatham), family
relationships, 8, 12, 14-16, 26, 48;
character, 12, 14;
death, 5, 15, 19, 38;
correspondence from son's tutor, 28, 31
Pitt, Thomas ('The Governor') parentage, characteristics, 1-5, 7, 14,
24, 508;
prescience regarding Chatham, 11, 26;
mourning item, 34
Pitt, Thomas (son of Robert, brother of Lord Chatham), conduct and
characteristics, 14-16;
seeks appointment, 18;
marriage, 41;
charge against, 49;
parliamentary career, 129, 159, 270
Pitt, Thomas (son of Thomas Pitt), 1st Baron Camelford, letters
quoted and referred to, 1, 3, 4, 6, 7, 12, 15, 17, 44, 48, 50,
52, 54, 85-7, 92, 93, 102, 103, 111, 114, 116, 121, 127, 130,
159, 160, 413, 491, 496;
created Baron Camelford, 19;
on Chatham's marriage, 354, 355;
bias toward Chatham, 23, 50, 102, 127, 257
Pitt, Villiers Clara, see Pitt, Betty
Pitt, William, 1st Earl of Chatham, see Chatham
Pitt, William (the younger), birth, 111;
death, 353
Place Bill, extension of, 245
Plutarch, referred to, 443
Poetical quotations, 19, 62, 143, 148, 158, 174, 177, 211, 254, 298,
307
Poland, partition of, 215
Poland, King of, Berlin Treaty and the, 206
Poland-Saxony, claims of Austria on, 203
Polwarth, against Walpole, 148
Pomfret, Lord, 467
Pompadour, Madame de, 400
Pope, Alexander, quoted, 79, 131, 132, 197
Porritt's 'Unreformed House of Commons' referred to, 129
Porte, Mr. de la, 102
Porter's 'History of the Knights of Malta' quoted, 451
Portsmouth, Duchess of, intercedes for Governor Pitt, 3
Potter, Thomas, supports petition against Seaford, 271;
Bucks Assize dispute, 272-5;
Chatham's praise of, 454;
position found for, 483, 486;
opposes navy reduction, 289
Pragmatic Sanction, maintenance of, 202, 203
Prague, King of Bohemia proclaimed in, 205
Pratt, Charles, 1st Earl Camden, 27, 311
Preston, Mr., 50
'Pretyman Papers,' referred to, 355
Prevot, as a prototype, 441
Prior Park, 112
Protestant Succession, endurance to secure, 198
Prussia, Convention signed at Hanover, 210
Pulteney, Sir William, Earl of Bath, Ann Pitt's designs on, 54, 107;
entertained at Stowe, 132;
his wit, 254;
idolised by the people, 175, 262;
Walpole's use of, 176, 219, 505;
stands aside for Carteret, 178;
popularity declines, 184, 259;
nettled at criticism, 185;
claims head of Government, 216;
forms a Government--its failure, 250, 251, 409;
proscribed, 252;
lack of character, 258;
introduces Prize Bill, 422;
Newcastle's reflection on, 472
Queensbury, Duchess of, 54, 84
Queensbury, Duke of, 249
Radway, 307
Ranby, Dr., 229
Raumer's 'Frederick II. and his Times,' 402
Reading, 43, 360
Redhall, 8
'Rejected Addresses,' see Smith, Horatio
Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 23, 489
Rhine, River, 207
Richelieu, Duke of, 204, 427
Richmond, 147, 193
Richmond, Duke of, 295
Ridgeway, Earl of Londonderry, 12
Rigby, Richard, 424
Rivers, Lord, 1
Robinson, Sir Thomas, his appointments, 345;
Master of the Wardrobe and Secretary of State, 330, 337, 344, 345,
349, 467, 482;
pensioned, 391, 392, 439;
Chatham's remarks to, 360;
Newcastle's praise of, 344, 345;
panegyric on himself, 428
Rochester, 104
Rogers, Samuel, 'Recollections of Samuel Rogers' referred to, 85, 86;
'Table Talk,' 364
Rolt, Bayntun, 172
Rolliad, quotation from, 19
Rondet, the royal jeweller, 4
Ross, Man of, 303
Roucoux, French victory at, 212
Royston, Lord, 465
Russell, Lord John, 231
Russia, George III.'s treaty with, 371, 378, 379
Ryder, Sir Dudley, 453, 455
Sackville, Lord George, 428, 442
St. James's Square, 105, 108, 110, 112, 113, 118, 120, 151, 162
St. Lawrence, River, naval battle at mouth of, 399
St. Rumbald, spring at, 304
Salisbury, 129
Samson of Battersea, nickname of Bolingbroke, 328
Sancho Panza, 191
Sandwich, Earl of, 279, 282
Sandys, Baron, 148
Sardinia, 203, 208;
King of, 225, 258
Sarpedon, 181
Sarum, Old, 2, 4-6, 129, 270
Saunders, Sir Charles, 450
Savile, Sir George, 191
Savoy, House of, 208
Saxe, Marshal, marches against Austria, 209;
successes in the Low Countries, 212
Saxons, as allies of Britain, 211
Saxony, entered by Frederick II., 210;
Elector of, 206, 286, 289
Schwerin, Marshal, defeats Austrians at Molwitz, 203
Scrope, John, 187
Seaford, election of Chatham for, 270, 358
Sedgemoor, 187
Seine, River, 199
Selwyn, George, 109, 345, 390
Seward's 'Anecdotes' referred to, 55, 161, 172, 180, 501
Shelburne, Lord, thoughts on Thomas Pitt, 18;
on the madness of the Pitts, 24;
on Pitt's use of words, 501;
on Richard Temple, 131;
troop offered to, 160;
on Pulteney's oratory, 176;
'Life of Shelburne,' see Fitzmaurice, Lord
Shenstone, William, 306
Sheridan, R.B., 502
Shippen, William, 148
Siddons, Mrs., 500
Sidmouth, Lord, 489
Silesia, 209
Sinclair, Sir John, 7
Sion, 115, 116
'Skew,' a nickname, 58, 69
Smith, Horatio, 'Rejected Addresses' referred to, 23
Smollett, Tobias, 174
Soho, 6
Solomon, name given to Chatham, 356
South Lodge, 308, 309
South Sea Bubble, 5
Spain, extravagance of the Bourbons, 195;
claim on Austria, 203;
cause of war with, 213;
Walpole's policy, 145, 165, 167;
war declared against, 201;
'Britons in Spanish prisons' cry, 167;
peace question raised by Lord Egmont, 284
Spencer, Lady Diana, 151
Spencer, John, bequests to and from, 234
Sporus, 197
Stair, Lord, 207, 218
Stanhope, George, death of, 98
Stanhope, Lady Hester, 7, 139, 489;
'Memoirs,' 139
Stanhope, James, 1st Earl, 31;
soldier and statesman, 5, 46;
marriage with Lucy Pitt, 14
Stanhope, Philip Dormer, see Chesterfield, Earl of
Stanhope, Sir William, speech on the Bucks Assize dispute, 272-4
Stanislas, 71
Stanley, Hans, 327
Stannaries, Thomas Pitt, Warden of, 18
States General, a party to the Treaty of Berlin, 206
Stephen, Leslie, 'English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth
Century,' 214, 307, 353
Stewart, General, 26
Stockwell, I., as tutor to Lord Chatham, 31
Stone, Andrew, 384, 390, 460
Stone House, 304
Stormont, 453
Stowe, 77-82, 130, 132, 272, 291, 306, 352, 355
Strange, Lord, 277
Stratford, 5, 28
Stuart, House of, 144
Stuart, Charles Edward, 'the Young Pretender,' 199, 210, 211, 222,
226, 243
Stuart, Mrs., 96
'Sublimity Pitt,' 54
Subsidies, On, 205, 209, 289, 379, 380, 430-4, 436
Suffolk, 234
Suffolk, Lady, letters referred to, 12, 53, 54, 57, 76, 78, 79, 81,
86, 102, 104, 107, 127, 161
Sunninghill, 304
Surajah Dowlah, 457
Sussex, tour in, 305
Swallowfield, 5, 11, 43, 57
Sweden, King of, 209
Talbot, Lord, evil living of, 49
Taylor, Miss, 51
Temperley's 'Essay on the Causes of War with Spain' referred to, 166
Temple, Countess, see Grenville, Lady
Temple, Lord, see Grenville, Richard Temple, afterwards Earl Grenville
Temple, Sir Richard, Viscount Cobham, 17, 77, 81, 236, 245, 292, 304,
346, 505;
builder of palace of Stowe, 130, 131;
his entertainments at, 132;
served under Marlborough, 131;
called 'the brave Cobham,' 131;
his great riches, 134, 141;
various titles and honours conferred on, 131;
opposed to the Excise Bill, 132;
sides with Pitt, 22;
Pitt devoted to Cobham, 160, 161, 178;
quarrel with Pitt, 256;
on the war in Flanders, 223, 224, 227;
growing jealousy of his 'young patriots,' 273, 276;
nicknames to, 131;
death of, 133, 138
Temple Bar, 169
Thackeray, Francis, 'Life of Chatham' referred to, 28, 54, 163, 363
Thackeray, W.M., referred to, 13;
satire on George II. mentioned, 196
Thames, Dutch ships in the, 226
'The Test,' a newspaper, 50
Thessaly, 332
Thirsk, 4
Thomson's 'Life of the Duchess of Marlborough,' 234
Timbs, 'Anecdote biography,' 308
'Tom Jones,' see Fielding, Henry
Torrens, W.T. McC., 'History of Cabinets,' 276
Towcester, 80
Townshend, Lady, 356
Townshend, Charles, 428, 435, 441, 467, 475
Townshend, Colonel, 277
Townshend, George, 428, 441, 467
Trinity College, Chatham admitted to, 30
Trojans, 332
Tunbridge, 306
Tunbridge Wells, 304, 309, 313
Twickenham, 5, 125
Underwood's 'Historical MSS.' quoted, 257
Utrecht, 18, 21, 39, 43
Vale Royal, 14
Valliere, La, 192
Vauxhall, New, 304
Vere, Lady, 107
Vere, Lord, 107
Versailles, 109;
Palace at, 192;
replica of, in a Bavarian lake, 192;
Treaty of, 401
Very, Count, 109
Vesey, Mr., 39
Vienna threatened by the French army, 205
Villiers, George, Duke of Buckingham, 26
Villiers, Harriot, marriage with Robert Pitt, 12, 26;
mother of Lord Chatham, 12;
her family, 15;
returns to France, 15;
correspondence with her son, 38-46;
death of, 48
Villiers, Lord, 39-41
Voiture, 61
Voltaire's 'Candide' referred to, 451
Waddington, Richard, 'Louis XV. et le Renversement des Alliances'
referred to, 401
Waldegrave, Lady Betty, 108, 109
Waldegrave, James, Earl, procures Pitt letters of introduction at
Paris, 70;
on the character of George II., 194, 195;
on Sir Thomas Robinson, 345;
negotiates for Fox to enter the Cabinet, 366-8;
'Correspondence' referred to, 359, 364
Waldegrave, John, Earl, 109
Waller, 224, 236; appointed Cofferer, 237
Walpole, Horace, 2nd Earl of Orford (son of Sir Robert Walpole),
283, 412
Walpole, Horace, 4th Earl of Orford (brother of Sir Robert Walpole),
his kinship with Lord Hervey, 197;
affection for Lord Camelford, 19;
as a gossip, 352;
on Thomas Pitt, 18;
charge against Betty Pitt, 49;
_re_ Ann Pitt, 53, 54, 92, 116, 125-7;
on Pitt's behaviour to his sisters, 50;
on the Grenvilles, 133, 137, 139, 140;
on George II., 193;
on Pitt's speeches, 392, 394, 405, 421, 424, 431, 434-5, 438, 441;
his admiration for Pitt, 341, 493, 503;
on Pitt's impatience for office, 244;
on Pitt's change of opinion, 288;
on Pitt's sudden illness, 298;
on Dr. Lee's attack on Pitt, 254-5, 268;
on Pitt's resentment against the Newcastles, 300, 357;
his partiality for Fox, 368;
on Sir Thomas Robinson's appointment, 344;
on Lyttelton, 413;
on Lord Wilmington, 179;
opposes Saxon subsidy, 289;
on the Bath Ministry, 250;
on the loss of Minorca, 452, 457;
on the American war;
on the scheme of the Notables, 480-1;
letter to Bentley, 344.
Walpole, Horace, 'Memoirs of the Reign of George III.,' quotations
from, 92, 140, 268, 359, 367, 370, 374, 394-5, 462, 467, 469,
478-81.
Walpole, Sir Robert, 1st Earl of Orford, character of, 132, 144, 146,
254;
his love for sport, 147;
his relations with George II., 196, 219;
on the political character of George II., 194;
his relations with Pitt, 74, 75, 158-60, 170, 178, 186, 187;
his attitude towards the Prince of Wales, 152, 157;
his attitude towards Newcastle, 175-7;
supports Pelham, 314-15;
his policy regarding Spain, 145, 167, 169, 201;
on the Army, 164;
on the Secessions, 168;
supports Maria Theresa, 203;
favours the Hanoverian vote, 225;
speech on threatened landing of the Pretender, 227;
temporary resignation of, 179;
inquiry into administration of, 184;
punishment of, 183;
succeeded by Lord Carteret, 205;
fall of, 148, 149, 171-3, 178, 505, 506;
resignation of, and papers burnt by his brother Horace, 172;
impeachment of, 473;
illness and death of, 228, 229;
compared with Pitt and Peel, 230-2;
'Memoirs of Sir Robert Walpole,' see Coxe, William
Walpole, Thomas, purchases Hayes, 310
Washington, George, General, 350, 397
Webster, Sir Whistler, 305
West, Gilbert, 304, 307, 309, 492;
his house at Wickham, 356
West, Molly, 352
Westminster, Treaty of, 401
Westminster School, 359
Westphalia, 306;
Treaty of, 286
Whately, Mr., 'Observations on Modern Gardening,' 309
Wickham, Chatham's honeymoon spent at, 356
Wilberforce, William, 261
Wilhelmine, Princess of Prussia, afterwards Margravine of Bareith,
151
Wilkes, John, 136, 358, 359, 491
Wilkins' 'Political Ballads,' 298
William III., indifference to England, 198, 199;
Pitt's story of his coming, 276
Williams, Sir Charles Hanbury, 174;
lampoon on Pitt, 235;
'Works of,' quoted, 211, 235, 465
Wilmington, Lord, 179, 216, 217, 314, 505
Wilton, Joseph, 490
Wiltshire, lands purchased in, 6
Wimbledon, Duchess of Marlborough's estate at, 234
Windsor, 156
'Wingfield MSS.' quoted, 343, 359, 474, 485
Winnington, Thomas, 250, 254
Wood, Robert, 'Essay on the Original Genius of Homer' quoted, 182
Worms, Treaty of, 208, 225
Wotton, residence of George Grenville, 113, 352, 354
Wyndham, Baron, 148, 254
Wynn, Sir Watkin, 224
Yarmouth, Lady, 280, 388, 481;
and George II., 193, 371, 464;
mistress of George II., 465;
and Pitt, 108-10, 263, 464, 472;
Fox solicits her influence to obtain a peerage, 296;
and Fox's overtures with the King, 341;
her utterance regarding, 461
Yonge, Lady, 240
Yorke, Charles, 371, 372;
interview with Chatham, 373
Yorke, Joseph, 185
Yorke, Philip, see Hardwicke, Earl of
Zoroastrians, politicians compared with, 389
LONDON: STRANGEWAYS, PRINTERS.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Camelford.
[2] Diary of William Hedges, III. x.
[3] Hedges, III. xii.
[4] He purchased it from Lord Salisbury about 1690. Hedges, III. xxx.
[5] The portrait of the Governor at Boconnoc represents him with the
diamond in his hat. That at Chevening with the diamond in his own shoe.
[6] Camelford.
[7] Camelford.
[8] Lyte's Dunster, 494.
[9] This and the following extracts from the Governor's correspondence
are all taken from the Dropmore Papers (Hist. MSS.).
[10] Lady Suffolk's Letters, i. 101-4.
[11] Camelford (italics his).
[12] Camelford.
[13] Dropmore Papers, i. 70.
[14] Camelford.
[15] Ib.
[16] Dropmore Papers, i. 75.
[17] Camelford.
[18] Camelford.
[19] Journal, ii. 45.
[20] Dropmore Papers, i. 38, 41.
[21] Tom Jones, Book xiii. Chapter i.
[22] Life of Shelburne, i. 72.
[23] Addressed: To Robert Pitt, Esqr, at Stratford, near Old Sarum,
Wilts. Endorsed: 'Mr. Burchet's letter about my Sons att Eton. Febry
4th, 1722.'
[24] Lyttelton's Misc. Works, p. 650. 'Written at Eaton School, 1729.'
The date is obviously wrong, for Pitt and Lyttelton both went to Oxford
in 1726.
[25] Endorsed: 'from my Son William Sept. 29th: recd Oct. 10th,
1723.'
[26] Endorsed: 'from Mr. Stockwell about ye charges of my Sons going to
Oxon: Novr 1726 ansd Decr 1st.'
[27] Mourning for the Governor.
[28] Endorsed: 'from Mr Stockwell about my Son Wm from Oxon: Decr
22d ansd 29th 1726.'
[29] Paduasoy.
[30] Endorsed: 'from my Son Willm Oxon Jany 20th wth ye acct
ye 100 answd ye 24th 1726/7.'
[31] Endorsed: 'from my Son Willm Aprill 10th wth an acct
of 3 mos expences 47 05 0
Rems in his hand 9 15 0
In all 57 0 0
Answd Aprill 25th, wth leave to draw for 25l.'
[32] Lyttelton, Misc. Works, 665.
[33] Always spelt Needham in the peerage books, always Nedham by the
family and those concerned.
[34] 'Villiers Pitt' to William Pitt. 'Tours, June 1, 1752.' Chatham
MSS.
[35] Mann and Manners at the Court of Florence, i. 382.
[36] 'The Test' was a weekly paper published in 1756-7, written
principally by Arthur Murphy, and inspired by Henry Fox, as may be seen
from his letters. See too Orford, ii. 276, and Walpole to Mann, Jan. 6,
1757. There had been a previous 'Test' in 1756, of which there was
published only one number, written by Charles Townshend. See Orford, ii.
218.
[37] Walpole to Mann, Jan. 17, 1757.
[38] To William Pitt, Oct. 10, 1751. Chatham MSS.
[39] Dutens' Memoires d'un Voyageur qui se repose, i. 31-42.
[40] Tours, June 11, 1752. Villiers Pitt to W. Pitt. Chatham MSS.
[41] Or 1787? as says a note in the Delany Memoirs, iv. 266. It matters
little.
[42] Climenson's 'Elizabeth Montagu,' ii. 53. See, too, Mrs. Montagu's
Letters, vol. iii.
[43] Suffolk Letters, ii. 233.
[44] Camelford MS. Cf., too, William's letter of Sept. 29, 1730.
[45] Thackeray, i. 158 note.
[46] There is a crayon portrait of her at Boconnoc, which the writer has
not seen. It 'represents the strong contemplative face of a woman well
past her first prime,' and was taken, apparently, in 1765.
[47] Seward's Anecdotes, ii. 355.
[48] All these letters from William to Ann Pitt come from the papers at
Dropmore, unless where noted otherwise.
[49] 'To Mrs. Ann Pitt, at Mrs. Phillips's, at Bath. T. Pitt Free.'
[50] Dr. Charles Bave, a physician of the highest character at Bath. See
note on Vol. I., p. 408, of Lady Suffolk's Letters.
[51] This must almost certainly be Ayscough, in spite of 'Skew's' being
the hereditary nickname of the Fortescue family.
[52] These are probably Colonel and Mrs. Lanoe, with whom Ann appears to
be staying at Bath.
[53] Lyttelton's Misc. Works, 619.
[54] 'Mrs. Ann Pitt, at Col. Lanoe's at Bath.'
[55] 'To Mrs. Ann Pitt jun. at Boconnock near Bodmin Cornwall.'
[56] 'To Mrs. Ann Pitt at Mrs. Phillips's at Bath. T. Pitt Free.'
[57] Same address.
[58] 'To Mrs. Ann Pitt, at Bath.'
[59] Ante, p. 56.
[60] Dr. Ayscough?
[61] 'To The Honble Mrs. Ann Pitt at St. James's House Londres.'
[62] Illegible.
[63] 'To The Honble Mrs Ann Pitt at Mrs Richard's In Pallmall,
London. Angleterre.'
[64] 'To the Honble Mrs Ann Pitt at St. James's House London.
Angleterre.'
[65] 'To the Honble Mrs Ann Pitt at St. James's London.
Free--Will, Herbert.'
[66] Doubtless his brother.
[67] His brother.
[68] Sir William Corbett.
[69] 'To The Honble Mrs Ann Pitt at St. James's London.'
[70] Elected Feb. 18, 1735.
[71] Doubtless his brother.
[72] Lyttelton--a mere guess.
[73] Doubtless his brother.
[74] N.B.--Pope was at Stowe during this month. See Lady Suffolk's
Letters, ii. 143.
[75] 'To the Honble Mrs Pitt at Kensington House Middlesex.
Free--W. Pitt.'
[76] Camelford MS.
[77] Recollections of Samuel Rogers, p. 104.
[78] Grenville Papers, i. 13.
[79] Chatham MSS.
[80] Orford, i. 85.
[81] His aunt.
[82] Their cousin, Colonel the Hon. George Stanhope, who distinguished
himself at Falkirk and Culloden.
[83] Letter dated Oct. 21, 1754, in the Chatham MSS.
[84] 'To The Honourable Mrs. Ann Pitt, W. Pitt.'
[85] Lady Suffolk's Letters, ii. 251.
[86] Delany, iv. 156.
[87] Walpole to Mann, Oct. 30, 1778.
[88] Ib. May 9, 1779.
[89] Delany, v. 403-5.
[90] Lady Suffolk's Letters, ii. 234.
[91] Porritt's Unreformed House of Commons, i. 35. T. Mozley when the
nineteenth century was well advanced saw the constituency of Old Sarum
in the person of 'a bright looking old fellow with a full rubicund face
and a profusion of white hair.' Reminiscences, ii. 13.
[92] Grenville Papers, i. 423.
[93] Grenville Papers, i. 423-5.
[94] Grenville Papers, ii. 496.
[95] Ib. ii. 512.
[96] Lord Dundonald in his 'Autobiography' says that it produced
20,693_l._ p.a.
[97] Dickins and Stanton. 'An Eighteenth Century Correspondence,' 193.
[98] It seems best to call this worthy, who assumed the name of
Dodington, by his patronymic; for it is his own name, and the most
appropriate.
[99] Walpole to Mann, Feb. 25, 1750.
[100] Memoirs of Lady Hester Stanhope, iii. 179.
[101] See 'The New Ministry, containing a collection of all the
satyrical poems, songs, &c. 1742.'
[102] Phillimore's Lyttelton, 681.
[103] Orford's George III. iii. 137.
[104] Ballantyne's Carteret, 107.
[105] Harris's Hardwicke, i. 382.
[106] These expressions are taken from Hervey's Memoirs.
[107] Dated Feb. 8, 1748. Bedford Correspondence, i. 320.
[108] Marchmont Papers, i. 84.
[109] Lord Dover's note to H. Walpole's letter of March 21, 1751.
[110] Carlisle Papers (Hist. MSS.), 172.
[111] Seward, ii. 362.
[112] Lady Suffolk's Letters, ii. 151.
[113] Hervey, ii. 195.
[114] Hervey, ii. 80.
[115] Ib. ii. 82.
[116] Parl. Hist. x. 464-7.
[117] Coxe's Sir R. Walpole, i. 575.
[118] Life of Shelburne, i. 46.
[119] Coxe's Sir R. Walpole, i. 580 note.
[120] See Temperley's Essay on the causes of this war in Trans. of Royal
Hist. Soc. Series II. vol. iii. p. 207.
[121] Parl. Hist. x. 1284.
[122] Parl. Hist. x. 1280-3.
[123] Coxe's Sir R. Walpole, i. 594 note.
[124] Marchmont Papers, ii. 180, note by Rose.
[125] Life of Shelburne, i. 37. Seward's Anecdotes, ii. 309.
[126] Coxe's Sir R. Walpole, i. 695.
[127] Sir C.H. Williams, ii. 140-1.
[128] Dutens' Voyage, &c., i. 142.
[129] Life of Shelburne, i. 45.
[130] Bishop Newton's Works, i. 93.
[131] Ballantyne's Carteret, 2.
[132] Seward's Anecdotes, ii. 280.
[133] Marchmont Papers, i. 42, 73.
[134] Wood's Essay on the Original Genius of Homer, p. vii. n. (Ed.
1775).
[135] Chesterfield, v. 65.
[136] Chesterfield's Letters, iv. 358.
[137] Parl. Hist. xii. 416-427.
[138] Harris, ii. 31.
[139] Parl. Hist. xii. 561.
[140] Ib. xii. 488.
[141] Parl. Hist. xii. 490.
[142] Parl. Hist. xii. 940 note.
[143] Ib. xii. 1033.
[144] Orford, Rem. 97.
[145] Hervey, ii. 182, 228.
[146] Holdernesse to Newcastle, Nov. 22, 1756. Add. MSS. 32869.
[147] Frederick, iii. 141.
[148] Martin, Hist. de France, xv. 265. Leadam, 376.
[149] Sir C.H. Williams, i. 247.
[150] L. Stephen, English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth
Century, 138.
[151] Parl. Hist. xiii. 136.
[152] Parl. Hist. xiii. 473 (note). Cf. Phillimore, 226. But Carteret
had taken the lead of the Prince's party in the House of Lords so far
back as 1737.
[153] Parl. Hist. xvi. 1097.
[154] Fortescue, Hist. of the Army, ii. 101.
[155] Marchmont Papers, i. 80.
[156] Ib. i. 176.
[157] To Mann, Jan. 24, 1744. Cf. Parl. Hist. xiii. 467 note.
[158] Orford, ii. 132.
[159] Thomson's Life of the Duchess of Marlborough, ii. 571-2.
[160] Marchmont Papers, ii. 338.
[161] H. Walpole to Montagu, June 24, 1746. Cf. Grenville Papers, i.
131. Camelford MS.
[162] H. Walpole to Mann, June 20, 1746.
[163] Marchmont Papers, i. 70.
[164] Works of Sir C.H. Williams, 1822, ii. 152.
[165] Glover, 30.
[166] Marchmont Papers, i. 67, 172. It was said that Harrington, from an
interest in Lady Yonge, wife of the actual incumbent of the office, did
his best to prevent Pitt's becoming Secretary for War. Ib. 97. But there
was a more majestic obstacle.
[167] Parl. Hist. xiii. 1054-6.
[168] Parl. Hist. xiii. 1176.
[169] Parl. Hist. xiii. 1177.
[170] Bedford is ranked by Newcastle among the Cobham deputation, though
he was First Lord of the Admiralty at the time. Perhaps he was the
honest broker.
[171] Newcastle to Chesterfield, Nov. 20, 1745. Add. MSS. 32705.
[172] Newcastle to Chesterfield, Feb. 18, 1746, in Coxe's Pelham Adm. i.
292.
[173] Newcastle to Chesterfield, Feb. 18, 1746, in Coxe's Pelham Adm. i.
293.
[174] Coxe's Lord Walpole, ii. 142.
[175] Coxe's Lord Walpole, ii. 133.
[176] Newcastle to Chesterfield, Feb. 18, 1746.
[177] Orford, i. 110. Walpole to Mann, April 2, 1750.
[178] Cartwright to Pitt, Feb. 27, 1745 (Chatham MSS.). We obtain the
exact salary more or less correctly from a lampoon.
'Hibernia, smile!
Thrice happy isle,
On thy blest ground
Twelve thousand pound
For Stanhope's found,
Three thousand clear
For Pitt a year;
So shalt thou thrive,
Industrious hive,
While these and more
Increase thy store.'
Sir C.H. Williams, ii. 166.
[179] Camelford.
[180] Cf. Underwood MSS. (Hist. MSS.), p. 405.
[181] He avowed this to Newcastle (Orford, George III. i. 82 note). But
it was otherwise patent.
[182] Parl. Hist. xiv. 103.
[183] See the debate in Parl. Hist. xiv. 204.
[184] Gibbs' History of Aylesbury, 502.
[185] Torrens says (History of Cabinets, ii. 119) that this speech was
revised by Pitt, but gives no authority. Almon (i. 172) specifically
declares that it was written by Gordon.
[186] Parl. Hist. xiv. 502.
[187] Grenville Papers, i. 93-5.
[188] Parl. Hist. xiv. 664.
[189] Parl. Hist. xiv. 692-6.
[190] Coxe's Pelham Adm. ii. 370.
[191] Add. MSS. 32721.
[192] July 20, 1750. Add. MSS. 32721.
[193] Coxe's Pelham Adm. ii. 131, 370.
[194] Ib. ii. 396.
[195] Parl. Hist. xiv. 801.
[196] Coxe's Pelham Adm. ii. 225, 359.
[197] Parl. Hist. xiv. 967.
[198] Stone to Newcastle, Feb. 22, 1750/1. Add. MSS. 32724.
[199] Parl. Hist. xiv. 970.
[200] Coxe's Pelham Adm. ii. 144.
[201] Coxe's Pelham Adm. ii. 165.
[202] Holland House MSS.
[203] Colebrooke's Memoirs, i. 63.
[204] Earl of Rochester. Ib. 73.
[205] Wilkins, Political Ballads, ii. 312.
[206] Parl. Hist. xv. 154.
[207] September, 1749.
[208] Almon, i. 195.
[209] Pitt to Newcastle, July 25, 1753. Add. MSS. 32732.
[210] Pitt to Newcastle, March 6, 1754. Add. MSS. 32734.
[211] Feb. 11, o.s. 1751. Letters, ii. 97.
[212] Climenson's Mrs. Montague, ii. 51. Kielmansegge's Diary, 131.
[213] Meehan's Famous Houses of Bath, 112.
[214] Meehan, 111.
[215] Climenson.
[216] Mrs. Montagu's Letters, iii. 235.
[217] Memorials of Lord Gambier, i. 61. Cf. Mrs. Montagu's Letters, iii.
240.
[218] Pitt to Newcastle. Tunbridge, Aug. 14, 1753. Add. MSS. 32732.
[219] Phillimore, 265.
[220] An Eighteenth Century Correspondence, 388 n. See too Harris's
Hardwicke, ii. 456.
[221] Timbs, Anecdote Biography, 156, quoting from The Ambulator (1820).
[222] Legge to Pitt. Berlin, July 10, 1748. Chatham MSS.
[223] Climenson, ii. 9-10. Mrs. Montagu's Letters, iii. 181.
[224] Nuthall to Lady Chatham, March 25, 1768. Chatham MSS.
[225] Chatham to Nuthall, Oct. 7, 1772. Chatham MSS.
[226] October 6, 1753. Add. MSS. 32733.
[227] October 13, 1753. Add. MSS. 32733.
[228] Pitt to Newcastle, March 7, 1754. Add. MSS. 32734.
[229] Grenville Papers, i. 109.
[230] Ib. i. 111.
[231] Pitt to Newcastle, March 11, 1754. Add. MSS. 32734.
[232] Murray.
[233] This seems an allusion either to Leicester House, or, less
probably, to Newcastle.
[234] Grenville Papers, i. 106.
[235] Granville Papers, i. 110.
[236] Pitt was member for Aldborough, one of Newcastle's boroughs.
[237] Phillimore's Lyttelton, 449.
[238] Phillimore's Lyttelton, 453.
[239] Grenville Papers, i. 112.
[240] Add. MSS. 32734. f. 322.
[241] Grenville Papers, i. 116.
[242] Pitt to Newcastle, April 2, 1754. Add. MSS. 32735. The more
elaborate draft of this letter is given with a wrong date in the Chatham
Corr. i. 85.
[243] Chatham Corr. i. 89.
[244] Chatham Corr. i. 95.
[245] Add. MSS. 32735. f. 21.
[246] Harris's Hardwicke, iii. 8.
[247] The sense shows clearly that Pitt intended to write 'unwilling'.
[248] Phillimore, 466.
[249] Holland House MSS.
[250] Holland House MSS.
[251] H. Fox to Argyll, Sept. 26, 1755 (H.H. MSS.).
[252] H. Fox to the Duke of Marlborough, March 22, 1754 (H.H. MSS.).
[253] Wingfield MSS. 224b in Hist. MSS.
[254] Walpole to Bentley, March 17, 1754.
[255] Colebrooke, i. 18.
[256] An Eighteenth Century Correspondence, 230.
[257] Newcastle to Pitt, April 2, 1754, Chatham Corr.
[258] Supra, p. 335.
[259] Add. MSS. 32733. Pitt to Newcastle, April 22, 1754.
[260] Bubb, 304.
[261] Aug. 29, 1754. H.H. MSS.
[262] Bubb, 317.
[263] Newcastle to Hardwicke, Oct. 2, 1754. Add. MSS. 32737.
[264] Hardwicke to Newcastle, Oct. 3, 1754. Add. MSS. 32737.
[265] Orford, i. 78.
[266] An Eighteenth Century Correspondence, p. 154.
[267] Mrs. Montagu's Letters, iii. 273.
[268] Orford, i. 406-7.
[269] Fox to Hartington, Nov. 26, 1754, in Waldegrave, p. 146. Orford,
i. 408. Cf. Calcraft to Digby, Nov. 26, 1754, in Wingfield MSS.
[270] Butler's Rem. i. 144.
[271] Waldegrave, 149-50
[272] Fox to Hartington, Nov. 28, 1754, in Waldegrave, p. 150. Orford,
i. 142.
[273] Butler's Reminiscences, i. 145.
[274] Table Talk of S. Rogers, p. 100.
[275] Orford, i. 417.
[276] Ib. 418.
[277] See Pitt's obscure note in Chatham Corresp. i. 130, and the
interpretation in Orford, i. 419.
[278] Orford, i. 420.
[279] Coxe's Lord Walpole, ii. 406.
[280] Bubb, 319-21. Orford, ii. 37.
[281] The accession of Fox to the Cabinet is beset with small
difficulties of chronology. Horace Walpole in his Memoirs (i. 147) tells
us that the King sent for Fox on November 29, 1754, and in a letter of
January 9, 1755, announces that Fox had been admitted to the Cabinet.
Yet we have Fox's own letter to Pitt of April 26, 1755, announcing that
the King that afternoon had signified to him his admission to the
Cabinet. (Chatham Corresp. i. 132). It is evident that Horace Walpole
believed, prematurely, that the matter was settled early in January.
Strangely enough our surest authority in all these transactions, except
Waldegrave, who is vague and dateless, is the corrupt and perfidious
Bubb.
[282] Thackeray gives a different account of this interview and of that
with Charles Yorke, we know not whence derived. The account in the text
is that of Charles Yorke and Hardwicke themselves (Harris, iii. 29-34)
and in part Bubb, on the authority of James Grenville (p. 340).
[283] Newcastle to Hardwicke, Sept. 3, 1755. Add. MSS. 32858. See too
Orford, ii. 40.
[284] Add. MSS. 32858.
[285] These two sentences are transposed for the sake of clearness.
[286] Italics ours.
[287] Italics ours.
[288] There was some family connection between Bubb and the Grenvilles,
though it is not easy to trace. Bubb's property indeed, to his disgust,
was entailed on Temple.
[289] Bubb, 370.
[290] Add. MSS. 32859, f. 86.
[291] Orford, ii. 45.
[292] Orford, ii. 7-9.
[293] Orford, ii. 17.
[294] 'Montcalm and Wolfe,' i. 483.
[295] Ib. i. 510.
[296] Ib. i. 54, 66.
[297] 'Montcalm and Wolfe,' i. 214-26.
[298] Souvenirs de Moreau, i. 62.
[299] Moreau, i. 58.
[300] Waddington. Louis XV. et le Renversement des Alliances, pp. 471-6.
[301] Baumer, Frederick II. and his Times, 227.
[302] Ibid. 233.
[303] Carlyle, Frederick, iv. 509.
[304] Orford, ii. 55-62.
[305] Fox to Ellis. Holland House MSS.
[306] Camelford.
[307] Walpole here professes to give Pitt's words exactly.
[308] _I.e._, suppose any man should have purposely put off bringing
hither troops from Ireland, with the object of making this country
appear so unprotected as to require foreign mercenaries.
[309] Orford, ii. 67-76.
[310] Parl. Hist. xv. 544-616.
[311] Bedford Corr. ii. 179.
[312] Bedford Corr. ii. 180.
[313] Orford, ii. 86-97.
[314] Orford, ii. 98-101.
[315] Orford, ii. 107.
[316] Holland House MSS.
[317] Orford, ii. 135-9.
[318] Orford says that Sackville moved for them on April 29. The
Parliamentary History says that Fox moved for them on March 29 (xv.
702).
[319] Parl. Hist. xv. 702.
[320] Orford, ii. 185-6.
[321] Orford, ii. 188-90.
[322] Orford, ii. 193-7.
[323] The Consul at Genoa had warned Newcastle early in February that a
surprise attack on Minorca was meditated. Mr. Corbett, who states this,
(England in the Seven Years War, i. 97) excuses Newcastle for neglecting
the information, one does not see why. More attention was paid to an
intercepted despatch of the Swedish minister at Paris, dated February
25, 1756.
[324] Walpole to Chute, June 8, 1756.
[325] 'So also we find it recorded during the siege of Malta, that some
hesitation having displayed itself on the part of the slaves in exposing
themselves, during their pioneering labours, to a fire more than
ordinarily deadly, the Grand Master directed some to be hanged and
others to have their ears cut off, "pour encourager les autres" as the
chroniclers quaintly and simply record.' Porter's 'History of the
Knights of Malta,' ii. 272.
[326] Fox to Ellis, July 12, 1756. Holland House MSS.
[327] Chatham Corr. i. 158.
[328] 'Montcalm and Wolfe,' i. 413.
[329] Newcastle to Hardwicke, Sept. 2, 1756. Add. MSS. 35416.
[330] Fox to Kildare. This, an undated narrative among the Holland House
MSS., seems to me the best statement from Fox's point of view. From Lord
Kildare's reply it is evident that it was written and despatched towards
the end of Nov. 1756.
[331] Narrative to Kildare.
[332] Fox to Stone, October 7, 1756. Holland House MSS.
[333] Ib.
[334] Fox to Ellis. H.H. MSS., Oct. 12, 1756.
[335] Newcastle to Fox, Oct. 12, 1756. H.H. MSS.
[336] Newcastle to Lady Yarmouth, Oct. 13. Add. MSS. 32868.
[337] Fox to Digby, Oct. 1756. Wingfield MSS. in Hist. MSS.
[338] Orford, ii. 253.
[339] Narrative to Kildare.
[340] Newcastle to Hardwicke, Oct. 15, 1756. Harris, iii. 73.
[341] Hardwicke to Newcastle, Oct. 19, 1756. Add. MSS. 32868.
[342] Harris, iii. 77.
[343] Grenville Papers, i. 178.
[344] Sir C.H. Williams, iii. 41.
[345] Shelburne, i. 83.
[346] Add. MSS. 35416; cf. Orford, ii. 257.
[347] Orford, ii. 259.
[348] Leadam, 445 note. Orford, ii. 259.
[349] Shelburne, i. 83 note.
[350] Add. MSS. 35870 'Powis Ho., October 24, 1756. Sunday night.'
[351] This poor Hanoverian victim, as completely as Andersen's Tin
Soldier, has melted into nothingness. But he once caused a mighty stir.
He bought four handkerchiefs, and by mistake, as was universally
conceded, took the whole piece, which contained six. Yet he was put in
prison on a charge of theft. His commanding officer demanded his
enlargement. Failing in this attempt, he obtained a warrant from
Holdernesse for his release. The whole country was aflame in an instant
with the old hostility to German mercenaries, Holdernesse was severely
threatened, and the innocent soldier cruelly flogged. See Orford, ii.
248-9.
[352] Strangely enough there is a different answer appended to this
report.
'That H.M. had been desirous, in this time of difficulty, to have the
assistance of Mr. Pitt in his service, and for that purpose to consider
him and those connected with him in a proper manner. That H.M. continues
in the same disposition, tho' what has been suggested by Mr. Pitt will
not in the King's opinion form a system for carrying on H.M.'s service.'
This may have been the first draft, and it may have been found, as
usual, that the less said the better.
[353] Partly given in Harris, iii. 80.
[354] Newcastle to Hardwicke, Oct. 13, 5 o'clock, 1756. Add. MSS. 32868,
f. 251.
[355] Ib.
[356] Digby to Lord Digby, Oct. 28, 1756. Wingfield MSS. in Hist. MSS.
[357] West to Newcastle, Newcastle MSS.
[358] Orford, ii. 262.
[359] Fox to Ellis. July 15, 1755. Holland House MSS.
[360] Narrative to Kildare.
[361] October 20, 1756. Holland House MSS.
[362] Holland House MSS.
[363] Bubb, 389.
[364] Orford, ii. 263.
[365] Narrative to Kildare.
[366] Bedford Corresp. ii. 210.
[367] Orford, ii. 266.
[368] See the summonses in the Holland House MSS. For example, that to
the Duke of Marlborough. 'Nov. 2, 1756. My dear Lord, H.M. desires Your
Grace would without fail be in town to-morrow evening. You shall find at
Marlbro' House a summons to the place of meeting, and I leave to Mr.
Hamilton to acquaint Your Grace more fully than I have time to do with
the intention of it. Adieu. The D. of Bedford is kept in town and all
great Lords within reach are sent to.'
[369] Narrative to Kildare.
[370] Narrative to Kildare.
[371] Holdernesse to Newcastle, Nov. 2, 1756. Add. MSS. 32868.
[372] Bubb, 390.
[373] Fox to Marlborough, 1756. Holland House MSS.
[374] Bedford Corresp. ii. 208.
[375] Orford, ii. 269.
[376] Bedford Corresp. ii. 210.
[377] The salary and allowances of Secretary of State were 2680_l._, as
appears from a paper of Fox's. But there was also 3000_l._ for Secret
Service which Fox appears to reckon as salary. H.H. MSS.
[378] Orford, ii. 268.
[379] Holland House MSS. H. Walpole to Fox, Oct. 27, 1756.
[380] Fox to Bedford, Nov. 23, 1756.
[381] H.H. MSS.
[382] Narrative to Kildare.
[383] Bedford Corr. ii. 170, 220. Bedford to Fox, Nov. 17, 1755 (H.H.
MSS.).
[384] Holland House MSS.
[385] Add. MSS. 32869.
[386] Chatham Corr. i. 190-4.
[387] Newcastle to Hardwicke, Sept. 2, 1756. Add. MSS. 35416.
[388] Fox to Digby. Wingfield MSS. in Hist. MSS.
[389] 'As your Lordship is of opinion that I cannot (which is firmly my
own) rechuse Mr. Pitt,' &c. Newcastle to Hardwicke, Nov. 3, 1756.
[390] 'Do you know that Sir George now Lord Lyttelton, who had engaged
with the Duke of Bedford for one and one at Okehampton, named Pitt to
His Grace as the man to be chosen in his room?' Fox to ----, Dec. 14,
1756 (H.H. MSS.).
[391] Camelford.
[392] Supra, p. 75.
[393] Works, i. 135.
[394] Life of Grattan, i. 234.
[395] Cradock's Literary Memoirs, i. 100-1.
[396] Foote's Table Talk, p. 103.
[397] Seward's Anecdotes, ii. 357.
Transcriber's Notes:
Many sentences in letters start with lower case.
Inconsistent and dubious spellings have been retained.
Many french accents missing.
Superscripts formatted with carets eg: Septembr ye 29th