The Bedford Faction.--Ambition of the Duchess of Bedford.--The
Dukes of Marlborough and Rutland.--Lord Gower.--Fox raised to the
Peerage.--Ingratitude of his friends, particularly of Calcraft and
Rigby.--Mr. (afterwards Sir Charles) Bunbury.--Lord Hertford and
Mr. Conway.--Charles Townshend’s presumption.--Reversions granted
by Lord Bute.--Walpole’s feelings towards that Minister.--His
Political acts.--Death of Lord Waldegrave.--His character.
The Bedford faction were not to be contented with empty honours or
slight emoluments. They sent for their Duke from France, who, to grasp
the more by seeming moderation, resigned the Privy Seal, as most men
thought, with views on the Treasury itself; at least, his squadron
vaunted that they had two or three administrations in readiness before
the King should be obliged to employ the Opposition. The Favourite,
from the first moment of his power, had made it a point to gratify,
nay, to outrun, the Duke of Bedford’s largest wishes. Nothing he had
asked, nothing his creatures were immodest enough to demand, had
been denied; yet Lord Bute was balked in his hopes of purchasing
the attachment of that connection--not from their usual perfidy; he
had lost them before they suspected the smallest diminution of his
omnipotence. He had not gratified the ambition of the Duchess.[318] She
had marked for herself the first post in the Queen’s family; but with
more attention to her pride than to her interest, had forborne to ask
it, concluding it must be offered to her. The Princess and Lord Bute,
either not suspecting, or glad to be ignorant of her views, were far
enough from seeking to place so dangerous a woman in the very heart
of the palace. This neglect the Duchess deeply resented, and never
forgave. She was even so weak as to declare that inveteracy in a letter
to her sister, Lady Elizabeth Waldegrave, from Paris; which Lord Bute
intercepting, there first learned what an aspic was lodged near his
bosom.
But though the Favourite, persuaded of the Duchess’s implacability,
dropped all correspondence with that faction, he was far from checking
the stream of the Crown’s graces towards them. The King begged the
support of the Duke of Marlborough,[319] and offered to make him Master
of the Horse, if the Duke of Rutland[320] could be induced to part with
it. The latter consented to exchange it for Lord Chamberlain; but that
post the Duke of Bedford insisted upon for Lord Gower.[321] After a
warm struggle, Lord Gower obtained the Chamberlain’s staff; the Duke
of Rutland remained in his old situation; and the Duke of Marlborough,
though so very young, was appointed Lord Privy Seal; and his brother,
Lord Charles Spencer, was made Comptroller of the Household.
Fox obtained his barony, and retained his place, but not without
experiencing such a scene of ingratitude as could scarce happen but to
a man who had selected his friends more for their utility than their
merit. In the discussion, and during the defending and proving what
he had or had not said relative to the cession of the Paymaster’s
place, Calcraft,[322] his own creature, his cousin, raised from extreme
indigence and obscurity to enormous wealth, to opulence so excessive
that the vast number of regiments to which he was agent, and the
outrageous plurality of places he held, were universally believed to
be deposited with him only for Fox’s use,[323] took part with Lord
Shelburne, and witnessed to the latter’s tale. Fox ordered Calcraft
to make up his accounts, dismissed him worth near 300,000_l._, and,
though so rich himself, grew almost justified; and, though so hated,
grew almost pitied; but this was not all. The man he most loved was
Rigby; and though Fox had not crammed him with wealth in the same
lavish guise with which he had enriched Calcraft, he had assisted
in Rigby’s promotions, and wished to push him forwards, and to be
strictly connected with him in every political walk. In the height
of his quarrel with Shelburne and Calcraft, Fox, walking along St.
James’s Street, met and stopped Rigby’s chariot, and, leaning on the
door of it, began to vent his complaints; when the other, unprovoked
and unconcerned in the dispute, interrupted him with these stunning
sounds, “_You_ tell your story of Shelburne; _he_ has a damned one to
tell of you; I do not trouble myself which is the truth;”--and pushing
him aside, ordered his coachman to drive away. From that moment Rigby
became the enemy of Fox.[324] The necessity of relating this story will
appear hereafter.
The Earl of Hertford was named to succeed the Duke of Bedford at Paris.
Fox, in the midst of his quarrels and mortifications, found leisure
to think of his friends, and to think of gratifying his hatred. He
procured his wife’s brother-in-law, Mr. Bunbury, to be imposed on Lord
Hertford as secretary of the embassy; an affront Lord Hertford was
advised not to digest: but, though he acquiesced in it, he treated
Bunbury with such obstinate coldness, that the latter was glad to quit
the employment. I never knew why Fox was on all occasions the personal
enemy of Lord Hertford and Mr. Conway; neither of them being hostile
to him, and both most inoffensive men. The elder brother was even a
good courtier, and never in union with Fox’s enemies. Mr. Conway’s
character was indeed a reproach to that of Fox, and antipathy is as
often the cause of enmity as offence is. The decorum and piety of Lord
Hertford occasioned men to wonder, when, in the room of Bunbury, he
chose for his secretary the celebrated free-thinker David Hume, totally
unknown to him; but this was the effect of recommendations from other
Scots, who had much weight with both Lord and Lady Hertford.[325]
While the arrangement of the new drama was thus settling, there was
an important actor to be made easy; but it was one who, whenever
he appeared of most consequence, was sure of rendering himself
insignificant. This was Charles Townshend. After his usual fluctuation,
he accepted the post of First Lord of the Admiralty, and actually went
to St. James’s to kiss hands for it. Presuming that nothing would or
could be refused to him, without asking it, without even naming it
to any minister, and as if the seats of his colleagues at that Board
were in the nomination of the First Commissioner, he carried to court
with him a Mr. Burrel, one of his followers, intending the latter
should kiss hands along with himself as another Lord of the Admiralty.
Thinking his honour engaged to carry through this absurdity, he would
not kiss the King’s hand unless Burrel was admitted too. It was flatly
refused, and Townshend was told that the King had no further occasion
for his service. Lord Shelburne was immediately named to succeed him at
the head of the Board of Trade, and Lord Sandwich to fill up the place
destined to Townshend at the head of the Admiralty.
These were all the public promotions calculated to oil the new
springs of Government. But the Favourite did not close the scene
of his administration without conferring still more solid marks of
his power and friendship on his family and intimate dependents. The
reversion of Auditor[326] of the Imprest was obtained for his own son
Lord Mount-Stewart. My place of Usher of the Exchequer was granted in
reversion to Samuel Martin;[327] and a place[328] in the Custom-house,
held by my brother, but the far greater share of which had been
bequeathed to me by my father for my brother’s life, was also granted
in reversion to Jenkinson.[329] I was, I confess, much provoked at
this last grant, and took occasion of fomenting the ill-humour against
the Favourite, who thus excluded me from the possibility of obtaining
the continuance of that place to myself in case of my brother’s death;
but in truth, except in the want of that attention, I had no reason
to complain. I had refused to accept the grant[330] from Fox, and I
had in terms told Lord Bute that I would accept no favour from him,
though with great civility, and without acting in any shape as hostile
to him. Thus my resentment kept no deep root: and I can say with the
utmost truth, that as I afterwards, though never connected with him,
was on many occasions friendly to that great favourite, so no word
in these Memoirs to his prejudice has been dictated by a vindictive
spirit, but the whole narrative is faithfully the representation of
what I knew and heard of him. Infinite ill has he occasioned to this
country, in which light only it is my intention to pass sentence on his
character. In other respects, the meanness of his abilities and the
poorness of his spirit place him below resentment. His private virtues,
the long and bitter persecution he has undergone, and many domestic
misfortunes, would extract every sting which exact or necessary justice
did not sharpen. The last transaction I am going to mention flowing
notoriously from his dispensation, was of a nature not to be palliated
or forgotten. To see it in its full force of indignity offered to so
mighty a country, the reader must place himself at the moment when
England, triumphant over France and Spain, had annihilated their
navies, and sat sole arbitress of peace and war, absolutely secure that
Europe combined could not wrench her conquests from her, and sure of
proving her moderation by consenting to peace on almost whatever terms
she should please to dictate.
At that moment did a pusillanimous favourite not only make peace,
relinquishing the greater and most valuable part of our acquisitions,
but (what never entered into the imagination of distress and slavery
itself) he purchased that scandalous peace of the envoy of a little
prince, who was not even a party in the war! In short, it now came out,
that a pension on Ireland of one thousand pounds a year for thirty-one
years to Count Virri,[331] the Sardinian Minister, through whose hands
the real negotiation[332] had passed, was the price and tribute of that
shame which Lord Bute, by the treaty of Paris, heaped on Great Britain!
The very day on which the Favourite resigned the reins of government
died the man who, of all England, would perhaps have rejoiced the
most to behold that event. James Earl Waldegrave was carried off by
the small-pox, April 8th. With unbounded benevolence, and of the most
flowing courtesy to all men, Lord Waldegrave, whose penetration no
weakness could escape, nor art impose upon, though vice he overlooked,
and only abstained sometimes from connecting with black and bad
men,--Lord Waldegrave, I say, had been so thoroughly fatigued with
the insipidity of his pupil the King, and so harassed and unworthily
treated by the Princess and Lord Bute, that no one of the most
inflammable vengeance, or of the coolest resentment, could harbour
more bitter hatred and contempt than he did for the King’s mother
and favourite. This aversion carried him to what I scarce believed
my eyes when he first showed me--severe satires against them. He has
left behind him, too, some Memoirs[333] of the few years in which he
was governor to the Prince, that will corroborate many things I have
asserted, and will not tend to make these Anecdotes be reckoned unjust
and unmerciful.
Lord Waldegrave died most unseasonably for his own honour. He stood so
high in the esteem of mankind for probity, abilities, and temper, that,
if any man could, he might have accomplished a coalition of parties,
or thrown sense into that party, which, though acting for the cause
of liberty, rather wounded than served it, so ill were they formed
for counsel or conduct. Had he lived still longer, he must, by the
deaths of the chiefs, been placed incontestably at the head of that
party himself. Indeed, but just before his illness, he was much looked
up to by very different sets. Lord Bute himself had thought of him
for a considerable share on his own retreat; and, but the day before
Lord Waldegrave was seized with the small-pox, he had been offered
the Embassy to France or Lord-Lieutenancy of Ireland, both which he
peremptorily declined. And yet after his death the Court boasted they
had gained him,--a report much resented, and eagerly contradicted by
his friend the Duke of Cumberland. But let us now turn to the opening
of the new Administration.