OJntttElI HntBEratty ICihrarg 3tl)aca, JJcm ^ork BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME OF THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND THE GIFT OF HENRY W. SAGE 1891 /»;;.' DAT£ DUE DA 501.M°5Ts2l'""""'^ ^'"'"'^ llllllfli™™i,Si(l,?„JP.'3Ce-hunter, 3 1924 028 126 245 PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTER Cornell University Library The original of tiiis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924028126245 BUHP. noinxirr.iN PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTER A STUDY OF GEORGE BUBB ^ODINGTON LORD MEL- COMBE BY LLOYD SANDERS WITH SIXTEEN -ILLUSTRATIONS LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD NEW YORK : JOHN LANE COMPANY. MCMXIX A-1b4r^r y 1 TTIIXIAM OLOWBa AND SONS, LIMITED, LOUDON AND BUCOLEB, BSGLAND >^^ INTRODUCTION GEORGE BUBB DODINGTON is mostly remembered nowadays as one of the persons of importance in their day with whom Robert Browning " parleyed." His diary, which half -diverted, half- shocked our ancestors on its appearance as the eighteenth century was drawing to its close, is probably but little read. Yet it interested Browning ; though the poet, after belabouring Dodington with Darwinian and other arguments calculated to perplex a Georgian poUtician not a httle, dismissed him with : — Hence the scofif That greets your very name ; folk see but one Fool more, as well as knave, in Dodington. This judgment must be pronounced to err on the side of severity. Dodington may have been a knave, but he was no fool. All the leading men of the time, from the mighty Pitt down- wards, had recourse, on the contrary, to his advice and influence. If his character must be defined in a phrase, that phrase is suppUed by vi INTRODUCTION Lord Chesterfield. He was a coxcomb, a " blest coxcomb," A supreme conceit, a monstrous over- dressing both of body and mind led to his undoing, if, indeed, from the place-hunter's point of view he can be said to have been undone at aU. But a coxcomb can be an engaging creature, and in the following pages an attempt is made to portray Dodington as by no means destitute of the unheroic virtues. Dodington the host and patron was a much superior person to Dodington the place-hunter. His hospitality at Eastbury in Dorset and La Trappe, Hammersmith, may have been ostenta- tious, but it was sincere. He shone in conversa- tion, and though his wit seems to have been of a dehberate, formal kind, such specimens of it as have come down to us are unmistakably of the genuine brand. Above aU, he was a man of strong and steady friendships ; always ready with kind offices, and willing to forgive shghts. His will may be called an effusive document, yet there is a touch of real feehng about his bequests to Lord Halifax, Sir Francis Dashwood and Lady Hervey. But Dodington' s chief merit consisted in his long and close association with men of letters hke Edward Young, James Thom- son and Christopher Pitt. Given the acknow- ledged relations between patron and poet, it was altogether to his credit ; the give-and-take INTRODUCTION vii reflected honourably on both sides. It is true that in his later years he surrounded himself with a band of coarse sycophants, chief among whom were Paul Whitehead and the astonishing Dr. Thompson. His morals seem, in fact, to have degenerated after his wife's death ; yet up to the last he was capable of taking a farewell of Young by no means devoid of a certain elevation. In the reigns of George I and George II a wide gulf divided the few statesmen from the multitude of politicians. On the one side stood Earl Stanhope, Walpole, Pitt, of course, Carteret, and, to the present writer's mind Henry Pelham. On the other thronged the crowd which included even Lord Chesterfield, when he was in Opposi- tion, and which had in Dodington its most pronouncedly tjrpical member. These men talked loudly about their principles, but were governed by motives of faction. When in office they merely strove to keep their party together, when out of it they shrank from no means, however unscrupulous, for overthrowing a powerful Minister. Dodington exaggerated the faults of this personal system on its time-serving side. His deplorable Diary records, with unblushing complacency, the transference of his services from Pelham to Frederick, Prince of Wales, and his prostration before the Pelhams after the death of that viii INTRODUCTION Prince. He was rich, but he was dully ambi- tious, and any combination that did not include Dodington had, in his eyes, no right to exist. Yet redeeming features are to be found even in Dodington's politics. He was never for violent measures, except after Walpole's fall, but con- sistently tried to keep the Prince's Court within the bounds of reason. He resembled BoUngbroke in deploring the narrowness of the party system and the ungenerous proscription of the Tories ; the scheme of patriot kingship, which George III endeavoured to realise at his accession, had long been advocated by Dodington, and that on plausible grounds. His outlook on foreign affairs never wavered from first to last ; he was for keeping England free from Continental com- plications. Here, again, he was plausible, though, if the Hanoverian dynasty was to be maintained, unpractical. Above all, he had the courage on two occasions to stand up for the victims of popular resentment ; in the cases of Admiral Byng and of Lord George SackvUle. The aim of this volume is, in fine, not to defend Dodington — that would be absurd — but to explain him. I am indebted to the Controller of H.M. Stationery Office for permission to make use of the Reports on the collections of Miss Eyxe-Matcham and Mrs. Stopford-SackviUe, pub- lished by the Historical Manuscripts Commission, INTRODUCTION ix and to Mr. Paget Toynbee for leave to quote from Mrs. Paget Toynbee's well-known edition of Horace Walpole's "Letters." My gratitude is also due to the memory of the late Mr, A, M. Broadley, who placed his fine collection of engravings at my disposal for purposes of illus- tration, and supplied me with several unpub- lished letters, notably the highly characteristic one from Dodington to Dr. Thompson. The Rev. Charles T. Wilton, Vicar of Foy, near Ross, has been good enough to have copies made of the entries relating to the Bubb family in the parish registers, and of the inscriptions on the tombs in the chancel of the church. The Rev. J. N. Walsh, Vicar of Hammersmith, has kindly sent me a copy of the entry of Dodington' s burial in the register of Hammer- smith Parish Church. From Mr. Wilfred Whit- ten I have received many valuable suggestions, particularly as to Dodington's relations with men of letters. L. S. CONTENTS CHAPTEB I dodington's ahcestby The Dodingtons of Dodington — Sir Francis — A "Bloody Tyrant " — TTig estates sequestrated — An Indigent Sineourist — Jolm Doding- ton and Hester Temple — An Embassy and an Escapade — Besident at Venice — Death in the Cup — George Dodington and the East India Company — A Whig Of&oial — Eastbury — The Bubbs of Foy — Jeremiah Bubb, Apothecary — A Hint from Meredith CHAPTER II THE YOUTH OF GEOHGE BDBB At Winchester — Exeter College, Oxford — One of the " Nine Oxford Poets " — " An Ingenious Young Gentleman " — Bubb and George Stubbes — " The Laurel and the Olive " — A Student at Lincoln's Ttiti — On the Grand Tour — Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough — Friendship with the Duke and Duchess — A Man about Town — M.P. for Winchelsea 14 CHAPTEE III QEOBGE BUBB, PIiENIPOTEKTIABY " Le Sieur Bubb " — A King, a Queen, and a Cardinal — Bubb's Correspondents — A Commercial Treaty — A Bribe and its Non- Delivery — A Dog-Latin Letter — The Treaty Annulled — The Assiento — Human Merchandise — An Austrian Aggression — Stanhope's Diplomacy — Alberoni's Alarm — His Intrigues — ^A General Tarifi 2i xii CONTENTS CHAPTEE IV THE SEIZnBE OF SABDINIA PAOB Spanish Preparations — Bubb's Besignation and its Acceptance — Alberoni'a Conspiracies — The Barcelona Expedition — Addison's Despatch — Occupation of Sardinia — Alberoni's Evasions — Memorial to the Spanish King— Colonel William Stanhope- Audiences with Alberoni — An Envelope Beturned — Bubb's Departure — Fall of Alberoni il CHAPTEE V DODHtGTOK AND WALPOLE Death of George Dodington — An Heir to Wealth and Influence — The Dodingtonian Phalanx — Attachment to Walpole — Poetic Eulogies — "In power a Servant, out of power a Eriend "—Later Impressions — A Lord of the Treasury — A Day at the Treasury Board — A Clerk of the PeUs in Ireland — Work done by Deputy — "That Scold Swift" — Attacks which Failed — Walpole and the Opposition — Dodington's Disappointment. .... 55 CHAPTEE VI EASTBUEY An Active County Man — Arcade, Gardens and Bagnio — Horace Walpole and Cumberland at Eastbury — Lady Hervey's Visit — Dodington as Host — AEeconciler of Quarrels — A Mentor of Youth — " The Last Msecenas " — Stubbes and Pitt — Edward Yoimg — His Addresses to Dodington — Voltaire at Eastbury — Young's Epigram — Dodington and Thomson — Welstead — Dr. Johnson's Bebuff — " Bubo " and " Bufo " — Caricatures .... 71 CHAPTEE VII A PEINCE AND A DUKE Dodington and Spencer Compton — An Anonymous Letter — Frederick, Prince of Wales — "Your Glory" — A Loan and a Sneer — James Oswald — The Excise Bill — Dodington's Dismissal — An Invitation to Eastbury— The Prince's Allowance — Dodington Consulted — An Incorruptible — An Ode to Queen Caroline — John, Duke of Argyll — A Disorganised Opposition — Dodington in Caricatare —Fall of Walpole 96 CONTENTS xiii CHAPTEE VIII FKOM WALPOEB TO PEDHAM PAGE Scramble for Ofiaoe — The New Opposition — Chesterfield on Dodington — Codington's Activities — " The Claims of the Broad Bottom" — The Treaty of Worms — An "Epistle from John Moore" — Debate on the Hanoverian Troops — Dodington's Speech — "A Noble Despair " — Dodington and Oswald — Treasurer of the Navy — Prestonpans and Culloden — Dodington's Duties — Political Calm — The Prince's Overtures ..... 123 CHAPTEE IX PKBDBKICK, PBmCE OF WALES Dodington's Diary — Its History — Some Considerations — Dodington's Eesignatiou — Treasurer of the Chambers — First Minister at Carlton House — " The Great Something " — Dodington and Lord Egmont — Bemonstrances — A Horseless London — Death of the Prince — Servandoni 141 CHAPTEE X EA TEAPPE Dodington's VOla at Hammersmith — Its History — Dodington's Im- provements — The Sculpture Gallery- — ^His Marriage Acknow- ledged — Mrs. Strawbridge — Mrs. Dodington's Position and Death — The Monks of La Trappe — Young — Henry Pielding — James Balph — A Grub Street attack — Bichard Glover — Dr. Thompson — Paul Whitehead — Medmenham Abbey — "Chrystal". . 162 CHAPTER XI HENRY PELHAM The Weymouth Seats — Dodington and the Solicitor-General — - Pelham's Character — Boyal Eesentment — "A Little Pelham" — The Princess of Wales — Her Belations with the Duke of Cumberland — The Heir to the Throne — Dodington's Speculations on the Future — The Prince's Tutors — A " Strange Important Trifle " — " A Dreaming Session " — Lord Egmont and Bridgwater — Death of Pelham 182 xiv CONTENTS CHAPTER XII THB UDKB OP NEWCASTI.B PAGE Political Oonfusion — Dodington and Newcastle — Disappointment — The Loss of Bridgwater — The Duke's Prevarications — Dodington and the Princess — Lord Halifax — Dodington and Pox — Pitt's Perplexities— His Overtures to Dodington— Negotiations for Oface — Dodington at Newcastle House — "The Preliminaries" — Debate on the Subsidies — Dismissal of Pitt — Dodington Treasurer of the Navy again — Coldness of the Princess — Grow- ing Anxieties — Collapse of the Ministry 196 CHAPTER XIII CHAOS The Duke of Devonshire — Dodington out of Office — Admiral Byng — Dodington's Bold Speech — The Oath of Secrecy — Dodington and Fox — Pox as a Ministry-maker — Sir Thomas Eobinson — Lord Halifax's Duplicity — Dismissal of Temple and Pitt — The Inter- miuisterium — Dodington again Treasurer of the Navy — Newcastle's Shuffling — Dodington's Anxiety — Thrown over by Fox — Lord Bute — "In" or "Out" — Dodington's Eefleotions — Lord Halifax and the Duke of Newcastle 221 CHAPTER XIV THE END OF THE EEIGN The Newcastle-Pitt Ministry — Lord Halifax forgiven — Descents on the French Coast — General Bligh — His alleged " Letter to Pitt " — Dodington's Pamphlet — Pitt's Reprimand — Lord George Sackville — Trial by Court-Martial — A Royal Slight — Lord Bute — Dodington and the Favourite — Newcastle's Suspicions — Death of George 11. 237 CHAPTER XV dodington's last yeabs Dodington and Bute — The " Usurpation of Oligarchy " — Dodington's Peerage — "A very Young Lord" — Melcombe and Lord Shel- bume — Letters to the Duke of Newcastle — Churchill's Satire — Bentley's Play — The " Epistle " to Bute — Pitt's Resignation — Correspondence between Melcombe and Bute — " Raining Bishop- rics " — A Bid for Office — Letter to Dr. Thompson — Melcombe in the Cabinet — Tucker's Ingratitude — Meloombe's Farewell to Young — His Death — The Conditions of his Will — The Pate of La Trappe and Bastbury 249 AUTHORITIES . . . .287 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS FACING PAGE BuBB DODINGTON ....... Frontispiece The Babl of Staib 26 Lady Hbbvby 78 Edwabd Young and the Eael of Bute 84 "The Pebbiwigs" by Hogaeth 94 Facsimile Lettbe 102 " The Motion " 120 " The Olaims of the Bboad Bottom " 128 Pbedbbick, Pbinoe of Wales 146 Viscount Cobham 158 Paul Whitehead 178 Henby Pelham 184 Augusta, Princess op Wales ... ... 190 The Duke of Newcastle 198 Henby Fox 208 Sib Fbahcis Dashwood 274 PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTER PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTER CHAPTER I dodington's ancestry The Dodingtons of Dodington — Sir Francis — A " Bloody Tyrant" — His Estates sequestrated — ^An Indigent Sine- curist — John Dodington and Hester Temple — ^An Embassy and an Escapade — Resident at Venice — Death in the Cup — George Dodington and the E^ast India Company — A Whig Official — Eastbury — ^The Bubbs of Foy — Jere- miah Bubb, Apothecary — A Hint from Meredith. PEDIGREES, though apt to be a stumbKng- block to biography, cannot be altogether avoided ; so that of George Bubb Dodington may be dismissed as briefly as possible. On his mother's side, George Bubb, who subsequently assuming his uncle's name, became Dodington, sprang from an old Somerset stock. Even if we disregard the nebulous Norman ancestry provided for them by the county historian, CoUinson, the Dodingtons were established at Dodington, a hamlet lying under the Quantocks, some fourteen miles from Taunton, by the time that Edward I. ascended the throne. In 1386, B 2 4 PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTER and again in 1408, Thomas Dodyngton, the husband of Beatrice Bakeler and tenant-in-chief, made dispositions of his property. The first concerned the manor of Dodyngton, and a third of the manor of Bockenhill ; the second afiected six acres of land in Bockenhill and Dodyngton. Under the first disposition remainders were granted to Cicely and Roger Dodyngton and others ; under the second, John and Roger Dodyngton appear as sons, with remainders to the heirs of William Cloutesham the younger, presumably a son-in-law ; and Hugh Loterell, " chivaler " or knight, was one of the enfeoffers. In Loterell, or Luttrell, and Cloutesham we get names typical of the stag-hunting country. Under the Tudors the Dodingtons appear to have lived quietly on their estates, to which they made substantial additions. They re-emerged in the person of the redoubtable Sir Francis, whom Charles I. knighted as sheriff of Somerset, and who was one of the first to take up arms for the King. He was a member of the County Association for the Enforcement of Conformity, and Whitelocke relates that, meeting a minister on the road near Taunton, Sir Francis challenged him with, " Who art thou for, priest ? " " For God and his Gospel," was the reply. Whereupon Sir Francis shot him dead. This grim man won the approval of Clarendon for the energy with which he beat off DODINGTON'S ANCESTRY 5 an attack on a Royalist convoy near Bridgwater. He did no good to his cause, however, when he captured the small garrison of Woodhouse, near Warminster, and then and there hanged fourteen men, whom Whitelocke represents as honest, wealthy clothiers.* The Commonwealth having triumphed, the hand of the Government fell heavUy on Sir Francis. He was one of the twelve presented for perpetual banishment and confiscation. His estates were sequestrated, and pensions on them granted to the widows of some of his victims. Alice, his wife, complained that, though one-fifth of the estate had been given her as allowance, she could not enjoy it without special order, " so that she wanted bread." On September 26, 1650, Parliament ordered Sir Francis's lands to be sold, with the result that Mrs. Carawaye, one of the widows, fearing that her pension would cease, raised much lamentation and denounced Sir Francis as a " bloody tyrant." Lady Dodington did not long survive ; but John Dodington, a son, was allowed to buy back portions of the property, partly on his own account, partly in conjunction with his brother Christopher, who, after a spell of prison, had with difficulty convinced the Government as to his loyalty. * Whitelocke, " Memorials," 96 and 100 ; Clarendon, " Hist, of the RebeUion," Bk. VIII., section 114. 6 PATRON AND PLAGE-HUNTER CoUinson tells the pleasing story that, after the Restoration, Sir Francis returned from exile in France ; lived quietly on his wasted estate, and never could be prevailed upon to ask anything of the Crown. In plain fact he was a strenuous place-hunter. In 1669 he petitioned the Treasury for the Comptrollership of Customs at Mnehead. About the same time he obtained a Commissioner- ship of Appeals in the Excise, £200 a year in value, though he was incapable, having become a Roman Catholic, of executing it in person. The difficulty was solved by appointing a nephew as deputy at £50 a year, while Sir Francis pocketed the £150. He then attempted, but in vain, to exchange his place for a grant of £1500, that he might pay his debts ; but after his death the Commissionership was continued both to his son John, and his grandson, George, on account of the losses the family had sustained in the service of the Crown. Up to a certain point, John Dodington con- ducted his affairs more circumspectly than his father. He was a barrister of Lincoln's Inn, and married Hester, daughter of Sir Peter Temple, a capital match. As we have already seen, he was permitted to buy back part of the Dodington estates. In 1658 he purchased the Remem- brancer's office in the Exchequer, but owing to disputes with his predecessor he never touched DODINGTON'S ANCESTRY 7 more than six months' profit.* Standing well with both sides, he was appointed after the Restoration secretary to Lord Carbery, the Presi- dent of Wales. Nine years later he became secretary to the Italian embassy of Lord Faucon- berg, Cromwell's son-in-law, " being a very good linguist," wrote Arhngton, the Secretary of State, " and besides a very ingenious gentleman of fine parts." Unfortunately on his way to the south the ingenious gentleman came to inglorious grief. In Savoy, John Dodington met a French gentleman, and to him used unbecoming language of his Most Christian Majesty, Louis XIV. The indiscretion was reported ; Colbert, then French Ambassador in London, took up the matter in high dudgeon, and there was nothing for it but the loquacious secretary's dismissal. But the Duchess of Orleans, the sister of Charles II., was induced to intercede for him, and in July, 1670, Lord Fauconberg received information that he was forgiven by the Court of France. Three months later Dodington was appointed British Resident in Venice. Dodington remained on the Adriatic for two years, and seems to have been apt in business. But connivance with the contraband trade between Venice and Algiers necessitated his recall. In a * Collinson makes him eecretaiy to Thurloe, and commits other inaccuracies. 8 PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTER piteous letter to Williamson, the Clerk of the Council, he bewailed his former failures and im- plored further patronage. A drinking bout soon carried him off. With two other gentlemen he consumed five quarts of wine at the Bear, m Leadenhall Street, and as the King's letter-carrier, Thomas Derham, wrote to Williamson, they " fell immediately after drinking it into high fevers and deliriums, of which Mr. Dodington and another died, but on the third it had the effect of violent physic and 'tis thought he may escape." * The presumption must be that Podington had been looking upon the wine when it was red on the occasion of his outburst in Savoy. Hester Dodington, John Dodington' s widow, set forth a sad tale of domestic privation in her petition for the continuance of the precious Commissionership of Appeals in the Excise ; she had six children and but a narrow and encumbered estate left. Her son, George, however, was to re-establish the family fortunes. He went into the City, as we should say nowadays, and by 1695 had become a director of the East India Company. Yet in 1707 we find him, with an agility of conversion worthy of his nephew, George Bubb Dodington, prominent in the counsels of the rival New Company, f " Sir Gilbert * Cal. State Papers Dom., 1673-5, 44. t Unless, indeed, this is another Dodington — possibly a brother. GeorgeDodington,anyhow,becamerich through shaking the pagoda-tree. DODINGTON'S ANCESTRY 9 [Heathcote]," one of Governor Pitt's correspon- dents wrote, " is Sovereign of the New Company, and holds great sway in the City ; he is supported by Messrs. John Ward, Eyles, Podington and Shepherd." This corporation, with its head- quarters at Skinner's Hall, in Dowgate Street, was an essentially Whig concern, whose difEerences with the East India Company were settled next year under the arbitration of Lord Godolphin. George Dodington, one imagines, did pretty well out of the negotiations, for he became exceedingly rich. Not content with being an early specimen of the nabob, George Dodington aspired to political influence as well. In 1705 he became one of the members for Winchelsea, and enrolled the little Parliamentary band which he was to hand on to his nephew. With a house in Covent Garden, he had for a neighbour, Lord Orford, the gallant sailor who, as Sir Edward Russell, had won the battle of La Hogue, and who, after flirtations with Jacobitism, settled down as a pertinacious Whig. Dodington acted as his secretary, and with some reluctance accompanied Orford to Edinburgh as secretary to the English Commissioners for the Union with Scotland. In 1707 he went to Dublin as Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant, the Earl of Pembroke, and made the acquaintance of Swift and Archbishop King. He was thought to 10 PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTER be " full of high opinions, probity and application, but not to have the least care of the officials under him." * But Dodington soon returned to his patron, Lord Orford, who, in 1710, succeeded in getting him on to the Admiralty Commission. Though the Tories ousted him two years later, he returned to office after the accession of George I., with Orford as First Lord, and thus could fairly consider that his ambitions as a placeman were fulfiUed. Apart from his wealth and his politics, George Dodington cannot be said to have impressed himself very definitely on the State papers. In addition to his house in Covent Garden, he com- missioned Sir John Vanbrugh to build him a huge mansion named Eastbury, at Tarrant Gun- ville, near Blandford. It had been barely began by 1720, the date of his death, but his nephew eventually finished it at the cost of £140,000. He had a stud farm at Brompton Park, with an Arab horse as its principal attraction, and kept at Covent Garden a collection of coins and medals, valued at £3000 or £4000. t Little is to be learnt of his character beyond that he was honest and severe, and that his chiefs, notably Lord Orford, held him in regard, and readily helped his nephew for his sake. He was one of the many who lent * " Correspondence of Jonathan Swift," ed. F. Ebington Ball, I,, 10. t T. Heame, " CoUections," VII., 167. DODINGTON'S ANCESTRY 11 money to Richard Steele, and when payment was refused he prosecuted the debtor.* But though he may have carried his business habits into his acquaintanceships, Dodington was generous to his relations. He had besides no family by his wife, Eleanor Bull, daughter of an M.P. for Bridgwater. He was in fact an ideal uncle for young George Bubb. Young George Bubb must have turned with some repugnance from the Dodingtons to his paternal ancestry. From various Oxford matricu- lations it may be gathered that the Bubbs were a middle-class family of Gloucestershire and Here- fordshire. And of them George Bubb's grand- father, Jeremiah Bubb, attained positions of a certain importance. After a first marriage, no record of which remains, he married as his second wife, a widow, Mary Abrahall, on IVIay 15, 1677 ; and her monument in the chancel of the church at Foy on the Wye ingenuously sets forth that — " Here rests the Body of Mary daughter of George Abrahall Cler : who was first married to Paule Abrahall of Ingestone Eqr., by whom she had no issue, afterwards to the Honble CoU. Jeremiah Bubb Gent. Usher to his sacred Majesty King William and governour of his Majesty's City and garisson of Carlyle, by whom shee left issue one Sonne and two daughters, shee departed this life 18 May [1689]." * Aitken's " Life of Steele," I., 277. 12 PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTER The Colonel, Usher and Governor also represented Carlisle in ParUament from January, 1688-89, until his death on February 28, 1691-92. The son by this second marriage was Scuda- more Bubb, who died when he was a mere boy. Of the daughters, Elizabeth, born in 1679, was married to a clergyman ; and Judith, born in 1688, served as housekeeper to her relative, Kyrle, the Man of Ross. She must thus have witnessed those pleasant scenes drawn by Pope — " Behold the market-place with poor o'erspread ! The Man of Ross dividea the daUy bread : He feeds yon alms-house, neat, but void of state. Where Age and Want sit smiling at the gate. Him portioned maids, apprenticed orphans bless' d, The young who labour, and the old who rest." * At her death on Februazy 7, 1725-26, " Mistress " Judith Bubb was buried in'^.the chancel of Foy Church. 7 George Bubb's father, anr^ther Jeremiah Bubb, who must have been 3ud.'ith's step-brother, and a son of the first marriage, is said by Horace Walpole to have been an apothecary of Carlisle, but a writer in Hutchins's " History of Dorset," who has a good deal of local knowledge, calls him with greater likelihood an apothecary of Weymouth. His social position would have been higher than that of a modern dispensing chemist ; but he must have been a bit of an adventurer to have secured, » " Moral Essays," Epistle III., 262-267. DODINGTON'S ANCESTRY 13 as he did, the hand of Mary Dodington, George Dodington's only sister. Fancy suggests an elope- ment contrived by the dashing apothecary from " the Bath " or some other fashionable resort. George Dodington, anyway, seems to have made the best of the business, since he accepted not only his nephew, George, who was born in 1691, but his brother-in-law as well. In 1707, when the boy matriculated from Exeter College, Oxford, the father is described as "of London, esquire," and esquire meant something in those days. By February, 1710-11, when George entered as a student at Lincoln's Inn, Jeremiah was dead. His name had been softened to Jeremie — a pretty touch — ^and he was described as " late of Foy co. Hereford arm. deed." But as the parish registers do not contain his name, he clearly was not buried a t Foy, and it looks as if he died in London. Jeremiah Bubb died when his son was barely twenty. Yet over the whole of his child's career he exercised the same subtle influence as did the Great Mel over Evan Harrington's. Strive to ignore it though he might, George Bubb Dodington never ceased to be a Bubb, and several passages in his life prove him to have been a true son of Jeremiah, otherwise Jeremie. CHAPTER II THE YOUTH OF GEORGE BUBB At Winchester— Exeter College, Oxford— One of the " Nine Oxford Poets " — " An Ingenious Young Gentleman " — Bubb and George Stubbes— " The Laurel and the Olive " —A Student at Lincoln's Inn— On the Grand Tour- Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough — Friendship vdth the Duke and Duchess — ^A Man about Town — M.P. for Winchelsea. FORTUNE smiled from the first on George, son of Jeremiah and Mary Bubb. After a childhood about which nothing is known, he engaged in the studies of good learning as a Commoner at Winchester College, where Dr. Nicholas was Warden, and Dr. Thomas Cheyney, Head Master. He may have entered the school in 1703, but no copy of the Long Roll for that year is believed to exist. In the following year, at any rate, he was in Fifth Book, and in 1706 senior of the two Commoner prefects. Those were not altogether prosperous years in the history of Winchester. As in most educational establish- ments, Jacobitism worked like an unruly leaven, and there were quarrels between the Warden and THE YOUTH OP GEORGE BUBB 15 Fellows, culminating in actions at law two years after Bubb left the school. Still Commoners increased in number, from twenty-eight to about fifty. They seem to have lived in Chamber Court, and were not, as was the case some thirty years afterwards, boarded in the town with their tutors, where by gambling, cock-fighting and tavern-life, they acquired " a poHte taste in fashionable vice," while learning was confined to College. George Bubb, at any rate, became an excellent classical scholar, with Tacitus for his favourite author ; and throughout his life his strongest and best friendships were with Wyckehamists. We may take it that he escaped the Jacobite heresy ; his uncle would have seen to that.* From Winchester, George Bubb proceeded to Exeter College, Oxford, whence, at the age of sixteen, he matriculated on July 10, 1707. He remained on the books as a Gentleman Commoner until November 23, 1710. f After he had been in residence about a year, George, Prince of Denmark, Queen Anne's husband died, and the University commemorated the event in a volume of Latin verse. George Bubb was a contributor, and he subsequently republished his Alcaics in a folio sheet, with very fine head- and taU-pieces and a misprint or two, evidently at his own expense. • Winchester Long Rolls, ed. C. W. Holgate ; A. F. Leach, " History of Winchester College " ; A. Audrey Ford, " Li Praise of Winchester." t Foster, " Alumni Oxonienses." 16 PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTER The copy was entitled "Ad Somnum," "To Sleep " ; and George Bubb's opening lines may be thus translated — " Sleep, sweet influence on lovers, thou who art present to soothe the breasts of maidens with thy kindly bough, thou who often bringest back to me my elusive Corinna, come hither, leaving the sunless caverns, with their carpet of flowers ; come hither on thy silent oar, and bring with thee the dewy Slumbers, thine own folk. Anon gently bending over Anne, disperse the care indwelling in her breast, and with thy gentlest bonds enchain her stubborn eyes." * Thomas Hearne, not yet ejected from the librarian- ship of the Bodeleian for his Jacobite opinions, highly approved ; the copy of verses was " very good," and its author " an ingenious young gentleman." t "Quite up to beta 'plus'" would probably be the modern verdict, in spite of the violent intrusion of Corinna. * Somne, blandum Numen Amantibus Praesens amico pectora Virginum Mulcere Ramo, qui fugacem Saepe mihi revocas Corinnam i Hue Antra linquens Sole carentia Stratumque florem, remigio citus Adses silenti, roscidosque Adde, Tuum Populum, Sopores. Paulisper Annse lenitur incubana Dissolve Curas pectoris Incolas Et moUicellis pervicaoes Illaquees oculos catenis, •j- Hearne, " CoUeotions," I., 38<5, THE YOUTH OF GEORGE BUBB 17 George Bubb was perforce enrolled among the nine Oxford poets immortalised to the distich — Alma novem genuit celebres Ehedecyna poetas Bubb, Stubb, Grubb, Crabb, Trapp, Young, Carey, Tickell, Evans.* Of the band, Edward Young, of the " Night Thoughts," had left Winchester a year before Bubb entered the school, and after being a commoner of New College, and gentleman commoner of Corpus, was nominated in 1708 to a law fellowship at All Souls', His friendship with Bubb, after- wards Dodington, was only severed by death. Thomas Tickell, whose chief claims to remembrance are as Addison's friend and as the author of the well-known elegy on his death, was about the same time chosen a fellow of Queen's, his college. He too was on cordial terms with Dodington for several years after they both left the University. Young and Tickell are the only ones of the nine with whose poetry posterity has at all concerned itself, though Carey was the author of " Sally in our Alley," and with theirs not overmuch. Bubb and Stubb, otherwise George Stubbes, however, formed an intimate association which was not without its amusing side. Stubbes was by several years the senior of the two ; he was the son of a Wiltshire parson, and a fellow of Exeter College. In 1710 he deliberately perpetrated an * Percy's " Reliques," Series III., Bk. IIL, and Notes and Queries, May U, 1861. C 18 PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTER allegorical poem, entitled " The Laurel and the Olive," and as a tribute of afEection "inscrib'd" it to his well-to-do young friend, " George Bubb, Esq." George Bubb was not slow to return the compliment in an address " To the Author." In his downright way he assured Stubbes that — " Uniival'd Charms bloom in your matchless Song Sweet as smooth G[ar]th, and bold as nervous y[oung]. So strong the pleasing Ray, so fierce the fire. You warm the Coward, and the Brave inspire. The earthiest, most inanimated Mass That shook Inglorious at th' Inspiring Brass Would Glory now thro' Seas of Blood pursue And smile at Danger to be sung by you." After this eulogy of Stubbes as a moral embroca- tion, one is not surprised to find Bubb concluding with — " AohiUes lives and Homer still delights Whilst Addison records, and ChmohiO. fights. This happy Age each Worthy shall renew. And all dissolved in pleasing Wonder, view In Ann Phihppa, Chaucer shine in yon.^' But alas ! Stubbes was no Chaucer ; he simply represented the so-called Augustan age at its vapidest. " The Laurel and the OHve " opens with the usual vision in the usual glad^ ; the tyrants of the " ravish'd laurel " — Ninus and his Warrior Queen, Xerxes, Ammon and Cortez — are contrasted with the warriors of the olive- Cyrus, Scipio, Alcides, "Immortal Nassau," Themistocles and Perseus — and a declamatory passage studded with " Marlbro," " Anna," ^■i Bellona " and '-' Lutetia " brings the thing to a THE YOUTH OF GEORGE BUBB 19 merciful conclusion. Yet severe criticism of Bubb and Stubb would be out of place. They were both young, and both no doubt were immensely pleased with themselves. It is affecting to think of the agonised rehearsals, eased, let us trust, by the college port, the joint production must have undergone before it was committed to print. " And Venus smil'd thro' the grim Face of War" was their pet line ; it was by Stubb, and Bubb quoted it with rapture. George Bubb did not take a degree; young men of fashion as often as not did not trouble to do so. But on February 28, 1710-11, he was entered as a student at Lincoln's Inn, another weU-trodden avenue to polite accomplishment.* Here again the process remained incomplete, for he cannot have eaten many dinners before he started on the grand tour, furnished no doubt by his uncle with a full purse and good introductions. "He had travelled farther," wrote Lord Shelburne, who observed him closely in his old age, " and with greater observation than was usual at that time." f His correspondence shows that he spent some months in Paris, where he made influential acquaintances at Court — trust him for that ! — and became an admirable French scholar, writing the language as easily as his own. By-and-by * Records of Lincohi's Inn, Vol. L t Lord Fitzmaurice's " Shelburne," L, 99. 20 PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTER he reached Italy, and was converted into an Italianate Englishman — a good deal, it must be confessed, in the rococo style. After his return home it pleased him to fill his mansions with Italian statues, and to style his bath-house at Eastbury a bagnio. As everywhere, he got to know the great, and was careful to keep up a correspondence with them, alleviated by presents. In later years he is to be found sending rare volumes to the bibliophile Cardinal Albani. Sir Horace Mann served him as an invaluable parcels delivery office ; in return the Ambassador acknow- ledged " the every way magnificent book on the ruins of Palmyra with the pretty works in steel." * As an amateur of art, Dodington may have affected floridity, but he was sincere. On his way home Dodington passed through Antwerp, and was presented to Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, still smarting under her disgrace at Court. She said to him, " Young man, you come from Italy, they tell me of a new invention there called caricature drawing. Can you tell me somebody that will make me a caricature of Lady Masham . . . that I may send it to the Queen to give her a right idea of her new favourite ? " | * Ad. MSS. 38,091 ; Sir Horace Mann's Letters to Bubb Dodington, passim. These letters, a good deal abbreviated, appear in Hist. MSS. Com. Reports ; Various Collections, Vol. VI. t Fitzmaurice's " Shelbume," I., 99. The word " caricature," how- ever, had been used earlier in this country, THE YOUTH OF GEORGE BUBB 21 This was in 1711 ; and four years afterwards when George Bubb had started on his travels again, he sent a letter, evidently of a facetious nature, from Madrid to the Duke and Duchess, Their joint reply was most gracious. The Duchess gave him a cordial invitation to one of her country houses, adding " to tell you the truth I am simple enough to like that sort of life much better than any Court." After a fling in Atossa's manner at " the last honest Ministry " — that of Harley and Bolingbroke, she concluded, with an urbanity unlike Atossa's — " Pray let me know if there is anything worth buying for me in any place you come thro' in your way home that can come without trouble to you ; if there is I will return your money, for I love to buy anything that is pritty and usefuU, but in this great affair I must desire you to consult a little with the Ambassador [Sir Paul Methuen], which you won't take ill since you will remember that at Antwerp you did not so much depend on your own experience as not to employ me." The great Duke added — " Lady Marl, letter is so very long that I must onely take this oppertunity of thanking you for your kind remembrance and I desir that you will be so good as to make my sincere compliments to my Ld Ambassador." * George Bubb had evidently made the best of impressions on their Graces. Meanwhile George Bubb had been returned on January 25, 1714-15, at his uncle's behest, by * Eg. MSS. 2170, ff. 21-24. 22 PATRON AND PliACE-HUNTER the obedient borough of Winchelsea. We can imagine that no false modesty prevented him from making his maiden speech on the first available opportunity, but in truth the record is lacking, A glimpse of him as a man about town, however, is given in a letter from Lord Stanhope, after- wards the famous Lord Chesterfield, who, living in Bloomsbury Square, was a near neighbour of Bubb and his uncle. Writing to Bubb abroad, he declared that the gay part of the town was much more flourishing than Bubb left it. BaUs and masquerades had taken the place of duU formal visiting days, and punning was on the increase.* The young man frequented the society of the wits. In his old age he afEected to be the last survivor of the Augustan era. Thus Richard Bentley, a son of the great scholar, addressed to him, after he had become a peer, a poetic " Epistle," in which this adroit flattery occurred — " To you, my Lord, this notion I submit. Who knew and helped to make this age of wit, Mix'd with those demigods in verse and prose, Congreves and Addisons and Garths and Rowes." f Elderly recollections are of course treacherous, and it may be that the acquaintance was not quite so extensive as imagination pictured it. Still, so far as dates go, there is no reason why George Bubb should not have visited Congreve in his * Chesterfield's "Letters," ed. Bradshaw, 11.. 669. t " The New Foundling Hospital for Wit," VI., 97. THE YOUTH OF GEORGE BUBB 23 valetudinarian decline ; he may have been a member of Addison's " little senate " at Button's cofEee-house ; he may have known the physician- poet Garth, and he may have associated with the poet-laureate and creator of " the gay Lothario," Nicholas Rowe. George Dodington, we may suppose, was on the watch to promote his nephew's fortunes, nor was it long before an unexpected vacancy occurred. Sir Paul Methuen, the diplomatist, who by his treaty with Portugal had made port wine a British institution, had barely reached Madrid to straighten out the things left crooked by the Treaty of Utrecht, when his health broke down. He poured out his woes to General Stanhope, the Secretary of State, diagnosing his complaint now as an " inward decay " with loss of stomach as a symptom, now as an apoplectic fit. He begged to be recalled, or at all events to have a partner in his overwhelming labours, and was told that George Bubb, aged twenty-four, was to succeed him.* The appointment would seem astounding if made in these days of slow diplomatic pro- motion ; but those were the times of a bright young amateurism largely explained by the facts that in despotic Courts an ability to make " a leg" or turn out an ode was almost as important as a mastery of treaties and conventions. * R. 0. State Papers Foreign, Spain, 83 ; Methuen to Stanhope, May and June, 1715. CHAPTER III GEORGE BUBB, PLENIPOTENTIARY " Le Sieur Bubb "—A King, a Queen, and a Cardinal— Bubb's Correspondents — ^A Commercial Treaty — ^A Bribe and its Non-Delivery— A Dog-Latin Letter— The Treaty Annulled — The Assiento — Human Merchandise — An Austrian Aggression — Stanhope's Diplomacy — ^Alberoni's Alarm — His Intrigues — A General Tariff. IE SIEUR BUBB," as he was officially styled, arrived at Madrid early in J June, 1715, and found there the faithful Stubbes, who had gone out with Methuen as his chaplain. By the 28th Bubb had received his credentials as Envoy Extra- ordinary, and Methuen his revocation. Methuen, however, lingered in Spain, and was not granted his audience of leave until August 26. It speaks weU for both men that harmony reigned at the British Embassy under the dual control. While forwarding the necessary papers, kind old Orford wrote to Bubb, " I wish you good success in your negosations, tho' by all I can learne, there is very littell appearance of restoring that trade in the GEORGE BUBB, PLENIPOTENTIARY 25 manner it formerly was. However, you will doe the best you can."* The Envoy Extraordinary had indeed a di£&cult hand to play. Acting on an economic theory which regarded gold and wealth as identical, the Spanish Government set their faces against British commerce ; British sailors were maltreated in the Spanish Indies and British merchants super-taxed and insulted in Spanish ports. Our own attitude, it must be confessed, was, " Be my brother or I will slay thee." The Spaniards complained besides that their priests were excluded from Gibraltar and Minorca on the pretext of spying. With causes of friction abounding, Bubb had to deal with a peculiarly impracticable Court. PhiKp V., the French Prince whom the Treaty of Utrecht had recognised as sovereign, was devout, melan- choly and lethargic with a double dose of Bourbon lethargy, yet when his royal dignity was touched he developed an immutable obstinacy. His second wife, Elizabeth Farnese, daughter of the Duke of Parma, had Papal blood in her veins, and brought a training in statecraft to support her Italian pretensions. The ostensible Minister of State was Cardinal del Giudice ; a typical Spaniard, dilatory and obscurantist. But, meanwhile, the Envoy from Parma, the Queen's mentor, was stealthily acquiring control over aflEairs. He was the son of * Eg. MSS, 2170, 1 23. 26 PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTER a market-gardener, a dwarf with a large head, who could conceal the mind of a MachiaveUi under the manners of a bufioon ; in short, he was the famous Count, afterwards Cardinal, Alberoni. George Bubb threw himself into the coU with abundant energy. He plied Cardinal del Giudice with representations ; it may be doubted, in fact, if Spain ever housed a more truculent Englishman until George Borrow invaded it on behalf of the British and Foreign Bible Society. His pen flew over paper. He established a jovial correspon- dence with the Earl of Stair, our Ambassador in Paris, that great gentleman who charmed the French Court by his graces while he foiled Jacobite designs by the methods of a peculiarly unscrupu- lous detective. Thus Bubb wrote — " Methuen's cook is so very much out of order that he dare not stay with me, and what would be strange anywhere else, I cannot get one here. I must beg of your lordship to let your mattr^ d'hote! use his endeavours to send me one. I will take care of his expenses hither, and do not much care what I give him, if he be a very good one ; I shall be very glad if it could be one that had any notion of our English cleanliness. One thing he must know, which is a very extraordinary one, and that is to do pretty well with almost nothing at all, for we have hardly anything here to eat, and less (I think) of what is necessary for a good cook to do anything with well. I believe one that has lived with general officers, and been used to THE KAKI, l)|- STAIR GEORGE BUBB, PLENIPOTENTIARY 27 make a shift with what he could get would be most proper." And later on — " I acquitted myself of your lordship's com- mission to the lady yesterday with great dexterity and success, for though I am unfortunate in my own affairs, I am a very lucky second. I am to return you a great many compUments. I think she is the most devote person I ever was acquainted with of her age and nation ; I wish I may ever be so happy as to be tolerably well with anything so holy, for I am sure the edifying things one must sometimes hear must expatiate all the little faux pas that one may happen to make. ' I beg your lordship's pardon, and shall say no more on this subject. May be I do it wrong, for the truth is, we are such a pack of frightful ugly fellows here that we are capable of making a saint of any woman living.* Bubb kept in close touch with the Commander of the Mediterranean Squadron ; Colonel Stanhope Cotton, the Governor of Gibraltar, sent him ponderous jocosities of the messroom type ; from Lord Forbes, a despondent Governor of Minorca, where the defences had been scandalously neglected, he received long recitals of anxieties. Bubb's instructions enjoined him to rectify the grievances of British traders by means of a new commercial treaty. Acting in concert with the Dutch Ambassador, Baron Ripperda, who was presently to enter Spanish service and to become * J. M. Graham, " Annals of the . . . Earls of Stair," L, 270; and II., 332. 28 PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTER a minor Alberoni, he put vigorous pressure on Cardinal del Giudice. But before long he reported in cipher to General Stanhope, on the authority of his Dutch colleague, that " Alberoni, the Parmese envoy, who had absolute control over the Queen, and whose only object was money," would procure a treaty settling all difficulties if he could receive 4000 pistoles on the day of the signature and 10,000 on the day of ratification — in all some £9000.* Stanhope demurred a little, but on October 19 he replied that " out of regard for the person for whom I have a singular respect having been personalhe acquainted with him some years agoe " — while prisoner after the battle of Brihuega — ^he had prevailed on George I. " to consent to your promising him 10,000 pistoles, 4000 to be given him on the signing of the Treaty and 6000 at the ratification." He added in a barely legible postscript, " I would not advise you to break off for 4000 pistoles more." f After the first delays, the negotiations marched rapidly. Alberoni swept Cardinal del Giudice aside, and before the end of November, Bubb was in direct communication with him. The Spaniards at first put the treaty into Latin — " the worst piece of Latin," moaned the scholar Bubb, " that * Eg. MSS. 2170, fi. 195-198. A French cipher was used, but fortunately the decipherings have been preserved among Bubb's papers. t Ibid., ff. 220-^21. GEORGE BUBB, PLENIPOTENTIARY 29 ever appeared since the monks' time " — but it was finally written in French and Spanish. After a thousand wranglings it was signed on December 14. Five days previously Bubb had duly drawn the 4000 pistoles, and he wrote home for the balance of 10,000 pistoles on the 15th.* So pleased was the British Government, that he received an additional allowance of £3 per diem, and was raised to the rank of Plenipotentiary. He had done very well, for Stanhope, who supervised the military measures against the Jacobite Rebel- lion, was too busy to send him instructions. Bubb had to rely on himself, and the friendly advice of Lord Stair. Commercial treaties are an acquired taste, and therefore Dodington's Treaty, as it was called, may be curtly dismissed. In brief, it put an end to the ambiguities of the Treaty of Utrecht, and replaced British subjects on the footiag for trade they had occupied under the Convention of 1667. The Spaniards were prevented from discriminating in favour of the French, particularly by means of export duties on Spanish wool. Here, at the risk of some digression, we may dispose of two curious sequels to Dodington's Treaty, which came to light after he had left Spain. The first concerned the bribe of 14,000 pistoles. In 1718, Earl Stanhope, as he had then * Ibid., fE, 312 and 334. 30 PATRON AND PLAGE HUNTER become, paid a hasty visit to Spain, in the futile hope of averting war. His conversation with Alberoni turned on the commercial treaty, and the Cardinal complained more than once that he had been reproached with having taken money to carry it through. After some fencing. Stanhope informed him that Bubb had declared that he had handed over 14,000 pistoles to Ripperda. Where- upon, Stanhope reported to Secretary Craggs, the Cardinal displayed emotion ; he declared that the matter must be cleared up, and that there had been rascally transactions between those two persons. Stanhope's solution to Craggs was that Bubb had been the dupe of Ripperda. Three days afterwards he forwarded to Craggs without comment a copy of a letter written by Ripperda to Bubb in dog-Latin of the turnspit breed, which may be thus translated : — Most illustrious and high-born Sir, Understanding that your Excellency says that you gave me 14,000 doubloons on account of the Treaties begun between Spain and England, I must say to that statement that it is contrary to truth, and out of keeping with the good faith and character of a man of good breeding. Hoping to have the occasion of refuting it, etc.* * Perillustris et generose Domine, Intelligens quod vestra Dominatio dioit mihi dedisae quatuordeoim millia doblorum ratione Tractatuum initorum inter Hispaniam et Angliam, debeo ad iUud dicere illud veritate non esse congruum et non convenire cum bonS, fide et indole Hominis bene nati. Sperens habere occasionem illud diluendi, etc. E. O. State Papers Foreign, Spain, 88 ; Stanhope to Craggs, August 22 and 25, 1718. GEORGE BUBB, PLENIPOTENTIARY 31 At this interesting point, the outbreak of war brought the correspondence to an abrupt con- clusion. Who shaU decide between these three worthies, Bubb, Ripperda, and Alberoni ? I wholly acquit Bubb ; his circumstances were easy, and the risk of appropriating the money would have been far too great. There was, besides, no sign of corruption about him at this period of his life. But it is a nice, or nasty, point between Alberoni and Ripperda. Comedian and inventor of grievances though Alberoni was, I am inclined to acquit him. Bubb, as we shaU soon see, was evidently anxious about the precise destination of the pistoles, and would seem to have had no receipt to show. Stanhope was probably right ; he had been duped by Ripperda, a thorough-paced rascal, and shrank from the rupture which the exposure of his knavery would entail. The second sequel concerned the Dodington Treaty itself. The question of its renewal came up in 1750. The Envoy, it was noted, had dealt with the pretensions of the Biscayners, who, enjoying self-government, could not be brought within a general arrangement, by confirming a private agreement which had been made in 1700 with the magistrates of Santander. This device was considered derogatory to the dignity of a Power like Great Britain, and in the and a new 32 PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTER treaty was substituted for the old. The sanguine young man, Bubb, had evidently been over-hasty with his negotiations, still it was something to have concluded a treaty at all.* To return to the Plenipotentiary at Madrid. The Commercial Treaty had barely been signed, when Stanhope directed Bubb to press for a better working of the Assiento, or contract for the supply of negro slaves to the Spanish Indies. This arrangement was carried out by the Assiento Company, a concern subsidiary to the South Sea Company. Bubb was therefore involved in a double series of negotiations, with the Spanish Government and with the South Sea Company, whose prodigious memorial reached him on February 9, n.s., 1716. Stanhope had previously written to him that if " a present well-lodged " could bring about a settlement of the Assiento, the directors were prepared to put down two or three or even four thousand pistoles to that end, Bubb eventually declined the suggestion, " that way of negotiating being too ticklish for a man of my age and inexperience to engage in." t Once bit ! He roundly characterised the Treaty as ' ' one of the worst I ever saw, and the most efEectually calculated for captiousness and chicane"; and with some difficulty reduced the Company's * Coxe's " Pelliam Administration," II., 116 note, and " Memoirs of the Bourbon Kings of Spain," chaps, xxiv. and 1. I Eg. MSS. 2171, fi. 89 and 332. GEORGE BUBB, PLENIPOTENTIARY 33 memorial to three heads. Those heads set forth a subtle system of obstruction on the part of the Spanish colonial authorities. When the Com- pany's annual ship reached the South American ports from Africa with its cargo of slaves, she found the markets closed. The negroes therefore had to be sold along the coast at a great loss, and their mortality was high. No warehouses were provided for the storage of the goods remaining on the Company's hands, which it had been unable to dispose of in Africa for the purchase of the negroes, and they were in consequence ruined. Bubb's remedies were : (1) The establishment of an annual fair at Cartagena, Porto Bello, or Vera Cruz in time for the arrival of the ship ; and if that fair was not held the Company should have the right to dispose of its merchandise within three months. (2) The Company should have the right to store its remaining goods in the Spanish King's warehouse in the Indies. (3) All duties anterior to May 1, 1714, should be wiped out as compensation for the obstruction of the sale of the negroes by the Spaniards. An instrument was drawn up on those lines, the three months being extended to four, and the right of warehousing granted at Buenos Ayres ; it was signed on May 26, 1716, and ratified on June 12. Thus was confirmed one branch of that odious traffic which flourished until, nearly D 34 PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTER a hundred years later, the righteous Wilberforce stormed vested interests and procured its abolition. It is a relief to meet a note of humanity in the discussion of this commerce, and Bubb must have the credit for it. He advised the Company to send for negroes often and in small quantities rather than in great numbers at once, " which must force you to seU them very cheap, or expose yourselves to have great quantities die on your hands, and wiU prove a considerable loss to you, as well as a great hardship upon the poor slaves." * In a more calculating spirit he informed Stanhope that the Company could sell 4800 negroes at from 250 to 300 doUars a head ; their clear gaia would be £500,000 at least. f The see-saw of European pohtics much afEected the course of these negotiations ; at times Alberoni got free play for his reforming instincts, at others the reactionaries headed by Cardinal del Giudice held the upper hand. Bubb expressed his views on the European situation with much freedom, nor was he sparing in sensational reports. Thus learning that the death of Louis XIV. was imminent, he wrote in cipher to Stanhope on September 6, 1715, that the King of Spain would in all probability start for Paris immediately, to seize either the throne or the Regency, and so * Eg. MSS. 2172, f. 44. t Eg. MSS, 2170, t 124. GEORGE BUBB, PLENIPOTENTIARY 35 bring about the union of the two Idngdoms. He suggested, rather lamely, that he should demand permission to accompany King Philip, and that if it was refused he should stay at Madrid until further orders. The outbreak of the Jacobite Rebellion evoked transports of loyalty from him, which George I. seems to have appreciated, since it was in this year that he was appointed to the honorary post of Vice-Admiral of Somerset. He kept a close watch on the Pretender's partisans, and in due course obtained the Prince's exclusion from the Spanish dominions. In a general way young Bubb was strongly anti-French ; and when the Austrian Emperor nearly precipitated a European war by seizing Novi from the Genoese, our Ambassador at Madrid, while disclaiming " to make new schemes of power," promptly proceeded to do so — " If the Emperor continues [his aggressions], he wrote, we might entirely ruin the French power here and divide the nations for ever ; so highly oblige the Queen [of Spain] (who is absolute) that his Majesty [George I.] would be looked upon as the protector of Spain, be more favoured in the Camera than ever, and make this Grown enter into the guarantee of the succession in his Royal family, the strengthening of which alone, while there is any virtue in England will be more valuable to us than anything under Heaven, and must endear his Majesty and his administration to the nation more than any other considerations whatsoever, to say nothing of the joint guarantee 36 PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTER of the Barrier for the Dutch which it is possible Spain may be brought to also, and which I look upon as an essential, though remote part of our security." * Nor were compliments to the Queen of Spain neglected. On Bubb's suggestion, as she was a fine horsewoman. Stanhope sent out seven " paddes " or palfreys. Two were injured during the voyage, but Alberoni and Bubb exercised the others outside the windows of the Roj^al palace. Bubb's was distinctly a policy ; England, Spain and Holland against Austria and France, an alliance strong by sea if weak by land. But that remarkable man, Earl Stanhope, entertained other views. Though bold to rashness on the battle- field, as his capture at Brihuega during the war of the Spanish Succession had shown, and too hot- tempered to be a safe leader of the House of Commons, he served his country well when he took up his pen. By a series of defensive treaties he secured the Protestant succession, which our ancestors dearly cherished, and the integrity of Hanover, for which our ancestors cared nothing at all. Stanhope's clear-cut system was based on the doctrine of the balance of power, and hinged on a strong friendship with France — ^the object of Bubb's aversion — as represented by the » Eg. MSS. 2171, f. 133. GEORGE BUBB, PLENIPOTENTIARY 37 Regent Orleans and his ape the Abbe Dubois. The weak point was that defensive treaties with various discordant Powers inevitably tended to become oflEensive against one or another of them. " It seems to me," wrote Bubb with some humour to Lord Stair, " that we shall at last have so many allies that we shall hardly have one friend in the world." Thus when Alberoni got wind that a defensive league had been concluded between Great Britain, Holland and the Emperor, he promptly took alarm. He represented the King of Spain as furious ; where was he with his English and Dutch ? "I have left my old friends," Philip was reported to have told his Minister, " relying on your word ; this the result ; I am at present friendless ; fine advice you have given me ! " So much Bubb had on April 27, 1716, from Ripperda, evident^ Alberoni's go-between.* On May 4, Bubb saw Alberoni himself, and endeavoured to soothe his fears ; the Minister was much concerned about the future of Leghorn. Stanhope told Bubb to assure the Count that " the alliance in hand is purely defensive and that his [British] Majesty is firmly resolved to contract no engagement which may possibly be to the disadvantage of the Catholic King." In June, Bubb was directed to show Alberoni the actual text of the Treaty, and a copy " of a plan * Eg. MSS. 2171, f. 303. 38 PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTER of a treaty between His Majesty, France and Holland as offered by France" — ^the germ, evidently, of the Triple Alliance, signed in January, 1717.* But, wrote Bubb to Brigadier Kane, commander at Port Mahon, Minorca, the Spaniards persisted in magnifying our Austrian alliance into an offensive one, " with secret articles against them and the Lord knows what." The spirit of discord, thus created, placed Bubb in a difficult position. The anti-British party in the Spanish Court rallied, and Alberoni's position appeared insecure. On the conclusion of the Assiento, Bubb was constrained to inform the King of Spain, by whom he had been granted an audience, that despite his Majesty's promise to re-establish commerce, every post brought the British Ambassador complaints from British sub- jects of new oppressions. Yet Alberoni and Bubb remained ostensibly on the best of terms. The Cardinal declared that his master would conclude a defensive alliance with Great Britain, always supposing an offensive one to be out of the ques- tion. Stanhope in return suggested, on August 11, that it would be well if " some person entirely in the secret and confidence of Mons. Alberoni were sent to The Hague," where the Triple Alliance was being put into shape. f But that did not suit * Eg. MSS. 2172, f. 44. t Ibid. 214. GEOEGE BUBB, PLENIPOTENTIARY 39 Alberoni at all ; such matters, he thought, were much better transacted at Madrid. The Count, driven on by the ambitious Queen, had, indeed, determined that if he could not make the superior Powers bend to him, he would raise Acheron, and had plunged into tenebrous intrigues with Charles XII. of Sweden, and the party of the Due de Maine in France. The crushing of the Austrian power in Italy was his principal object, with revolutions in France and England, which Charles XII. was to invade, as secondary considerations. During the last months of 1716 he merely played with Stanhope and Bubb to gain time for his plottings to mature. And yet so strong was the zeal of this extra- ordinary man for internal reform that he cannot be accounted altogether insincere, when, on November 16, he held out hopes to Bubb of a general tarifE, and the appointment of an inter- national committee at Cadiz to examine into com- mercial difficulties.* Bubb jumped at the ofEer with both hands ; he pressed British Consuls for returns and made himself master of details. To Consul Russell he wrote an able despatch on the principles at stake, and his language was antici- patory of Free Trade doctrine. " My opinion of duties is that the subject where they are imposed always pays them, and they are only prejudicial * Eg. MSS. 2173, f. 122. 40 PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTER to commerce when they are so great as to hinder the consumption." By the end of the year he reported that deputies from all nations had been sent to Cadiz, Mr. Consul Russell, with his full approval, representing Great Britain.* * Eg. MSS. 2173, f. 236. CHAPTER IV THE SEIZURE OF SARDINIA Spanish Preparations— Bubb's Resignation and its Acceptance — Alberoni's Conspiracies — The Barcelona Expedition — Addison's Despatch — Occupation of Sardinia — Alberoni's Evasions — Memorial to the Spanish King — Colonel WiUiam Stanhope — Audiences with Alberoni — ^An Enve- lope Returned — Bubb's Departure — Fall of Alberoni. DURING the first months of 1717 Bubb's hopes were now high, now low. Mysterious naval preparations were on foot, and a coup might be meditated, but, intent on his tariff, he finally persuaded himself that " having made very considerable expenses, they will be convinced that Spain will never be formidable at sea." On the same day he asked permission to return to England. " The heats of this country have been very prejudicial to my health, which makes me more apprehensive of the approaching summer." The re-establishment oi the commerce of Spain had been discussed in all its branches ; " the only thing to do is to wait." " It is certain," he continued feelingly, " that I cannot be responsible for the truth of another 42 PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTER person's promises, especially in a Court where things are so subject to change from one day to another ; but it is very certain that such promises have been made to me." A further reason was " the expense that this employ obliges me to, which I should not be in the least capable of sustaining, without the great indulgence my family has for me." Yet if his Majesty thought other- wise, " I would readily prefer the honour of obeying him to any consideration that may result from it." AMinisterial crisis had just occurred in England. The turbulent Sunderland, a haughty aristocrat with republican leanings, had forced his way into power, and had brought in Joseph Addison with him as Secretary of State, Stanhope beiag transferred to the Treasury. Addison, therefore, signed Bubb's letter of revocation on April 22, O.S., 1717. Methuen, who had been acting as Secretary of State during Stanhope's absence, had already informed Bubb that his resignation had been received with much regret, but having been pressed by Mr. Dodington and his other friends to grant the request, the Kling had at last consented to it. He was asked to remain at Madrid untU the arrival of his successor, who was to be Chetwynd, the British IMinister at Turin. Bubb's reasons for his resignation seem simple enough ; but, wise after the event, he developed THE SEIZURE OF SARDINIA 43 a completely difEerent version of them for the edification of Consul Russell — " The gentlemen that have resigned are all my most intimate friends, and some my nearest rela- tions ; you may depend upon it that nothing can alter their most steady adherence to his Majesty ; and now I must tell you as a friend that a few days before Mr. Methuen took his leave of the King, he made my demission to his Majesty ; his own followed it so soon that he had not time to send my revocation which I received from Mr. Addison. I do not design to leave this Court, however, these three months. I must confess I was con- cerned to take my leave of the King, but I could not avoid sharing the fortune of my friends." Bubb's candid biographer is constrained to con- fess that this explanation will not do at all. It is true that Methuen resigned ; and that in the course of the Ministerial shuffle George Dodington, " my nearest relation " in the singular, dis- appeared from the Admiralty. But it is equally clear that Bubb at Madrid had no inkling what- ever of the crisis in London, since he continued to write to Methuen for some weeks after Methuen had ceased to be acting Secretary of State. Let us trust that Consul Russell was too much im- pressed to peer narrowly into the statement. By this time it wanted but a spark to create a conflagration between Spain and Austria. Stan- hope had laboured in vain to bring about an accom- modation between the two Powers at The Hague, 44 PATEON AND PLACE-HUNTER but Bubb reported that Alberoni was far from satisfied. Austria, the Count pointed out, had only given assurances about Parma, where Eliza- beth was scheming to secure the succession for one of her younger sons ; no declaration had been made about Tuscany. Alberoni regarded the Emperor as too powerful in Italy ; it was useless to make treaties with him, since he could seize on all before anybody could oppose. The British Government probably did not pay much attention to these representations, which had nevertheless a measure of truth. A portion of Alberoni's conspiracy had already taken air through the arrest of two agents of Charles XIL, GyUenborg in London and Gortz at The Hague. GyUenborg had on him most compromising papers, setting forth no less than a plan for an invasion of England in the Pretender's cause and under the personal command of the King of Sweden ; he was found to be in close relations with Count Monteleone, the Spanish Ambassador. Addison directed Bubb to press for Monteleone' s recall, and to insist on a convention against the fitting out of Swedish privateers in Spanish ports. Despite these awk- ward disclosures Alberoni went blandly on with his pacific assurances. He sent his factotum, the Jesuit Patiiio to Cadiz, to expedite, as he told Bubb, the tariff negotiations. With sublime assurance the Court asked to be allowed to enhst THE SEIZURE OF SARDINIA 45 3000 men in England or Ireland, since the Spanish King's Walloon Guards could no longer be counted upon. As the clouds gathered apace, Bubb warned the Governors of Gibraltar and Minorca that a Spanish expedition was in preparation, though he added, for the consolation of Lord Forbes, that he had no reason to suppose that the Spaniards had any design against us. Towards the end of June the Austrians put themselves conclusively in the wrong by apprehending Molinez, the newly appointed Inquisitor General, as he was on his way home from the Vatican. Instantly it appeared that Patino's visit to Cadiz had been due to objects other than tariffs. He was closeted with Alberoni, and on July 6, Bubb informed Addison in a long despatch, mostly in cipher, that military and naval preparations were on foot at Barcelona. Galleys were collected there ; tents, transports, and 12,000 sacks of corn were at Tortosa. Thirty battalions of troops had marched out of Madrid, including some Walloon Guards. He added with much sagacity : " I cannot pretend to say exactly what the destina- tion of the enterprise may be, but I think it is Sardinia, and thence if it succeeds, it will go to Naples." He sent despatch after despatch, in- sisting on the warlike intentions of the Spaniards. On July 30, o.s., Secretary Addison sat down 46 PATKON AND PLACE-HUNTER and composed a momentous despatch. He directed Bubb to wait on Alberoni, and congratu- late him on the cardinal's hat which had been granted him after much mortifying delay. Then he got to the point — " You are also to acquaint him with the advices which his Majesty [George I.] has received from several parts of the expedition which is now going on in the kingdom of Spain, and press him in the strongest manner to explain the views his CathoHc Majesty may have in these pre- parations. " If you can learn from the Cardinal that this expedition is designed against Sardinia or the Kmgdom of Naples or have a good reason to entertain such a conjecture, you are to set forth to him how far his Majesty is interested in the neutraUty and repose of Italy by the Article of Guaranty in the Treaty of Utrecht, and at the same time represent how the Crown of France is engaged in the same Guaranty ; and how any violation of the said Treaty will be resented by the several Powers and States as are parties to it. " You are further to remind him of the last Treaty between Great Britain and the Emperor (which has been communicated to his CathoHc Majesty) whereby the King is obhged to assist his Imperial Majesty with 8000 foot and 4000 horse, or with an equivalent at sea, in case any attack should be made on his dominions on the side of Europe. " To this you must add that it would be with great reluctancy his Majesty should see himself forced to put these Treaties in execution, and represent in the most amiable terms his Majesty's THE SEIZURE OF SARDINIA 47 earnest wiBhes that the King of Spain may desist from such measures as may put the Emperor upon demanding what has been stipulated by the said Treaty." Failing satisfactory assurances from Alberoni, Bubb was to present a memorial to the King of Spain, in such respectful terms as might give no cause of ofEence.* This State paper is of interest because it dis- poses of the story started by Pope and accepted by Dr. Johnson that Addison as Secretary of State was so fastidious that he could not write an ordinary departmental order, f So, for that matter, do other despatches of his in the Egerton Collection. Tortured by asthma though he may have been, Addison was much too fine an English- man not to throw every weakness aside when he had to speak for his country. The governing minds, no doubt, were those of George I. and Stanhope, both profoundly versed in foreign affairs, but the diction is Addison's, and, at least, it is not lacking in directness. The body of the despatch was written by a clerk, but Addison revised it and interpolated the significant word " Sardinia." Sardinia it was. The Spaniards descended on the island, and aided by the malcontent « Eg. MSS. 2175, fi. 56-58. t " Lives of the Poets," [ed. Biikbeck Hill], lU., 111. 48 PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTER inhabitants took possession of it in less than three months, Bubb did not gain admission to the Cardinal until August 30. In the meantime he was informed that Chetwynd's appointment had been cancelled, and that Stanhope's nephew, Colonel William Stanhope, was coming out as his successor with full powers. Bubb cheerfully- acquiesced in an arrangement that meant further delay in his departure from Spain. Alberoni, when brought to book, was not exactly illuminating. Confining himself to general terms, he told Bubb that the Emperor did nothing but insult the King of Spain, and he made no definite assertion about the destination of the armament. Bubb continued — " The Cardinal told me that he had no part in this enterprise but the execution, and he assured me that he had represented very strongly to the King both in discourse and by writing the inconveniences that might follow upon it, but that the King was absolutely bent upon it, and all he could say had not weight enough to dissuade him from it.* If for " King " we read " Queen," the Cardinal's assertion was not far from the truth. His instincts were all for the internal improvement of his adopted country, but the ItaUan ambitions and fears of Elizabeth, " the termagant of Spain," * Eg. MSS. 2175, f. 160. THE SEIZURE OF SARDINIA 49 as Carlyle calls her, swept him into diplomatic and military adventures to his ultimate un- doing. Bubb thereupon set to work on a memorial to the Spanish King. " I drew it up in the softest manner I could," he wrote to Addison, " because I am persuaded that they will shortly be very glad to come to an answer." Alberoni still dangled the tariff before him, and Bubb was hardly alive to the seriousness of the situation. But it was one thing to draw up a memorial, another to get a reply to it. The King and Queen both had attacks of tertian fever, while Alberoni, Bubb reported, was taken with a vertigo which deprived him of his senses for some hours. At last the British Envoy got an answer of a kind, through the Marquis Grimaldo, the King's Secre- tary. It assumed the form of a brisk counter- attack, special stress being laid on the language used by Lord Stair in Paris. Bubb expressed indignation at these unworthy reflections on his friend.* So the comedy continued until the arrival of Colonel William Stanhope in October. The two young men became fast allies, and on the 18th and 23rd they paid joint visits to the Cardinal, while Bubb saw him privately, as a friend, on the I4th; The scenes must have been packed with * Eg. MSS. 2175, % 187 *nd ?03, 50 PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTER humour. The Cardinal we know, with his grotesque figure, explosive, evasive ; a gad-fly of a man. Colonel Stanhope, who subsequently became Earl of Harrington and a prim, precise politician, was the strong, still Englishman. An anecdote of a slightly later date reveals him to us. On some occasion he showed Alberoni a paper setting forth the naval strength of Great Britain. In real or simulated rage the Cardinal snatched it from his hand and tore it to pieces. '* As I was saying to your Eminence," continued Stanhope, as though nothing had occurred.* And then there was the rococo Bubb, of whom we also have an idea. The two young men embodied their impressions in prodigious despatches to Earl Stanhope, in which their respective contri- butions to the debate were sometimes indicated by " moi Stanhope " and " moi Bubb." In the intervals they called on their French and Dutch colleagues and found them disconcertingly luke- warm, if not treacherously inchned. The plan of the English Government honestly aimed at averting a war. Bubb and Stanhope were authorised to ofier British mediation between Spain and Austria on the bases of the recognition of the Spanish succession to Parma and Tuscany, and the renunciation by Austria of her vexatious claims on the Spanish throne. They were to • Seward, " Anecdotes," III., 253. THE SEIZUEE OF SARDINIA 51 press for the immediate despatch to London of a Spanish Minister in the King's and Cardinal's confidence. But it took all the young men's skill to bring Alberoni to the semblance of a point. In his fiery and discursive way he started with a list of grievances, dating from the Treaty of Utrecht. He aJEEected to believe that the intentions of France were unknown, though bluntly informed more than once that the British plan had been concerted with the Regent. With some lack of candour he declared that the succes- sions to Tuscany and Parma were useless to the Spanish King, but Austrian aggression was in- supportable. Guarantees were of no avail because princes broke their word ; he pointed out instances in which England had not kept faith. This gave a fine opening to one of the young men ; to " moi Bubb " assuredly. Such things, was the proud reply, had not happened since the happy corona- tion of King George ; his Majesty set such a high example that the whole nation tried to imitate him in the punctual and inviolate observance of its engagements. At last they forced the Cardinal to disclose his hand. Repeating that guarantees were useless, he exclaimed that nothing could be done with the Emperor while so much strength was left to him ; the balance of Europe must be re-established. In other words Austria must be deprived of a part of the Italian territory 52 PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTER she already held ; an absolutely impracticable demand.* As a last resource Bubb and Stanhope had a final audience with the Cardinal on November 12, After much fencing, Alberoni agreed to give a promise in writing that the King of Spain would accept the preliminaries, guaranteeing the Spanish succession to Parma and Tuscany, and send a Minister to London to treat, as soon as he was satisfied of the good intentions of the Austrian Emperor. But, when his letter arrived next day, Bubb and Stanhope regarded it as not composed with the precision that so important a matter demanded. They therefore drew up their own version of the understanding, and sent it to the Cardinal. Alberoni returned the envelope as evidence that he had opened and read the paper, with a verbal message that it was un- necessary to give any answer, f Bubb's mission had come to an end, but Spanish punctiHo kept him for awhile at Madrid. He did not reach Bayonne until December 29, whence he wrote to Addison that though King Philip had refused to receive his recredentials, which seem to have been irregular in point of form, his Majesty had presented him with a diamond from his Royal finger, which Bubb • Eg. MSS. 2175, ff. 276-281, 286-290. •f fhid., ff. 310-317. THE SEIZURE OF SARDINIA 63 valued at at least 1000 pistoles. Even after he had returned to England he kept up a corre- spondence, probably none too sincere, with Alberoni. In an undated letter he beseeched the Cardinal to relieve British commerce from oppres- sion, because " mon honneur y est en quelque fa9on engagee." * Thus George Bubb remained outside that rush of events which comprised the destruction of the Spanish fleet, unaware whether it was at peace or war, ofE Cape Passaro by Admiral Byng ; Lord Stanhope's hasty mission to Spain on the chance of averting hostiUties even at the price of sur- rendering Gibraltar — a possession regarded at that time as of little value and difficult to pro- vision — a war in which Spain was worsted on every side, and finally the dismissal of Alberoni by King PhiUp and Queen Elizabeth. The baffled man withdrew to spend the rest of his life in obscure intrigues, though if his better instincts had been given fair play he would have become the Colbert of Spain. As for George Bubb, he had reason, apart from his dark dealings with Ripperda, to regard his mission with satisfaction. If he had not sue ceeded, it was through no fault of his own. Placed in circumstances as difficult as ever confronted a young man of twenty-four, he had brought energy, * Eg. MSS. 2175, f. 332. 54 PATRON AND PLAGE-HUNTER integrity, and ability to bear upon them. To some extent he had failed to penetrate the designs of Alberoni ; but then it would have required an ultra-Italianate Englishman to probe that subtle mind. Stanhope, at any rate, expressed himself as content with Bubb's embassy, and his compli- ment was not merely that of one Whig sending empty politenesses to another. CHAPTER V DODINGTON AND WALPOLE Death of George Dodington — ^An Heir to Wealth and Influence — ^The Dodingtonian Phalanx — ^Attachment to Walpole — Poetic Eulogies — " In power a Servant, out of power a Friend " — Later Impressions — ^A Lord of the Treasury — Meetings of the Treasury Board — ^A Clerk of the Pells in Ireland— Work done by Deputy—" That Scold Swift "— Attacks which Failed — ^Walpole and the Opposition — Dodington's Disappointment. ON his return to the land that bore him, George Bubb quietly reoccupied his seat for Winchelsea, which no such trifle as his residence abroad for over two years had obliged him to vacate. The next two years of his life are a blank, though they profoundly affected the history of his country. In their course the South Sea Bubble became inflated until it burst ; the powerful Ministry of Stanhope and Sunderland was buried under the financial collapse, and out of the chaos Walpole einerged supreme. The crisis was still raging when in March, 1720, George Dodington, the uncle, died, and his nephew succeeded to his wealth and Parliamentary influence. Desiring that his 56 PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTER name should be preserved, Dodington had pro- cured a private Act authorising " George Bubb henceforth to be called by the surname of Doding- ton and not by the surname of Bubb." * The heir obeyed, and thenceforth resolutely dropped the " Bubb " from his signature, as indeed he was compelled to do by law. But his enemies — and in the course of a long life he made many — did not allow him to forget it. He was collo- quially known as Bubb Dodington ; some wag even nicknamed him " Sillybub." So late as 1756, Henry Fox innocently addressed him as " George Bub [sic] Dodington, Esq.," greatly, no doubt, to his annoyance. Even friendly observers like Richard Cumberland, the dramatist, declared that his origin was humble ; while Lord Chesterfield complained that he was perpetually talking about his ancestry, though no man knew if he had ever had a grandfather. The system inherited by Walpole from Stanhope and Sunderland lent itself to the fortunes of a rich young man like George Bubb Dodington. Entrenched behind the Septennial Act, the Wliigs relied for their fighting forces on the pocket boroughs, and on the commercial interests and Dissenters for moral support. The bulk of the cultivated classes of the country was probably against them, notably at the Universities. But * IV. George I,, cap. 1. DODlNGTON AND WALPOLE 57 in the House the avowed Jacobites under Shippen were too few to be taken into serious account, not more than forty or fifty at most. The Tory country gentlemen, led by their fine orator. Sir William Wyndham, made a better show; but identified somewhat unfairly by Walpole with Jacobitism and therefore with Popery, they were out of heart, and frequently remained on their estates without troubling to come up to vote. The most formidable Opposition to Walpole was that created by his own intolerance of talent. His supporters were kept together less by down- right pecuniary corruption — that grew much worse under the Pelhams and became intensified under Bute and Henry Fox — than by a system of places, perquisites, and patronage. Of those three delectable things Dodington came in for his full share. The composition of the Dodingtonian phalanx is worth examining, because it shows how a borough-monger pulled the strings. Dodington himself exchanged his seat at Winchelsea for Bridgwater in November, 1722, when Thomas Townshend, second son of the statesman and a pleasant scholarly man, was chosen in his place. After Townshend came, in 1727, Old Scrope, the Secretary to the Treasury and a colleague of Dodington. Then came Edmund Hungate Beaghan, Dodington's brother-in-law. From May, 58 PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTER 1741, to the end of Dodington's life Thomas Orby Hunter, an Admiralty Commissioner, held the seat. It is clear, however, that Dodington brought within his sphere of influence other members of the Cinque Ports as well. His spaniel, Harry Furnese, sat sometimes for Dover, at others for New Romney, and he had as a colleague at the latter place, the unedifying Sir Francis Dashwood, another political ally. The Cinque Ports, like all seaside towns, were peculiarly corrupt. " The number of dockmen and Cinque Port officers," wrote a contributor to The Crafts- man, "is as regularly computed at our county election, as a gentleman reckons his own tenants " ; and he anticipated, no doubt with exaggeration, that quite one-fifth of the English boroughs might thereafter fall under the influence of the Treasury.* At Bridgwater Dodington remained secure until 1754, when, to his infinite disgust, he was ousted by Lord Egmont. It was not a satis- factory borough from the owner's point of view. Dodington was never sure of the second of the two seats ; a Tory was known to get it through Whig dissensions, and his Wyndham relations occasionally stood in a provokingly independent fashion. It was otherwise with his four seats at Weymouth and Melcombe Regis, counting as one borough ; they gave but little trouble. In • TU Craftsman, No. 381. DODINGTON AND WALPOLE 69 1721-22 Dodington put in the painter. Sir James Thornhill, a very proper selection, as he was a native and benefactor of Melcombe. Two Tuckers, one of whom was an East India merchant and manager of Dodington's business affairs, sat for many years. Beaghan appears in 1747, and a cousin, George Dodington of Horsington. In 1750, Dodington came to a deal with the Pelhams, in pursuance of which Lord George, and after him Lord John Cavendish, and Welbore Ellis sat for two of the four seats. After he had become a peer, Dodington brought in " Leonidas " Glover ; and found a seat for Sir Francis Dashwood, who was to prove a singularly incompetent Chancellor of the Exchequer. Obviously Dodington, the borough-monger, was a man to be reckoned with. After his breach with Walpole, Sir Charles Hanbury Wilhams maliciously represented him as saying — " Oh, Darner, Tucker, Raymond, Steward To Eastbmy all welcome ; Two of you shall for Weymouth serve And two shall serve for Meloomb. * * * » " One-half of Winchelsea is mine, And so's Bridgwater too ; Poole, as you know, my wash-pot is, O'er Wells I cast my shoe." * When it is added that Dodington interfered in the Dorset County elections, and made himself * Hanbury Williams's " Works " (edition of 1822), I., 20. 60 PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTER felt wherever it suited his purpose, he must be pronounced a most useful supporter of an eighteenth -century administration. Dodington seems at first to have treated his Parliamentary duties rather lightly. Thus on July 18, 1721, he wrote a bantering letter to Francis Colman, the British Minister at Florence, and after a discharge of heavy pleasantries con- cluded with the observation — " As to politics, it is my opinion that this Administration cannot stand ; I think there must be a change of persons or of parties ; I wish I may be a false prophet ; there has been and is in town a very strong report of the Tories coming in ; a little time w2l show what is in it." * But Dodington soon attached himself closely to Walpole, who no doubt found the young man much to his taste : witty, able, obsequious. As befitted a Whig, he became an early member of White's Club.f The young man celebrated the Minister in verse which certainly did not err on the side of restraint. It was better, he informed Sir Robert, to be pelted with roses than with rotten eggs. Thus Walpole's birthday, August 26, formed the pretext for a panegyric, in which after extolling — " One bearing greatest toils, with greatest ease, One born to serve us, and yet bom to please," * G. Colman, " Posthumous Letters to Francis and George Colman," 5. t A. Bourke, " The History of White's," I., 44. DODINGTON AND WALPOLE 61 Dodington addressed August, "fairest daughter of the various year," and informed her that — " The greatest Prince, the foremost son of fame. To thee bequeath'd the glories of his name ; Nature and Fortune thee their darling chose. Nor could they grace thee more, till Walpole rose." * This is somewhat in the treacly style ; hut Dod- ington did not stop there. In 1726 he published an anonymous " Epistle to the Right Hon. Sir Robert Walpole." It opens with some hints on the disposal of patronage ; a matter in which the statesman was supposed to be more than commonly adept. Despite " strength of genius by experience taught " Walpole was pressed to listen to his " unexperienc'd friend " — " For friendship sometimes want of parts supplies, The Heart may fiu-nish what the Head denies." The poem rises to a resonant definition of "an Honest Man " as contrasted with " the Coxcomb " and " the Knave " — " Let others barter servile Faith for Gold, His friendship is not to be bought, or sold : Fierce Opposition he, unmov'd, shall face ; Modest in Favour, daring in Disgrace ; To share thy adverse Pate alone pretend ; In Power, a Servant ; out of Power, a Friend. Here pour thy Favours in an ample Flood, Indulge thy boundless Thirst of doing good : Nor think that Good to him alone confined ; Such to oblige, is to oblige Mankind." ■f * Dodsley's " Collection of Poems," IV., 223. t Dodsley's " Collection," V., l?9, 62 PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTER In his retreat at the Leasowes, Shenstone con- sidered the " Epistle " to be " the best address Sir Robert Walpole ever received." * It is at least superior to the efforts of Young and Hanbury Williams. But Dodington, in after years, must often have regretted an authorship which soon became public property. Pope sneeringly quoted the htie— " In Power a Servant, out of Power a, Friend " as the indiscretion of one — " To W[alpo]le gnilty of some venial sin." f Hanbury Williams laughed at Dodington as grown too wise "to -write a panegyric." J In " The Triumvirate," an anonymously abusive effort, [1743] Dodington was represented as saymg— " A Poet, qaoth he, long distinguished by Fame And known to aU critical judges, I am. * * * * » " Very great is the largess I'd give to suppress Those verses of which I'm ashamed, I confess. They are flat in my teeth contradicting each word In my speeches since made, as those speeches record." Poetic justice, however, was slow to overtake " The Epistle " ; at present its recipient poured his favours in an ample flood. Dodington had been appointed to succeed his uncle as Lord- • Letters, 378. t " Epilogue to the Satires," 161. 1 Hanbury Williams's "Works" (1822), I., 16. DODINGTON AND WALPOLE G3 Lieutenant of Somerset; in 1724 Walpole made him a Lord of the Treasury. Together with a colleague at the Treasury Board, Sir William Yonge, he was regarded as peculiarly in the Minister's confidence. Walpole was "the Governor " to them and Old Scrope, the Secretary.* Thus Lady Mary Wortley Montagu wrote to her sister, the Countess of Mar, in her happiest vein — " There is a biU cooking up at a hunting-seat in Norfolk [Houghton] to have Twt taken out of the commandments, and clapped into the creed, the einsuing session of Parliament. This bold attempt on the liberty of the subject is whoUy projected by Mr. Walpole, who proposed it to the secret committee in his parlour. WiUiam Yonge seconded it, and answered for all his acquaintance voting right to a man. Dodington very gravely objected that the obstinacy of human nature was such, that he feared when they had positive commandments to do so, perhaps people would not commit adultery and bear false witness against their neighbours, with the readiness and cheerfulness they do at present. This objection seemed to sink deep into the minds of the greatest politicians at the board, so I don't know whether the bill won't be dropped." t Years afterwards Dodington professed to look back upon these visits to Houghton with mingled feelings ; he resented Walpole's coarseness and * Hist. MSS. Com. Reports, Various C!olIectioiis, VI., 5. t Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's " Works," ed. Lord Wharncliffe, II., 160. 64 PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTEK illiterateness. He told a curious story in illus- tration of Sir Robert's homely speech. On the way to Houghton there was a bad common, on which they were more than once benighted. Dodington suggested that it would be at once becoming and suitable to Sir Robert's rank to have flambeaux ready for the occasion, and orders were given accordingly. When the crisis next occurred, Walpole inquired of his servants for the " links." The links produced were some links of sausages ! " Such was the vulgarity of Sir Robert's diction and habits that he used the phraseology of Drury Lane and Co vent Garden." * At the Treasury Board Dodington sat by Walpole's side, even when their relations cannot have been harmonious. He was at first a regular attendant, but after awhile allowed himself a generous holiday every summer, though Walpole never missed a meeting. Some of Dodington's absences, as wiU be shown later on, must have been with a purpose. His colleagues cannot be called remarkable men, with the exception of Sir Robert and the engaging Winnington, who was the attached friend of Hanbury Williams, and whom WiUiams commemorated in an epitaph which is a model of lapidary eloquence. Of Sir William Yonge, indeed, Walpole said in a familiar phrase, that nothing but so bad a character could ♦ liord FitzroauTJce'g " Sbelbuine," n., 29. DODINGTON AND WALPOLE 65 have kept down his talents and nothing but his talents could have kept up his character. George II. impolitely alluded to him as " Stinking Yonge." His real merit seems to have consisted of a great command of Parliamentary language, the trick, as Lord Hervey puts it, " of talking eloquently without a meaning and expatiating agreeably on nothing " ; he was, in short, to Wal- pole what Dundas was to the second Pitt. The rest of the Board can be unceremoniously dismissed. Giles Erie was a waggish, covetous man, who affected to be meaner than was actually the case : " Oh Lord ! " he said, " what fine things oysters would be, if one could make one's servants live on the shells ! " Lord Sundon is handed down to us in a Dodingtonian anecdote. One day he laughed at something Dodington had said ; and Winnington, in a whisper to the latter, remarked, " You are very ungrateful ; you see Lord Sundon takes your joke." "No, no," repHed Dodington; "he's laughing now at what I said last Board day." The calendars of the Treasury Papers set forth the collective business of the Board very fully, but afford no clue to individual action. We may assume that Walpole got pretty much his own way. The business was multifarious, embracing a good deal of administration now under the control of the Office of Public Works, Larg§ 66 PATRON AND PLACE-HtJNTER sums of money — £5000 and £6000 at a time — were handed over to safe Old Scrope " without accotmt," to be spent, it is to be hoped, in the payment of British agents abroad. There were interludes, as when the Grovemors of Christ's Hospital with the mathematical boys exhibited to their Lordships some drawings in perspective ; or when a projector, name not given, produced his plan for the abohtion of the National Debt, which f aUed to satisfy their Lordships. Dodington's labours were alleviated by oppor- tunities of patronage. Thus he recommended Francis Edwards to be landwaiter at Poole port, and obtained an order for £1000 for the sufferers by the &e that burnt down half Blandf ord. By way of perquisite, certain goods of his, no doubt curios from abroad, were passed duty free at the Tower. As trustee to the inhabitants of Portland, he received 9d. out of a 12d. duty on the stone which they had obtained licence to dig within the commons of the island, if not dug for the Crown.* Dodington also held the comfortable offices of Clerk of the Pells and Clerk of the Treasure of the Exchequer in Ireland, together £2000 a year in value ; he further obtained exemption, " the King's service requiring him to reside in England," from the tax of 4-s. in the pound imposed on all * CaL Treasury Papers, June 24, 1730. DODINGTON AND WALPOLE 67 Irish salaries.* The duties were performed by a deputy, and when one Love resigned that position through age and infirmities, Lord Chancellor West recommended that Bayly, his successor, should allow Love £30 a year out of his pay. " It will be better," added the Chancellor, " to say nothing that might be shown about the town concerning his £30 per annum." Dodington paid rare visits to Irpland, but he kept up a copious correspondence with West, Wainwright, Baron of the Exchequer, Speaker Boyle, and other dignitaries. It was just as well, since the absentee Clerk of the Pells by no means went uncriticised, despite the ordinary docility of the Parliament on CoUege Green. In 1735, " that eternal snarl Swift," Bowes, the Solicitor-General, wrote to Dodington, raised the question at a public city banquet. The attack ultimately resolved itself into the sneer : " I hear that Mr. Dodington, when he was here, bought an Irish stuff suit, and then everybody said, ' Won't you vote for Mr. Dodington, who wears our manufactures ' ; so you made him a present of seven or eight hundred pounds a year for laying out forty or fifty shillings on Irish stuff." This, explained Sir Arthur Acheson, another correspondent, "is a way of rattling the Dean has always indulged himself in, and towards all * The Pells were the parchment rolls of the Exchequer, and the clerks entered the receipts and disbursements on them. 68 PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTER sorts of people, which, though I don't approve, I fear he will never be broke of." The rattling was unfortunate, aU the same, since the annual vote for Dodington's salary was just coming on. Baron Wainwright urged com- promise and even surrender. In a more cheerful spirit Jocelyn, the Attorney-General, opined that though there might be " some Grumbletonians," the attack would fail. And so it proved ; the objections never " rose to the shadow of a debate," and the malcontents did not venture to divide the House.* " Treating in Piccadilly " was one of the palliatives recommended by Baron Wainwright, and this, in the ingenuous language of Lord Barry- more to a correspondent, is how it was done — " We do no good in that which relates to Mr. Dodington, as to the fees that belong to him as Clerk of the PeUs, which on some additional duties was to go to the pubUc ; we acted as the most arrant dupes, and upon asking some great men on that head, it terminated that he invited them to dinner in London ; such f oUies I confess are not new." t Dodington stuck to the Pells until the end of his life, having in 1757 parted with the reversion to Henry Fox, a pohtician a good deal more grasping than himself. * Various Collections, VI., pp. 55-80. The Irish section of Miss E}Te-Matchams Collection is of considerable interest and importance, t Hist. Com. Report, XX„ 16, DODINGTON AND WALPOLE 69 The Parliamentary position which Dodington had attained by the end of the reign of George I., cannot be certainly defined. The meagre record merely states that in 1727 he spoke for the Muiistry during the debate on the Address. But it is fair to assume that his reputation as a debater was of no abrupt growth, and that Walpole looked upon Dodington as one of his most trustworthy subalterns. It goes for nothing that he escaped the onslaughts of The Craftsman, which in December, 1726, and onwards, attacked the Administration with a concentrated bitterness equalled only by M. Rochef ort in his prime. With the exception of an occasional broadside directed at the portly form of Walpole' s brother, Old Horace, or a fling at the oddities of the Duke of Newcastle, Bolingbroke, Pulteney and their friends reserved their fire for the Minister who was alleged to be undermining British liberty. The Craftsman monstrously exaggerated the state of afEairs, yet there was a certain measure of truth in its diatribes. By concentrating autho- rity in his own hands and keeping only useful instruments about him, Walpole undoubtedly safe-guarded the Protestant succession ; produced administrative efficiency, and built up com- mercial prosperity. The gain to the country was well worth the price, and British liberties, despite The Craftsman, were in no way endangered. 70 PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTER Still the position of First Minister, which Walpole assumed in fact, while angrily denying the title, may reasonably have appeared a dangerous pre- cedent to an Opposition, many of whom had been forced to bow their wills to his. The thing, they declared, was unknown to the Constitution, and it was many years before such a supremacy came into practice again. Walpole's autocracy must have been discon- certing to a subordinate Minister with a will and ambition of his own. And, for some reason. Sir Robert declined to gratify Dodington's desires in a matter which would have been precious to his soul. Thus when George I. revived the Order of the Bath in 1725, the Lord of the Treasury appHed, and his request was not entertained. As Hanbury Williams entertainingly recorded — " When the Knights of the Bath by King George were created. He greatly desired he the order might wear ; But he had not one star, for poor Bub was ill-fated, And ne'er a red ribbon fell to his share : For the King would not dub. So low-bom a scrub. Nor the order disgrace with a fellow like Bub." * The end of the reign, therefore, found him cherishing that sense of injury which is peculiar to coxcombs, and ripe for revolt. * Hanbury Williams's " Works " (1822), I„ 26. CHAPTER VI EASTBUKY An Active County Man — Arcade, Gardens and Bagnio — Horace Walpole and Cumberland at Eastbury — ^Lady Hervey's Visit — Dodington as Host — ^A Reconciler of Quarrels — ^A Mentor of Youth — " The Last Maecenas " — Stubbes and Pitt — Edward Young — His Addresses to Dodington — Voltaire at Eastbury — Young's Epigram — Dodington and Thomson — ^Welstead — Dr. Johnson's Rebuff—" Bubo " and " Bufo "—Caricatures. DODINGTON'S activities extended over Somerset and Dorset. Wherever loyal sentiments required fomenting, wherever patronage could be exercised, we may take it that he was not wanting. His was a kindly soul ; and we are not surprised to find him urging one of those appeals for mercy which even under a harshly administered law did not always fall on deaf ears. Thus he pleaded for one Smith of Blandford ; it only needed the intercession of Lord Harrington, the Secretary of State, to induce the King to pardon the poor man's transportation.* Eastbury House, the centre of Dodington's • R.O. State Papers Dom. George II., 32, August 24, 1734. 72 PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTER local energies, lay — a fragment of it still lies — ^in the parish of Tarrant Gunville, four miles from Blandford and a nule off the long rolling road that runs from that pleasant town to Salisbury. His uncle began it just before his death, but caily buUt the offices. The house rose with leisurely dignity, and some twenty years passed before Dodington had spent the last of his £140,000 on the structure. " It is," wrote Sir Joseph Banks, " exceeding large, and possibly one of the heaviest piles of stone that Sir John Vanbrugh ever erected " ; and Van was, of course, notorious for the heavy burdens he laid on the earth.* The various descriptions of Eastbury leave us gasping over its magnificence. Thus : " The approach to the house was through a beautiful lawn, whence you passed through a grand arcade, on each side of which the offices were ranged, and you landed on a flight of steps eleven feet high, under a noble Doric portico, crowned with a pediment extending sixty-two feet, the pUlars whereof were forty-sLx feet high, opening into a magnificent hall adorned with statues and busts." Turrets rose from each comer of the house ; it had three courts and the whole front extended five hundred and seventy feet, t Unhappily, the plates of Eastburj', * A "Journal of an Exonrsion to Eastbury" (1767) in the Pro- ceedings of the Dorset Natural History Field Club, Vol. XVL I am indebted to the late W. P. Courtney for this reference. t Hutchins'a " Dorset," m., 457. EASTBURY 73 published in Colin Campbell's "Vitruvius Britan- nicus," represent the portico as pompous and the arcades as pretentious. The grounds of Eastbury were designed by the famous Bridgeman, the planner of Kensington Gardens, and were large and fine. They contained an elaborate scheme of mounds, sunken beds, and vistas. The canals were supplied by engines, worked by horses. Many of the trees in the plantations had been transplanted from several miles ofE and weighed three tons. At the end, facing the house, stood a great portico by Van- brugh, thought to be the most splendid of its kind in England. A "bagnio," or bathroom, fronted the bowling-green. These buildings were in better taste than the house itself. Eastbury stood in a lordly park, and Dodington added field to field until the whole estate lay within a ring fence some eight mUes round. With characteristic disregard to the claims of antiquity, he made a grotto out of an ancient barrow in the north corner of the park. In executing his innovations he did not always dwell at peace with his neighbours. Thus in 1728 he appUed for a royal licence to enclose a way running past his house into the high-road to Blandford. Sir Simeon Stewart and other neighbours thereupon com- plained that the alternative road offered by Dodiugton was a watery lane to avoid which cattle 74 PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTER would have to be driven over the common field. The lord of Eastbury had, however, a friend at court in Yorke, the Attorney-General, who over- ruled the objection.* The whole thing looks rather like a job. Sir Joseph Banks considered that the inside of Eastbury was much more convenient as well as more elegant than the outside gave any hopes of. There was a great deal of gilding, and ceUings painted after the antique. One of these ceUings, in the octagon room, was designed by Sir James Thom- hilLf At one end of the hall were " three noble apartments, one hung with crimson velvet, another with flowered velvet, a third with satin, all richly laced with gold " ; in the great eating-room and elsewhere were valuable marble tables, purchased in Italy. Unfortunately much of this splendour, as minutely described by Horace Walpole and Richard Cumberland, the dramatist, must have resembled the garishness of a travelling circus. Instead of pictures, immense patches of gilt leather, shaped into bugle-horns — Dodington's crest — adorned the walls. Round his state bed ran a carpeting of gold and sUver embroidery which too glaringly displayed its derivation from old coats, waistcoats, and breeches by the testimony of pockets, button-holes, and loops. Cumberland * R.O. State Papers Dom. George II., 7, July 2, 1728. t EList. MSS. Com., Eighth Report, Ap. III., 8, h. EASTBURY 75 and Horace Walpole agree upon this very Doding- tonian detail. It goes to explain the remark of the first of them that Dodington maintained his magnificence at comparatively small expense.* Dodington went down from London to Eastbury in a coach drawn by six fat, unwieldy black horses, short-docked and of colossal dignity. Having reached home he could only be approached through a suite of apartments. His costume kept company with his furniture. The suits of clothes varied in flaring richness, and each was a load to its wearer, but they were all of the same old-fashioned cut. " His bulk and corpulency," writes Cumber- land, "gave full display to a vast expanse and profusion of brocade and embroidery ; and this when set off by an enormous tye-perriwig and deep-laced ruffles, gave the picture of an ancient courtier in his gala habit or Quin in his stage dress." He commissioned Francis Cobnan to send him some green Indian silk brocades from Italy, t His broad face, however, as handed down to us in Bartolozzi's engraving after a painting by an vmknown hand, has a certain power about it. The nose and eyebrows are strongly marked, the mouth is shrewd. Though radiant with conceit, it is far from the face of a fool. * Horace Walpole's "Memoirs of George 11.," Vol. I., Appendix I. ; and Richard Cumberland's " Memoirs," I., 183-195. t G. Colman, " Poathumous Letters to Francis and George Colman," 13. 76 PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTER In spite of his aidulatioii of rank, Dodington must have been an agreeable companion. His reputation for wit stood among the highest, though he would sometimes refine away the spirit of his sentiments. He was constitutionally legarthic ; " The Still Life " was the contribution he was mahciously asserted to have made to a picture exhibition.* But though he would loll in perfect apathy, dozing and sometimes snoring, the rash man who provoked him came ofi second best. His cousin. Lord Cobham, Horace Walpole tells us, once reproached him with having been asleep. Dodington denied it, and offered to repeat aU that Cobham had been saying. The challenge was accepted, and Dodington retold Cobham's story. " And yet," he said, " I did not hear a word of it, but I went to sleep because I knew that about this time of day you would teU that story." Yet Dodington had his graver topics, and was never flippant on reUgious subjects. Character- istically enough, he kept a collection of anecdotes and repartees from which he used to refresh his memory. It was, he said, a comphment he paid to society. Cards were unknown at Eastbury, but it was Doditigton's custom of an evening to entertain his party by reading aloud. In this art he excelled, and was therefore impatient of bad reading in * " Letters of the Countess of Sufiolk " [ed. Croker], L, 342. EASTBURY 77 others. When James Thomson was reciting with his usual odd Scots utterance, Dodington was so provoked that he snatched the paper and told him that he did not understand his own verses.* But he sometimes left a good deal to be desired on the score of selection. UnHke the elder Pitt who read the elevated parts of Shakespeare, but when he came to the buffoon parts handed the book to one of the company, Dodington revelled in broad passages. He treated the Dowager Lady Strafford and Lady Hervey, when they were staying at Eastbury, to the whole of Fielding's " Jonathan Wild," in which, as Cumberland well remarks, he consulted his own turn for irony rather than theirs for elegance. Dodington's was ostensibly a bachelor establish- ment until, as we shall see later on, he acknowledged a clandestine marriage. He was presumably more of a man's than a lady's man, but he could do the honours of the table with urbanity. Cumber- land differentiates ; he talked to the men with the ease and gaiety of a Frenchman, to the ladies he had all the courtly and profound devotion of a Spaniard. We have Lady Hervey's own account of her visit to Eastbury, and she clearly enjoyed herself. " This," she wrote to the Rev. Edmund Morris, her son's tutor, " is a most delightful place , . . Mr. Dodington's conversation is adapted to •!■ pr, Johnson, " iJveB qf thp Poets," HI., ?97, 78 PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTER all understandings " ; and though her host was much depressed he was " much better company than some people are in their best spirits." * The approbation of Lady Hervey was worth having. " Youth's youngest daughter, sweet Lepel," whom Gay, Pope, and the other poets had sung, had outlived her unpleasant husband, whom Pope held up to the scorn of inen, and was now making her home with her aged father- in-law, the Earl of Bristol. With her children, her garden, her classics, and her theologians to interest her, she surveyed politics from her seclusion with the wise eye of a lady of affairs, with visits to Paris for a distraction. The small collection of her letters which Croker edited, and edited well, do not, in all probability, give a just measure of her powers ; they are written to a dependent and therefore have a certain constraint about them. But a letter written to Dodington from Paris, which Bowles inserted " as a curiosity " in his edition of Pope, reveals her — and for that matter Dodington — in an altogether pleasant light. Dodington was thanked for showing Mr. and Mrs. Morris over Eastbury, whereby he had " very efEectively obhged two very honest, sincere, and insignificant people " ; and Lady Hervey hoped that on her return she would have the pleasure of often giving a little dinner to a small but » " Lady Hervey's Letters " [ed. Croker], p. 232. LADY IIEKVKV EASTBURY 79 chosen company " of which you can easily guess two:' * Dodington was a great reconciler of the quarrelsome. As his Diary shows, he laboured to bring together the Duke of Dorset and his erring son Lord Middlesex — all the more zealously no doubt because a Duke was a Duke — quoting Scripture to the father and offering his purse to the prodigal. Nor was he altogether amiss as Polonius to a young East, whose money was in Chancery and whose mother lived in Paris. The youth may conceivably have yawned over Doding- ton's pompous definition of the character of an EngUsh gentleman : " 'Tis not the Patent of the King, it is the Patent of the People only that bestows it," and much besides. But there was shrewd sense in the recommendation that the dead and living languages should be cultivated. Young East should also have a knowledge of riding — the "great saddle," dancing and fencing; very frequent conversation with women of fashion was desirable ; cards to be avoided. Dodington thought that East's travelling allowance should be £600 a year, without a " governor " or tutor, who would cost about £300 more, and offered if his guardians had " settled it too narrow " to lend him money to make up the amount, without security or interest. But to that Mrs. East, who * W. L. Bowles, " Pope," III, 423. 80 PATEON AND PLACE-HUNTER knew her boy, strongly demurred, though ready to admit that in other respects the lad had set up Dodington for a law-giver.* Dodington's old friend, George Stubbes, held the living of Tarrant GunvUle, toiling in two parishes, as James Thomson wrote, for £40 a year. We may assume all the same that a knife and fork were laid for him at Eastbury. Doding- ton, too, brought his influence to bear ; and after serving as domestic chaplain to the Duke of Dorset, Stubbes was appointed chaplain-in- ordinary to Frederick, Prince of Wales, in 1734 ; in the same year he became rector of ToUeshunt Knights, Essex, and of St. Lawrence, Newland, in the same county, less than three years afterwards. These were comfortable pluralities for a clergyman who was regarded as silent and reserved, seeming conscious of a want of address, though at the same time of superior abilities. They meant at least one dedication, and Stubbes addressed " A Dialogue in the Manner of Plato between Socrates and Aspasia " in a " plain familiar epistle " to Dodington. " Some Socratic conversations at Eastbury, in which I had the pleasure to bear a (very little) part," the worthy man explained, " first made me conceive it an attempt not altogether impracticable." He hoped that Doding- ton would present it to the Duke of Dorset and * Hist. MS3. Com., Vsrious Collections, VI, 2&-30. EASTBURY 81 that he might find a fair patroness in his Grace's family. The " Dialogue " is an improvement on "The Laurel and the Olive," but it scarcely justifies a contributor to The Gentleman's Magazine in hoping that more of Stubbes's work would be rescued from oblivion. * He died and was buried at Tarrant Gunville in July, 1742. Enough of Stubbes ! Parson Christopher Pitt, of Pimperne, a Win- chester contemporary of Dodington, was probably nearer his heart than the devoted but dull Stubbes. His church, with its fine Norman stonework, stands just ofE the high-road between Blandford and Tarrant Hinton. Pitt, who was a distant cousin of the Great Commoner, represented a type of clergyman peculiar to the Church of England. His monument in Blandford Church records that : " Eminent for the universal candour of his mind and the primitive simplicity of his manners, he lived innocent and died beloved." Yet this man, who was content to bury himself in a country parish, had some pretensions as a scholar. He translated Bishop Vida's " De Arte Poetica," and did the "iEneid" into English verse — some- what tamely it must be confessed. " Dryden's faults," Dr. Johnson not unjustly wrote, " are forgotten in the hurry of dehght, and Pitt's beauties are neglected in the languor of a cold * Omtkman'a Magazine, 1776, 213-214. 82 PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTER and listless perusal." Christopher Pitt, however, had a pretty touch in the light verse he wrote to amuse his intimates. Thus — " If Dodington will condescend To visit a poetic friend. And leave a various bfll of fare, For four or five plain dishes here. * * * • - " Youi mutton comes from Pimpeme-down ; Your fish, if any, from the town ; ***** " Punch I have store, and beer beside. And port that's good, though Frenchified." In 1722 Pitt indited an " Epistle " to a prominent member of Dodington's circle, Edward Young of the " Night Thoughts." It began— " While with your Dodington retir'd you sit, Charm'd with his flowing burgundy and wit ; By turns relieving with the circling draught Each pause of chat, and interval of thought. Or through the well-glaz'd tube, from business freed. Draw the rich spirit of the Indian weed." Pitt also described Young as examining " Van- brugh's models " of the rising house, or wandering through the " opening vistas " of the " new Eden." Dodington's burgundy often flowed for Young, and given the relations between patron and poet — ^relations with difficulty realised now — the long friendship was honourable to both. In 1722 Young had not yet taken orders or become the lugubrious author of the "Night Thoughts." Tradition asserts, indeed, that he had been a gay spark, and EASTBURY 83 though he may have profited by the society of Addison, he cannot have found the dissolute Duke of Wharton an edifjring associate. To Wharton Young dedicated " The Eevenge," that sonorous tragedy long favoured by actors of the declamatory school. He had also begun those " Satires " which subsequent rehgious qualms caused him to exclude from his collected works, and which have since been consigned to a neglect not altogether their due. In the second of them he wrote — " A fool at forty is a fool indeed." The unknown painter, who depicted him at about that age, represents not a fool, but a man of gentle simplicity. Young's mild but not magnificent eye gazes inquiringly at the spectator from the walls of the National Portrait Gallery as if doubtful of the reception he will get ; and there is little decision or distinction, though some goodness, to be discovered in the face as a whole. In the portrait from which the accompanying illustration is taken, Verhelst seems to have ideahsed his features, but the perplexity remains. He may not have been the original of Fielding's Parson Adams ; none the less he bore some resemblance to that immortal character. Young was at Eastbury again in 1727 when Voltaire arrived on a visit of some importance in literary history. The English poet appears to 84 PATRON ANB PLACE-HUNTER have held his own in a contest about MUton, and is said to have thrown at the Frenchman the often- quoted distich — " You are so witty, profligate, and thin. At once we think thee Milton, Death, and Sin." But the improvisation, t£ made at all, must have been subsequently amplified and mollified ; since while dedicating his " Seapiece " to Voltaire, Young asked him — " No stranger. Sir, though bom in foreign climes ; On Dorset downs, when Milton's page With Sin and Death provok'd thy rage. Thy rage provok'd, who sooth'd with gentle rhymes ? " The suggestion that Young was poking fun at M. de Voltaire from first to last is tempting, but to be rejected. On the whole, Young adulated his Dodington with as much discrimination as could be expected from one who was so very, very humble. In his second Satire he pays Dodington a compliment for his " opermess of heart " and " manner nobly free." * Satire HI. was addressed to the master of Eastbury — " Pierian Eastbury " as Young calls it elsewhere — " Long, Dodington, in debt I long have sought To ease the burden of my grateful thought." * Dodsley filled up the blank with Lord Chesterfield's name, and so the compliment is paid to him in some editions of Young's works. But Dodington's is the correct name, since Chesterfield is eulogised earlier in the Satire as Stanhope. EASTBUEY 85 Young concludes, after observing how hard it is for real worth to gain a prize — " May, Dodington, this maxim fail in you, Whom my presaging thoughts already view. By Walpole's conduct fir'd and fiiendship grac'd. Still higher in your Prince's favotir plac'd." As we shall soon see, this was not a happy prophecy. In his last years Young made a forcible-feeble attempt to wipe out the ill-effects of Dodington's "Epistle to Walpole" in verse, entitled "An Old Man's Relapse." In affected ignorance he ex- claimed — " But whence so finish'd, so refin'd a piece ? The tongue denies it to old Rome and Greece." He ended — " Adieu, who'er thou art 1 on death's pale coast Ere long I'll talk thee o'er with Dryden's ghost ; The bard wiU smile." The bard must have been in an unusually accom- modating temper. And Young, after all, survived his friend Dodington by some three years. James Thomson was recruited to Eastbury through the intervention of Young. He, like many a young Scot, had known what hunger in a London garret meant, until the publication of his " Winter " gained him reputation and admission to the " famUy " or household of Lord Binning. To that patron Thomson proposed to dedicate his forthcoming poem " Summer," but in his important way Dodington sent Young to him with a request 86 PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTER for his acquaintance. Lord Binning, thereupon, good-naturedly advised Thomson to dedicate the verses to Dodington, " a man who," as Dr. Johnson writes, " had more power to advance the reputation and fortune of a poet." Dodington accepted, and was rewarded with a prolix prose " Epistle " which Thomson subsequently had the good taste to suppress. There appeared instead the lines — " And thou my youthful Muse's early friend In whom the human graces aU unite : Pure light of mind, and tenderness of heart ; Genius and wisdom ; the gay social sense. By decency chastis'd ; goodness and wit In seldom-meeting harmony combin'd ; Unblemish'd honour, and an active zeal For Britain's glory, liberty and man — Oh ! Dodington, attend my rural song. Stoop to my theme, inspirit every line. And teach me to deserve thy just applause." Tn " Autumn " again Thomson exclaimed — " Oh, lose me in the green delightful walks Of, Dodington, thy seat serene." Thomson dUated on the " pure Dorsetian downs " surrounding Eastbury ; its " lofty dome " ; its columns and groves — " Full of thy genius all ! the Muses" seat : Where in the secret bower, and winding walk, For virtuous Young and thee they twine the bay." And then Jemmy, who had a sweet tooth, went off to pick the "shining plomb " and "fragrant nectarine " in the kitchen garden. Thomson's flattery may, of course, be regarded EASTBURY 87 as payment in return for a comfortable home, burgundy and the twenty guineas which the patron disbursed for copies of the collected edition of " The Seasons." But the letters written to Dodington while Thomson was travelling abroad as tutor to a son of Lord Chancellor Talbot prove that he was animated by higher motives than comfort and coin. It is true that the poet, who found his surest inspiration in English scenery, after " longing to see the fields where Virgil gathered his immortal honey," soon came to con- fess that his enthusiasm was fast abating, and com- mitted himself to some Philistine observations about classic statuary. But his zeal for literature con- tinued unimpaired ; and though he wisely rejected Dodington's suggestion that he should write an epic on Timoleon, because the machinery of the heathen gods " will not do at this time of day," Dodiugton hit upon a congenial subject in poems descriptive of travel, a vein in which Thomson might have anticipated Rogers's "Italy."* Thomson evidently set genuine store by Doding- ton's advice, while in a poem, more remarkable for amiability than elevation, he styled his patron " The Happy Man "— " Nor canst thou, Dodington, this truth decline. Thine is the fortune, and the mind is thine." Thomson, good-natured, rather idle, sUent in * Seward, " Anecdotes," 11., 341-348. 88 PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTER mixed company, but cheerful among his friends, by whom he was much beloved ; " more fat " besides — to quote his own " Castle of Indolence " — " than bard beseems," represents eighteenth- century authorship on its honourable side. In Leonard Welsted the man of letters appears in a less amiable light. That poetaster is only remembered through Pope's scathing couplet — " Flow, Welflted, flow 1 like thine inspirer, beer. Though stale, not ripe : though thin, yet never clear." As a holder of various places, a commissionership for managing the State Lottery among them, his circumstances appear to have been easy. Still there is evident truth in Pope's sneer that he screwed money out of patrons by dedications, and among those patrons was the easily-penetrated Dodington. In his " Proposals for Translating the whole Works of Horaxje," Welsted addressed to him an imitation of the first Ode ; and, with greasy flattery, described him as " to kings aUied." The efEusion met with some ridicule ; and, before very long, Welsted, fearing that he had lost Dodington's favour, gave vent to his " inexpressible uneasiness, not to say torment," and assured him that but for his behef in Dodington's judgment, " it concerns me not at all how much lower I may be in your opinion than Mr. Thomson or any other person." * ♦ " Various Collections," VL, 9. EASTBURY 89 Though poets with tempers must have been difficult persons to handle, Dodington never wearied in his patronage. Nor did he confine himself to verse, for the Rev. John Croker of Mapowder humbly dedicated his laborious " Survey of Dorset- shire " to the local magnate. Yet two illustrious men of letters escaped the Dodingtonian lure. Dr. Johnson's rejection of Dodington's tender of friendship is rather inexactly related by Sir John Hawkins in his " Life " of the lexicographer — the commonly received version — ■ but the authentic story is to be found in a con- temporary letter from Cave, the pubhsher, to Samuel Richardson, the novelist.* It seems that on the appearance of the " Rambler " in March, 1750, Cave and Johnson agreed that its authorship should be kept secret. The publisher, however, was approached by two gentlemen, belonging to the Court of the Prince of Wales, who inquired the writer's name, in order to do him service. Cave declined to divulge it, and the inference was not unnaturally drawn that he was desirous of keeping to himself so excellent an essayist. Soon after, Dodington sent a letter directed to the " Rambler," inviting him to his house, when he should be disposed to enlarge his acquaintance. The ofEer was not accepted, but in No. 14, what Cave caUs * Nichols' "Literary Anecdotes, V., 40; and Johnson's "Mis- cellanies" [ed. Birkbeck Hill], II., 104. 90 PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTER " a kind of excuse " was made. In one of his happiest essays, Johnson, the finest talker of his time, hinted that a good writer might not appear to advantage in conversation. A man, he declared, writes better than he lives. Johnson continued in his best style — " A man of letters for the most part spends, in the privacies of the study, that season of life in which the manners are to be softened into ease, and polished into elegance ; and, when he has gained knowledge enough to be respected, has neglected the minuter arts by which he might have pleased. When he enters Hfe, if his temper be soft and timorous, he is diffident and bashful, from the knowledge of his defects ; or if he was born with spirit and resolution, he is ferocious and arrogant, from the consciousness of his merit ; he is either dissipated by the awe of company, and unable to recoUect his reading and arrange his arguments ; or he is hot and dogmatical, quick on opposition, and tenacious in defence, disabled by his own violence and confused in his haste to triumph." When Johnson wrote this feeling passage, grinding poverty was stUl with him, and though he had founded the first of his clubs, that in Ivy Lane, he had not yet become recognised as a social autocrat. The diffidence expressed by him was evidently sincere. At the same time he may well have felt that Dodington was not likely to be to his taste, and so fought shy of his acquaintance. Pope was by no means content with leaving Dodington severely alone. His animosity appears EASTBURY 91 to have originated in an injudicious attempt on Swift's part to obtain a pension for him through Dodington. But personal antipathy lay really at the root of the antagonism. To one who associated with his St. John and his Marchmont on equal terms, Dodington's pompous patronage must have been intolerable. We are not astonished, therefore, to find Pope writing to Swift : " He is too much a half-wit to love a true wit, and too much half -honest to esteem any entire merit. I hope, and I think he hates me too, and I will do my best to make him. He is so insupportably insolent in his civility to me when he meets me at one third place, that I must affront him to be rid of him." There seems to have been on Pope's side a sense of some personal injury, whether real or imaginary.* Pope was as good as his word. In Epistle IV. of the " Moral Essays " he exclaimed — " See ! sportive Fate, to punish awkward pride ; Bids Bubo build, and sends him such a guide : A standing sermon, at each year's expense. That never coxcomb reached magnificence." After demolishing Bubb Dodington and Van- brugh in a line, Pope proceeded to describe in the " Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot " how Balbus, who has been identified with Lord Dupplin — " for mine obligingly mistakes The first lampoon Sir Will or Bubo makes." * Pope's " Works " [ed. Elwin & Courthope], VII., 174 and 319. 92 PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTER Sir Will was, of course, Yonge, Dodington's coUeague at the Treasury. Dodington's want of political character was flagellated in the " Imita- tions of Horace "-^ " Why one like Bu with pay and Bcom content BowB and votes on, in Court and Parliament." Again, in the " Epilogue to the Satires " Pope twice bracketed Dodington and Yonge — " But Horace, Sir, was delicate, was nice ; Bubo observes, he lashed no sort of vice Horace would say. Sir Billy served the Crown." And ' The flowers of Bubo [originally Bubbington] and the flow of Y - - ng." But Pope's most elaborate attack on Dodington was in the " Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot " as it was first written. The passage began — " Proud as ApoUo on his forked hiU Sat full-blown Bubo, pufied by every qnilL" It went on to describe how his library — " Received of wits an undistinguished race. Who first his judgment asked, and then a place : Much they extolled his pictures, much his seat. And flattered every day, and some days eat : Till grown more frugal in his riper days. He paid some bards with port, and some with praise. To some a dry rehearsal was assigned. And others (harder stiU) he paid in kind." But Pope altered his mind. By a stroke of the pen. Bubo became Buf o ; that is Charles Montagu, Earl of Halifax, Dodington's predecessor as a patron of the poets. Four lines were deftly EASTBURY 93 inserted, transferring the narrative to the age of Dryden. It thus, as Pope's editors point out, became consistent with other passages in the " Epistle," such as the famous attack on Addison. But prudential considerations may also have dictated the change. Halifax was dead ; Doding- ton very much alive. Dodington, too, was intimately connected with Lord Cobham, whose house, Stowe, was presumably the " third place " to which Pope alluded, and the rest of Pope's political allies. Resentment had to be confined to passing allusions ; a set attack was dangerous. If Dodington did not escape the satirist, he was also sport for the caricaturist. The prints in which he appeared as a subsidiary figure after he had passed into opposition to Walpole, are politically rather than artistically important, perhaps, and are, therefore, best considered in that connection. But, towards the end of the reign of George II., two clever artists — one a genius — were attracted by his rotund figure. George, afterwards the first Marquis, Townshend introduced him into "The Recruiting Serjeant," a satire on Henry Fox's attempt to form a Govern- ment. Horace Walpole vouched for the fidelity of a likeness which made him laugh till he cried. It is, indeed, impossible to mistake Dodington as, arrayed in a crimson coat embroidered with lilies, he waddles after the gaunt figure of Lord 94 PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTER Sandwich and exclaims : "I can't follow this lean fellow much longer ; that's flat." The print sold in great quantities, in spite of Horace Walpole's criticism that George Townshend's merits lay entirely in his pencil and that his labels were dull. " The Recruiting Serjeant " seems to have suggested to Hogarth one of his genuine caricatures of Dodington — ^there are others that may or may not be his — ^in which Dodington appears, hat in hand, with the lace ruffles making a brave dis- play. His attitude, when in the act of speaking, appears to have been admirably caught.* But a more elaborate Dodington is to be discovered ia " Chairing the Members," the last of the famous " Four Prints of an Election." He is the storm- tossed politician ; his colleague is waiting his turn ; among the figures surveying the riotous eighteenth-century scene is the Duke of Newcastle. Lastly comes the capital " Perriwigs " plate, or, to give it the full title, "The Five Orders of Perriwigs as they were worn at the late Corona- tion [that of George III.] Measured Architectoni- cally." Here Dodington, now Lord Melcombe, is the first figure in the second row, the " Old Peerian or Aldermanic," and to a speaking likeness the artist has added the mahcious touch or two * This caricature, which was etched by Bartolozzi, is catalogued No. 3588 in the " Catalogue of Satiric Prints in the British Museum " (VoL m.. Part U., p. 1132). '■|j.i-ir5« 1^ .« ^ i EASTBURY 95 that make up true caricature. I am privileged to publish a reproduction from Horace Walpole's own copy. It will be noted that Walpole, with a characteristic disregard for proper names, writes " Malcomb " for Melcombe. An obese figure in " The Times, Plate II.," has also been taken by some for Melcombe, but the identification is doubt- ful, more especially as Hogarth's victim had died before the print appeared. Fatness, after all, was not a monopoly of the Lord of Eastbury. CHAPTER VII A PEINCE AND A DUKE Dodington and Spencer Compton — ^An Anonymous Letter — Frederick, Prince of Wales — " Your Glory " — ^A Loan and a Sneer — James Oswald — ^The Excise Bill — Dodington's Dismissal — ^An Invitation to Eastbury — The Prince's Allowance — Dodington Consulted — ^An Incorruptible — An Ode to Queen Caroline — John, Duke of Argyll— A Disorganised Opposition — Dodington in Caricature — ^Fall of Walpole. THE crisis which followed the death of George I. at Osnaburgh has been vari- ously related in detail, but its main course is clear. When the news reached London, Sir Robert Walpole rode hard to Rich- mond ; awoke the new King from his afternoon nap and broke the inteUigence to him. The reward he received was : " Go to Chiswick and take your instructions from Sir Spencer Compton," the Speaker. The fact that Sir Robert was in dis- favour soon spread abroad, and time-servers fled before him when he walked through the rooms of Leicester House, where the new King still held his Court. Among the deserters was Dodington. His " early application and distinguished assiduity A PRINCE AND A DUKE 97 at this juncture," wrote Lord Hervey, " to the supposed successor of his former patron and benefactor were never forgiven." * The move was thoroughly unsound, because Spencer Compton promptly proved his incapacity, and Walpole's furtherance of the King's wishes as to the Civil List did the rest. " Consider, Sir Robert," said George II., " what makes me easy in this matter will prove for your ease too ; it is for my life it is to be fixed and for your life." The alliance did not last, it is true, till death parted them, but Walpole had strengthened his position with the King by his short surrender, more especially as he had a firm friend in the King's sagacious Consort, Queen Caroline, Dodington must have walked delicately for some weeks. It is possible, too, that he had private qualms about an anonymous paper, signed A. P., which Compton had received during the crisis. This document has been preserved in Mrs. Stopford- Sackville's Collection, and, as the Editor remarks, it is a good deal in Dodington's style.f An out- pouring of long, pretentious sentences, bespattered with semi-colons, denounces Walpole as the author of his country's ruin, and urges Compton to take a peerage, and "undertake the glorious part fate seems to have destined you for." At the * Lord Harvey's " Memoirs " [ed. Croker], I., 38. t Hist. MSS. Com., Mrs. Stopford-SackviUe, I., 375. H 98 pateo:n and place-hunter same time eighteenth-century poUticians were a good deal given to prolix dissertations, and if the manner of the paper resembles Dodington's, the spelling certainly does not. He would never have committed " fateague " for fatigue, and numerous other solecisms. " A.P." may, of course, have been a hack writing under Doding- ton's dictation, and even adopting bad spelling as a disguise. Still, as Dodington has a good many intrigues against him, he may, in this instance, be given the benefit of the doubt. A Lord of the Treasury would hardly have stooped to an anonymous communication, but if he had wished to influence Compton he would have written in person. The betrayal of such a letter to Walpole would have been an outrageous breach of weU-recognised rules, and so the step might have been safely taken. Some eighteen months after the accession of George II., Frederick, Prince of Wales, was allowed to come to England, and the Opposition soon greeted him as the centre they had been long seeking. It was a great thing for the Anti-Court party to have a Court of its own. The Whigs whom Walpole had driven into exile, Pulteney and Carteret being the chief, looked to the Prince as their titular leader, and they were joined by the Tories under Sir William Wyndham. The young men with futures, Pitt, Lyttelton, the Grenvilles, A PRINCE AND A DUKE 99 and the rest — " Tlie Boy Patriots " as Walpole called them, " the Cousinhood," as others, " Cob- ham's Cubs," as others a little later — entered into still closer relations, and some became members of the Prince's " family." By-and-by Boling- broke wrote " The Idea of a Patriot King " for the guidance of this Opposition, but it was swayed by faction rather than principle. Dodington was among the first who turned to worship the rising sun. He became the confidential adviser — ^First Minister, Lord Hervey calls him — of the flighty, insincere Prince, and the papers in Miss Eyre- Matcham's Collection prove the intimacy of the connection. Dodington set himself to train the Prince ; and on July 2, N.s., 1732, he wrote to him from Paris in unctuous phrases — " I have set my whole heart on your happiness, but I place it in your glory, and this last in the welfare of oiu" country. To see that life and gaiety which makes you the dehght of all that are near you, corrected by a severe probity and rigid honour makes me every day bless my good fortune, and your partiahty to me ; but when I consider the happiness of millions one day flowing from you, as the eflEect of that probity and honour, I am thoroughly charmed with the prospect, and am proud to own that your good opinion does give me a pleasure that the friendship of a private man could not give." * Some fourteen months later, Dodington called * " Various Collections," VI., 12. 100 PATRON AND PLAGE-HUNTER " the great God to witness that my principal view was to cultivate in you those maxims which would make you a great and glorious prince, and by strengthening and establishing on immovable foundations your happy disposition towards great and virtuous actions and sentiments, to leave in you an inestimable legaxjy to my country, when I shall be beyond the reach of favour or disgrsLce." * By the world at large Dodington was regarded as aU-powerful. Writing to the Duke of Dorset, a very discontented Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, Lady Betty Germain mentioned as a report, which she partly beheved, that Dodington had made up aU difEerences between the King and the Prince. Yet it was noticed that the King sat by himseK at the Haymarket House, whereas at Dodington's the Prince pressed her as earnestly to the Lincoln Fields opera, as if it had been a thing of great moment to the nation, f But the Prince's was a merry Court, from which the graces were by no means excluded, since he was a capital musician and took some interest in astronomy; and in it our Dodington was a good deal of a butt. He might write as he pleased about " probity " and " glory," but that did not prevent his being triindled downstairs, wTapped up in a blanket. The Prince, too, borrowed money from his would-be * " Various Collections," VL, 15. t Hiat. MSS. Report XV., Ap. 7, 37, b. A PRINCE AND A DUKE 101 Dr. Pangloss, and then sneered at him. "That man," he said to Hedges, his Secretary, "is reckoned one of the most sensible men in England, yet with all his parts, I have just nicked him out of five thousand pounds." * Another version of the story. Lord Shelburne's, has " touched him for," instead of " nicked him out of," which sounds curiously modern. In either case the Prince seems to have soon become remarkably proficient in Enghsh slang. The following letter, which is devoid of date, shows that the Prince was not equally skilled in English composition — " My GOOD DORRINGTON, " I plead excuse for not coming at our meeting by Vane's, but a crowd of family, which expect the King hinders me of it. You know the velleite [lukewarm affections] of the Wendnes- day [sic] comers there. A good courtier must be out of the way, the more now. I'll tell you the success of to-night if you come after their supper. Come to me at 12. Adieu mon bon ami, "F. P." This missive was evidently despatched while the Prince was making one of his rare appearances at Court. Dodington's reply opens with florid sub- servience — " I received the honour of your Royal High- ness's letter with all the pleasure that a heart full * Walpole's " Memoirs of G«orge IL," I., 67. 102 PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTER of the deepest respect and most affectionate concern for you can feel." Dodington proceeds to urge the claims of Francis Colman for employment, and comments on the good looks of Mrs. Colman in a style the reverse of delicate. About the same time Dodington sent a facetious invitation to Eastbury, reproduced here in facsimile, to James Oswald, a worthy Scots politician and accomplished speaker, who is always mentioned in Dodington's diary in terms of hearty respect. The communication is typical both of the warmth of his hospitality and his abounding self-import- ance — " I have thought of what you mentioned about our friend, the Prime Serjeant, and heartily wish he may find the way ; at least, to be sure 'tis worth whUe for you to stay and expect the event. But you must own that you may expect it in the country as well as in town, and therefore I must insist upon it that you should go with me to Eastbury for a fortnight ; I will carry you, and get you back to your content, if I do not come myself any day or hour that your letters (which, you will there receive) shall require your presence in town. This is not a comphment, but a thing I absolutely insist on. I go one of the last days of next week, and as I write from the royal apart- ment, I command your attendance ; for such is our good will and pleasure, and so we bid you heartily farewell." * * These three letters came from Mr. Broadley's collection. 'r,/,,,!/,,// /J fl i-^i-i' fl'^ r/flr' /-w/ r^^/ri-/ /f /// //v vr///i/^jr. /i^ f^r// .// /// :'/r/i-/i-. t' ry.vi'/f^fz , >^//,// /////// /i/u/i // /■(«/' ///>// //i/^k/i/ ^ '^l'//i /lie /yr '/a/U/iry,/.'/' ,-i //'///i^/'Ji/, :' /r/'i^ fil /■/'/ ///n/, V) '/t'-^ ■/t'!l /nrA //I IV/I i^/l foi ' /^' ,' //,' /if/ /-/r/iir />:■/• -'f '' , /ifl// ^at/a-/ v^.?' //a/ /jfirr ^-//fJ' (.'''^'■'^' '/i^'' /■>///X-."- /rr''/i^r^.';ifi/^'' ^r.v.".'r. .. y'f/ii/r^i' '/i/t// ^/z • . ' :'>'r, .'/I' /' ' //^ ,{rr/ -v W/// ^' > /„^ / "mr ./fim/','„c yh- /!-f/, // ,<;./■ A'//, (/ -/.r^/,, -c //.> ^<> ■ 'J' 'ffft,:-!,,;//,,! /n/O^ir/C- / / ■/•^•/•/ r/i/nr/^/ "-' ^^. - ■///// FACSIMILE LETTEK A PEINCE AND A DUKE 103 Dodington, it is clear, was for moderate opposi- tion to the measures of the Court — as he would have said, from patriotic motives, as his enemies might have declared, because he could not afiord to break with Walpole. In the House, accordingly, he allowed himself not too much independence, but just independence enough. Thus, in a debate on the elevated topic of the importation of sugar to Ireland for the purpose of making rum, after Old Scrope had advocated restricting the source of supply to the West Indies — propounding, in the words, a policy of Colonial preference — Doding- ton rose, threw over his colleague, and in a mellifluous oration, advocated Free Trade and justice to Ireland.* When Walpole reached a crisis of his fate during the momentous debates on the Excise Bill, Dodington, on whom he would naturally have relied for support, maintained an obstinate silence. Sir Robert told Lord Hervey that, if it were not for the fear of making a breach between the King and his son, he both could and would turn out Dodington ; "for this," he added, "is the second time that worthy gentleman has prepared to rise by treading on my neck." t The abandonment of the Excise BUI in the face of mob clamour added seriously to Walpole's difficulties. He had proved himself vulnerable, * Pari. Hist., December 1, 1743. t Lord Hervey's " Memoirs," I., 212. 104 PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTER and The Craftsman in a series of brilliant papers had demonstrated that the scheme was only the &st of a series of measures for destroying the liberties of EngHshmen. The Trojan horse was considered an instructive parallel. " We know what a General Excise is, and cannot be ignorant that it hath an Army in its beUy." Besides, by proscribing the malcontents on one pretext or another, Walpole sent recruits over to the Anti- Court party. Lord Chesterfield, for one, was abruptly dismissed from a post in the Household ; and Lord Cobham, for another, deprived of the command of his regiment, which, as was the custom of those days, he had purchased in hard cash. Both men, in different. ways, -n-ere to draw Doding- ton within their political orbit, Dodington himself gained little hy leaving Walpole in the lurch. The Prince's little Court was rent by petty quarrels, and Dodington con- trived to get to loggerheads with a 2\lr. 3Ierry, a member of the family. Merry, he was accused of saying, " could never be left there if servihtude should be translated." The Prince reproved Dodington in a rambling, good-natured letter ; and he denied the charge in a reply which was not wanting in obsequiousness. " You well know," was his heart-cry, " it has always been my lot to be represented as an arrogant, self-sufficient, empty coxcomb, and in tlie same quarter of a A PRINCE AND A DUKE 105 hour, nay, in the same breath, as a deep, designing, dangerous spirit." * It is possible that his enemies used Merry as a stalking-horse ; at any rate, they were pretty busy. The blow finally came from one whom Dodington had reason to reckon as his friend. He had brought about the Prince, young Lyttelton, an amiable angular man with a turn for elaborately prepared oratory, and a mildly pleasing Muse which had perpetrated the dedication of the second of four Eclogues to him. " Hear, Dodington, the notes that shepherds sing, Like those that warbling hail the genial Spring." Lyttelton, however, if Lord Hervey can be trusted, professed to be shocked by Dodington's ingratitude to Walpole. He also joined Lord Chesterfield and Lord Cobham, who was his uncle, in urging that the temperate opposition advocated by Dodington was inexpedient, and the outcome of cunning calculation. The Prince, who was pro- bably weary of being lectured about his " probity and glory," thereupon dismissed Dodington ; and with unroyal spite planted shrubs before the door between the disgraced Vizier's house in Pall Mall and the gardens of Carlton House, and changed every lock to which he had given Dodington keys.t Dodington's house, it may be explained, stood * " Various Collections," VI., 14. t Hervoy's " Memoirs," I., 431-434. 106 PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTER on the south side of Pall Mall, on or near the site of the Senior United Service Club. It had only just been finished, since two years previously it was a-buUding, and that, in the opioion of Lord Binning, " in a very fine taste. ' ' After Dodington's death, it was incorporated into Carlton House, of which it became the front part.* We can well beheve Lord Hervey's assertion that Dodington beat a retreat into the countrj-. The gardens of Eastbury and his Stubbes were fit companions for his wounded spirit. There, too, he could exercise his hospitahty ; and when in the following year Sir Philip Yorke, Chief Justice of the King's Bench, and not yet Lord Hardwicke and Lord Chancellor, was on assize at Salisbury, he received a truly Dodingtonian invitation to Eastbury. " I know your entries are necessarily attended with ceremony which possibly need not be so strictly observed in your settings out. This encourages me to make it my humble request to your Lordship that you would honour me with your company at this place on Wednesday morning, and give me leave to wait on you from, hence, on Thursday after dinner as far towards Dorchester as you please to permit. If my coach can be of any use, you will please to command it. Though I freely own that the pleasure of passing a day with yotir Lordship is my temptation, yet I as freely confess that I am much at a loss to find any * Hanbury Williams's " Worka " (1822), L, 18. Horace Walpole's note. A PRINCE AND A DUKE 107 temptation to you to grant it. The best I can think of is to endeavour to prevail on the Bishop to keep you company, which I wiU attempt if I am so happy as to receive your Lordship's permission. " If the favour I have asked be improper, I humbly beg of your company on Thursday at dinner at the hour you please to appoint. In either case I assure your Lordship will find every- thing as easy to you as the most sincere respect, arising out of abihties far superior to the distinctions you have met with, can make it." The spirit of his father Jeremiah must have been strong upon Dodington, when he thus poured the precious ointment of his adulation over Lord Hardwicke. The upshot we cannot tell ; but it is significant that some years later he is to be found writing in a decidedly querulous spirit to Hardwicke about the living at Bridgwater, which one of the Wyndhams had secured for his candidate, though Dodington had forwarded a petition for it. In reply the Lord Chancellor coldly regretted that he could not depart from an arrangement already made,* Walpole's wisdom in keeping on terms with Dodington was soon to become apparent. In April, 1736, the Prince of Wales married Augusta of Saxe-Gotha, a Princess of sound judgment, to whom he soon became attached with the same pecuHar mixture of afEection and infidelity as characterised his father. The alliance, it was * Add. MSS., 35,585, f. 295 ; 35,587, fi, 26, 28. 108 PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTER hoped, would smooth over the difierences between the King and the Prince, but its result was unhappily to sharpen them. After taking his advisers into his confidence, the Prince determined to apply to ParUament for an increase of his allowance, which came from the Civil List, and was therefore dependent on his father's will, from £50,000 to £100,000 a year and for a jointure upon the Princess. Dodington, whose resentment would naturally be brief where a Prince was con- cerned, happening to call, Frederick admitted him to the secret, and in the appendix of his Diary is to be found his minute " Narratve " of audiences protracted over several days. The story is a curious one, and, with certain deductions, it bears the stamp of truth ; stiU its prolixity cries aloud for abridgment. According to Dodington, then, the Prince, after broaching his design, much to his hearer's disquiet, asked him to sound his friends. Sir Paul Methuen, Lord Wilmington (the Spencer Compton of old) and the Duke of Dorset. Dodington demurred ; in an affair of such importance it was proper that the Prince should know their sentiments from their own mouths. The Prince thereupon enlarged on the enthusiasm of his friends, Pulteney, Lord Carteret, Lord Chesterfield, and Sir Wilham WjTidham, and the certainty of his success. Dodington shrewdly replied that the attempt would A PRINCE AND A DUKE 109 only strengthen Walpole, who, having lost the afEection of the people, would make the King's cause inseparable from his own. Besides, was it generous to make such an attack when the King was in such a languishing condition ? With his ugly habit of speculating on his father's death, Frederick replied that the King could not live many years, but might linger a good while. Greatly to Dodington's relief, the audience ended without his being asked to make a direct promise about his vote. Dodington used the interval of grace to collogue with Methuen, Wilmington, and the Duke of Dorset, and found them strongly opposed to the Prince's plan. Six days afterwards the clash of wills was renewed at Carlton House before dinner, and for nearly two hours after it, though Dodington shu£Bed himself into the midst of the company, so as to be the first to get away. The Prince was much agitated and very obstinate. Dodington, after roundly declaring that he should give his absolute dissent from the motion, plied him with hard questions. Could not the allowance be obtained in a manner less ofEensive to the King than by taking it out of the Civil List : why not a separate appeal to Parliament ? The Prince theatrically exclaimed that he would rather beg his bread from door to door than be a further charge on the nation. Would he not be creating no PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTER a precedent which, his brother, the Duke of Cumberland, might afterwards follow ? The Prince gave his word that he would make his children and his brother entirely easy; that would be the best way of keeping everybody quiet. He wailed that he was deserted by his best friends, and that Dodington's being against him cut ofE his fingers. But Dodington was adamant ; as he now stood he could not absent himself from the House, though if he could bring himseM to do so he would wait on the Prince again ; and he undertook not to influence his friends. "Thus ended the most painful conversation I ever had, or I beheve, shall ever have, in my life," We can weU beheve it. Lord Hervey brilliantly describes the turmoil of the Court when the news became known ; the fury of Gfeorge 11., the wrath and anxiety of the Queen, and the perplexity of the Minister. They even made overtures for an accommodation. After the House had risen, Walpole summoned Dodington to a conference behind the Speaker's chair, and the "Narrative" gives ILLuminating portraits of the two men, hating each other, distrusting each other, and yet not daring to break. Dodington began by informing Sir Robert that the question was by no means new to him, but that for several years past it had been the great struggle of his life to prevent its breaking out, and that he absolutely A PRINCE AND A DUKE 111 disapproved of the Prince's move. Sir Robert answered that that was a very handsome declara- tion, and begged him to speak to his friends. Then Dodington became virtuously indignant; his friends were independent gentlemen. As for himself — " Had I any pretensions ? any expectations ? What had I asked or pretended ? He knew I had none ; if I had, let him say it. He said it was very true ; that I must be sensible that there had been great misunderstandings between us, he was willing to suppose on both sides, but that so great a service as that wiped out a multitude of things. I answered, that what I should do was from a motive of my duty ; that I neither asked nor expected any reward for it, nor pretended anything from it ; that as to the gentlemen, I would, as I designed, lay the matter fairly before them, and plainly teU them which way I should vote ; whether my example would influence them they must determine, but I should use no arguments to do it." From this position Dodington declined to budge at their next meeting, when Walpole told him that their misunderstandings had been very public, but now — The Incorruptible interrupted the Mini ster ; he was acting on a principle of honour and conscience, regardless of consequences, though not blind to future resentments. Meanwhile, Dodington had summoned the phalanx ; and that body, " entirely imbiassed " — a point we can believe or not as we please — 112 PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTER decided to vote against the Prince. Its support was useful, for after Pulteney had made the motion in an embarrassed speech, and had been answered by Walpole in one of almost equal embarrassment, the Government escaped defeat by thirty. Sir William Wyndham, in spite of Frederick's bravado, and forty-four Tories walking out. In the Lords, where Carteret moved the resolution, the numbers for the King were 103, and for the Prince 40. As for Dodington, we can discount a good deal of his alleged outspokenness to Frederick, and declarations of independence to Walpole. But the "Narrative," as a whole, reads truthfully, and represents him as playing a not unpatriotic part. The banishment of the Prince from Court followed, and an undignified war of reprisals on his part, which was interrupted by the death of the Queen, still unreconciled to her son. Dodington's docile ]Muse didy turned out an elegy of conven- tional structure and sentiment. It cannot be called a happy production. True, the wise woman is very properly extolled as one who — " Biult her empire on a people's love." But she was also praised as a — " Patron of freedom, and her conntry's lavs. Sure friend to virtue's and religion's canse ; Religion's cause, whose charms superior shone To eVry gay temptation of a Crown." • * Coxe'3 " Walpole L," 555. A PRINCE AND A DUKE 113 The Queen Garoline of history happens to have been of a decidedly sceptical mind. But if Dodington was ready to flatter the Court, he by no means abated his resentment to the Minister. The Prince was evidently well acquainted with his company ; the Ministerial malcontents, the Duke of Dorset — a great noble- man and nothing more — the Duke of Argyll and Lord Wilmington, who after Walpole had extin- guished him in the Upper House as Lord President of the Council, did nothing but grumble and intrigue. Of the trio, Dodington attached himself most closely to the Duke of Argyll. In lines written after the Duke's death, in which there is a certain ring of sincerity, he invoked " Mem'ry, rare gift," to the following efEect — " Each feature of the fav'rite picture trace, Kecall his Ease and Dignity and Giace, His Carriage cool, his Wisdom void of art, The gentlest Manners, and the warmest Heart ; His Soul with ev'ry nobler passion fraught And pushing Eriendship sometimes to a Fault." ^ John, Duke of Argyll and Greenwich — Jeanie Deans's Duke — was undoubtedly a r splendent man. Aikman's painting in the National Portrait Gallery hands down to us his graceful figure, and delicately refined countenance. His manner was delightful both to his equals and his inferiors. * " A Poetical Epistle from the late Lord Meloombe to the Eail of Bute." I 114 PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTER Moreover, he had done the State some service. He had returned from the War of the Spanish Succession with a reputation second only to Marl- borough's ; by his dramatic arrival at the Privy Council, whUe Queen Anne lay dying, he had thwarted Jacobite hopes at the moment when they soared highest ; he had crushed, with fortune to aid him, the Rebellion of 1715. Yet withal, there was something wanting. He was an unstable politician, now for and now against the Union between England and Scotland ; his fine speeches enchanted the House of Lords, but when considered they were found to be empty of thought. His pride swayed him from side to side. The alliance between the Duke and Dodington, not unlike the comradeship of Don Quixote and Sancho, much diverted the town. Hanbury Williams indited a merry " Ode to the Duke of Argyll as from Mr. Dodington," wherein his Grace was reminded — " How you on either side debate For and against a question," and how he had " the left wing forgot " at the battle of Sheriffmuir. But to Walpole the con- version of the Duke's influence in Scotland from support to hostility was formidable indeed. The Minister endured his opposition for awhile; and then when it became too pronounced, turned him out of all his employments, which included the A PRINCE AND A DUKE 115 Master-Generalship of the Ordnance, and the Governorship of Portsmouth. Dodington must have felt that his turn was coming at last. " For sometimes," wrote Hanbury Williams — " For sometimes by himself he sat, Projecting glorious ends ; And then he sent his letter forth To summon all his friends." * He did not venture near the Treasury Board after May 22, 1740 ; during the whole of that summer only Walpole, Winnington, and Lord Sundon attended. On June 17, Walpole wrote him an angry letter, teUing him that he must not meddle with Pearce and Olmius, who by arrangement with Dodington, sat for Weymouth in the Court interest, f In October the Duke of Newcastle, presumably as Minister in Attendance, dealt the fatal blow, and Dodington bowed his head to the stroke. "I received the honour of your Grace's letter this morning. As there is no cause assigned to my dismission, I have nothing to do but, with the utmost humility, to thank his Majesty for all his past favours ; most dutifully assuring him that I quit his service with as much zeal and attachment to his Royal person and Government, and as fervent prayers for the long prosperity of both, as any subject ever entered it with. * Hanbury Williams, " Works " (1S22), I., 19. t Olmius was a director of the Bank of England, of Dutch origin who became an Irish peer. Williams rhymes him with " defy us." 116 PATRON ANP PLACE-HUNTER " I beg leave at the same time to assure your Grace that no occasion can be disagreeable to me that gives me room to hope for the honour and continuance of your good opinion." * As an additional mortification a peerage was refused him about this time — probably before the General Election — and he had to wait over twenty years before he became Lord Melcombe. As he was becoming very fat, one of Walpole's sons said that what he had lost in influence he had gained in weight. The ejected and unpeered Dodington must have felt the iron enter into his soul, when after making a speech, in which he called the Adminis- tration infamous, Walpole gravely alluded to him as a person of great seH-mortification, who for sixteen years had condescended to bear part of the odium. In vain Dodington returned to the attack, and in a set speech declaimed against a particular person who had so usurped authority, that all inferior offices were obHgedto submit to his will, and either to bend and bow, or be broken ; and added that he hoped the steps they were now going to take, would make the post of First Minister so dangerous a post, that nobody would care to accept it for the future. Lord Doneraile bluntly wished that the gentleman would speak more leniently of an administration with which he had been so ■^ Add, MSS„ 32,695, f. 288. A PRINCE AND A DUKE 117 intimately concerned for so many years. With delicate wit, Winnington said that he did not know what Dodington had meant by either tending or being broken ; that he knew some who had been broken, though they had both bowed and bended.* But behind the scenes Dodington was a power. The General Election of 1741 resulted in a serious diminution of Walpole's majority, and Dodington set himself to organise the Opposition. Political necessities having brought him and Chesterfield together again, he rallied the Earl to the Duke of Argyll. " If the Duke sounds to battle," was the reply, " I'll follow my leader ; if he stays in Oxfordshire, I'll stay in Grosvenor Square." Dodington, thereupon, set himself to educate his leader in a long epistle, to be found in the Corre- spondence appended to Coxe's " Walpole." With a power of analysis which the modern political meteorologist might well envy, since the conditions of those days were far more fluctuating, he cal- culated that the Court had not at best a majority of more than nine. Therefore " our chiefs " should meet, to the number of eight or ten ; by comparing lists they should find out who were their friends, and who not ; and concert upon a point of attack, " but not upon the choice of a Speaker, unless our numbers should appear to be, what I am confident they are not." The result * Walpole, " Letters " [ed. Toynbee], I. 165 and 188. 118 PATKON AND PLACE-HUNTER must be communicated to the gentlemen in their difEerent districts ; they should be invited to dinner. " Decent frugality should be the cement of our society " — the Duke was supposed to be rather a miser — clubs should be encouraged. Again — and this idea was entertained by Dodington for many years — ^the names of Whig and Tory shoidd be extirpated. " If," he magnanimously asked, " the Tories profess restraining the prero- gative ; defending and augmenting the liberties of the people ; and preserving the Protestant family on the Throne, at the expense and hazard of their Hves and fortunes (and some of the most eminent among them do profess this), what farther is required to the pohtical creed of a true English- man ? " The Duke's " poor servant "' concluded by imploring him to place himself in the forefront of the battle. In some respects, Dodington was in advance of his time ; the late iMr. Schnadhorst would have clasped him to his bosom. But of the aristocrats with whom he had to deal, the Duke of Argyll, after two months' silence, simply declared that he would persevere that Session, and then, if un- successful, retire ; while Pulteney, already flinching from responsibility, snuflEed Dodington out. " He saw no use of a meeting, or concert ; would by no means write to, or summon gentlemen ; thought a fortnipfht before the Session would be time A PRINCE AND A DUKE 119 enough ; . . . was absolutely resolved not to take the lead." Did Dodington despair ? Not he. Though he had declared to win, as they say on the turf, with the Duke of Argyll, he was not above running another horse as well, and his selection proved thoroughly sound. He was also in communication with Lord Wilmington. " I suppose it is agreed," he wrote by way of exordium, " that this man [the man Walpole] or this country must perish." And then, with a prodigahty of underhning — " I have many good reasons to believe that C [Lord Chesterfield] is (and has been for some time) strongly at work with N [ewcastle] and C [arteret] to deprive you of the honour of this great event, and our country of the advantage of it. Be pleased to consider what a diminution this would he to your glory, what a loss to our country ! For you know what I have had the honour to explain to your Lordship, you ajid you only can settle the King's afiEairs at this crisis, upon that extensive bottom, and his person in that universal affection of all his people where only lasting prosperity and advantage for the one, and lasting security and glory for the other, can be found. How fatal to both, therefore, to let it slip ! " * Walpole fell, after all, less before Dodington and his Peers, than before the excited resentment of the public. He had entered on a war with Spain against his convictions, and he carried it on without spirit. The English people had forced * Hist, MSS. , Com. Report IX. , Ap. , 8 b. 120 PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTER him into a course to which his judgment stood opposed ; and there is this much to be said for them, that though their hero. Captain Jenkins, may not have " committed his soul to God and his cause to his country," he, and other British sailors, had been barbarously treated. With pubhc opinion in a state of effervescence, the claptrap of Richard Glover's " Leonidas " — ^ingeniously con- verted by Lyttelton into a patriotic manifesto — and his ringing ballad, "Captain Hozier's Ghost," counted for much more than Parliamentary manoeuvres. Caricatures swarmed. " The Motion," by "Gravelot," reproduced here, enjoyed great popularity, and was long remembered. It was suggested by Lord Carteret's resolution : " That Sir Robert Walpole should be dismissed from his Majesty's presence and councils for ever." The scene is laid on the banks of the Thames, with a house, presumably Walpole's Chelsea villa, in the background, and Chelsea church in the di^tance. Lord Carteret, in the coach, thrusts his head out of the window and cries : " John, if you drive so fast you'U overset us aU, by God ! " John is, of course, the Duke of Argyll, and between his legs is a Danish carriage-dog with " Bubb " on its coUar. The postilion is Lord Chesterfield ; the running footman may be Pitt ; the two footmen behind are the Bishops of Lincoln and Lichfield, ! / / ■ / A PRINCE AND A PUKE 121 one of whom exclaims in terror, " Ora fro nobis." The lanky equestrian, who brings up the rear, is Lyttelton. In another and cruder version of " The Motion," the coach is driving down Whitehall with Holbein's gate in the distance. The figures are varied, Cobham and Pulteney being introduced. But Argyll is still on the box and Dodington remains as the carriage-dog, the identification being driven home by the rhymes — " Who be dat de Box do sit on ? 'Tis John the Hero of North Britain Who out of place, does Place-men spit on. Doodle, etc. Between his Legs de Spaniel Cur see. Who, now he growls at Bob so fierce. Yet fawn'd on him once in Doggrel Vers6." * " The Acquittal " carried on the story of discom- fited faction. Walpole, a virtuous St. Sebastian, is standing in a landscape, the target of the darts of " pique," " want of place," and so forth. Dodington is easily distinguishable by his broken bow. Pulteney exclaims, " Zounds, I missed him ! " ; Sandys, one of Hanbury Williams's butts, " All mismanaged ! " " Downright " Shippen, the Jacobite, who declined to persecute Sir Robert, says, " I'U een not meddle " ; the servile Smalbroke, Bishop of Lichfield, declares, " The Devil owed me a spite." • •; Catalogue of Satiric Prints," HI., 368 and 377. 122 PATilON AND PLACE-HUNTER Dodington was foremost among the pack who clamoured for Walpole's nun. An Opposition meeting was held at his house, and after the Mrnister's fall over the Chippenham Election Petition — ^which cost the Prince of Wales, who represented purity of administration, £12,000 in corruption — ^he stood, but without success, for the Select Committee appointed to inquire into the statesman's conduct of affairs. It was very vindictive of him ; but then the refusal of the red ribbon, and a peerage, and the ejection from the Treasury ! Dodington would not have been Dodington, if he had not laid such things deeply to heart. CHAPTER VIII FROM WALPOLE TO PELHAM A Scramble for Office — ^The New Opposition — Chesterfield on Dodington — Dodington's Activities — " The Claims of the Broad Bottom "—The Treaty of Worms — ^An " Epistle from John Moore " — Debate on the Hanoverian Troops —Dodington's Speech — " A Noble Despair " — Dodington and Oswald — Treasurer of the Navy — Prestonpans and CuUoden — Dodington's Duties — Political Calm — ^The Prince's Overtures. WALPOLE had secured his retreat before the fateful division on the Chippenham petition. By negotiations with the Opposition leaders, he obtained a pro- mise of immunity from extreme reprisals ; and, as the world knows, the Select Committee appointed to inquire into the last ten years of his adminis- tration found out nothing. Old Scrope, who could have told, said that he was fourscore years of age, and did not care whether the last few months of his life were spent in the Tower or not. But long before the inquiry came to its futile end, the malcontent Whigs had discovered how huge had been their mistake in taking a personal hatred 124 PATRON AXD PLACE-HUNTER of the Minister for a policy. Walpole's colleagues had escaped them; and the most prominent, including those tenacious brothers, Henry Pelham and the Duke of Newcastle, had no intention of following their chief into exile. Besides, when the crash came, the Patriots were leaderless. Sir William Wyndham, who might have kept them together, died on the eve of victory. Pulteney's nerve deserted him in the confusion; as he told Lord Shelbume in after years, he lost his head and was obliged to go out of town for three or four days to keep his senses. He returned to sink into the earldom which the King, on Walpole's advice, extended to him ; and to be held up to scorn by Hanbury Williams or another — " Leave a blank here and there on each page To enrol the fair deeds of his youth ! When you mention the acts of his age. Leave a blank for his honour and truth ! " • The final arrangement was a coalition, with Lord Wilmington as its nominal head and the Pelhams and others of Walpole's former colleagues as the holders of the best appointments, except the principal Secretaryship of State which fell to Carteret. Pulteney, become Earl of Bath, was an unofficial member of the Cabinet. From this combination Dodington was excluded, probably * Hanbury Williams, " Works " (1822), L, 151. Horace Walpole was not satisfied as to the authorship of the poem, which WilliaiD= never acknowledged aa his own. FKOM WALPOLE TO PELHAM 125 for the reason that in the scramble no room could be found for him. His patron, the Duke of Argyll, joined the Government in the worst of tempers, and very soon threw up his appointments. Lyttelton, Chesterfield, and Pitt were all left out in the cold ; and though Lord Cobham was created a Field-Marshal and appointed Colonel of the first troop of Horseguards, he promptly began to intrigue against the Government from within. From exclusion to Opposition was always a short step with Dodington, and the observant Glover records that he made strong attempts, not without success, to become a leader.* But the new Opposition really acted under the direction of Lord Cobham and Edmund Waller. Cobham was able but disputatious and a power at Carlton House ; he seems to have always looked upon Dodington with that veiled dislike which is so often directed at rich relations who are "not quite the thing," while they were occasionally at open variance.! Edmund Waller, of Beacons- field, a descendant of the poet, was a rancorous, * " Memoirs by a celebrated Literary and Political Character," 9. t Dodington's uncle appears to have directed that £30,000 should be laid out on Bastbury ; the nephew is said to have applied the sum to the purchase of an estate close by which he intended for the Wyndhams, but this having been deemed a misapplication of the legacy the purchase was declared void (Hutchins, " Dorset," III., 456). A case. Lord Cobham v. Dodington, was tried in 1744 by Lord Hardwicke (Add. MSS. 36,054, f. 1326), but no report of it exists. 126 PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTER confused person, who may be said to have anti- cipated Sam Whitbread in the violence of his faction. Eventually, Cobham having hberated his soul by resigning his commission, a junto of nine was formed consisting of himself. Waller, Pitt, Lyttelton, Chesterfield, the Duke of Bedford, Lord Gower, Sir John Hinde Cotton, and Dodington. The first five represented the Prince's interests — and Dodington's renewed association with Lyttel- ton was not without its humour ; the Duke of Bedford headed a knot of place-hunters known later as the " Bloomsbury Gang," conspicuous among whom was Henry Fox ; Lord Gower and Sir John Hinde Cotton were Tories — some said Jacobites ; Dodington was Dodingtonian. Glover frankly defines admission to office as their principle of union. This laudable object they proposed to achieve by coercing Henry Pelham, of whose timidity they had formed a shrewd estimate, and by attacking Carteret, whose foreign policy was vigorous but vulnerable, at every point. But internal dissensions were rife. " Damn those fellows," Cobham exclaimed of Chesterfield and Lyttelton, " they mean nothing but themselves ! WHl they stand by us ? By God, we will have no further concern with them." His resolution did not hold.* Just about this time, too, Chesterfield permed » Glover, 33. FROM WALPOLE TO PELHAM 127 a character of Dodington which is not exactly amiable — " With submission to my Lord Rochester, God made Dodington the coxcomb he is ; mere human means could not have brought it about. He is a coxcomb superior to his parts, though his parts are superior to almost anybody's. He is tho- roughly convinced of the beauty of his person, which cannot be worse than it is without deformity. His distinguished awkwardness he mistakes for a peculiar gracefulness. . . . And what is difficult for him to do, he even overrates his own parts. Common coxcombs hope to impose upon others more than they impose on themselves ; Dodington is sincere, nay, moderate ; for he thinks still ten times better of himself than he owns. Blest coxcomb ! " * Dodington's activities were incessant during the years that followed Walpole's resignation. He inspired James Ralph's so-called pamphlet — ^it is in two stoutish volumes — on the " Use and Abuse of Parliaments," the first part of which is a reprint of Algernon Sydney's " General View of Govern- ment in Europe." This vigorous arraignment of ParUamentary institutions, which gathers strength as it proceeds, forms a teUing, if belated, assault on the system established by Sir Robert. The minute examination of Spanish affairs and sundry patriotic ejaculations at its close may well come from Dodington's pen. Horace Walpole also attributes * " Lord Chesterfield's Letters " [ed. Lord Mahon], V., 385, 128 PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTER to his unaided hand a pamphlet called " A Com- parison between the Old and the New Ministry," no copy of which appears to have survived. The caricaturist was busy again, and on March 1, 1743, appeared the effective print, " The Claims of the Broad Bottom," that is, the claims of those who wished to be included in a Ministry formed on an enlarged basis. In the accompanying illustration many of the figures have been correctly identified by some eighteenth-century owner of the engraving. In the four comers are winds blowing " Broad Bottom " gales on the company. The artist has brutally represented the Duke of Argyll, stricken down by paralysis, as a ghost, sitting at the head of the board. Behind him stand two dependents, the one on his right his henchman, Tom Carew. In the foreground on the left is the portly presence of Sir John Cotton, accompanied by fox-hunting squires, with oak leaves in their hats ; on the right Sir Watkyn Wynn with attendant Welshmen wearing leeks. Their labels need no elucidation. Chesterfield is first figure in the background on the right-hand side ; "I must oppose," he remarks, " Carteret has got what I wanted, the Secretaryship of State." The stout man next him seems doubtful ; is it Oswald ? And then, seated next the Duke of Argyll, comes Dodington ; a striking likeness. His emphatic observations are : " I doubt we FEOM WALPOLE TO PELHAM 129 are out ; in our politics I will never trust a Scot again ; oh, damned Argyll ; his daughter's title rot him ! " and, " I deserve Sandys's post in the Treasury ; did I not act lovingly at that Board with Sir Robert Walpole, till I saw he could hold his place no longer ? " At Dodington's shoulder stands Pitt, then comes Lyttelton, then Waller, and then Lord Cobham. The artist has signally failed to catch Pitt's features, but he is clearly indicated by the label : " Am I not an orator ? Make me Secretary of War. Murray [Lord Mans- field] is a fool to me." * Lord Carteret's deference to the King's Hanoverian prejudices by supporting the payment of the Hanoverian troops out of the British Treasury — " the little, low interest of Hanover," as a contemporary pamphlet called it — ^and his system of German subsidies in general were the inevitable points selected by the Opposition for their attack on the Ministerial entrenchments. In his main object, the union of all Germany against France, the Secretary of State admittedly failed ; he had to fall back on the Treaty of Worms, signed on September 13, 1743, which by securing the support of Sardinia, safeguarded Maria Theresa's interests on the Mediterranean seaboard. Doding- ton flouted this policy of the second-best in a mock " Epistle from John Moore, Apothecary of * "Catalogue of Satiric Prints," III, 450. 130 PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTER Abchurch Lane," one of the most notorious quacks of the day.* He began — " The Learned hold that worms in time Take wing and buzz and fly. And after having passed their prime Return to worms and die. " Such C[arteret] are thy projects all, The maggots of thy brain. They buzz and bluster round the ball Then turn to worms again. • • . ■ • " Say, where do^ all this tempest tend. Thy battles, sieges, storms ; Do they at last in treaties end. In Treaties too of Worms ? " Li the House of Commons, the Opposition, led on by Pitt, Lyttelton, and Dodington, attacked Carteret again and again. They raised the ques- tion of the Hanoverian troops during the debate on the address of December 1, 1743, when Doding- ton, foUoTidng Pitt, complained that the King treated his English ofl&cers with coldness ; and Lj^telton in neat allusion to the yellow Hanoverian sash worn by George 11. at the battle of Dettingen, remarked that Alexander the Great disgusted his faithful Greeks by wearing the Persian robe. Six days afterwards Dodington spoke again ; and the speech, which fills nineteen columns of the "Par- liamentary History," bears out Horace Walpole's * " If I find on inquiry, that the famous Mr. John Moore has really performed such cures with his vxirm-powd^r and other medicines as he assures us he has done" {Tin Crnft-m-an, Xo. 3). FROM WALPOLE TO PELHAM 131 saying that he always sought for wit and gene- rally found it. In one long, elaborate and clever sneer he piled up arguments to the detriment of George II. and the Secretary of State. Whereas, he said, it was a maxim of the French Court to spare their own forces and leave the battles to be fought by their allies ; the Hanoverian Court had improved on it, for their maxim was to preserve the Electoral troops and to leave the battle to be fought by those that paid them. After much ingenious amateiir strategy, there came this pungent passage — " Among many just qualities our present Sovereign is possessed of, he has certainly that of a sincere love of his native country, which is in itself a virtuous passion and highly commendable ; but to our misfortune, this passion, when too much indulged, may lead him into measures that are diametrically opposed to the interests of the nation. For this reason a British Minister, who is a faithful counsellor and a true Englishman, will always be on his guard against this passion and wiU take care never to advise his Majesty to indulge it at the expense or the risk of his British subjects ; but a Minister who, in order to make himself the sole favourite, is resolved to indulge his master's governing passion will, notwithstanding his being an Englishman, become at once a true Hanoverian, and will every day be contriving new schemes for the interest of Hanover, however contrary they may be to the interest of England. Some such Minister, I am afraid, his Majesty has had and always will have about him ; and every one knows how easy it is for a cunning and deceitful 132 PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTER counsellor to persuade the wisest of men, that what is agreeable to his governing passion is not dis- agreeable to his true interest ; for nothing is more certain, than that we easily believe what we ardently wish to be true." K the King, Dodington said in conclusion, persisted in taking the Hanoverian troops into his pay, the British army would become disaffected, and upon that army the kingdom depended for its protection against the Pretender.* The Government, despite Dodington's oration, had a majority of 231 votes to 181 on the division. The Ministry seemed impregnable. On Sep- tember 1, 1744, Dodington wrote to Sir Watkia Williams Wynn that if nothing was to be done, " let us at least agree on that nothing and show that it does not proceed from meanness, but from a noble despair, which by a firm union in improviag events, may possibly save or contribute towards saving our countrj^" On the 29th of the month, he wrote to Lord Hillsborough : " If I foresaw any possibility of repelling the broad ruin that now stares us in the face, I should call upon your Lordship with confidence as an efficient part of our preservation." f Dodington was more than usually absurd at this time. Yet by way of palliation it may be pointed out that to a confirmed * Pari Hist., December 7, 1743. ■f " Various Collections," yi„ 18, FROM WALPOLE TO PELHAM 133 anti-Hanoverian, Carteret's policy must have presented one long vista of disaster- Still Dodington at Eastbury was a different person from Dodington at Westminster, and his correspondence with James Oswald continued to be in his rollicking, good-natured vein — " Mr. GrenvUle tells me [he wrote on October 26, 1743] that he left you in a perfect state of health in Scotland, both as to body and soul, and this last from your firm adherence to the beauty of holiness as professed by the Church of England. I hope you have and will make the best use imaginable of this illumination, during the little time you will be under its dispensation. For I most impatiently long to see you, and though I know it will last no longer than tUl you pass the Tweed, yet I cannot forbear begging of you to let us enjoy you soon ; come away then, which, considering the change of religion, [that] will certainly seize you before you get to Carlisle, is little better than saying, ' Come and be damned.' " Be that as it may, I hope it wLU be open account for many years longer, and am only to tell you that your friends call for you, want you, wish for you ; none of them does all these things more than myself and that for many private as well as public reasons. I have been so beholden to you for too many hours of improvement, as well as pleasure, to forget them, and not earnestly to desire the continuance of them, and as private interest is become the characteristic of this blessed country, don't be surprised that without alleging one public motive I press you to come away and gratify mine." 134 PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTER On October 6 of the following year, 1744, Dodington wrote to Oswald again — " I received the honour of yoiirs with just the same degree of mortification that your personal appearance (which I expected about this time) would have given me pleasxire. I am so much of a Christian that I am glad you have spent your time better though at the expense of making me spend mine worse. Climate and soU are very secondary ingredients in hfe ; a clear head, with an honest heart, is the real sun in every soil ; they make a frozen valley bloom and the rough mountain smile ; with them we can laugh at the north winds howhng through the broken precipices, and make the incumbent gloom cheerful, — " Nor envy Fraud her sunshine and her skies. " I thought of importing a httle of this com- modity from your side of the Tweed to help to pass away the autumn, but you prevented me, and when I presented my cargo, truly you pop me ofE with necessity. . . . But I shall object to the use of it no more, because I think the Ministry have brought it to a reaHty on both sides ; and though formerly they used it, as false patriots did the interest of their country, as a stalking- horse they could not justify, and durst not own, yet now I thiok it is a palpable truth that it is of absolute necessity that we should be undone, or they shall be hanged." * Shortly after Dodington had devoted himself to "a noble despair," the pertinacity of the Opposition prevailed. Henry Pelham, who on * " Memorials of the Right Hon. J. Oswald," 47&-480. The original of the first letter was in Mr. Broadley's collection. FROM WALPOLE TO PELHAM 135 Wilmington's death had succeeded him as First Lord of the Treasury, contrived, in spite of the King's reluctance, to get rid of Carteret. That reckless, great man — ^the finest mind that directed public afEairs between the eclipse of Walpole and the noonday of Pitt — took his fall vsdth the good humour, which was one of his many engaging qualities. With his invariable circumspection the Minister proceeded to enlarge his Government, placing it on " a broad bottom," upon which even the Tories, Lord Gower and Sir John Cotton, found foothold. One by one the Opposition leaders were admitted to ofl&ce ; and though they evidently imagined that they had captured Pelham, it was equally true that Pelham had silenced them. " Do but think," Horace Walpole wrote, " of two hundred men of the most consummate virtue setting themselves to sale for three weeks ! " Dodington's turn came on December 29, 1744, when he was appointed Treasurer of the Navy. He had apparently been on the conciliatory tack for some weeks. Thus he had made a moderate speech in support of a motion for an inquiry into the unsatisfactory behaviour of Admirals Matthews and Lestock in the naval engagement off Toulon ; and Pelham had admitted that the proposal was only reasonable. Before the new Treasurer had been long in office, the Jacobite EebeUion of 1745 came to a 136 PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTER head. Dexterously avoiding Sir John Cope, Prince Charles gained Edinburgh, and on September 21 he utterly defeated Cope in one wild Highland rush at Prestonpans. Oswald, in Scotland, evidently kept Dodington well-informed as to the swift progress of events, for on the 28th the latter wrote from Eastbury — " I am much obliged for your two letters. Our poor friend, Johnny [Cope] has made Mrs. Dodington and I, who sincerely valued him, very melancholy ; poor, worthy, gallant creature ! IVIay thy virtues be rewards! where thou art and imitated where thou art no more ! " As to the behaviour of Edinburgh, I am not quite satisfied with it ; as to friend Archy [Archi- bald Stewart, the Lord Provost] certainly he may be blameless, but I find by all accounts he has very ill luck. Some make him Earl of Leith, etc. What is the truth of the man's conduct ? " Sure the behaviour of Cope's army is beyond example, and there must be more at the bottom of it than I can account for. However, though sure there never was such management, yet I think we have now a number of Tories on our side that puts us out of danger." * After the battle of CuUoden had brought Jacobite hopes to ruin, Dodington advertised his loyalty to the reigning dynasty by illumi- nating his house in Pall IMall. Opportiinities of that sort were never neglected by him. Dodington' s accounts as Treasurer of the Navy • Oswald's " Memorials," 481. FROM WALPOLE TO PELHAM 137 are preserved at the Public Record Office, but they are not illuminating. AU that can be said about them is that they were carefuUy kept ; that he or a clerk checked every item, and that when he went out of office, he got them cleared much quicker than most Treasurers. Thus his oppor- tunities of enriching himself, after the recog- nised custom, by appropriating the interest on his balances were small.* His duties consisted in seeing that the sailors were punctually paid. Here, for instance, is an entry of March, 1745 — " Money being wanted at Plymouth for carry- ing on the payment of ships in the treasurership of the Right Hon. George Dodington, Esq., the paymaster of the Navy was sent for, and Mr. Tucker the cashier attending for him, was desired to send from Portsmouth and Plymouth the sum of five thousand pounds and such ships of war as the Right Honourable the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty shall appoint for the purpose." In the following year he was instructed to send £10,000 to pay off the squadron of Admiral Vernon, " that the men may not go to sea without receiving the wages that are ordered to be paid them." Clamour, the Admiralty informed him, on account of undue preference in the payment of wages, was to be avoided. As he was a kindly soul, it may have been through his representations * The balance on the accounts of Dodington's first Treasurership was only £3814 ; of his second it waa £10,353. (Add. MSS. 38, 324, f. 13.) 138 PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTEPw that the Admiralty ordered aU men discharged as unfit for service to be paid oflE immediately on application at the ticket office, instead of having to wait a month as had been customary, by which means they had been forced to sell their tickets at a very unreasonable discount, and had been put to great expenses.* Foreign policy had not gained by the dismissal of Carteret. England stood committed to a Continental war which concerned her but remotely, and which had the heroic, but useless, advance at Fontenoy as an incident ; the Treaty of Aix-la- Chapelle brought hostilities to a close by the tame arrangement of a mutual restoration of conquests. But Pelham's handling of domestic afEairs, though interrupted by " the 45," and the ^Ministerial crisis of the following year, when Bath and Carteret, become Lord Granville, made a twenty-four hours' attempt at turning the brothers out, was conducted on beneficial and unsensational lines. As a disciple of Walpole, the ^^linister paid a special attention to finance ; after a war which had cost the nation £30,000,000, he cleverly reduced the interest on the national debt from four to three per cent. Trade expanded and wealth increased. By en- listing most of the ablest ParHamentarians on his side, Pelham had almost stifled the spirit of * R.O. Admiralty, Accomitant General's Letters, March 29, 1745; August 17, 17i5 ; August 4, 1757. FROM WALPOLE TO PELHAM 139 resistance. The one element of uncertainty, as the public imagined, lay in the life of George II. " My lord," the Prince of Wales would cynically remark, " remember that the King is sixty-one, and I am thirty-seven." That consideration was sufl&cient to keep the Prince's followers in Parlia- ment spasmodically active. And, in an evU hour for his already fly-blown reputation, the Treasurer of the Navy lent a ready ear to the overtures of Carlton House. James Ralph, Dodington's most assiduous lackey, was the go-between marked out by fate, and Ralph, at Dodington's request, subsequently drew up a narrative of the transactions. ArtfuUy coloured though it is, its substantial accuracy need not be questioned. In the course of the year 1748, then, the Prince kept expressing concern about his party : " We have good subalterns enough," he said, " but we want leaders." In his confidences with Ralph he frequently mentioned Dodington's name, sometimes in a tone of com- plaint that he had left the Prince's service, but more often in one of hope. Ralph, all this whUe, kept on the reserve, or, as he deUcately remarked, " threw in such general suggestions concerning Mr. Dodington, as were dictated rather by senti- ment than pohcy." By-and-by the Prince grew warmer ; it was " Dear Ralph," or, " Good Ralph, get me Dodington if possible ; I must have 140 PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTER Dodington, at any rate." At last, on March 8, 1749, the Prince's Master of the Horse, Lord Middlesex — the son of Dodington's old ally the Duke of Dorset — ^was ordered to send Ralph with a message, — " requiring him, expressly in the name of his Royal Highness, to invite ]Mr. Dodington into his Royal Highness' s service ; or rather, as it was phrased, to live with him as he had formerly done, and as if that sort of life had never been inter- rupted ; which offer was unaccompanied by any ofEer or stipulation of any kind whatsoever. Nay, when ]VJr. Ralph asked, ii no character or employ- ment, either in present or future was allotted to him [Dodington] the answer given was that nothing of either kind had been so much as mentioned." CHAPTER IX FREDBBICK, PEINCE OF WALES Dodington's Diary — Its History — Some Considerations — Dodington's Resignation — Treasurer of the Chambers — First Minister at Carlton House — " The Great Something " ■ — Dodington and Lord Egmont — Remonstrances — A Horseless London — Death of the Prince — Servandoni. A T this highly critical point Dodington's / % Diary begins. Some brief considera- X m tions on that remarkable document may, therefore, be to the purpose. First, as to its history ; it was published in 1784, by Henry Penruddocke Wyndham, member for Wilts and a distant cousin of Thomas Wyndham, Doding- ton's legatee, despite the injunction in his relative's will that those papers alone should appear -nhich might, " in some degree, do honour to his [Doding- ton's] memory." The editor got over this stipu- lation by some highly ingenious, if scarcely decisive arguments. It was true, he thought, that the Diary proved Dodington's conduct to have been wholly directed by the base motives of avarice, vanity, and selfishness. But then it had been left in such a finished state th^t Dodington 142 PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTER evidently intended it, at some future season, to be produced to light as an apology for his poHtical conduct. Wyndham considered, accordingly, that in pubKshing the Diary, he was fulfilling Dodington's design : " it is to be supposed that, in his opinion, there is nothing dishonourable in it, and to his judgment I am in duty bound to sacrifice my own." Wyndham appears to have consulted several friends before he came to this casuistical decision. Serjeant Eames strongly dissuaded publication, but Trenchard, a Dorset neighbour of Dodington, whose pineapples Horace Walpole declared that the lord of Eastbury derided, was enthusiastically for it.* Posterity should be fateful to Trenchard, whether or no he wished to pay off old scores. It may be added that, having once published the Diary, Wyndham felt himseK at liberty to give an airing to other papers of Dodington's even if they could not be held in some degree to do honour to his memory. Thus it is that evidence about him emerges from Coxe's " Life of Walpole," Seward's " Anecdotes," Bowles's edition of "Pope," Adolphus's "History of England," and other more or less unexpected places. The editor of Dodington's Diar\' certainly erred in one respect ; he was too precipitate. When it was published, Dodington had only been twenty- two years in his grave, and many of those with or * Hutchins, " Dorset,"' m., 456. FREDERICK, PRINCE OF WALES 143 against whom he had intrigued were still alive. An outburst of personal feeling, therefore, occurred, rather than the display of amused toleration with which the world has since received the revelations of the place-hunting and vindictiveness of Creevey. And yet, when the contemporary opinions are weighed, they will be found to be based on other grounds than would be advanced to-day. Horace Walpole was chiefly concerned with wondering why Dodington's wit had disappeared, and the criticism, as far as it went, was just ; the Diary is desperately serious. But its pages caused Walpole but little surprise ; he laiew that the poUtics of the reign of George II. were dirty, and that Dodington had wallowed deeply in the mire. The secrets it blabbed were more characteristic than novel, he wrote, and it gossipped about the living as familiarly as a modern newspaper. By the high-minded Irish peer. Lord Charlemont, again, the Diary was accepted as a faithful register of fact. It contains, he wrote — " to a good mind at least, the best antidote to the dangerous desire of becoming a man of influence, and by laying open the tricks of statesmen, guards the honest and unwary against putting too much confidence in them. It may, indeed, be not inaptly called the statesman's cabinet unlocked." * Croker, then, brought his usual horse-sense to bear on the problem when he declared that * Hist. MSS. Com. Report XU., Ap. X., I., 7 (n). 144 PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTER Dodington was no worse than his contemporaries — only they were prudent enough not to keep diaries. Each age, too, has its own political vices, and it must be an open question whether the present cult of the many-headed does not produce sacrifices of conscience quite as calamitous to the individual and to the State as those entailed by Dodington's calm transference of his allegiance from Walpole to Wilmington and from Pelham to the Prince. That line of thought, however, takes us far afield. A nearer point of interest is this ; how Dodington, with his undeniable -wit where others were concerned, should have been so abnormally blind to the interests of his own reputation. Chesterfield suppHes the answer ; he was a supreme coxcomb. His vast conceit caused him to view the furtherance of Dodington's ambitions as the right aim of the scheme of existence ; and that premiss once conceded, it followed that everj- step taken to that end needed no palliation, rather should be regarded with righteous approval He was so fond of talking about himself, wrote Horace Walpole, that he told aU he knew about himseK ; self-love formed the groimd-work of the whole performance. Besides, to an admiration for titles natural to the son of Jeremiah Bubb, he added the feeling that he could hold his own with any of his feUow-commoners. The Duke of Argyll or Lord Bute was one kind of person ; Pitt FEEDERICK, PRINCE OF WALES 145 another. The extraordinary thing is that Pitt, in one formidable crisis of his life, virtually accepted Dodington at his own valuation. It was not so after he became Secretary of State, and then Dodington learnt to hate him, just as he had hated Walpole. The blest coxcomb could find no room in his soul for the two greatest men of his generation. As soon as he was sure how he stood with the Prince, Dodiagton, who was confined to his house by an attack of gout, wrote to Pelham, resigning the Treasurership of the Navy. The Minister, who was averse from changes, expressed his concern and surprise, and calling on Dodington, endeavoured to dissuade him. " I told him," runs the Diary, " that I saw the country in so dangerous a condition, and found myself so incapable to contribute to its rehef and so unwel- come to attempt it, that I thought it misbecame me any longer to receive great emoluments from a country, whose service I could not, and if I could, I should not be suffered to promote." As a fact the country was enjoying unusual prosperity. His resignation was accepted, though he continued in office until his successor could be found. The Prince was promptly informed in writing that Dodington had ceased to be Treasurer of the Navy. Dodington then proceeded to define his future position ; "his Royal Highness was to 146 PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTEK admit him to the honour of being about his person, at his leisure hours as a most respectful, most affectionate, and most disinterested attendant." That great condescension, from so great and amiable a Prince, he added, would make the decline of Dodington's life much the happiest part of it. But Dodington expressly disclaimed any wish to direct the measures of the Prince's party in Parliament, " while himself and his very few most efficient friends are not in his Royal High- ness's service," because Dodington was convinced that his rank and fortune must render any such attempt impracticable. The meaning of this studiously vague stipulation was that if he was to have an official position at Carlton House, it must be a good one, and that provision must be made for Dashwood and Fumese, his closest political associates. The Prince took the hint. Dodington was carefid to note by way of seK-justification that four months passed before any ofEer was made him. When the plan was broached, it was certainly handsome ; and Dodington was touched by the frank and afEectionate manner in which it was urged on him. The Prince wished to put the principal direction of his affairs in Dodington's hands ; what he could not do in his present situation, must be made up in futurity. An appointment, that of Treasurer of the Chambers, kKliKKICK. I'KIM K clK WAl I.S FREDERICK, PRINCE OF WALES 147 was to be immediately created for him ; the salary was to be £2000 a year, £1200 of which appeared in the accounts, while the Prince paid the remainder out of his own pocket. In vain Dodington protested that he would rather stand on the establishment without any salary during the King's lifetime ; it was a becoming ofEer, replied the Prince, for him to make, but it did not become the Prince to accept it. And then he proceeded to settle ofi&ces in reversion. Doding- ton was to have a peerage, with the management of the House of Lords, and the seals of Secretary of State for the Southern Province ; he was, in fact, to be the Carteret of the new reign.* Perceiving Dodington to be under much confusion at this unexpected offer, the Prince gave him his royal word and added, " I give you leave to kiss my hand on it now, by way of acceptance." The ceremony, which was not without its Uttle ironies, was duly performed. With the same prospective liberality, the Prince provided for Dodtngton's friends, and great was the joy among the faithful. * Under the cumbersome arrangement then prevalent, the Secretary of State for the South had chief control over Foreign affairs, though the Secretary for the North could claim, and sometimes asserted, the superintendence of the affairs of Northern Europe. The " Provinces " were divided by the line of the Thames, projected, as it were, over Europe. By far the best account of the Secretaryships is to be found in Mr. Basil Williams's excellent "Life of WiUiam Pitt, Earl of Chatham," I., 325-327. See also the " Letters of Queen Victoria," L, 357 (popular edition). 148 PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTEK Lord Talbot alone had the good taste to decUne an office in reversion. Horace Walpole accurately defined Dodington's position : " He is First Minister at Carlton House, and is to lead the Opposition ; but the misfortune is, nobody will be led by him." * He kissed hands on receiving his appointment, and as he rose with difficulty from his knees, the King exploded with laughter. Reviewing his functions with portentous gravity, he drew up on October 12 a Memorial for the Prince's guidance. The paper may be pronounced to be by no means devoid of sagacious lights, even if those lights are dim. It opens with an exordium to a great Prince ; and its author asserted that he regarded the discharge of his duty " as the most important article he is answer- able for to Almighty God, before whom he expects shortly to appear." He proceeded : " As nobody has seen this paper, elegance and accuracy it may possibly want ; sincerity and affection it certainly will not ; the head may err, but the heart cannot." The Prince's patience must have nearly come to an end when Dodington reached his point ; the uses of an Opposition. " Opposi- tion has too frequently changed its views from the redress of grievances (its ancient, and only justi- fiable object) to a pursuit of private preferment or private resentment." Now, a Prince of Wales * "Letters," II., 414. FREDEEICK, PRINCE OF WALES 149 could not identify himseK with the ffl-st sort of Opposition ; he must eventually be King and nothing else, nor could such a course make him so one hour before his time. If he embraced the second, he would be under the disadvantage of appearing to act peevishly, personally, inefEec- tually, when he must one day have it in his power to act nobly, nationally, and efEectually. Again, an Opposition founded on private preferment implied the overthrow of the Government as its aim ; but a Prince could not act as the head of an Administration, nor could his followers join one without ceasing to be his followers. A new policy was imperative ; and Dodington proceeded to define the " great something " that was wanting — " Now, according to my understanding, this great and necessary point is, to fix in the minds of mankind, by the dignity and steadiness of your own behaviour, a strong prepossession of your warm and beneficent intentions for the welfare of this country, witiiout private view or resent- ment ; and by such a choice of those to whom you delegate the principal direction of your afEairs, as may create a fuU confidence that you are not only thoroughly determined, but also properly prepared to carry those intentions into full execu- tion, when you are vested with power to do it. " And now, Sir, I, whom your Royal Highness may hitherto have thought an enemy to all opposition, become an humble advocate, in my turn, for an Opposition ; such a one as may be productive of this noble piirpose, suitable to the 150 PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTER greatness of your name, your reputation and most princely accomplisliments ; an Opposition strongly marked with the public good, where your private views all centre in the public welfare ; and those of your followers are openly and declaredly confined to the honour of one day carrying your great designs into execution ; till that time to ask for nothing, to accept of nothing, but devote themselves to watch over the pubHc, and prevent, as far as they can, any further encroachments being made upon it, till by becoming the glorious instruments of your gracious intentions they can redress all the grievances they have not been able to prevent." The Prince read Dodington an answer to his memorial, written by his own hand. The difference between them was inconsiderable, and the First Minister at Carlton House thought that the piece was astonishingly well drawn. The " great something," however, by no means appealed to the Prince's Parliamentary supporters. They agreed upon one point : the hne of action to be taken on the death of George II, Obnoxious Ministers were to be dismissed ; Parhament dis- solved, and Frederick I, was to throw himseK on the country, offering to be content with a clear annuity of £800,000 for himself and his numerous family. But leadership was absent from the Prince's rout, and its members had no intention of acceptiug Dodington. The " family " had changed since the daj^s when it included Pitt and Lyttelton, and that for the worse. Its one FREDERICK, PRINCE OF WALES 151 man of character was Dr. Lee, a barrister of repute, wh.0 subsequently rose to be Dean of Arches. Otherwise there was Lord Egmont, a volatile Irish peer, whom Horace Walpole declares to have aimed at the restoration of the feudal system, but who made himself chiefly conspicuous as an irresponsible debater and assiduous pamphleteer. Egmont was also in close relations with the Jacobites. There was the arch-buffoon Nugent, summed up by Glover as " a jovial and voluptuous Irishman who had left Popery for the Protestant religion, money, and widows " ; who dabbled in poetry, though Mallet was suspected of having written an ode to Pulteney, the only creditable effort published under his name, and who placed a fuU purse at the Prince's disposal. Lord Baltimore, who rounded off the group, was a light dilettante. The debate following the innocuous King's Speech of November 16, 1749, revealed the divisions in the Prince's party. Dodington refrained from opposing the Address, but Lord Egmont spoke violently against it, and Lord Baltimore followed on the same side. They did not venture to divide the House. When Dodington moved the omission of the word " death " from the Mutiny Bill, no one rose to support him. Again, in a debate on the defences of Dunkirk, which the French were pledged by the Treaty of Utrecht 152 PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTER to demolisli, Dodington — Shaving, as he thought, won over the Prince to his opinions — spoke against the production of papers. A rupture with France was to be avoided, he said, and Pitt agreed. Lord Egmont, who had made the motion for the papers, persisted in going to a division, sorry though he was to differ from Dodington. The Opposition were beaten by a very large majority. Dodington felt that he could not appear in the business of the House, unless the Prince adopted different maxims and listened to less dangerous advisers. The worst of it was, as the Diary gravely sets forth, there were those about the Prince who told lies about Dodington. He was said to have displayed great passion at what passed during the debate on the Address, though Lord ^Middlesex was there to bear witness that Dodington had talked the matter over with him with calmness. Dodington regarded Baltimore as the author of this dirty piece of cunning. Under February 5, 1750, we read : " This night there was published the vilest and most rancorous pamphlet against me, that, I beUeve, any age or country can show ; the author of it taking, by implication, the cha- racter of being in the Prince's service." Nugent and Egmont, on being questioned by the Prince, denied its authorship with expressions of abhorrence. It was finally thought to have emanated from the Court. Baltimore, however, confessed to Harrj- FREDERICK, PRINCE OF WALES 153 Fumese when in wine, and repeated when sober, that there was a combiaation of the whole family ; that they were " in a round Robin " — ^that is that an address to the Prince for Dodington's removal was being circulated. Dodington's friends at Court were Lady Middle- sex, the Prince's favourite, described by Horace Walpole as " low and ugly but a vast scholar," and her husband, a weak, amiable man who was heavily in debt. They agreed that he had a right to ask for an explanation, and the Diary contains several entries of colloquies between the indignant servant and the perplexed, easy-going master. To Dodington's complaints that the family dis- trusted him, the Prince answered that there must be a little shyness at first, there were so many stories. Dodington retorted that, apart from the Prince's commands, it never occurred to him to thiak that " these gentlemen " could do him any honour by admitting him among them. The Prince handsomely admitted that Dodington ought not to make court to any man in England. This was on November 24 ; as matters did not improve, Dodington expressed himself in even plainer terms on February 9 following. The Prince took the precaution of keeping Dr. Lee in the room. After alluding to the pamphlet, Doding- ton adroitly touched the Prince on his vain side by saying that the want of confidence must be 154 PATEON AND PLACE-HUNTER due to a fault of Dodington's own, because he could not believe that any body of men would be hardy enough to prescribe whom the Prince should employ and in what manner. The reply was that nobody should pretend to do that with him ; that he allowed sometimes one, and sometimes another, to lay their opinions before him. Then, Dodington asked, why had the family so completely altered their conduct towards him ? He hotly denied that he had attempted to govern the Prince, or had spoken ill of his followers in the many leisure hours of private hfe. The Prince gave an uneasy acquiescence, though not so fully as Dodington could have wished. The Diary continues : — " I then said, I would not desire his Royal Highness to declare if those gentlemen had treated me with the same fairness — as I was sure he would answer that to himseH. As to the governing them, did I ever interfere with them '1 They formed their own motions, without the least communica- tion with, or complaint from me : that I was sorry for it, as they made me a useless servant to him in Parhament ; or that it was impossible for me to go thither, and follow their motions at sight and at hearing, and then to be disowned for my pains. He laughed, and said it was because they had nothing to communicate ; they had done nothing that he knew of." Dodington concluded by giving chapter and verse for the family's insubordination, and by pointing out how hard it was to bring aiiy national FREDERICK, PRINCE OF WALES 155 abuse to an undeniable proof, aU the offices and documents being in the hands of the Court, The storm in the slop-pail died away, but not before Dodiagton had learnt through Lord Middle- sex that the Prince's version of the audience differed completely from his own ; the talking had been on the Royal side ; and if Dodington had said directly that a combination existed to govern the Prince, he would not have been allowed to go on. Lord Middlesex agreed to press Dodington's views on the Prince once more, and his grievances were rehearsed at length, but the Diary is sUent as to the result. The Prince may well have intimated that he had had more than enough of grand remonstrances. Still Dodington appears to have gained his point ; Egmont, Nugent, and Baltimore subsided in the House of Commons, and, as Horace Walpole's Letters show, the town was much more concerned with an earthquake shock which vastly frightened great ladies, than with the small upheavals in the Prince's Court, Dodington next set himself to rearrange the affairs of the Duchy of Cornwall ; he found that the Prince was not receiving the full benefit of his rights over the tin-mines, and that by careful management they should yield a net profit of more than £38,000 a year. But Carlton House took life less seriously than its Vizier. The Prince and Princess drove to Norwood Forest to see a 156 PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTER settlement of gypsies ; they visited conjurers and fortune-tellers. Plays were given every day at Kew, and the famUy, men, women, and children, worked on the new walk — ^no trifling exertion, one thinks, for a man of Dodington's ample figure. Dodington, meantime, was drawing up a scheme of opposition in concert with Lord Talbot, a scatter-brained peer whom he attempted to convert into a statesman, Dashwood, Ralph, Fumese, and his other pohtical cronies. It ran on the lines advocated in the letter to the Duke of Argyll; the Tories were to be separated from the Jacobites, and were to subscribe to a declaration of principle, offering to appear with the Opposition Whigs as the Prince's party, and to form an administration when he came to the throne. Lord Shaftesbury, who was held in general esteem and who exercised great territorial influence, approved of the idea. In the autumn of 1750 Dodington was unusually serene. On November 10 he sent James Oswald a lively description of a charitable meeting at which he was present, made several weighty speeches and voted, only to discover that the person who should have thus acted was not himself, but his cousin, George Dodington of Horsington. The difficulties of eighteenth-century locomotion are exemplified in his next paragraph : — " Thougli I much desire to see you [in Pall MaU], FREDERICK, PRINCE OP WALES 157 yet I will be so just to your friends as to own I think them in the right to keep you as long as they can. You see I return good for evil, for now I despair of seeing you, unless you come on foot, for an epidemic distemper has struck all the horses in and about town, so that everybody is laid up. This time to such a degree, that the Prince designed to take the air on Thursday morning, and was forced to stay because his whole stables could not furnish horses enough to draw a coach. They went from Kew yesterday morning in a borrowed set : the Princess returned to the drawing-room at night, and was two hours beyond her time this morning before she could get a hired set to go and bring the Prince back. I pray for the healths and backs of the chairmen ; if either of them should fail, far the greatest part of the matrons in town will be forced to become acquainted with the inside of their own houses, which hitherto have been of no use but to sleep in, now and then, after an ill run [at cards]. " I am told, by good hands, that ParHament does not meet till after Christmas ; and that the Ministry are at variance ; neither of which points I think of any importance." All, in fact, was right in the world, but for Lord Egmont, when spiteful Fortune made one of her dramatic interventions. On March 6, 1751, the Prince told Dodington that he had caught a cold at Kew ; on the 21st he was dead. " Father of mercy," Dodington wrote in his Diary, " Thy hand that wounds alone can save ! " The political world in its flippant way treated the event with derision in so far as 158 PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTER its victims were concerned. Henry Fox wrote to Hanbury Williams : " My Lord Drax [the Prince's secretary], my Lord Colebrook, Earl Dodington, and Prime Minister Egmont are distracted, but nobody more so than Lord Cobham." * Horace Walpole, to whom Sir Horace Mann cruelly for- warded a copy of Dodington's lamentations, made a joke about Bubb " De Tristibus." What the broken-hearted courtier could do, he did. He walked in the scantily attended funeral procession — " not one English Lord, not one Bishop, and only one Irish Lord, two sons of Dukes, one Baron's son, and two Privy Councillors " — and he bought seven of the Prince's horses for £140. The plan of uniting Tories and Whigs in Oppo- sition languished and by-and-by died. At first Dodington thought that the opportunity should be seized ; the Pelhams were mortally afraid of the Bedfords, more especially since their leader, the Duke of Cumberland, might seize the Regency. The Opposition, therefore, might either join them on conditions, or support them from outside, or try to overthrow them. His hopes balanced his fears ; and by way of making the best of both worlds, he wrote in his Diary : "I have done enough, and henceforth shall live to myself the years which God in his mercy may grant me, unless I am caUed upon to assist." But, after renewed * Coxe'a " Pelham Administration," II., 165. \is(Oi;nt cobham FREDERICK, PRINCE OF WALES 159 negotiations vsdth the Tories, Lord Talbot broke to him that the only union likely to be attained was one which implied exclusion from office. This did not suit Dodtngton's book at all : " It is all over, and I give up all thoughts of ever being, any further, useful to mankind." The Prince left piles of debts behind him, and one of them eventually involved Dodington in some trouble. He employed the Italian architect, Servandoni, to decorate La Trappe, his villa at Hammersmith, and paid him £140 for his work. Dodington also recommended Servandoni to the Prince of Wales, with the result that some designs were executed which won the Royal approval. When the Prince died, his widow, though declining to be responsible for her late husband's debts, agreed that Servandoni should be paid £100, and Dodington drew that sum from her Treasury on the architect's behalf. Yet, four years later, Servandoni wrote to the Princess declaring that he had never received any money, and pressing for payment, in the interval the Italian had entered the service of the King of Poland, and that Court backed his application. Dodington, to whom the matter had evidently been referred, descended on Servandoni in his most vigorous French. He had received Servan- doni's letter of May 13, 1755, he declared, with the utmost surprise. The original claim on the 160 PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTER Princess was correctly stated, but Servandoni seemed to have forgotten that Dodington had personally advanced to him £30 on the representa- tion that his affairs were involved, and that he was obliged to go to Paris. The remaining £70 had been forwarded to him by Dodington through a friend or rather a dependent, who declared that the money had been handed over and that a receipt should shortly be forwarded. Unfortu- nately, this friend — one of the tribe of Ralph, apparently — had died insolvent soon afterwards, and Dodington had thought no more about the business. He continued A\-ith explosive recti- tude : — " Let us understand one another and probe this affair to the bottom, for in this sort of affair I cannot allow any doubt whatever to exist. I most certainly received £100 on your account. I have hitherto believed that £70 had been paid over to you. But you state the contrary. It is only right that you should be paid. " As for the £30 that I have advanced you, I have no receipt either, and do not think that I have ever had one. So, if you have forgotten the £30 — ^let us cut the thing short — ^I wiU have no ambiguity — draw on me as soon as you can for both the first and second amounts — ^that is to say, for the £100 and I wiU pay at sight. For this is the only thing of the kind that has happened to me in the whole of my hfe, and I do not want it to stand over one quarter of an hour longer than is necessary. Be good enough to send me together with your bill an acknowledgment that aU the FKEDEEICK, PKINCE OF WALES 161 accounts between yourself and myself have been discharged." Had Dodington forgotten the transactions of long years earlier with Ripperda ? It would seem so, but he cannot be called lucky either with his agents or his receipts.* * The originals of these letters were in Mr. Broadley's collection. M CHAPTER X LA TEAPPE Dodington's Villa at Hammersmith — Its History — Dodington's Improvements — The Sculpture Gallery — His Marriage Acknowledged — ^Mrs. Strawbridge — ilrs. Dodington's Posi- tion and Death — The Monks of La Trappe — ^Young — ^Henry Fielding — ^James Ralph — ^A Grub Street Attack — Richard Glover — ^Dr, Thompson — Paul Whitehead — Medmenham Abbey — " Chrystal." IX 1749, two years before the death of Frederick, Prmce of Wales, Dodington bought a villa at Haminersmith, and several acres of ground round it.* The land lay on the bank of the Thames, to the south of the street running from the Broadway to the river, and was separated from that thoroughfare by the narrow strip known as the Chancellor's Estate, because it had been originally granted to the Chancellor of St. Paul's Cathedral. The house, which dated from 1626-7, shortly after the beginning of the reign of Charles I., had a historj^ It was buUt by Sir Xicholas Crisp, » C. J. Feret in " Pulham Old and New," ITL, Cli. Vm Faulkner, in his " Fnlham," gives ITiO as the date of purcbaee, but he is evidently wrong. In March, 17-19, when the Diary opens, Dodington was living at Gunner^bur;-. He did not move to Hammersmith before October. LA TRAPPE 163 whose name Crisp Street still commemorates, a slave-trader on the Guinea coast and a farmer of the customs. This adventurous person freely placed his wealth at the King's disposal on the outbreak of the Great Rebellion, and by equipping a naval squadron succeeded for some time in maintaining communications with the Continent. Though greatly crippled by private loans and Parliamentary sequestrations. Crisp, who had fled for awhile to France, managed after the Restoration to recover a considerable portion of his means, and died in February, 1665-6, a wealthy man. His fidehty to Charles I. was recorded in the fine bronze bust of that " Glorious Martyr " which he placed in Hammersmith Church, with his own heart in an urn below it. The house was bought from Crisp's grandson, another Sir Nicholas, by Prince Rupert for Margaret Hughes, the beautiful actress who, as Grammont delicately remarks, brought his natural fierceness to reason, and so reftirbished her lover that he appeared quite unhke himself. She tired of her possession after about ten years, and sold it in 1692 to Timothy Lannoy, a rich Turkey merchant and dyer, whose granddaughter, Leonora, sold it to Dodington. Campbell's " Vitruvius Britannicus," Vol. IV, contains three plates of the house, which give a clear idea of Dodington's alterations and additions. 164 PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTER As for the exterior, he seems to have contented himself with plastering stucco on to the front, and erecting a weak, Georgian balustrade. But Servandoni, as we have seen, was engaged to paint the ceiling of the drawing-room, which also con- tained a costly chimney-piece of white marble. Horace Walpole, whom nothing escaped, adds the detail that it was hung with spars representing icicles round the fire. Dodington's bed — ^he was evidently great on beds — ^was of purple, lined with orange, and crowned by a dome of peacock's feathers. Less blatant, it would seem, was the sculpture gallery which Dodington built on to the house. Yet it had its door of white marble, sup- ported by two columns of lapis lazuli ; an inlaid marble floor and a ceiling painted in fresco. In the centre were two columns seventeen feet high of Sicilian diaper, both of which were in one stone. A statue of Ceres — some late Hellenistic copy, one suspects — ^was one of the treasures of this spacious apartment, on which, as the " Vitruvius Britan- nicus " assures us, no expense had been spared that would render it either superb or magnificent. " AH this weight," Horace Walpole explains, " was above stairs." On showing it to Edward, Duke of York, one day, Dodington said, " Sir, some people tell me that this room ought to be on the ground." " Be easy, >Ir. Dodington," replied the young Prince with pretty wit. " it wjU soon be there." LA TRAPPE 165 In the centre of the turf before the doorway appeared in pebbles Dodington's crest, a bugle. A Greek temple adorned the grounds overlooking the Thames, which Faulkner, the historian of Hammersmith, considers to have been magnificent in style. It was the last of Dodington's erections to survive. In 1756 he enlarged his boundaries by obtaining a lease of extensive lands formerly belonging to the Crisp estate. Such was the Tusculan villa which it pleased its owner to call La Trappe, and its guests his monks. A distillery now stands on or about its site ; and, if rough measurements are to be trusted, utiUtarian Dis- tillery Lane has taken the place of the avenue up which Lady Hervey used to drive to call on her friend, Mr. Dodington. Dodington plunged vigorously into his altera- tions and embellishments, and as always kept a careful eye upon expenditure. In the year of the purchase he wrote to the Duke of Newcastle that, as he was obhged to be frequently between Hammersmith and London to look after his work- men, he humbly begged the favour that his name might be inserted in the list of those whose Hveries were permitted to go through the Park, while the King was out of town at Kensington.* This privilege, it may be noted, was much appreciated, because the high-road between Hyde Park * Add. MSS. 32,718, f. 191. 166 PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTER Corner and KensingtoQ was no better than a slough. Several years earlier, Dodington had astonished the polite world by an announcement that he had been secretly married for fourteen years to a lady whom Horace Walpole calls jNIts. Beghan and Mrs. Behan, but whose real name appears in Dodington' s wiU and elsewhere as Beaghan. With his usual punctiliousness, he informed his relative, Lord Cobham, of the fact in a " very fine and civil letter," though their relations ran, as a rule, by no means smoothly, adding that he had no issue.* The town appears to have been a good deal diverted ; Horace Walpole, for one, permitted himself a ribald comment in his next communica- tion to Sir Horace ^lann. The " ilrs." in point meant " [Mistress." Dodington's wife, that is, had been regarded as an unmarried lady of a certain social standing, f Her brother, as we have seen, was a member of the phalanx. The slur thrown upon her by the concealment of the marriage stands greatly to Dodington's discredit, but then * W. J. Smith, " The Grenville Correspondence," I., 18. If " Respectable young ladies -were not yet styled Misses,'' ■ffiote Lady Lotuaa Stuart (" Letters and Journals of Lady Mary Coke,"' L, XT.). But the mle was not absolute, since Lady Hervey always allnded to her daughter as Hiss Hervey. In the suburbs a distinction of the sort lasted into the nineteenth century. In " A Morning's Walk from London to Kew" (1817), Sir Richard Phillips noted that at Mortlake widows of gentlemen were " Madams " ; old maids " Mistresses " : and young girls " Misses." LA TRAPPE 167 he was never conspicuous for delicacy of sentiment. He even lied gratuitously about his wife; while discussing the affairs of the nation with Alexander, Earl of Marchmont, he blessed God that he was a single man, not married, and had no family to look after nor be concerned for. Horace Walpole's explanation of the subterfuge is evidently correct ; Dodington had embroiled himseK with another lady, a Mrs. Strawbridge, "a handsome, black woman " who had a house in Saville Row, and to whom Rowe wrote a baUad. He had given a bond to her for £10,000, that he would marry no one else, and her death alone released him from the unworthy thraldom. Of Mrs. Strawbridge and Dodington, Horace Walpole tells the familiar story that, in the course of his lethargic courtship, the swain one day sank on his knees, and after kissing her hands for some time cried, " Oh, that I had you but in a wood ! " " In a wood ! " exclaimed the disappointed dame. " What would you do then ? Would you rob me ? " Though he thrust his wife into the background for years, Dodington seems to have been an affectionate husband. Lord Chesterfield wrote that she was one of the only two women who ever cared for him, despite his affectation of being successful with her sex. Her position once recog- nised, everything went smoothly. That must have been a proud day — its precise date was October 23, 168 PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTER 1753 — when the Princess of Wales and her daughter Princess Augusta, attended by Lady Middlesex and Mr. Breton, did Mr. and Mrs. Dodington the honour of breakfasting with them at Hammer- smith. " After breakfast we walked all round my gardens ; we then came in, and they went into all the rooms except the common dining-parlour ; when we were coming down stairs, I told their Royal Highnesses that there was one room in it I had forgotten to show them ; they desired to see it and found a cold collation (for it was near three o'clock). The Princess very obligingly sat down, and we all ate a very hearty and very cheerful meal ; she stayed with us till the day began to decHne, and behaved with infinite ease and con- descension." ]Mrs. Dodington died in the \\inter of 1756, and Lady Hervey was impressed by the widower's grief.* Ostentatious as ever, Dodington erected in the approach to La Trappe a lofty obelisk, surmounted by a bronze urn, to her memory. Wyndham, his heir, took down the obehsk and sold it. The monks of La Trappe were in several instances identical, no doubt, with Dodington's familiar friends at Eastbury. Edward Young was, of course, an intimate, and Boswell teUs a characteristic story of host and guest. Young * llrs. Dodington was buried at St. James's, Westminster, in December, 1756. LA TRAPPE 169 happened to go into the garden one night while a violent storm of rain and wind was raging. " It is a dreadful night ! " exclaimed Dodington. " No, sir," was the reply, " it is a very fine night. The Lord is abroad." A greater man of letters than Young, however, was a caller on Dodington whether at La Trappe or at his house in Pall Mall. The visitor in ques- tion, Henry Fielding, had been slow to find the true source of his inspiration. Plunging recklessly into London life, with the full force of a fine con- stitution, he had ministered to his necessities by turning hack-plajrwright for the stage, giving in the farce of " Tom Thumb the Great " the first hint of his real genius. The plain-spokenness of his " Pasquin," and the consequent establish- ment of the Lord Chamberlain's licence as an in- dispensable preliminary to production had extin- guished him for awhUe as a dramatist. In con- junction with James Ralph, he had started a periodical paper. The Champion, one of the innumerable imitations of The Spectator, and as Ralph was frequently in Dodington's employment. Fielding had come within the wide sphere of that patron's influence. What was more natural than that the indigent young man should address to George Dodington, Esq., " Of True Greatness, an Epistle " ? Very natural ; though one rather wishes that Fielding had not written it, for Dodington 170 PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTER is saluted as "Great Sir," and extolled in a vein of some extravagance — " Some Greatness in myself, i>erhaps I view ; Not that I write but that I write to you. To you ! who in this Gothick Leaden Age, When Wit is banish'd from the Press and Stage, When Fools to greater FoUy make Pretense, And those who have it, seem asham'd of Sense ; When Nonsense is a Term for the Sublime, And not to be an Idiot is a crime ; When low Buffoons in ridicule succeed. And men are largely for such writit^ fee'd. As W[alpole]'s self can purchase none to read ; Yourself th' unfashionable Lyre have strung. Have own'd the Muses and their Darling Toung. " All court their favour when by all approVd Ev'n Virtue, it in fashion would be loVd. Yon for their sakes with Fashion dare engage, McBcenaa you in no Awjiistan Age." * It is only just to add that tiie rest of the poem rises to a higher level ; Fielding, who could not write absolutely badly if he tried, did himself truer justice in a passage describing a town taken by assault — " The Infant wonders at its Mother's Tears, And smiling feels its Fate before its Fears." And in 1742, the yeai after the pubHcation of the "Epistle," the appearance of "Joseph Andrews " brought Fielding into his own kingdom. The novelist's association Vkith Dodington con- tinued, however, for some years after the purchase * Fieldmg, " Miscellanies " (1743), L, 10. LA TRAPPE 171 of La Trappe, though it is difficult to imagine that they ever had much in common. James Ralph, dramatist, versemonger, journalist, and historian, was a more congenial associate. A Peraisylvanian by birth, he came to England with Benjamin Franklin in 1724, and staved off starvation by writing play after play for the stage, and perpetrating " Night : a Poem," with an obsequious dedication to Lord Chester- field, to the joy of Pope, who scarified him in the " Dunciad." He appears, in the first instance, to have placed his venal pen at Walpole's dis- posal, and then to have gone over to the party of the Prince of Wales. His connection with The Champion probably caused Dodington, in search for a hound to set at Walpole, to seek him out ; and shortly after 1740, they were deep in each other's confidences. Living first at Turnham Green, and then in a house on Chiswick Mall, which stood on the property of Westminster School, Ralph was handy to La Trappe. Dodington inspired his pamphlets, and possibly subsidised them ; and stood patron to his laborious " History of England during the Reigns of King WUliam, Queen Anne, and King George I." Dodington, too, subsidised The Remembrancer, a journal edited by Ralph in the interests of the Prince of Wales, and gave him shelter when he was threatened with arrest. In return, Ralphj 172 PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTER as we have already seen, brought about the second of Dodington's tergiversatiorLS-in-chief, his recon- ciliation with the Prince, Together they earnestly discussed, later on, whether Ralph should take service under the Bedfords or the Pelhams ; and Dodington stood benevolently neutral, when the scribe permitted himself to be silenced by the Government ^ith a pension of £300 a year. In contemplating the tribe of Ralphs and MaUets, it must be remembered that they often went hungry unless they dined at a rich man's table ; that the Fleet yawned for them, and that, as poHtics turned rather on persons than principles, there was but little real difference in the long run between writing for the Court or the Prince, for the Bedfords or the Pelhams. The partnership between Dodington and Ralph did not escape the notice of Grub Street, and an anonymous scribbler gave rehef to his feelings in " A Ballad to the tune of ' Chevy Chase.' " A contemporary caricatm'e illustrates the blunder that prompted the rhymes. Dodington one day instructed his servant to leave a card on Ralph, inviting him to dinner. The servant, who was a Welshman, mistook " card " for " cart," and drove up in one of those vehicles, then unpleasantly associated with the hangman. Dodington eventu- ally called for Ralph in his coach, and peace was restored. The irate Ralph, however, is LA TEAPPE 173 represented as exclaiming in the interval with pointed reminiscence — " For Favour not in human Pow'r Thou did'st stun W[alpo]le's Ears, For he must have work'd Miracle To place thee with thy Peers. " W[alpo]le you did immortalize To him all virtues gave ; Then strove to bring liim to the Block O vile, false-hearted Slave ! " From P[rince] to K[ing], from K[ing] to P[rince] Six times thou'st been untrue, And now art the Contempt of both And of aU men — Adieu." Richard Glover imagined himself to stand, and probably did, on a difierent footing with Dodington from the useful, needy Ralph. His arrogant and atrabilious diary, which Duppa edited under the title of " Memoirs by a Distinguished Literary and PoHtical Character," shows that the author of " Leonidas " regarded himself as an equal on most occasions, and on some dispensed super- cilious advice. And Glover, like Dodington, was a person of importance in his day. As the son of a Hamburg merchant in London, and the husband of a wealthy wife, he commanded ample means during some periods of his hf e, though he seems to have done his best to dissipate them. He was powerful in the City as the mouthpiece of Walpole's opponents, and his ready pen drew up their peti- tions. Above all. Glover was a tremendous patriot, and as such he took part in the plans of 174 PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTER the Prince of Wales and of Cobham, Lyttelton, and Chesterfield. He was a frequent visitor at La Trappe, and Dodington had to endure a reading of his now unreadable tragedy " Medea," a severe test of friendship. In their different ways, the pair entertained a mutual regard ; when Dodington received his peerage he put in Glover as Member for Weymouth, and left him a small memorial by will. Glover, on his side, paid Dodington the handsome compKment of recording that he never violated a confidence, and was not without zeal for his country. A super-toady himself, Dodington liked to have toabdies about him, and Cumberland gives a lively sketch of the regular trenchermen of La Trappe. " A misanthrope, a courtier and a quack," is his concise summary. The misanthrope was Doding- ton's cousin, Thomas Wyndham, who inherited the Hammersmith property, and -v^ho certainly showed no nice regard for the testator's wishes. The courtier was Sir William Breton, later Priv^^ Purse to George III., an antiquated coxcomb whose egregious vanity Dodington would plaj- off against Wyndham's STillenness. The quack was Dr. Thomas Thompson, a character who might have stepped out of the pages of Fielding or SmoUett. He was the son of a physician ; he received a good medical education, he signed himself " sometime Prosyndic of th e University of Padua . '' He gained LA TRAPPE 175 the popular ear by ridiculing the methods of treat- ment in vogue ; he would have nothing to do with " philosophical systems and hypotheses in physic " ; give him Nature. Certain it is that in a case where two eminent surgeons decided on amputation as the only treatment for a sabre-wound, Dr. Thompson — ^like Pr. Gully after him — placed his confidence in Malvern water, and the patient recovered. But his treatises on gout and small- pox reek of the quack, and are abusive of Cheyne and other eminent men. Dr. Thompson held forth in taverns, in coffee- houses, and at the Cyder-ceUar in Maiden Lane, in a voice that Garrick compared with the buzz of a humble-bee on a haU-window. He prated everlastingly on criticism and politics, and could assign a motive to every action of the King of Prussia. He swaggered and sponged, and was perpetually in debt and in fear of arrest. His attacks on his brother-physicians caused him to be regarded by Pope and Fielding as a man of original mind. But there were those who declared that he kiUed Winnington, when suffering from fever, by a lowering course of treatment. A pro- tracted dispute arose, which Thompson presumably regarded as so much advertisement. Signing himseH Physician to the Prince of Wales, though it may be doubted whether the appointment was official, he whipped up a hurricane of controversy 176 PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTER by his violent language when the heir to the throne died. Thompson was censured by the CoUege of Physicians, and iavolved in an action at law ; but a duke and an earl gave evidence to his reputation, and he obtained £20 damages. Dodington retained this queer creature at £50 a year, and kept for him a room ; a welcome sanctuary agaiost sheriffs' officers. Nominally a body-physician, he really served as a butt, he caring little for the patient's health and the patient caring less for his prescriptions. One morning he cried out at breakfast to have the muffins taken away. " Take away the raga- muffin ! " shouted Dodington ; and Cumberland, who tells the story, adds that " a more dirty animal than poor Thompson was never seen outside a pigstye." Elsewhere it is stated that Thompson's linen was far from white ; he bought his shoes at a Yorkshire warehouse ; never had them cleaned, but wore them till his toes came through the upper leathers, then shook them o£E in the same place, and bought a new pair. He could not afiord a coach, but, bemired to the knees, trudged the streets, with an oak staff in hand. La Trappe must have been repulsive at times. One wonders what ]\Irs. Dodington thought of it all.* * The chief sourcea for this sketch of Dr. Thompson are Sir John Hawkins's " Life of Dr. Johnson," and Captain Edward Thompson's biographical preface to Paul Whitehead's poems. He is not to be found in the biographical dictionaries. He died in Angnst, 1763, LA TRAPPE 177 Thompson found a eulogist in one even more odious than himself, namely, Paul Whitehead, who in an inevitable " Epistle " observed — " While you, my Thompson, spite of medicine save, Mark ! how the College peoples every grave," and who followed Thompson as he " cracked joke on joke and mingled soul with soul " " at East- bury's majestic towers," or " Ashley's," the Duke of Dorset's, " amarantine bowers," or Henry Pelham's — addresses which show the Doctor to have been in wide request as a jackpudding. As for Paal, meantime, he was — " Safe in the haibour of my Twickenham bower !From aU the wrecks of State or storms of power. No wreath I oom't, no subsidies I claim, Too rich for want, too indolent for fame." Despite this complacent piece of self-por- traiture, Paul Whitehead must be pronounced the worst of Dodington's none too refined band of satellites. The patron admired his wit and reUeved his necessities ; in return the cUent wrote panegyrics on Dodington's statesmanship and patriotism. As a satirist, Paul had a certain vigour ; the " State Dunces " was by no means the feeblest of the many attacks on Walpole. His too was a kindly soul ; his confidence in a designing acquaint- ance consigned him to the Fleet for some years of his life ; he behaved with invariable tenderness to his wife, a woman of good family, whom the Avorld N 178 PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTER at large regarded as little better than an idiot. He reckoned Hogarth among his friends. As a paid hack-writer to the Prince of Wales, he was probably no more, if no less, imprincipled than Ralph, with whom later satirists coupled him, much as Pope had harnessed Dodington and Yonge. But withal he was singularly unedifying. " In his conversation," wrote Sir John Hawkins, " there was little to praise ; it was desultory, vociferous, and profane. He had contracted a habit of swearing in his young days, which he retained to his latest." If ever character was reflected in the face, it is the portraits of Paul Whitehead and his flagellator Charles Churchill, as they are to be studied in the national collection, and in the same room. Whitehead as painted by Downman, is quite the fine gentleman ; his features recall Voltaire, he has thin, cynical lips. Schaak repre- sents Churchill, on the other hand, as red-faced and brutal ; carelessly dressed like his verse as described by Cowper — " Surly and slovenly and bold and coarse, Too proud for art, and trusting in mere force." Gainsborough caught Whitehead's likeness to even better purpose than Downman in the portrait reproduced here as an illustration. Yet Churchill, his bad reputation notwith- standing, had justice on his side when, in " The PAUL WHITEHEAD LA TRAPPE 179 Conference," after comparing Whitehead with Ralph for venality, he exclaimed — " May I (can worse disgrace on manhood fall !) Be born a Whitehead, and baptized a Paul," if he turned political apostate. In "The Candidate" Churchill wrote again — " A nation's reckoning like an alehouse score Whilst Paul the aged chalks behind the door." " The nation's reckoning " alludes to the public indignation aroused by the revelations of the " Hell-fire Club " at Medmenham Abbey, to which Paul acted as secretary and steward. It was about 1755 that that reprehensible society took up its quarters on the banks of the Thames in buildings which had formerly belonged to the Cistercians, styling itself the Franciscans, from the Christian name of Sir Francis Dashwood, its founder. Dashwood and Whitehead between them enrolled Dodington, who had as fellow-members the graceless Lord Sandwich, the finished rake Thomas Potter, who subsequently became a political ally of the elder Pitt, Potter's victim John Wilkes, and Robert Lloyd, a bit of a poet who was ruined by ChurchUl. Enough, and more than enough, has been set down about the hard- drinking and puerile mummeries of the Franciscans; it is needless, therefore, to dwell upon them at any length. But the monks cannot be dismissed, as Captain Edward Thompson, Whitehead's absurd 180 PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTER biographer, attempts to dismiss them, for " a set of worthy, jolly fellows, happy disciples of Ventts and Bacchus, got occasionally together to celebrate Woman in wine ; and to give more zest to the festive meeting, they plucked every luxurious idea from the ancients, and enriched their own modem pleasures with the addition of classic luxury," When the secret became known through Lord Sandwich's fatal attack on Wilkes, his former associate, it shocked an age by no means inclined to squeamishness or reverence. And the worst of it was that several of the club had no longer the excuse of youth. Dashwood, who had affected profanity from his boyhood upward, was getting on for fifty when it was founded ; White- head was forty-five ; Dodington was over sixty. Of Dodington one can only say that he was never prominently identified with the orgies of Medmenham Abbey, though his membership is clearly established ; and that it may be that he only made rare appearances to please Dashwood, his close associate in politics. In his dull roman- a-clef "Chrystal," Charles Johnstone asserts that Dodington's Mephistopheles was Dr. Thompson.* He wrote a book, Johnstone says, in praise of vice, and then declared that it was entirely derived from his patron's conversation. His vanity being • " Chrystal," VoL nL, Chap. XXIV., and the key to " ChrystaJ " in W. Davis's " Olio of Bibliographical and Literary Anecdotes." LA TRAPPE 181 touched, Dodington made his practices conform to this declaration of his principles, and to com- plete his character procured admission to Medmen- ham Abbey. But this story may be dismissed as purely apocryphal ; it does not answer in the least to the known relations between Dodington and his creature. Blasphemy was not really to his taste. In the hall of La Trappe, under a bust of Comus, he invoked — " True wit that firm to virtue's cause Respects religion and the laws ; True mirth, that cheerfulness supplies To modest ears and decent eyes." Such amenities must have been conspicuously absent from Medmenham Abbey. StiU Dodington may be said to have resembled the heroes of eighteenth-century fiction in this respect at least : that he appeared to greater advantage in hia country home than when caught by London and its tentacles. At Eastbury Yonge and Thomson, Parson Pitt and Parson Stubbes formed a most respectable circle. The same cannot be said of Ralph, Glover, and Paul Whitehead. They ministered to Dodington's grimier activities, which had their centres in Pall MaU and at La Trappe. His instruments lay conveniently to his hand. Dash wood was a neighbour in Pall Mall ; Harry Furnese lived at Gunnersbury ; Ralph on Chiswick Mall, as we have seen ; Whitehead at Twicken- ham. CHAPTER XI HE>TEIY PELHAM The Weymouth Seats — ^Dodington and the Solicitor-General — Pelham's Character — Royal Resentment — "A Little Pelham" — ^The Princess of Wales — Her Relations with the Duke of Cumberland — ^The Heir to the Throne — Dodington's Speculations on the Future — ^The Prince's Tutors — ^A " Strange Important Trifle " — " A Dreaming Session " — Lord Egmont and Bridgwater — Death of Pelham. *X spite of the melancholy resolve to retire from puhlic hf e on the death of the Prince, Doding- ton early in the following year, 1752, entered into active negotiations with Henry Pelham. The two seats for Weymouth, which he had placed at the disposal of the GJovemment, afforded a convenient pretext, and it is right to point out that the Minister sought him rather than he sought the Minister. A general election was near, and Welbore Ellis, who sat for the borough as a supporter of the GJovemment, naturally called on its owner to know how he stood ; 3Ir. Pelham, he was told, might command Dodington's interest «joo7i 'proper conditions. The phrase was Irequc-utly repeated, and Ellis was desired to HENRY PELHAM 183 observe that no engagement existed. Meanwhile, Furnese had been in conversation with Murray, the Solicitor-General, who subsequently became famous as Lord Mansfield, on the dehcate topic. The Solicitor-General was represented as entering into Dodington's affairs with much afEection ; there was not the least objection to him in the Ministry, but the King was strongly prejudiced against him personally ; Murray would take upon him to bring that matter to a proper issue. " The event is with God," wrote Dodington in his Diary. On caUing upon the Solicitor-General by appointment, however, Dodington discovered that Furnese had been too optimistic ; such was the strength of the Royal prejudice against the anti- Hanoverian orator, that Murray could answer for nothing. Dodington concluded that the thing was broken off, but Murray said that he could not see it in that light. On May 5, Dodington, through Murray's good offices, called on Pelham at his house in Arlington Street. The Diary sets forth a string of inter- views, all circling round the Weymouth seats and Dodington's admission to office. The Minister dined with Dodington, and Dodington dined with the Minister ; " much drink and good humour." But all the while Henry Pelham stuck quietly but tenaciously to his point. He was, indeed, one of those self-contained men whose abilities 184 PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTER are apt to be undervalued until their achievements are taken into account. The world regarded him as timid and fickle, even false ; and he pre- ferred, no doubt, to circumvent difficulties rather than to march over them. There is a latent strength, however, in the sohd, rather handsome features, which WiUiam Hoare has handed down to us, especially about the lines of the firm, shrewd mouth Pelham had a profound knowledge of men, and his was the rare merit of being able to get his own way when dealing with colleagues of greater powers than himself. Lord Liverpool was such another, notwithstanding DisraeH's sneer at the " arch-mediocrity " ; in our time those who stood nearest him descried the same un- obtruded force in Sir Henry CampbeU-Bannerman. The Diary needs no careful reading to prove that Pelham was much more than a match for Dodington. The conversations inevitably followed the same model, Dodington played the Weymouth seats and ofEered the services of himseK and his friends ; he desired no rank that could justly create envy in his equals, or any sort of power that might occasion suspicion in his superiors. Pelham rephed by many comphments, but with deep regrets that the Royal resentment should have assumed so inveterate a form. It appeared that when Doding- ton went to Kensington on a .Sunday, some time HKNRV I'El.HAM HENRY PELHAM 185 after the Prince's death, the King bluntly said, " I see Dodington here sometimes ; what does he come f or ? " Pelham had answered that Doding- ton's coming to Court was certainly to show his duty, and that it was possible he might wish to join the Ministerial ranks. The King replied : " No, there has been too much of that already " — and the conversation did not end well. Both Pelham and Murray considered that the affair could not be broken to the King before his return from Hanover, so Dodington resolved to practise patience. Pelham pointed out that the King's temper was peculiar. Dodington answered that when a gentleman asked pardon he was entitled to it, and pointed out that he had re-entered the Prince's service without any stipulations, and had always endeavoured to bring moderation into his policy. " Mr. Pelham said, he understood me perfectly weU, that he wished the thing cordially, and would do all imaginable justice and leave nothing in his power unattempted to persuade the King — that, in short, he had explained to me the bottom of his politics — that he had a great regard for all Europe, but did not trouble himself much about it — that his concern was to keep things on a right foot at home — that if the King was wUhng to arrondir his affairs, and let them get together as many as they could of those who could best contribute towards it ; in order to go on as he was bred up and suffer them to endeavour to have a tliorough Whig ParUament chosen which would 186 PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTER make the remains of his Majesty's life easy and settle the young Prince upon the throne, so as to secure him a prospect of a prosperous reign." The characters of the two men come out forcibly in this dialogue ; Dodington's in the parade of his re-entry into the Prince's service without any appointment — a protest of honesty which will not bear examination — and Pelham's sigh for a thorough Whig Parliament, The man of peace had, it is true, some reason for anxiety. The death of the Prince of Wales had brought his brother, the Duke of Cumberland, to the front, and he had become the recognised chief of the Bedfoids. As his father's favourite child and the head of the army he exercised great influence, and from his sullen manner he was supposed, though wrongly, to cherish dangerous designs. During the debates on the Regency BUI Pitt had darkly alluded to what might happen if the Princess of Wales were to die, and Fox had warmly defended Cumberland. In plain fact, the Duke was as loyal a subject as his father's dominions contained ; yet he was the Duke, quite as much as the Duke of Wellington or the Duke of Cambridge after him, and acting with the factious Bedfords a person to be dreaded by a Minister who loved his ease. Dodington considered the ilinister's conver- sation " a little Pelham " ; that is, it was in parts HENRY PELHAM 187 ambiguous. It was more than that ; it was very Pelham indeed. For without committing himself to a single specific promise, the Minister had won over Dodington and his boroughs. Before long the office-seeker was exclaiming in his explosive style that Pelham had behaved in so open and noble a manner that he evidently lacked the power and not the will to serve him ; their friendship would continue, even if the design failed. He began to fetch and carry for the Government just as he had fetched and carried for Walpole, the Prince, and the Duke of Argyll. A candidate pledged to vote for the Ministry was secured for the second seat at Bridgwater. In return the Ministry threw him scraps of confidence ; he learnt a good deal about their anxiety as to the German subsidies, about the restlessness of Pitt and his friends and the ambition of Fox. That wise lady, the widowed Princess of Wales, who was always on the watch, though she kept herself studiously in the background, soon heard of Dodington's colloquies with Pelham. She alluded to the circumstance, and Dodington confessed to her that, as he put it, he was anxious to end his life in quiet with those with whom he had begun it. The Princess expressed no dis- pleasure ; it seems clear, indeed, that she thought the Government had behaved badly in not pro- viding for the Prince's old servants. During the 188 PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTER years 1752 and 1753 Dodington was frequently at Kew Palace, and he duly appreciated the honour. Her friendship and frankness were more than he had expected from a great lady who had established a character for prudence in not opening herself much to anybody and of great caution to whom she opened herself at alL The long conversations which Dodington com- mitted to paper with minute care throw much light on the Princess and not much on the diarist. For once in a way he was not persistently pushing his own interests, and was content to remain for the most part a polite listener. And though the Princess of Wales became unpopular in the follow- ing reign through a scandal that had far more surmise than fact behind it, at this period of her Hfe she displayed undeviating tact. " Lady Prudence," as Horace Walpole calls her, kept on excellent terms with the old King, though she deplored his meanness in refusing to pay her late husband's debts, and even suspected him of designing to oust her from Carlton House. There was no love lost between her and the Duke of Cumberland. He and the Duke of Bedford, she was satisfied, would make the minority their point of action ; that is, that they would try to wrest the Regency from her. But though Doding- ton threw out the suggestion that she should look about her a little and secure friends in whom she HENRY PELHAM 189 could trust, she failed to take up his lunt that she should form a party of her own. The Princess seems to have deliberately brought up the heir to the throne in seclusion ; the young people of quaUty, she said, were so iU-educated and so very vicious that they frightened her. She thought the Prince an honest boy, but she wished he was a little more forward and less childish for his age ; she hoped his preceptors would im- prove him. She feared, however, that they did not teach him much. Their characters she summed up with some shrewdness : Stone was a sensible man, and she thought that the Prince could gain from him a knowledge of the world as well as of books, but he could not gather much wisdom from Lord Harcourt, while, as for the Bishop of Norwich, he might be a mighty learned man, but his thoughts seemed too many for his words. Dodington then took up the conversation with his accustomed mixture of dutifulness and self-seeking — " I said, that as her Royal Highness had mentioned the negative which the Ministry seemed to continue upon the Prince's friends, I presumed to ask her about the young Prince's afEections towards his father's memory ; because he was, now, bred in a manner, and in hands so totally unacquainted with the late Prince, and with those who had been about him, that he might very easily be brought to forget them ; which I feared, at the first setting out in life, would give a very disadvantageous, if not a dangerous impression 190 PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTER of him ; that trifles are of consequence in the first outset (particularly those that relate to the heart) to Princes, whose highest actions engage the attention, and whose elevation exposes them to the continual inspection of mankind ; that many good things lose their gloss, at least by untoward impressions ; that a great deal of power might be required to do things, where affection and con- fidence were wanted, which a very little might bring about, where they were once established by first and favourable impressions. That, for these reasons, I should be extremely sorry that his Royal Highness should entirely forget those who had been faithfully attached to his father, as that attachment was the only reason that could be given to justify the proscription which they now He under. She said, that she agreed with me, that nothing could be more disadvantageous and hurtful to him : that it would afEect her very sensibly ; that she had no reason to apprehend it, as the Prince seemed to have a very tender regard for the memory of his father, and that she encoiu^aged it as much as she could ; that when they behaved wrong, or idly (as children will do) to any that belonged to the late Prince, and who are now about her she always asked them, how they thought their father would have liked to see them behave so to anybody that belonged to him, and whom he valued ; and that they ought to have the more kindness for them, because they had lost their friend and protector, who was theirs also." Dodington must have been much edified by this pious fiction. The Princess's moderation of language deserted her when she came to the Pelhams. Everybody AU'lI'srA, I'RINIUSS OF WALES HENRY PELHAM 191 would leave them by degrees on account of their pusillanimity. What ground had they to stand on ? Could they doubt but that her good sister and brother. Princess Amelia and the Duke of Cumberland, were the whole day long doing them all imaginable mischief at St. James's ? Was not the Duke of Bedford stirring heaven and earth in the country and opening his house and courting everybody in town ? Dodington seems to have been rather shocked by this tirade against the powerful faction. He set down some curious specu- lations, suggested by the probability that the old King would die while his grandson was still a minor. The Princess, he thought, was likely to become nothing, by siding either with the Ministry or the Duke of Cumberland. She might form a third party, but it would be difficult to find, and more difficult to support. On the whole, she would be best advised to come to terms privately with the Duke, so that she might be sole Regent in appearance, and he in efEect. Dodington thought it certata that if the Duke was not immediately removed from the Army he would overpower both the Ministry and the Princess. All this surmise rested on mere suspicion, but Dodington was not the only person to entertain fears of the Duke's designs. Dodington evidently regarded the Princess as deficient in strength of wUl. It may be suspected 192 PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTER that, on her side, she was far from lookiag upon him as an ideal Vizier, and therefore only opened up to him the surface of her mind. One of the suppressed characters of history, Augusta, Princess of Wales, puzzled her contemporaries and is an enigma to posterity. Lord Cobham went so far as to say that she courted most those whom she hated the most, and he had many opportvmities of judging her. Lord Cobham must have exag- gerated her secretiveness. But she had evidently made up her mind to avoid the errors which her husband had committed as a feather-headed leader of Opposition. Dr. Lee, who was regarded as her representative in the House of Commons, refrained from any declaration of poHcy ; in the House of Lords, Lord Bute, whose influence over her was probably much less than the pubhc sup- posed, merely held a watching brief. Her cue was to wait, and to educate her docile son in the maxim, " George, be King." In later years the turmoil which occurred at this time through the circulation of anonymous letters alleging that the Prince's upbringing was in Jacobite hands — " this strange important trifle," as Dodington calls it — and which ended in the resignation of the Prince's tutors, Scott and Stone, the second an old 'protege of BoHngbroke, was regarded as significant of much. The Princess laughed the whole thing off. " There has been fine HENRY PELHAM 193 doings in our family," she told Dodington ; " a very fine bustle indeed ! I am glad we are rid of them." She was candid to this extent ; Scott and Stone, so far as we can teU, had little influence over their pupil, and were no Jacobites. The dominant intellect was her own, and she was steadUy training her son to overthrow the Whig oligarchy.* After " a very dreaming Session," as Horace Walpole described it, which was enlivened only by a vehement altercation between Lord Hardwicke and Henry Fox over the Marriage Act— one of the few substantial measures of reform with which the Pelham Administration is associated — aU sides began to prepare for the General Election. Dodington became unpleasantly aware that he was to be opposed at Bridgwater by his old enemy, Lord Egmont. His righteous soul was vexed by a set of " low worthless fellows, who, finding that they would not be bribed without opposition, had prevailed on Lord Egmont to lend his name, to whom they would give one vote that they might be able to sell the other." He thought, however, that his opponent had no chance. Pelhanj. promised that Dodington should have the Ministerial influence on his side at the election, * Horace Walpole' s treatment of the incident in his contemporary "Letters" (III., 135-140), is much more flippant than when he after- wards came to write his "Memoirs ofthe Reign of George III." (III., 137- 139). Then it assumed a retrospective importance. 194 PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTER and the Diary proceeds : "In this affair he has acted, and I am convinced he will act, the part of a real friend. But I do not find he has made any progress of smoothing my way with the King." Details were arranged with the Duke of Newcastle, on whom fell the congenial task of managing the elections. Dodington agreed to pay those who would take money and to present no bill ; the Duke was to pay those who were not to be bribed. The second stipulation meant that Dodington's two parsons of Bridgwater and Weymouth, Burroughs and Franklin, were to be presented to the first Crown livings that fell vacant in those parts. The lucky Burroughs got the living of Broadworthy within a few weeks, but two years later Dodington was still representing — " That Parson Franklin of Weymouth, aUied to our chief friends there, always steady and respectable, has been long promised a living. His Grace knows how well Weymouth has deserved of the Government." * " There never was such established bribery or so profuse," wrote Horace Walpole. When the first returns appeared of an election protracted over many weeks, the Government appeared to be more firmly fixed than ever. But on March 6, 1754, the uneasy partnership between the two brothers was broken by the sudden death of Henry * Addit. MSS. 32,864, f . 50. HENEY PELHAM 195 Pelham. Those familiar with the inside of politics saw exactly how things would go. Horace Walpole wrote to Mann : " That calm, that supineness of which I have lately talked to you about is at an end ! There is no heir to such luck as his ! " The King exclaimed : " Now I shall have no more peace ! " It was Pelham's best epitaph. CHAPTER Xn THE DUKE OF NEWCASTLE Political Confusion — Dodington and Newcastle — Disappoint- ment — ^The Loss of Bridgwater — ^The Duke's Prevarica- tions — Dodington and the Princess — ^Lord Halifax — Dodington and Fox — Pitt's Perplexities — His Overtures to Dodington — ^Negotiations for Office — ^Dodington at Newcastle House — " The Preliminaries " — Debate on the Subsidies — Dismissal of Pitt — Dodington Treasurer of the Navy again- — Coldness of the Princess — Grooving Anxieties — Collapse of the Ministry. DODINGTON was as active as ever during the chaos that ensued on the death of Pelham. He sat up with Lord Barnard until five in the morning, and discussed with him, among many things, the vacant leader- ship of the House of Commons. Murray, the Solicitor-General, was Dodington's suggestion ; but the other would not hear of it, and Murray's ambition was centred, no doubt, on legal promo- tion. He waited on the Princess of Wales, and told her that his first engagements were to her and her house. She gave him no directions, however, confining herself to expressions of dis- like at the prospect of Fox as leader of the THE DUKE OF NEWCASTLE 197 Commons ; it meant, of course, more influence for the Duke of Cumberland. After two un- successful attempts, Dodington had his say with the storm-driven head of the Government, the Duke of Newcastle. In its inartistic way the Diary conveys an even better idea of that fussy, rambling, absurd and yet crafty man than Smollett's famous caricature in " Humphry Clinker," in which the Duke makes his appearance at his levee with the shaving-cloth under his chin. Dodington, too, shines as a circumlocutory negotiator. He began by assuring the Duke that he had come to convey his dutiful affection, having no engagements to make him look either to the right or left. He also came to remind the Duke that he had promised Henry Pelham to choose two members for Wey- mouth — Lord John Cavendish and Welbore Ellis — and to keep Lord Egmont out of Bridgwater if he could. The last interest, Dodington grandi- loquently exclaimed, was very indifferent to him ; he did not expect to live to see another Parliament, and had no successor, relation or friend to leave it to, but Pelham had admitted that he would regard the loss of the borough as grave. The Duke, in a serious and dejected manner, enlarged on his own worries, and on the nobihty of Doding- ton's conduct. He begged Dodington to recount all that had passed between Pelliam and himself 198 PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTER After much beating about the bush Dodington admitted that no particular office had been fixed ; he had meant to live with the Pelhams as their humble friend. Newcastle said he always under- stood it so ; and asked Dodington, as they were obUged to cut their cloth into as many pieces as possible, if he thought he could come in — that is, join the Ministry — ^before the election for Bridg- water. The reply was, of course, an affirmative. Then the Duke, professing to let Dodington into his secrets, talked at large about the Ministerial appointments, hinting now at one office, now at another. " There is my old place. Treasurer of the Navj' ," Dodington pointedly remarked, " that must be vacant ; I should like it better than anything. But why should I enter into these things ? I leave it whoUy to your Grace." The Duke, however, was not to be enticed into a specific promise ; all that Dodington could extract from him was that he would be his caution — ^that is, his friend at Court — with the stiU obdurate King. " He took me in his arms," the Diarj- records, " and kissed me twice, with strong assurances of affection and service." Seven days later the Diary was enriched with this laconic entry : " Dined at Lord Barrington's, and found that, notwithstanding the fine conver- sation of last Thursday, all the appointments were given away." IMIK I1UKI-: 0|- NliWCASTI.K THE DUKE OF NEWCASTLE 199 More evil was to follow, for on reaching Bridg- water Dodington discouraged things " very dis- agreeably framed." He spent three days " in the infamous and disagreeable compliance with the low habits of venal wretches." Came on the election, and the numbers were : for Lord Egmont, 119; for Balch, Dodington's candidate, 114; for Dodington himself, 105. He explained for his own consolation that the returning-officer had rejected five good Dodingtonian votes and accepted five bad votes for Lord Egmont. Dodington had takAi the precaution, however, to be nominated for Weymouth as well, and there he continued to sit secure until he reached his desired haven, the House of Lords. On his return to town, Dodington had it gradu- ally borne in upon him that the loss of Bridgwater had materially weakened his position. The Duke played with him, however, from the end of April to the end of July ; no small accomplishment in the gentle arts of prevarication and procrasti- nation. The fate of Bridgwater was naturally the first point to be decided. If Lord Egmont was permitted to hold the seat, the borough would be lost to the Whigs. Nothing would be easier, Dodington thought, than to eject him, provided the Government supported a petition against the election, such matters being then decided by a party vote quite irrespectively of their merits. 2U0 PATRON AXD PLACE-HUXTER But it was in vain that Dodington besieged New- castle House, and that Dodington's account of his pecuniary sacrifices rose from £2500 to £3400, and finally to close on £4000. The Duke shuffled and dropped hints ; at times he was all for action, but finally, putting Dodington on his honour not to reveal the precious confidence, he declared it to be Ms mind that the petition should not go on. The Duke pursued the same tortuous tactics when reminded of Dodington's claims to office and honours. He made great expressions of good ■RTshes, which weighed with Dodington as much as the breath they were composed of. But, when it came to business, the Duke was the reverse of expHcit. Dodington in vain attempted to play the indifferent. The Duke should perceive, he argued, that £2000 a year would not make Dodington's fortune, with one foot in the grave ; as to rank, Dodington had heard that the King was odd about titles, and though Dodington had as much respect for the peerage as any man, the Dnke must see that in his situation, without succession or collateral, a peerage was not worth the expense of new-painting his coach. With a disconcerting dive into veracity the Duke retorted : " I understand you ver\- well ; you could have no competitor in the House of Commons ; you expect any employment that you can take which shall first fall, and I -nppose you Avill be disobliged if THE DUKE OF NEWCASTLE 201 you have not the very first that falls." Dodington demurred a little at the oddness and bluntness of the proposition, as well he might. Then changing his tactics, he forgot his foot in the grave and asserted that if he could not have the Duke's protection, he must make a figure ; he must look around him and consult his friends, but some figure he was determined to make. To this open threat the Duke replied that he would do his best to settle it to Dodington's satisfaction, and that he trusted that the Royal proscription would not be final. Some five weeks later, after Lord Dupplin, who was soon to become joint Paymaster, had attempted to pacify Dodington, the Duke confessed that he had laid all Dodington's services before the King in the fuUest manner, and that George 11. had declined to admit him to any mark of his favour. That brought the negotiations to an end. The Duke was given to understand that Dodington would not remain postulating among the common herd of suitors ; he would as soon wear a livery and ride behind a coach in the streets. Dodington buried his mortification at East- bury. By the end of September he was back at La Trappe, and watching the distresses of the Ministry which, in addition to its internal schisms, was fast drifting into a war with France. To Lord Hillsborough, Comptroller of the Household, 202 PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTER as reported in Dodington's Diary, we owe Pitt's magnificent retort to the Duke of Newcastle, when the Minister tried to talk to him about the expedi- tion to the Ohio to dislodge the French : " Your Grace, I suppose, knows that I have no capacity for these things, and therefore I do not desire to be informed about them." All men felt that the Duke could not go on, yet go on he did, thanks to the subservience of the majority in the House of Commons. The Princess of Wales, too, was watching events, full of anxiety as to her son's prospects. She echoed all Dodington's tirades against the weak- ness, meanness, cowardice, and baseness of the Duke of Newcastle, and agreed that he could not possibly stand without a new system. Dodington urged the necessity of a system, and said that what retarded it most was that people were guessing at her, and were tender at pushing any- thing that would disoblige her. The passage in his Diary setting forth his programme cannot be called lucid, but its purport seems to be that promises of political support on behalf of the Princess should be made to the Duke of Newcastle without the King's knowledge. In other words, Dodington's latest idea was to force himseK on the Ministry as the Princess's man. But the Princess once more declined to move ; there were a hundred good reasons, she said, that tied her THE DUKE OF NEWCASTLE 203 hands from interfering with the King, those of her children were obvious enough. The Princess declining to be put forward, Dodington proceeded to sound one of the Duke's subordinate Ministers. This was the Earl of Halifax, the great-nephew of " Bufo," an able, energetic, though unstable man, who, as the head of the Board of Trade, had already earned the com- pliment of having the capital of Nova Scotia called after him, and who had tried, but vainly, to get his department, then mainly colonial, raised to the rank of a third Secretaryship of State. He could never, Cumberland thought, be mistaken for less than he was. Dodington stayed with him at Horton, and discovered that his host was chafing under the Duke's treatment. Newcastle had been informed that since he would not trust Halifax in business and was continually putting people before him, the Garter must be granted as a mark of distinction. The Duke had boggled at the request, and Lord Halifax was persuaded that he had never mentioned the matter to the King at all. Dodington sententiously remarked that he wished the Earl had insisted rather on getting a share of government, and a power to serve his country at the exigence. Nevertheless, a bargain was concluded ; Halifax " testified much kindness and protestations of friendship and desired to unite with me and mine." So far, so good. 204 PATEON AND PLACE-HUNTER The capture of Henry Fox was a more important achievement, and Dodington effected it about this time. "Mr. Fox spent the morning with me," is the entry for June 29. " We had a good deal of talk to no purpose." The pair had been old associates under Walpole, but Dodington's deser- tion of that Minister had estranged Fox. Pohtical necessities now brought them together again, since Fox profoundly distrusted the Duke of New- castle, and knew that the struggle for supremacy between himself and Pitt could not long be post- poned. Anxious to secure support, he desired, as the Duke of Cumberland's man, to unite with Dodington, the Princess's man, more especially as he suspected Pitt of making overtures in her direction. Dodington did not beheve in the move attributed to Pitt ; he thought that Cresset, the Princess's secretary, was the only person in her confidence. A visit to Kew, during which the Princess said she wished Hanover at the bottom of the sea as the cause of all our misfortunes — a patriotic opinion from which the King alone would have dissented — confirmed Dodington in his opinion that she had no fixed digested political plan. His conferences with Fox continued, never- theless, and he was kept fuUy informed about the confused instructions and naval mismanagement which ushered in the Seven Years' War. Yet the fatal Diary records that Dodington was THE DUKE OF NEWCASTLE 205 simultaneously enteriug into intimate relations with Fox's great rival. Pitt's situation was perplexing in the extreme. He was a slighted member of a Government that stood committed to war, yet he differed profoundly from his col- leagues as to the manner in which the war should be carried on. He would support naval hostilities with France to the utmost ; but, hampered by his speeches in Opposition, he disagreed entirely with the system of safeguarding Hanover against Austria by means of German subsidies. Yet the Kjng and the unwilling Newcastle were pursuing that system much further than Carteret had ever done. In addition to Hessian, Saxon, and Bavarian subsidies, Hanbury Williams, who had been con- verted into a diplomatist, had been directed to purchase Russian troops at the cost of a yearly subsidy of £120,000, and £500,000 more when we took the men into pay. Pitt would acquiesce in the Hessian subsidy for that occasion only, but he was rootedly opposed to the Russian ; and he demanded an undertaking that the whole system should come to an end. From that attitude he declined to move, though Hardwicke, the Lord Chancellor, offered on Newcastle's behalf, to procure for him the seals of the Secretaryship of State which he so much desired. Pitt caught him up — the seals which he had so much desired — of whom ? — he did not remember he had ever 206 PATEON AND PLACE-HUNTER applied to his lordship for them ; he was sure he never had to the Duke of Newcastle. All these perplexities Pitt poured into Doding- ton's attentive ear. And then they proceeded to discuss whom they should engage for the coercion or overthrow of Newcastle. Pitt said that Legge, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, was as firm as a rock ; Lord Egmont Seemed to enter into the thing ; he thought Oswald was with them. He desired Dodington to apply to Lord Hillsborough and Dashwood. Dodington asked him if he had communicated with Fox ? Pitt said no ; nor did he design to do it ; he wished Fox very well, but they could not act together. When Dodington suggested that it was proper to think what should be held out to them in case they succeeded, Pitt declined; it would look too much like faction, and had nothing " country " about it. Yet he was ready to enter into any engagements with Dodington. The Diary continues — " He then expressed himself strangely as to me ; that he thought me of the greatest conse- quence ; no man in this country would be more listened to, both in and out of the House, etc., etc. — that he was most desirous to connect and unite himself with me in the strictest manner — he ever had the highest regard for my abilities — ^we had always acted upon the same principles ; he had the honour of being married into my relations ; everything invited him to it. He added a great deal more that surprised me very much, considering THE DUKE OF NEWCASTLE 207 the treatment I have met with for years past both from him and those relations. It surprised me so much, that all I said was, that I was much obliged to him, but that he might depend upon it that I would not accept of his friendship, or any mark of his confidence, without meeting him more than haK-way." This, it must be confessed, was what Burke after- wards called " significant, pompous, creeping, explanatory, ambiguous matter in the true Chathamic style." Dodington confined himself to the comforting reflection that he would get support in his opposition to the subsidies, a step he must have taken even if he had stood alone. He evidentlj' did not mean to do business with Pitt. Pitt's visits to Dodington — there were two in one day — were on September 2, and shortly after- wards Newcastle was ready to admit Dodington to the Ministerial fold.* Dodington retired to Eagtbury, and the arrangement was that Fox should visit him there and settle conditions. As Dodington purposed a quick return to Hammer- smith the visit was not made ; but, whether fully acquainted with the circumstances or not, he poured forth his gratitude to Fox in a letter dated September 27 — "... That of aU those who are in the King's service, or are likely to be so, you are the one I most cordially wish to see ia the first rank is a * Add. MSS. 32,858, f. 419. 208 PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTER truth I hoped to convince you of by contributing both to the placing and supporting you in it and not by words, and therefore I have been very sparing of them. You know you were the last thing I saw before I set out, and that I delayed my journey a day to have that pleasure. Since I have been here you will imagine I have seen nobody to agree, difEer, or engage with. " My opinions on many things must naturally be known to most of those I converse with. For as it is below the Administration to take notice of them, I have thought it below me to conceal them ; taut as to the particular manner of acting in pursuit, and consequence of those opinions, I have taken no positive engagement, because 1 have not positively determined any in my own thoughts, nor will I take any till I have the honour of seeing you since you are pleased to make me some part of your care in so noble and friendly a manner. As such I look upon it and receive it with pleasure. " I never thought you could be a looker-on ; I never wished it ; I always wished you should be an actor, a principal actor, but where honour and reputation as well as power and profit distingiiish the part you are to appear m ; for, dear Mr. Fox, believe an old man that loves and esteems you, there is nothing else worthy of an honest, noble, well-regulated ambition." * Events moved rapidly after Dodington was back at La Trappe. On October 3, late at night, Fox wrote to the Duke of Newcastle — " Mr. Dodington dined here and is just gone. We had a deal of discourse, and I think he is ♦ This letter, and the subsequent correspondence with Fox, are to be found in the Add. MSS. 38,091, ff. 61-64, 67-86. HKNkY I 'IX THE DUKE OF NEWCASTLE 209 extremely inclined to what you wish, but as I found he could not give his answer now, I did not name any particular thing, but only in general told him that I had authority to speak to him in the way I wished. Upon the whole, which is the only way of conveying my sense of what passed, I think he longs to be one with the Attorney- General [Murray], Lord Hillsborough, your humble servant and perhaps equally with any of us. Lord Halifax. If, therefore, besides the person you meant yesterday [possibly Furnese] you can employ Lord Halifax in this work, I shall have no doubt of it. He wants to bring Sir Francis Dashwood with him if he comes. If you know, as I suppose you do, the present income, real, good and honest as well as odd character of that gentleman, and the power he has, in his way, of doing hurt in the House, you wiU, I dare say, be glad to give a hand to such a treaty. But into this I did not enter further than by good wishes. " He went away, I verily think, undetermined. Strong inclination one way, opinion (perhaps declared opinion) the other. Don't delay applying to Lord Halifax and your other friend, and then you may expect the answer, which he is to give me Simday or Monday sennight, such as your Grace and I for your Grace's sake and mine heartily wish it may be." To make matters sure. Fox wrote next day to Lord Halifax, summing up the situation, asking the Earl to bestir himself and adding the important point that the King had given his word that he would not put his negative on Dodington. Simultaneously the Duke of Newcastle was writing to Lord Halifax asking him to see Dodington as 210 PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTER soon as he could, and "acquaint him with the inclination of us all that he shall he one of us." The Duke added : " ^Ir. Fox has not thought it proper to mention the particular employment to him and you should not ; but to show your Lord- ship that I am in earnest I have procured the King's leave to offer him the Comptroller's stafE, but I beg you would not mention it to him." Never- theless, Dodington was able to make a copy of the Duke's letter ; of so small account did his Grace's colleagues hold his mysteries. Three days later Murray wrote urgently to the Duke; he had met Fox by accident, who had reported Dodington much hurt at former treatment, he would not take the Comptroller's staff ; the Duke should lose no time in seeing him.* Thus four eminent men were all jogging one another to get Dodington ofl&ce. It was a tribute to his usefulness, if not to his character. The upshot was that on October 10 Dodington waited by appointment on the Duke at Newcastle House. The spectacle, as he descended from his coach and mounted the steps of the fine old mansion which stUl stands, rather desolately, in the north-west comer of Lincohi's Tnn Fields, must have been impressive. We may take it that the tye-wig had been well curled, and that the lace rufifles made a brave display. Dodington by * Add. MSS. 32,859, f. 417. THE DUKE OF NEWCASTLE 211 this time knew his Newcastle, and was not disposed to submit to further trifling. The conversation, therefore, took a heated turn — " My Lord, where there is no offer, no answer can be expected. " He said all would depend upon measures, if those could be made agreeable, everything would be made easy ; and therefore it would be proper to go upon that. " My Lord, if your Grace pleases, one thing at once. As you have no offer to make, you can expect no answer upon that head : and be pleased to observe that / have nothing to offer, and nothing to ask. " Why, to be sure, he said, if what was thought of was not agreeable, anything else that I liked might be brought about ; but what the King first thought of, was the Comptroller's staff. " My Lord, I will suppose I did not hear you, and as you have nothing to offer, and /have nothing to ask, there can be no answer, and we may shut the book. " He said that if they had known I should not have liked the staff, it would not have been thought of. " My Lord, it should not have been thought of. If you please, my Lord, let us suppose that nothing specifical has been offered ; and I repeat my expectation that your Grace will remember, that I have nothing to offer or propose to you and nothing to ask." The poor Duke was accustomed to this sort of thing from Pitt, but it must have come hardly from Dodington. Newcastle was further given to understand that, whUe Dodington was for the 212 PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTER defence of Hanover provided it was attacked, yet he would have nothing to do with the Russian subsidy, and would not say he would be for the Hessian.* The Duke \vxote to Lord Hardwicke that he regarded negotiations at an end ; Doding- ton had done for himself. Yet nine days later, probably through fresh remonstrances from Murray, Dodington settled "preliminaries " with the Duke, and this is his version of them. In the sordid records of party jobbery they stand alone in their primitive shamelessaess — " The Peelimin ABIES, " What is hinted at for I\Ir. Dodington, is more than he desires for himself ; but without the con- currence of his friends, and the following conditions for them, it is impossible for him to enter into any engagement. " Earl of Hahfax to be of the Cabinet. Such provision in possession, or reversion, for !Mr. Fumese, as shaU be agreed upon between him and ]Mr. Attomey-G^eneraL " Sir Francis Dashwood to be ofEered the Comp- troller's stafE, or something that is proper for, and would be agreeable to him ; if he can be prevailed on to accept anything, which I very much doubt. " Lord Talbot to be comprehended, ilr. Tucker to be provided for, at or before the end of the Sessions. * A note from Mtixray to the Ihike (Add JLSS. 32,860, t 7) and a lengthy letter from the Duke to Lord Hirdwicke (Qnd., t 18) confirm Dodington' s version of the interview. Newcastle writes that Dodington " protested against the Russian treaty in stronger, and more explicit terme than even Mr, Pitt himselt ' THE DUKE OF NEWCASTLE 213 " Full liberty to oppose the subsidies, honestly and fairly ; which is never to cause the least coldness, expostulation, or remonstrance. " Mr. Dodington is also obliged to be of the Irish side of the question, about the linens. " It is presumed, that there is to be no trifling ; but that the correspondence and communication between Mr. Dodington's friends, and the Adminis- tration, is to be sincere, honourable, and un- reserved." Parliament met on November 13, Fox two days afterwards leading the House as Secretary of State. The Russian and German subsidies were hotly debated. The level of eloquence stood high. Horace Walpole wrote in his Memoirs that after a long doze of genius there at once appeared nearly thirty men, of whom one, Pitt, was a real orator, a few were most masterly, many very able, not one was a despicable speaker. He counted Dodington in the band ; and contrasting him with Oswald remarked that : " Oswald over- flowed with a torrent of sense and logic ; Dodington was always searching for wit, and, what was surprising, generally found it. Oswald hurried argument along with him ; Dodington teased it to accompany him." But his speech, as Horace Walpole noticed, betrayed a willingness to turn defendant. The summary given is certainly a masterpiece of trimming. He disapproved of the treaties, but sought for arguments to convince, not to inflame. He would concur with protecting 214 PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTER Hanover, but the journals would point out better methods of assistance ; the effectual one was to disable the enemy from attacking it. He wished that approbation of the treaties shoidd be omitted from the Address, but would allow assurances that they would stand to be given to the Electorate. After Pitt had blazed forth in the great speech containing the famous figure of the junction of the Rhone and the Saone, the House divided, and the Government were victorious by 311 votes to 105.* Pitt, Legge the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Greorge GrenvUle were promptly dismissed, but the reconstruction of the Ministry was deferred to the Christmas recess. Then Dodiogton got his reward, returning to his old office of Treasurer of the Navy. " The PreHminaries " underwent considerable modification, since " what was hinted at " must have been a higher appointment, and Lord Halifax did not enter the Cabinet, Even so his new allies by no means received Dodington with open arms. The Duke of Newcastle wrote to the Duke of Devonshire, the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, that of the various " dispositions," or arrangements, " that of Dodington went down hardly both in the Closet and with our friends, but there may be good in it." -r Others were • Walpole, " Memoirs of George IL," L, 408 and 488 ; " Letters," m., 366. t Addit. MSS. 32,862, f. 17. THE DUKE OF NEWCASTLE 215 frankly amused. " You will smile," Horace Walpole wrote to Mann, " at seeing Dodiagton again revolved to the Court." But " Leonidas " Glover regarded him with a sterner eye. He had been watching Dodington all the summer, and perceived that he was wavering between Pitt and Fox. Glover warned him that he could go into no office at that juncture without being the most unhappy of men ; and when the advice was dis- regarded gave but a cold congratulation.* Glover, the moralist, must have been even more wearisome than Glover, the writer of tragedies. Dodington must have set far greater store on the opinion of the Princess of Wales. Yet from her, too, there came a chilling recognition of his promotion. The entry in the Diary for October 19 is — " I waited on the Princess to acquaint her with what had passed — but her Royal Highness received me very coolly." After all his protesta- tions of allegiance, he certainly cut an awkward figure as a member of the Government through the influence of Henry Fox, the Duke of Cumberland's man. With his administrative ability and intimate knowledge of affairs, Dodington must have been a source of strength to the Ministry. We learn from his Diary that he was frequently consulted about the unpreparedness of the Navy both by * Glover, 67 and 69. 216 PATKON AND PLACE-HUNTER Fox and Newcastle, the pair freely blaming one another except when they combined to censure the First Lord, Anson. He spoke in the House on the new tax on plate, declaring with far-fetched humour that he could not understand how men who had gone on losing so much interest by a stock of plate should now declare they would eat on trenchers, because it was to be taxed at a halfpenny an ounce. With keener wit Dodington gibed in private conversation at the King, for making the nation pay for his Hanoverian troops. " His Majesty," he said, " would not for the world lend himself a farthing." Of the Hanoverian contingent, summoned by the Ministry in a disgraceful panic for the protection of the country, he said that the motto on their caps, "Vestigia nviUa retrorsum," shoidd be translated, " They never mean to go back again." An earher epigram deUghted the Duke and Hardwicke. During the crisis the rumour ran that Pitt and Fox were drawing together. Dodington thereupon neatly parodied an immortal line : " The gods," he sneered, " take care of Cato." On August 30, 1756, Dodington sent the following letter from Eastbury to the Duke of Newcastle. With a slight variation of the opening, a copy went to Lord Dupplin. WTiy waste original flattery on an underling ? THE DUKE OF NEWCASTLE 217 " I thank your Lordship for your very obliging letter, and particularly for your kind promise of giving me a Une, if anything of consequence should happen ; for at this distance I know nothing of public affairs but what I see in the public papers. 'Tis true, they afford no very promising prospect, but I cannot see any ground for despair ; or as yet for any great uneasiness but one, which is the unassociating spirit of incon- fidence so universally prevaUing which deprives the public of the full use and advantage of those abilities and resources which I think much more than equal to the difficulties we have at present to struggle with. "As to myseK, my own part is very easy, for it is my inclination as well as my duty to serve the public by co-operating cordially and un- reservedly with those friends who have done me the honour to call me into their connection, amongst whom let me indulge my vanity, so far as to reckon your Lordship a very valuable one." * On the same day Dodington wrote to Henry Fox in the same sense, but with less ceremony. There seems to have been a genuine Uking between the two. " But in truth [he continued] the state of my poor dear country is not the cause of my writing, though so pathetically set forth by those gentlemen [the gentlemen of the pubhc papers], but the report of your ill-health is the real motive of this letter, which a little alarms me, and if you can order Mr. Tucker to send me a word that you are well, it will be a more agreeable piece of news to me than all the Ministerial intelligence you will ever be able to send me as long as you live. * Addit. MSS. 32,867, f. 158 and 38,091, f. 67, 218 PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTER " May you live long and happy and nostri non immemor. " P.S. — ^My duty to Lady Caroline and any young widow you may find in the neighbourhood." Dodington seems to have kept copies even of his unofficial letters. This one is annotated, apparently by a contemporary hand, with notes of interrogation over " the real motive of this letter " and of exclamation over " which a little alarms me." Can the humorous commentator have been Dr. Thompson ? On September 6 Dodington wrote again to Fox, but in a chastened spirit ; the pubhc having taken the loss of Minorca in a temper of deep resentment, and the loss of Oswego ha-v-ing fallen on top of it. Also there was the great affair of the Hanoverian soldier at Maidstone, who was convicted of ha\Tng stolen handkerchiefs, and whose release was ordered by the Attorney- General, to the fierce indignation of every honest Englishman. Dodington wrote therefore — " I thank you for your kind letter. Your recovery gives me real joy ; take care not to dash it by a relapse, but obey the Countess [Lady Caroline Fox] and I am contented. " I am a little hurt with the public prospect, but do what I can to keep up my spirits. Despair is a bad physician. You say nothing of Brest: are you sure that they are not stronger than Boscawen for periods long enough to come out and attack him ? THE DUKE OF NEWCASTLE 219 " I hope the best from the Mediterranean, but am not quite so sure as you seem to be of our superiority there at this hour. Remember how you were misled into a behef that Byng's squadron was too strong for all they could put out ; for those who aflfirmed that to you could have no certainty of his being joined by Edgcumbe — ^but this only among ourselves. " I entirely agree there is no good reason to apprehend any active mischief from America this year ; but reflect a Uttle if inaction be not defeat where without victory the expense is ruin." Dodington had gauged the situation with sagacity. The Ministry was unable to stand up against the storm of public resentment. Fox's optimism vanished when he returned to town, and dining with him on October 14, Dodington noticed that " he appeared to be in an extraordinary pertvu-- bation." These anxious notes passed while matters were stiQ in suspense. " I had a good deal of serious discourse [Fox wrote to Dodington on the 19th] with H.M. [His Majesty] yesterday. The Chancellor [Hard- wicke] did not come to town tiU last night. The D. [ulce] of N. [ewcastle] did not know his own mind, if he does now. H.M. kept his temper therefore, and is open to any future behavioiir he shaU think proper. Pitt came to town this morning. I know nothing more, and therefore I have nothing to trouble you with ; I beUeve, without knowledge, reflection will have brought you from what seemed to be your opinion on Saturday that things will be accommodated. But [what] wiU be the event I know not, nor am in 220 PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTER any degree maker of it. It is in other hands and I am not sorry for it. Adieu." Dodington answered on the same day — " The more I consider this whole matter, the less I confess I am able to form any determined judgment of it and its consequences. The serious conversation you are pleased to mention must, I should think, furnish materials that may be decisive ; but as I do not know the particulars, I cannot pretend to judge in what manner, and can only form the most ardent wishes that it may be to the advantage of the public and yoiir parti- cular satisfaction." Fox was right, things were not accommodated. Pitt peremptorily refused to have anything to do with the Duke or Fox. Lord Hillsborough, for one, buoyed himself up with the behef that the Court would not submit to Pitt. Dodington thought otherwise, and the event justified his opinion. After a series of unedifying quarrels, first Fox resigned, and then Newcastle, and the ^Ministry came to an end. The wonder must be that it lasted as long as it did. CHAPTER XIII CHAOS The Duke of Devonsliire — Dodington out of Office — Admiral Byng — Dodington's Bold Speech — ^The Oath of Secrecy — Dodington and Fox — ^Fox as a Ministry-maker — Sir Thomas Robinson — Lord Halifax's Duplicity — Dismissal of Temple and Pitt — The Inter-ministerium— Dodington again Treasurer of the Navy— Newcastle's Shuffling — Dodington's Anxiety — Thrown over by Fox — Lord Bute — " In " or " Out " — Dodington's Reflections — Lord Halifax and the Duke of Newcastle. THE Duke of Devonshire, an honest, diffident man, undertook the thankless task of forming a Ministry, with Pitt as the principal Secretary of State. One of his first proceedings was to call on Dodington in Pall Mall, and finding him out to leave word that he would come again next day. Dodington, however, waited on the Duke at Devonshire House. In a manner strongly resembling that of a later and more famous Duke of the Cavendish family, the First Lord of the Treasury unfolded his difficulties. He had been forced by the King to take up the appointment he held, and to dis- cover on what conditions Pitt would serve. In 222 PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTER the arrangement made by Pitt and his friends, the Treasurership of the Navy was unfortunately demanded. The Duke was very sorry for it ; he was not concerned in it. Thus Dodington, as Horace Walpole pleasantly put it, was out for about the hundred and fiftieth time. It must have been an additional source of mortification to him to discover that his successor was his relation, George GrenvUle, one of the " Cousin- hood." Yet his ejection from office enabled Dodington to perform the finest act of his life, his pleading for Admiral Byng. It seems likely that there was a personal friendship between the two men. Some ill-spelt letters in Miss Eyre-Matcham's Collection show that Byng's father. Lord Torrington, was a friend of Dodington's uncle, and one of them concludes, " Pray make my service acceptable to Mr. Dodington the younger." But it really needed no old ties to bring Dodington into the arena as an advocate of mercy. He was naturally a kindly man, Epicuri de grege. In defence of Byng he rose to something higher. And while Dodington ceased to be a coxcomb, Dashwood was no longer a rake, and Horace Walpole dropped the dilettante. The three worked honestly and hard to save Byng from the consequences of popular resentment. On February 23 Dashwood brought before the House the consideration of the article of war under CHAOS 223 which Byng stood condemned. The court martial had acquitted him of cowardice and disaffection, but by pronouncing him guUty had imphed that he had committed criminal negligence. To this verdict they added a strong recommendation to mercy, on the ground that they passed the sentence because the law left them no alternative. The Admiral's blood, exclaimed Dashwood, would lie at the door of those who had not explained what they meant by their sentence, of which no man else could give an interpretation. Dodington followed Lord Barrington, who, after urging the necessity of the article of war, moved for the order of the day. Horace Walpole's summary of his speech runs — " He had no interest in this question, but as it touched Mr. Byng ; in whose case national justice, pubhc and private compassion were concerned too. That it was impossible to argue that ambiguities ought not to be cleared up. That for fear of bringing on a question he would not call for the sentence ; but he should be glad to know of what the Admiral stood condemned. He did know of what he was not condemned ; and that supported him ; as it was what stained neither the soldier nor the subject. Without doors the sentence was thought extremely cruel ; and well might people think so, when the judges who pronounced it declared they thought so themselves. Perhaps it might be deemed advisable not to carry it into execution ; it certainly would be mercy to the judges, and to the distress of their consciences ; nor would clash with the King's promise, who 224 PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTER certainly never engaged his royal word to adopt the worst construction of a doubtful law. He wished to hear something thrown out for compassion." Horace Walpole says that " this humane and pathetic speech — to the shame of my country I may caU it this hold speech, considering in how unpopular circumstances it was deHvered " — ^was received with attention and sensibOity. Dodington spoke again when Dashwood moved that the members of the court martial should be absolved from their oath of secrecy, so as to be able to explain why they had condemned Byng. The procedure advocated was by an Act of Parhament. Dodington said he had sought compassion and relief — had found compassion even when he called ; but rehef could only come constitutionally through justice. The court martial did at last perceive that they might have been mistaken. Were he in their place, he should not have waited for a BiU — he should have thought a Hfe was to be saved at any rate.* All efforts were in vain, however, as the King declined to exercise the prerogative of mercy ; the Bill of Relief for the court martial was dropped in the Lords, and on March 14, 1757, Byng was executed on the quarterdeck of the Monarque in Portsmouth harbour. * Walpole, "Memoirs of George II.," 147 and 164. Professional men and civilians wUl probably continue to be divided to the end of time as to the justice of Byng's execution. He certainly displayed irresolution, but he had also undertaken an impossible task. CHAOS 225 Curiously enough, Dodington's Diary contains not a single entry relating to his efforts to save the unhappy man. He was far, at any rate, from breaking with Fox, who throughout had cynically used the case of Byng as an instrument for weaken- ing the Ministry. The pair, indeed, were actively engaged in those oflfice-mongering intrigues in which their souls delighted, and which the weak- ness of the Devonshire-Pitt Ministry rendered peculiarly inviting. The King was eager to be rid of the Government, so enduring was his hatred of Pitt ; and threw himself on Fox to form a new administration. Dodington is described by Horace Walpole at this juncture as ready to take anything, having got in and out too often to lose any repu- tation by one more promotion or disgrace. Yet, as a fact, he refused the Chancellorship of the Exchequer, though he agreed to take the Board of Trade if his friend. Lord Halifax, would go to the Admiralty. Two days after the death of Byng, Fox wrote to Dodington this illuminating letter — (( What can I do ? Can I speak to Lord Halifax without such authority as may justify me at all events in what I say to him ? I not only authorise but desire you to converse with him on this subject, and if you please, to say that it is by my desire and on this foot : That I wish the King would dismiss Pitt, Lord Temple [the First Lord of the Admiralty], etc., that I think no one of the late 226 PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTER Ministers can now succeed them, but that such a Ministry should be formed as the late Ministers may support, and as the people cannot complain of ; that the Secretary of State must be in the House of Commons ; that if the Duke of Devon- shire will stay there is no place but First Lord of the Admiralty for his Lordship [Lord Halifax], nor anybody that 1 know of but his Lordship who would fill that place ; that I should advise you to succeed him, that Oswald should be Secre- tary of the Admiralty ; that the concilittbulum should consist of the Dukes of Devon and Bedford, the Earl of Halifax, Lord Mansfield, and the two Secretaries.* That is my notion, and if every- body will act the part assigned to them, I can answer for the success. If because they will not, or for any other reason, his Majesty is forced to keep these gentlemen two months longer, I shall look upon them, as complete conquerors, and Leicester House the Court. Adieu, my dear Sir. As soon as I know his Majesty's determination you shall know more, or that there is nothing more to be known." The dismissal of Earl Temple would have been peculiarly gratifying to Dodington. He disliked him the most heartily of all " my Grenville relations," for not only was Temple an arrogant, disagreeable man, but also since the death of Lord Cobham he had become the heir to Eastbury. On March 18 Dodington wrote to Fox from Pall Mall at the hour of midnight in a deeply mysterious style — * The conciliabulum was the inner or efficient Cabinet. See the late Sir William Anson a valuable article in The English Historical Review, Januafy, 1914. CHAOS 227 " The gentleman was with me this morning and dined here afterwards. He told me what had passed between you and him yesterday in the House. You have done what nobody else could have done. He gave me an account of the letter he wrote this morning. I like his setting forth the difficulties of the undertaking and the decent diffidence he expresses of himself as it ends in an absolute obedience to his Majesty's pleasure even in that particular. The hitch in the last part I do not like so weU, I mean insisting upon a gentleman's giving his word he would concur, because it is but childish at best. For if that was all the assurance I could rely on for his con- currence, our friend himself would not teU you, or me, that he would give sixpence for his security. . . . " Were not the subject so serious, it would make one smile to suppose that anybody could really think that a gentleman's word could add security and strength to his acting for his own interest and safety who never in his life kept it one moment when he thought it came in competition with the one or the other. If such a paradox should defeat so wise and great a system, I shall look upon it as a fatality of the times. I have heard that Lord Mansfield does not so warmly approve, as it were to be wished. I hope it is without grounds ; or at least that he wiU not discourage it." Who was this unnamed gentleman, with all his doubt, hesitation, and pain ? The Diary does not throw any direct light on the point, but from an entry of a few days later he w(Juld appear to be Sir Thomas Robinson, on whom, sorely unwilling, the peremptory King had forced the seals of 228 PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTER principal Secretary of State which he had held ia the first Newcastle Ministry. Robinson, however, had no mind to be Pitt's dumb victim again, and after a decent interval sent word through Lord Halifax that he could not, must not, would not, accept. Fox answered Dodington on the 20th — " I wish I could agree with you that Lord H [ahfax] mentioned the idle promise of another pro forma only. But we may probably see ; for a positive declaration will be required on the D [uke] of N [ewcastle's] part and perhaps dechned. Lord Mansfield, I am told, approves of no mezzo termino. I beUeve that he approves of nothing that may sooner or later make lus patron [Newcastle] again a Minister. Be at the House to-morrow and I will inform jou ; and besides I intend there to call upon the Ministers for a contradiction of the prevailing lie that he industriously spread of an intended message for English troops to be sent to Westphalia. They say Pitt would not carry such a message, and is therefore to be turned out. Adieu. . . ." The story was that a British contingent was to be sent to Germany, whither the Duke of Cumberland was about to start to take command of the army of observation. Legge denied it and that con- scientiously. But, as Dodington noted in his Diary, less than three months afterwards Pitt gave a million of money and sent over some 7000 English soldiers to that vers* army. ^Yhen aU was over, Dodington discovered to his infinite disgust that his familiar friend Lord CHAOS 229 Halifax had been playing a double part. Though he openly spoke of the Duke of Newcastle as a knave and a fool, he was all the while quietly negotiating with him. Thus it happened that when Dodington, as Fox's mouthpiece, offered Halifax the Admiralty, he pleaded his delicacy in engagements of a political sort. Fox and Dodington both regarded this ambiguous remark as a refusal, and Fox sent warning to Hahfax that if he would not accept the Admiralty, he had no chance of getting either of the Secretaryships of State, even if both of them were taken from the House of Lords. At last Lord Halifax said that he would come into the system provided Sir Thomas Robinson was principal Secretary of State. But all the while the perfidious Earl knew that under no conditions would Sir Thomas take the seals. The King brought matters to a crisis on April 5 by dismissing Lord Temple, whom he hated for his verbosity and rudeness. Next day he sent Pitt about his business. The famous inter- ministerium, as Horace Walpole terms it, had begun, the Duke of Devonshire continuing at the Treasury, while Fox, as the King's choice, was hunting high and low for support. He was, indeed, the " recruiting sergeant " of George Townshend's pencil. Lord Winchelsea became First Lord, but an Admiralty Board did not make an Administration, 230 PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTER On April 6 Lord Holdemess was sent by the King to Fox and Dodington, commanding them to kiss his hand as Paymaster of the Forces and Treasurer of the Navy respectively. Thus Dodington took up his old appointment for the third and last time. It was bestowed after previous negotiations through Lord Hillsborough which throw a lurid light on Dodington's reputa- tion. The go-between wrote to Dodington that Fox— " begs of you to accept of Treasurer of the Navy without making any conditions at present ; and commissioned me to repeat to you his assurances of standing by you, totis virihus, if during his Majesty's life any attempt should be made to maltreat you ; that he will not stay in a quarter of an hour if such an event was to happen ; and if you will be so kind to him as to accept of this for the present, he will be ready to assist in bringing about any practicable exchange that you may wish." But in truth both worthies had reasons for not wishing to court publicity more than they could help. When they accepted the appointments they wrote to their patron, the Duke of Cumberland, that they thought it would be more for his Majesty's service not to enter upon them publicly, until the inquiry into the loss of Minorca was over. That inquiry, like a good many House of Commons inquiries since its date, speedily ended in the sorriest of farces, and Fox and his ally Dodington could breathe again. CHAOS 231 The City o£ London and the nation at large, however, would place their destinies in the hands of none but Pitt. He in turn was conscious that he could not do without the Duke of Newcastle, and Lord Hardwicke's tact slowly brought the two together. Meanwhile, the King had urgently pressed the Duke to say if he would support Fox or to name what plan he would support, but to speak positively, for his Majesty would have no more evasive answers. But to extract plain- speaking from the Duke was beyond the power even of a king. The inter-ministerium went on ; so did the war ; both Houses debated without leadership ; Nugent, a Lord of the Treasury, brought out the financial arrangements of the year. The next letter, however, that passed from Dodington to Fox shows an uneasy feeling that the game had been practically lost. It is dated June 2. " I hear you are come to town, but not much more informed of the settlement of the Adminis- tration than the King himself. How long is this gentleman [Pitt] to trifle with his Sovereign and benefactor ? and to keep our destiny in suspense ; you of too much consequence, I of too little to be trusted with or admitted to 'the honour of support- ing him. I know nobody that ought to decide for you but the King. I am sure nobody shall decide for me but you." Dodington's destiny did not remain much longer in doubt, since Fox's reply, which has not 232 PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTER been preserved, must have conveyed that, while he wa^s secure of the Paymastership of the Army and its rich emoluments, Dodington's chances of retaining the Treastirership of the Navy were dubious, Pitt had, in fact, earmarked it ; and in the final settlement it went once more to the odious George Grenville. Dodington was always being smitten in the house of his relations. His answer to Fox was — " I humbly thank you for 3-our note. I must ever think that the King stands equally engaged in honour, though not in interest to both of us for the two Paymasters' offices. If it be necessary to the system you are entering into to leave me quite out, I have nothing to say to that. If I am to have an equivalent, I think they ought to settle it with you at the same time, for with them I will have nothing to do." Fox's two next letters adroitly imply that he can do nothing more for Dodington. On June 4 he writes — " It is impossible to recoUect and you, Dear Sir, would be sorry to read half the absurdities I have heard this day. The Duke of Newcastle went to the King, not to accept, but to desire until Tuesday to determine, because Lord Hardwicke does not come to town till Monday. " If he accepts, it is against the advice of aU his friends, yet he will accept, and let those friends make his situation ten times worse than it would be if they did not meddle. But he is to act against their advice, vet they are to advice him. I in CHAOS 233 the meantime will not be of the system (as you will persist to call those who never had a system). I will take what I take from the King. He is certainly engaged in honour to you as weU as to me. And therefore that settlement too must be with him. But they caimot settle it with me, nor I with him as yet, for I am sick of what passes and wUl neither see him nor them more till I kiss his hand and that I ever shall kiss it is doubtful. Adieu." On June 6 Fox wrote again — " The Duke of Newcastle has been with the King to know what terms he may oflEer Mr. Pitt ; whom together with Lord Hardwicke and Lord Bute he is to meet to-night. " The King gave the Duke little encouragement to think he would condescend to such terms as they would accept ; and the Duke gave the King as little to imagine that he would come in without them. His Grace is to be at Court to-morrow when, according to present appearances, they will part for good and aU, for the King complains of himself for having permitted so long dela}^ But the very reverse of this conjecture may prove to be the event. Incertus non perturbatus, I'll go to dinner. Adieu." The conference, which Lord Bute attended as the representative of the Prince of Wales, thus introducing a new factor in poUtics of rapidly increasing importance, ended in nothing. Pitt would not unbend, Newcastle would not be straightforward. Further complications ensued ; Lord Waldegrave attempted and failed to form a Ministry ; Fox made one more attempt and also 234 PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTER failed ; so did Lord Hardwicke ; Lord C!hesterfield at the prompting of the advisers of the Prince of Wales, negotiated between the Duke of Newcastle and Pitt, and at last, after an interval of more than eleven weeks a new Ministry was settled. On June 10, while the suspense still lasted, Dodington wrote to Fox — " When we parted I went to carry Lord Leicester to Kenwood [Hampstead] who kept us there tiU nine. Not a word of what passed or was passing. I met Rigby yesterday in Hyde Park, who stopped to tell me that Lord H [ardwicke] had resigned. Am I to wish you joy and of what ? If I do, I do it cordially, and will support you in every honourable thing — us(fad internecionem — ^in whatever shape you like best either in or out. " It was " in " for Fox, but " out " for Dodington. Sacrificing his ambition to his avarice. Fox sank to amass wealth out of those pickings from the Paymastership of the Forces which Pitt had scorned. " But," Dodington feelingly recorded in his Diary, "his Majesty was not pleased so to behave to me." The members of the great Newcastle-Pitt Administration kissed hands on June 29. Dodington's comment in his Diary was, " Thus ended this attempt to deliver the King from hands he did not like, and it failed from Lord Halifax's duplicity, which drew a greater affront upon him, CHAOS 235 than I ever remember ofEered to anybody ; from the Duke of Newcastle's treachery and ingratitude, who, after having given his word to the King that he would never join Mr. Pitt but by his Majesty's consent, forced the King to consent by his Majesty's timidity, who dared not support anybody even in his own cause." The conduct of the Duke of Newcastle had certainly been far from heroic, but then he was never famous for pohtical courage. And Dodington much exaggerates the consequences of Lord Halifax's proceedings. All he had done was to decline the Admiralty. But his refusal was not fatal to the Fox-Dodington plan, since Lord Winchelsea consented to take up the appoint- ment. Though Horace Walpole gives an elaborate account of the inter-ministerium, the Earl nowhere appears as one of the villains of the play. Dodington, however, could not resist setting down the retributory justice which overtook Lord Halifax. He had gone over to the Duke of New- castle under a promise that the Board of Trade and Plantations should be made into a third Secretary- ship of State. After the Ministry was formed, he went to Court and talked to Pitt about the change as a settled thing. The reply was one of Pitt's disconcerting stares and an intimation that he had never heard one word of it, and that he did not conceive that any one had any right to curtail his office, the first Secretaryship, to that degree, more 236 PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTER especially as it was already too much encroached upon by the Board of Trade. Then Lord Halifax, covered with confusion, went off in a rage ; wrote an angry letter to the Duke of Newcastle; com- plained to the King, but meeting with no great comfort, resigned. The iuevitable explanation of it all was that the Duke had refrained from broaching the question of the third Secretaryship of State to Pitt, because " Pitt looked so much out of humour, that he durst not." They were very human, those eighteenth-century statesmen ! As for Lord Halifax, he freely abused the Duke ; but about iMichaelmas, finding that the Board of Trade was stUl vacant, he returned to it on the old conditions. They might revile the Duke behind his back, and upbraid him to his face as much as they pleased, but he generally beat them in the end. CHAPTER XIV THE END OE THE KEIGN The Newcastle-Pitt Ministry — Lord Halifax forgiven — Descents on the French Coast— General Bligh — His alleged " Letter to Pitt " — Dodington's Pamphlet — Pitt's Reprimand — Lord George SackvUle — ^Trial by Court-Martial — ^A Royal Slight — Lord Bute — Dodington and the Favourite — Newcastle's Suspicions — Death of George H. THUS Dodington was excluded from the great Ministerial combination which raised the country from the depths of humiliation to the heights of Imperial renown. We may presume that he took the frowns of fortune with a fair amount of philosophy. He was old, rich, and childless ; the world had not much more to offer him. Besides, even George II. could not live for ever, and then The two dominant motives in Dodington's mind, therefore, during the glorious years which secured Canada and India to the Empire were a bitter resentment against Pitt and the Grenvilles, who had thrust him out of the Treasurership of the Navy, and a desire to join hands with the little group which would be all-powerful in the new reign. Lord Halifax was soon forgiven. Dodington 238 PATRON AND PLAGE-HUNTER discovered that badly as he had behaved, Legge had behaved worse ; he had accepted the Ex- chequer seals under Pitt though Pitt hated him and had deserted him ; he had in turn betrayed Lord Halifax and Oswald. Dodington was invited, before long, to spend Christmas at Horton, and his host facetiously wrote that he was far more ready to treat on t^rms of accommodation for the journey than any Plenipos that had been lately prominent. When he had arrived, the guest was to have everything as much to his wish as the Earl and his children, " who will sing and prattle to you better than when you saw Horton last," could make it. This pretty invitation was no doubt accepted with alacrity. Dodington occupied his enforced leisure by a minute scrutiny of naval and military preparations. He had access to excellent sources of information. Fox for one ; and he duly committed to paper fact and rumour, statistics and anecdotes. The enterprises of the year 1757 ofiered much scope for criticism. The great ]Ministry did not begin weU. Pitt was hampered by the bad appointments he found on entering ofiSce ; he had also to act before he had time to look about him. The French coast lay temptingly near, and he first hoped for success from descents on the harbours and arsenals of the enemy. Old Lord Granville, Lord President of the Council, strongly demurred ; experience had THE END OF THE REIGN 239 taught him that France was best attacked on the Continent. But Pitt was not to be convinced, even though the failures of Hawke and Mordaunt against Rochefort and of Howe and the Duke of Marlborough against St. Malo should have opened his eyes. The second armament put out to sea again, Howe commanding the naval forces as before, and General BUgh, a veteran who was hastily summoned from Ireland, the land forces. They started well by occupying Cherbourg, destroy- ing the basin and capturing some cannon. Howe next landed Bhgh in St. Lunaire Bay ; and the weather proving stormy directed him to march to St. Cas by land. The re-embarkation proved most disastrous, as the Due d'AiguiHon fell upon the Grenadiers, who were acting as rearguard, and inflicted heavy losses on them. The unfortunate General Bligh was so coldly received at Court on his return that he resigned his appointments. Shortly afterwards there appeared "A Letter from the Honourable L[ieutenan]t G[enera]l B[li]gh to the Right Hon. W[illia]m P[it]t, Esq., Se[cretar]y of S[ta]te. Together with his M[ajest]y's instructions for the late expeditions on the coast of France. ' ' The publication naturally created no small stir, Pitt's enemies fixing on the instructions as a point of attack. When challenged as to the authorship, the General denied it. The facts would seem to have been that some injudicious 240 PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTER friend of the General had got hold of a draft of a letter of his to Pitt, and had interpolated many rhetorical passages of his own ; also that the thing was published behind the poor man's back- But the genuineness of the instructions was not seriously refuted. Dodington, anyhow, smelt mis- chief, and dashed into the paper war. He had already, Horace Walpole tells us, flung in one or two bitter pamphlets against Pitt, He now wrote yet another, which he entitled " An Examination of a Letter PubHshed under the name of L[ieutenan]t G[enera]l B[li]gh and Addressed to the Hon. {sic) W[illia]m P[it]t, Esq." Dodington begins by enquiring with ponderous sarcasm into the identity of the editor of the letter to Pitt. He could not be the General ; could he be the great personage to whom the letter was supposed to be addressed, that is Pitt himself ? No, argued Dodington, the ridicule of writing what might be justly called a letter to himself would be too gross, too rank ; besides Pitt would not venture to publish the instructions without the King's leave. The editor was more likely to be some one who had become acquainted with the instructions officially or by a friendly communi- cation ; and who, without considering conse- quences, thought it a pity the public should be defrauded of so rich a piece. Dodington pro- ceeded to poke fun at the instructions, which set THE END OF THE REIGN 241 forth the necessity of creating a diversion from Germany, and compelling the enemy to employ in their own defence a considerable part of the forces destined to invade and oppress the liberties of Europe — " What a pity it is that some of our great statesmen had not, in time, before such immense sums were squandered away on that rage of ours for interfering with the Continent, felt with more judgment the distempered pulse of its Powers, and on finding it such as they would certainly have found it, left them to their own methods of treatment ? Instead of which we appear in the strange character of physicians giving instead of taking fees for our prescriptions and remedies, which are thrown at our heads into the bargain." Dodington ridiculed the idea that an expedition landing on the shore of France would cause a diversion or even alarm the country ; the joke was evident to every one who knew anything of the coast — " Thanks to the Government of France, a wealthy farmer is a prodigy, and even the t hinl y scattered houses of their common country-gentle- men are miserably furnished. A long table in the hall, and a few wooden chairs make the chief figures in their inventory, A few thousand men unexpectedly landed on one of the many places of the coast exposed to that circumstance, may perhaps take a cool walk unmolested along the shore, and pick up the great material of Caligula's triumph, cockleshells, or tire themselves with fruitless straggling a few miles up country ; but 242 PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTER what tlien ? After all, ' re-embark ' is the word ; and what has been done ? Comparatively speak- ing, next to nothing or worse than nothing." This passage came unpleasantly near the truth. But, not content with the subject matter of the letter to Pitt, Dodington proceeded to attack the inconsistencies of Pitt's present poUcy as compared with his past professions. " At last," he exclaimed, addressing Pitt, the country thought it had a minister after its own heart, but what was the result ? " The Germanic system, so loudly, so justly fulminated against, and almost given up, began under your auspices to be once more the pre- dominant one. Circumstances were said to be changed, and so indeed they were ; but so as to afford tenfold reason more than before to keep clear of it. Instead of employing your superiority of poUtical knowledge, to repress the people's infatuation with a meteor [Frederick the Great], a people doubly deceived by the grossest mis- information, and by their passion the more dangerously, from its being founded on the most virtuous motives, you made your use of it to renew, under no better a sanction than this popular error, the most unpromising and the most exceptionable of all the connections on the Continent." We had, iu short, abandoned Austria and allied ourselves with Prussia, who could not help us nor we help her.* * This pamphlet is catalogued in the British Musenm Library ttnder " Bligh," not " Bubb. ' THE END OF THE REIGN 243 Dodington, unfortunately, had recourse to Little England arguments at a moment when Little Englandism was very much out of fashion. The provocation of Pitt, besides, was a dangerous proceeding, even if his best friends could not call his career a model of consistency. When Parlia- ment met, on November 23rd, 1758, the Secre- tary of State proceeded to armihilate Dodington and his pamphlet. In his Olympian manner, Pitt assumed responsibility for aU that had passed, except the providing of the money. That load he left on the Treasury, and vast he said it would be ; heaps of millions must be raised — thus affecting, as Horace Walpole points out, to heighten rather than disguise the expense and difficulties of the situation — we could not make war, as the French, or as our ancestors did, for the same money. He painted the distress of France, and coloured high what had been done by ourselves. He called on any who disapproved of the measures taken or taking, to speak out, or discuss them, or to propose others then ; not to lie in wait in hopes of distresses, and then find fault ; though for himseH he hoped he should never be judged by events. If there were any secret Austrians in the House, instead of dispersing pamphlets, he invited them to speak out.* This crushing rebuke appears to have more or * Walpole, " Memoirs of George II.," II., 32.5. 244 PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTER less extinguished Dodington as a Parliamentarian for the remainder of the reign. He only attended the House, he wrote to the Irish Lord Chancellor, Bowes, three times in one Session, StUl he was not found wanting to Lord George Sackville, the son of his old friend, the Duke of Dorset, when his conduct at the battle of Minden became the subject of impassioned controversy. Sackville had refused, whether from want of nerve or an insubordinate temper, to advance with the British cavalry, in spite of the repeated orders of the Commander-in-Chief, 'Prince Ferdinand of Bruns- wick, and on being dismissed the service, he pressed for a court-martial, which the Government seemed to be in no hurry to grant. Dodington thought he was making a mistake ; his best plan would be to let the matter drop, while his friends in the meantime spread about that he was a martyr to a German General, whose displeasure he had incurred for not suffering British troops to be destroyed by undue preferences in the de- fence of Hanover. All this, Dodington cynically wrote to Bowes, though probably not true, might have been of great avail to Lord George by-and-by, when the people's hot fit was over and acold one had come on. Sackville, however, was doggedly bent on a court-martial, and that body, after long delays, found him guilty of disobedience to orders and unfit to serve the King in any military capacity whatever, THE END OF THE REIGN 246 All that Dodington and Dashwood, once more the joint advocates of clemency, could do was to point out the anomaly that a man who was no longer a member of the army should be tried by martial law. This attempt to save Sackville from himself inevitably failed. Dodington scored a good debating hit, however, when he declared that knowing no statute or reasons on which the legality of the proceedings was grounded, he felt it his duty to declare positively that they were illegal and that there was nothing for it but a revisal of the Mutiny Act. George Grenville was one of Dodington's opponents on this occasion, and we can well believe that he was answered " pretty strongly." * Dodington, meanwhile, was in search of some prince or princess to whom he could offer his political services. The choice was limited indeed. The Duke of Cumberland, having lost his reputa- tion by the defeat of Hastenbeck and the conse- quent Convention of Kloster Zeven, had resigned all his military appointments and ceased for the remainder of the reign to be a political power. Dodington, therefore, had perforce to make his peace with the Princess of Wales. He was not received with cordiality. Horace Walpole relates that on the birthday of the heir to the throne in 1759, Dodington took his place in the circle. The * " Various CoUeotions," VI., 45. 246 PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTER Princess passed him without speaking ; her son just spoke to him, but affected to cough and walk on. The little Princes, less acquainted with his history, and accustomed to see him, talked a good deal to him. Charles Townshend, who stood behind and observed the scene, leaned forward, and in a half -whisper cried, " Dodington, you are damned well — with the youngest ! " Such slights had, of course, to be borne with submission, and before long the Princess relented. Fortunately for Dodington a new influence had arisen at Leicester House, where, rather than at Carlton House, the Princess of Wales and the heir to the throne kept their joint Court. John, Earl of Bute, who had served Frederick, Prince of Wales, as a sort of master of the revels, appears to have developed political ambitions after he was appointed Groom of the Stole to his son in 1756. He was a man of handsome presence, gifted with a genuine taste for art and gardening, great at private theatricals, but ignorant of pubHc affairs, and unpopular as a Scotsman and patron of Scotsmen. Under his guidance the Princess's prudent pohcy was continued. The family made no factious opposition in Parliament ; no unbecom- ing demands were put forward for an increase in the Prince's allowance, Leicester House quietly opened good relations with statesmen who would be useful in the new reign. The poUcy was to watch and wait. THE END OF THE REIGN 247 Dodington was slow to perceive the power of Lord Bute. He is seldom mentioned in the Diary, in which Cresset, the Princess's secretary, is regarded as Grand Vizier. The place-hunter and the courtier must have been ancient acquaintances, since Bute was a nephew of Dodington's old patron, the Duke of Argyll, but they appear to have become estranged when Dodington took office under Pelham. During the last four or five years of the reign the two became intimately connected. In December, 1767, Lord Talbot wrote effusively to Dodington, who had brought him to the Earl's notice ; " they," that is Leicester House, Lord Talbot declared, should have his support in the House of Lords, and he praised Bute's " capacity, discernment and dignity of mind," no less than his " propriety of manners " and " attentive good breeding." It would be unkind to enquire if Lord Talbot really believed what he wrote about the influential personage. Bute's manners may have been perfect, but his capacity left something to be desired. The Bute-Dodington coalition came under the notice of the Duke of Newcastle, from whom indeed very little in the way of intrigue was ever hidden. On October 5, 1758, he wrote to Lord Hardwicke — " My friend [Lord Anson] also told me that Mr Dodington was insinuating himself into Lord Bute. That he had instructed Breton what 248 PATRON AND PLACE-HUXTER language to hold in his parties with the Prince of Wales ; that the conversation was out of the late pamphlet, ' Things as They Are,' which shews that Dodington was not a stranger to that book." * " Insinuating himself into Lord Bute " is good. The Ihike must have been mistaken, however, in attributing to Dodington yet another pamphlet. " Things as They Are " was by Lord Egmont, and between him and Dodington lay the gulf created by the Bridgwater election. Though the Duke might suspect Dodington of trying to gain the Prince's ear, his support was still worth having. As the long reign was drawing to a close, Newcastle is to be found, therefore, making an appointment to the coUectorship of Weymouth in pursuance of his suggestion. The old King died suddenly on October 25, 1760, and the new era, which Dodington had eagerly anticipated for so many years, and for which he had sacrificed his reputation, began at last. » Addit. ii^S. 32,5&i, t 69. CHAPTER XV dodington's last years Dodington and Bute— The "Usurpation of Oligarchy"— Dodington's Peerage — " A very Young Lord " — Melcombe and Lord Shelbume — Letters to the Duke of Newcastle —Churchill's Satire— Bentley's Play— The " Epistle " to Bute — Pitt's Resignation — Correspondence between Mel- combe and Bute — " Raining Bishoprics " — ^A Bid for Office — Letter to Dr. Thompson — Melcombe in the Cabinet — Tucker's Ingratitude — Melcombe's Farewell to Young— His Death— The Conditions of his Will— The Fate of La Trappe and Eastbury. ON hearing of the death of George II., Dodington wrote to Bute with business- like promptitude, praying the Earl to obtain for him some mark of the royal favour from the young King and the Princess, who had ever been his most gracious mistress. He plunged vigorously into the congenial task of procuring Parliamentary support. " I am exerting all my endeavours," he wrote on December 15, " to get as many members as I possibly can. For God's sake do not aUow the King's interest to be employed against his power. If it be not thought proper to raise an army, let us at le^st secure a phalanx to oppose the malice and faction that are everywhere at work." When, therefore, Welbore 260 PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTER Ellis called, on behalf of the Duke of Newcastle, to enquire about the Weymouth election, he was cavalierly informed that Dodington begged to be excused troubhng his Grace because the Weymouth interest was engaged to gentlemen who would no doubt be agreeable to him because they were acceptable to the King. How the poor Duke must have fumed ! Glover promised conditional sup- port ; "he was not determined about pohtical connexions, but I think he inclines much to my scheme." Such was Dodington's zeal that he even promised Bute to lend his influence to Lord Egmont at Bridgwater, where his seat was con- sidered insecure. " I hope," he remarked in his Diary, " that he [Bute] wfll not accept the service offered." Dodington's programme was simple : " Mon- archy must be recovered from the inveterate usurpation of oligarchy " ; Bute must assume office at the earliest moment, and peace must be concluded on the basis of the abandonment of Hanover and the employment of the suppHes thus set free to coerce France. On December 17, he enclosed some lines which were not to be seen by anybody unless Bute had a mind to make the King and Princess laugh. They were — " Quoth Newcastle to Pitt, 'tis in vain to dispute If we'd quarrel in private, we must make room for Bute. Quoth Pitt to his Grace, to bring that about, I f ear, my dear Lord, you or I must turn out. DODINGTON'S LAST YEARS 251 Not at all, quoth the Duke, I meant no such thing. To make room for us all, we must turn out the King. If that's all your scheme, quoth the Earl, by my troth, I shall stick to my master, and turn ye out both." * Dodington's fundamental principle was tho- roughly acceptable to the King and the favourite ; they were determined to break down the Whig oligarchy which Newcastle represented, and gave open signs of their intentions by summoning Tories to Court, after they had languished in Opposition for two reigns, except for hostages like Lord Gower and Sir John Cotton. But Bute's plan of attack was more cautious than Dodington's. Dr. von Ruville, in his careful " Life of WUliam Pitt, Earl of Chatham," has persuaded himself, indeed, that the favourite only exchanged the position of power behind the throne for that of responsible Minister with extreme reluctance, and at the express and repeated commands of George III. But it is difficult to reconcile with this amiable theory the very pertinent conversations recorded in the Diary. The entry for November 29 is this— " Lord Bute came to me by appointment, and staid a great while. I pressed him much to take the Secretary's office, and provide otherwise for Lord Holdernesse : he hesitated for some time, and then said, if that was the only difficulty, it could be easily removed ; for Lord Holdernesse was ready, at his desire, to quarrel with his fellow * " Various Collections " VI., 47. 252 PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTER Ministers (on account of the slights and ill-usage which he daily experienced) and go to the King, and throw up in seeming anger, and then he [Bute] might come in, without seeming to dis- place anybody. I own the expedient did not please me." It is clear then, that Bute was simply disposed to more dilatory tactics than Dodington ; they did not difEer in principle. He was content to set Pitt and the Duke of Newcastle at cross- purposes, though, far from adopting his mentor's peace policy, he lent his support, on the whole, to Pitt's advocacy of vigorous measures. But his approach to office, though stealthy, was steady. The last entry in Dodington's Diary, on February 6, 1761, records Bute's opinion that it would be easy to make the Duke of Newcastle resign, but it would be difficult to find a successor to him at the Treasury ; "he did not seem to think it advisable to begin there." Immediately after the dissolution of Parliament on March 21, the contemplated step was taken, and after the arrangement planned by Dodington. Lord Holdemess, an industrious duU man, oblig- ingly efEacing himself with a large pension and the reversion of the Cinque Ports, Bute became second Secretary of State. And then Dodington got his reward. The peerage for which he had plotted and fawned was his at last ; the son of Jeremiah Bubb rose to be Baron Melcombe of DODINGTON'S LAST YEARS 253 Melcombe Regis. His friends shared his good fortune as became true Dodingtonians. Lord Halifax became Viceroy of Ireland, and a popular one too. Dashwood was made Treasurer of the Chambers. Lord Talbot, who sorely vexed Bute by the extravagance of his pretensions, received the staff of Lord Steward and an earldom in addition. The appointment created not a little scandal, since Talbot's morals were bad and his tastes pugilistic. He entered on a course of rigid economy, with the results that cooks were cashiered and maids-of-honour complained of the abridgment of their allowance for breakfast. At the Coronation he made the assemblage stare by his antics and expostulations with the Barons of the Cinque Ports and the City Corporation. Melcombe, the grand old coxcomb, displayed his unblushing honours precisely as might have been expected. No joy, Horace Walpole wrote, exceeded his ; he was as fond of his title as his child could be, if he had one. Perceiving Walpole at Lady Hillsborough's, Melcombe advanced to meet him. Walpole said, " I was coming to wish you joy." " I concluded so," replied Melcombe, " and came to receive it." He left a card on Lady Harrington ; "a very young Lord to wait on Lady Harrington, to make her Ladyship the first offer of himself." * He was presented to the * Walpole, " Letters," V., 39, 254 PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTER young bride of George III,, arrayed in an em- broidered suit of sUk with lilac waistcoat and breeches, and, if Cumberland can be trusted, some of these garments broke from their moorings in a very indecorous manner. At the Coronation, he walked in procession with Lord Shelburne, who, with Lord Mansfield, had introduced him into the House of Lords. One of them, he told his friends, was to get him into every scrape ; the other to get him out of it. He was presumably too happy to write any more Diary. Melcombe's zeal at the general election outran his discretion. Lord Shelburne, having gone to the House of Lords, nominated as his successor in the pocket-borough of Chipping Wycombe, Colonel Barre, who was soon to acquire notoriety through his virulent attacks on Pitt. But an opposition candidate appeared in Willes, the son of the Lord Chief Justice, and after some inquirj'^, Shelburne discovered that Melcombe was WiUes's promoter. Bute, to whom the matter was reported, wrote to the borough-monger a letter of pained reprimand. But Melcombe laughed the whole thing off. He told Bute that Shelburne was too young to trouble his head about such things. When taxed by Shelburne himself he merely said, " Well, did you ever know any one get out of a scrape but by a great lie ? " Otherwise all went well. Glover filled Melcombe's place at DODINGTON'S LAST YEARS 255 Weymouth, and Dashwood was put in for another of the four seats. Lord Egmont was permitted to continue at Bridgwater undisturbed. Melcomhe had fought and won his last electoral campaign. In the House of Lords, Melcombe made at least one speech as a supporter of Lord Bute. But he seems to have taken his Parliamentary duties rather lightly. It was more to his taste to air his new title, and work his patronage to the utter- most. As the Duke of Newcastle was evidently getting to the end of his tether, Melcombe could afEord to treat him somewhat unceremoniously. Thus he wrote on September 26 — " I think it my duty to inform your Grace that I find the Receivership of St. James's [Palace] at 4s. in the £ does not exceed £250 per annum, and at the same time humbly to thank your Grace for your obliging attention to my request. My friend chooses to rely upon your promise of the first vacancy in one of the smaller commissions or in anything of equal value." * Lord Melcombe softened, however, to the Duke in the following year, and the closing letter in their correspondence exhibits him in his oiliest mood — " I was yesterday to wait on your Grace to thank, not to solicit you, for I looked upon the favour as received from the first moment it was * Add MSS. 32,928, f. 373. 256 PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTER promised, and from thence dated my obligation to your Grace. " Give me no share, my dear Lord, in your exemplary goodness to our poor friend's most helpless daughter, but that of having laid her sad state before your Grace. That feeKng heart knows no merit in procuring reUef for distress but naming it. " I feel myself obliged to your Grace, and I have a heart sensible of obHgations, but I feel that the title you are pleased to give me to your real friendship is the greatest obligation I can receive from you. " Long may you live, my dear Lord, to enjoy the pleasure of doing good, and may [you] meet such returns as may invite those you leave behind to follow your example." The recipient of the pension thus effusively acknowledged appears to have been Madam Judith Hop, presumably a daughter of M. Hop, a member of Lady Ailesbury's household ; it was to the amount of £500 a year.* Serene in his prosperity, Melcombe probably endured with equanimity the renewed attack of satire. As he was the sport of Pope in his manhood, so, in his old age, he became the butt of the savage Churchill ; and despite many vigorous lines we feel, as we read of " The Ghost," that satire has descended a very long way since " The Dunciad." After a fling at him in the second book, bidding * Add. MSS. 32,934, f. 303 ; and R. 0. King's Warrant Book, February, 1762. DODINGTON'S LAST YEARS 257 him " seek Hell's deepest shade," Churchill de- scribed in the fourth how Fancy hovered — " O'er Melcombe's feathered head ; Who, quite a man of gingerbread. Savoured in talk, in dress and phiz More of another world than this ; To the dwarf Muse a giant page The last grave fop of the last age." As a patron of the drama, Melcombe had hitherto confined his energies to listening to Young's and Glover's dreary tragedies. But he did more for " The Wishes ; or, Harlequin's Mouth Opened," by Richard Bentley, a son of the great scholar, Horace Walpole's " Goth," and a cleverish desultory man ; he got it produced. The play was a whimsical burlesque of the Greek tragic drama. Melcombe, having overcome the author's afiected dislike to be known as an author, first read it at Lady Hervey's, and then, in solemn conclave, present Lord Bute, the two Chief Justices, Wedderburn, who, as Lord Loughborough, was to carry on the great time-serving tradition, and Samuel Foote, the actor and play-writer. The last agreed to produce it with modifications, and Horace Walpole thought well of its chances. But it failed, despite the exemplary patience of a well-disposed audience ; the fifth act was too much for them, and Walpole could only suppose that Lord Melcombe had fallen asleep before he came to it. The scene, however, was highly 268 PATEON AND PLACE-HUNTER ludicrous. The author with his wife was " perked up in the front boxes and acting audience at his own play." " In the stage-box," Horaice Walpole wrote to George Montagu, " was Lady Bute, Lord Halifax and Lord Melcombe — I must say the two last entertained the house as much as the play — your King [Viceroy of Ireland] was prompter, and called out to the actors every minute to speak louder — the other went backwards and forwards behind the scenes, fetched the actors into the box, and was busier than Harlequin." " If they don't damn this," said the philosophic author, " they deserve to be damned themselves." * The author of " The Wishes " punctually perpetrated an " Epistle to Lord Melcombe." The patron received it coldly, and made no attempt to get it published, as Bentley no doubt desired. After Melcombe's death, however, it appeared in the collection known as " The New Foundling Hospital for Wit." f Bentley 's eulogy of the old peer as the last survivor of the wits of Queen Anne's reign has already been quoted ; " by way of codicil," he added a comparison of Melcombe with Charles Montagu, Earl of Halifax — " Thus Halifax, my Lord, as you do yet, Stood forth the friend of Poetry and Wit ; Sought silent Merit in its secret cell, And Heav'n, nay, even man, repaid him welL" * Walpole, " Letters," V., 69, 92-93 ; and Cumberland, "Memoirs," L, 212-214. t VI., 97. DODINGTON'S LAST YEARS 259 The " Epistle " is chiefly concerned with the difficulty of writing poetry in a prosaic age and the death of the classical simile — " But then to Poetry where's the pretence ? Locke and Sir Isaac write not plainer sense." The producer of " The Wishes," Foote, took his revenge, but also after Melcombe was in his grave. In 1764, Foote staged his own play, " The Patron," at the Haymarket, and Melcombe's foibles were held to have been hit ofi in the principal character. Sir Thomas Lofty. Thus the lover exclaims — " What, Sir Thomas Lofty ! the modern Midas, or rather (as fifty dedications will tell you) the PoUio, the Atticus, the patron of genius, the protector of arts, the paragon of poets, decider on merit, chief justice of taste and sworn appraiser to ApoUo and the tuneful Nine. Ha, ha ! oh the tedious, insipid, insufferable coxcomb ! " The part of Lofty, played by Foote himseK, has many shrewd touches of satire. Meanwhile, in eager consultation with Young, Melcombe was penning a " Poetical Epistle " to the Earl of Bute. The poet's emendations were advanced with his invariable humility. " What, my good Lord, if it ran thus ? — ' if we can judge aright From a fair Morning of Meridian Light.' " "As to the other places, the two verses you have inserted sets all right. . . . " We in the country stare and wonder and 260 PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTER look as wise and as well satisfied as we can ; and talk much because we know not what to say. " Your thinking some of mj'^ notes not useless to you gives me pleasure. . . . " There is an ease and simplicity in the above alteration (which I think right, especially in an Epistle) and almost the reverse of flattery." The two lines, the last of the Epistle, do not appear ia the printed version, but they are given as " But thine it ia if we can judge aright From Morning Brightness of Meridian Light," whatever that may mean, in the manuscript copy accompanying Young's letter.* This version ap- parently represents the form in which Melcombe wished that his " Epistle " should be given to the world, because many of Young's emendations have been adopted in it, while others have been dis- carded. It is to be feared, however, that no demand exists for an editio princeps of Melcombe's works, and so a critical examination of the col- laboration need not be attempted. The printed version, taken, it would seem, from Melcombe's rough copy, appeared in 1766, with Young's emendations as footnotes ; and the singular experiment in the conversion of resound- ing verbiage into a semblance of elegance lent itself to irreverent parody. Melcombe begins — " Pollio, to thee, my patron and my friend, The secret counsels of my soul I send." • The letter and the copy of the " Epistle " were in Mr. Broadleye collection. DODINGTON'S LAST YEARS 261 He describes himself as a legacy from Bute's "godlike uncle," John, Duke of Argyll. The " Epistle " is indeed much more concerned with the past than the present ; the happiest compli- ment the old man could pay was — " By thee, my friend, the soul with joy surveys The page of memory marked by brighter days ; By thee — thy mien, thy manners and thy smile Recall the generous, graceful, brave Argyll." Bute accepted the homage, no doubt ; but, in return, he was far from letting Melcombe into all his secrets. He seems to have set due store upon his Parliamentary influence, but to have regarded him as an unsafe guide in foreign policy. The divergence of their views found expression on the resignation of Pitt on October 6, 1761. Melcombe exulted with unholy glee over the fall of his great adversary. Next evening he wrote to Bute— " I sincerely wish your Lordship joy of being delivered of a most impracticable colleague, his Majesty of a most imperious servant, and the country of a most dangerous Minister. I am told the people are suUen about it. " Be that as it may, I think it my duty to my most gracious Sovereign, and my generous friend to say, that if I can be of any service to either in anything that is most dangerous and difficult, I am most ready to undertake it, and shall esteem it the more as it partakes of either or both." This offer to die in the last ditch received something uncommonly like a snub — 262 PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTEJR " Whatever private motives of uneasiness [Bute wrote on the 8th] I might have with the late administration, I am far from thinking the dissolution of it favourable, in the present minute, to the King's afEairs. Without entering into the causes of the war, it is sufficient to observe, it was a national one, and that the honour of the nation is obliged to support its allies. You, my dear Lord, cannot dislike it more than I do ; but as we have to do with a most treacherous enemy [France], whose infamous prevarications have been so lately experienced, we must act with redoubled vigour and spirit, before we can bring them to such a peace as, from our repeated con- quests, this country has a right to expect ; such a peace as I (with this load of responsibility) durst put my name to. This being so, the change of a IVKnister cannot at present make any remark- able change in measures. I sigh after peace, but wiU not sue for it ; not out of pride, or from motives of self-preservation (though both might without dishonour be urged), but from a thorough conviction that begging it from France is not the readiest way to come at it. . . . " I shall not fail to acquaint the King with the very frank and generous declaration you made. Indeed, my good Lord, my situation, at all times perilous, is become much more so ; for I am no stranger to the language held in this great city : ' Our darling's resignation is owing to Lord Bute, who might have prevented it with the Kin g, and he must answer for all the consequences ' (which is, in other words, for the miscarriages of another system, that Pitt himself could not have pre- vented). All this keeps up my attention, and strengthens my mind, without alarming it ; not only whispers caution (wherein my noble friend's assistance wUl no doubt prove a real comfort to DODINGTON'S LAST YEARS 263 me). Adieu, my dear Lord ! My subject has insensibly led me to write a long letter where I only intended to trouble you with a few Unes." Bute was no peace-at-any-price man ; that unworthy pohcy was advocated by the Duke of Newcastle and the Duke of Bedford. But he differed from Pitt in shutting his eyes to the danger from Spain, through the conclusion of the " Family Compact " with France. There he was wrong ; Pitt right. Melcombe, who cannot have felt flattered at the vague acceptance of his offer of service, replied the same day from La Trappe with more than his wonted prolixity : — " I know the nobleness of your heart, and as your Lordship knows the sincerity of mine, I shall not endeavour to disguise the simplicity of it, but shall give you my thoughts of what you do me the honour to write about (which I did not expect) naturally as they arise, and shall only premise that my veneration to the King, and my love and gratitude to your Lordship shall have no bounds. " I am sorry I differ in opinion with you, because I am sensible it is not the way to be agreeable to you ; and I wish much to be so. But I look on the late event [Pitt's resignation] as an obstacle removed, and not as one added, where peace is to be treated. Your Lordship may remember some months ago, when you sometimes did me the honour to talk to me about business, I said, I thought Mr. Pitt would never make peace, because he never could make such a peace as he taught the nation to expect. I suppose he 264 PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTER now sees that we are within a year or two of an impracticability of carrying on the war on the present footing, and may think, by going out in a spirited pretence, to turn the attention and dis- satisfaction of the public on those who, at a ruinous expense, are to carry on his wild measures, and whom they have been taught to dislike, by a total abandonment of the press to him and his creatures, which I humbly hope you will now think to employ better. . . . " I am sensible I am writing on a subject I am in no ways informed about. The mention of it made in your letter drew me to it. I have done." He had not done, for he proceeded to give a very qualified approval of Gteorge Grenville's pro- motion to lead the House, which must have annoyed him not a Uttle ; and to urge that the insolent City of London should be taught better manners. " I was bred a Monarchy-man, and will die so." * Before long, Melcombe brought down upon himself a still more emphatic rebuke by angrily complaining that his application for a prebend or canonry on behalf of his friend, Jones, had been ignored. It had, of late, been raining bishoprics, deaneries^, and canonries ; and he had waited hoping that his poor friend would have got into the tail of the shower. Bute tartly replied that Melcombe's letter had " too much the air of reproach, and conveyed too sensibly the idea of a broken promise not to surprise a person of my * Seward's "Anecdotes," IL, 266-272. DODINGTON'S LAST YEARS 265 warm temper." He proceeded obliquely to remind Melcombe of his variegated past : — " I will not call to mind any occurrences that passed from the death of the Prince of Wales to that of the late King, for I not only buried them in oblivion myself, but endeavoured to eradicate them elsewhere. This much, indeed, I must affirm : all former habitudes were so broken ofE between your Lordship and me at the demise that you could not call upon me for acts of friend- ship ; and yet my conduct ever since has been that of a sincere and steady friend." Bute continued with genuine feeling : "I own, and that without blushing, I have been unfortunate in the means I have for years taken of cementing friendships and procuring attachments ; others, with much less trouble, perhaps without my honesty, succeed better . . . but I repine not." * Bute professed, and no doubt truthfully, to be longing for the day when the heavy burden he bore should be placed on other shoulders. Though the country wavered for a moment in its allegiance to Pitt, when he accepted a pension of £3,000 for three lives and a peerage for his wife, it soon reverted to the belief that he was the victim of a Ministerial conspiracy. The City adored him, while Bute was hooted in the streets, and had to provide himself with a bodyguard of prize- fighters. * Hist. MSS. Reports, Various Collections, VI., 61. 266 PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTER Melcombe was profoundly dissatisfied with the state of afEairs. On March 27, 1762, he dis- charged his wrath in a wonderful letter to his familiar. Dr. Thompson. He had fallen into the hands of quacks, and the communication opens with a very medical account of the treatment prescribed for him by a certain gioghee, or Indian doctor, whom Melcombe firmly beheved to have renewed his youth. He went on — " But waving a subject to which you are so superior a judge, I come now to the motive of this address to you. That motive I fairly pre- confess to you is downright vanity. Weak as I am, I could not, on the perusal of the Papers relating to the Rupture with Spain and of the most impudent and lying Observations on those Papers, resist the temptation of invoking your testimony, I mean in petto to yourseK, of the justness of my conjectures.* Allow me then for once to consider you as my Court of Record. Did not I early, and in time, point out to you that spring of action to our Ministers which has since appeared in the course of the Letters between Lord B[ute] and Lord Ch[esterfield ?] as clearly as if I had been what, I thank God, I never was, nor even desire to be, admitted to the Cabinet Council ? f Did not I teU you in the plainest terms that the key to the new Administration would be found to be * The "Pajjers" were presented on January 29, soon after the opening of the Session ; the " Observations " was a pamphlet in Pitt's favour written by John Wilkes in the form of " A Letter from a 3Iember of Parliament to a Friend in the Country/' ■j- It b difficult to see who Lord Ch can be except Lord Chester- field, who, though in retirement, corresponded with the Ministry on public a£Eairs. DODINGTON'S LAST YEARS 267 just what Pitt or his advocate upbraids them with (and in that deed he does not lie) ; their taking him for their ' example ! ' Gracious and Almighty God ! Mm, him for their example ! And yet it is so. The same tenor of councUs ! The same rage of acting vaguely on the mob-trap plan of doing something to be talked of no matter how little to the purpose ! The same waste of blood and treasure upon a la volee expeditions, of which even the success, I repeat it, even the success, can contribute nothing essential in our favour to the sum of things. Could we even take ten Martioicos and ten Havannas it could, in aU human proba- bUity, be only so much the worse.* While the German system continues to hang its dead weight upon us, everything is against us even to our successes : nor ought we ever to be surprised whenever that weight shall come to be felt, as feel it we could not yet if the wheel should run down with more rapidity than it has been wound up. And this very fellow [Pitt] whose levity, whose prostitution has made even the field of victory hoUow under us, will, from that fatal neglect in his successors of immediately at once laying open to the nation the horrors of his conti- nental measures and applying aU the remedy in their power, be enabled to insult them for their compliance to his mad schemes and for their confessing that they took their ' example ' from his spirit ! that spirit which was so despicable, since there was not a grain of judgment went with it. Add too that his spirit was at bottom as false as his oratory and his oratory as false as his politics." Melcombe next surveys Europe with a jaundiced * The news of the fall of Martinique had reached London by March 22. 268 PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTER eye, but his reflections on that head are the reverse of lucid. He reverts to domestic affairs and the Duke of Newcastle's struggles to retain office, even at the price of a coalition with Pitt. " Have you seen the Continuation of the Address to the City ? I think that you mentioned the first part to me.* The writer is certainly a man of sense. Be this remarked, without the least par- tiality in me to him for his sousing the D[uke] of N[ewcastle] and his puppet [Pitt]. One material observation has, however, escaped him. After the stating in a very clear Hght that coUusive game, or rather that gross bungling juggle between those two ' Great Men,'' he might very weU have added that his Grace after long using P. as his tool was now at this moment that I am writing, employing him as his scare-crow ; his Dragon to frighten children from those golden apples of Government of which he has made himself the dispenser. Mark him holding up P[itt] to Lord B[u]t[e] and Co. as much as to say ' // you are not good children and do as I hid you I will bring the old Fee-faw-fum in again ' ; and, Nota Bene, bring him in he would in spite of their teeth : a circumstance the power of which he owes to themselves, to their indolence, to their letting the most glorious occasion shp them of gaining a popularity on the strength of which they might have safely bid defiance to his Grace, to his Bully, and to the fools of both ; at the same time that they would have done besides infinite honour to themselves, infinite service to their king and country. You know what I mean, the recall of our troops from Germany with all * " The Address to the City " is an ironical pamphlet attacking Pitt and more or less defending Newcastle. The " Continuation " does not appear to be in the British Museum. DODINGTON'S LAST YEARS 269 the coolness and all the concomitant requisites to render that step a political, a safe and especially an honourable one. Should you here stop me by saying they could not he recalled. Let that be granted. So much the better ; such a circum- stance would open the eyes of the nation. At least the Ministry would have had the honour of letting the nation into that curious secret of the army being ia pawn for the reckoning. The fault could not have been THEIRS. " You cannot sure have seen the Papers relative to the Rupture with Spain, What do you think of them ? Are they not wonderfully instructive ? My being taken in by those awful words prefixed to some of the letters ' Most Secret,^ to expect what I did not find, something very clever and very important, a little disgusted me, since most certainly, all due allowance being made for time and circumstances, they contained nothing but what might without the least impeachment of discretion have been, at the moment of their arrival, pasted up in the gateway of the Escurial. This mock-mysterious air reminded me naturally enough of the whispering - scene in ' The Rehearsal ' between the Gentleman-Usher and the Physician for which Bayes accounts for thus : ' Because they are SUPPOSED to be POLITICIANS and MATTERS of STATE must not be divulged.' * However, I blame neither of the Ministers [Bute and Lord Egremont, the other Secretary of State] for this absurdity. A part was given them be- neath a candle-snuffers from a creature of whom I never think, with his theatrical oratory, but I figure to myself a strolhng buskineer ranting away before the kitchen fire of a country inn to the greasy cook-maid and three country bumkins, a * " The Rehearsal," by the Duke of Buckingham and his friends ; see Act II., scene 1. 270 PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTER scene I once saw. Of such a wretched part, then, what could they make more than they did ? For absolutely, the writing, in some parts, is very well, and proves that they both deserved a better opportunity of displaying their talents. " But to say the truth, it is not the talents that are now so much wanted as SPIRIT. I do not mean, you may be sure, such a false spirit as that of his most unserene mob-royal Highness, but that unadulterate public-spirit, the very term of which is almost become an archaism in our lan- guage. A spirit in short that dares in the teeth of a siUy mob, whether of Court, country or City, at least aim at restoring the British system, without which there is no salvation for this country. " But let that be as it may, do you only do me the justice to remember how practical, how noble and how constitutional a plan I opened the view of in that application to Parliament, which would have made the present Ministers the most truly great Ministers that this country ever saw. But remember too that I told you I was not idiot enough to expect that that plan would be pursued ; that I was afraid what could efEectuate it would sink under the weight of the conjuncture, and indeed they realised my fears. From that fatal Wednesday when P[itt] fairly outbrasened a set of men armed with the most damning matter against him ; and the blasts from that cave of the winds, his head, made the whole House bow before him, like corn lodged by a storm, I knew what I was not to trust to on behaK of this wretched country.* " I bespoke and you know that I bespoke his successors sticking in the slough into which he * At the beginning of the Session Pitt defended his policy in a studiously moderate speech. DODINGTON'S LAST YEARS 271 had plunged them without their having the spirit to flounce out of it. " Let them then with all my heart give them- selves the marrow bones and cleavers for their sublime efEorts of genius in treading in Pitt's steps and taking him, as they are now fairly twitted with it, for their example. They are doubtless in the right, if they can find nothing better in their own heads, to cultivate that precious production of his, the German war. It is a fine exotic, but let them take care that it does not in the end make Sodom-apples even of their fairest successes, even of that of their grand ex- pedition, which at the best will only pass for a copy of the great original's. May they not, on the winding up of things, instead of the ' universal shout and high applause,^ hear ' from innumerable tongues A dismal universal hiss, the sound Of Public scorn ! " Dii meliora ! I sincerely wish they may them- selves not find their mistake too late both for their country and themselves. But this I know ; at present thus stands the prospect. If Pitt was to go down to Hayes and lock himself up in the contemplative solitude of his closet, to plan, for his successors, that tenor of their conduct which would bid the fairest to make him regretted, and to force him into power again, I defy him, nor has he talents enough for it, to frame a plan so likely to produce such an event as that which has been indeviously pursued ever since his abdication of the Ministerial throne : or to descend from buskins, ever since his doing as Fanny Murray and others have done before htm, his retiring from Public Business and living upon an annuity.* * Fanny Murray was Beau Nash's friend. 272 PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTER " I wifili for their own sake that the members of the Tory ingraftment would consider that in the way things are going on they are sure of all the blame in case of an unfavourable issue ; and that, in neither event, will they have the honours of history, or the opinion of the people in their favour. " But once more all the wretched temporising of theirs, all this idle expectation that things wiU conform themselves not to their command of them by their conduct, but to their being content to wish such a conformity, flows not from want of sense, not from want of good intentions, of aU these I do them the justice to believe they have enough, but to that bane of aU great procedure, the miserably mistaking forms of business for the spirit of it, the shadow for the substance ; as if, in short, to do &-n.y good, thinking was not as necessary to acting, as acting to thinking. At present one would imagine the People of Britain had declared an implacable war against thinking, as if thought was their greatest enemy, an enemy too they do not serve as they do the French, fairly encounter it, but decline it. In short, it is inconceivable the courage that is nowadays re- quired not to be an idiot. The men of the first rank and distinction in the State are absolutelj- so fool-ridden as not to dare to follow the dictates of their own heart, of taste, of sense, of worth, of honour, for fear of the laugh of fools at them for being particular, that is to say, for not being like them as if that unlikeness would not of itself be a merit, or at least a suspicion of merit." * Dodington concluded this astounding letter by informing Dr. Thompson that, sick of things as they were, he was amusing himself T^ith words. * This X^tiet ca^.e from Mr, Broadl«^v'5: collectiou. DODINGTON'S LAST YEAKS 273 His investigations into the Gallic or Welsh etymo- logies, he declared, had persuaded him that that tongue was " not only the headspring of Greek and Latin, but, what I value .more yet, of the present English language." A singular discovery indeed ! Shortly afterwards, on April 13, Melcombe wrote to Bute, in the character of Job's comforter, denouncing the violence of the multitude and the supineness of Ministers. He was still brooding over Bute's disregard of his advice. " The people are intoxicated with conquest, his partisans take efEectual care to combine the idea of Mr. Pitt with it ; his party rises ; they attack you publicly in aU conversations, and now in writing, personally, in the strongest and most audacious manner. Does anybody of office assist them in all this ? No. Does it hft a finger against them ? Yet less. They observe a worse than Spanish neutrality, and though 'tis probable they may at present have no compact with your enemy, yet they wUl not, most certainly, show you their own famUy compact among themselves (which I believe will be found more offensive than the Spanish one) as they find they are in no danger of your declaring war." The highly characteristic passage followed — " This picture would be unwelcome, even from a welcome hand ; mine, I am sensible, is become an unwelcome one. Since the beginning of the summer I [have] found such an alteration, not in your kindness, my dear Lord, but in your confi- dence, as would have been very grievious if the consciousness of my pure unswerving attachment T 274 PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTEE to you had not supported me. ... I perceive that you impute this vehemence at bottom to a desire and an eager one, to get a place. I do not wonder you should be told this, I do, that you should believe it. . . . My fortune is just suffi- cient to support the rank that you, my dear Lord, have raised me to, and to leave no stain of injustice on my memory to make me repent the friendship you honour me with. Money has no charms for me ; . have neither passions nor time to employ it, nor anybody to leave it to. What then should make me sohcitous about a place, indeed, why wish it unless your service or credit calls for it ? ... I do assure you, my dear Lord, that I wiU never take one from any other hand or for any other reason." * Bute was unable to take up this Dodingtonian hint untU the end of May, when the Duke of Newcastle was compelled at last to relax his clutch on office. The favourite was immediately declared First Lord of the Treasury ; George GrenviQe succeeded him as principal Secretary of State, and Dashwood, of whom a wit said that a sum of five figures was to him an impenetrable secret, became Chancellor of the Exchequer. Melcombe, hastily swallowing his objections to the policy of the Government, was admitted to the Cabinet, apparently with the intention of giving him office as soon as a vacancy occurred, f * Various Collections," VI., 63. ■f Walpole's " Memoirs of the Reign of George III.," I., 177, and the inscription on the memorial column to Melcombe as given in Faulkner's " Hammersmith." SIR FRANCIS DASHWOOI) DODINGTON'S LAST YEARS 275 The changes were unpopular. Horace Walpole wrote to Sir Horace Mann that his father. Sir Robert, was not more abused after twenty years than Lord Bute was in twenty days. Wilkes had got to work in the North Briton. A few days after Dashwood had gone to the Exchequer, Melcombe wrote for the last time to the ever-faithful Mayor and Corporation of Wey- mouth — " Though you were acquainted with the great and deserved mark of favour which His Majesty intended to bestow on Sir Francis Dashwood, yet no public appUcation could be made to you tUl it was carried into execution. I therefore take the liberty again to recommend my best friend to your favour, not warmer in inclination though increased in abilities, to be the friend and servant of the Corporation and Towns of Weymouth and Melcombe. " I must confess that the many obHgations I have to you aU in the repeated marks of your goodness and affection to me on all occasions, make me look upon this application as matter of form, not doubting your condescension to my humble request. " But no mark of respect shall ever be wanting on my part to show my regard for you, and I seize with pleasure every opportunity to declare my sense of all your favours to me, and to assure you that the little time I have to live, I will never cease to exert my warmest endeavours to promote the interest, service, and satisfaction of you all." * * Eg. MSS., 2136, f. 44. 276 PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTER What Mayor and Corporation could resist such an appeal ? Yet there was a bitter drop in the old man's cup, for when Tucker was asked by Melcombe to make room at Weymouth for George GrenviUe, who wanted a safe seat, he dechned to budge, though he yielded to Bute's personal request, on condition that when a vacancy occurred elsewhere he should be brought in cheaply.* Melcombe wrote thereupon to an unnamed correspondent, presumably Jenkinson, Bute's secretary — " I have been too Ul all night and am so still to use my own hand, which I beg you not to mention to any one of our friends. "TeU Lord Bute I would have chosen Mr. GrenviUe in obedience to his commands, if I had not been prevented by the unexampled as well as unexpected behaviour of a man who owes every- thing to me. I am glad Lord Bute and you have taught him to behave with the submission which becomes his rank and situation. " I take no manner of merit in it with Lord Bute or ISIr. GrenviUe, to which last I never had nor ever will have any obhgation. !Mr. Tucker has found the only way (I did not think there had been one) of serving Lord Bute without obliging me." f Melcombe hated his GrenvUle cousins to the last, you see. In the capacity of Cabinet Minister, Melcombe » W. J. Smith, " The Grenvflle Papers," I., U8-A^9. The arrange- ment was not carried out after all, GrenviUe continuing to sit for Buckingham Borough. t Eg. MSS. 2136, f. 156, DODINGTON'S LAST YEARS 277 submitted heads of discussion to Bute, which the First Lord considered admirably chosen. But he was given little space for making himself felt as a shaper of policy, though at one time it was thought that he would become Secretary of State in suc- cession to Lord Egremont, at another that he would be made First Lord of the Admiralty. He had a faU down the kitchen stairs, an accident that somehow seems appropriate. Symptoms of dropsy declared themselves in his unwieldy figure, and those about him saw that his days were numbered. Nothing in his life, his candid bio- grapher must confess, became him like the leaving of it. So far back as the previous October he took a poetic farewell of Young — " You seemed to like the ode I sent you for your amusement, I now send it you as a present. If you please to accept of it, and are willing that our friendship should be known when we are gone, you will be pleased to leave this among those of your own papers that may possibly see the light of a posthumous publication. God send us health while we stay, and an easy journey ! " Blind companion of my youth. Loved for genius, worth, and truth. Take what friendship can impart. Tribute of a feeling heart ; Take the Muse's latest spark, Ere we drop into the dark. He who parts and virtue gave, Bade thee look beyond the grave : Genius soars and Virtue guides Where the love of God presides. 278 PATRON AND PLACE-HUJN i\b;±t There's a gulf 'twixt us and God, Let the gloomy path be trod : Why stand shivering on the shore ? Why not boldly venture o'er ? Where unerring Virtue guides Let us brave the wind and tides : Safe, through seas of doubts and fears, Rides the bark which Virtue steers." There follows a poem, which is not only the best thing that Melcombe ever wrote, but which also displays an unexpected flash of self-knowledge. He is not here the Dodington who pressed his greedy claims upon the Pelhams. " Not with too intense a care " is precious. " Love thy country, wish it well Not with too intense a care, 'Tis enough that when it fell Thou its ruin didst not share. II " Envy's censure. Flattery's praise. With unmoved indiiference view; Learn to tread life's dangerous maze With unerring Virtue's clue. Ill " Void of strong desire and fear. Life's wide ocean trust no more ; Strive thy little bark to steer With the tide but near the shore. IV " Thus prepared, thy shortened sail Shall whene'er the winds increase. Seizing each propitious gale. Waft thee to the Port of Peace. DODINGTON'S LAST YEARS 279 " Keep thy conscience from oSenoe And tempestuous passions free : So, when thou art called from hence Easy shall thy passage be. VI " Easy shall thy passage be. Cheerful thy allotted stay. Short the account 'twixt God and thee : Hope shall meet thee on the way ; VII " Truth shall lead thee to the gate, Mercy's self shall let thee in, Where its never changing state, Full perfection shall begin." * Young's acknowledgment was, " I am much obliged by the serious ode you sent me, as I think it introduces me to your heart, which I find in good health. The ode is a beautifully finished piece." On July 27, the day before his death at La Trappe, Melcombe signed his will. It was not quite so long as Clarissa Harlowe's, but it was a comprehensive document and bore evidence that he had all his wits about him. Melcombe knew how to die in the Epicurean manner. With un- expected humility he gave direction that he should be buried where he died, and that the funeral expenses should not exceed £50. Melcombe lies, therefore, in Hammersmith churchyard ; but * Young's "Poems" [ed. Doran], II., 82-83. 280 PATRON AND PLACE-HUJNTi^K though the Parish Register states that he was buried there on August 3, no tombstone bear- ing his name can now be discovered. On the other hand, he left £500 to Dashwood, of which all or a part was to be employed " in building an arch, temple, column or additional room to such of his seats where it is likely to remain the longest as a testimony to after-times of my affection and gratitude for the invariable and very enduring friendship he has honoured me with." Dashwood, whose ideas were peculiar, com- plied by erecting in West Wycombe churchyard the vast hexagonal and roofless mausoleum of flint, supported by Tuscan columns, which rises stupendous on the crest of the hill, just below the bizarre little church, also his handiwork. In its tastelessness, it is an appropriate monument to " George Dodington, Baron of Melcomb Regis," though the title is thus incorrectly given on the inside cornice. Farther down the hiU is the entrance to the catacombs excavated in the chalk and leading to a central hall, where the monks of Medmenham used to dine under conditions of chilly discomfort which must have needed much wine as a corrective. Eastbury, as has been said, was entailed on Lord Temple ; but Melcombe's house-property in Weymouth went to Tucker, though he had offended him so deeply a few weeks previously, and to DODINGTON'S LAST YEARS 281 Thomas Wyndham Melcombe left all he could in the shape of freehold, copyhold and customary- hold manners, messuages, lands, in the counties of Somerset, Dorset and Middlesex. Under that provision he, of course, inherited La Trappe. Melcombe's noble friends received personal gifts indicated with minute care ; Lord Litchfield had " my onyx ring with the representation of Leda and the Swan," Lord Bute " my large gold snufE-box," Lord Talbot " my large enamelled snufi-box," Lord Hillsborough " my cane with the Kerry-stone head," Lady Hervey " my late wife's enamelled ring," and Lord Halifax " the small agate snufi-box which the late Prince of Wales gave me." Last comes " Leonidas " Glover with " my smallest gold snufE-box." It was about all he deserved. Mrs. Oakes, wife of Mr. Oakes of Bedford, " chirurgeon and man- midwife," was left £500. Dr. Thompson, the butt-in-ordinary, who had recently been placed through Bute's good offices on the list of Court physicians, received £300 and " my gold-headed cane." Melcombe beC[ueathed a bond for £2,000, borrowed from him by his late brother-in-law, Edmund Hungate Beaghan, for the payment of £1,000 to his two daughters, to be divided between them. And then there was Jane Watson, spinster, Dodington's housekeeper, who must have made 282 PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTER Dodington's three sisters-in-law very jealous in- deed. They only got £50 each for mourning, but Jane received £5,000 due to Melcombe on mortgage, as well as all the moneys belonging to him which might be in her custody at the time of his decease. Sir William Breton, one of the monks of La Trappe, was caught in a two-edged clause directing that he should not be released from his debts to Mel- combe unless he repaid within three months from Melcombe's decease the £400 lent him by Jane Watson. To Jane was also left glass, silver, knives, forks, spoons, furniture and Mrs. Dod- ington's wearing apparel and jewels " except her diamonds and her enamelled ring." Melcombe's steward and servants were not forgotten.* Jane got her money and she kept it. Li 1765 Samuel Lee, surgeon, brought an action against Melcombe's executors for £1,000, the balance due to him, according to his statement, for attendance on the late Lord Melcombe, who had been afflicted with a dangerous rupture for eleven years before his death. He lost his case ; and Jane, who had in the interval become Mrs. Leckie, had him prose- cuted for perjury, with the result that he was convicted, though Lord Ligonier and other dis- tinguished persons gave evidence on his behalf, f * Somerset House Probate Registers ; Melcombe's will was proved on August 3. t R.O. State Papers Dom. Home Office Papers, Secretary Conway to Lord Mansfield, December 28, 1765. DODINGTON'S LAST YEAES 283 Lady Hervey was among those who regretted Melcombe's death. She wrote on August 31 — " Poor Lord Melcombe, an old friend, and a most entertaining, agreeable companion, is lately subtracted from the few friends I have left ; and he is really a great loss to me : I saw him often ; and he kept his liveliness and wit to the last." * But Horace Walpole, who took such matters rather lightly, dismissed him with the unfeeling remark that he had died just when the views of his life were nearest being realised. Thomas Wyndham gave vent to his sentiments by erecting a column in a field to the east of La Trappe whereon, after a recital of Melcombe's titles and offices, all men could read — " He was raised to these honours, himseK an honour to them, rather by his eminent merit and great abilities, after experience both in the Senate and council, than either by birth or fortune, and if wit and true learning can delight, if eloquence can affect the heart, or literature can improve the mind, if universal benevolence hath its charms, no wonder he lived admired and beloved by all who knew him and died by all lamented." This remarkable column was taken down, and re-erected in 1789 at Lord AUesbury's park, in Wiltshire, in commemoration of the recovery of George III. from his illness.f * Lady Hervey's " Letters," 289. •f It seems doubtful whether La Trappe had one or two columns or obelisks, and possibly all that Wyndham did was to place the inscription to Melcombe on Mrs. Dodington's monument, and then sell it ! 284 PATEON ANT) PLACE-HUNTER The glories of La Trappe and Eastbury were indeed but fleeting things. Thomas Wyndham died in 1777, and the Hammersmith estate was sold first to Paul Wentworth and then to a Mrs. Sturt, a lady fond of society. In 1792 it was purchased by Christian Frederick, Margrave of Brandenburgh Anspach and Bayreuth, who re- tired to this country when revolution seized upon his principality, and who married the lively widow of Lord Craven, a familiar figure in Horace Wal- pole's Letters and the author of some slipshod memoirs. In her day La Trappe was known as Brandenburgh House ; she turned Melcombe's sculpture gallery into a dancing-room and built a theatre " in a castellated form, resembling an ancient ruin," by the water-side. There she acted in plays written by her son, Keppel Craven, and herself. To Brandenburgh House came Queen Caroline, the wife of George IV., as a tenant on May 3, 1820. All Hammersmith rallied to her ; the village was illuminated when the House of Lords abandoned the Pains and Penalties BiU in Novem- ber ; there were a thanksgiving service and con- gratulatory addresses. But her popularity left her after her unseemly display at the Coronation ; her health broke down and she died at Branden- burgh House on August 7, 1821. In the following year the Margravine decided DODINGTON'S LAST YEARS 285 on living at Naples ; Brandenburgh House was sold by auction and demolished, and the estate was divided up into streets and building sites. The fate of Eastbury was not quite so dis- astrous, but it proved a formidable burden to its possessors. Neither Earl Temple, nor his nephew and successor, who was created Marquis of Buckingham in 1784, could afford to keep it up, and the second of the two actually offered to pay any one £200 a year to live in it. Meeting with no answer to this sporting proposal — ^for the age of rich Americans and cosmopolitan financiers was not yet — ^he demolished Eastbury with the ex- ception of one wing. The widow of Josiah Wedg- wood, the famous potter, lived in this remnant, converted into a dwelling-house, and there her third son, Thomas, the first photographer and the benefactor of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ended his short and blameless life in 1805. Two years later the reduced Eastbury was purchased by Mr. James John Farquharson, and to his family it still belongs. The stupendous Vanburgh arch, which stands in front of the present house, gives some idea of what Eastbury must have been when Horace Walpole and Cumberland surveyed its magnifi- cence. Many of the pretty old cottages in the village, too, must have been inhabited by Doding- ton's retainers. But of the church where he 286 PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTER worsliipped, the dumpy tower alone remains. The body of the building is Mid- Victorian Gothic, and a new rectory has taken the place of George Stubbes's home. The spirit of Dodington survives most intimately perhaps in the cheerful Bugle Horn Inn. It hands on " my crest " to posterity, and represents at the same time an instrument of self-glorification which Dodington was never chary of sounding. AUTHOEITIES MY account of the Dodington family has been mainly constructed from : — • (I.) the Calendars of the Patent Rolls, Richard II., 1385-1389, and Henry IV., 1405-1408; (II.) the Calendars of the State Papers Domestic, Proceedings of the Com- mittee for Compounding, the volume 1660-1665, and the volumes from October 1668 to April 1690 ; (III.) the Historical Manuscripts Commission's Reports, V., Various Collections II., the House of Lords MSS., 1695-1697 and 1697-1699, Drop- more Papers I., Welbeck Papers V. and MSS. of the Earl of Lonsdale. References to sources other than these are given in the footnotes. ' The entries relating to the Bubb family in the parish registers of Foy, near Ross, and the in- scriptions on their tombs in the chancel of the church clear up a certain confusion which has hitherto existed between the two Jeremiah Bubbs, George Bubb Dodington's father and grand- father. C. W. Holgate^s "Winchester Long RoUs " and Foster's " Alumni Oxonienses " have been consulted for Bubb's school and University days ; 288 PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTER and Vol. I. of tlie " Records of Lincoln's Inn " contains the entry of Ms admission as a law student. The authorities for Bubb's mission to Spain are ample. The Egerton MSS. at the British Museum, 2170-2175 (wrongly referred to as "Ad- ditional MSS. " in the " Dictionary of National Biography "), contain copies of his despatches, the originals of Earl Stanhope's, Methuen's and Addison's despatches, and an abundant corre- spondence with Cardinal Alberoni, the Earl of Stair (British Ambassador in Paris) and the South Sea Company. Some originals of Bubb's despatches are to be found at the Public Record Office under State Papers Foreign, Spain ; and there too are the documents relating to the bribe supposed to have been given to Alberoni. The mission is briefly treated in ]Mr. Edward Armstrong's " Eliza- beth Famese, The ' Termagant of Spain.' " ]Miss Eyre-Matcham's Collection (Historical Manuscripts Commission's Reports, Various Col- lections VI.), throws important Ught on Doding- ton's activities from the time that he became a Lord of the Treasury under Walpole down to the end of his life. The Papers relating to Irish afiairs are of exceptional interest, and valuable information is imparted as well on Dodington's connection with Frederick, Prince of Wales, and with Thomson and other men of letters. Mrs. Stopford-Sackville's Collection in the Historical AUTHORITIES 289 Manuscripts Commission's Reports illustrates Dod- ington's intrigues with Lord Wilmington and the Duke of Dorset. The documents derived from the Additional Manuscripts at the British Museum are indicated in the footnotes. Some of them come from the well-known Hardwicke and Newcastle Papers, but the most useful series is Dodington's correspondence with Henry Fox. It was purchased by the British Museum in 1910, together with letters from Sir Horace Mann to Dodington ; and the papers, a good deal abridged, have been printed in the Report on Miss Eyre-Matcham's Collection. Dodington's notorious Diary was first published in 1784, and went through several editions, some of which omit the very characteristic appendices. The most accessible edition is that included in the little series, entitled " Autobiography," and pub- lished by Hunt and Clarke ( 1828). The manuscript, containing some passages omitted from the pub- lished editions, was sold by auction on April 14, 1910. The splendours of Eastbury are fuUy described in Hutchins's "History of Dorset," Vol. III., Richard Cumberland's " Memoirs," Vol. I., 180-195, and Horace Walpole's " Memoirs of the Last Ten Years of the Reign of George II.," Vol. I., appendix. The history of La Trappe, Dodington's vUla at Hammersmith, is to be found in C. J. Feret's u 290 PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTER "Hammersmith, Old and New," and Faulkner's "Hammersmith," while a map indicating its position appears in that writer's " Fulham." It is there called by its later name, Brandenburgh House. Plates of Eastbury and La Trappe are included in Colin Campbell's " Vitruvius Britannicus." The late W. P. Courtney's privately printed volume, " Dodsley's Collection of Poetry : Its Contents and Contributors," supplies by far the best account of Dodington as a patron of letters, and a good deal of its information comes from recondite sources. It is a reprint, with additions, of some papers which appeared in " Notes and Queries." The register of Hammersmith Parish Church contains the entry of Dodington's buriaL His wUl is among the records of the Probate Registry at Somerset House. INDEX AoHESON, Sir C, 67. Addison, J., 22, 42, 44-47, 52, 83. Albaoi, Cardinal, 20. Alberoni, Cardinal, 26, 28-30, 34- 53. Amelia, Princess, 191. Anne, Queen, 15, 114. Anson, Lord, 216, 247. ArgyU, Duke of , 1 13-1 1 8, 125, 128, 241, 246. Augusta, Princess, 168. Augusta, Princess of Wales, see Wales, Balch, Mb., 199. Baltimore, Lord, 151-155. Barnard, Lord, 196. Barr6, Col., 254, Barrington, Lord, 198, 223. Barrymore, Lord, 68. Bath, Earl of, see Pulteney. Beaghan, B. H., 57, 59, 281. Beaghan, Mrs., see Dodington, Mary. Bedford, J., Duke of, 126, 188, 191, 226, 263. Bentley, R., 22, 257-259. Binning, Lord, 85, 106. Bligh,Gen.,239. Bolingbroke, Viscount, 69, 99. Bowes, Irish Chancellor, 67, 244. Brandenburgh, Margravine of , 284. Breton, Sir W., 168, 174, 247, 281. Bridgeman, J., 73. Bridgwater, 11, 57, 107, 187, 193- 200, 250. Bubb, family of , 11-13. Bubb, George, see Dodington, George Bubb. Bubb, Jeremiah, Col., 1 1. Bubb, Jeremiah, 12, 13, 14, 107, 144, 244. Bubb, Judith, 12. Buckingham, Marquis of, 285. Bute, Earl of, 57, 192, 233, 246- 255, 259-275, 281. Byng, G., Lord Torrington, 53, 222. Byng, J., Admiral, 219, 222-224. Campbell, C, 73, 163. Carawaye, Mrs., 5. Caroline, Queen, 97, 110, 112. CaroUne, Queen, 284. Carlton House, 106, 109, 246. Carteret, Lord, 98, 108, 119-121, 124,129-132,135,138,238. Cave, E., 89. Cavendish, Lord J., 59, 197. Champion, The, 169, 171. Charlemont, Lord, 143. Charles XII. of Sweden, 39, 44. Chesterfield, Earl of, 22, 104, 108, 119,125-127,234,266, Churchill, C, 178, 256. Cobham, Viscount, 76, 93, 99, 104, 105, 125, 129, 158, 192, 226. Colebrook,SirW.,I58. Collinson,J.,3, 6. Colman, P., 60, 75, 102. Compton, Sir S., see Wilmington, Cope, Sir J., 136. Cotton, Sir J. H., 126, 128, 135, 251. Craftsman, The, 58, 69, 104. Craggs, J., 30. Cresset, W., 204, 247, 292 INDEX Crisp, Sir X., 162. Croker, J., 89. Croker, .J. W., 78, 143. Cumberland, R., 56, 74-76, 17f;. 203, 285. Cumberland, W., Duke of, IKi, 158,186,188,228,245. Dashwood, Sir F. (Lord le Des- pencer), 58, 59, 156, 179-181, 206, 209, 222-224, 245, 253, 274. 280. Devonshire, Duke of, 214, 220, 226, 229. Dodington, family of, 3-1 1 . Dodington, Sir P., 4-6. Dodir^on, George, 8-11, 23, 42, 43,55. Dodington, George, of Horsington. .59, 156. Dodington, George Bubb, Lord Melcombe, birth, 13 ; education 15-19 ; travels, 19-21 ; M.P. for Winohelsea, 22 ; Spanish mission, 24—54 ; Lord-Lieu- tenant of Somerset, 63 ; Lord of the Treasury, 63 ; Clerk of the Pells, 66 ; joins the Prince of Wales, 98-105, 108-112; di-- missed by Walpole, 115; Treasurer of the Xavy, 13.5-138 ; rejoins the Prince, 139-1.58 ; ejected from Bridg\vater, 190 ; Treasurer of the Xa^-y again, 214-220; loses office, 222; Treasurer of the Navy once more, 230; discarded, 234; becomes Lord Melcombe, 252 ; admitted to Cabinet, 274 ; will, 279; death, 283. Dodington, Hester, 6,8. Dodington, John, 5, 6-8. Dodington, Mary, 13, 14. Dodington, Mary, 136, 166-168. Dodyngton, Thomas, 4. Donerade, Lord, 116. Dorset, Duke of, 79, 80, 100, 108, 113. Drax, Mr., lo8. Dupplin, Lord, 91,201 216 Eames, Serjeant, 142. East, Mr., 79. Eastbury, 10, 70-95, 207, 216, 280. 285. Egmont, Earl of, 58, 151-155, 158. 193-200, 206, 248, 255. Egremont, Earl of, 269, 277. Ehzabeth, Queen of Spain, 25, 35. 36, .39, 49, 53. EUis.W., .59, 182, 197,250. Erie, J., 65. Fatjcosbdeg, Lord, 7. Fielding, H., 77, 169-171. Foote, S., 257-259. Forbes, Lord, 27, 45. Fox, H. (Lord Holland), .56, 57, 68. 158, 200-210, 216-220, 22.5-234. Frederick the Great, 242. Frederick, Prince of Wales, su Wales. Famese, H., 58, 152, 156. 181, 1 83. 212. GeoegeL,35,47, 51,97. George IL, 97, 100, 103, 108, 110, 130-L32, 185, 200-202, 216-236. 248. George ILL, 1 89, 233, 246, 2.50, 262. Germain, Lady B., 100. Gibraltar, 25, 27, 53. Giudice, Cardinal del, 25, 28, 34. Glover, P., 59, 17.3-174, 215, 254, 281. Gower, Lord, 126, 135, 251. Grenville, G., 98, 133, 214, 222, 2.32, 245, 264, 274, 276. Grimaldo, the Marquis, 49. Hautax, C, Earl of, 92, 258 . i Hahfax, G., Earl of, 203, 209-212, i 214, 22.5-229, 23.5, 253, 258, ! 281. 1 Harcourt, Lord, 189. Hardwicke, Earl of, 74, 106, 206, I 231-234. i Harrington. Earl of, 48, 49-52, 71. ! Harrington, Countess ot, 253. INDEX 293 Heame, T., 10, 16, 209, Hedges, J., 101. Hervey, Lady, 77-79, 165, 168, 257, 281, 283. Hervey, Lord, 78, 97, 99, 103. Hillsborough, Lord, 132, 201, 206, 220, 230, 281. Hogarth, W., 94. Holdemess, Lord, 230, 251, 252. Hop, Judith, 256. Hunter, T. O., 58. Hutchins's "History of Dorset," 12, 72, 125, U3. Jenkins, Capt., 120. Johnson, S., 47, 81, 89-90. Kane, Gen., 38. Kew, 156, 157, 188. Lannoy, L. and T., 163. La Trappe, 159, 163-178, 201, 263, 279, 284. Lee, Dr., 151, 153, 192. Lee, S., 283. Legge, H. B., 206, 214, 228, 238. Leicester House, 96, 226, 240, 247. Litchfield, Lord, 281. Lloyd, R., 179. Lvttelton, G., Lord, 98, 121, 129, 130, 150. Mallet, D., 151, 172. Mann, Sir H., 20. Mansfield, W., Earl of, 129, 183, 196, 209, 226-228, 254. Marlborough, Duke and Duchess of, 20-21. Meloombe, Lord, see Dodington, George Bubb. Merry, Mr., 104. Methuen, Sir P., 21, 23, 26, 42, 43, 108. Middlesex, Lady, 153. Middlesex, Lord, 140, 152, 155, Minorca, 27, 218. MoUnez, Inquisitor Greneral, 45, Montagu, Lady M. W., 63. Moore, J., 129. Murray, P., 271, Murray, W., see Mansfield, Earl of. Newcastle, Duke of, 69, 94, 119, 124, 165, 197-220, 231-236, 247, 250, 255, 263, 268. Novi, 35. Nugent, Lord, 151-155, 231. Oakes, Mrs., 281. Olmius.H., 115. Orford, Edward Russell, Lord, 9, 10, 24. Orleans, the Regent, 37. Oswald, J., 102, 108, 133, 134, 156, 206, 213. Fating, Father, 44, 45. Pelham, H., 124, 126, 134, 138, 145, 183-197. Pells, the, 67-68. PhiUp V. of Spain, 25, 34, 38, 49, 52, 53. Pitt, Rev. C, 81. Pitt, W. (Earl of Chatham), 98, 120, 125, 129, 130, 150. 202, 205-207, 214, 231-243. 261-271. Pope, A., 47, 62, 90-93, 178. Potter, T., 179. Pulteney, W. (Earl of Bath), 69, 98,108,119,124,138. Ralph, J., 127, 139, 156, 169, 171- 173, 178. Remembrancer, The, 171. Richardson, S., 89. Rigby, R., 234. Ripperdti, Baron, 27, 30, 161, Rowe,N.,23, 167. Robinson, Sir T., 227, 229. Rupert, PriDoe, 163. Russell, Consul, 39, 40, 43. 294 INDEX Sackville, Lord G. (Lord G, Germain), 244. Sandwich, Lord, 94, 179, 180. Sandys, S., 121, 129. Sardinia, 45-47. Scrope, J., 57, 63, 103, 122. Servandoni, J. J., 159-161, 164. Shaftesbury, Lord, 156. Shelbume, Lord, 19, 101, 254. Shenstone, W., 62. Shippen, W., 57, 121. Stair, Earl of. 26, 29, 49. Stanhope, Earl, 25, 29, 32, 36-39, 54. Stanhope, W., Col., see Harrington, Earl of. Steele, Sir P.., 11. Stewart, A., Lord Provost, 136. Stewart, Sir S., 73. Stone, P., 189-192. Strawbridge, Mrs., 167. Stubbes, Pv^v. G., 17-19, 24, 80, 286. Sunderland, Earl of, 42, 56. Sundon, Lord, 65, 115. Swift, J., 9, 67, 91 Talbot, Earl, 87, 148, 156, 212, 247, 281. Temple, Earl, 225, 226, 229, 280, 285. Thompson, T., Dr., 174-177, 218, 266-272, 281. Thomson, J., 77, 80, 8.5-87. Townshend, C, 246. Townshend, G., Marquis, 93, 229. Townshend, T., 57. Trenchard, Mr., 142. Tucker, H., 59, 212, 276, 280. Vanbetoh, Sir J., 10, 72, 82, 285. Vernon, Admiral, 137. Voltaire, A. de, 83. Waldeqbave, Earl, 233. Wales, Augusta, Princess of, 107, | 277-279. 155, 157, 159, 168, 187-193, 204, 214,245,250. Wales, Frederick, Prince of, 89, 98-102, 104-106, 107-112, 122, 139, 145-158, 171. Wales, George, Prince of, see. George IIL WaUer, E., 125, 129. Walpole, Horace, 74, 76, 93, 129, 1.35, 143, 164, 212, 222-224, 258, 285. Walpole, Horatio (Old Horace), 69. Walpole, Sir R. (Earl of Orford), 55, 56, 60-66, 69, 96-122. Watson, Jane, 281. Wedderbum, A., 257. Wedgwood, T., 285. WeLstead, L., 88. Wejrmouth and Melcombe, 58, 1 82, 250, 255, 274. Whitehead, P., 177-181. White's Club, 60. WilkM, J., 179,266,274. Williams, Sir C. H., 59, 62, 64, 70, 114,124,158,205. Wilmington, Lord, 96, 97, 108, 113, 124, 1.35. Winehelsea, 9, 22, 54, 57. Winchelsea, Earl of, 229, 235. Winnington, T., 65, 115, 117, 119, 175, Worms, Treaty of, 129. Wyndham,H.P., 141. Wyndham, T., 141, 168, 174, 274, 283 284 Wyndiiam, Sir W., 57, 98, 108, 112, 124. Wynn, Sir W., 128, 132. 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