YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY Tr. WILLIAM Pr" ROYAL P-:' LOUISA F" CM'OLWK 'Y./if // ' //' /fe /'//// r,y/7'//fff //( „//¦///,-//- 6/////?/" '¦/¦/''. '// // / ' "f/ ¦ C/'' /. . ,0 -t" /¦//// \ // a/// ¦ f'/7///-/'//'y/ ' /,¦// ,//-y7.//,-T''//jy/t/y,' />///-, //{y/i- t/y/y/'i//?-: /// c //y?/?.' /¦{/////, 6-/f ¦///'m-/' ^-yy/'c/y/l' ////>' ~- // k/ tW ///¦/. Louctoia-, 3ol\n. Murri" MEMOIRS OF THE EEIGN OF GEORGE THE SECOND, FROM HIS ACCESSION TO THE DEATH OF QUEEN CAROLINE. BY JOHN, LOED HERVEY. /// EDITED BY THE RIGHT HON. JOHN WILSON CROKER, LL.D., F.R.S. IN TWO VOLUMES.— Vol. II. NEW EDITION. LONDON: JOHN MUEEAY, ALBEMAELE STEEET. 1855. LONDON ; PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, STAMFORD STREET, AND CHARING CROSS. ( iii ) CONTENTS OF VOL. II. CHAPTER XX. Foreign affairs — Plan of pacification — Rejected by Fleury, and why — Nego tiations and mediation of England and Holland — King at Hanover exer cises rights by law delegated to the Regent in England — Lady Suffolk marries Mr. Berkeley — Her behaviour on retiring — Her former behaviour — Squabble with her husband — King sees Princess Augusta of Saxe-Gotha, and fixes on her for the Prince of Wales — The Prince's amours, rupture, and negotiation with Miss Vane — His attachment to Lady Archibald Hamilton — Her character — Lord Hervey assists Miss Vane . Page 1 CHAPTER XXI. The King returns from Hanover — Dissatisfied with England and every body — His increasing ill-humour — and rudeness to the Queen — Her patience and management — Madame de Walmoden — The King had pro mised her to return to Hanover — Walpole objects .... 27 CHAPTER XXII. General Peace — Terms — Discussed — The event favourable to .the Adminis tration — Horace Walpole's negative success — M. de Chavigny — Favours the Opposition — Lord Hervey's opinion as to the duties of a Foreign Minister — M. Chauvelin, Garde des Sceaux in France— Corrupt — Dis graced — Lord Hervey's intercourse, in Walpole's absence, with the King and Queen — Advocates a reduction of the forces — They resist — Walpole's reasonings for maintaining the Army 59 CHAPTER XXIII. Spain accedes to the Treaty of Peace— Parliament meets— Opposition slack Pulteney goes abroad — Bolingbroke flies — Attacks on the Church in Parliament— Repeal of the Corporation and Test Acts — Mortmain Bill —The Quakers' Tithe Bill— Opposition of the Bishops and Clergy to the latter— Lord Hervey's zeal for it — Complains ofthe abuses of Queen Anne's Bounty— Bishops Sherlock and Butts — The King's indecent impatience to end these questions, and to go to Hanover— Bishop Sher lock complains to the Queen of Lord Hervey— The Queen rebukes him— Affairs of the Church- Candidates for Lambeth — Lord Hervey suggests Potter 85 a 2 CONTENTS OF VOL. II. CHAPTER XXIV. The Prince's marriage proposed — King's impatience hurries it on — Prin cess Augusta of Saxe-Gotha arrives at Greenwich — Prepossessing beha viour — Reception at Court — The King goes abroad — Queen Regent — Prince's disrespect to her — Signature of English Commissions in Hanover — Disagreeable occurrence to Madame de Walmoden — Princess scruples about the Church of England Communion — How reconciled — Etiquette at Chapel Royal — Lady A. Hamilton — Privy Purse to the Princess — Riots in London and the West Page 112 CHAPTER XXV. Poetical Epistle to the Queen on her commanding Lord Hervey to write no more — Dramatic Scenes at Court on a report of Lord Hervey's Death 147 CHAPTER XXVI. The King's return delayed — The Queen's patience exhausted, but per suaded by Walpole and Lord Hervey to invite Madame de Walmoden over — Correspondence between the King and Queen on this subject — Public impatience at the King's stay — Pasquinades — Indecent and undutiful behaviour of the Prince — Characters of the Princes and Princesses 174 CHAPTER XXVII. The King announces his return — Th/ Queen's altered feelings — The King supposed to be in danger at sea-WIndecent conduct of the Prince — The Queen's anxieties— Lord Hervey's speculations on the King's loss — The King at sea, but driven back by a great storm — The Prince affects popu larity — His conversation with Walpole — The King returns . . 204 CHAPTER XXVIII. The King's good humour — His illness— Meeting of Parliament— Lord Carteret moves an inquiry into the riots— The Prince resolves to bring forward his claim for a larger income— Views of this measure by different persons and parties 236 CHAPTER XXIX. The Prince's claim continued— Walpole proposes a compromise— Disliked by the King and Queen— King's message to the Prince— His answer- Discussion between the Queen and Lord Hervey on this point The debate in the Commons— Pulteney's speech — Walpole's answer— The Prince defeated 2se CONTENTS OF VOL. II. CHAPTER XXX. Anger of the King and Queen— Restrained by Walpole— Debate on the Prince's claim in the Lords — Defeated again— Protest — Army voted — Walpole's favour diminished — His conversations with Lord Hervey and the Queen on that subject Page 282 CHAPTER XXXI. Prosecution of the Porteous Riot — Opinions and Intrigues about it — Lord Hervey takes up the cause of the Scotch Magistrates with Lord Isla and the Duke of Argyle — Bishop Sherlock zealous on the other side — Car teret courts the Queen, and retreats out of the Scotch Question . 298 CHAPTER XXXII. Sir J. Bernard's proposition for the reduction of the interest of the funds to 3 per cent. — Opposition of Walpole and the King and Queen — Their motives— The Porteous Riot Bill — Mitigated in the Commons — Zeal of the Duke of Argyle against it — Carteret retreats from the Scotch ques tion — Bill for licensing Plays and Players — Official changes — The King and Lady Deloraine — The Princess's pregnancy announced — Carteret courts the Queen — He, Chesterfield, and Bolingbroke supposed to be writing Memoirs of their own time 325 CHAPTER XXXIII. Princess's pregnancy — Kept secret — The Royal Family suspect that a fraud is intended — She is taken in labour at Hampton Court, and hurried by the Prince to St. James's — Details of this affair — Birth of a Princess — The Queen's Night Visit to the Princess — Indignation of the King and Queen — Opinions of the Queen, Walpole, and Lord Hervey on this matter — Lord Hervey's hatred of the Prince . 362 CHAPTER XXXIV. Proceedings and Correspondence on the Prince's Conduct — Prince con sults his Friends in Opposition — They disapprove, hut agree to support — Pulteney reluctant— Further Correspondence — The Prince's hosti lity directed against the Queen — Lord Hervey's conferences with the Queen and Walpole— His hatred of the Prince induces him to urge severe measures— Double dealing of Carteret — His views and hopes aided by Lady Sundon — Dunoyer, the dancing-master, a spy of both Courts— Contemptible hypocrisy of the Prince .... 388 \ ) vi CONTENTS OF VOL. II. CHAPTER XXXV. Conference of Walpole and Hoadley on the Test Act— Proposed dis junction of Hanover from England— Christening of the Child— Con tinuation of the Prince's Correspondence— Rhyming Parody of his Letters — His disrespeet to the Queen— Resolution taken to expel him from St. James's— Lord Hervey drafts a Message— Discussion of the King, Queen, and Cabinet on the Draft— Walpole's jealousy of Lord Hervey increased — The Message sent— The King's Character of the Prince's Advisers— Lord Hervey's Character of Lord Bristol — Notice given that those who should wait upon the Prince would not be received at St. James's — Other marks of displeasure — The Prince's minor Council Page 410 CHAPTER XXXVI. The Prince consults the heads of the Opposition — Further Correspondence — Walpole jealous of Carteret — Remonstrates with the Queen — Thinks her too easily swayed — Conduct of different Members of the Cabinet — The Chancellor and Duke of Newcastle — Duke of Grafton and Lord Pembroke — Character of these — Walpole dissatisfied with Newcastle — Reasons for not breaking with him — Sir C. H.Williams — Correspondence continued — Lord Hervey advises to stop it — The Queen's short answer — The Prince denies his own statements — City Address — The Correspond ence printed — Walpole resolved never to act with Carteret . . 442 CHAPTER XXXVII. The Prince hires Norfolk House, and reduces his Establishment — His Popularity — His Complaints against the King— George I.'s Will — ¦Garbled copies of the Correspondence printed by the Prince— The originals translated by Lord Hervey and published — Copies of the Cor respondence on the quarrel between George I. and the Prince of Wales — Nefarious design against the latter — The Prince's new Court — Bishop Sherlock offends the Queen — Madame Walmoden — Spanish Depreda tions — The Queen's Conference with Lord Isla — Her opinion on the Separation of England and Hanover 464 CHAPTER XXXVIII. The Queen taken ill— Princess Caroline ill also — Arrangement of attend ance—The Queen grows worse— Sir R. Walpole sent for— The Queen reveals her secret disease, a Rupture— The Prince's request to be ad mitted to see her refused— Progress of the disease — History of her Rupture — Her obstinate reluctance to confess it — Her danger grows imminent — Legal doubts as to the succession to the Queen's property- Lord Hervey consults the Chancellor— Surgical operations . . 490 CONTENTS OF VOL. II. vii CHAPTER XXXIX. The Queen grows worse — Mortification declared — The Queen's parting interview and advice — Her presentiment that she should die on Wednesday — Walpole arrives — His interview — The Queen recommends the King and Kingdom to his care — The King and Queen displeased at the inquiries of the Prince's family— The King's superstition — The Queen's fortitude and resignation — Question about religious offices — The Archbishop sent for — The Queen recommends Dr. Butler by name, and her other servants generally Page 510 CHAPTER XL. A mystery now made of the fatal symptoms — The King's panegyric on the Queen — His strange mixture of brutality and tenderness — Princess Emily's disrespect — The Queen grows weaker and weaker — The dying scene — Her death— The King's grief — He sees only his children and Lord Hervey — Conjectures as to who might succeed to the Queen's influence — Walpole's coarseness disgusts the Princesses — Lord Hervey supposed to be in great favour— Knows that it is fallacious — Expostulates with Walpole on his long neglect — Some friends incite him to overthrow Walpole and step into his place— Such projects injudicious and imprac ticable—Conclusion 530 SUPPLEMENTAL CHAPTER. List of the Cabinet — Naval forces of England, Spain, and France — Minutes of Cabinet Councils — Letters to Lord Bristol on Lord Hervey's dismissal from office 551 ADDENDA ET CORRIGENDA. VOLUME II. Page 30, note 3 — after 1736 add — as well as in the 'Drama,' post, p. 162. Page 108— on the word Pope in the text add this note: — "Walpole used to call Bishop Gibson his Pope, adding, ' and a very good Pope too.' " Coxe. Page 153, note 15 — I have now no doubt that Augustus Schutz was meant. Page 1 54, note 24— for Grisset read — Gresset. Page 232— after note 17 add — see post, 412-417. Page 321, note 12— -for peculiar read— peculiarly. Page 464— after note 1 add — George III. was born at Norfolk House, 4th June, 1738. Page 480, note 12, for unexceptional read — unexceptionable. Page 509, note— -for the notion read — the contrary notion. SOME MATERIALS MEMOIRS OF THE REIGN KING GEORGE THE SECOND. CHAPTER XX. Foreign Affairs— Plan of pacification— Rejected by Fleury, and why— Nego tiations and mediation of England and Holland — King at Hanover exer cises rights by law delegated to the Regent in England — Lady Suffolk marries Mr. Berkeley — Her behaviour on retiring — Her former behaviour — Squabble with her husband — King sees Princess Augusta of Saxe-Gotha, and fixes on her for the Prince of Wales — The Prince's amours, rupture, and negotiation with Miss Vane— His attachment to Lady Archibald Hamilton — Her character — Lord Hervey assists Miss Vane. In order to give an account of the posture of foreign affairs during this summer, it is necessary for me to go a little back. On the 17th of February, 1735, the long-expected plan of accommodation ' was at last delivered out to the Ministers of the several Courts whose interests were con cerned in it, and the principal articles of it were these : — That Stanislaus should keep the title of King of Poland, and renounce all pretensions to the kingdom. 1 Proposed by England and Holland as mediators. VOL. II. B 2 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XX. That the Eussians should be withdrawn from Poland, on the Elector of Saxony's being acknowledged King. That the Emperor should yield the kingdoms of Naples and Sicily to Don Carlos ; and to the King of Sardinia the Tortoneze, the Novarreza, and Vige- vanasso, which should be detached from the Milanese and annexed to Piedmont. That France and the Allies, on the other hand, should restore everything they had taken elsewhere during the war from the Emperor and the Empire — Don Carlos at the same time giving up all his pretensions on the duchies of Tuscany, Parma, and Placentia to the Emperor, the town of Leghorn excepted, which should remain a free port, and dependent only on its own magistrates — the rights and privileges of commerce there being secured to the English and the Dutch, as in the reign of Charles II. of Spain. That France should guarantee the Pragmatic Sanction ; Spain renew that guarantee which she had already made ; and the King of Sardinia be included therein. This plan concluded with a little sort of a hint to the powers at war, that, if it was not accepted, the maritime powers would be obliged to take some part in the war if those [belligerent] powers would allow them no share in making a peace.2 Those who had ridiculed this negotiation in embryo, and had always treated it as one that must prove abor tive, triumphed extremely on its coming forth such a 2 Lord Hervey had here inserted a printed copy in French of this pro ject, which, after his summary, and as it is to be found in the ' Historical Register,' it is unnecessary to insert : the details of and arguments on the plan itself are fully given in a letter from Lord Harrington to Sir Thomas Robinson, of the 15th of January, 1735 (Coxe'sWal. Cor., iii. 234), but no mention is made in either of these documents of the proposed cession of Lorraine. 1735. PLAN OF PACIFICATION REJECTED. 3 one as, even before it was rejected, appeared incapable of any other fate. Lord Bolingbroke was the only one not in the secret who ever pronounced so judiciously upon it as to say, that Walpole was no fool, and for that reason it was impossible but that there must have been something more in this negotiation than had yet appeared. Pie judged right ; and that something was the cession of Lorraine to France, which Holland and England told Cardinal Fleury they would readily consent to as an engraftment on their plan of pacification, but which it was impossible they could insert in the original draught ; for though the Emperor, considering the con nection between him and the Duke of Lorraine, might take upon him to barter the possessions of that Prince, yet it was neither proper nor decent for the maritime powers to be cantoning out the dominions of a sove reign who was no way concerned in the war, and conse quently had not committed his interests to their care in making the peace. The plan of pacification was no sooner3 delivered out than rejected ; and everybody said it was no won der such a scheme of accommodation should not take effect, when every article of it seemed to be in favour of that power who was not only the weakest, but had been beaten wherever he had been attacked ; and yet, according to this proposal, would regain everything by paper that he had lost by arms, and be in as good a situation after all his defeats as he could have hoped to have been had they been so many victories. When I relate the Cardinal's having been acquainted 3 Not quite so suddenly, for the final rejection was by the Emperor on the 7th, and by France on the 8th of May, an interval of near three months. b2 4 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XX. with every particular of this plan before it appeared, his having consented to the insertion of every article it contained, and his approbation of every step it took in its progress towards the public appearance of it, it will be very natural for my readers either to suspect my veracity, or to ask how the Cardinal then came not to accept it in his public character : to which I shall give two answers— one of which was the reason given by his Eminence himself to England and Holland ; the other, the secret reason assigned by our Ministers for this ex traordinary conduct and seeming inconsistency. The reason he gave to the maritime powers for the rejection of this plan of pacification was, that, let him be ever so well satisfied with the scheme of this pro posal, and the consequences that were tacitly under stood to be designed to flow from it (I mean the cession of Lorraine), that he could not think of abandoning his allies and making a separate peace, nor of forcing them to come in to terms of general accommodation that were not as agreeable in the parts relating to the interests of these Princes as they were in that which concerned only his own. The real reason for his receding (or at least what was believed so by our Ministers) was this : the Cardi nal's fondness of peace, and his desire to have the sole glory of making it, had induced him to undertake this negotiation quite alone, and to bind our Ministers not only in an obligation to treat with no other, but in a pro mise of absolute secrecy ; by which means M. Chauve- lin, the Garde des Sceaux in France, and coadjutor to the Cardinal in the Administration there, was entirely shut out of this transaction : and, as M. Chauvelin go- 1735. THE EMPEROR'S REPRESENTATIONS. 5 verned the Cardinal as absolutely as the Cardinal governed the King (with this difference only, that the King knew he was governed, whilst the Cardinal was governed without knowing it), so M. Chauvelin, partly out of pride and resentment to our Ministers, and partly in indulgence to his own inclinations, which were strongly bent on prosecuting the war, as soon as ever he was made acquainted with these proposals employed all his skill, weight, and influence to demonstrate to the Cardinal that it was neither for the interest nor the honour of France to give in to them : and as M. Chauvelin succeeded in this, all negotiation for peace was broken off, all prospect of accommodation vanished, and the campaign was opened in Italy and on the Rhine. After this public rejection of the plan of pacification, and before the King was yet set out for Hanover, the Court of Vienna began to press the Court of London more vehemently than ever to come into the war. Among many letters I saw tending to this end, there was one which General Deimar showed me from Prince Eugene to him, which urged this point in the least answerable manner, and the most artful of all : in this letter Prince Eugene desired General Deimar to repre sent to the King how long, in complaisance and defer ence to his Majesty, the Emperor had forbore insisting on the immediate compliance of England with the articles of those treaties by which England was bound to assist the Emperor in the preservation of his posses sions in Italy, and to put his Majesty in mind at the same time how much in the right the Court of Vienna had been when they told him that all the assurances 6 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XX; France had given of desiring peace were only to amuse and deceive him in order to prevent England taking part in the war ; to represent to his Majesty that the Empire itself was in the utmost danger ; and at the same time to insinuate, that, if the maritime powers were so careless of the interest of the Emperor in the war, his Imperial Majesty hoped they would not be surprised if he was as negligent of theirs in making a peace ; for, in case they would not assist him in carry ing on the war, sure nobody could blame him if he con sidered nothing but himself in his manner of putting an end to it when he was able alone to support it no longer. By this he meant to alarm England and Holland with the apprehensions of his intending to bias France to restore what he had lost in Italy by the bribe of Flanders : and, in consequence of this letter, his Impe rial Majesty, to show he was in earnest and did not care what became of Flanders, drew out all the troops that were in garrison there to recruit his armies in Italy and on the Rhine. The answers from England to all these repeated arguments and remonstrances were, repeated palliatives, evasions, and hopes of yet succeeding in our endeavours to procure peace. Soon after the King went to Hanover a new induce ment to enter into the war was made to glitter in his Britannic Majesty's eyes by an offer of the command of the Imperial army on the Rhine. This step had been foreseen by Sir Robert before the King left Eng land ; and accordingly his Majesty, by concerting with Sir Robert Walpole what he should say and do in that case, was provided with an answer. 1735. THE EMPEROR'S OFFERS. 7 When Count Kinski, therefore, by order of the Em peror, in the most obliging and most captivating manner, made this proposal to the King at Hanover, his Majesty desired Count Kinski to assure the Emperor of the great gratitude with which he received this honour ; but said he could neither think of doing anything so wrong to himself as appearing at the head of an army, as King of England, in which no Englishman was to be exposed or fight under him, and could as little persuade himself to do anything so contrary to the interest ofthe Emperor as take the command of the Imperial troops out of the able and experienced hands in which it was at present lodged : that, if anything could induce him to take such a step, it would be the having Prince Eugene always with him, and being sure that things, though his Majesty had the nominal command, would be then done as much in pursuance of that great man's advice as before they had been in obedience to his order ; but that, if he had been hitherto suspected of not doing everything in his power for the service of his Imperial Majesty, and had made himself liable to the reproach of faults of omission, it would be the highest imprudence in him to incur further reproach for faults of commission, which must be his situation if any sinister accident should happen, and he should make himself responsible for the chance of war ; nor could he hope to avoid that additional demerit, how ever unjustly it might be imputed to him, since he had already felt the weight of being upbraided (in a manner he had as little deserved) for the hitherto ill success of his good offices towards procuring a peace. In this manner was the King saved from the incon veniences into which he would have drawn himself and 8 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XX. this country had the songs of these military sirens (the songs he was always most ready to listen to) prevailed on his Majesty to follow their invitation ; but Sir Robert Walpole had, before he set out, tied him so fast to the mast that he enjoyed the safety of Ulysses, though he did not, like him, owe that safety to his own prudence and foresight. When new proposals were made to the Allies for a cessation of arms, they offered to agree to an armistice, provided things should remain just in the condition they now were, and every article of accommodation be referred to a Congress. The policy of the Allies in this demand was, that all the Emperor's possessions in Italy might be cantoned out, and remain in the hands of the two Princes that had conquered them ; that Mantua, the only place the Emperor yet retained in Italy, might not be reduced, because they did not know what to do with it if it were — the Kings of Spain and Sardinia not being able to agree about it; that the Diet of Poland, which was just going to meet, might not confirm by civil power to King Augustus what military power had acquired for him ; and that the Elector of Bavaria, by the march of forty thousand Russians through his territories, might neither be obliged to abandon the interests of France nor be punished for having hitherto adhered to them. This proposal, therefore, as the single preliminary to an armistice, of leaving things just as they were, and referring all disputes to a Congress, was rejected by the Emperor and the maritime powers ; whilst the summer was protracted without anything material being done 1735. THE QUEEN REGENT. 9 either in the cabinet or the field : the armies on the Rhine doing nothing but looking at one another ; and the great acquisition of the unopposed armies of the Allies in Italy amounting to nothing more than the taking of Mirandola, which, although the work of the whole summer, ought naturally to have been nothing more than the employment of a week. Whatever step Sir Robert Walpole took in England wij;h regard to all these negotiations, though concerted solely, and concluded absolutely, in reality by the Queen and him in her closet, wore the face of being always as much the act of the whole Cabinet Council as theirs — not a letter coming from Hanover relating to these things that was not communicated to the Cabinet Council, nor any piece of advice sent thither but what was signed by them ; so that Sir Robert Walpole, with a dexterity equal to his power, whilst in fact he did everything alone, was responsible for nothing but in common; whilst those ciphers of Jhe Cabinet signed everything he dictated, and, without the least share in honour or power, bound themselves equally with him in case this political merchant should be bankrupt. On the other side of the water, the sagacious Lord Harrington,4 who, dull as he was, was not such a fool as not to know in what manner things were transacted here, set up for an interest of his own with the King, and of course pretended to have an opinion of his own in what was doing; accordingly, he was perpetually sending over despatches hither, in which he took the liberty, under the pretence of differing only with the Who had accompanied the King to Hanover as Secretary of State. 10 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XX. Cabinet Council, to arraign all the acts and cavil at all the measures of the Queen. It was thought to be by his advice, too, that the King, in several things, did acts as King at Hanover, particularly those of signing commissions for officers, which in law, to be sure, were not valid acts, the regal power not being divisible, and the instrument that con stituted the Queen Regent having of course delegated all the regal power to, and vested it in, her. Sir Robert Walpole, as well as the Lord Chancellor and Lord Hardwicke, soon hit this blot ; they saw the ab surdity of the proceeding, and represented it to the Queen, but she absolutely forbade them speaking of it, or endeavouring to touch this point by mentioning it to the King ; knowing full well, from the temper of his Majesty, let her be ever so manifestly and indubitably in the right, the danger there would be in starting the least controversion of any power he had a mind to claim or exercise ; and how much the dispute lying between him and her, though merely in a point of form, would make the path more slippery, and render the step more delicate. Whilst the King was at Hanover there happened a marriage in England which I believe surprised his Ma jesty as much as it did many of his subjects ; I mean Lady Suffolk's with Mr. George Berkeley, an old lover of Mrs. Pulteney.5 Mr. Berkeley was neither young, handsome, healthy, nor rich, which made people wonder what induced Lady Suffolk's prudence to deviate into this unaccountable piece of folly : some imagined it was s And a great friend, private and political, of Mr. Pultenev — (Ante vol. i. p. 10.) '' s ' 1735. LADY SUFFOLK MARRIES MR. BERKELEY. 1 1 to persuade the world that nothing criminal had ever passed between her and the King ; others that it was to pique the King : if this was her reason, she succeeded very ill in her design, for the King, in answer to that letter from the Queen that gave him the first account of this marriage, told her, " J'etois extremement surpris de la disposition que vous m'avez mande que ma vieille maitresse a fait de son corps en mariage a ce vieux goutteux George Berkeley, et je m'en rejouis fort. Je ne voudrois pas faire de tels presens a mes amis ; et quand mes ennemis6 me volent, plut a Dieu que ce soit tou- jours de cette faqon." Those who had a mind to abuse Lady Suffolk the most upon this occasion said she had been so long used to a companion, that she could not live without some thing in that style, and that at her time of life, as there was none to be lost, so she took up with the first engage^ ment that offered. The Queen, who was the first body that told me this marriage was certainly over, and would in a very short time be publicly owned, was ex tremely peevish with me for saying I did not believe one word of the matter, and that I was sure it was somebody who proposed making their court, by putting Lady Suffolk in this simple light, who had told her this improbable story. "Mon Dieu" said the Queen, "what an opiniatre devil you are, that you will never believe what one tells you one knows to be true, because you happen not to think it probable ! Perhaps," continued 6 I do not find the exact date of the birth of the " vieux goutteux" but he was a college contemporary of Lord Chesterfield (Suff. Cor., i. 1), and, if he was about his age, would be now under forty. The King calls him his " ennemi" because he was in strong opposition.; 12 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XX. she, "you are one of those who have so high an opinion of her understanding, that you think it impossible she should do a silly thing; for my part, I have always heard a great deal of her great sense from other people, but I never saw her, in any material great occurrence of her life, take a sensible step since I knew her; her going from Court was the silliest thing she could do at that time, and this match the silliest thing she could do now ; all her behaviour to the King whilst she was at Court was as ill-judged as her behaviour to me at leaving it."7 Upon the Queen's mentioning Lady Suffolk's be haviour to her upon her leaving the Court, I said that was a thing that had excited my curiosity more than any incident that had ever happened since my being in it; for that I could not possibly imagine that Lady Suffolk could come to her Majesty and say, " Madam, your husband being weary of me, I cannot possibly stay in your house or your service any longer ;" and yet, if she did not say that, I could not comprehend what it was she did say. The Queen told me Lady Suffolk had not spoken her sense in those words, but that they differed little in their purport from what I imagined was impossible for her to suggest. " Then, pray, Ma dam," said I, "may I beg to know what was your ' We have seen (ante, vol. i. p. 427) that to the Duke of Newcastle the Queen made no complaint of Lady Suffolk's behaviour on that occasion. Her retreat seems to have been longer on the tapis than is stated in the text. " The Queen," says Horace Walpole, " however jealous of Lady Suffolk, latterly dreaded the King's contracting a new attachment to a younger rival, and had prevented Lady Suffolk from leaving Court as early as she had wished to do." — Reminiscences. The marriage was, as Lord Bolingbroke expresses it, "declared" in July, 1735; and may have taken place some time earlier. 1735. HEE, BEHAVIOUR ON RETIRING. 13 Majesty's answer?" "I told her," said the Queen, " that she and I were not of an age to think of these sort of things in such a romantic way; and said, 'My good Lady Suffolk, you are the best ser vant in the world, and, as I should be most extremely sorry to lose you, pray take a week to consider of this business, and give me your word not to read any romances in that time, and then I dare say you will lay aside all thought of doing what, believe me, you will repent, and what I am very sure I shall be very sorry for.' " The Queen in this conversation told me many other circumstances relating to Lady Suffolk's affairs, and to her conduct at Court, that till then I was entirely unac quainted with, particularly that she had had 2000?. a year constantly from the King whilst he was Prince, and 3200Z." ever since he was King, besides several little dabs of money both before and since he came to the Crown. She told me the whole history of the bustle Mr. Howard had made to take his wife from Court, and that, when Mr. Howard came to her Majesty, and said he would take his wife out of her Majesty's coach if he 8 It seems at first sight, from Horace Walpole's statement, that this pension was not continued to her. " Her own acquisitions were so mo derate, that, besides Marble Hill" (her villa near Twickenham), " which cost the King ten or twelve thousand pounds, her complaisance had not been too dearly purchased. She left the Court with an income so little to be envied, that, though an economist, and not expensive, by the lapse of some annuities on lives not so long a3 her own she found herself strait ened ; and, besides Marble Hill, did not at most leave 20,000?. to her family." — Reminiscences. We have seen (ante, vol. i. p. 429) that Lord Hervey says that the King intended to continue her pension, and perhaps by the "annuities which lapsed before her death" may be meant a pension from the King, whom she survived seven years. 14 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XX. met her in it,9 she had bid him "do it if he dare;" " though," said she, " I was horribly afraid of him (for we were tSte-a-tete) all the while I was thus playing the bully. What added to my fear upon this occasion," said the Queen, " was that, as I knew him to be so brutal, as well as a little mad, and seldom quite sober, so I did not think it impossible but that he might throw me out of that window (for it was in this very room our inter- 9 In the Walpoliana Horace Walpole is made to date this affair at Mr. Howard's accession to the title, 1731, but in the Reminiscences he himself represents it as much earlier. But he does not seem to have known of Mr. Howard's personal appeal to the Queen. " Mr. Howard," he says, " went one night into the quadrangle of St. James's, and vociferously demanded his wife : being threatened, he sent her a letter by the Archbishop reclaiming her, and the Archbishop, by his instructions, consigned the summons to the Queen, who had the malicious pleasure of delivering the letter to her rival. Such intemperate proceedings by no means invited the new mistress to leave the asylum of St. James's. She was safe when under the royal roof, even after the rupture between the King and Prince (for the affair commenced in the reign of the first George) ; and though the Prince, on quitting St. James's [1717], resided in a private house, it was too serious an enterprise to attempt to take his wife by force out of the palace of the Prince of Wales. The case was altered when their Royal Highnesses removed to Richmond. She apprehended Mr. Howard might seize her on the road. To bafne such an attempt, her friends John Duke of Argyle and his brother Lord Isla called for her in the coach of one of them, and lodged her safely at Richmond. [See ante, vol. i. p. 168.] During the summer a negotia- ! tion was commenced with the obstreperous husband, who sold his own noisy honour, and the possession of his wife, for 12001. a-year." — Remi niscences, 78. But here again there is a confusion of dates, and some errors of fact. A large original correspondence on this subject is extant, from which it appears that the differences and personal separation between Mr. and Mrs. Howard took place about 1717; that early in 1727 Mr. Howard,* who was in the King's (George I.) family, obtained the commands of his Majesty— ready enough to displease and affront the Prince (George II.)— to remove his wife from the Princess's service. It was at this juncture that the carrying her off by force was in contemplation, and that she was removed to Rich mond. In the mean while George I. died, and a negotiation was begun or continued for a legal separation, and it was in this state of the case that, some time in the autumn of 1727, the interview of Mr. Howard with the Queen must have taken place. See the whole story in the biographical notice to the Suffolk Papers. 1735. THE QUEEN AND MR. HOWARD. 15 view was, and that sash then open just as it is now) ; but as soon as I had got near the door, and thought myself safe from being thrown out of the window, je pris mon grand ton de Reine, et je disois I would be glad to see who should dare to open my coach-door and take out one of my servants ; sachant tout le temps qu'il le pouvoit faire s'il le vouloit, et qu'il auroit sa femme, et moi Vaffront. Then I told him that my reso lution was positively neither to force his wife to go to him if she had no mind to it, nor to keep her if she had." He then said he would complain to the King ; upon which je prenois encore mon liaut ton, and said the King had nothing to do with my servants, and for that reason he might save himself that trouble, as I was sure the King would give him no answer but that it was none of his business to concern himself with my family ; and after a good deal more conversation of this kind (I standing close to the door all the while to give me courage), Monsieur Howard et moi nous nous don- nions le bonjour, et il se retira. " After this, that old fool my Lord Trevor came to me from Mrs. Howard, and, after thanking me in her name for what I had done, proposed to me to give 1200?. a-year to Mr. Howard to let his wife stay with me ; but as I thought I had done full enough, and that it was a little too much not only to keep the King's guenipes" (in English trulls) " under my roof, but to pay them too, I pleaded poverty to my good Lord Trevor, and said I would do anything to keep so good a servant as Mrs. Howard about me, but that for the 1200?. a-year, I really could not afford it.10 io Paid, however, it seems to have been ; but probably by the King. 16 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XX. " But, after all this matter was settled, the first thing this wise, prudent Lady Suffolk did was to pick a quarrel with me about holding a basin in the ceremony of my dressing,11 and to tell me, with her little fierce eyes, and cheeks as red as your coat, that positively she would not do it ; to which I made her no answer then in anger, but calmly, as I would have said to a naughty child, ' Yes, my dear Howard, lam sure you will; indeed you will. Go, go ! fie for shame ! Go, my good Howard ; we will talk of this another time.' " About a week after, when upon maturer deliberation she had done everything about the basin that I would have her, I told her I knew we should be good friends again ; but could not help adding, in a little more serious voice, that I owned of all my servants I had least ex- 11 The Queen's statement is not quite candid : — " From the Queen Mrs. Howard tasted many positive vexations. Till she became Lady Suffolk she constantly dressed the Queen's head, who delighted in subjecting her to such servile offices, though always apologizing to ' her good Howard.' " — Reminiscences. As to the affair mentioned in the text, it is clear that though the Queen at first calls her " Lady Suffolk," it must have happened at the accession, when she was only Mrs. Howard and Bedchamber-toomara ; and the question was not, I suspect, as to merely holding the basin, but kneeling to hold it. It seems that Mrs. Howard consulted, through Dr. Arbuthnot, Lady Masham, the celebrated bedchamber-woman to Queen Anne, on this point of etiquette. Her answer was, " When the Queen washed her hands, the page of the back-stairs brought and set down upon a side-table the basin and ewer ; then the Bedchamber-woman set it befwe the Queen, and knelt on the other side of the table over-against the Queen, the Bedchamber-lady only looking on. The Bedchamber-woman brought the chocolate, and gave it kneeling. In general the Bedchamber-woman hod no dependence on the Lady of tlie bedchamber."— Suff. Cor., i. 293. We shall see by and by that the Lady of the bedchamber (though a Countess) presented the basin for the Queen's washing on her knees. But whatever the exact point of difference was, it is creditable to the temper and discre tion of Lady Suffolk, and indeed to the Queen herself, that, after so many years of such a delicate position, this affair, seven or eight years old, is all that the Queen has to reproach her husband's favourite with. 1735. LADY ARCHIBALD HAMILTON. 17 pected, as I had least deserved it, such treatment from her, when she knew I had held her up at a time when it was in my power, if I had pleased, any hour of the day, to let her drop through my fingers — thus ." So much for Lady Suffolk. To return therefore to Germany. During the King's residence there, it was contrived that he should see, as by accident, the Princess [Augusta] of Saxe-Gotha at Herenhausen. The consequence of this interview was his fixing upon her Highness for the future bride of the Prince of Wales, and the treaty was immediately set on foot. Soon after he came to this resolution he wrote to the Queen to give her leave to communicate it to her son ; and upon her doing so she told him that it would cer tainly be proper for him to take leave of a mistress whom he kept in so open a manner as he did Miss Vane.12 The Prince's attachment to Lady Archibald Ha milton13 growing every day stronger than the other, made him listen to this advice from the Queen with more willingness than compliance with her counsel, or decency in his own conduct, without this additional motive, would in all probability have produced. Lady Archibald Hamilton was not young, had never been very pretty, and had lost at least as much of that small share of beauty she once possessed as it is usual for women to do at five-and- thirty, after being the mo ther of ten children. 12 See ante, vol. i. p. 329. 13 Lady Jane Hamilton, the daughter of the sixth Earl of Abercorn, married, in 1719, Lord Archibald, brother of the Duke of Hamilton, a naval officer. A note of Lord Hervey's states that he was "old enough to be his wife's father." VOL. II. C 18 LOED HEEVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XX. Her husband, Lord Archibald Hamilton, was a Scotchman, uncle to the Duke of Hamilton, a Lord of the Admiralty, and of so quiet, so secure, and contented a temper, that he seemed cut out to play the passive character his wife and the Prince had graciously allotted him. His wife was cunning, and had just sense enough to make that cunning useful to her, when employed to work on such a husband as Lord Archibald Hamilton, and such a lover as the Prince of Wales ; and succeeded perfectly well in flattering the first into an opinion of her virtue, and the latter into an admiration of her beauty and understanding, which she facilitated by the much easier task of making the Prince believe she was entirely captivated by his. But as there always are some people who doubt of the most notorious intrigues, as well as others who make no doubt of what only themselves believe, so there were some few who thought, or, I rather believe, affected to think, that this commerce between Lady Archibald Ha milton and the Prince was merely platonic, though stronger symptoms of an affaire faite never appeared on any pair than were to be seen between this couple. He saw her often at her own house, where he seemed as welcome to the master as the mistress ; he met her often, too, at her sister's ; walked with her day after day for hours together tete-a-tSte in a morning in St. James's Park; and whenever she was at the drawing-room (which was pretty frequently), his behaviour was so re markable that his nose and her ear were inseparable, whilst, without discontinuing, he would talk to her as if he had rather been relating than conversing, from the 1735. MISS VANE. 19 time he came into the room to the moment he left it, and then seemed to be rather interrupted than to have finished. Her jealousy of Miss Vane made her not satisfied with the Prince's only taking a public leave of her ; she feared, notwithstanding that step was taken to amuse the world, and as a necessary preliminary to his future mar riage, that his Royal Highness would still continue to see her in private, and perhaps with more pleasure when it would be with less liberty. The Prince, therefore, to please Lady Archibald Ha milton and quiet these apprehensions, not only sent Lord Baltimore,14 one of his Lords of the Bedchamber, to Miss Vane to say how necessary it was, on his marriage being now so near concluded, for him to take his leave of her, but ordered Lord Baltimore to propose to her, as the most proper manner of parting both for him and her, that she should go immediately for two or three years into Hol land or France, or any other place she would choose out of England. And in case Miss Vane did not seem to relish this proposal, Lord Baltimore was ordered to add, that though the Prince would for her life continue the 1 600?. a-year he had allowed her ever since she left the Court in case she complied with this proposal, that he would not allow her one farthing if she rejected it. As for her son, Lord Baltimore was to tell her that the Prince would take care of his education here in Eng land ; and his Lordship was fully instructed not only to press the journey on Miss Vane in point of interest, but 4 Charles Calvert, sixth Lord Baltimore, born in 1699, died in 1751, a month after tho Prince, in whose service and political confidence he had continued till his Royal Highness's death. c 2 20 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XX. to represent to her how much more agreeable it would certainly be for her to go out of the way for some time, and avoid seeing and hearing all the little malicious triumphs of those who would not fail to repay themselves on this occasion for all that their envy had made them suffer on her account during her prosperity and her pos session of the Prince's favour. When Lord Baltimore brought this proposal to Miss Vane, she was extremely shocked at it, refused to send an answer by Lord Baltimore, and wrote to Lord Her vey to come and advise with her in an affair of the utmost importance. * * * 15 The manner of the reconciliation [between Miss Vane and Lord Hervey] was from their seeing one another in public places, and there mutually dis covering that both had a mind to forget their past enmity and renew their past endearments — till from ogling they came to messages ; from messages to letters ; from letters to appointments; and from appointments to all the familiarity in which they had formerly lived: for when two people have a mutual inclination to meet, I never knew any objection that might arise in their own minds prevent their aiming at it, or any foreign obstacle hinder their accomplishing it. She told Lord Hervey that the condition of leav ing England was one which she was resolved not to comply with, though she was entirely at a loss how she should go about to avoid it. She said she had no friend left about the Prince (now she had is There is here a ,chasm in the MS., which evidently related to Lord Hervey's intrigue and subsequent quarrel and final reconciliation with Miss Vane. See ante, vol. i. p. 329. 1735. MISS VANE'S LETTER TO THE PRINCE. 21 found out Lord Baltimore to be no longer such) who had common sense, and was resolved therefore to send her answer to the Prince in writing ; what that answer must be she said she depended entirely on Lord Hervey to determine, and begged him therefore to write her a copy of such a letter as he thought it proper on this occasion she should send. Lord Hervey, who had a mind to keep Miss Vane in England, and was not a little pleased to have an op portunity of fretting the Prince, undertook this commis sion very willingly, and wrote immediately the following copy of the letter she was to send : — " Considering the manner in which I have lived with your Royal Highness, I think I might, without being thought very im pertinent, begin this letter with complaining that, when you have anything to say to me, your Royal Highness should think an ambassador necessary to go between us ; and though a harsh or unkind thing, I must own, would always be little consistent with what I think I have deserved from your Royal Highness, yet it would sure want no such additional weight as the letting another convey it, and consequently be acquainted with the little regard or concern you retain for me. " That your Royal Highness is going to be married I may repine at ; but I appeal to you if ever I was so unreasonable as to reproach you with it, or to imagine that my interest was to be put in competition with the interest of England, or that what was right for your affairs was not to outweigh every consideration of mine. " But that your Royal Highness should break with me in the most shocking way ; that you should not be content to abandon me without banishing me, nor take yourself from me without driving me from every other friend, relation, and ac quaintance, and depriving me of those comforts at a time when I shall want them most, is sure an aggravation to my bad fortune and unhappy situation which you are as much in the wrong to ask me as I should be myself to comply with. 22 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XX. " Your Royal Highness need not be put in mind who I am, nor from whence you took me : that I acted not like what I was born, others may reproach me ; but if you took me from happiness and brought me to misery, that I might reproach you : that I have long lost your heart I have long seen and long mourned : to gain it, or rather to reward the gift you made me of it, I sacrificed my time, my youth, my character, the world, my family, and everything that a woman can sacrifice to a man she loves : how little I considered my interest, you must know by my never naming my interest to you when I made this sacrifice, and by my trusting to your honour when I showed so little regard, when put in balance with my love, to my own. I have resigned everything for your sake but my life ; and, had you loved me still, I would have risked even that too to please you ; but as it is, I cannot think in my state of health of going out of England, far from all friends and all physicians I can trust, and of whom I stand in so much need. My child is the only consolation I have left. I cannot leave him, nor shall anything but death ever make me quit the country he is in. Your Royal Highness may do with me what you please ; but a Prince who is one day to rule this country will sure, for his own sake, never show he will make use of power to distress un deservedly ; and that one who has put herself without conditions into his hands has the hardest terms imposed upon her, though she never in her life did one action that deserved anything but your favour, your compassion, and your friendship ; and it is for these reasons I doubt not but your Royal Highness will on this occasion, for your own sake if not for mine, do everything that will hinder you from being blamed and me from being more miserable than the reflection of what is past must neces sarily make one who has known what it was to be happy, and can never expect to taste that 16 again. " I know how vain it would be to think reproaches could ever regain a heart which kindness could not keep, and for that reason I will add nothing more than to assure your Royal High ness I shall ever wish you health, prosperity, and happiness, and shall ever be, with unalterable affection," &c. Word illegible. 1735. MISS VANE'S LETTER TO THE PRINCE. 23 Miss Vane was extremely pleased with every part of this letter except that which professed any regard for his Royal Highness, and would fain have had those expressions more of a piece with the rest. She would also have carried this letter away with her to have copied it at home, but Lord Hervey insisted on its not going out of his lodgings in his handwriting, and, notwithstanding all the opposition she made to it, and her reproaches to him for his distrusting her conduct on an occasion where she was as much or more con cerned than he to keep the secret, he made her write it out in her own hand before he let her stir out of the lodgings. And that her brother Harry Vane might not disavow her in this proceeding, Lord Hervey advised her, before she sent the letter to the Prince, to send a copy of it to her brother for his approbation. Harry Vane, knowing by the style ofthe letter that it was none of her own, and guessing it (as she told Lord Hervey) to be Mr. Pul teney's,17 readily gave in to her sending what he thought had been advised by one whose understanding and friendship for his sister he had so great an opinion of. Accordingly the letter was sent through one Vreid's18 hands, a valet-de-chambre of his Royal Highness who used always to convey all the letters that passed be tween them. As soon as the Prince received it he flew into a violent passion, said he knew the letter was not of her writing, and that he would be revenged not only 17 Harry Vane, afterwards first Earl of Darlington, was a close private and political friend of Pulteney's, by whom— on the great Walpole debacle in 1742 — he was made Vice-Treasurer of Ireland. is Mr. John Wrede, one of the Prince's pages. 24 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XX. of the villain who had given her this advice, but of her for following it: the letter was shown by him to his mother, his sisters, his servants, and everybody that he could get to read it, in order to justify the rigour with which he said he was determined to treat her if she did not produce the rascal that had put her upon taking this step. On the other hand, Miss Vane showed the letter to all her friends, and told the story of Lord Bal timore's embassy that occasioned it ; and Lord Hervey had the secret satisfaction of exposing and fretting the Prince ; whilst everybody who pretended the least re gard for Miss Vane, or for Mr. Pulteney, who was generally thought the author, justified that which they would have been the first people to condemn, had they known out of what quiver this arrow had been shot. Miss Vane stuck to it that she had written every word of the letter herself, and justified the substance of it on the provocation of Lord Baltimore's having told her from the Prince, that, if she would not live abroad, she might for him starve in England. The Prince, finding everybody condemned the bru tality of this rough message, determined to deny he had ever sent it ; and Lord Baltimore not being much fonder of the credit of delivering it, the Prince and he agreed together to say the proposal was made to her as a thing his Royal Highness thought would be agreeable to her, from what Miss Janssen,19 sister to Lord Balti more's wife (a very dexterous lady), had reported from a conference she had had with Miss Vane on this subject, in which she had been commissioned to feel Miss Vane's pulse on this point, and, if she could, to lead her to it. 19 Daughter of Sir Theodore Janssen, Bart. 1735. MISS VANE'S SECOND LETTER. 25 As the Prince therefore denied the having sent, and Lord Baltimore the having delivered, the rough mes sage Miss Vane said she had received, and that she could make no proof of it, as she had been alone with Lord Baltimore when this interview happened, her brother, Mr. Pulteney, Mr. Mansel, and all those who pretended any remains of friendship for her, advised her to write a second letter to the Prince, in which she should only justify the former on the supposition of her having understood Lord Baltimore in the manner I have already related. She had recourse for the second letter to the same hand that worked the first, and these were the contents of it:— " It is so easy to remove the appearance of a fault when one is conscious of not meaning to commit one, that I make no doubt but your Royal Highness will think me thoroughly justified for writing my last letter when I tell you nothing could have in duced me to such an expostulation but the harsh message which I thought I had received by your Royal Highness's order through Lord Baltimore. " In that confusion, shame, and vexation, I wrote just what I felt, but resolved (how ill I might execute my resolution I know not) to urge my own request, and to represent what I thought your ill usage of me, in the most respectful terms that such complaints would admit of : if I said anything I ought not to say, or in a manner I ought not to say it, I am heartily sorry, and ask your pardon, and appeal now to your justice to tell me whether I ever did or said anything in my life that was not consistent with what I owed to you, though I am very ready to own I have for your sake done things very inconsistent with what I owed to myself. " That I received such a message by Lord Baltimore is certain ; whether he was authorised to deliver it I know not ; it is certain, too, that all the messages I ever sent by him were answers to 26 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XX. others, and not any that came originally from me. It is hard your Royal Highness will not allow me an opportunity to clear my self; but, deal with me as you please, I shall ever pray for your happiness and prosperity, even whilst I reflect it is at least to your love, if not to your hate, that I owe the loss of my own. I am, with the greatest respect and truth," &c. In consequence of all these transactions, it was at last settled that she should have her house in Grosvenor Street for ever, 1600/. a-year for life, that her son should not be taken from her, and that she should be at her liberty to live where she pleased. But soon after this, her cholics, loss of appetite, and general decay growing fast upon her, she was advised to go to Bath, where, in about two months, she finished a life20 that, at her going to Bath, she said was, from the circumstances she was now in, likely to prove the hap piest she had ever had. Her son, who was left with her brother when she went to Bath, died about a week before her of con vulsion fits. The Queen and the Princess Caroline told Lord Hervey they thought the Prince more afflicted for the loss of this child than they had ever seen him on any occasion, or thought him capable of being. 20 March 11, 1736. 1735. KING RETURNS FROM HANOVER. 27 CHAPTER XXI. The King returns from Hanover — Dissatisfied with England and every body — His increasing ill-humour — and rudeness to the Queen — Her patience and management — Madame de Walmoden — The King had pro mised her to return to Hanover — Walpole objects. But to go back to the King. The time being now come that his Majesty was obliged to undergo the mortifi cation of returning to his British dominions, in order to keep his birthday there, he at last sent the long-expected orders for the yachts ; and hearing they were at Helvoet- sluys, he set out from Hanover on Wednesday morning, the 22nd of October, and arrived at Kensington the Sunday following, before dinner, just as the Queen re turned from chapel. Her Majesty, attended by all the Court, met him at the great gate as he alighted from his coach. She kissed his hand before she presumed to touch his lips, mutual embraces followed, and this kissing ceremony at the door of the coach ended as it began, by her Majesty again gluing her mouth to the King's hand, which he was graciously pleased to offer afterwards to lead her up stairs. This was a sort of triennial honour bestowed upon the Queen by his Majesty, for I never knew him confer it on any other occasion than a return from Hanover.1 As soon as they were got up stairs, they went directly into the Queen's i May it not have been in consideration of her Majesty's dignity of Regent ? 28 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXI. gallery, where the King ordered all the company, both men and women, to be let in and presented to him. He stayed there near half an hour, talked, to_mpst people but the Queen, and it was by her order, not his, that the company was at last dismissed. But by unreasonably hurrying himself to arrive in England, though he was as unreasonably sorry to return thither at all, he had made himself extremely ill ; for whilst he travelled in this violent manner, day and night, and almost without any rest, only for the^pleasure of bragging how quick he moved, he had so heated his blood that he was feverish for several days after he re turned ; and by sitting so long in his coach had brought upon himself such a severe fit of the piles, to which he was extremely subject, that he was in great pain, lost a great quantity of blood, and had so violent an inflam mation and swelling attending this complaint, that for a fortnight together his surgeon was forced to attend him with alternate applications of lancets and fomentations. This disorder was kept a great secret to all the Court, but the consequences of it were no secret. Everybody shared the warm and frequent sallies of his abominable temper, and everybody imputed them to what was the joint though not the sole cause of these eruptions, which was the affliction he felt for the change of a German life to an English one, with the society of a stale wife instead of a new mistress ; and, what grated more than all the rest, the transition to limited, from unHmftj^jDower. Whilst the late King lived, everybody imagined this Prince loved England and hated Germany ; but from the time of his first journey, after he was King, to Hanover, people began to find, if they had not been 1735. KING DISSATISFIED WITH ENGLAND. 29 deceived in their former opinion, at least they would be so in their expectations ; and that his thoughts, what ever they might have been, were no longer turned either with contempt or dislike to his Electoral do minions. But after this last journey Hanover had so completed the conquest of his affections, that there was nothing English ever commended in his presence that he did not always show, or pretend to show, was sur passed by something of the same kind in Germany. No English or even French cook could dress a dinner ; no English confectioner set out a dessert ; no English player could act ; no English coachman could drive, or English jockey ride ; nor were any English horses fit to be drove or fit to be ridden ; no Englishman knew how to come into a room, nor any Englishwoman how to dress herself; nor were there any diversions in England, public or private ; nor any man or woman in England whose conversation was to be borne — the one, as he said, talking of nothing but their dull politics, and the others of nothing but their ugly clothes. Whereas at Hanover all these things were in the utmost perfection : the men were patterns of politeness, bravery, and gal lantry ; the women of beauty, wit, and entertainment ; his troops there were the bravest in the world, his coun sellors the wisest, his manufacturers the most ingenious, his subjects the happiest; and at Hanover, in short, plenty reigned, magnificence resided, arts flourished, diversions abounded, riches flowed, and everything was in the utmost perfection that contributes to make a prince great or a people blessed. Forced from that magnificent delightful dwelling to return again to this mean dull island, it was no wonder, since these were his notions of them, that he felt as 30 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXI. great a change in his humour as in his enjoyments ; and that frowns should take the place of smiles upon his countenance, when regret had taken that of pleasure in his heart. But as everybody who came near him, in any calling (except just that of a common courtier in his public circle at the levee or the drawing-room), had some share of his bilious temper at this time, so what everybody knew and everybody felt, everybody talked of and everybody confessed ; for, by a practice very un common in courts, people, instead of hiding with shame the snubs they received from their master, bragged of them in mirth; and, by finding these distinctions so general, revealed in sport those affronts which, had they been more particular, the objects of them would have concealed in sorrow. a In truth he hated the English, looked upon them all as king-killers and republicans, grudged them their riches as well as their liberty, thought them all over paid, and said to Lady Sundon3 one day as she was waiting at dinner, just after he returned from Germany, that he was forced to distribute his favours here very differently from the manner in which he bestowed them 2 There is a discrepancy between this account of the King's temper and that given in Lord Hervey's letter to Mr. Walpole, then in Holland, a few days after the King's arrival : — " I know not in what temper you found his Majesty at the other side of the water, but since he came hither we think he seems as well pleased as if he had left nothing that pleased him elsewhere." — Coxe, iii. 298. There seems no sufficient reason why Lord Hervey should have endeavoured, in a mere private letter, to mystify Walpole ; unless it was by the Queen's commands, who was very anxious to conceal the King's ill-humour and its cause. s It is said in the magazines of the day that Lady Sundon succeeded Lady Suffolk as Mistress ofthe Robes in May, 1735, and it seems probable that the Irish peerage was conferred on her husband about that time in con templation of that appointment ; but I doubt whether it was ever actually conferred on her, as I find her in the " Present State " for 1736 as still Bed chamber-woman, and in that rank she was pensioned after the Queen's death. 1735. QUEEN'S OPINIONS ON GOVERNMENT. 31 at Hanover ; that there he rewarded people for doing their duty and serving him well, but that here he was obliged to enrich people for being rascals, and buy them not to cut his throat. The Queen did not always think in a different style of the English, though she kept her thoughts more to herself than the King, as being more prudent, more sensible, and more mistress of her passions ; yet even she could not entirely disguise these sentiments to the observation of those who were perpetually about her, and put her upon subjects that betrayed her into reveal ing them. I have heard her at different times speak with great indignation against assertors ofthe people's rights; have heard her call the King, not without some despite, the humble servant of the Parliament — the pensioner of his people — a puppet of sovereignty, that was forced to go to them for every shilling he wanted, that was obliged to court those who were always abusing him, and could do nothing of himself. And once added, that a good deal of that liberty that made them so insolent, if she could do it, should be much abridged ; nor was it possi ble for the best prince in the world to be very solicitous to procure benefits for subjects that never cared to trust him. At other times she was more upon her guard : I have heard her say she wondered how the English could imagine that any sensible prince would take away their liberty if he could. " Mon Dieu I " she cried, " what a figure would this poor island make in Europe if it were not for its government ! It is its excellent free government that makes all its inhabitants industrious, as they know that what they get nobody can take from 32 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXI. them ; it is its free government, too, that makes foreigners send their money hither, because they know it is secure, and that the prince cannot touch it : and since it is its freedom to which this kingdom owes everything that makes it great, what prince, who had his senses, and knew that his own greatness depended on the greatness of the country over which he reigned, would wish to take away what made both him and them considerable ? I had as lief," added she, " be Elector of Hanover as King of England, if the government was the same. Qui diable that had anything else, would take you all, or think you worth having, if you had not your liberties ? Your island might be a very pretty thing in that case for Bridgeman and Kent 4 to cut out into gardens ; but, for the figure it would make in Europe, it would be of no more consequence here in the West than Madagascar is in the East : and for this reason — as impudent and as insolent as you all are with your troublesome liberty — your princes, if they are sensible, will rather bear with your impertinences than cure them — a way that would lessen their influence in Europe full as much as it would increase their power at home." But, at the very moment her Majesty was uttering these truths, the love of rule, the thirst of dominion, and the jealousy of prerogative were so strongly im planted in her — the German and the Queen so rooted in her mind — that the King himself had not more at heart all the trappings and pageantry of sovereignty than she the essential parts of it ; nor could she more * Kent and Bridgeman were the first inventors and practitioners of land scape-gardening. See Walpole's ' Essay on Modern Gardening.' 1735. KING'S ILL-TEMPER. 33 easily brook any checks to the authority of the Crown than he any contradiction to his opinion. His Majesty stayed but two days after his arrival at Kensington, and then removed to London, to keep his birthday and settle there for the winter ; but during this short stay at Kensington most of the inhabitants of the Court spoke of his behaviour to the Queen as quite different from what it had formerly been — some of them from seeing instances of the change, and others from fancying they saw them because they expected to see them. The accumulated trifles that contribute to forming opinions of this kind are much easier observed than related, and depend upon the combination of so many little circumstances that to try to describe them would be a task as tedious as imperfect. One example, how ever, I will give. In the absence of the King, the Queen had taken several very bad pictures out of the great drawing-room at Kensington, and put very good ones in their places : the King, affecting, for the sake of contradiction, to dislike this change, or, from his ex treme ignorance in painting, really disapproving it, told Lord Hervey, as Vice-Chamberlain, that he would have every new picture taken away, and every old one replaced. Lord Hervey, who had a mind to make his court to the Queen by opposing this order, asked if his Majesty would not give leave for the two Vandykes, at least, on each side of the chimney to remain, instead of those two sign-posts, done by nobody knew who,. Jhat had been removed to make way for them. To which the King answered, " My Lord, I have a great respect for your taste in what you understand, but in pictures I VOL. II. d 34 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXI. beg leave to follow my own : I suppose you assisted the Queen with your fine advice when she was pulling my house to pieces and spoiling all my furniture : thank God, at least she has left the walls standing ! As for the Vandykes, I do not care whether they are changed or no ; but for the picture with the dirty frame over the door, and the three nasty little children, I will have them taken away, and the old v ones restored; I will have it done too to-morrow morning before I go to London, or else I know it will not be done at all." "Would your Majesty," said Lord Hervey, "have the gigantic fat Venus restored too ? " " Yes, my Lord ; I am not so nice as your Lordship. I like my fat Venus much better than anything you have given me instead of her." Lord Hervey thought, though he did not dare to say, that, if his Majesty had liked his fat Venus as well as he used to do, there would have been none of these disputations. However, finding his jokes on this occasion were as little tasted as his reasonings ap proved, and that the King, as usual, grew more warm and more peremptory on everything that was said to cool and alter him, his Lordship was forced to make a serious bow ; and though he knew the fat Venus was at Windsor, some of the other pictures at Hampton Court, and all the frames of the removed pictures cut or enlarged to fit their successors, he assured his Majesty that everything should be done without fail, next morn ing, just as he had ordered. Lord Hervey told the Queen, next morning at break fast, what had passed the night before, who affected to laugh, but was a good deal displeased, and more ashamed. She said, the King, to be sure, was master 1735. KING'S CHANGE OP TEMPER. 35 of his own furniture ; and asked Lord Hervey if the pictures were changed ; who told her No, and why it was impossible they should. She charged him not to tell the King why, but to find out some other reason. Whilst they were speaking the King came in, but, by good luck, said not one word of the pictures: his Majesty stayed about five minutes in the gallery; snubbed the Queen, who was drinking chocolate, for being always stuffing ; the Princess Emily for not hear ing him ; the Princess Caroline for being grown fat ; the Duke [of Cumberland] for standing awkwardly ; Lord Hervey for not knowing what relation the Prince of Sultzbach was to the Elector Palatine: and then carried the Queen to walk, and be resnubbed, in the garden. The pictures were altered according to the King's direction soon after; and the excuse Lord Hervey made for their not being done that morning was the man's being out of the way who was always em ployed ou those occasions. When Lord Hervey told Sir Robert Walpole how ill it went with the Queen, Sir Robert said it was impos sible, since the King had tasted better things, it should be otherwise ; and that he had told the Queen she must not expect, after thirty years' acquaintance, to have the same influence that she had formerly ; that three-and- fifty and three-and-twenty could no more resemble one another in their effects than in their looks ; and that, if he might advise, she should no longer depend upon her person, but her head, for her influence, as the one would now be of little use to her, and the other could never fail her. He added another piece of advice to this, which I believe was as little tasted as that which intro- d2 36 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXI. duced it. It was to send for Lady Tankerville,5 a handsome, good-natured, simple woman (to whom the King had formerly been coquet), out of the country, and place her every evening at commerce or quadrille in the King's way. He told the Queen it was impos sible the King should long bear to pass his evenings with his own daughters after having tasted the sweets of passing them with other people's, and that, if the King would have somebody else, it would be better to have that somebody chosen by her than by him ; that Lady Tankerville was a very safe fool, and would give the King some amusement without giving her Majesty any trouble. Lady Deloraine,6 who was very handsome, and the only woman that ever played with him in his daughters' apartment, Sir Robert said was a very dan gerous one ; a weak head, a pretty face, a lying tongue, and a false heart making always sad work with the smallest degree of power or interest to help them for ward ; and that some degree of power or interest must always follow frequent opportunities given to a very coquette pretty woman with a very coquet idle man, 5 The unconscious object of this strange recommendation was Camilla Colville, wife of Charles second Earl of Tankerville. 6 Mary Howard, of the Suffolk family, was born in 1700, had been one of the Princess's maids of honour, and was now the widow of Henry Scott, first Earl of Deloraine, and governess to the younger Princesses. Lady Deloraine is supposed to have been the Delia against whom Pope has immortalized an imputation of poison — " Slander or poison dread from Delia's rage." The person suspected to have been poisoned was a Miss M'Kenzie ; the grounds of the suspicion I have not discovered, but it was very prevalent. Lady Deloraine survived her lord (who was much her senior), and re-mar ried William Wyndham, Esq., of Carsham, and she died in 1744. 1735. WALPOLE'S INDISCREET JESTS. 37 especially without a rival to disturb or share with her. Lord Hervey asked Sir Robert Walpole how the Queen behaved upon his giving her this counsel, and was answered, that she laughed, took it extremely well, and seemed mightily pleased with all he said ; which I dare say was not the case. That the Queen laughed, I can easily believe ; but imagine the laugh was rather a sign of her having a mind to disguise her not being pleased, than any mark that she was so ; and I have the more reason to believe so, as I have been an eye-witness to the manner in which she has received ill-understood jokes of that kind from the same hand, particularly one this year at the King's birthday, when, pointing to some jewels in her hair, she said, " / think I am ex tremely fine too, though" (alluding to the manner of putting them on) "un peu a la mode ; I think they have given me horns." Upon which Sir Robert Walpole burst out into a laugh, and said he believed Mrs. Purcel (the woman who usually dressed the Queen's head) was a wag. The Queen laughed on this occasion too ; but, if I know anything of her countenance, without being pleased, and not without blushing. This style of joking was every way so ill understood in Sir Robert Walpole, that it was astonishing one of his extreme penetration could be guilty of it once, but it was much more surprising that with all his observa tion he could be guilty of it twice.7 7 Swift's vituperative character of him, published in the Suff. Cor., ii. 32, hits this failing of Sir Robert's : — " By favour and fortune fastidiously bless'd, He was loud in his laugh, and was coarse in his jest; Achieving 38 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOTRS. Chap. XXI. For in the first place, when he told the Queen that the hold she used to have of the King by the charms of her person was quite lost, it was not true; it was weak ened but not broken, and the charms of a younger person pulled him strongly perhaps another way, but they had not dissolved her influence, though they ba lanced it. In the next place, had it been true that the Queen's person could no longer charm any man, I have a notion that would be a piece of intelligence which no woman would love or like any man the better for giving her. It is a sort of thing which every woman is so reluctant to believe, that she may feel the effects of it long without being convinced that those effects can proceed from no other cause ; and even after she is con vinced of it herself, she still hopes other people have not found it out, and cannot help disliking anybody who lets her know he sees what she wishes everybody should be blind to. In the midst of all this ill-humour shown by the King to the Queen at his first arrival, he made her a present of some fine coach-horses he brought from Ha nover, which those who knew not his manner of think ing, and his usual motives for making presents of this sort to the Queen, took to be a mark of his kindness ; but the truth was, he brought the horses over because he had a vanity in showing them here, and gave them to Achieving of nothing, still promising wonders, By dint of experience improving in blunders ; A jobber of stocks by reporting false news ; A prater at Court in the style of the stews." I find a copy of this character in Lord Hervey's letters, with the date of December, 1732, and an observation that it was a paraphrase of one of Cardinal Fleury. 1735. KING'S ILL-HUMOUR. 39 the Queen as he had done Richmond, and several sets of horses before, which he used as much as she, that her Majesty, having the nominal property of them, might be at the expense of keeping them. When he came to London his humour was not much mended by the circumstances of an empty town, a very thin appearance on his birthday, and the reason some fools near his person gave for people not being more richly dressed, which was, that they kept their fine clothes for the Prince's wedding. Sir Robert Walpole being to go to Norfolk with a great deal of company for three weeks, as he used to do at this time of the year, to the hunting congress (as it was called), was an other circumstance which, as it contributed to thin the town, and particularly the levees and drawing- rooms, contributed too to sharpen his Majesty's temper, whose edge, whenever it was whetted, was seldom put in a sheath. Sir Robert Walpole was at present in such high favour on things going so well abroad, that he had only now and then his skin a little razed by this edge when it was sharpest, whilst others were sliced and scarified all over ; Sir Robert Walpole too, the King said (speak ing on this present epidemical rural madness8), he could forgive going into the country; his mind, his Majesty said, wanted relaxation, and his body exer cise; and it was very reasonable that he should have a month in the year to look after his own private business, when all the rest of the year he was doing that of the public and his Prince : but what the other "* Lord Hervey himself was a professed lover of the town against the country. 40 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXI. puppies and fools had to do to be running out of town now, when they had had the whole summer to do their silly business in, he could not conceive. When the Duke of Newcastle, among the rest, asked his leave to go into the country, his Majesty pretended to take it upon another foot ; and said, " With all my heart, my Lord, since Walpole is going, I wish you would all go and leave me a little in quiet, that I might not hear of a letter, or a despatch, or any business, till he comes back again." When the Duke of Grafton notified his design to go into the country, the King told him it was a pretty occupation for a man of quality, and at his age, to be spending all his time in tormenting a poor fox, that was generally a much better beast than any of those that pur sued him ; for the fox hurts no other animal but for his subsistence, whilst those brutes who hurt him did it only for the pleasure they took in hurting. The Duke of Grafton said he did it for his health. The King asked him why he could not as well walk or ride post for his health ; and said, if there was any pleasure in the chase, he was sure the Duke of Grafton could know nothing of it ; " for," added his Majesty, "with your great corps of twenty stone weight, no horse, I am sure, can carry you within hearing, much less within sight, of your hounds." This last dialogue I was present at. The Duke of Newcastle's I had from Sir Robert Walpole. Lord Harrington stayed in town, but fared not much better than those who went into the country ; for though he had lost himself with the Queen by his neglect of her, and the separate court he had long, but particu larly this last summer at Hanover, made to the King, 1735. LORD HARRINGTON. 41 yet he possessed not a much greater degree of favour with the one than the other, and the only difference be tween the manner in which they each of them felt to his Lordship was, that to the contempt they both had for his capacity the Queen joined a constant dislike from resentment, the King often a casual one from temper ; but as the King was not so solicitous to conceal that he was not gained by Lord Harrington's applica tions as the Queen was to disguise her being piqued at them, so this unskilful statesman and awkward courtier was perpetually snubbed by the King, who had only no regard for him, and perpetually caressed by the Queen, who had an utter aversion to him. For so great was the difference between the King's command of his temper and the Queen's, that, whereas he would often kick whilst he obliged, she would smile whilst she hated. Lord Harrington's behaviour to Sir Robert Walpole was to the full as extraordinary and as impolitic as his conduct to the Queen, and in one very material article much more so, for, as he owed the seals to Sir Robert Walpole, as much as any clerk in the Treasury owed his employment to him, so towards Sir Robert Walpole there was not only a want of policy in Lord Harring ton's conduct, but a want of gratitude. Most people thought, and I believe justly, that Lord Chesterfield, working on that self-sufficient pride of Lord Harrington's which made him think himself the fittest man in this kingdom for a First Minister, had put him upon undertaking to make himself so by a separate in terest with the King : not that I imagine Lord Chester field, after the experience of his own disgrace, and my Lord Wilmington's miscarriage, Lord Townshend's re- 42 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXI. moval, and Lady Suffolk's fall,9 thought this scheme was practicable; but his Lordship, having a greater desire to annoy and give trouble to those he hated, though but for a month, than he had to avoid the ruin of his best friends for ever, and thinking that this might give the Queen and Sir Robert Walpole some disturb ance, though he could not flatter himself it would do them any essential hurt, set Lord Harrington on to this attack, though he knew the mines that were ready to spring under his friend and kinsman's feet, and the great probability there was of his being blown up. Two instances of Lord Harrington's injudicious pride and simple conduct with regard to Sir Robert Walpole I cannot help relating just as Sir Robert the other day related them to me : the one was his telling Sir Robert Walpole he intended to ask the King for an earldom, and desiring, not Sir Robert's interest to obtain it, but that Sir Robert would speak of it to the King as a thing that ought to be done for him : the other was desiring Sir Robert Walpole to procure him a reversional grant for life of Richmond Park ; though Sir Robert, with re gard to the first, told his Lordship that the King's reluctance to make promotions of this sort had pre vented him hitherto asking for an earldom for his own son, and, as an earldom for his family was a thing he owned he wished to procure, so the first demand of this kind that he would make to his Majesty, should cer tainly be for a Walpole ; and as to Richmond Park, Sir 9 It is clear, from the Suffolk Correspondence, that (contrary to Horace Walpole's opinion, which had before passed current) Lord Chesterfield was fully aware of the Queen's predominant power, and had not put any trust in Mrs. Howard's. 1735. LORD HARRINGTON. 43 Robert Walpole said, he had it himself only during pleasure, and that it would be very odd for him to ask a thing of the Crown in reversion for another in a more ample manner than he possessed it himself; and could not help saying, that to ask it at all for another, all cir cumstances considered, would not be very agreeable to him, nor indeed to have it granted. Lord Harrington, notwithstanding his first onset was parried in this manner, pursued his demands, and urged many good reasons (as he thought) to prove the fitness of them ; and had the imprudence, in riding about the park (near which he had a house 10), to talk always to the keepers of the alterations he intended (when he should be master of it) to make there ; which discourses the keepers never failed to repeat, at least as strongly as they were first spoken, in mockery to Sir Robert. But to return to the palace. The King, who never used to be civil to the Queen, even when he was kind, was now abominably and perpetually so harsh and rough, that she could never speak one word uncontradicted, nor do any one act unreproved ; and though the Queen, whilst she knew the King's heart was as warm to her as his temper, could, for the sake of the agreeable advan tages she reaped from the one, support and forgive the irksome inconveniences she was exposed to from the other, yet now the case was altered, for, as his heart grew cooler and his temper warmer, so her sufferings were increased, and the usual recompense for them lessened. In the midst of this his disagreeable be- i° At the bottom of the hill in Petersham, from which, when he got the earldom, he took his viscounty. 44 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXI. haviour towards her, she one morning, smiling, to con ceal her real concern, and to avoid seriously reproaching him, said to him, just as he was going out of her apart ment to his own side, that, as Sir Robert Walpole had always been her friend, and that he was the single person in the Court who seemed at present in any degree of favour with his Majesty, she would apply to him to speak a word in her behalf, and try if he could get the rigour of her present treatment a little softened. The King was so far from taking or returning this joke, that, with eyes which always swelled and widened with eagerness and grew as red as other people's cheeks, when he was angry, he said he did not know what she meant by these complaints, nor what rigour he had exercised towards her. " I am very ill, and I believe nobody is in the same good humour sick as well ; and in the next place, if I was well, do you think I should not feel and show some uneasiness for having left a place where I was pleased and happy all day long, and being come to one where I am as inces santly crossed and plagued?" To which the Queen, changing the tone of voice in which she had begun this expostulation, and answering in his own, asked him, if he was so happy at Hanover, why he did not stay there ; "I see no reason," she said, " that made your coming to England necessary ; you might have continued there, without coming to torment yourself and us : since your pleasure did not call you, I am sure your business did not, for we could have done that just as well without you as you could have pleased yourself without us." Upon which the King, in a great huff, trembling with passion, and without one word in reply, went out of the room. 1735. ROYAL CONVERSATIONS. 45 I relate this conversation just as Sir Robert Walpole told it to me, and as he said the Queen told it to him ; but I am apt to believe either he embellished in re peating this incident, or she bragged in reporting it : at least I am sure the smartness of her last speech, thus represented, was very little of a piece with the rest of her £onduct during these turbulent times, since when ever, in public or private, I have seen her with the King, she has always behaved with the obsequiousness of the most patient slave to the most intemperate master ; returned every injury with flattery, and every contra diction with acquiescences ; crouched when he spurned, and, with the implicit resignation of the most rigid Christian, whenever he smote one cheek turned the other. I cannot resist giving here, by way of specimen, an account of one conversation between her and him and Lord Hervey, whilst the circumstances of it are yet fresh in my memory. About nine o'clock every night the King used to re turn to the Queen's apartment from that of his daughters, where, from the time of Lady Suffolk's disgrace, he used to pass those evenings he did not go to the opera or play at quadrille — constraining them, tiring himself, and talking a little indecently to Lady Deloraine, who was always ofthe party. At his return to the Queen's side the Queen used often to send for Lord Hervey to entertain them till they retired, which was generally at eleven. One even ing among the rest, as soon as Lord Hervey came into the room, the Queen, who was knotting whilst the King walked backwards and forwards, began jocosely to attack 46 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXI. Lord Hervey upon an answer just published to a book11 of his friend Bishop Hoadley's on the Sacrament, in which the Bishop was very ill treated ; but before she had uttered half what she had a mind to say, the King in terrupted her, and told her she always loved talking of such nonsense and things she knew nothing of; adding, that, if it were not for such foolish people loving to talk of those things when they were written, the fools who wrote upon them would never think of publishing their nonsense, and disturbing the Government with imperti nent disputes that nobody of any sense ever troubled himself about. The Queen bowed, and said, " Sir, I only did it to let Lord Hervey know that his friend's book had not met with that general approbation he had pretended." "A pretty fellow for a friend!" said the King, turning to Lord Hervey. " Pray what is it that charms you in him ? His pretty limping gait" (and then he acted the Bishop's lameness), " or his nasty stinking breath ? — phaugh ! — or his silly laugh, when he grins in your face for nothing, and shows his nasty rotten teeth ? Or is it his great honesty that charms your Lordship ? — his asking a thing of me for one man, and, when he 11 ' A plain Account of the Nature and End of the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper.' In a periodical criticism of the time the objections to this work are thus shortly stated : — " The world has been lately alarmed with a treatise concerning the nature and end of the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, in which that sublime ordinance of Christianity is debased by a very low and jejune interpretation." — Weekly Mis., 12th July, 1735. It produced an answer from Dr. Brett, probably that referred to in the text. It may have been Lord Hervey's conversation with the Queen that made him so anxious, as he seems by his letters to have been, to ascertain the general opinion as to Hoadley's book, and especially to press Dr. Mid dleton for his ; and Middleton having sent him some Remarks, he says (9th August), " I have communicated them to a few, and very few chosen friends," — probably the Queen and Princess Caroline. 1735. BISHOP HOADLEY. 47 came to have it in his own power to bestow, refusing the Queen to give it to the very man for whom he had asked it ? Or do you admire his conscience that makes him now put out a book that, till he was Bishop of Winchester, for fear his conscience might hurt his pre ferment, he kept locked up in his chest ? Is his con science so much improved beyond what it was when he was Bishop of Bangor, or Hereford, or Salisbury 12 (for this book, I hear, was written so long ago) ? or was it that he would not risk losing a shilling a-year more whilst there was anything better to be got than what he had? My Lord, I am very sorry you choose your friends so ill ; but I cannot help saying, if the Bishop of Winchester is your friend, you have a great puppy and a very dull fellow and a great rascal for your friend. It is a very pretty thing for such scoundrels, when they are raised by favour so much above their desert, to be talking and writing their stuff, to give trouble to the Government that has showed them that favour; and very modest in a canting hypocritical knave to be crying, ' The kingdom of Christ is not of this world,' at the same time that he, as Christ's ambassador, re ceives 6000?. or 7000/. a-year. But he is just the same thing in the Church that he is in the Government, and as ready to receive the best pay for preaching the Bible, though he does not believe a word of it, as he is to take 1B Even a not unfavourable biographer is forced to put the same ques tion that the King did. " So far, indeed, was Hoadly from adhering strictly to the doctrines of the Church, that it is a little to be wondered at on what principles he continued throughout life to profess conformity." — Biog. Diet. Archbishop Seeker one day at his table, when the Monthly Reviewers were said by one of the company to be Christians, replied if they were, it was certainly " secundum usum Winton" — after the manner of Winchester ! 48 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXI. favours from the Crown, though, by his republican spirit and doctrine, he would be glad to abolish its power." During the whole time the King was speaking, the Queen, by smiling and nodding in proper places, en deavoured all she could, but in vain, to make her court by seeming to approve everything he said ; and well, indeed, might she approve it, for it was almost word for word what she had said to Lord Hervey on this subject in the summer when the book first came out, which Lord Hervey, to flatter her, whilst she flattered the King, gave her to understand he remembered, by telling her very emphatically, when she asked him what he had to say to all this, " Your Majesty knows already all I have to say on this subject ;" and then added (to sweeten the King), " but how partial soever I may be to my friend, I assure your Majesty I am not so partial to myself as to imagine, let his cause be ever so good, that I should be able to plead it with success against the very able counsel that I have just now heard draw up the charge on the other side." He then, in order to turn the conversation, told the King that he had that day been with a Bishop of a very different stamp, who would never, he dared to answer for him, disturb his Majesty's Government with writing. (The man he meant was one Wilcocks,13 Bishop of Ro chester, the dullest branch of episcopacy, and the most ignorant piece of orthodoxy, in the whole kingdom.) "As soon," continued Lord Hervey, "as Lord Wil is Joseph Wilcocks, Prebendary of Westminster, Bishop of Gloucester, 1721, and of Rochester, 1731, in which see he lived twenty-five years. The biographies give a more favourable account of his learning and taste. 1735. MERLIN'S CAVE. 49 mington, Lord Chancellor, and I, had to-day discharged your Majesty's commission in proroguing the Parlia ment, my Lord of Rochester carried us to Westminster Abbey to show us a pair of old brass gates to Henry VII.'s Chapel, which were formerly overrun with rust and turned quite black, but are now new-cleaned, as bright as when they were first made, and the finest things of the kind I ever saw in my life." Whilst Lord Hervey was going on with a particular detail and encomium on these gates — the Queen asking many questions about them, and seeming extremely pleased with the description — the King stopped the conversa tion short by saying, " My Lord, you are always putting some of these fine things in the Queen's head, and then I am to be plagued with a thousand plans and work men." Then turning to the Queen, he said, " I suppose I shall see a pair of these gates to Merlin's Cave, to complete your nonsense there." (This Merlin's Cave was a little building so christened, which the Queen had lately finished at Richmond.14) The Queen smiled, and said Merlin's Cave was complete already ; and Lord Hervey, to remove the King's fears of this expense, said that it was a sort of work that if his Majesty would give all the money in his exchequer he could not have now. "Apropos," said the Queen, " I hear the Crafts- 14 Merlin's Cave was a grotto in Richmond Gardens, in which the Queen had placed figures of Merlin, and some allegorical votaries ofthe magician, copied from persons of her Court, with a collection of books, of which the celebrated Stephen Duck was appointed a librarian. It was begun in May or June, 1735, and finished about the middle of August ; but seems by what we read of it to have deserved the King"s censure of being " silly stuff." The abusive Craftsman was No. 491, 13th September, 1735, in which, after some banter on the bad taste of the Queen, there is a long and some what dull attempt at pleasantry on Sir Robert. VOL. II. E 50 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXI. man has abused Merlin's Cave." " I am very glad of it," interrupted the King : " you deserve to be abused for such childish silly stuff, and it is the first time I ever knew the scoundrel in the right." This the Queen swallowed too, and began to talk on something else, till the conversation (I know not by what transition) fell on the ridiculous expense it was to people, by the money given to servants, to go and stay two or three days with their acquaintance in the country ; upon which the Queen said she had found it a pretty large expense this summer to visit her friends even in town. " That is your own fault," said the King ; "for my father, when he went to people's houses in town, never was fool enough to be giving away his money." The Queen pleaded for her excuse that she had only done what Lord Grantham had told her she was to do : to which his Majesty replied, that my Lord Grantham was a pretty director ; that she was always asking some fool or other what she was to do ; and that none but a fool would ask another fool's advice. The Queen then appealed to Lord Hervey whether it was not now as customary to give money in town as in the country. He knew it was not, but said it was. He added, too, that to be sure, were it not so for par ticulars, it would certainly be expected from her Majesty. To which the King said, " Then she may stay at home, as I do. You do not see me running into every puppy's house, to see his new chairs and stools. Nor is it for you," said he, addressing himself to the Queen, " to be running your nose everywhere, and trotting about the town to every fellow that will give you some bread and butter, like an old girl that loves to go abroad, no 1735. KING'S ILL HUMOUR. 51 matter where, or whether it be proper or no." The Queen coloured, and knotted a good deal faster during this speech than she did before, whilst the tears came into her eyes, but she said not one word. Lord Plervey (who cared not whether he provoked the King's wrath himself or not, provided he could have the merit to the Queen of diverting his Majesty's ill humour from her) said to the King, that, as the Queen loved pictures, there was no way of seeing a collection but by going to people's houses. "And what matter whether she sees a collection or not ?" rephed the King. " The matter is, Sir, that she satisfies her own curiosity, and obliges the people whose houses she honours with her presence." " Supposing," said the King, " she had a curiosity to see a tavern, would it be fit for her to satisfy it ? and yet the innkeeper would be very glad to see her." " If the innkeepers," replied Lord Hervey, " were used to be well received by her Majesty in her palace, I should think the Queen's seeing them at their own houses would give no additional scandal." The King, instead of answering Lord Hervey, then turned to the Queen, and, with a good deal of vehemence, poured out an unintelligible torrent of German, to which the Queen made not one word of reply, but knotted on till she tangled her thread, then snuffed the candles that stood on the table before her, and snuffed one of them out ; upon which the King, in English, began a new disserta tion upon her Majesty, and took her awkwardness for his text. The account of this conversation upon paper swells into so great a length that I shall enumerate no more particulars ; what I have said will suffice for a sample e 2 52 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXI. of this conference, and this conference for a sample of many more of the same kind. The Queen commended Lord Hervey's behaviour extremely to the Princess Caroline, who told him of it again ; and next morning, when the Queen saw him, she told him, smiling, " Our conversation last night was admirable ; but I think you looked at me once as if you thought I was ready to cry." Lord Hervey, who knew the Queen had no mind he should think she was much hurt at what had passed, said her Majesty did not use to interpret looks so ill ; and that he was so far from looking towards her and thinking her ready to cry, that he looked a contrary way, concluding her ready to laugh, and for fear, if he had met her eyes, that they might both have misbehaved. In short, at this time the Prince, who was not upon a foot of being spoken to by his father, was the only person who did not taste of his ill humour, and, though he was most of all in his displeasure, he least of all felt the effects of it. As the King hated, too, to talk of him almost as much as to talk to him, and disliked to have him the subject of his conversation almost as much as he did to have him the object of his sight, so he was as little apt to rail at him directly when he was absent as to snub him when he was present; though by a side wind sometimes he took the pleasure of laying it on him pretty thick. The Queen one night speaking of a man that had been ill-used and behaved ill in a fray at the playhouse, the King said, " I suppose nobody knows such a scoundrel." To which the Queen replied, his name was Bray, and that the King knew his father very well. " His father," said the King, " might be a 1735. KING'S SARCASMS ON THE PRINCE. 53 very worthy man, though his son is a puppy. One very often sees fathers and sons very little alike ; a wise father has very often a fool for his son. One sees a father a very brave man, and his son a scoundrel ; a father very honest, and his son a great knave ; a father a man of truth, and his son a great liar ; in short, a father that has all sorts of good qualities, and a son that is good for nothing." But his Majesty drew this picture of a father and a son with so much eagerness, compli menting the one so strongly, and inveighing against the other so vehemently, that the Queen (though a good deal mistress of her countenance), looking towards Lord Hervey, betrayed that she took the parallel as it was meant ; and the King himself, feeling he had pushed it too far, turned off the ridicule he thought he had in curred with quickness enough, by saying that some times it was just the reverse, and that very disagreeable fathers had very agreeable men for their sons. I sup pose in this case he thought of his own father, as in the other he did of his own son. One morning whilst he was dressing, before the com pany was let in, and when nobody but those who had the privilege of the bedchamber were present, he in dulged himself in another sally of this kind against his son, by saying, whilst he was talking of the actors that he had seen in the play of Harry the Fourth the night before, that there were some really very good ones, but for the Prince of Wales, he must own he never saw so awkward a fellow and so mean a looking scoundrel in his life. Everybody who was present, I believe, had the same thought, but all very properly pretended to understand his Majesty literally, joined in the censure, 54 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXI. and abused the theatrical Prince of Wales for a quarter of an hour together. The Queen and the Prince were at this time, to all appearance, upon much better terms together than they had been for a long time past ; and never really worse than they had been all the summer : but I believe one might apply to their present intimacy a thing the Queen herself said about this time of her son's correspondence with Lord Chesterfield, which was, that, let the appear ances of confidence be ever so strong, she would answer for it that each of them knew the other too well to love or trust one another. And, I dare say, the mother and the son were quite as well acquainted as the Prince was with the Lord. Lord Chesterfield, however, used to throw out fre quent intimations to all his acquaintance of his being extremely in the Prince's favour. When Lord Hervey told Sir Robert Walpole that Lord Chesterfield bragged that it was he had married the Prince, Sir Robert looked very significantly and said, " Is he married ? " Lord Hervey replied, he understood that question, and the manner of asking it ; " but I believe," said he, " you will find their Majesties have overshot themselves on this occasion. When they talked of this match first, I imagined, like you, that they certainly never designed to conclude it : but they will do by this wedding as Cardinal Fleury did by the war— they will, without in tending to go on, be step by step brought so far that they will not be able to avoid it." Sir Robert said (and I believe truly) " that he could not tell how it would be, for that the King and Queen had never consulted him in anything relating to this marriage, nor communicated 1^35. PRINCE'S MARRIAGE. 55 their intentions with regard to any particular that was to be previous or consequential to it : but it is certain that the King had by the Queen offered to marry the Prince to the ugly, crooked, and not very young, Prin cess of Denmark,15 whom the Prince refused, and said she was offered him only because it was known he would refuse and ought to refuse her. It is certain too that the King did see the Princess of Saxe-Gotha this sum mer at Herenhausen ; and it is said too that he intends to demand her for the Prince, and has already more than intimated this design to her brother and his own son." Many people as well as Sir Robert Walpole doubted whether they did design to marry their son or not ; though they had carried this grimace (if they did not design it) so far as to build an apartment at St. James's for the reception of this future Princess of Wales, had bought jewels to present her, and actually made their wedding-clothes: but when these circumstances were told to the sceptics and infidels on this occasion, answer was made, that cradles and clothes for the Princess Royal's child had been made, but she was never brought to bed. Since I have mentioned the Princess Royal, I will say two or three words of her present disagreeable situ ation : by growing very fat she became every day less likely to have children ; her Court grew duller and duller, her husband poorer and poorer, and his inte rest in Holland weaker and weaker ; hers in her husband is There were two princesses of Denmark — Charlotte Amelia, born in 1706, and Frederica Sophia, born in 1713. I suppose from the allusion to her being " not very young," the former was meant. 56 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXI. kept pace with her husband's in the state ; and for the finishing stroke in the mortification of her pride, he was thought to be in love with Miss Schutz, one of her maids of honour, to whom she had always been particularly kind for the sake both ofthe girl and of her father.16 The Princess Royal saw the King in his way from Hanover to England, though she had had the mortifi cation of not seeing him when he went thither ; but the short comfort of barely seeing him was the only comfort she enjoyed in this interview, for no money, no hopes of coming to England, nor any promises of assisting her husband in Holland, were given her, nor were there any other consequences attending this meeting than her returning to the ennui from which she came. But there was a circumstance at this juncture known to but few people, which gave the Queen and Sir Ro bert Walpole, and those who wished well to either of them, more trouble than all the other effects of his Majesty's ill-humour put together, though the Queen always denied believing it. This circumstance was his Majesty's having given his word to Madame Walmoden to return to Hanover by the 29th of May next summer ; which promise being known to all her friends, the night before his Majesty left Hanover, Madame Walmoden, at supper, in a mixture of tears and smiles, toasted the 29th of May, which all the rest of the company pledged in a bumper. The King had never yet, that I could learn, given the least hint of this intention to anybody on this side is Miss Schutz, the daughter of Augustus Schutz (ante, vol. i. p. 411), who, I believe, afterwards married the Baron Grovestein, before-mentioned (vol. i. p. 410), subsequently Dutch Ambassador in England. 1735. KING'S JOURNEY TO HANOVER. 57 of the water ; I am sure he had not to the Queen or Sir Robert Walpole ; and Lord Harrington, I believe, had been as close upon this subject as his master. It was told to Lord Hervey by Mr. Poyntz, who I guess had it from one Weston,17 a great friend of his, a sensible fellow, and commis to Lord Harrington. When Lord Hervey told it to Sir Robert Walpole, Sir Robert seemed at first much surprised and concerned ; and afterwards said, " But he shan't go for all that. His Majesty imagines frequently he shall do many things, which, because he is not at first contradicted, he fancies he shall be let to do at last. He thinks he is devilish stout, and never gives up his will or his opinion ; but he never acts in anything material according to either of them but when I have a mind he should. I am going, my Lord, to make an odd declaration for a minister — for generally it is the policy of ministers to throw the blame of everything wrong done on their master ; but I am willing to own, whenever our master does wrong, it is the fault of his ministers, who must either want reso lution enough to oppose him, or sense enough to do it with success. Our master, like most people's masters, wishes himself absolute, and fancies he has courage enough to attempt making himself so ; but if I know anything of him, he is, with all his personal bravery, as great a political coward as ever wore a crown, and as much afraid to lose it." How Sir Robert could reconcile this speech with his keeping up such an army in England, and in the present circumstances of England, I know not ; or how he would it Edward Weston, Esq., one of the Under Secretaries of State for the Northern Department. 58 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXI. be able to justify this measure in private without disa vowing in some degree the other assertion, I am quite at a loss to guess : however, Lord Hervey knew too( well how little anybody likes to have such puzzling questions put to them to desire Sir Robert to clear uj this matter. The King gave other very strong marks at this time of his fondness for Madame Walmoden, which were as little known here as the promise he had made of returning to Hanover ; one of which the Queen knew, but was ashamed to tell even to Sir Robert Walpole : this was, that his Majesty, who till this year always used to stay with the Queen in a morning till after he had had the military amusement of peeping through the cane-blinds of the windows to see the guard relieved, which was hardly ever finished till eleven o'clock, did now forego that joy as well as the pleasures of his wife's conversation, and went every morning to his own side by nine o'clock or a little after, where he constantly wrote for two or three hours to Madame Walmoden, who never failed sending and receiving a letter every post. 1735. GENERAL PEACE. 59 CHAPTER XXII. General Peace — Terms — Discussed — The event favourable to the Adminis tration — -Horace Walpole's negative success — M. de Chavigny — Favours the Opposition — Lord Hervey's opinion as to the duties of a Foreign Minister — M. Chauvelin, Garde des Sceaux in France— Corrupt — Dis graced — Lord Hervey's intercourse, in Walpole's absence, with the King and Queen — Advocates a reduction of the forces — They resist — Walpole's reasonings for maintaining the Army. Soon after the King came to England the remarkable and important news arrived that the preliminary articles to a general peace were signed at Vienna [3rd October, 1735] by the Emperor and France, and that, in conse quence of the conclusion of this treaty, a cessation of arms had been declared at the head of the Imperial and French armies on the Rhine, as well as in Italy. The armistice was published in Italy just as the Duke de Montemar was going to urge the siege of Mantua with his utmost vigour, but upon this mortifying and unexpected news he made his retreat not only from the Mantuan, but deserted also Parma and Placentia ; for, after evacuat ing those duchies of the troops, gutting the palaces of all the moveables, and carrying off everything he found portable, he withdrew into Tuscany in order to fortify himself there and prevent the Imperialists from pene trating into that country and taking possession of it according to the stipulations of this new-concluded treaty; the articles of which were in substance as follows : — 60 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXII. 1. France shall restore to the Empire all the places which she has taken from it during the war. 2. The Emperor shall have the Mantuan, Parma, Placen tia, and the Milanese ; Vigevanesco and Novaro and their de pendencies excepted, which shall be given to the King of Sardinia, with the liberty of building fortresses in what part of those countries he shall at any time think proper. 3. The duchy of Tuscany, after the death of the present Grand Duke, shall be given to the Duke of Lorraine, shall be put into the hands of his Most Christian Majesty, and remain annexed to his monarchy. 4. King Stanislaus shall be acknowledged by all the Powers of Europe King of Poland, and shall enjoy all the honours and prerogatives of a crowned head ; after which he shall resign voluntarily the possession of the kingdom of Poland in favour of King Augustus, who shall restore to him all the estates in Poland which either belonged to him or to his Queen. 5. King Stanislaus shall have, by way of equivalent for Poland, the immediate possession of the duchy of Barr. 6. Don Carlos shall be acknowledged King of Naples and Sicily, and shall have the State of del Presidii, with the island of Elba ; as for Leghorn, it shall be declared a free port. 7. France shall guarantee the Pragmatic Sanction. 8. The Kings of Spain and Sardinia to be invited to accede to this treaty; and England, Holland, Portugal, and Venice to guarantee it. The Court of Spain was so incensed at the conclusion of this treaty, that her Catholic Majesty would not permit the French Minister at her Court for some time to obtain an audience to communicate it. All the letters and despatches from Spain to every Court in Europe were full of nothing but the strongest invectives against the conduct of France, reproaching her with the basest treachery and perfidy to her allies, the blindest igno rance of her own interest, and treating her as the weak and wicked dupe of the Court of Vienna. 1735. SPAIN DISSATISFIED. 61 All this outcry was on account of the disposition made by this treaty of the duchy of Tuscany, which her Spanish Majesty had cut out by way of appanage for Don Philip, second of her three sons : the first, as actual King of Naples, and as presumptive heir to the Crown of Spain, she thought not ill provided for ; and her third son, Don Lewis, though but seven years old, being, by her assiduity at the Court of Rome, just con firmed Archbishop of Toledo, with a revenue of about 100,000 pistoles a-year, and made a cardinal, she was in no great anxiety for a further provision for his Royal and Eminent Highness the Cardinal of Bourbon, for this was the new title by which Don Lewis was now styled. This delicious morsel, therefore, of the duchy of Tuscany, so long designed by her Spanish. Majesty for her second son, Don Philip, being now otherwise dis posed of, was what she could not brook, and what she was determined, before she would submit, to try all the force of negotiation at least to prevent. The English Ministers, knowing the storm this treaty would raise at Madrid whenever it came to be di vulged, had very wisely worked at it as mediators between France and the Emperor, without making England a party, or appearing openly enough in the transaction to give Spain a just handle for public re proach; though Spain must know too well the true state of the case not to feel some dissatisfaction, and utter some private complaint. There was great deliberation and various opinions in the Cabinet Council on the wording the first letters that were sent to Spain after this great event. Sir 62 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXII. Robert Walpole had been all along very prudently (though almost single in his opinion) for letting the English Administration stand the reproach and ridicule of its enemies at home for having had no hand in this treaty, in order to avoid the displeasure and reproaches England must necessarily have incurred at the Court of Madrid, if the part England took in this transaction had publicly appeared. But the use Sir Robert would have made after ward of this policy was, in the opinion of most people who were acquainted with this transaction, encroaching too far on the real fact ; and, in the representation he would have made of it, giving up too much of his veracity to his dexterity. The words which he would have inserted in this despatch to the Court of Spain, in speaking of this treaty, were — "a treaty set on foot without the consent of England, and concluded without our participation." As to the former part of this sentence, nobody cavilled at it, as it was certainly true, though impudently denied by the Cardinal, that a private treaty between the Courts of Vienna and Versailles had been entered into, without England being called in either as an umpire or an assistant. But these two great and proud powers, finding it difficult to bend to the making such conces sions to one another as they thought they might with honour submit to on the solicitation of a mediator, were forced to break off this private treaty, and call England in to facilitate the progress of a new nego tiation. The former part, therefore, of Sir Robert Walpole's words was agreed to ; but the great dispute was on the 1735. ENGLISH CABINET DISCUSSIONS. 63 word participation ; and if I were to recite all I heard said on this occasion, I might fill as many volumes of verbal criticisms on this word participation as any Dacier or Bentley ever wrote on Homer or Horace ; but it not being my design to tire my readers with such critical lumber, nor my inclination to fatigue myself with the greater trouble of writing what I suffered so much trouble in hearing, I shall repeat nothing more of this ten-days' dispute on the word participation, than that Sir Robert, though seconded by nobody but Lord Isla, insisted on its standing, and left the care of this favourite word, when he went into Norfolk, to the Duke of Newcastle, who, proving as ready to give up any other body's sense as he was to maintain his own nonsense, abandoned his charge, suffered participation to be erased out of the despatch, and the more explicit term of " concluded without England's being a party" to be inserted in its stead.1 The Queen of Spain, pretending not to see what she was not at present in a condition to resent, applauded our having lent no aid to the contravention of former treaties subsisting between Spain and England ; re minded us of our guarantee of Parma, Placentia, and the succession of Tuscany, to Don Carlos ; and said it would be very hard her son should be obliged to quit those rich possessions and succession for the kingdoms of Naples and Sicily, where the Imperialists had not left a ducat. In answer to this, the Court of England reminded her Catholic Majesty, that we were equally guarantees • It seems, certainly, that this expression was nearer the truth. 64 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXII. for Naples and Sicily to the Emperor, notwithstanding which Spain had, without our consent, attacked and subdued them ; and that it would be very unreasonable and unjust for Spain to expect to avail itself of our guarantee in one case, when it had shown so little regard to it in the other ; but, however, if Spain thought itself aggrieved and prejudiced by the exchange of Parma, Placentia, and Tuscany, for the Two Sicilies, our Court declared England was very ready to consent to return again to the treaty of Seville, and put the possessions of Italy under the same sovereigns to whom by those stipulations they stood allotted. The King of Sardinia was the worst used of anybody in this treaty, but he knew it was to no purpose to complain, and was therefore silent. He had disobliged every power in Europe by the alliance he had made with France ; France had betrayed him, and no power in Europe espoused his cause. But if the Court of France knew (as I conclude it did know) that the King of Sardinia would have joined the Emperor (provided England would have gone into the war), France, I suppose, would have had few qualms in giving up an ally who only continued so because his overtures of desertion had not been accepted. The reason why the King of Sardinia had made this overture was, that Spain had refused to yield the Milanese to his Sardinian Majesty, according to the tenor of the treaty between him and France ; and by the whole conduct of France the King of Sardinia found France would rather lean to the interest and yield to the importunity of Spain than fulfil their engagements and maintain him. As to France betraying Spain to the Emperor in this 1735. TRIPLE ALLIANCE DISSOLVED. 65 treaty, France certainly knew that the Queen of Spain had been tampering at Vienna ; and if she could have secured the possession of her conquests for Don Carlos by a marriage with one of the Emperor's daughters, and settled by treaty what she had acquired by arms, the Cardinal was very sure she would then have given the same cause of complaint to France that she now pretended to receive from thence, and would have been the injurer instead of the injured; for which reason France felt as few scruples and as little remorse in sa crificing the Court of Spain as in abandoning that of Turin ; or, to speak more properly, as little as national consciences ever feel when they sacrifice their faith to their interest, and have nothing to fear from those they injure but reproaches. But as the Cardinal was not at liberty publicly to own he knew of this transaction, so he only gave hints of it at the Court of Spain, whilst the excuse he pleaded there for his conduct was, that the opposition Spain had made, from its boundless ambition, to the suffering France to fulfil its engagements to the King of Sardinia by putting him in possession of the Milanese, and the dissensions he foresaw must result from that point, was the principal consideration that had driven him into this measure, in order to take advantage of the weakness of the common enemy before the jealousies and divisions of the Allies had weakened them enough to let the Emperor regain by their quarrels what he had lost by their union. In this manner was this formidable Triple Alliance of Spain, France, and Sardinia, that had for these three last years struck terror into all Europe, at last dissolved. VOL. II. f 66 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXII. But I cannot make use of that expression of Triple Al liance (as it was always called) without observing how improperly it was thus nominated : for though France had a treaty that united her with both, yet to the treaty subsisting between France and Sardinia, Spain had never acceded, and to that between France and Spain, Sardinia had never acceded ; nor did Spain and Sardinia bear greater enmity to the foe against whom they seemed united than to one another ; so that the philosopher's rule of quos conveniunt in eodem tertio conveniunt inter se was never more strongly contradicted than in the connection of these three powers. Almost from the very beginning of their union it was very plain to those who knew the true anecdotes of the times — the courier and cabinet history of this war — that there was not one of these three powers who did not mean to make dupes of the other two, and take ad vantage of their own strength at the expense of the others' interest. France only indeed could betray both, as she only was in league with both ; and this honour able privilege it is impossible for anybody to accuse her of not exercising to the fullest extent, leaving to all pos terity so memorable a mark of Gallic faith, that the Punic, antiquated by this modern example, need no longer be proverbial. The Queen, who had certainly a great deal of wit, and was a most entertaining companion, used very justly, as well as agreeably, to say that "this Triple Alliance always put her in mind of the South Sea scheme, which the parties concerned entered into not without knowing the cheat, but hoping to make advan tage of it, everybody designing, when he had made his 1735. GALLIC FAITH. 67 own fortune, to be the first in scrambling out of it, and each thinking himself wise enough to be able to leave his fellow-adventurers in the lurch." But this being a secret known only to a few ministerial brokers in these fraudulent bargains, the conduct of France, even with regard to Spain and Sardinia, upon the making of this separate peace, appeared in no very honourable light to mankind in general ; and with regard to every other power that had favoured her cause, her conduct stood certainly wholly unjustifiable to all the world, and will remain so to all posterity as long as that phantom, national faith, shall have any regard paid to its appearance, and till all private people come to own that national faith ought to be considered no more than it is plain princes and ministers do consider it. If France was to be asked why she abandoned Spain,, broke her treaties with Sardinia, and betrayed both, she would answer, perhaps, that they attempted to do the same thing by her, and that her crime was nothing more than theirs, only more manifested by having better success. But if she was to be asked why she abandoned, in that shameless manner, the father-in-law of her King after making his interest the sole plea for entering into this war ? — why she so dishonourably neglected all the no bility of Poland who espoused his cause? — why she suffered the Dantzicers to be ruined for adhering to the same interest? — why she paid so little regard to her Treaties with Sweden, with the Elector Bavaria, and with the Elector Palatine? — what could France answer, but that she had got the reversion of Lorraine, f2 68 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXII. and looked on that acquisition as an equivalent for all the reproach she had incurred ? Various were the sentiments and language of the people in England on the consummation of this very important transaction ; all whose interests were inter woven, or whose dependencies were in any manner linked, with the people in power, as well as the very few who considered the interest of England detached from personal views or party considerations, rejoiced extremely at this event, and laid their encomiums on the conduct of the Administration as thick as the most devoted friends of the Minister could wish. The Opponents first took the turn of saying that the peace was concluded at Vienna between the Emperor and France without the knowledge, as well as without the assistance, of the English Ministers ; but this sug gestion gained credit only with a few, and even with them soon lost its force ; for the articles of the present peace being drawn on the plan of accommodation of last year, and with so small a variation, if any honour was to redound to those who laid the scheme of this peace, it was impossible not to allow some share of it to those whom the Opponents, when the scheme did not take effect, were so ready to reproach and ridicule as the sole authors and projectors of such wild and unsuc cessful folly. The Opponents then asked a few invidious questions, and said they knew no way of computing the advan tage of any transaction but by the benefit of its effects ; and as, at Carthage, after Hannibal had sent the news of the battle of Cannse and the advantages he had !735. OPINIONS IN ENGLAND. 69 gained in Italy over the Romans, Hanno asked in what particular these advantages were apparent, whether Rome was unable to continue the war ? — whether she sued for peace? — whether Hannibal did not want more men ? — and whether he did not want more money ? ¦ — so, on the conclusion of this boasted peace, the patriot Opponents demanded — in what England was to be the better for it ? — whether we were to be disentangled from all our former engagements, and, if we were, whether we were to be involved in no new ones ? — whether Spain and Sardinia would accede to this treaty, or whether England was to be made a party to force them ? — whether our fleet was to be recalled from Portugal ? — whether our army was to be reduced ? — or our vast expenses lessened ? — and whether it was the interest of England to weaken Spain in order to strengthen France; or to disoblige the first, only to ingratiate ourselves with the last ? These were topics of declamation for the faction in general, but the sensible part of the Opposition saw too plainly the advantage this occurrence would be of to the Ministry, in what manner soever it had been brought about, and whatever the measures of the Court were in consequence of it, not to mourn the success of so fortunate a negotiation. Lord Bolingbroke's dictum on this occasion was, that if the English Ministers had had any hand in this peace, they had more sense than he thought they had, and, if they had not, that they had much better luck than they deserved to have: Pul teney declared it was a most fortunate event for Eng land, and, let who will have the honour of it, he was glad this country had the benefit of it : Lord Carteret's 70 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXII. reflection was, that he had always thought Walpole the luckiest dog that ever meddled with public affairs : and Sir William Windham owned it was not only a good peace for the Administration, but for the nation. The King seemed to value himself so much on this occasion, that one would have imagined every step that had been taken in order to produce this peace had been taken as much according to his inclination and his judgment as it was taken against both. The Queen was more just, and acknowledged, not only to Sir Robert Walpole himself, but to many other people, that he had, like a skilful pilot, saved us all from the storm, and brought us into a safe port, when, if it had not been for him, we had now been upon the high seas and many leagues from shore. His credit and interest at present both with the King and Queen were higher and firmer than ever ; but, to do him justice, he bore his success, and acted in this plenitude of power and triumph, with great moderation. The Duke of Newcastle's behaviour on this occasion was a little in the same style with the King's, for, though he must be conscious his part and merit with regard to the peace was such that the messenger who carried despatches of other people's writing might as well be proud of his share in this business as one who only wrote despatches of other people's dictating, yet his Grace was so elate and so proud of this his imagin ary glory, that he was more busily troublesome, more ministerially important, more haughtily familiar, more oppressively talkative, and more noisily glad, than even he had ever before appeared upon any other occur rence. 1735. OPINIONS IN ENGLAND. 71 Horace Walpole returned from Holland crowned with a new sort of wreaths of triumph, for all his honours resulted from his good fortune in having two years incessantly pursued the Dutch with fruitless solicitation, in which (as paradoxical as it may sound) he most successfully miscarried, and was most bene ficially disappointed : his first view having been to excite the Dutch to the war, and his labours in peace only what he was at last reduced to as the pis aller. In reality, therefore, whatever advantages accrued to Europe in general, or England in particular, from this peace, were chiefly, if not solely, owing to that caution and perseverance in the Dutch which for three years together the whole Court of St. James's had been calling obstinate phlegm and infatuated blindness : and the reason why I impute this happy event of our being now out of the war to this cause is, that Sir Robert Walpole himself, who alone opposed our going into the war, had put his opposition at last entirely upon that foot — that without the Dutch joining with us we could not justify going into it ; and thereupon con sented to send his brother to exert all his eloquence to sound the alarm, and his strongest incitements to per suade them to take it. Whether Sir Robert Walpole put his opposition to England's engaging in the war on this issue from knowing the Dutch would never consent to be embarked in it, or whether, if they had consented, he had any 2 I must here observe that Lord Hervey's strictures on Mr. Walpole are strange contrasts with the very friendly and flattering letters that he about the same time, and on the same subjects, addressed to him. See Coxe's Walpole Papers, vol. iii. pp. 298, 301, 311. 72 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXII. ) after-stroke of policy and dexterity to withstand our > engaging in the war, are secrets which lie, uncommuni- cated by him and undiscovered by me, in his own breast; but, according to a natural judgment on the known circumstances that attended the progress of these negotiations between England and Holland, one should be apt to imagine that had Holland yielded to our importunity, instead of our submitting to her refusal, England and Holland at this moment, instead of being mediators in a general peace, had been parties in a general war, and auxiliaries in the contention instead of guarantees for the accommodation. There was no private man so ill-treated throughout this whole negotiation as the French Minister in England, M. de Chavigny : 3 during the progress of this transaction, till the public declaration of the armistice, he was kept in such profound ignorance of what was doing at his own Court, as well as this, that, in the last audience he had of Sir Robert Walpole before he went to Hanover on the subject of the peace, he said the honour of France was so much concerned in making Stanislaus King of Poland, and driving the Emperor quite out of Italy, that, without those two fundamentals submitted to, it was impossible for France ever to listen to any terms of accommodation, by whatever hands they were pro posed. But Sir Robert Walpole, at the very time that 3 Theodore de Chavigny was born about the beginning of the century, and early introduced into diplomacy, but was never again employed in so important a post as this English mission. He was a relation of M. de Vergennes, whose fatal advice precipitated France into the American Revolution — and her own. 1735. M. DE CHAVIGNY. 73 Chavigny was giving himself these airs, had in his pocket the consent of France to treat of peace without either of these stipulations, and told Chavigny he would certainly find himself deceived ; he told him so, too, with an air that implied he had more reasons to think so than he would communicate : upon which M. Chavigny began to complain of the little openness with which Sir Robert ever treated him. Sir Robert said it was not his fault that they had lived in no better intelligence, and that M. Chavigny must have too good sense to expect that, whilst he lived in such seeming intimacy with the avowed enemies and opponents to the King's measures, he could receive any marks of confidence from those who had the honour to transact them. Chavigny apologised for this conduct by saying that a stranger in any country was surely not blamable for returning any civilities he received there ; and that Lord Bolingbroke, Sir William Windham, and Mr. Pulteney had shown him so many, that he neither could nor ought to decline living with them in a familiar way as a private man ; and that, as a public minister, or with regard to politics, he had as little communication with them as if they never saw one another at all. These sort of evasions passed on Sir Robert Walpole for just as much as they were worth, and this expostulation between him and M. Chavigny ended as most expostulations of this kind must do, where the one only excuses a coldness he is determined to continue, and the other, by justifying the conduct which has drawn it upon him, shows he intends to per severe in deserving it. But Chavigny, though a sensible man, certainly 74 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXII. acted injudiciously in attaching himself so firmly and so openly to the heads of the opposing party, as it must exclude him from all confidence with the people in power here, and of course in time work him out even of the confidence of his own Court ; as no Ministers of one Court who desire to act efficaciously or amicably with those of another will ever intrust their negotia tions to the hands of a man who has made himself ob noxious to those with whom he is to treat. Marshal Broglio, Chavigny's predecessor, had split on this very rock ; and yet the caution and circumspec tion of Chavigny — bred from his earliest youth in the dependence of a subaltern courtier, the intrigues of negotiation, and the vassalage of a ministerial proxy — fell into the same errors, unwarned by example, that Broglio committed, who, without any natural under standing, or any knowledge acquired from experience, was taken out of a camp and made an ambassador, when there was not a corporal or serjeant in his regi ment who was not as fit for the employment. By these means both Chavigny and Monsieur de Broglio became absolute ciphers at the Court of Eng land, all business between England and France being now transacted by Lord Waldegrave at Paris, as in the times of Monsieur de Broglio's residence here it had been by Horace Walpole. In my opinion, there are very few situations in which a foreign Minister employed at any Court can act politically by caballing with the enemies to the people in power there : if the nation is ripe for a revolt, or for insurrections and civil wars, and that it is the interest of the Court by whom that Minister is em- 1735. M. DE CHAVIGNY. 75 ployed, to foment these divisions and weaken the government ; he may possibly do his master some little service by promoting such measures, but more probably come to be ruined without doing him any ; and as to common cases, though it may be for the honour, and often even for the interest of a native, to adhere to the under party and oppose the people in power, yet it can seldom or never be so for a foreign negotiator : in the first place, as it excludes that foreigner immediately from any pretence to favour, or any hope of confidence ; in the next, as an ambassador to any Court is sent to the Crown and not to the King, to the minister and not to the man, so whoever wears the one, and is the other, those persons for the time being are the persons to whom an ambassador should address himself; and the shifting his applications as fast as the Crown changes its master, or the King his servant, is certainly what not only in prudence he ought to do, but what with honour he may do — how ignominious soever the like conduct would be in a native, who must betray the party he last acted with, and the principles he last acted upon, to behave in that manner. Chavigny, from reasoning differently, lost his credit at home, and made but an indifferent figure at this time abroad ; those who had brought this disgrace upon him being glad to publish it in whispers to forty or fifty chosen friends, who circulated the story so generally that there was nobody in England who knew Cha vigny's name, that did not know this peace was made without his privity. Both the King and Queen rejoiced extremely at this slur put upon Chavigny, partly because they thought it 76 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXII. would be construed as an instance of their influence at the Court of France, but chiefly because they hated Monsieur Chavigny personally, and were glad of any mortification he underwent. Nor can I say their Ma jesties' dislike to Monsieur Chavigny was ill-founded or capriciously taken. In the first place, it can never be very agreeable to any Prince to have a Minister sent to transact business at his Court, who is thought to com municate every negotiation or consultation to those of his subjects who labour to distress every measure and cross every step which that Prince designs to take. But the King and Queen had still more personal reasons for being exasperated against this Minister ; for as he took all his notions of this Court from the con versation and intelligence of men who were always endeavouring to put every circumstance and person belonging to it in the most hateful as well as the most despicable light, so in despatches he sent to France, intercepted by our Ministers, the strongest and most personal invectives against the King and Queen were often discovered, and without any softening always reported to their Majesties, which will easily be ima gined to have been the case, when the reporter4 was one who had at least an equal share in the bitterness of the satire. Among many examples I could from my own ocular testimony recite of these liberties taken by Chavigny with his Majesty's name and character, I shall content myself with exhibiting one only by way of sample for the rest ; which, if I had not forgot to insert it in its Sir Robert Walpole. 1735. M. DE CHAVIGNY. 77 proper place, would have been noticed in the transac tions of the year 1731. The passage I mean was in one of his letters, where, speaking of the King's unpo pularity in England, he added these words : " Et quoi qu'il est bien rare qu'on puisse mepriser ceux qu'on ha'isse, ou hair ceux qu'on meprise, sa Majeste Britannique a trouve moyen d'etre en mSme temps meprise et hai de tous ses sujets." When Sir Robert Walpole showed the copy of this invective to the King, his Majesty said Chavigny lied like a fool as well as a rascal, for that he was sure, let him be ever so much hated, that nei ther his conduct nor his character was such as made him liable to be despised ; from which Sir Robert took occasion to say many things to the King, all tending to the making his own Court, and to fanning the King's resentment against Chavigny, which in some respects went much further than Sir Robert would have had it, for the King could not be prevailed upon to speak to Chavigny in near a year after, though Sir Robert told him that Chavigny ought, in his opinion, either to be treated by the King just as if this had never happened, or to be forbidden the Court; the one being as natural a consequence of the King's being sup posed to be ignorant of this letter, as the other would be of his owning he was informed of it. However, the King did not deviate from his usual marks of mute re sentment on such occasions, but shut his ears to Sir Robert, and his mouth to Chavigny. From a constant series of such intercepted reflections in Chavigny's letters for several years, it is easy to imagine that their Majesties must have felt some satis faction in the disgrace they found put upon him at this 78 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXn. time, on the conclusion of a peace upon articles he had always opposed, and which were at last agreed to, no more with his confidence than with his approbation. The King, whenever he spoke of him at this time, exulted, insulted, and confessed he had great joy in seeing such a scoundrel-puppy treated as he deserved ; the Queen on the other hand, with more finesse, said to me, that though she owned it was natural for one to see with some pleasure the mortifications of those whom one had reason to wish mortified and endeavoured should be so, yet that poor Chavigny seemed to bear his mortifications so ill, that she really suffered when she saw him ; but at the same time, related the many provocations he had given both to the King and her ; she said Chavigny had drawn her character in the letters he had written to his Court as one that was hated by the whole kingdom, had affirmed that it was notoriously known that there was nothing done but by her influence, and that her influence was never exerted but by the force of money, which she took on all hands, and for all things, in proportion to the circumstances of the solicitor and the value of the thing solicited.5 Her Majesty on this occasion, too, gave the whole history of Chavigny's mean birth, his low original, and first rise in the world, telling me that he was the son of a baker, that he was first employed by the Cardinal du Bois as a spy, that after that he crept up into the employment of a minor Minister, was employed at Ratisbon, and disavowed by his Court in his transaction there, and 5 This perhaps was the echo of similar probably unfounded or exag gerated rumours as to her favourite Lady Sundon— ante, vol. i. p. 90. 1735. M. CHAUVELIN. 79 that Monsieur Chauvelin,6 who was a great knave, chose to employ him as one he could command and counter mand, trust or not trust, order and disavow, and in short, use just as he pleased. What diverted her most, she said, was to hear the manner in which Chavigny and Lord Carteret spoke of one another, which she described, mimicking the ges tures and tone of voice of each, in a much more humor ous manner than I can repeat, but the substance of it was, both of them spoke of the other as such stigmatised knaves, who made profession of as little honesty or truth as they practised, that each was astonished how the other got any Court to employ him, any Minister to treat with him, or any party to receive him. Whilst Sir Robert Walpole was in Norfolk, the King and Queen trusted chiefly to Lord Hervey to let them know what turn both the friends and foes of the Court took in their conversation relating to the peace. When the King and Queen were together he never entered into particulars, but said there seemed to be a universal satisfaction and triumph among the friends to the Government, and as general marks of sorrow and disappointment among those who were not so well 6 Chauvelin, Garde des Sceaux and Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, who had been long Cardinal Fleury 's "homme de confiance," (ante, p. 4,) was dismissed early in 1737 for pecuniary corruption and treachery in his office, an imputation which the Walpole Correspondence goes far towards confirming. The case against him must have been very flagrant, for, be sides being exiled, he was ordered to obliterate from both the outside and interior of his houses " all the emblems of the offices of Garde des Sceaux and Vice-Chancellor, that no record or trace might remain of his having ever held these places." The ' Biographie Universelle,' however, treats Chauvelin's dismissal very coolly as an unlucky indiscretion on the part of the Cardinal, who thereby deprived himself of so useful an assistant ! He died in 1762, ast. 77. 80 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXII. inclined to it ; to the Queen alone Lord Hervey told, not so acceptably as sincerely, that the first question everybody who was best inclined to the Government asked him was, what number of troops were to be dis banded, and when the orders for a reduction would be issued out ? The Queen, who loved troops full as well as the King, though she did not talk quite so much of them, seemed extremely dissatisfied with people's show ing such an impatience for this step to be taken ; and said, if they were friends to the Government who talked in this way, that at least they were very ignorant and silly friends, who imagined it would be advisable for the King to disband a man before the peace was con cluded. Lord Hervey said that there was certainly nothing so odious to men of all ranks and classes in this country as troops ; that people who had not sense enough to count twenty, or to articulate ten words together on other subjects, had their lessons so well by heart, that they could talk like Ciceros on this topic, and never to an audience that did not chime in with all their arguments ; and as a standing army was the thing in the world that was most disliked in this country, so the reduction of any part of it was a measure that always made any Prince more popular than any other he could take. Lord Hervey added too, that if he had the honour to advise the Crown, he had rather give his counsel to disband 6000 or 8000 men now, and to raise 12,000 on the most frivolous pretence six months hence, than continue the present number unaltered, which at this time everybody would construe as a declaration that they never were to expect to have fewer ; he said too, that there were several people to his knowledge in 1735. LORD HERVEY PRESSES THE REDUCTION. 81 the King's service who chose to say these things any where rather than in the palace, and that he hoped her Majesty would not take it ill of him that he chose to say them in the palace rather than anywhere else. The Queen pressed him extremely to say who those people were, which he absolutely refused to comply with ; she then went on to enumerate many good reasons as she thought why no troops should be yet disbanded ; among which was the uncertainty of Spain's coming into this peace, and the use it would be of to show that England was in a condition to join in forcing her ; then the ex ample was urged of the good effect our fleet had had at Lisbon in preventing a war between Spain and Por tugal, with several other arguments equally unsubstan tial and as unworthy to come out of any sensible un prejudiced lips as to be inserted here. When Sir Robert Walpole came to town Lord Her vey gave him an account of this and several other con versations of the same tenor, which he had had in his absence with the Queen : telling Sir Robert at the same time how sorry he was from these symptoms to find how little probability there was that the universal expectations of mankind of some reduction of the forces being made on this occasion would be answered. Sir Robert said he did not believe the Court could be brought to consent to reduce them ; and Lord Hervey replied that he believed Sir Robert would find it at least as difficult to bring the Parliament to consent to continue them. Sir Robert said those were not the things that ever hurt an Administration, for that this would only be one day's debate — that some of the young people would throw out some warm strong things in VOL. II. g 82 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXII. set declamations — that it would be a long day and a small majority, but the point would be carried, and there would be an end of it. Lord Hervey agreed that it would be carried, but did not agree that when it was carried there would be an end of it ; ' on the con trary, he said, the clamour would be great and lasting ; and that many of those who would not dare to vote against it would grumble at it ; and (as it often happens on such occasions) would hate Sir Robert for making them incur the reproach of supporting this measure, more than even those who would load them with that reproach, as they would think the people who abused them did no more by them than what they deserved, and that he who had made them liable to that abuse had done more than he need, and put them into a dis agreeable situation which he could easily have avoided. Sir Robert said to Lord Hervey, " I do not tell you, my Lord, if I could do just as I would on this occasion, that no troops at all should be disbanded, but believe me, my Lord, you are too much biassed the other way ; and remember, your old friend leaves this advice with you as a legacy when I am dead and gone, if you ever come to govern this country and if you hope to do it in peace, never leave it without an army, nor ever let that army at lowest be reduced to less than 18,000 men. Believe me, my dear Lord, the disputed title to this Crown,8 the natural temper of our countrymen, t But in a letter of Lord Hervey's own to Mr. Walpole, 3rd Jan. 1736, he adopts Sir Robert's view, and even his words : " The opposition to the troops is nothing more than the dispute of a day, which are never the questions that distress the most." — Coxe. s The rebellion of 1745, which Lord Hervey did not live to see, and every event from that time to this, proved the wisdom and foresight of his old friend. 1735. HIS CONVERSATION WITH WALPOLE. 83 the struggle there is for power and dominion in all countries, and the licentiousness under the name of liberty that reigns in this, will, even with 18,000 men, standing forces at your command, leave your hands full of as much work as you can turn them to, be as able and as dextrous, and as vigilant and circumspect as you please." Lord Hervey assured Sir Robert, though many people wished to be many things they were not fit for, and he perhaps among the rest, yet the Government of this country was what he was sure he neither did nor ever should desire ; as he was very sensible he had nei ther a head fit to undertake the weight of it, a temper to submit to the constraint of it, nor a constitution to go through the fatigue of it — that to pass a good deal of his time alone, and to choose his company when he was not alone, were the two things that he desired most to be able to do as long as he lived ; and that he had too sure an example before his eyes of those two things being impracticable to any First Minister in this coun try, " when even your understanding and taste, Sir, can bring neither of them about." Sir Robert thanked Lord Hervey for his compli ment, and then began to inquire how the King behaved to the Queen, whether she had gained any ground, or he lost any of his ill temper. Lord Hervey told him he did not perceive either, and told him what was the true state ofthe case ; that the King was generally in a most abominable humour, and that the Queen was the chief mark at which all the sharpest arrows were aimed. His Lordship added too, that if he was the Queen, he should be more exasperated still at his Majesty's good- humour than his bad, for whenever in these vicissitudes g2 84 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOERS. Chap. XXII. the transient fit of good-humour took its turn, it was only to relate the scenes of his happy loves when he was at Hanover, and give her Majesty a detail of all his amorous amusements with her rival. The suppers, the balls, the shows and masquerades with which this son of Mars entertained his new Venus were not only the frequent topics of his private con versation with the Queen at this time, but added to this he had the goodness to bring over pictures of these scenes in fine gilt frames, to adorn the Queen's dress ing-room ; and was often so gracious to Lord Hervey when he was with their Majesties in this dressing-room for an hour or two in the evening, to take a candle in his own royal hand, and tell him the story of these pictures, running through the names and characters of all the persons represented in them, and what they had said and done the whole night these entertainments had been exhibited ; during which lecture Lord Her vey, whilst he was peeping over his Majesty's shoulder at these pictures, was shrugging up his own, and now and then stealing a look to make faces at the Queen, who, a little angry, a little peevish, and a little tired with her husband's absurdity, and a little entertained with his Lordship's grimaces, used fo sit and knot in a corner of the room, sometimes yawning and sometimes smiling, and equally afraid of betraying those signs either of her lassitude or her mirth. 1736. SPAIN ACCEDES TO THE TREATY. 85 CHAPTER XXIII. Spain accedes to the Treaty of Peace — Parliament meets — Opposition slack — Pulteney goes abroad — Bolingbroke flies — Attacks on the Church in Parliament— Repeal of the Corporation and Test Acts — Mortmain Bill — The Quakers' Tithe Bill — Opposition of the Bishops and Clergy to the latter— Lord Hervey's zeal for it— Complains ofthe abuses of Queen Anne's Bounty — Bishops Sherlock and Butts — The King's indecent impatience to end these questions, and to go to Hanover — Bishop Sher lock complains to the Queen of Lord Hervey — The Queen rebukes him — Affairs of the Church— Candidates for Lambeth — Lord Hervey suggests Potter. Before the Parliament met [15th January, 1736], the news came of Spain's accepting the preliminary articles ; and as this took away the only poor little shadow of pre tence for keeping up the same number of troops that were maintained last year, the Court was forced to con sent to a reduction, and bring in'the estimate for the army this year just upon the same foot it had been before the 8000 men were added that had been raised in conse quence of the vote of credit. The King's speech required more address than usual this year in the penning of it, as it was to be conceived in such terms as were modestly to intimate to his Par liament and people that the whole merit of making this peace belonged to him and his Ministers ; and yet was not to do this so plainly as to give the lie to what the Court of England had declared at the Court of Spain, or to incur the ridicule which must have attended this piece of arrogance in every other country in which this speech would be read. 86 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXHI. This fortunate event of the peace made the opposition to the measures of the Court this session very languid. Lord Bolingbroke's1 going out of England on account of the bad situation both of his public and private affairs, slackened too extremely the spirit of the public papers ; and Mr. Pulteney, partly from a very ill state of health, and partly, as some people thought, from being weary of the opposing part he had so long un successfully acted, withdrew himself the greatest part of the session from all attendance in the House of Commons.2 Sir William Wyndham, deprived of his private prompter, Lord Bolingbroke, and his coadjutor in pub lic action, Mr. Pulteney, made a very inconsiderable figure, and was as little useful to the party he espoused as formidable to that he opposed ; those who were in clined to flatter his understanding imputed the languor of his performances not to the loss of Lord Boling broke's instructions, but to his being softened to the Administration, and his desiring to make his peace; 1 It is a disappointment not to find in these Memoirs some clue to the real cause of Bolingbroke's sudden retreat into France, but Lord Hervey was not yet in the Cabinet. Mr. Pulteney attributed it, as Lord Hervey does, to pecuniary difficulties (Letter to Swift, 22nd Nov., 1735), and such was no doubt Bolingbroke's own language (Letter to Wyndham, l%th March, 1736). Pope (17th August, 1736) chides Swift for believing that there was some more censurable cause, but does not intimate what it was. The probability seems to be as hinted by Lord Mahon (vol. ii. p. 271), that Sir Robert Walpole had obtained proofs of some serious in trigues with the foreign ministers here. It can hardly be doubted that there must have been some more sudden and urgent cause than that assigned. 2 Pulteney at this time interchanged some secret civilities with the Court, and with the Walpoles (Wal. Cor., 2oth May, 1736), which ex plains LadyM. W.Montagu's parody ot Horace and Lydia into a dialogue between Walpole and Pulteney. — Works, vol. iii. p. 414. 1736. CORPORATION AND TEST ACTS. 87 and this opinion obtained so much from the manifest alteration of his behaviour in Parliament, that most people imagined this peace was privately negotiating between Sir Robert Walpole and him, but there was in reality no such treaty on foot. All the considerable debates that passed this year in Parliament were upon church matters ; and Parliament, like bull-dogs, sticking close to any hold on which they have once fastened, the poor church this winter was as much worried as Sir Robert had been any other. I cannot say but that it was in a great measure the fault of the churchmen that the church was so ill used, the Parliament in the first affair that came before it showing no disposition to annoy her. This first affair was the repeal of the Corporation and Test Acts,3 which the Dissenters insisted on trying, notwithstanding Sir Robert Walpole had fairly told them, when they proposed it to him, and asked his fa vour in it, that, whatever his private opinion might be, yet, as all the clergy in England were so violently against it, and looked upon this measure, or at least re presented it, as so great an encroachment on the esta blished church, he should be obliged, in the station he had the honour to serve the Crown, if the Dissenters persisted, contrary to his advice and entreaty, to try their strength on this question in Parliament, to oppose them. From the Lord Chancellor [Talbot], the Speaker of 3 This measure had been started by Bolingbroke before his evasion, as a means of dissension between Walpole and his old friends the Dissenters. It was moved by Mr. Plummer on the 12th March, and negatived, 251 to 123. 88 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXIII. the House of Commons [Onslow], and several other considerable people in Parliament whose favour the Dissenters went to solicit, they met with no better en couragement ; notwithstanding which they brought it into the House of Commons and lost it there. There was at this time depending in the House of Commons a Bill brought in [10th March] by Sir Joseph Jekyll to prevent the further alienation of lands by will in mortmain, and another [2nd March] for the more easy recovery of tithes from the people called Quakers. All that the Quakers desired from this Bill was, not to be exempted from paying any tithes whatever paid by Church-of-England men ; but as their silly con sciences would not permit them to pay tithes without being compelled to it, they prayed the Legislature to oblige the clergy to use those methods of compulsion that should be least expensive and oppressive to the Quakers, without making the property of the clergy in any point more insecure ; which request was consonant to the scheme of a Bill formerly passed in their favour in the reign of King William. If anybody has a mind to see the state of the case more in detail, they may find it in two very short smart pamphlets that at this time made a good deal of noise : the one written against the Quakers by Sherlock, Bishop of Salisbury, and entitled ' The Country Parson's Plea ;' the other for the Quakers, entitled ' The Quaker's Reply to the Country Parson's Plea' and. written by Lord Hervey. Gibson, Bishop of London, when first this Bill was brought into the House of Commons, went to Sir Robert 1736. QUAKERS' TITHE BILL. 89 Walpole and remonstrated against it ; but Sir Robert plainly told him, though he had resolved to stretch his conscience in the case of the Dissenters and Test Act to oblige him, and was ready to do anything to support the Established Church, or, as far as he could justify it, to show favour to churchmen, yet the request of the Quakers was such as would list all mankind on their side, and irritate all mankind against the clergy if it was refused, — for which reason he must be for it. The Bishop of London, who could never brook the least contradiction, was much dissatisfied with this an swer ; but the repeal of the Test Act being yet under consideration and to come on first, he determined to postpone his further remonstrances against the Quaker- scheme till the other was over. The morning after the proposal for the repeal of the Corporation and Test Acts was rejected in the House of Commons, the Bishop of London came to Sir Robert Walpole to thank him in the name of all the Bishops for the part he had acted in this point, and for all the declarations he had taken occasion upon this subject to make the day before in favour ofthe Established Church, and of his steady resolution to maintain at all times, as far as in him lay, the rights and property of the clergy. The Bishop of London in this interview said not one word of the Quakers, but went directly out of Sir Robert Walpole's house4 to the Archbishop of * Sir Robert Walpole removed in 1730 from' the Green Park side of Arlington Street, to the official residence in Downing Street, which had been that of the Hanoverian minister, Bothmar. George II. wished to give it to Walpole as his own, but Sir Robert would only accept it as attached to his office. It was to the close of the last century the only 90 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXIIL York's, who lived next door but one or two to Sir Robert's, and there, all the Bishops having been sum moned to concert what was to be done to defeat the Mortmain and Quakers' Bills then depending, it was resolved that the Bishops should all send circular letters through their respective dioceses, to alarm the clergy, to notify to them what was going on in Parlia ment, to advise them to petition the Parliament, and to tell them, as the Bishops had thought it their duty to give them this warning and this advice, so they would provide Counsel ready to support the petitions of the clergy in Parliament. Butts, Bishop of Norwich, who was at this meeting, came directly from thence to Lord Hervey's lodgings and gave him an account of everything that had passed there, telling him at the same time how much he dis approved what had been done, and how much he had been embarrassed between his disapprobation of the behaviour of his brethren, and his not caring to be the single man of the fraternity who would not go with the herd. This Butts was a man of excellent good natural parts, whom Lord Hervey had taken out of the obscu rity of a country living and a domestic chaplainship to his father, the Earl of Bristol, and had by his interest (since he was Vice- Chamberlain) first made him Dean of Norwich, and three years after [1732] Bishop; which obligation Bishop Butts always remembered with so warm and grateful a heart, that it was impossible for any man to be more thoroughly attached to the official house in Downing Street, where there is now nothing else. The Bishop of London lived in Whitehall. 1736. OPPOSITION OF THE BISHOPS. 91 interest of another than he was to Lord Hervey, not satisfying himself with losing no opportunities that offered, but for ever seeking occasion to do him any pleasure or any service. The Bishop of London, from his general principle of combating all lay recommendations, and making his favour and protection the only canal to church pre ferments, had not willingly submitted to Butts's first promotion to the Deanery of Norwich, but had so strenuously opposed his next step to the Bishopric, that he had made both the Bishop of Norwich and Lord Hervey at least as much his enemies as he had shown himself theirs.5 Lord Hervey, however, on this occasion of the Quakers, told the Bishop of Norwich he was too young upon the bench to separate single from the rest of his fraternity, and advised him, whatever they did, to do the same. He then went to Sir Robert Walpole and told him what had passed ; Sir Robert Walpole was equally surprised and angry at this conduct: the Court, too, resented this behaviour of the Bishops, and blamed them extremely, asking what they meant by trying to revive the long deadened spirit of Church- quarrels in the nation, and by sounding these false alarms among the clergy of injury designed them, to put the" whole kingdom in a ferment. The Bishops, at first thinking themselves so con siderable, and the body of the clergy so formidable, from the compliment that had been paid them in the 5 This candidly accounts for much of the asperity with which Lord Her vey treats Bishop Gibson — but the truth is, that, exclusive of any per sonal pique, he had a lively aversion to the Church and churchmen, as is especially evident throughout this chapter. 92 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXHI. case of the proposition for the repeal of the Corpora tion and Test Acts, justified in general what had been done, and the Bishop of London, to soften a little his particular conduct, sheltered himself under the old excuse of being obliged to swim with the stream of the clergy if the Court expected he should have any in fluence over them ; but this was only the sequel of that part he had acted in Rundle's case, he himself having been the exciter of that spirit in the clergy which he affected to the Court only to comply with. In the main article (which was that of writing the circular letter) it was proved upon him, for though he said he had only done like all the rest of the Bishops, by whom it was agreed, at their meeting at the Archbishop of York's, that every one of them should write such a letter, yet Lord Hervey detected him in this flat lie to Sir Robert Walpole, having got into his hands an original letter of the Bishop of London's to one of his clergy of a date three days prior to the meeting at the Archbishop's, and conceived almost word for word in the same terms with the copy there agreed to ; which showed that the general letter was of his concerting, and that to act the first role on this occasion he had anticipated with his own clergy the compliment which the other Bishops paid in a lump. He wrote a long letter one Friday night to Sir Robert Walpole, which Sir Robert, going as usual the next morning to Richmond Park to pass his Saturday and Sunday with Miss Skerrett, resolved to answer there; this letter was full of so much insolence and pride, and conceived in such impertinent terms to Sir Robert, considering his station, as well as such un- 1736. KING AND QUEEN CHIDE SHERLOCK. 93 grateful expressions, considering the steady and friendly part Sir Robert had acted to this man, that Sir Robert owned he wrote the answer to it with less temper than ever he showed on any occasion. Sir Robert Walpole said, when he read the Bishop's letter again, he thought he had said too little in answer to it ; when he read his own, he thought it too much, and having two days to cool, and thinking it below him to enter into an epistolary paper war with this eccle siastical bully, he threw his own letter into the fire, and made no answer to the Bishop at all. As he had always disliked Bishop Sherlock, and was afraid he might make some advantage at Court of this stumble of the Bishop of London, Sir Robert repre sented the conduct of all the Bishops there, and par ticularly to the Queen, as equally culpable ; adding, that Sherlock's part was as little to be justified in point of understanding and policy, as in integrity and grati tude ; since he had not only partaken of all the Bishop of London's guilt in endeavouring to disturb the quiet of the kingdom, but by being only his follower had shown himself his dupe too. The Queen, when Bishop Sherlock came to her, chid him extremely, and asked him if he was not ashamed to be overreached in this manner a second time by the Bishop of London ; and after all she had said to him to point out his folly in following the Bishop of London in Rundle's affair, how he could be blind and weak enough to be running his nose into another's dirt again ? The King, with his usual softness in speaking of any people he disliked, called the Bishops, whenever he mentioned them in private on this occasion, a parcel of 94 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXHI. black, canting, hypocritical rascals ; and said the Government was likely to go on well if those scoun drels were to dictate to their prince how far he should or should not comply with the disposition of his Parlia ment; and to be giving themselves these impertinent airs in opposing everything that did not exactly suit with their silly opinions. And indeed church-power was so little relished at this time, and churchmen so little popular, that these cabals and combinations of the Bishops to oppose and influence the transactions of Parliament, and to irritate the passions of the inferior clergy, were generally exclaimed against and con demned. The Mortmain Bill and the Quakers' Bill were both passed in the House of Commons by great majorities, and everybody that spoke for them gave the Bishops and the parsons very hard as well as very popular slaps ; the young men all ran riot on these topics, and there were none to take the part of the poor Church but a few old Tories and the Jacobites. Sir Robert Walpole, however, who hated extremes, and dreaded the consequences of all intemperance in Parliament whatever, though he voted for these Bills, endeavoured to quell and soften the zeal of those who voted with him ; and rather followed in every step that was taken in them than promoted it. When they were brought into the House of Lords, the Bishops had the mortification of having all the severe things said to their faces, which they had before been sufficiently mortified in barely hearing had been said. The Duke of Argyll abused them the most and particularly the Bishop of London ; but, consider- 1736. QUEEN ANNE'S BOUNTY. 95 ing his Grace's trade and theirs, most people thought he went too far : and that how hard soever he might be allowed to press them in facts, yet in words a soldier to a clergyman ought to have been more gentle.6 My Lord Chief Justice Hardwicke struck deeper: as he expressly said that there were many things in two books written by the Bishop of London, or by his order, contrary to law ; and that in those books powers were asserted to be in the Church which did not belong to it. He spoke also of pluralities as a great grievance, and said he hoped the Legislature would take cognizance of this abuse in the Church and put some stop to it. Lord Hervey laid open all the mismanagements in the fund called Queen Anne's Bounty, which was given for the augmentation of small livings ; and, by the dis position made of it, had never been properly applied according to the intention of Parliament, or with common justice to the poor clergy. He made this out so clearly to the House, by the calculations he had made of what this Corporation had received, and showing how those receipts had been disposed of, that in consequence of these representations the House of Lords addressed the Crown to inquire into this affair, and to give the Corporation new rules and restrictions for their future proceedings ; which, in consequence of this address, next summer was done in Council. This inquiry into the management of Queen Anne's Bounty came a propos by the Bishops proposing this Corporation to be excepted in the Mortmain Bill, as 6 The Duke of Argyll had all the anti-prelatical opinions of the Cove nanters. See post, p. 101. 96 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXIII. the two Universities were ; but the Mortmain Bill passed the House of Lords without this exception. When the Quakers' Bill was debated it was lost [55 to 35], by the two law Lords, the Lord Chancellor Tal bot and the Lord Chief Justice Hardwicke, opposing it. One reason these law Lords had for this conduct was desiring to make their peace with the clergy, and regain some of that favour they had forfeited by their manner of espousing and pushing the Mortmain Bill ; but, in truth, the reason that weighed most with them was the consideration of popularity with the men of their own profession ; for as great men as these two lawyers were, and as upright as they were esteemed, they had the spirit of preferring the power and profit of their own profession as much at heart" as any parson in the kingdom, or any set of men in the world. It was this spirit that made them and all the lawyers in both Houses for the Mortmain Bill : as the fewer lands there were unalienable in the kingdom, the more titles to lands there would be open to be litigated.7 It was this spirit, too, that made them against the Quakers' Bill ; for as the purport of this bill was to make a justice of peace a sort of referee between the parson and the Quaker, in the case of all tithes under ten pounds, so this bill — had it passed into a law — would, of course, have prevented nine law-suits in ten that " This motive seems to me too far fetched as well as too mean : it could hardly have influenced a practising conveyancer, much less these great judges. Lord Campbell, in his ' Lives of the Chancellors,' states these matters more candidly. " Lord Hardwicke," he says, " rendered essential service to the public by supporting a bill to amend the Mortmain Acts . . and opposed and threw out a well-meant but impracticable bill for regulat ing the payment of tithes by Quakers."— vol. v. p. 35. 1736. QUAKERS BILL REJECTED. 97 were now brought into Westminster-Hall from ever coming there. This Lord Hardwicke, in one of his speeches, with great inadvertence (and I dare swear thorough repentance) plainly avowed was his chief motive for opposing this bill ; saying, that " if the bill should pass, it would not only exclude the jurisdiction of the Ecclesiastical Courts from operating in the case of these tithes, but would also virtually shut out the temporal courts, as it would make a justice of the peace a turnpike to the temporal courts, where almost all the disputants would be stopped." — The very reason (begging my Lord Hardwicke 's pardon) that should have induced every man in England, but a lawyer or a parson, to be for this bill ; but as long as money and power are reckoned of the good things of this world, it was no wonder the parsons should oppose a bill that would abridge their present capacity of worrying a Quaker, or that the lawyers should join the parsons when they were to reap the profits from this equitable Christian chace. But from what I have said, it is pretty plain (in my opinion at least) that the lawyers in promoting the Mortmain Bill, or opposing the Quakers', had nothing strongly in view but the enriching the harvest of West minster-Hall ; and that their popularity with the laity in the first, or with the clergy in the latter, was not their primary or chief consideration, but a casual incidental consequence of their attachment to the interests of their own burdensome profession.8 8 The clergy in London, and some other dioceses, entered into resolu tions of thanks to their diocesans for their effectual resistance to " that strange and unheard of infringement of their rights which was lately attempted on the Quakers by the bill." — Lord Malum, vol. ii. p. 297. VOL. II. H 98 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chaf. XXIII. Considering the manner in which the Bishops and clergy were treated during the dependence of this Quakers' Bill, they had no great reason to triumph in its being dropped ; for the Churchmen had never so strong reason to believe the decay of their interest in the kingdom as this winter ; there was nobody of any rank or figure at present that could stand the ridicule of putting themselves at the head of a Church party. Lord Winchelsea, Lord Chesterfield, and Lord Ba- thurst had all spoken for the Quakers' Bill ; and Lord Carteret had declared in his speech, tliat as much an enemy as everybody knew he was to this Administration, he would never join in attacking any minister ecclesias tically insulted. Even the old Tories and Jacobites who had voted with the Bishops on this occasion, had done it in a manner little more agreeable to their spiritual lord ships than those who had voted against them ; for there was not one of those who spoke in the debate that did not rather more than intimate that he had paid the Bishops this compliment from a regard to their voca tion, and not to their personal characters; and that they did not reverence them more as members of the Church than they contemned them as tools to a court.9 The King, about a month before the Session con cluded, had begun to break the ice in hinting his intention to go again this year to Hanover ; and as Madame Walmoden's being with child before he left Hanover had extremely increased his fondness for her 9 Lord Hervey evidently concurs in this censure, forgetting that he had just charged the Bishops with " insolence and ingratitude," for not being " the tools of the Court." 1736. THE KING AND MADAME WALMODEN. 99 before they parted, so the birth of a son10 this spring had very much whetted his impatience to return to her. A child, in most correspondences of this kind, is a cement that binds them faster ; and the silly vanity old men have in getting one was an additional circum stance that made the King's fondness for Madame Walmoden increase much more on this incident than it would have done from the same cause twenty years ago. This being his Majesty's present situation, as the Church debates in Parliament had a little protracted the Session beyond what was expected — and, of course, postponed his Majesty's departure — he grew so inor dinately peevish that everybody about him wished him gone almost as much as he wished to leave them. It was generally reported, and as generally believed, that he one day said to the Queen on this subject, in one of his fretful transports, when she was talking of what had passed in the House, and that the Bishops should not be suffered by the Court to be so irritated by the present run against them as to be made des perate and irreconcilable — that he did not care a farthing how it ended, provided it did but end some way or other ; and, upon her attempting to reply, that he stopped her short, by saying, " I am sick to death 10 When after the Queen's death Madame de Walmoden came over to St. James's, " this boy threw Lord Chesterfield into a ridiculous distress. On being made Secretary of State [in 1746], he found a fair young lad in the ante-chamber at St. James's, who seeming much at home, the Earl, concluding it was the mistress's son, was profuse of attentions to the boy, and more prodigal still of his prodigious regard for his mamma. The shrewd boy received all his Lordship's vows with indulgence, and without betraying himself; — at last he said, ' I suppose your Lordship takes me for Master Louis, but I am only Sir William Russell, one of the pages.' " — Reminiscences. h2 100 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXm. of all this foolish stuff, and wish with all my heart that the devil may take all your Bishops, and the devil take your minister, and the devil take the Parliament, and the devil take the whole island provided I can get out of it and go to Hanover." But the truth of this speech I cannot pretend to authenticate. Towards the close of the session, the Bishops finding their interest and credit, both in and out of Parliament, much weaker than they could have imagined it, were glad to make overtures of peace with the Court, and the Court knowing twenty-six votes in the House of Lords were always worth managing and preserving, was as ready to accept these offers of reconciliation as the Bishops were to make them. Mutual complaints passed and mutual forgiveness : the Bishops complained of the Church being attacked in the Quakers' Bill ; and the Court, of the Government being insulted in the manner the Bishops had taken to oppose it ; and that cabals and combinations of that kind ought no more to be suf fered by any Government among any set of men than it would be suffered in an army. All the Bishops who had access to the Queen complained, too, that their punishment had been much too great for their crime, and that, considering the firmness with which the whole Bench had stuck for so many years to the sup port of the Court, it was very hard, for one false step, and what at worst could only be called an excess of zeal on a commendable foundation, they should have been so treated, and not only abandoned by the Court to run the gauntlet unprotected through the Plouse of Lords every day for two months together, but con demned to receive the severest lashes from Lords who 1736. THE CHURCH AND THE COURT. 10 L were known to be in the greatest credit at Court. Sherlock and Hare11 talked to the Queen in this strain every time they saw her ; to which the Queen answered that they both knew very well that the Duke of Ar gyll was not the most manageable man in the world, that his Presbyterian education had given him a spleen to all episcopacy, and that old squabbles with the Bishop of London had, joined to that general prejudice, made him take this occasion to gratify both. Sherlock said that, supposing that to be the Duke of Argyll's case, everybody knew it was not Lord Hervey's, and that everybody knowing he was with the Queen every day of his life in private, it was very natural to con clude that what he did every day of his life in public was not very disagreeable to her. The Queen said she had heard Lord Hervey had been very cool and very decent, and had not said one personal thing. Sherlock said all that was very true, but that it was true too that Lord Hervey had stirred and opened the whole affair relating to Queen Anne's Bounty ; and that the air of coolness he put on when he was pretending to demon strate that the Bishops were robbing the public under pretence of stealing for the poor clergy, and then cheat ing the poor clergy by giving what they had stolen among the rich, was only in order to make people be lieve he spoke not from any motive of passion, but from a desire to do justice ; and whilst others had only spoke to the passions of the laity against the Bishops, that Lord Hervey had endeavoured to set all the inferior clergy against them. 11 Francis Hare, Dean of St. Paul's and Bishop of Chichester, in which see he died, 1740. 102 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXIII. The Queen said she really knew nothing of the state of Queen Anne's Bounty, or the management of it ; but if it was wrong, as the Bishop of London was known to have had the chief hand in it, she did not wonder, " nor you (said she), my Lord, cannot wonder, at what Lord Hervey has done. You know he has hated the Bishop of London ever since he opposed Butts being Bishop of Norwich ; and since that Lord Hervey says in several little things he has desired of Sir Robert Walpole in Church matters, the Bishop of London has always opposed him ; and though I do not justify Lord Hervey for laying open at this time the frauds that have been committed in this thing, and making all the Bishops odious, because he feels a resentment against one of them ; yet I can easier excuse him for throwing some of the Bishop of London's dirt upon you than I can excuse all you other fools (who love the Bishop of London no better than he does) for taking the Bishop of London's dirt upon yourselves. You know I love you (continued the Queen to Sherlock), and that I wish you well, and therefore I have a right to chide you that you will not let me do you the good I have a mind to do you ; but with all your good sense, how was it possible you could be so blind and so silly to be run ning a race of popularity with the Bishop of London among the clergy, and hope you could rise upon the Bishop of London's ruins (whom you hate and wish ruined), when you were going hand-in-hand with him in these very paths which you hoped would ruin him ; and by these means brought yourself to be just in such a situation that if the Bishop of London could force the Court into his -measures, you had lent your force to 1736. THE CHURCH AND THE COURT. 103 strengthen your enemy, and, if he fell, you must fall with him ? Are you not ashamed not to have seen this, and to have been at once in this whole matter the Bishop of London's assistant and enemy — tool and dupe ?" If Sherlock made any good answer to this, all I can say is, I know it not ; and as I heard the con versation reported only by the Queen, it is no wonder I should know no good answer if a good one had or could have been given ; few people who speak so well caring to own they have been as well answered : but in this case there was so much truth in what the Queen had alleged, that I do not really see there was a good answer to be made. Sir Robert, to prevent Sherlock's making any advantage of the Bishop of London's dis grace, had inculcated all this, and poured it so often into the Queen's ears, that I dare say by the manner in which she repeated it to me, it came very glibly out of her mouth. When Bishop Hare complained to the Queen of Lord Hervey's conduct in Parliament, he said Lord Hervey was not contented with displaying his own fine oratory against the Bishops, but that he must breed up his ape, my Lord Hinton,12 to abuse them too ; and write speeches for him, full of all these impertinences which he was ashamed to speak himself. The Queen was extremely diverted with the Bishop's eagerness, and particularly with the expression of the ape ; and the next morning told Lord Hervey every word that had passed. Lord Hervey desired the Queen to tell the Bishop that he liked his own young ape much better 12 John, Lord Poulet of Hinton, called up January, 1734, and after wards second Earl Poulet. 104 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXHI than he did her old baboon ; and added that, if he could keep this story no better than her Majesty, and was to tell it Lord Hinton, that his ape would cer tainly knock her baboon down the first time he met him. The next time the Queen saw Bishop Hare she con fessed to him that she had not been able to resist telling Lord Hervey about the ape ; upon which the Bishop cried out in a most abominable fright, "Good God, Madam, what have you done ? You have made these two men my enemies for ever : as for my Lord Hervey, he will satisfy himself perhaps with playing his wit off upon me, and calling me Old Baboon ; but for my Lord Hinton, who has no wit, he will knock me down." This tallied so ridiculously with what Lord Hervey had said to the Queen, that she burst into a fit of laughter, which lasted some minutes before she could speak; and then she told the Bishop, "That is just, my good Lord, what Lord Hervey did do, and what he said the ape would do." But afterwards she bid the Bishop be under no apprehensions of this matter going any farther, for that she would answer for Lord Hervey's not repeating what she had said to him. All the Bishops, except the Bishops of Salisbury and London, made their peace again so well with the Court that they stood much on the same foot after the con clusion of the session as they had done before it began, the^Court satisfying itself with its having been proved to the Bishops of how little consideration they were without the support of the Court, and the Bishops glad, after nobody would receive them, to return again to those who, though offended, were ready to absolve them. 1736. QUEEN'S ADVICE TO SHERLOCK. 105 Bishop Sherlock was seemingly as much restored as the rest, but not in reality and essentials, for as the Bishop of London was now no longer designed to suc ceed the Archbishop of Canterbury [Wake] when his Grace, who had been long mellow, should at last drop, so Sherlock had lost the hope of succeeding Gibson on that promotion at London, and saw too plainly — de prived of the long-expected fruits of that promise — that Sir Robert's opposition to him with the new handle given would be too strong to let him [succeed] at Can terbury ; and indeed Sir Robert had taken such effec tual care with the Queen to prevent this, that he had told her Majesty, the spirit of people in general, and particularly of the House of Commons, was so strong against Sherlock, as a man thought both willing and able to carry Church power as high as ever it was known in this nation, that if she thought of sending him to Canterbury at this time she must call a new Parliament, for that he had seen enough of this, this session, to know that nobody would be able to manage it, alarmed by such a preferment to the head of the Church. The Queen therefore advised Sherlock to go down to his diocese and live quietly ; to let the spirit he had raised so foolishly against him here subside, and to re proach himself only if he had failed or should fail of what he wished should be done and she had wished to do for him. It will be very natural for everybody to wonder how a man who loved power so well as the Bishop of London, and was never reckoned a fool, could wantonly throw it away in the manner he has done. 106 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXIII. The Bishop of London was a man of so haughty, so insolent, and so sour a disposition, as no man was ever more ungrateful to his superiors and benefactors, more assuming among his equals, or more oppressive towards his inferiors, that it was very easy to reconcile his con duct to his character in the point of pride, but very difficult for anybody to account for it, conformable to the opinion the world had always entertained of his understanding. As Sir Robert Walpole was every way best able to explain the riddle, I shall solve it in his words. The Bishop of London hated Sherlock, and had always insisted with the Court, when he himself should be removed to Canterbury, upon naming his successor at London ; telling Sir Robert Walpole that if he went to Lambeth, and Sherlock was settled at London, that he knew very well the consequence would be, Sher lock's having all the power, and that all he should get for playing it into his hands would be the honour of being called " your Grace," and living in the palace at Lambeth ; and he told Sir Robert Walpole that from Lambeth he should never be able to see him but by appointment, whereas from the house he now had in Whitehall he could watch opportunities, and see him at any time in five minutes ; and for these reasons, unless he had the power of putting somebody he could entirely depend upon into his present bishopric, that he was determined not to leave it. Sir Robert Walpole said, " My Lord, you know I have always made it a point to maintain you in spite of all your enemies, and the attacks that have been made upon me to shake your interest : I will continue to do so, and declare, at Lon- 1736. GIBSON'S MOTIVES. 107 don or Lambeth, wherever you are, you shall be my first and sole minister for Church matters ;13 and as I will never deceive you by doing less than I promise, so I will give you no hopes of my doing more than I know I can. I can make you Archbishop — I can keep all the power in your hands when you are Archbishop ; but I cannot prevent Sherlock's succeeding you at London ; his interest with the Queen on this point is too strong for me in prudence to undertake to combat it ; for those Ministers who are resolved always to go as far as they think they can go, may sometimes go much farther than they should go ; and, in my opinion, knowing when to yield is as great a skill as any that belongs to courts." The Bishop of London took this ill, imagining either that Sir Robert ought to have risked everything rather than suffered Sherlock to come in at London, or that Sir Robert was inclined to divide the power between them. Sir Robert says he believes from this interview the Bishop of London took the resolution of not going on these terms to Canterbury, and either hoped he should prove himself considerable enough to force the Court into his measures, and to comply with his own terms ; or at least, if he could not, that by pushing his opposition to the Court in Church matters, he should so far ingratiate himself with the clergy, and hide the true state of this rupture, as to have them and all the 13 Horace Walpole tells us that " Sir Robert maintained his influence over the clergy by Gibson, Bishop of London ; but he often met with troublesome obstructions from Lady Sundon, who espoused, as I have said, the heterodox clergy, and Sir Robert never could shake her credit [with the Queen]." — Reminiscences. We see how strongly Lord Hervey was of the same heterodox party, and his influence no doubt assisted Lady Sundon. 108 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXIII. world imagine that it was produced on ecclesiastical points, and not on personal jealousy. It is very certain that the Bishop of London's public style of talking at this time so far authenticated this manner of accounting for the reason of his strange behaviour, that in all his conversations, as well as all his letters, the purport of his assertions was, that there was at present, both in and out of Parliament, an anti- Church spirit every day growing stronger and stronger, which Sir Robert Walpole either could not or would not quell, and that it was equal to him whether it was Sir Robert's negligence or impotence that suffered it to rage ; that, for his own part, the Church on one side, and the Court on the other, had been so long grinding him between them, that he was determined now to get out of that uneasy situation ; and, since he found there was no serving God and Mammon, he should not long hesitate in making the option, but was determined to adhere, without the least swerving, to his God, his Church, his religion, his charge, his profession, his duty, and his fraternity. Sir Robert Walpole told Lord Hervey nobody wished at present more for the Archbishop's life than he did ; for, should his Grace die just now, he should not know how to replace him. Lord Hervey said he could not imagine why he should be so much embarrassed. "Sure, Sir," continued he, "you have had enough of great geniuses : why can you not take some Greek and Hebrew blockhead, that has learning enough to justify the preferment, and not sense enough to make you repent of it? During the Bishop of London's reign your situation was much worse than doing nothing in 1736. LORD HERVEY RECOMMENDS POTTER. 109 Church matters ; for the demerit towards everybody that was disobliged was thrown upon your account, and the merit of every obligation that was conferred the Bishop of London placed to his own. Add to this, that all the laity were angry with you for supporting a man so obnoxious to them ; whilst none of the clergy thought they owed any thanks for what they got to anybody but him. This I hope, Sir, for the future will cure you of having another Pope, and teach you to take the ma nagement and dispensation of ecclesiastical as well as temporal favours and preferments into your own hands, that you may not be blamed for other people's faults, nor let other people be thanked for your merits." Sir Robert said all this was very true, but that Sher lock's interest with the Queen stood upon such a foot, that it would be very difficult to find any Bishop to trip up his heels there. Lord Hervey replied, " You, Sir, have shaken her opinion of Sherlock's understanding in practice so much lately, and laid so strong a foundation for another to stand upon, by telling her Majesty that she cannot carry Sherlock to Lambeth at present without calling a new Parliament, that I fancy I could name a man who, with these helps, and the natural inclination the Queen has always shown to him, might at this time get the preference to Sherlock in this promotion. The man I mean is Potter, the Bishop of Oxford ;14 and the same power that hindered him from getting the better of Hoadley in the last preferment to the Bishopric of Winchester, might easily, I believe, help him to get the better of Sherlock in case of a vacancy at Canterbury. 14 Author ofthe ' Antiquities of Greece.' 110 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXIII. Potter is a man of undoubted great learning — of as little doubted probity. He has been always, though reckoned a Tory in the Church, uninterruptedly attached to this family, without the lure or reward of any preferment but this poor Bishopric of Oxford, where he has stuck for twenty years. The Queen loves him ; his character will support you in sending him to Lambeth ; and his capacity is not so good, nor his temper so bad, as to make you apprehend any great danger in his being there." Sir Robert agreed to all Lord Hervey had urged, but seemed much more inclined to take Hare, provided he could get the Queen to accept of him. Hare's having been his tutor at the University gave Sir Robert prejudices for him ; and the good correspond ence in which he had lived with him ever since made his vanity, I believe, more inclined to Hare than Potter, as the promotion in that case would be more marked out to have been made solely by his influence. Lord Hervey told him, " You will certainly repent of it if you take Hare. He is a haughty, hard-natured, impe rious, hot-headed, injudicious fellow, who, I firmly believe, would give you more trouble at Lambeth than even Sherlock himself; and, besides that, is so tho roughly disliked in private and feared in public life that I do not think you could lodge power in more unpopular hands." This did not weaken Sir Robert's bias towards him ; but Lord Hervey's constantly talking to the Queen in this strain strengthened the natural bias she had against him ; and his Lordship never lost any opportunity of doing Potter as many good offices as he did ill ones to Hare ; and, as all he said on these 1736. CHURCH MATTERS. 1 1 1 two subjects had tbe groundwork of her own inclina tion, it made an impression which, without that aid, would have sunk much less deep, and been much easier effaced. Thus stood the situation of Church matters. 112 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXIV. CHAPTER XXIV. The Prince's Marriage proposed — King's impatience hurries it on — Prin cess Augusta of Saxe-Gotha arrives at Greenwich — Prepossessing beha viour — Reception at Court — The King goes abroad — Queen Regent — Prince's disrespect to her — Signature of English Commissions in Hanover — Disagreeable occurrence to Madame de Walmoden — Princess scruples about the Church of England Communion — How reconciled — Etiquette at Chapel Royal — Lady A. Hamilton — Privy Purse to the Princess — Riots in London and the West. I must now go a little back to give an account of the Prince's marriage, which was another principal event of this winter. It had been so long talked of without anything being done to forward it, that everybody began to think it was not designed, when a step was taken that showed at last the King was in earnest. This step was his Majesty's sending [12th February] a message in form to the Prince by five of the Cabinet Council — Lord Chancellor Talbot ; Lord Wilmington, President of the Council ; Lord Godolphin, Privy Seal ; Duke of Grafton, Chamberlain ; and Duke of Devonshire, Stew ard — to acquaint the Prince that his Majesty, if his Royal Highness liked it, would demand the Princess of Saxe-Gotha for him in marriage. The Prince made answer with great decency, duty, and propriety, that whoever his Majesty thought a proper match for his son would be agreeable to him. In consequence of this message to the Prince, Lord Delaware, Treasurer of the King's Household, was 1736. ARRIVAL OF THE PRINCESS OE SAXE-GOTHA. 113 nominated for the embassy to Saxe-Gotha to demand the Princess of her brother the Duke in marriage for the Prince of Wales. Lord Delaware, if the King chose him to prevent the Prince's having any jealousy of his future bride's affections being purloined on the way by him who was sent to attend her to England, was the properest man his Majesty could have pitched upon ; for, except his white staff and red riband, as Knight of the Bath, I know of nothing belonging to the long, lank, awkward person of Lord Delaware that could attract her eyes ; nor do I believe there could be found in any of the Goth or Vandal courts of Germany a more unpolished ambassador for such an occasion. The necessary preparations for this embassy taking up some little time, and the King being very impatient to return to Hanover to the arms of Madame Walmo den, declared to his Queen and his Ministers, that if matters could not be so managed as to bring the Prin cess of Saxe-Gotha into England before the expiration of the month of April, that the marriage should either be put off till the winter, or solemnized without him ; for that he would positively set out for Germany as soon as ever the Parliament was up. This declaration obliged the Ministers to hurry on this affair ; and on Sunday morning, the 25th of April, whilst the King was at chapel, news was brought him that the Princess of Saxe-Gotha was landed at Green wich.1 On the Tuesday following, about two o'clock, i " And was conducted by Lord Delaware to his Majesty's palace there. In the evening the Prince of Wales went to pay her a visit, and stayed several hours. The next day he dined with her at Greenwich, where the crowd of people was very great, and her Highness condescended to show VOL. II. I 114 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXIV. she came to St. James's ; and, the marriage being to be performed that evening, the whole Court, and almost indeed the whole town, resorted to St. James's in their wedding-clothes to see her arrival. She came from Greenwich in one of the King's coaches to Lambeth,2 was conveyed from thence to Whitehall in one of his barges, and from Whitehall came through St. James's Park and Garden in the King's chair to the foot of the steps that go out of the King's apartment into the garden, where the Prince (who had been often at Greenwich in these two days3) received her, and led her up to the King, who had been waiting (not very patiently) above an hour with the Queen and the whole Court in the great drawing- room to receive her ; as soon as she came she threw herself all along on the floor first at the King's and then at the Queen's feet, who both took her up and embraced her ; this prostration was known to be so acceptable an accosting to his Majesty's pride, that joined to the propriety of her whole behaviour on this occasion, it gave the spectators great prejudices in herself from the gallery of the palace, which drew forth the most lively acclamations." — Lond. Mag., 1736, p. 218. It seems strange that the King and Queen should have allowed this young creature, so inexperienced and unattended, to have passed above forty- eight hours at Greenwich, while they were at St. James's. The excuse given by the historian Tindal is that " the laws of precedency had not settled the rank of the Princess before she became Princess of Wales ;" and we shall see presently that the Prince was disposed to advance pretensions of this nature, in which the rest of the Royal Family were little inclined to indulge him. 2 There was then no bridge but London Bridge. 3 The Prince behaved with becoming attention. He visited her imme diately on her arrival ; dined in private with her on Monday, and "after wards gave her the diversion of passing on the water as far as the Tower and back in his barge, finely adorned, preceded by a concert of music. Their Highnesses afterwards supped in public."— Gent. Mag. Ap. 1736. 1736. PRINCESS OF SAXE-GOTHA. 1 15 favour of her understanding, which on better acquaint ance afterwards soon mouldered away. This Princess was but seventeen years old when she came to England, knew not a mortal here, and was suffered to bring nobody but one single man with her, so that in this situation, and brought from the solitude of her mother's country-house in Saxe-Gotha at once into the crowd, intrigues, and pomp of this court, the bare negative good conduct of doing nothing absurd might reasonably prejudice sensible people in her favour. Sir Robert Walpole was one of this number, who said to me the morning after the wedding, that her gaining upon the King last year in one interview enough to make him fond of the match and her be having at Greenwich to the Prince in such a manner as to put him in good humour with it, after all his Royal Highness had uttered against her before he had seen her, were circumstances that spoke strongly in favour of brains that had had but seventeen years to ripen. She could speak not one word of English, and few of French; and when it was proposed the year before to her mother, when this match was resolved upon, that she should be taught one of these languages, her mother said it must be quite unnecessary, for the Hanover Family having been above twenty years on the throne, to be sure most people in England spoke German (and especially at Court) as often and as well as English. — A conjecture so well founded that I believe there were not three natives in England that understood one word of it better than in the reign of Queen Anne. The Princess was rather tall, and had health and i2 116 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXIV. youth enough in her face, joined to a very modest and good-natured look, to make her countenance not dis agreeable ; but her person, from being very ill-made, a good deal awry, her arms long, and her motions awkward, had, in spite of all the finery of jewels and brocade, an ordinary air, which no trappings could cover or exalt. She did not appear at all embarrassed on this occa sion, which most people gave as an instance of sense ; but Lady Stafford, an old French lady, daughter of the famous Count de Grammont, who had a pension from this Court, and had lived for many years in England, and had as much wit, humour, and entertainment in her as any man or woman I ever knew, with a great justness in her way of thinking, and very little reserve in her manner of giving her opinion of things and people, said — "Pour moi, je trouve qu'on juge tres mal — si cette pauvre Princesse avait le sens commun, elle doit etre embarrasse dans sa situation ; quand on a un tel role ajouer, qu'on doit epouser un sot Prince et vivre avee un desagreable animal toute sa vie privee, on doit sentir ses malheurs, et je suis sure qu'elle est sotte, et mime tres sotte, puis qu'elle n'est pas embarrasste et qu'elle ne parait point confondue dans toutes les nou- veautes parmi lesquelles elle se trouve." 4 * This censure does not show much of the sense and judgment which Lord Hervey praises, for it supposes the poor young creature to be already as good a judge ofthe character and the future conduct of persons whom she saw for the first time, as Lady Stafford with her long experience : and if the Princess could be supposed to have this prophetical power, the con cealing any such apprehensions would be a mark of her good sense. The result disproved Lady Stafford's prognostic. The Princess showed through life much good sense; Lord Mahon calls her "a princess of excellent judgment" (ii. 303) ; and Horace Walpole himself, who hated and libelled her, admits that she was " a woman of a strong mind." 1736. ROYAL ETIQUETTE. 117 The King and Queen dined this day as usual in< their own apartment, but the Duke and the Princesses were ordered to dine with the Prince and his bride in the Prince's apartment, where the King, to avoid all difficulties about ceremony, had ordered them to go undressed; notwithstanding which, the Prince wisely contrived to raise a thousand disputes, pretending first that his brother and sisters should sit upon stools whilst he and his bride sat in armed chairs at the head of the table ; next, that they should not be served on the knee, though neither of these things had ever entered before into his head since he came into England, and that he had ate with them constantly every day. However, in both these things and several others, the Princesses having had their directions from the King and Queen what they were to do, his Royal Highness was overruled; the Princesses would not go into his eating-room, but stayed in his antechamber, till the stools were taken away and chairs carried in ; and being to be served by their own servants at table, they ordered their servants to do everything for them, just as the Prince and Princess's did for them ; only after dinner, the Princess Caroline told me they were forced to go without their coffee, for fear that, being poured out by a servant of the Princess's, they might have met with some disgrace (had they accepted of any) in the manner of giving it. I mention these occurrences to show from what wise motives the irreconcilable differences in princely families often proceed, and by what trifles widened and kept up. At nine o'clock in the evening [27th April] the cere- 118 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXIV. mony ofthe wedding took place, the Royal Family after wards supped together, and after the Prince and Princess went to bed the whole company was permitted to pass through their bedchamber and see them. * * * 5 The two Houses of Parliament addressed the King. On this occasion Mr. GrenviUe, Mr. Lyttelton, and Cornet Pitt6 got up one after another in the House of Commons to compliment the Prince's character and the Princess's family; and to insinuate, not in very covert terms, that the King had very little merit to the nation in making this match, since it had been owing to the Prince demanding it of his father, and the voice of the people calling for it too strongly not to be complied with. At the end of the session Cornet Pitt was broke for this ; which was a measure at least ill-timed, if not ill- 5 Here is another chasm in the MS., and I am sorry, instead of the ac count that Lord Hervey probably gave of this scene, to be obliged to sub stitute the following from the ' Gentleman's Magazine,' April 1736. After supper, " Their Majesties retiring to the apartments of the Prince of Wales, the bride was conducted to her bedchamber, and the bridegroom to his dressing-room, where the Duke [his brother] undressed him, and his Ma jesty did his Royal Highness the honour to put on his shirt. The bride was undressed by the Princesses, and, being in bed in a rich undress, his Majesty came into the room ; and the Prince following soon after in a night gown of silver stuff, and cap of the finest lace, the quality were admitted to see the bride and bridegroom sitting up in the bed, surrounded by all the Royal Family." It goes on to describe the dresses, and says that the Dukes of Grafton, Newcastle, and St. Albans, Lord Albemarle, Lord Hervey, and many other noblemen, were in gold brocades of from 300/. to 500/. a suit. See ante, vol. i. p. 310. 6 We cannot but smile at this light mention of him who was to be the great Lord Chatham. His speech, however (though it seems vapid enough as reported), must have been forcible and stinging, for it was the foundation of that long and irreconcilable personal animosity of George II. against Mr. Pitt, which contributed more than any other single cause to all the factions and difficulties of his own subsequent reign, and of the earlier portion of his successor's. 1736. THE PRINCE'S FAMILY. 119 taken ; since the breaking him at the end of the session looked as if it had been done on account of the general tenor of his conduct during the session, to avoid which interpretation, if the Court did not think him too in considerable an object to be distinguished by such a mark of its resentment, he ought certainly to have been turned out the night after he made this speech, to mark out the crime that drew the King's indignation upon him. Before the King went abroad he sent a message by the Duke of Grafton to the Prince, to let him know that wherever the Queen resided there would always be apartments provided for him and the Princess : this message being verbal, when the Prince complained that it was to tell him he was to be prisoner wherever the Queen resided, that explanation of it was denied, and on the King's side of the house it was said that it was rather a civility shown to the Prince ; though in reality everybody knew how it was meant, and the design was certainly to prevent either Prince or Princess having a separate court, and so afterwards explained. I forgot to mention one thing in its proper place, which was the dispute between the Queen and the Prince (when she nominated the Princess's servants before her coming over) about Lady Archibald Ha milton's being one of the Ladies of the Bedchamber : the Prince insisted much upon it ; but the Queen said, whether she believed Lady Archibald innocent or not, the Prince's behaviour to her had been so particular, and had caused her to be so generally talked of as being his mistress, that it was impossible for her to put Lady Archibald about the Princess without incurring 120 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXIV. the censure of the whole world ; and therefore all she could do to oblige him in this particular was, as the Princess was designed to have four Ladies, to nominate but three, leaving a vacancy in case the Princess liked to have Lady Archibald about her, to add her after wards ; but Mrs. Townshend,7 wife of his Groom of the Bedchamber, whom the Prince also solicited to have one of the Women of the Bedchamber, the King pe remptorily refused ; not on account of prudery, for the Prince was never talked of for Mrs. Townshend, but for political reasons ; his Majesty bidding the Queen say to her son that as Mr. Townshend was the most impertinent puppy in the Prince's whole family, he was determined not to reward him for being so ; and that it was more favour than either the servant or master deserved, that he himself was not turned out. Upon the Prince's marriage the King increased his allowance from 24,000/. to 50,000/. a-year, which the Prince said was robbing him of 50,000/., as the Parlia ment when it gave the Civil List at the King's acces sion designed him 100,000/., which the King had had in the former reign when he was Prince of Wales ; and most people were of the same opinion. The breach between these two parts of the family grew wider every day ; and this circumstance of the 100,000/., as it was one ofthe principal causes of their disagreement, and indeed the most material point in dispute between them, it was not likely the breach would ever be healed, as the one would never cease to 7 Jane, second daughter of Lord William Paulet, wife of William, third son of Lord Townshend, by his first marriage. Ante, vol. i. p. 212. 1736. THE PRINCE'S PERVERSITY. 121 think the withholding half of this income a wrong done to him, and the other would never be prevailed upon, right or wrong, to give it. Sir Robert Walpole told the Queen that he could see no way of keeping the Prince within any tole rable bounds but by the Princess; and yet if her Majesty tried to cultivate any good correspond ence there too early, he said it would only give the Prince a jealousy, and prevent his ever suffering his wife to have any interest with him or any influence at all over his conduct ; and therefore that her Majesty must give the Princess time to form an interest in him before she went about to make any use of her Royal Highness to these purposes. In the middle of May the King left England,8 and the same morning he left St. James's to embark at Gravesend the Queen went to Richmond, taking with her her children, her Lady and Woman of the Bed chamber in Waiting, and Lord Hervey. The Prince pretended that he designed to follow her next day and stay at his house at Kew till the Queen returned to Kensington to open her commission of Regent, which she never used to do till the news was brought of the King's being landed in Holland. But the Princess being taken ill the night before they were to remove to Kew, or being ordered to say she was so, the Prince sent to let the Queen know he was prevented by the indisposition of his wife from coming to Kew as he had intended, and ordered all the things s On Thursday, 21st May, the King prorogued Parliament, and on the 22nd set out for Hanover. 122 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXIV. and servants which had been sent thither to be brought back to London. The Prince first said the Princess had the measles, but as he could not get Dr. Hollings, who attended her, to confirm this report, he brought the measles down to a rash, and at last compounded for a great cold. The Queen having a mind to be satisfied of the truth of the case, whilst she thought the Princess in perfect health (as she herself told me), pretended to believe her ill, and with great civility and maternal kindness, went with her two eldest daughters to Lon don to see her ; but the Princess keeping her bed, and the room being made (on purpose, as the Queen ima- ginedj very dark, she returned as little informed of the true state of her daughter-in-law's health as she went. However, most people were of opinion this illness, if not entirely feigned, was much aggravated by the Prince's report of it, partly because he liked better to stay in town and divert himself there, but chiefly to take the first opportunity of evading, if not disobey ing the orders he had received from the King by the Duke of Grafton.9 When the Queen went to Kensington to open her commission of Regent, his Royal Highness did not think fit to appear at Council, but contrived to come to Kensington just after the Council wras over, and pre tending he had designed to be present, though he was too late. 9 There is no doubt that such was the motive of this and several other ofthe Prince's proceedings : his whole conduct seems to have been a series of tracasseries to try how far he could brave his mother, whose Regency ex ceedingly offended him. 1736. COMMISSIONS DELAYED. 123 Lord Harrington's ill state of health was made the pretence for Horace Walpole's being sent in his stead this year to Hanover with the King ; but had his health been better, his interest at Court was so much worse, that some other reason would have been found and given for his not going ; for it was a resolution to my knowledge taken the year before by the Queen and Sir Robert, that Lord Harrington should never be suffered to go thither with the King again. There were a great number of commissions in the army vacant, which the King, from a natural dilatori- ness in his temper, joined to a particular backwardness in giving, had postponed filling up all the winter, not withstanding the frequent and pressing instances made to him by Sir Robert Walpole, who never received any other answer on these occasions from his Majesty, than " It is time enough — I will fill them up at the end of the session." Most people thought the King's reason for keeping commissions in the army vacant in this manner was, because the pay during their being vacant went into his pocket; and had that been the case, his conduct would not have been so wonderful in this particular : but it was not his avarice that operated in this point, for he got little or nothing by it, the intermediate pay not coming to him, but being accounted for to the public. It was therefore owing merely to his reluctance to oblige, and his loving nobody10 well enough to have i° This is a very unlikely motive, and must have been suggested by Lord Hervey's private pique against the King, which indeed is evident throughout. Nor was the fact as stated " illegal :" for, as these commissions had been pre sented for the King's signature, they must have borne dates prior to the regency, and of course the King only, and not the Regent, could sign them. 124 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXIV. any pleasure in preferring them, that this vast number of posts in the army was unfilled. At the end of the session, when Sir Robert came with these numerous solicitations, the King said it was impossible for him, in the hurry of his departure, to answer them all ; so signed only some few before he went, and a few more after he got to Hanover, which in the account of the last year's transactions at Ha nover, I think, I observed was illegal practice, the regal power being not divisible, and by delegation at this time vested in the Queen. His Majesty's happiness with Madame Walmoden, at Hanover, did not last long without alloy or inter ruption; an unlucky accident happening, that gave occasion to his Majesty to fret, as much as it gave occasion to those who were less concerned in it to laugh. The fact was this : — whilst the King was at Heren- hausen,11 and Madame Walmoden at her lodgings in the palace at Hanover, one night the gardener found a ladder, which did not belong to the garden, set up against Madame Walmoden's window ; and concluding it was with a design to rob her, this poor, innocent, careful servant made diligent search in the garden, and found a man lurking behind an espalier, whom he concluded to be the thief; accordingly, by the assist ance of his fellow-servants, he seized and carried him to the captain of the guard then upon duty. When the prisoner was brought to the light, it proved to be one Monsieur Schulemberg, a relation of the Duchess of 11 The King's country palace, near Hanover. 1736. THE LADDER STORY. 125 Kendal's, and an officer in the Imperial service ; he complaining to the captain of the guard of this vio lence, and the captain of the guard, like the gardener, thinking nothing but a design of robbery could be at the bottom of this affair, and that a man of that rank was certainly no robber, ordered him to be released. This affair made a great noise immediately, and Madame Walmoden thinking it would be for her advantage to tell the story herself first to the King, ordered her coach at six o'clock in the morning, drove to Herenhausen, and went directly to the King's bed side, threw herself on her knees, drowned in tears, and begged of his Majesty either to protect her from being insulted or to give her leave to retire. She said she doted on him as her lover and her friend, and never when she gave him her heart considered him as a King ; but that she found too late, that no woman could live with a King as with a man of inferior rank ; but that a thousand people, for political reasons, and with whom she was too weak to struggle, were studying every day. new tricks to ruin her ; and therefore as she foresaw sooner or later she must be undone, though she pre ferred the King's love to every other pleasure or hap piness in the world, yet as her cowardice made her prefer security and quiet even to that, she begged his Majesty would give her timorous innocence leave to retire out of a world and a Court she was unfit to live in. The King, surprised at this unexpected visit and this long preface, asked what all this meant ; she then told the story just as I have related it, and said she was sure this was a trick of the Schulemberg family, 126 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXIV. and perhaps a contrivance of Madame d'Elitz to ruin her. This Madame d'Elitz was a Schulemberg, sister I2 to my Lady Chesterfield— a very handsome lady, though now a little in her decline, with a great deal of wit, who had had a thousand lovers, and had been catched in bed with a man twenty years ago, and been divorced from her husband upon it. She was said to have been mistress to three generations of the Hanover family — the late King, the present, and the Prince of Wales before he came to England, which was one generation more than the Duchess of Valentinois 13 (mistress to Henry II.) could boast of in France. The present King had quitted Madame d'Elitz for Madame Walmoden, upon which a quarrel ensued be tween the two ladies, and the King thereupon had turned Madame d'Elitz out of the palace the year be fore ; just therefore when the King set out for Hanover this year, Madame d'Elitz set out for England, where she now was with her aunt and sister, the Duchess of Kendal and Lady Chesterfield. Madame Walmoden affected to the King to be lieve that all this had happened the night before, from a plot laid by Madame d'Elitz and her family, to be revenged of her for the victory she had got over them in the King's favour. The King was extremely incensed, and ordered the captain of the guard at Hanover to be put under arrest is Cousin, if the general opinion be correct. See ante, vol. i. p. 14. 13 Diane de Poitiers ; but the best historians deny her intrigue with Francis I., and treat it as a " calomnieodieuse." So perhaps was the modern instance. 1736. THE LADDER STORY. 127 immediately for having released Monsieur Schulemberg ; and Monsieur Schulemberg to be again apprehended. Horace Walpole, fearing, as Monsieur Schulemberg was in the Emperor's service, this simple love-affair might grow an affair of State, and the Emperor resent the ill-usage which the King's warmth at this time might offer to this officer, went immediately to Count Kinski, the Emperor's minister, and advised him, by all means, that very hour to force Monsieur Schulem berg to leave Hanover, and get as fast as he could out of the Hanoverian dominions, which advice was forthwith followed. Some people in England thought, but I believe without foundation, that Horace Walpole had a hand in this ladder affair, in order to ruin Madame Wal moden, and make his court to the Queen. Others said that Monsieur Schulemberg had an intrigue with Madame Walmoden's chambermaid; others, that the ladder belonged to the garden, and that one of the workmen had placed it where it was found by accident : what the truth was, I know not ; but it had not the effect of weakening Madame Walmoden's interest in the King, who continued as fond of her as ever. Horace Walpole wrote an account of this affair to Sir Robert, and the King to the Queen, from both which letters the account I have given is taken. The King's letter was a very extraordinary one, asking the Queen, as he would have done a man-friend, what she thought of all this business ? saying, perhaps his passion for Madame Walmoden might make him see it in a partial light for her, and desiring the Queen to consulter le gros homme (meaning Sir Robert), ] 28 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXIV. " qui a plus d 'experience, ma chere Caroline, que vous dans ces affaires, et moins de prejuge que moi dans celle-ci." In the mean time, in England there happened several disturbances of a family and public nature, which I must not pass over in silence. The Princess of Wales took it into her head to have some scruples about receiving the Sacrament according to the manner of the Church of England, and went to the Communion at a Lutheran German chapel. The Queen, at the desire of Sir Robert Walpole, spoke to the Prince on this subject, and told him he ought to interpose, representing to him when this thing came to take air, how ill it would be received not only by the bishops and clergy, but by the people of England in general ; and what bad consequences it might have, by giving the whole nation prejudices against his wife. The Prince assured the Queen he had already said everything he could think of on this subject to his wife, to no purpose ; that in answer, she only wept and talked of her conscience. Lord Hervey advised the Queen at her next con ference to tell the Prince that this might grow a very serious affair ; for as the Act of Succession enjoined the heirs to the Crown, on no less a penalty than the forfeiture of the Crown, to receive the Sacrament according to the manner of the Church of England, as by law established, it was impossible to say how that law might be construed to extend to the wife of the Prince of Wales, and whether she might not possibly be sent back to Saxe-Gotha. 1736. THE PRINCE'S DISRESPECT TO THE QUEEN. 129 All these arguments and conferences had their effect at last so well, that the Princess dried her tears, lulled her conscience, and went no more to the Lutheran Church, but received the Sacrament like the rest of the Royal Family. An old woman called Madame Rixleiven, who had been the Princess's governess at Saxe-Gotha, and was sent for to England at her request, was thought to have put this conscientious nonsense into the Princess's head ; but talking to her too freely also on conjugal points, the Prince soon grew to dislike her, and sent her back from whence she came. There was another thing which happened soon after, relating to going to church ; which, though an affair not of devotion and religion, but of pride and cere monial, yet as it is of the number of royal trifles that had like to have been of serious consequence, I must insert. The Prince and Princess, whether from an air of grandeur or by chance, I know not, used generally to come to chapel at Kensington after the service had been some time begun ; and the Princess, when she did so, being obliged to crowd by the Queen, and to pass before her — between the Queen and where her book lay — the Queen, who really found it troublesome (the passage being very narrow), and, besides the trouble, thinking it had not a very respectful or decent air, after suffering it two or three Sundays, sent and ordered Sir William Irby, the Princess's chamber lain (her Majesty being already in the chapel), to bring the Princess in at another door where the Ladies of the Bedchamber came in, and through which the Princess might come to her place without crowding by the VOL. n. K 130 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXIV. Queen if she was standing, or being obliged to stay at the door, if the Queen was kneeling, till her Majesty rose up. But notwithstanding these orders, the Prince, who was present when the Queen's Vice-Chamberlain delivered them to the Princess's, commanded Sir William Irby to carry the Princess into chapel at the same door he used to do, and accordingly he did so. The Queen, as it is natural to believe, did not much approve of this disobedience to her orders ; and, speak ing of it the next morning to Lord Hervey, said she believed nobody was ever treated, so impertinently as to be told one should not be mistress in one's own house, nor be able to order what door should or should not be opened. Lord Hervey said she was certainly in the right; but that it was very plain by this, and many other particulars in the Prince's conduct since the King went, that he endeavoured to force her to quarrel with him during his father's absence, that he might have it to say that the one was as hard to be lived with as the other ; for which reason, if he were to advise her Majesty, he would wish, if the Prince was to sit down in her lap, that she would only say she hoped he found it easy. He added, that if she ordered her servants to stand at the chapel-door where she went in, and not suffer it to be opened after she was once seated, that to be sure she might keep the Princess from coming in, and make her Royal Highness go round to the other door or back again to her own apartment : but then it would make an eclat, and the Prince would carry a point he had more at heart than the door, which was that of a public dispute. 1736. LADY ARCHIBALD HAMILTON. 131 After this, the Prince, being told, I believe, by some of his own people that he was in the wrong, ordered the Princess, whenever she was not ready to go into chapel with the Queen not to go at all, and by this means avoided either persisting or yielding. The Prince had contrived to put Lady Archibald Hamilton so well into the Princess's good graces, that she was her first favourite, and always with her ; and to obviate any alarms that might be given to her jealousy, he told the Princess himself that malicious people had set it about that she was his mistress ; and that the Queen, who was glad of any pretence to cross him, had laid hold of this excuse to refuse making her one of the ladies of the Princess's Bedchamber, though he had pressed it extremely ; and that the Queen had owned she never believed there was the least founda tion for any such report. At the same time he extolled Lady Archibald's merit and virtue, and said, though she was married very young to an old man, and had been very pretty, that not the least blemish had ever been thrown upon her character till some of the King and Queen's Court, to vex him and to please them (who grudge him the friendship of every man and woman that ever attached themselves to him), made this malicious insinuation. This had its effect so well, that the Princess made it her request to the Queen that she would write to Hanover to the King, to ask his leave for her to take Lady Archibald Hamilton into her service ; to which the King consenting, Lady Archibald was immediately made Lady of the Bedchamber, Privy-Purse, and Mistress of the Robes to the Princess ; with a salary, k 2 132 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXIV. for all three together, of nine hundred pounds a- year. It would be endless if I were to tell how many hints the Prince gave of the Princess being with child this summer; but one foolish circumstance in her Royal Highness's manner of passing her time I must relate, which was her playing every day with a great jointed baby, and dressing and undressing it two or three times every day. Princess Caroline, who had heard that the sentinels and footmen used to stand and stare and laugh during this performance, desired her sister-in-law one day not to stand at her window during these operations on her baby ; for though there was nothing ridiculous in the thing itself, yet, the lower sort of people thinking everything so that was not customary, it would draw a mob about her and make la canaille talk disagreeably. Notwithstanding the little demeles that happened between the Queen and the Prince, her Majesty, being determined not to quarrel with him during the King's absence, never failed asking him and the Princess to dine with her (which they often did during the sum mer) whenever they came in the morning to her drawing-room ; the Princess, too, came sometimes to music, and to play in the Queen's gallery at night, but the Prince never. The Queen was always very easy with her, and used to acknowledge she should be the weakest creature in the world, as well as the most unjust, if she took anything ill of the Princess ; for that she knew the Princess did nothing without the Prince's order, and must do everything he did order her. For which reason I once heard the Queen add, 1736. CORN RIOTS. 133 " Poor creature, if she were to spit in my face, I should only pity her for being under such a fool's direction, and wipe it off;" and to give the Queen her due, she was always remarkably and industriously civil to her ; and has often said to me she thought there was no sort of harm in her, that she never meant to offend, was very modest and very respectful ; and that for her want of understanding it was what to be sure fatigued one when one was obliged to be with her, but what one must want understanding oneself to be angry with her for not having. When Lord Hervey used to come to the Queen in the afternoon, those days the Prince and Princess had dined with her, the Queen used generally to accost him with yawning and complaining of the vapours ; telling him often at the same time, that the silly gaiety and rude railleries of her son, joined to the flat stupidity of her daughter-in-law, had oppressed her to that degree that she was ready to cry with the fatigue of their company, and felt herself more tired than she believed she should have done if she had carried them round the garden on her back. During this summer a licentious, riotous, seditious, and almost ungovernable spirit in the people showed itself in many tumults and disorders, in different shapes, and in several parts of the kingdom. In the West the people of the country rose in great numbers to oppose the exportation of corn, knowing that practice raised the price of corn in the home markets, and made it dearer to these mutineers ; but as this com merce was a great national advantage (and experienced so particularly in the last war), so the farmers were not only permitted by the Legislature to exercise it, but 131 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXIV. had by Act of Parliament a bounty of five shillings per quarter allowed upon it. The interruptions the people of the country gave to this trade this summer were so great, that the civil power alone was not sufficient to protect the farmers in carrying it on, but was forced to call the military force in aid, which quelled for a time the open opposition made by these rioters, but rather irritated than allayed the spirit from which that opposition sprung. [In the last week of July] a riot of another kind happened in Spitalfields : several Irishmen being em ployed there by the weavers, and working at a lower rate than the English journeymen, the English, fearing this might in time come to reduce their price, all rose in combination to oblige the Irish to quit this trade ; killed some, wounded many, defaced and threatened to pull down the houses of those who hired them, and swore they would never be quiet whilst one single Irishman was employed. On the unreasonableness of this proceeding in the English I need not descant; since it is obvious that their demands were as unjust as the manner of making them was illegal. This riot lasted three or four days ; and though it began on a point in which the Government seemed to be little concerned, yet mobs and multitudes, by what accident soever they are first assembled, are always objects worthy the care of a Government ; as those who wish ill to a Government may turn a flame they had no hand in kindling to annoy such persons as at first it was not intended to touch nor thought likely to reach. This was the case of the Spitalfields weavers, who began with railing against Irishmen, but came in twenty- 1736. THE TROOPS CALLED IN. 135 four hours to cursing of Germans, reviling the King and the Queen, and huzzaing for James III. The troops were sent to assist the civil magistrate in quelling this tumult also ; but the magistrate who read the proclama tion to disperse the rioters made a great blunder, by seizing some persons after he had read the proclamation, before the hour was expired which the Act allows to the rioters to disperse, before it is construed felony to remain there. However, these seizures, though they were not made in such a manner as to make those who were seized incur a capital punishment, yet had their effect so far as to intimidate and disperse the rest. But the rioters carried their point in banishing the Irish, none of the great dealers daring to employ them. I must here cursorily observe the hard situation of the soldiery on these occasions, as the law of this coun try now stands. The soldiers by law cannot fire unless attacked by fire-arms ; if they do, they are guilty of murder. When, therefore, two or three hundred men are ordered by their officers to go against two or three thousand rioters, if they refuse to go it is mutiny, and they will be condemned by a court-martial and shot ; if they go, and do not fire, they will probably be knocked on the head ; and if they do fire and kill anybody, they will be tried by a jury and hanged- — such are the ab surdities of our laws with regard to the army at present. But if standing troops are necessary to be kept up in this country, and that the civil power cannot put the laws in execution without the assistance of the military power, it is hard that the laws and the civil power should not protect their own support ; and in the case 136 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXIV. of smuggling, that practice is so increased of late years, and is got to such a height in all the countries round the coasts, and the smugglers are associated in such numerous bands, and are so well mounted and armed, that this country, if it were not for the army, would certainly be overrun by these trafficking robbers, and all the acts of Parliament relating to the revenue no more regarded in any part of them than they are in the oaths they impose. The severe law passed the last session to make this offence capital, for a short time suppressed the practice of smuggling ; but it soon became as universal as before the law was passed, and the penalty being so much greater only made it more difficult to condemn those who incurred it, as in capital cases fewer people are willing to inform, and juries more reluctant to con demn. In many places in England turnpikes, too, were now thought grievances, and were the occasion of many riots, which without the troops could never be kept within any tolerable bounds ; and, even assisted by them, the civil power could not prevent many turn pikes from being cut down and destroyed. There was this summer, too, an occurrence in West minster Hall which was as much talked of for a time as any I have mentioned. [On the 14th of July, between one and two in the afternoon,] whilst the courts were all sitting, and the judges on the benches, the counsel pleading, and the Hall full of lawyers and clients, all on a sudden, at the corner of the Court of Chancery, there was such a loud report from a discharge of gun powder, that the whole Hall was in a moment in the 1736. EXPLOSION IN WESTMINSTER HALL. 137 utmost confusion ; and everybody concluding it was a plot to blow up the Hall, the judges started from the benches, the lawyers were all running over one another's backs to make their escape, some losing part of their gowns, others their periwigs, in the scuffle ; and such an uproar it occasioned, that nobody thought his own life was safe, or knew how it came to be in danger. When the tumult subsided a little and an examination was made into this matter, part of the bag in which the gun powder had been lodged was found, bills of five acts of Parliament which had been blown up with it, and vast numbers of copies of a printed paper, which it was thought this contrivance was laid purposely to disperse with eclat. What follows were the words of this printed paper : — " Wednesday, July 14, 1736. " By a general consent of the citizens and tradesmen of London, Westminster, and the Borough of Southwark, this being the last day of term, were publicly burnt, between the hours of twelve and two, at the Royal Exchange, Cornhill, at Westminster Hall (the courts then sitting), and at Margaret's Hill, Southwark, as destructive of the product, trade, and manufacture of this kingdom and the plantations thereunto belonging, and tending to the utter subversion of the liberties and properties thereof, the five following printed books, or libels, called Acts of Parliament : viz. — " 1. An Act to Prohibit the Sale of Distilled Spirituous Liquors. [Gin Act.J " 2. An Act entirely to Extinguish the small remains of Charity yet subsisting amongst us. [Mortmain Act.] " 3. An Act to prevent Carriages and Passengers coming over London Bridge, to the great Detriment of the Trade and Commerce of the City of London and the Borough of South wark. [Bill for building Westminster Bridge.] " 4. An Act to Seize all Innocent Gentlemen travelling with Arms for their own Defence, called the Smuggler's Act. 138 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXIV. " 5. An Act to enable a Foreign Prince14 to borrow 600,000/. of Money sacredly appropriated to the Payment of our Debts.15 " God save the King!" Nobody, however, could tell who had put the bag in the place where it was blown up, nor did anybody see how the fire had been applied to it. My Lord Chancellor and my Lord Hardwicke were so nettled at the ridicule the lawyers had incurred, as well as the affront and insult offered to the courts of justice, that they applied to the Queen to have a Council summoned the very next day at Kensington, where they each of them made a long speech, setting forth, with a narrative of the fact, the heinousness of the crime, and the necessity of inquiring into and punishing so impudent a treason, for so at first they called it, though they could not afterwards in a legal prosecution construe the paper to be such. The Queen immediately in Council ordered a pro clamation, offering a reward for the discovery of those concerned in the transaction, and pardon to any one who should inform against his accomplices, so as to bring them to justice ; and, on a strict search, it proved to be [one Nixon], a Non-juring parson, half mad, and quite a beggar, whom the lawyers should have sent to Bedlam, would have sent to Tyburn, and could only send to rot in a jail. i* The term " Foreign Prince," meaning the Elector of Hanover, occa sioned Lord Hardwicke's statement in the House of Lords, that " these libels not only reflected most indecently on the two houses of Parliament, but denied his Majesty's right to the throne, and asserted the Pretender to be our true and lawful king." — Pari. Hist., vol. ix. p. 1294. is The Act was " to enable his Majesty to apply 600,-000/. of the Sink ing Fund to the service of the year.'' 1736. THE GIN-ACT RIOT. 139 Another riot and rising was expected to happen on Michaelmas Day, when the Act (passed the last session to prevent the sale of distilled spirituous liquors to the common people) was to take place. Sir Robert Wal pole had several letters sent him, in a style in which he had received many on other occasions, as well as this and the Excise, to tell him that he should certainly not be suffered to outlive that day ; though, indeed, the Act was entirely owing to Sir Joseph Jekyll, the Master of the Rolls, whose reforming principles in this measure were much more reasonable than they were on many others ; for the drunkenness of the common people was so universal, by the retailing of a liquor called gin, with which they could get dead drunk for a groat, that the whole town of London, and many towns in the country, swarmed with drunken people of both sexes from morn ing to night, and were more like a scene of a Bacchanal than the residence of a civil society. However, by the great care taken by the Govern ment, this riot was prevented, both horse and foot guards being posted and appointed to patrol day and night some time before and long after Michaelmas Day, throughout all the streets of London and Westminster. The guards at Kensington were doubled ; and Sir Ro bert Walpole, rather, I believe, to mark out who was the author of this Act than in favour to the Master of the Rolls (for he hated him heartily), got a particular guard of thirty men to be set round the Master's house, under the pretence and show of protecting it from the attacks of the mob. But the riot which made the most noise of any that happened this year, and one of the most extraordinary 140 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXIV. nature that ever happened in any country, was an insurrection in Edinburgh in Scotland. One Andrew Wilson, a notorious smuggler, having been condemned for not contenting himself with de frauding the King of his duties, but for robbing some of the officers of the revenue of money they had col lected, it was apprehended that the mob of Edinburgh, who always favoured these sort of offenders, would make an attempt to rescue him as he was leading to execution. The magistrates of Edinburgh therefore ordered the Town Guard to be drawn out to defend the officers of justice, and secure the prisoner at the place of execution, and likewise sent to the command ing officer of the King's troops to be ready to assist, in case his aid should be wanting. Just after the execution a tumult arose, and the mob began to throw stones at the executioner and at the Town Guard ; whereupon Captain Porteous, commander of the Town Guard, ordered his men to fire among the multitude, which was assembled there to the number of many thousands. Several people were killed, to the number of eight, and many more wounded, by this dis charge of the fire-arms of the guard ; and the mob were so enraged against Captain Porteous for what he had done, that when he was leading to prison in order to be put upon his trial, and afterward from prison to his trial, it was with great difficulty that they were pre vented from tearing him to pieces. The jury brought in a verdict on which the judges condemned him, which appeased the rage of the mob by promising his life to satisfy it. But as Captain Porteous's case, by the cooler and better sort of people in Scotland, was 1736. THE PORTEOUS RIOT. 141 thought a hard one, a petition, signed by vast numbers of the nobility and gentry of Scotland, was sent to the Queen (now Regent) to exercise the mercy of the Crown in his favour. Accordingly the Queen sent down a reprieve, at which the mob were so incensed, that the night preceding that day fixed by the judges for the execu tion they assembled to the number of four or five thou sand, seized and shut the city gates, possessed themselves of the arms of the City Guard, set fire to the prison-gate, released every prisoner there confined but Captain Porteous, and dragged him from the prison to a place called the Grassmarket, the ordinary place for the execution of malefactors, and there, with all the so lemnity of a legal execution, hanged him ; some of them saying they would show the world that there was no authority should have power to dispense with the laws of Scotland, and others talking in the coarsest and most opprobrious terms of the Queen and her reprieve. As soon as this cool, deliberate, and horrid murder was committed the mob dispersed without further violence or disturbance to any one. That something of this nature would be attempted, in case the Queen pardoned or reprieved Captain Porteous, was commonly reported not only in Edin burgh, but over almost all Scotland long before the thing happened, from whence it was concluded, by the negligence and remissness of the magistrates in taking measures to prevent it, that the magistrates either wished this murder as much as those by whom it was perpetrated, or were afraid to oppose what seemed to be the universal bent of the lower sort of people (at least) of the whole country. 142 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXIV. General Moyle, who commanded the King's troops at this time in Scotland, was much blamed for his con duct on this occasion. This was his case : — General Wade, commander-in-chief of all his Majesty's forces in Scotland, had given Moyle orders, when he left the command to him, not to send any of the King's forces to assist the civil magistrate, unless demanded in writing, or unless a civil magistrate came himself and offered to go along with the troops and head them. Wade's reason for leaving such orders was, that he himself had once gone on verbal orders only from the civil magistrate, and though he had been desired by the magistrate to fire, yet upon his doing so, and quelling a tumult that could not have been suppressed without it, some people being killed, the magistrate disavowed General Wade in this proceeding, and told Wade himself, when all was quiet, that Wade must answer for the blood that had been spilt. However, in Wade's orders left with Moyle, not to send troops without a written order, there was a paren thesis, that excepted the case of assisting the officers of the revenue, or the prevention of immediate bloodshed ; and for this reason, Mr. Lindsey, one of the represen tatives of the city, having been sent with verbal orders during the time of the riot, from the Lord Provost of Edinburgh to General Moyle, to desire him to march immediately the King's troops to his assistance, Moyle was by most people thought to be in the wrong for not obeying ; however, as nobody suspected him to wish well to the undertaking of these rioters, and that he was a neighbour and relation of the Duke of Grafton's and Lord Hervey's in Suffolk, they both took the turn 1736. THE PORTEOUS RIOT. 143 immediately of excusing him at Kensington, and getting Sir Robert Walpole to join with them, they brought the Queen to temper ; who, when first the account of this whole affair was brought to Court, declared, with more warmth than I ever knew her show on any other occasion, that Moyle deserved to be shot by order of a court-martial, as much as any of the rioters deserved to be hanged. Sir Robert Walpole too, in private to Lord Hervey, told him Moyle either deserved to be broke for a coward, begged for a fool,16 or hanged for a knave: Lord Hervey only smiled in answer to Sir Robert's accusation of General Moyle, but softened the Queen by telling her, since the law was so severe upon officers who were too rash on these occasions, their situation was a terrible one, if the Crown should be equally severe when they were too cautious. It was evident that the magistrates of Edinburgh were as unwilling or as fearful of punishing this riot as they had been to prevent it ; for notwithstanding the numbers concerned in it, there was not one single person taken up for it, till Lord Isla was sent down to Scotland, and even then he could get information made against one man only, which was a footman to Lady Wemyss ; and Lord Isla wrote to England to say the whole country was so zealous in this matter, that let him commit ever so many, it would be impos sible to get witnesses against them, or if he could get witnesses, to get a jury who would regard them ; and the acquittal afterwards of this footman, who was 16 This old phrase, " begged for a fool," means so notorious an idiot, that the profitable custody of him might be begged of the Crown. 144 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXIV. proved to be one of those who put the rope about Captain Porteous's neck, verified Lord Isla's re port. Considering this whole proceeding from its com mencement to its conclusion, that is, from the legal execution of Wilson to the illegal execution of unfortu nate Captain Porteous, it looked as if the people of Edinburgh were determined to take the decision of all criminal cases into their own hands, and to suffer no man to be executed whom they thought fit to spare, nor any man to be spared whom they thought fit to execute. The Queen, therefore, resented this conduct of the Scotch as a tendency to shake off all govern ment ; and, I believe, was a little more irritated, from considering it in some degree as a personal affront to her, who had sent down Captain Porteous's reprieve ; and had she been told half what was reported to have been said of her by the Scotch mob on this occasion, no one could think she had not ample cause to be pro voked. All these commotions, added to the secret history of h'er own family, furnished matter sufficient to fill reams of paper, which she wrote this summer to the King, who was extremely dissatisfied that so few people could be hanged when so many had deserved it ; and I sup pose said often at Hanover on these occasions, as I heard him impoliticly and indecently in England on many others, that the laws here were so loose, that not half the people were condemned that ought to be; and he would then add with a pert cruel air — " But if they come into my hands, I shall never spare them." During this whole summer, notwithstanding all these 1736. LORD HERVEY'S JEUX D'ESPRIT. 145 tumults and commotions, the Queen was in as good humour, health, and spirits, as I ever saw her. Her pride was shocked, and she seemed a good deal hurt, for some time after the King went ; but this cloud soon dispersed, and the being freed from his ill-humour seemed to be a full compensation for all his good hu mour being bestowed elsewhere. Lord Hervey was with her this summer at Kensing ton every day, and almost all day, Saturdays ex cepted, which she always passed at Kew, and he in London. Some of the things he wrote for her amuse ment I will here insert, as they will contribute to illustrate the characters of many people in the Court, as well as several of the little occurrences and transac tions of these times. The first of the two pieces that I shall here transcribe was written upon the Queen's bidding him write no more — an epigram in Martial, which he had paraphrased and applied to Lord Bur lington's house at Chiswick, and his Lordship's per formances as an architect, having got about and made Lord and Lady Burlington, and their friend, his Grace of Grafton, extremely angry with him.17 The prose dramatic piece that follows was written on the Queen's saying what an alteration in the Palace Lord Hervey's 17 The Epigram, I presume, was : — " Possess'd of one great hall for state, Without a place to sleep or eat ; How well you build let flattery tell, And all mankind how ill you dwell ! " which is a paraphrase of the two last of the eight lines of the 50th Epigram of Martial's 12th book :— " Atria longa patent : sed nee ccenantibus usquam Nee somno locus est : quam bene non habitas ! " which VOL. II. L 146 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXIV. death would make, how many people would mourn, and how many rejoice ; to which Lord Hervey replied, he believed he could guess just how it would be ; and being pressed to tell, said he would do it in writing. which had been already imitated in a jeu d'esprit on Blenheim, concluding thus : — " Thanks, Sir, cried I, 't is very fine, But where d' ye sleep, and where d' ye dine ? I find, by all you have been telling, That 't is a house, but not a dwelling." Lord Hervey also said of the villa at Chiswick, that " it was too small to live in, and too large to hang to one's watch." Subsequent additions, how ever, have made Lord Burlington's pavilion a tolerable house — and there died Mr. Fox and Mr. Canning. 1736. POETICAL EPISTLE TO THE QUEEN. 147 CHAPTER XXV. Poetical Epistle to the Queen on her commanding Lord Hervey to write no more — Dramatic Scenes at Court on a report of Lord Hervey's Death. [The Epistle, notwithstanding some lively and well- turned passages, is as a whole neither so pointed nor so polished, nor in such good taste, as might have been ex pected from Lord Hervey, and will add little to his poet ical reputation. Admitting, as it is only fair to do, that it was a hasty effusion, and that much of personal allu sion and temporary pleasantry must be lost to us, it still seems a very uncouth though laboured attempt at a style of writing which Pope had lately brought to such per fection; and it seems strange enough that Lord Her vey, smarting, as we should suppose, under Pope's recent lash, should have condescended to borrow (as an attentive reader will perceive that he does) several hints from the very pieces in which he himself had been so cruelly satirized. The Dramatic piece which follows is better in every respect but one, and is no doubt a lively picture of the scene. It is not without hesitation that I copy several coarse expressions in both these pieces ; but some pas sages — even those put into the mouths of royal and noble ladies — are too grossly indelicate for publication, for which however Lord Hervey clearly intended them. I at first doubted whether all trace of these passages should not be suppressed ; but, considering that they were written l2 148 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXV. by the elegant Lord Hervey for the perusal of the ex emplary Queen, and that they certainly exhibit the style of the times, it seems right to indicate their existence as an important item in the estimate of character and the history of manners. The communication of either of these pieces — but particularly the second — to Queen Caroline would prove that Lord Hervey must have been not merely in great favour, but in a very confidential familiarity, and I am, I confess, not much more surprised at the indelicacies attributed to her Majesty than at the free dom with which some peculiarities of her style, temper, and manners, as well as her imperfect English, are exhibited. I have attempted, not always I fear with success, to elucidate some of the temporary and personal allu sions; but there are others of which I can offer no explanation. The reader will observe that Lord Hervey has worked up into these pleasantries several facts and characteristic anecdotes which he had already more gravely mentioned.] TO THE QUEEN. 'Tis true, great Queen ! I have your dread commands No more with ink to stain these scribbling hands ; No more in duchtich1 verse, or teufflish prose, To raccommode* my friends, or lash my foes ; i My German friends are not agreed as to the precise import of duchtich, which, however, from its use in p. 161, seems to mean sly. Teufflish is devilish— spiteful? I copy everywhere Lord Hervey's orthography. s Raccommoder here and before, vol. i. p. 504, means to correct. 1736. POETICAL EPISTLE TO THE QUEEN. 149 But how shall I this flippant pen restrain, Like hellebore so long has purg'd my brain ? I should go mad were I to stop the drain ! If, then, like Midas' barber I am curst, And feel that I must either vent or burst ; Allow me still those midwives, pen and ink, (To You, at least, let me on paper think) — 'Tis a sharp labour — You may make it safe ; I shall be brought to bed, and you will laugh. To you I '11 tell each Betty- Cotton* tale And harmless joke, whilst sourer blockheads rail Let Fog and Danvers* call each courtier slave, Each senator a mean corrupted knave ; And all your Palace crew, from prow to helm, Huns-nas, bernheuter, reckel, hecks, and schelm ;5 Let envious Brudnat6 her great friends abuse, And little Titch"1 with lower scandal souse ;* 'Tis no such rancour stimulates my soul, I only ask to call a fool a fool : No vice to give, no virtue to deny ; I would no more than Lady Sundon lie ; And ne'er a present or an absent friend Or basely will give up, or cool defend ; Not e'en my foes I would unhappy make ; To smile is all the liberty I '11 take. 3 Betty Cotton was, probably, some subordinate gossip of the Queen's family. 4 Fog's Journal and the Craftsman, opposition journals — the latter written under the pseudonyme of Caleb Danvers. 5 German terms of contempt and abuse — dog's-nose, lazy-bones, yawner, cheat, rogue. « No doubt Susan Burton, one of the Bedchamber Women, wife of the Hon. James Brudenell, Master of the Jewel Office, and afterwards a Lord of Trade and Groom of the King's Bedchamber. 1 Charlotte Amelia, daughter of Lord Molesworth, widow ofthe Hon. W. Titchburne, son of Lord Ferrard of Ireland, appointed Bedchamber Woman to the Princess in 1715. 8 Souse, to immerse in pickle — to overwhelm with abuse. When Lady M. W. Montagu was impertinently attacked at a masquerade, she says that she " had the temper not only to be silent herself, but she enjoined silence l50 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXV. And freely thus, whilst I unpack my breast, Where safer can the cargo be address'd Than to my gracious Queen, who, angry, spares, And, whilst she chides my faults, my folly bears ? Whose goodness ev'ry day and hour I prove, And look upon, like heav'n, with fear and love ; Whose mercy still, when I offend, I trust, Owning the rules I swerve from to be just : Whose sense I feel, whose merit I discern, And wish to practise what I daily learn : I wish my conduct to your maxims true, Yet can't that conduct I approve pursue. With gifts so rare Thee partial Heav'n has bless'd, Your rank is less uncommon than the rest ; With ev'ry good of nature or of art, Or for the social or the Boyal part ; Whatever dignifies or softens state ; In private amiable, in public great ; With all those qualities that recommend The best companion or the kindest friend ; When serious, just ; when gay, for ever new ; Quick in discernment, in reflection true ; All that the Greek or Roman sages thought— What Plato, Socrates, or Tully wrote, Philosophers or moralists have taught, Drawn from the head, and dictated by art — Was the prophetic picture of Thy heart ; By precept they, You by example teach, And practise ev'ry virtue which they preach : Whate'er the grave historian's page has shown— Whate'er experience tells, to Thee is known — The ancient and the modern world Thy own : Whilst policy on maxims unrefin'd,8 To gentle sway and steady conduct join'd, The mildest temper and the firmest mind, on one who was with her, and would have been very glad of an occasion of sousing her assailant." — Works, vol. ii. p. 180. » So in MS., but I do not understand it ; undefined would make a kind of sense. 1736. POETICAL EPISTLE TO THE QUEEN. 151 Told to the distant, by the nearer seen, Complete the woman, and adorn the Queen ; A Queen whom most proclaim, and none disown, An ornament and bulwark to her throne. If, then, each morning with your converse fir'd, (These talents ponder'd, and these gifts admir'd), When all the trappings and constraint of pride, For ease postpon'd, for pleasure thrown aside ; Your words no longer dictated by art ; Your mind unloaded, and unlock'd your heart ; When each Court-animal, from first to last, Like those in Eden in review has pass'd, And each — I won't say brute — receiv'd its name! According to tbe merits of its claim, Or mischievously wild or dully tame : Pursuant to the sketch such scenes afford, If I their worth endeavour to record — If from your presence afterward retir'd, When, only pleas'd, I fancy I 'm inspir'd, And recollecting in my pensive walk, Think I can write as I have heard you talk ; So well the merit of Your style is known, It can't seem strange, or strange to you alone, When I would have mine please I choose your own. May I not then, great Queen, your pardon claim ? j Should any priest his own enthusiast blame ? J. Should those reproach the stroke who give the aim ? J Or — cordials to a feeble brain applied — Should those who made us drunk our transports chide ? No worse a canting parson Satan paints, Who damns the devils he made for not being saints. Oh ! let me then describe, without control, This idiot pon,10 or t' other idiot troll; Some are so great, to name them is offence ; But mayn't I mention Mrs. Eighteen-Pence ?10 10 Troll is German for trollop; but I cannot explain the term pon, nor guess at Mrs. Eighteen-Pence. As Lady Suffolk had left the Court, I hardly think Lord Hervey would have introduced her again. 152 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXV. Or Privy Nasyn with his open mouth, His eyes half shut, and at each corner froth ? When, grinning horrible a ghastly smile, I hear him (snorting, belching, all the while) Tell you that " two and two he 's sure makes four ; That fruit too ripe is fiat, unripe is sour," Internally, at least (that's not uncivil), Good Queen, let me repeat — Oh ! dummer Teuffel ! ,2 Much harder measure at Your hands he found ; My touch is but a fillip, Yours a wound. When Cow- Tail,13 tott'ring, waddles through your rooms, And with his useless velvet budget comes, Mayn't I reflect upon his riddle-fate, Obscure in eminence and mean in state ? An exile made, by an uncommon doom, From foreign countries to his native home ; In vain with titles and distinctions grac'd, By favours hurt, by dignities debas'd, And sunk upon the steps that others rais'd. This statesman's fortune (odd as it may sound) In that of your old china may be found ; For first at an enormous price you bought him, Then never us'd him, and, laid by, forgot him. In verse or prose, when privately I play With characters like these, seen ev'ry day ; If for admittance to your eyes I plead That some great princes certainly could read,14 Though I confess, alas ! they 're long since dead ; If, to this honour when I lay my claim, Great sovereigns and great authors I should name — Say, to Augustus polish' d Horace wrote, And Trajan deign'd to read what Pliny thought — Perhaps my works you '11 promise to admit When I have Pliny's sense or Horace' wit ; 11 I suppose Lord Wilmington. 12 Stupid devil. is Lord Harrington. See ante, vol. i. p. 208, The " velvet budget' was no doubt the official portefeuille. 14 An allusion, I fear, to the King's scanty literature. 1736. POETICAL EPISTLE TO THE QUEEN. 153 But though, great Queen ! their talents I may want, And only daub when these great masters paint ; Yet for your mirth the liveliest you may keep, Le Behn shall read the dullest whilst you sleep ; And sure in sleep no dulness you need fear, Who, ev'n awake, can Schutz 15 and Lifford 16 bear ; Who ev'ry Sunday suffer stupid Shane'1'1 To preach on a dried fly and Hampstead stone, To show such wonders as were never seen, And give accounts of what have never been ; Who ev'ry Wednesday hear Montandre™ prate Of pohtics and maxims out of date, And with old fringes furbelow the State. As well that Ever- Green his wife might boast The long-fled bloom of a last century toast ; The same poor antiquated merits grace The Politician's head and Beauty's face : Each in their diff 'rent style have equal charms — I 'd ask his counsel, as I 'd court her arms. But what can You, oh Queen ! from dulness dread, Who can resist such loads of verbal lead ? Who, if stupidity did poison bear, Must die, like Hamlet, poison'd at your ear ; When, after Walpole's clear strong sense, you deign"] To let his echo,19 in enervate strain, Lisp all that sense in nonsense o'er again ; 15 Lord Hervey frequently cites Mr. Schutz as a personification of dul ness ; but I have some hesitation in believing that he could mean Augustus Schutz (ante, vol. i. p. 411), of whom his other contemporaries appear to have had a different opinion. Perhaps the old Hanoverian Baron— the father of Augustus and Colonel John Schutz — may be meant, who lived till 1740, and probably was an extra-official habitue of the Court circle. i« Ante, vol. i. p. 292. 17 Sir Hans Sloane, Physician in Ordinary to the King. is The Marquis of Montandre was one of King William's old officers, and was made Field-Marshal in 1739, and died next year. If his wife was in 1736 a " last century toast," she must have lived to a very great age, if she was the same Marquise de Montandre who died in 1772 (Ann. Reg. p. 165), and I know of no other. 19 The Duke of Newcastle. 154 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXV. By turns of Asoph 20 and of Clermont talk, Of armies' marches, and a well-turf 'd walk, A falling empire, and a planted oak. Thrice happy genius ! that can handle still These diff 'ring topics with an equal skill ; Yet some allege these honours not his own — Kentn makes his gardens, his despatches Stone ; 22 But this is all the envy of a Court (Where worth resides will envy still resort), For Stone to aid his Grace no more is able Than Backenswants to manage Pomfret's stable.23 Whilst things like these each hour I see and hear- If this vain world was all your servant's care, I own 't were better silently to pass, Nor heed the chatt'ring ape nor braying ass ; But as I think 't is better for my soul I should not, what Heav'n seems to will, control ; And as by the devoutest lips 't is said That God for nothing nothing ever made ; So when these animals come 'cross my way, I laugh with that devotion others pray, Thinking I execute the will of Heav'n ; For to what other end could they be given ? Name any other, I '11 from this refrain ; But, well consider'd, boldly I maintain, Unridicul'd, their being would be vain.24 20 The Russians had early in the spring taken Asoph. The " falling empire " alludes to the danger in which Turkey then seemed to be. 2i Kent was patronized by the Duke of Newcastle and his brother Mr. Pelham, at Claremont and " in Esher's peaceful grove, Where Kent and Nature vie for Pelham's love." 22 Andrew Stone, Private Secretary to the Duke, appointed, in 1736, Under Secretary of State, and subsequently tutor to the young Prince, afterwards George III. He died in 1773. 23 This is, I suppose, ironical, and means that Stone (an able man) did write the despatches, and that Mr. John Backenschwants, Clerk of the Queen's Stables under Lord Pomfret, was really the efficient manager of that department. 24 The same idea which Grisset has so well condensed : — Les sots sont id bas pour nos menus plaisirs. 1736. POETICAL EPISTLE TO THE QUEEN. 155 As well we might, in spite of Nature, try To make fat geese like carrier-pigeons fly ; Bid the slow ass like the train'd race-horse run, Or darkling owls like eagles face the sun, As make the human owl, or goose, or ass, For any species but its own to pass ; Or e'er attempt, by any rule of Court, To turn to bus'ness what was meant for sport. As then Court-brutes, who nothing understand, Should never lead a Queen but by the hand?5 You may direct, but ne'er consult a fool ; None set the horse to drive that ought to pull ; And thus at Council when I see his Grace, ji (The term 's so gen'ral, pray you let him pass,) I Methinks I see your coach-horse in Drost's*6 place. J But art to falsify God's coin is vain ; The head he stamps with fool shall fool remain ; For varnish, mill, or clip it e'er so much, Your sterling fools will answer to the touch ; Or did the touch-stone not decide their fate, Like gold, you still may know them by their weight. Well as I can I nature then pursue ; Through microscopes or prisms nothing view ; Nothing to paint or magnify I try, Behold each object with my naked eye ; Nor strive to force the things that will recoil, But strive myself to things to reconcile — I learn from Walpole — at Newcastle smile. Yet think not, whilst these methods I pursue, And give each Caesar what is Caesar's due, That I their int'rest or their peace would shake ; ' Rest without molestation may they take, Or in their sleep, or what they call awake ; And if the brain that never thinks, can dream, Of either slumber, pleasure be the theme ! Nor with their bus'ness would I interfere ; Let each great courtier dignify his sphere : 25 The duty of the Chamberlains. 26 Henry Drost was first coachman to the King. 156 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXV. Let Shaw2'' snuff caudles when at night you play ; And when you dress at noon, your chaplains pray :28 Let all the Cabinet, with ductile hand, Sign what they read, and never understand ; Let dupes you rally thankfully receive it ; Let Teed21 mill chocolate, and Parcel^ give it ; What others dictate, let great statesmen write, And we Gold Keys9-9 learn all to read at sight : Let Wilmington, with grave, contracted brow, Red tape and wisdom at the Council show, Sleep in the senate, in the circle bow. Let Harrington still strive, and Isla swim, This always with, and that against the stream. Argyll abuse the Bishops, Bishops him, Till e'en abuse becomes a tedious theme. Let Hare30 abjure the heresies he wrote, And broil us all for being what he taught. Sherlock the Church's crippled state deplore, Give up her doctrines, but still grasp her pow'r. Gibson cabal, and honest Potter grunt ; Grantham set chairs, and wiser Grafton hunt : Let one, the extent of his discourse to show, Vary comment qa va ? and how you do ? T 'other his journals eloquently tell, Which hound first hit it off, what horse did well. Let nauseous Selkirk31 shake his empty head Through six courts more, when six have wish'd him dead, 27 Shaw, Teed, and Purcel, menial attendants on the Queen, ante, vol. i. p. 504. I do not see the pleasantry of introducing these inferior persons with the " great courtiers" and the " Cabinet." 28 As to the Queen's morning prayer, see the following piece. 29 Another sneer at his colleagues. 30 Ante, p. 101. " About the latter end of Queen Anne's reign he pub lished a remarkable pamphlet entitled The Difficulties and Discouragements which attend the Study of the Sciiptures in the way of Private Judgment. This work was thought to have such a direct tendency to promote scepti cism and a loose way of thinking in matters of religious concern, that the Convocation judged it right to pass a severe censure on \t."—Biog. Diet. si Charles Douglas Hamilton, first Earl of Selkirk, born in 1664, This veteran courtier was unlucky in being satirized by both the antagonist wits, Pope and Hervey. See Pope's Ep. to Sat., i. 92; ii. 158, He had been a 1736. POETICAL EPISTLE TO THE QUEEN. 157 Charlotte32 and Schutz like angry monkeys chatter, None guessing what 's the language or the matter. Let Pembroke33 still * * * And Dame Palladio,3i insolent and bold, Like her own chairman, whistle, stamp, and scold ; Her quiet still preserv'd, though lost her fame, As free from ev'ry punishment as shame ; Her worn-out huntsman frequent may she hold ; Nor to her mason-husband be it told That she, with capital Corinthian™ grac'd, Has finish'd his in the Ionic taste.36 I could enumerate a hundred more, But for your sake the tedious list give o'er ; And end this rhyming circle I have run Just with the same petition I begun. Freely my thoughts of men and things to write, Veil'd by my well-lock'd bureau from the light ; Or, like choice pictures, hid from common view, To draw the curtain back to only You. And when from all the irksome cares that wait On rank or power, on eminence and state, You wish to borrow one relaxing hour, To think of Swedish subsidies no more, Domestic feuds, or Europe's balanc'd pow'r ; Lord of the Bedchamber almost uninterruptedly from the Revolution to his death, in 1739. 32 Lady Charlotte de Roussie, ante, vol. i. p. 292. 33 Mary, daughter of Viscount Howe, Maid of Honour to the Queen, became in 1725 the third wife of Lord Pembroke, and on his death re married, on the 9th of October, 1735, Colonel John Mordaunt, next brother to the fourth Earl of Peterborough. She had no children by either marriage, and her fancied pregnancies were a constant theme of ridicule amongst her acquaintance. Here, and in a subsequent place (p. 165), the expressions, as I have said in the prefatory notice, are too coarse to be produced. 34 Dorothy Savile, Lady Burlington. See vol. i. p. 227 — an explana tion of this allusion to her amour with the Huntsman Duke of Grafton. Lord Burlington was celebrated for his architectural taste. 35 A countenance of Corinthian brass. 36 " The volutes of the capitals of columns are sometimes called horns." — Encyclopaedia. They are peculiarly prominent in the Ionic order. 158 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXV. How long your fleet near Tagus' banks must wait ;37 Or Montemar38 maintain the Tuscan state ; When from these thoughts to trifles you unbend, And with superior taste e'en those attend, Sure he who can amuse you is your friend. Or in that title if too much he claim, A faithful servant half deserves the name ; And though more useful, none can be more true Than I, my lov'd and honour'd Queen ! to You ; Whose pleasures all my thoughts and hours employ Your service all my aim, Your favour all my joy. 37 A powerful fleet under Sir John Norris had been sent, in May, 1735, to the Tagus, to countenance and protect Portugal against Spain ; and it did not return till April, 1737. ss Ante, vol. i. p. 343. 1736. DEATH OF LORD HERVEY-. A DRAMA. 159 THE DEATH OF LORD HERVEY; Or, A MORNING AT COURT. A DRAMA. ACT I.1 Scene. — The Queen's Gallery. The time, nine in the morning. Enter the Queen, Princess Emily, Princess Caroline, fol lowed by Lord Lifford2 and Mrs. Purcel. Queen. Mon Dieu, quelle chaleur ! en verite on etouffe. Pray open a little those windows. Lord Lifford. Hasa your Majesty heara de news ? Queen. What news, my dear Lord ? Lord Liff. Dat my Lord Hervey, as he was coming last night to tone, was rob and murdered by highwaymen and tron in a ditch. Princess Caroline. Eh ! grand Dieu ! B Queen [striking her hand upon Iter knee~\. Comment, est il ve'ri- tablement mort ? Purcel, my angel, shall I not have a little breakfast ? 4 i It can hardly be doubted that in writing this curious jeu d'esprit Lord Hervey must have had an eye to Dean Swift's " Verses on his own Death." It is true that this was written in the autumn of 1736, and that Swift's poem, though bearing the date of 1731, was not published in its present state till 1739 ; but a surreptitious copy had appeared in 1733, from which Lord Hervey may have taken his idea. 2 A Frenchman. See ante, vol. i. p. 292. 3 The reader will observe how well the part of the Princess Caroline agrees with Horace Walpole's account of her personal feelings towards Lord Hervey. * The Queen's breakfast-table parentheses remind us of the card-table conversation in Swift : — "The 160 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXV. Mrs. Purcel. What would your Majesty please to have ? Queen. A little chocolate, my soul, if you give me leave ; and a little sour cream and some fruit. [Exit Mrs. Purcel. Queen [to Lord L.]. Eh ! bien, my Lord Lifford, dites nous un peu comment cela est arrive1. I cannot imagine what he had to do to be putting his nose there. Seulement pour un sot voyage avee ce petit mousse'' — eh bien ? Lord Liff. Madame, on sgait quelque chose de cela de Mon. Maran,6 qui d'abord qu'il a vu les voleurs s'est enfui et venu a grand galoppe a Londres, and after dat a waggoner take up the bady and put it in his cart. Queen [to Princess Emily]. Are you not ashamed, Amalie, to laugh ? Princess Emily. I only laughed at the cart, mama. Queen. Ah ! that is a very fade plaisanterie. Princess Em. But if I may say it, mama, I am not very sorry. Queen. Ah ! fie done ! Eh bien ! my Lord Lifford ! My God, where is this chocolate, Purcel ? Re-enter Mrs. Purcel, with the chocolate and fruit. Queen [to Mrs. Purcel]. Well, I am sure Purcel now is very sorry for my Lord Hervey : have you heard it ? Mrs. Purcel. Yes, Madam ; and I am always sorry when your Majesty loses anything that entertains you. Queen. Look you there now, Amalie ; I swear now Purcel is thousand times better as you. Princess Em. I did not say I was not sorry for mama ; but I am not sorry for him. Queen. And why not ? Princess Em. What, for that creature ! Princess Car. I cannot imagine why one should not be sorry " The Dean 's dead : (pray what are trumps ?) Then Lord have mercy on his soul ! (Ladies, I '11 venture for the vole.) Six deans, they say, must bear the pall. (I wish I knew what King to call.)" » His second son, Augustus (afterwards a sea officer and third Earl), now about twelve, and going, it seems, to sea as a Midshipman. 6 Maran was Lord Hervey's valet. 1736. DEATH OF LORD HERVEY : A DRAMA. 161 for him : I think it very dure not to be sorry for him. I own he used to laugh malapropos sometimes, but Jig, was mightily meTKfedT^an^Tor people that were civil to him he was always readyto do anything to oblige them ; and for my part I am sorry, I assure. Princess Em. Mama, Caroline is duchtich ; for my part I cannot paroitre. Queen. Ah ! ah ! You can paroitre and be duchtich very well sometimes; but this is no paroitre; and I think you are very great brute. I swear now he was very good, poor my Lord Hervey ; and with people's lives that is no jest. My dear Pur cel, this is the nastiest fruit I have ever tasted ; is there none of the Duke of Newcastle's ? or that old fool Johnstone's ?7 .27 dtoit bienjoli quelquefois, my Lord Hervey; was he not,' Lifford ? Lord Liff. [taking snuff]. Ees, ended he vas ver pretty com pany sometimes. Princess E. shrugs her shoulders and laughs again. Queen [to Princess Emily]. If you did not think him com pany, I am sorry for your taste. [To Princess Caroline.] My God, Caroline, you will twist off the thumbs of your glove.8 Mais, my Lord Lifford, qui vous a conte' tout qa des voleurs, du ditch, et des wagoners ? Lord Liff. I have hear it at St. James, et tout le monde en parte. Queen [to Mrs. Purcel]. Have you sent, Purcel, to Vickers about my clothes ? Mrs. Purcel. He is here, if your Majesty pleases to see the stuffs. Queen. No, my angej, I must write now. Adieu, adieu, adieu, my Lord Lifford. Queen and the two Princesses alone. Queen. Mais, diable, Amalie, pourquoi est ce que vous voulez faire croire a tout le monde que vous etes dure comme cette table ? [Strikes the table with her hand.] 7 I have read somewhere that Mr. Johnstone, who had been King William's Secretary for Scotland, amused his old age with horticulture. 8 Note this hint of Princess Caroline's agitation. VOL. II. M 162 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXV. Princess Em. En vefiU, mama, je n'ai jamais fait semblant de V aimer pendant qu'il dtoit en vie, et je ne sqais pas pourquoi doncje devrois faire semblant de le pleurer a cette heure qu'il est mort. Queen. Ah! psha; ny a-t-il point de difference entre pleurer les gens, et rire de leur malheur. Outre cela vous aviez gran- dissime tort mime quand il Stoit en vie ; car il s'est comporti envers vous avee beaucoup de respect ; et jamais je crois a-t-il dit le moindre impertinence sur voire sujet. Princess Em. Pour moi,je crois qu'il en a dit cent milles. Queen. Vous faites fort Men de dire que vous le croyez pour vous excuser. Princess Car. Pour moi,je ne le crois pas ; je ne dis pas que la Emilie na pas raison de le croire; parce qu'il y a mille gens qui pensent faire leur cour en disant qu'ils Vont entendu parler impertinemment ; maisje n'ai jamais entendu de ces choses dans son stile, et je connais son stile ; et outre cela il m'aparu s'etre fait une regie de ne le point faire. Queen. Eh bien ! adieu, mes cheres enfans, il est tard. Dites un peu en passant que la Mailbone 9 soit prete. [Exeunt. ACT II. Scene. — The Queen's dressing-room. The Queen is discovered at her toilet cleaning her teeth ; Mrs. Purcel dressing her Majesty's head; The Princesses, Lady Pembroke and Lady Burlington,10 Ladies of the Bedchamber, and Lady Sundon, Woman of the Bedchamber,11 standing round. Morn ing prayers saying in the next room}2 9 Mrs. Mailbone, her German nurse. — Ante, vol. i. p. 90. i» Ante, p. 157. It is observable that, though they hated each other, Lord Hervey makes Lady Burlington talk with spirit and good sense. u This proves that she was not Mistress ofthe Robes. See ante, p. 30. 12 << While the Queen dressed, prayers used to be read in the outward room, where hung a naked Venus. Mrs. Selwyn, Bedchamber Woman in Waiting, was one day ordered to bid the Chaplain, Dr. Madox (afterwards 1736. DEATH OP LORD HERVEY : A DRAMA. 163 1 Parson (behind the scenes). "From pride, vain glory, and hypocrisy, from envy, hatred, and malice, and all uncharitable- ness," 2 Parson. " Good Lord deliver us ! " Queen. I pray, my good Lady Sundon, shut a little that door : those creatures pray so loud, one cannot hear oneself speak. {Lady Sundon goes to shut the door.) So, so, not quite so much ; 13 leave it enough open for those parsons to think we may hear, and enough shut that we may not hear quite so much. [To Lady Burlington.] What do you say, Lady Burlington, to poor Lord Hervey's death ? I am sure you are very sorry. Lady Pern, (sighing and lifting up her eyes). I swear it is a terrible thing. Lady Burl. I am just as sorry as I believe he would have been for me. Queen. How sorry is that, my good Lady Burlington ? Lady Burl. Not so sorry as not to admit of consolation. Queen. I am sure you have not forgiven him his jokes upon Chiswick. I used to scold him for that too, for Chiswick is the prettiest thing I ever saw in my life. But I must say, poor my Lord Hervey, he was very pretty too. Lady Burl, (colouring and taking snuff). I can't think your Majesty does Chiswick any great honour by the comparison. He was very well for once, like a party to Vauxhall, where the glare and the bustle entertain one for a little while, but one was always tired of one as well as t'other in half an hour. Queen. Oh ! oh ! I beg your pardon. I wish all the Vaux- halls were like him, I assure you — I would divert myself ex ceedingly with Vauxhall ; and for your half-hour, I am your humble servant ; he has entertained me, poor my Lord Hervey, Bishop of Worcester), begin the service. He said archly, ' And a very proper altar-piece is here, Madam !' Queen Anne had the same custom ; and once ordering the door to be shut while she shifted, the Chaplain stopped. The Queen sent to ask why he did not proceed. He replied, ' He would not whistle the Word of God through the key-hole.' " — Reminiscences. 13 A trait of character. Lady Sundon would have willingly shut out the "parsons" altogether, but the Queen moderates her low-church zeal. M 2 164 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXV. many and many half-hours, I can promise you : but I am sure you thought he laughed at you a little sometimes, as well as Chiswick. Come, own the truth. Lady Burl. I never thought enough about him to think whe ther he did or did not ; but I suppose we had all our share. Lady Sund. I must say I never in my life heard my Lord Hervey make or give into any joke upon people that he pro fessed living at all well with. He would say a lively thing sometimes, to be sure, upon people he was indifferent to, and very bitter ones upon people he was not indifferent to ; and I believe we are all glad enough to do that when we have a fair opportunity ; the only difference amongst us is, who does it best and worst. Princess Em. [to Lady Sundon]. Did you really love him ? (Laughs, and mutters something in German to the Queen.) Lady Sund. I had a great deal of reason, for he was always very particularly civil and kind to me. Lady Burl. If he was very civil to you, it was being very par ticular to you, that 's certain. Queen. I beg your pardon, he was very well bred. Lady Burl. Where it was his interest, perhaps ; he was very well bred to your Majesty, I dare say. Lady Sund. I am sure he loved the Queen. Princess Em. That is, you are sure he said so, my good Lady Sundon, and so will all Mama's pages and gentlemen ushers. Lady Sund. But he has said it in a way that I think I could see whether he felt what he said or not : he has often said that the Queen had a thousand good and agreeable and amiable qualities that one should like in a private person, and that he could not conceive why those qualities were not to be loved be cause they were in a Queen — and one felt the justness of that way of thinking ; and I assure your Royal Highness I think the Queen will have a very great loss of him, for, besides the use he was of in Parliament, which I do not pretend to be a judge of, he was certainly a constant amusement to the Queen in private, and gave up his whole time to amuse her ; and I must say I do not think it is everybody (if they would give their whole time to it) is capable of amusing the Queen. 1736. DEATH OF LORD HERVEY ; A DRAMA. 165 Queen. Oh ! upon my word he amused me exceedingly. I pray give me the basin to wash. (Lady Pembroke kneels14 and gives the basin.) I am afraid, my good Lady Pembroke, you15 Princess Em. * * Lady Pern. ***** Lady Burl. You might say what you pleased, but I don't see how you could think what you pleased * Lady Pern. I don't know ; one flatters oneself, you know, and then Mr. Mordaunt was out of his wits about it. Lady Burl. But you must be out of your wits too, — ¦* Queen. I beg pardon ; * * * * Oh ! poor my Lord Pembroke ; he was the best man in this world, and loved you prodigiously. Lady Pern. I believe there was nothing in the world he would not have done for me * * * * Queen. * * I must say my Lady Pembroke was the best wife in the world, and you will be, I am sure, as good a wife to Mr. Mordaunt. Lady Pern, I am sure I should deserve to be hanged if I was not, for he is the best husband in the world. Before I was married he used to nurse me almost as much as he did afterwards ; indeed it was that prodigious good nature that made me marry him ; for in so young a man showing so much compassion and good nature to be sure is very engaging. Enter Lord Grantham. Queen. Oh ! mon Dieu ! there is my Lord Grantham just come from Scarborough. How do you do, my good Lord Grantham ? How does your vapours, and how does Mr. K See ante, p. 16. 15 See an explanation of these blanks in the prefatory notice to this chap ter, and in the note in p. 157. It is observable that in this portion of the conversation Lord Hervey's friends, Princess Caroline and Lady Sundon, have no part. 166 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXV. Clarke ?16 I am prodigious glad to see you again, my good Lord Grantham. Lord Grantham. I am sure as I am glad to see your Ma jesty ; for when I am not with your Majesty I am always as de goose out of de water. Lady Burl. Then now your Lordship is like the goose in the water. Queen. And so he is : I know nobody can swim better in a Court than my Lord Grantham. Lady Sund. And it is not in Court-waters as in other waters, where the lightest things swim best. Queen. They must not be too heavy neither. But what news do you bring us, my Lord Grantham ? Lord Grant. Your Majesty has hear de news of poor my Lord Hervey ? Queen. Ah ! mon cher my Lord, cest une viellerie ; il y a cent ans qu'on le sqait. Lord Grant. I have just been talking of him to Sir Eobert. Sir Robert is prodigiously concerned ; he has seen Monsieur — how you call — Maraut. Queen. Maran, vous voudrez dire. I must ask Sir Eobert a little what that poltroon, Mr. Maraut, as you call him, says of his Lord. I pray, my good child, take away all these things, and let Sir Robert come in. Lord Grantham brings in Sir Robert Walpole, and all but Sir Robert and the Queen go out. Queen. Come, come, my good Sir Robert, sit down.17 Well, how go matters ? Sir Rob. Everything very well, Madam, pure and well. I have just had intelligence out of the City — all is very quiet there. Queen. But we must hang some of these villains.18 16 Mr. Clarke was a constant companion of Lord Grantham, but what else he was I know not. 17 This was a peculiar favour, paid, no doubt, to Sir Robert's " gros cotps etjambes enflees ;" for, until the Regency of 1810, it was very unusual for any man to sit in the Queen's presence, except at cards. 18 The rioters. 1736. DEATH OF LORD HERVEY: A DRAMA. 167 Sir Rob. We will if we can, Madam. I had my Lord Chancellor and my Lord Hardwicke with me this morning, and I told them the circumstances of the fellows we had taken. Queen. I must do my Lord Chancellor and my Lord Hard wicke justice. They have behaved both exceeding well ; ex ceeding well, upon my word. I am sure they will hang these rogues. Sir Rob. I told my Lord Chancellor, Madam, that these fellows that the soldiers had seized were some of the most cla morous and most audacious, that they were holloaing in a very tumultuous manner at the head of the mob, and crying " Come on ! come on !" and all that kind of stuff. Queen. And what did he say? I am sure he was very zealous. He is the best man in the world. Sir Rob. Madam, after hearing my story out, he paused some time, and seemed to decline giving any opinion at all ; at last he asked, and very significantly, whether the hour given by the Riot Act for the dispersing of the mob was expired before the men we proposed trying were taken. Queen. Mon Dieu ! that is always those silly lawyers' way, as if the soldiers were to go against people in rebellion with watches in their pockets, or to be asking what is o'clock when they should be serving their Prince. And what said my Lord Hardwicke ? Sir Rob. He said too, Madam, that it was impossible to condemn these fellows upon the Riot Act unless the hour was expired. Queen. Ah ! mon Dieu ! they are all so ennuyant with their silly forms and their silly Acts. But what did he say about pulling down and disfacing — how do you call it ? — the houses. Sir Rob. He said on that too, Madam, that unless it could be proved that the men we have taken assisted in the defacing the houses, that their being in company with those that did was not capital ; for though in murder all present are deemed principals, yet in this law, none were deemed criminal but those who were proved accessary. Queen. There is your fine English liberty ! The canaille may come and pull one by the nose, and unless one can prove which finger touched one's nose, one has but to put a plaster to one's 168 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXV. nose, and wait to punish them till they pull it again ; and then, may be, they shall pull one's eyes out of one's head, too. Sir Rob. I am afraid, Madam, there are inconveniences and imperfections attending all systems of government, and these are ours ; but we will see what's to be done, and if they are to be come at they shan't escape. But what news from Hanover, Madam ? Queen. There is a letter of five-and-forty pages I have received from the King ; I have not time now, but there are some things in it I must talk to you about. Sir Rob. I have had a long letter, too, from Horace. Queen. Oh ! mon Dieu ! not about his silly ladder-story" again. My good Sir Robert, I am so tired and so sick of all that nonsense that I cannot bear to talk or hear of it any more. Apropos — poor my Lord Hervey, I swear I could cry ! Sir Rob. Your Majesty knows I had a great partiality for him ; and really, Madam, whatever faults he might have, there was a great deal of good stuff in him : I shall want him, and your Majesty will miss him. Queen. Oh ! so I shall ; and that fiddle-faddle Duke of Newcastle I am sure will be glad ; but if he or his sleepy friend the Duke of Grafton come with any of their silly raillery about him, upon my word I will give them their own. Adieu, my good Sir Robert, I believe it is late — I must go a moment into the drawing-room ; do you know who is there ? Sir Rob. I saw the Duke of Argyll, Madam. Queen. Oh ! mon Dieu ! I am so weary of that Felt-marshal,20 and his tottering head and his silly stories about the Bishops, that I could cry whenever I am obliged to entertain him. And who is there more ? 19 The ladder at Madame de Walmoden's window, ante, p. 124. It is not to be doubted that, seeing the style in which the King took up this attempt against the new favourite, the Queen would be exceedingly tired of that subject. Lord Hervey no doubt copied from the life ; but it seems diffi cult to imagine his thus venturing to show her this reflection of her own thoughts. 2« The rank of Field-Marshal was first introduced into the British army in the preceding January, when the Duke of Argyll and Lord Orkney, the two oldest Generals, received that title. 1736. DEATH OF LORD HERVEY : A DRAMA. 169 Sir Rob. There is my Lord President, Madam. Queen. Oh ! that's very well ; I shall talk to him about his fruit, and some silly council at the Cock-pit, and the Planta tions :21 my Lord President loves the Plantations. Sir Rob. He had plantations of his own for several years together, Madam, in Leicester Fields, but your Majesty would not let them grow.22 Queen. He was, poor man, just the reverse of those people in the Gospel who reaped where they had not sowed, for my good Lord President sowed where he did not reap. But who is there beside ? Sir Rob. There is my tottering Lord Harrington. Queen. Oh ! mon Dieu ! I wish he tottered till he fell quite down, that I might not have the fatigue of being obliged to entertain him. The slowness of that drone is a fatigue to me that is inexpressible : he must have six hours in the morning for his chocolate and his toilet, and the newspapers ; six hours more for his dinner; six hours more for his nasty guenipes23 and for supper ; and six more for sleep ; and there is the twenty-four very well disposed : and if ever he gives by chance six hours to his business, it is for what might be done in six minutes, and should have been done six days before. Sir Rob. Ha ! ha ! ha ! Poor Harrington ! I wonder he need take six hours to dress, when your Majesty shows you can dress him in six minutes, with six words. Queen. Adieu, adieu, my good Sir Robert ; I must go, though you are to-day excellent conversation. 2' The business of the Colonies at the Privy Council which sat at what was called the Cock-pit. 22 Paying court to the Prince ; but the Queen had blighted his hopes. 23 Trulls. 170 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXV. ACT III. Scene changes to the great Drawing Room — all the Courtiers ranged in a circle. Enter the Queen, led by Lord Grantham, followed by the Princesses and all her Train. [Queen curtsies slightly ; Drawing Room bows and curtsies very low.] Queen [to the Duke of Argyll]. Where have been, my Lord? One has not had the pleasure to see you a great while ; and one always misses you. Duke of Argyll. I have been in Oxfordshire, Madam ; and so long, that I was asking my father here, Lord Selkirk, how to behave : I know nobody that knows the ways of a Court so well, nor that has known them so long. Lord Selkirk. By God ! my Lord, I know nobody knows them better than the Duke of Argyll. Duke of Arg. All I know, father, is as your pupil ; but I told you I was grown a country gentleman. Lord Selk. You often tell me things I do not believe. Queen [laughing]. Ha ! ha ! ha ! You are always so good together, and my Lord Selkirk is so lively. [Turning to Lord President^] I think, my Lord, you are a little of a country gentleman too — you love Chiswick mightily ; you have very good fruit there, and are very curious in it ; you have very good plums. Lord President. I like a plum, Madam, mightily — it is a very pretty fruit. Queen. The green-gage, I think, is very good. Lord Pres. There are three of that sort, Madam— there is the true green-gage, and there is the Drap-d'or that has yellow spots, and there is the Reine Claude that has red spots. Queen. Ah ! ah ! One sees you are very curious, and that you understand these things perfectly well : upon my word, I did not know you was so deep in these things — you know the plums, as Solomon did the plants, from the cedar to the hyssop. 1736. DEATH OF LORD HERVEY A DRAMA. 171 Queen [to the first Court Lady]. I believe you found it very dusty. First Court Lady. Very dusty, Madam. Queen [to the second Court Lady]. Do you go soon into the country, Madam? Second Court Lady. Very soon, Madam. Queen [to the third Court Lady]. The town is very empty, I believe, Madam ? Third Court Lady. Very empty, Madam. Queen [to the fourth Court Lady]. I hope all your family is very well, Madam. Fourth Court Lady. Very well, Madam. Queen [to the fifth Court Lady]. We have had the finest summer for walking in the world. Fifth Court Lady. Very fine, Madam. Queen [to the Duchess of Hamilton]. One cannot help wish ing you joy, Madam, every time one sees you, of the good matches your daughters have made. Duchess of Hamilton. Considering how they behaved, I wonder indeed they had any matches at all ; but for any other two women of quahty, one should think it no great catch for one to be married to a fool and t'other to a beggar.24 Queen. Oh fie, fie ! my good Duchess ! One cannot help laughing, you are so lively ; but your expressions are very strong. Queen [to the Duchess of Rutland2*]. Come, come, my good Duchess, one is always glad to see you. Duchess of Rutland. Your Majesty is always very kind to an old woman and a poor widow, that you are so good to let torment you about her children : and, Madam, I must beg your Majesty — [whispers to the Queen]. 24 Elizabeth, daughter and heiress of Lord Gerard. She died in 1744, aged 63, having had seven children. Her eldest daughter, Lady Charlotte Hamilton, married, 1 May, 1736, Charles Edwin, Esq., and Lady Susan, Anthony Tracy Keck, Esq., 16th August of the same year. The former was the " fool," and the latter the " beggar." "%> Lucy Bennett, sister of the first Lord Harborough, widow of the second Duke of Rutland, who died in 1721, leaving her six sons and two daughters. 1Y2 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXV. Princess Caroline [at the other end of the room, to the Duke of Grafton]. I vow I think it is very brutal to laugh at such things. Duke of Grafton. Dans ce monde, il faut—il faut—il faut26 — se consoler dans tous les malheurs. [ To the Duke of New castle.] Have you cried for my Lord Hervey ? Princess Caro line says one should— one should — shed a little tear for my Lord Hervey. Princess Car. I say no such thing. I said there was not de quoi rire for anybody ; and that, for my own part, I am very sorry ; and that he used to entertain me very often. Duke of Graft. Well, I knew people used to say — and that — of his wit ; but, upon my word, it may be, perhaps — you know everybody does not — just alike, and so — in those things — or may be, when I saw him — but I swear then — entertaining and all that — why now, Madame la Princesse, it did not, I own, strike me ; and there was something — I don't know how to say it — but, in short, you know what I mean. Princess Emily. Well, I swear I think now the Duke of Grafton is in the right : to be sure there was a vivacity, and a great many words, and all that — mais je vous jure que le tout ensemble ne me plaisoit pas. Duke of Newcastle [picking his nose, his ears, his teeth, Sfc, one after another]. Well said, Madame la Princesse ! I think the Princess Emily has hit that off well : there was, to be sure, things in him, but altogether it did not do well ; at least, it did not please me : and there was something, I don't know how to describe it, and perhaps I may be told I am prejudiced, and therefore Duke of Graft. Why now there is Chesterfield — I don't love Chesterfield — but then my Lord Chesterfield has — has — my Lord Chesterfield has certainly wit — and that Duke of Newc. Well, I think Chesterfield has ten times more wit than my Lord Hervey ; and in the House of Lords, though Sir Robert, you know, is partial to one and against the other, in my opinion there is no comparison. 26 Lord Hervey elsewhere mentions " the hesitating lips of the Duke of Grafton." 1736. DEATH OF LORD HERVEY : A DRAMA. 173 Queen [comes up to the Dukes of Grafton and Newcastle]. You are talking of poor my Lord Hervey, I believe ; well, I am sure now the Duke of Grafton is very sorry, for au fond the Duke of de Grafton is not what one calls hard — je I'ai toujours dit. Duke of Graft. Your Majesty will want him by your chaise a hunting— oh ! no — I think he did not hunt of late. Queen. No, my Lord, he did not hunt ; but though he did not love nor understand hunting so well as votre Grace, there are many occasions in which I shall want him very much ; the King will want him too. Do you not think so, Duke of New castle ? Duke of Newc. I think the King can't want a Vice-Chamber lain ; I dare say his Majesty will find people enough will be glad of the office. Queen. I must say, my good Duke of Newcastle, this is une tres platte reponse — to be sure, the King will find Vice-Cham berlains enough, though my Lord Hervey is dead ; as he would find Secretaries of State enough, if we had the misfortune to lose our good friend Permis f but I dare say he would never find such another- Duke of Newc. As which ? Queen. Just as you please ; I leave it with you. Enter Lord Grantham in a hurry. Lord Grantham. Ah ! dere is my Lord Hervey in your Majesty gallery ; he is in de frock and de bob,28 or he should have come in. Queen. Mon Dieu ! My Lord Grantham, you are mad ! Lord Grant. He is dere, all so live as he was ; and has play de trick to see as we should all say. Queen. Then he is mad — allons voir qu'est ce que c'est que tout ceci. [Exeunt omnes. 27 A nickname in the Queen's circle for the Duke of Newcastle, from his habit of addressing the Royal Ladies with " JEst-il permis ?" 28 In a frock-coat and bob-wig — not a court dress. 174 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXVI. CHAPTER XXVI. The King's return delayed— The Queen's patience exhausted, but per suaded by Walpole and Lord Hervey to invite Madame de Walmoden over — Correspondence between the King and Queen on this subject — Public impatience at the King's stay — Pasquinades — Indecent and undu- tiful behaviour of the Prince — Characters of the Princes and Princesses. The Queen's temper and patience under the King's neglect held out tolerably well till it came to be sure that his stay at Hanover would be protracted beyond his birthday. But this being a mark of his indifference to her, and the strength of his attachment to another, with which she had never before been mortified, she began to deviate a little from the general resolution she before seemed to have taken, of submitting to every slight her husband thought fit to put upon her, not only without resenting or murmuring, but even without seeming to feel or see it. She began to slacken in her assiduity towards his Majesty in her letters and the length of them ; the thirty or forty pages, which used to be their usual length, were shrunk to seven or eight; and it is probable that the style (though this is only conjecture) abated as much of its cordiality as the bulk of its quantity. Lord Hervey had observed these alterations and disapproved them ; but as the Queen had always spoken of this amour of the King's with Madame Walmoden as a thing she despised, and that Lord Hervey back again had talked of it as a thing 1736. WALPOLE'S ADVICE TO THE QUEEN. 175 below her regard, and often turned every circumstance of it into ridicule, his Lordship did not now care to risk the taking it on a more serious tone, or to seem to observe that her Majesty had done so, when she had not thought fit to give the least hint of this alteration either in her way of acting or thinking ; nor was there perhaps any in the latter, though there was in the former. However, as he apprehended such a change would weaken her interest yet more with the King rather than retrieve it, Lord Hervey told Sir Eobert Walpole what he had remarked, and begged him somehow or other to prevent her going on in a way that would cer tainly destroy her. Sir Robert Walpole said nothing could ever quite destroy her power with the King, though several things might happen temporarily to weaken her influence or to make the exercise of it more difficult. Lord Hervey replied that he knew but two ways any woman had of keeping her power with any man, which were by the man's fondness for her person or by habit ; that, as to the first, it was very plain that cement no longer subsisted to unite the King and Queen ; and that, for the other, these frequent absences, he feared, would bring habit to operate with no more force than inclination, especially when the King found whenever he broke into this habit of being with his wife, it was for his pleasure ; and whenever he returned to it, that it proved for his mortification. Sir Robert Wal pole allowed all this to be very true, but insisted still that the Queen had by a long course of years, and by the King's opinion of her understanding, as well as se curity in her truth to him, got such an ascendant over 176 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXVI. his Majesty's mind that it was impossible for anything to dissolve it. However, he said he was entirely of Lord Hervey's opinion that her taking the fiere turn would hurt her, and that he had observed she was going into that method before Lord Hervey had told him of it ; that he had already spoken slightly on the subject to the Queen, and resolved, if he saw hints had no effect, to give her his opinion more plainly. Accord ingly he did so, and gave Lord Hervey, some time after, an account of what had passed between him and the Queen on this subject; he said he had told her Majesty that if he had a mind to flatter her into her ruin, he might talk to her as if she was now five-and- twenty years old, and try to make her imagine that to alarm the King with apprehensions of losing her affec tion might awaken his fear and bring him back. But as this was not the case, he said he should be unpar donable if, in order to talk in a style that might please her, he should give her counsel that would ruin her ; he said it was too late in her life to try new methods, and that she must never hope now to keep her power with the King by reversing those methods by which she had gained it ; that nothing but soothing, comply ing, softening, bending, and submitting, could do any good ; but that she must persist in those arts, must press the King to bring this woman to England ; and that if her Majesty would do this, trust to him and take his advice, he would engage she should get the better of her. He taught her this hard lesson till she wept ; and her Majesty, instead of reproaching him for the liberty he had taken, promised to do everything he had de sired her, and thanked him for the friendship he had 1736. WALPOLE'S ADVICE TO THE QUEEN. 177 shown towards her. When Sir Robert Walpole re lated this passage to Lord Hervey, he added, " My Lord, she laid her thanks on so thick, and made such professions of friendship and gratitude, that I found I had gone too far ; for I am never so much afraid of her rebukes as her commendations. I know how to justify myself against the first, but not against the latter, as I know them often to be false, and dare not receive them but as if I thought they were true." However, Sir Robert Walpole did not disguise his suspicions so well but that the Queen perceived them ; for, two or three days afterwards, walking with Sir Robert Walpole in her gardens at Richmond, where she passed every Saturday all this summer, she told him, " I saw you did not believe me the other day, nor imagine, though I promised to take your advice, that I intended to keep my word ; own the truth, am I not in the right ? " Sir Robert Walpole (who was certainly a very ill-bred man), yet by the force of his under standing, made an answer to this question that if one had known no other stroke of his character in point of breeding, one should have concluded him as polite a courtier as dexterous statesman. "Madam (said he), your Majesty, in asking if I disbelieved you, would put a word into my mouth so coarse that I could not even give it place in my thoughts ; but, if you oblige me to answer this question, I confess I feared}' "Well," replied the Queen, "I understand what 'i feared ' means upon this occasion ; but to show you your fears are ill-founded I have considered what you said to me, and am determined this very day to write to the King just as you would have me ; VOL. II. N 178 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. CHAr. XXVI. and on Monday, when we meet at Kensington, you shall see the letter." Accordingly, a most submissive, kind, and tender letter was written by her Majesty to the King, assuring him she had nothing but his interest and his pleasure at heart ; that she had long known such was her duty, and that she hoped he had long known such was her practice ; that she hoped the un interrupted series of her conduct ever since he had known her would make his recollection convince him of this truth more fully than all she could say ; and the letter ended with making it her earnest request to the King that he would bring Madame Walmoden to England ; and giving him repeated assurances that his wife's conduct to his mistress should be everything he desired when he told his pleasure, and everything she imagined he wished when she was left to guess it. The Queen never showed Lord Hervey this letter, nor ever gave him the least hint of her having written one to this effect farther than always agreeing with him when he said he wished this new favourite to be brought over; and frequently, when he talked to her on this subject, she would begin to sing or repeat these words : " Se mai piu saro gelosa mi punisca il sacro nume," &c, which was the beginning of a song in one of Handel's operas, called Porus: and always spoke of these conjugal infidelities as things about which only girls and fools ever made themselves uneasy ; acknow ledging at the same time, as she knew the discontent the King's annual journeys to Hanover created here, that there was nothing she wished so much as that he would bring Madame Walmoden over. She would often say at the same time how much she had wished 1736. QUEEN'S LETTER TO THE KING. 17& to keep Lady Suffolk at Court ; and though the gene rality of the world, who always made false judgments on these occasions for want of seeing le dessous des cartes, had imagined Lady Suffolk's disgrace was the effect of her Majesty's intrigues and a proof of her in fluence over the King, that it was so much the contrary that she had done all she could to persuade her to stay in that audience Lady Suffolk asked of her ; and that when she told the King she had done so, the King snubbed her for it, and said, " What the devil did you mean by trying to make an old, dull, deaf, peevish beast stay and plague me when I had so good an oppor tunity of getting rid of her ? " ' But notwithstanding all the reasonable things the Queen could say on these two subjects, of having for merly desired to keep Lady Suffolk at St. James's, and now desiring to bring Madame Walmoden thither, she neither felt all she said, nor was willing even in her own mind to reflect on all she felt, but often deceived even herself as well as others, and (from wishing she could think as her pride and her interest would dictate to her) would not permit herself to see that the wife in her breast was perpetually combating the Queen, and the woman revolting against the politician. When Sir Robert Walpole told Lord Hervey of this letter that the Queen had written to the King, to solicit his bringing Madame Walmoden over, he gave the manner of cooking it the greatest encomiums in which it was possible to speak of such a performance ; he said she had not pared away the least part of his 1 See ante, vol. i. p. 56, n. 26. n2 180 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXVI. meaning, but had clothed his sentiments in so pretty a dress, had mixed so many tender turns in every para graph, and spoke with such decent concern of her own situation as well as consideration of the King's ; had covered all her own passions so artfully, and applied so pathetically to his, that Sir Robert Walpole said he did not believe anybody but a woman could have written a letter of that sort, nor any woman but the Queen so good a one. Lord Hervey said he was quite satisfied with this report of the letter ; and had only one question more to ask, which was, if Sir Robert thought the letter went ? Sir Robert said he really believed it did ; for though upon his first reading it he thought it was so good that it was never designed to go, yet the Queen's whole behaviour that morning had such an air of open ness and sincerity that he really believed the letter would be sent that night to Hanover. " Her behaviour was very different this morning," continued he, "from what it was when first I spoke to her on this subject. She acknowledged I had before made her half angry with me ; and the anger she owns is never dangerous ; it is only her commendations alarm me, for whenever she daubs I fear. " But this day," continued Sir Robert, " she went even farther than I desired, by telling me she intended to make the King the offer of taking Madame Walmoden into her service, which I advised her against, telling her if the King should accept that offer it could have no good air in the world, as it must either draw con tempt upon her from being thought too mean a conde scension in her if it should be judged merely her own 1736. THE KING'S ANSWER. 181 doing, or would bring an odium upon the King, if it should be concluded that Madame Walmoden had been forced upon her. The Queen then gave the example of Lady Suffolk's situation, which had made no clamour at all of this kind ; to which Sir Robert Walpole replied that he could not help thinking the world would judge very differently of the two cases, as. the King's making one of the Queen's servants his mistress, or his mistress one of the Queen's servants, were two things which nobody would see in the same light. Soon after all apprehensions of this letter not having been sent were totally dissipated, for an answer to it came from the King, which the Queen showed to Sir Robert Walpole. This letter wanted no marks of kindness hut those that men express to women they love ; had it been written to a man, nothing could have been added to strengthen its tenderness, friendship, and affection. He extolled the Queen's merit towards him in the strongest expression of his sense of all her good ness to him and the gratitude he felt towards her. He commended her understanding, her temper, and in short left nothing unsaid that could demonstrate the opinion he had of her head and the value he set upon her heart. He told her too she knew him to be just in his nature, and how much he wished he could be everything she would have him. " Mais vous voyez mes passions, ma chere Caroline ! Vous connaissez mes foiblesses, il n'y a rien de cache dans mon coeur pour vous, et plut h Dieu que vous pourriez me corriger avee la mime facilite que vous m'approfondissez ! Plut a Lieu que je pourrais vous imiter autant que je sais vous admirer, et que je pourrais apprendre de 182 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXVI. vous tputes les vertus que vous me faites voir, sentir, et aimer ! " 2 His Majesty then came to the point of Madame Walmoden's coming to England, and said that she had told him she would do anything he would have her, that she relied on the Queen's goodness, and would give herself up to whatever their Majesties thought fit, and to be disposed of implicitly as they should direct. Sir Robert Walpole, who gave Lord Hervey an account of this letter merely by memory (but said he had read it several times), assured Lord Hervey it was so well written, that if the King was only to write to women, and never to strut and talk to them, he believed his Majesty would get the better of all the men in the world with them. The King in this letter gave a full description to the Queen of Madame Walmoden's person, understanding, and temper. He said she was far from being a regular beauty, but had a very agreeable countenance ; was rather genteelly than exactly made. " Qu'elle n'avait pas un esprit eclatant, mais enjoue et amusant ; metis a Vegard du cceur elle est surement la meilleure crea ture du monde." This was the conclusion of her cor poral and mental picture. In this letter, too, the King having desired the Queen to prepare Lady Suffolk's lodgings for Madame Walmoden, her Majesty, when she had shown the letter to Sir Robert, said, " Well now, Sir Robert, I hope you are satisfied. You see this mignone is coming to England." Upon which Sir Robert shook his head. " What do you mean by 2 It is impossible not to wonder at the modesty and even elegance of these expressions, and the indecency and profligacy of the sentiment they convey. 1736. MADAME WALMODEN. 183 that?" said the Queen. "I mean," said Sir Robert, " that your Majesty is not pleased with me when you think she is coming, and that you imagine by this letter that she will do what she no more designs than you wish. Madam, it is very plain to me that she won't come, and that — I wish I could speak Latin to y0U — I would tell your Majesty that when the King assured her she might depend on your Majesty's good ness to her, I believe her answer was — sic notus Ulysses?"3 " Pray, explain that to me," replied the Queen. " The explanation, Madam," said Sir Robert, " is that she has had a character of your Majesty only from your enemies ; that she mistrusts when she pre tends to confide, that she fears your goodness when she says she relies upon it, and never intends to trust to what — I soften her thoughts when I only say— she doubts. I must add too, Madam, though the King tells you more than I believe any man from the begin ning of the world ever told his wife of his mistress, yet depend upon it he does not tell you all, and there are some things pass between them — as communicative as you think him and as he really is — unreported. How ever, Madam, get him here and be ruled by me. We will notwithstanding all this bring her here and humble her too. Lord Hervey said tome the other day, in speaking on this subject, ' If you can but once get this favourite to St. James's she will in three months be everything Lady Suffolk was, but deaf;' and it is really, " Ulla putatis Dona carere dolis Danaum ? Sic notus Ulysses ?" " Has ever Greek a guileless favour shown ? And are Ulysses' wiles so little known 1" — JEn. ii. 43. ] 84 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. CHAr. XXVI. Madam, the true state of the case, and your only option is whether you will fear her at a distance or de spise her near." " Well," said the Queen, " we shall soon see ; for I have this very day wrote the King word that I will get Lady Suffolk's lodgings ready imme diately, and enlarge them by adding the two rooms where my books now are which join to Lady Suffolk's lodgings, and I will hire some rooms for my books in the mean time till my library that is building " in the Park shall be fit to receive them." When Sir Robert Walpole told all this again to Lord Hervey, he added that it was those bitches5 Lady Pomfret and Lady Sundon, who were always bemoan ing the Queen on this occasion, and making their court by saying they hoped never to see this woman brought under her Majesty's nose here, who made it so difficult to bring the Queen to do what was right and sensible for her to do. Lord Hervey did not say he guessed who had told him this, but was as sure as if he had heard her that it was Mrs. Selwyn,6 a Bedchamber Woman of the Queen, and the only woman about the Court who loved Sir Robert Walpole, as he himself knew and often would i A building of a single story that stood in the Green Park, with an entrance from the Stable-yard. It was removed, I think, to make way for the Duke of York's — now Stafford — House. 5 Again, I must express my regret at having to exhibit the Jan Steen style of Sir Robert's pictures, but such a strong dislike of these ladies may excite a suspicion that the celebrated story of the diamond earrings (ante, i. 90) said (on Sir Robert's authority) to have been given to Lady Sundon as a bribe for procuring the place of Master of the Horse for Lord Pom fret, may have been discoloured by his hostility to the parties. 6 Mary Farrington, wife of Colonel John Selwyn, one ofthe Bedcham ber-women. " Mother of the famous George, and herself of much vivacity and pretty." — Reminiscences. 1736. LADIES POMFRET AND SUNDON. 185 say. Mrs. Selwyn was a simple cunning woman, who hated Lady Sundon, and to make her court to Sir Robert had told him this story. Lord Hervey, who really loved Lady Sundon, and looked upon her as a woman deserving to be loved and esteemed, as she had very great, good, and noble qualities, said he firmly believed Sir Robert was as much mistaken about Lady Sundon as about Lady Pomfret ; for as to the latter, the Queen, he was sure, never permitted her to talk on these subjects to her at all ; and as to Lady Sundon she was certainly no fool, and had been long enough about the Queen to know that nobody could make their court so ill as those who affected pitying her ; neither did he imagine Lady Sundon judged so ill of the Queen's interest as to think it better for her that Madame Walmoden should continue where she was, beckoning the King every summer over to Hanover, to risk his life and irritate his subjects. "My Lord," says Sir Robert, "you have a sneaking kindness for Lady Sundon, and therefore pretend to think better of her than you do, or than she deserves ; but as to what I have now told you, I know it to be true — I say I know it— and at the same time I know too she has given hints, as if I wished to bring this woman over only to play the wife upon the mistress and the mistress upon the wife, as my own interest should occasionally prompt me, without caring a farthing what became of either, pro vided I could keep my power ; and what I now tell you, you may depend upon I know to be truth." His peremptory repetition of his knowing all this to be true, obliged Lord Hervey in common decency and good breeding to give up the dispute, but did not make 186 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXVI. him alter his opinion. " A propos," said Lord Hervey, " to playing the mistress and the wife upon one another, has the report so current about town of your brother's having made a great feast at Hanover on Madame Walmoden's birthday any foundation?" Sir Robert Walpole said that his brother's conduct was so different from what was insinuated by a report of this kind, that he was very confident nothing had ever passed between him and Madame Walmoden that looked as if he knew she was the King's mistress, and that Horace thought himself so much in the Queen's favour that he was sure if anybody was to ask him who had the best interest with the Queen of the two brothers, Horace would answer himself. Sir Robert's jealousy of anybody pretending to have interest with the Queen but himself never appeared so strongly as on this occa sion, for he could not help saying what I have repeated even of his own brother without at the same time showing such a dislike as surprised Lord Hervey a good deal, considering the situation of Horace, but alarmed him much more considering his own.7 A little while after this conversation Lord Hervey, having a mind to be satisfied whether he was in the right in his opinion of Lady Sundon's never having spoken to the Queen against Madame Walmoden's coming to England, talked with her upon the subject, told her how right he thought it, and asked her opinion about it ; but before he began the conversation insisted on Lady Sundon giving him her honour she would never give the least hint to anybody whatever that he 7 Note this curious expression of Lord Hervey's " alarm " at Sir Robert's jealousy of his confidential intercourse with the Queen. 1736. LADY SUNDON AND MRS. SELWYN. 187 had ever asked her this question, or spoken to her upon this chapter ; and Lady Sundon was one of the few courtiers whose honour, so solemnly given, Lord Hervey would have thought any security on such an occasion. Lady Sundon assured Lord Hervey that directly nor indirectly she had never mentioned this to the Queen in her life, nor heard the Queen speak upon the subject ; that as to her private opinion, as she was no Minister, she would wish Madame Walmoden here ; for that she foresaw nobody but a Minister that would be distressed by her being here. Lord Hervey then asked if she had never talked of this to any other body. Lady Sundon assured him she had always avoided not only talking but hearing anything relating to Madame Wal moden ; and added that Mrs. Selwyn the other day in the Queen's antechamber, where they were together alone, had quite astonished her by the free manne r in which she had spoke of these things ; " but favourites you know, my Lord, may venture anything." "She told me," continued Lady Sundon, " that she believed if the King should go again next summer to Hanover, it would be for good and all, for that the people would be so exasperated they would never let him come back." "To which," said Lady Sundon, "I re plied as cautiously as I could (for I know Madam Selwyn), to be sure the disposition of the people to wards the King was not so good as one wished it, but I hoped it was not so bad neither as she seemed to apprehend it." Mrs. Selwyn (Lady Sundon said) then asked her whether she did not think it would be better to have Madame Walmoden in England ? To which she replied she believed there would be diffi- 188 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXVI. culties both ways. "And this," said Lady Sundon, "is all I would say, though she tried to make me more open, and would really have distressed me had not Lord Grantham come into the room, whom for the first time in my life I was glad to see," This was enough to convince Lord Hervey that he had conjectured well ; and though Sir Robert Walpole several times after spoke to him of Lady Sundon's talking in this strain to the Queen, Lord Hervey only said (as he had done at first), without letting Sir Robert know he had ever spoken to Lady Sundon about it, that he did not think it probable ; and would venture his head that the Queen had never let anybody but Sir Robert and himself talk to her on the chapter of Madame Walmoden at all. Lord Hervey, by way of softening his flat contradiction of Sir Robert in this fact, added, " If you, Sir, had told me anything that you had seen or heard, perhaps I might believe one of your senses against my own five ; but as you had this from intelligence, you will give me leave to say I think my observation on this point as good as theirs ; and I '11 be hanged if 'tis true." Sir Robert said, " Ask the Queen ; I do not believe she will deny it." Lord Hervey, who knew Sir Robert's reason for bidding him ask the Queen,8 replied, "You and I, Sir, are well enough acquainted with the Queen to know that when she lets a sentiment escape her which she is ashamed of, that she had rather one should think it was planted in her, than that it grew there ; and though she would not lay it upon anybody herself, she will suffer you uncontradicted to lay it on whom you please, pro- s A continuation, I suppose, of the " alarm " indicated in page 186. 1736. MADAME WALMODEN. 189 vided you take it off her. But, believe me, the greatest obstacle in this kingdom to Madame Walmoden's coming here is the Queen's own heart, that recoils whenever her head proposes it." In October the King wrote to the Queen to desire her to remove from Kensington to London : saying the season of the year being so far advanced, and that house where she was having the reputation of being damp, he fancied the Queen would find it better for her health, as well as easier to the Ministers that were to attend her,9 to go now and settle for the winter at St. James's ; but as the Queen understood this to be an offer which he thought himself obliged to make, and one which he had rather she did not accept, her Majesty determined to stay at Kensington till the King should set out from Hanover, and only go to London time enough to receive him there. She knew the King and his way of thinking thoroughly; and certainly imagined this air of retirement, and her seeming to decline all state and parade during his absence, would be most agreeable to his Majesty ; and that her choosing this part when he had pressed her to take the other would make the choice doubly meritorious. 9 The removing from Kensington to St. James's, for the purpose of facilitating the Queen's intercourse with Ministers, seems in our days very singular, but the following extract from a letter of Lord Hervey's to his mother, dated 27th Nov. 1736, will explain it : — " The road between this place [Kensington] and London is grown so infamously bad, that we live here in the same solitude as we should do if cast on a rock in the middle ofthe ocean, and all the Londoners tell us there is between them and us a great impassable gulf of mud. There are two roads through the park, but the new one is so convex and the old one so concave, that by this extreme of faults they agree in the common one of being, like the high road, impass able." 190 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXVI. In the mean time the people of all ranks grew every day more discontented at the King's stay in Germany. The people belonging to the Court were uneasy at it, as it made the Court so much more unpopular ; and those who were attached to the Queen were yet more so from the apprehension of these long absences being both the means and the signs of her altered power. The tradesmen were all uneasy, as they thought the King's absence prevented people coming to town, and particularly for the birthday; the citizens made this preference he seemed to give to his German dominions a pretence to show their disaffection, but were before so thoroughly disaffected that it made no great addition to what they felt, though it opened the sluices of their clamorous mouths. The ordinary and the godly people took the turn of pitying the poor Queen, and railing at his Majesty for using so good a wife, who had _ brought him so many fine children, so abominably ill. Some of them (and those who, if he had heard all this, would have fretted him most) used to talk of his age, and say, for a man at his time of day to be playing these youthful pranks, and fancying himself in love, was quite ridiculous, as well as inexcusable. Others, in very coarse terms, would ask if he must have a mistress whether England could furnish never a one good enough to serve his turn ; and if he thought Par liament had given him a greater civil-list than any of his predecessors only to defray the extraordinary ex penses of his travelling charges, and enrich his German favourites. To this familiar manner of talking were added several little ingenious manuscripts : pasquinades were 1736. PASQUINADES. 191 stuck up in several quarters of the town, and some practical jokes and satires (that no marks of dis satisfaction might be omitted) were likewise exhibited. An old lean, lame, blind horse was turned into the streets, with a broken saddle on his back and a pillion behind it, and on the horse's forehead this inscription was fixed : — " Let nobody stop me — I am the King's Hanover Equipage, going to fetch his Majesty and his * to England." At the Royal Exchange, a paper with these words was stuck up : — " It is reported that his Hanoverian Majesty designs to visit his British dominions for three months in the spring." On St. James's gate this advertisement was pasted : — " Lost or strayed out of this house, a man who has left a wife and six ehildren on the parish ; whoever will give any tidings of him to the churchwardens of St. James's Parish, so as he may be got again, shall receive four shillings and sixpence reward. N.B. This reward will not be increased, nobody judging him to deserve a Crown." It would be too tedious to enumerate half the things of this nature that were put in practice on this oc casion ; but Dion Cassius and Suetonius do not inform us of more jokes, verbal or practical, put upon Caesar on his return to Rome than were exhibited against our Augustus for not returning to England ; nor was Nicomedes oftener objected to the one than Madame Walmoden to the other. But most of these things lost the effect they were designed to have on the King so much, that instead of mortifying his pride, irritating his wrath, and covering him with shame, many of them 192 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXVI. only served to flatter his vanity ; for as the two charac ters he most affected were the brave warrior and the tender lover, so he looked on all these satires and lam poons as so many proofs of his eminence in the last of these callings. When the Queen declared she intended to stay at Kensington till the King came, the Prince, who had a mind to go to London for the same reason that the Queen avoided it — which was because he thought his Majesty would dislike it — told the Queen his expenses at Kensington were so great, and his lodgings there were so damp, that he intended to remove to London : and would fain have drawn her in either to consent to this design or to lay her commands upon him not to put it into execution, but he could bring neither of these things about — she declined both. And for fear his Royal Highness might mis-report the conversation, she repeated the substance of it next morning to him in the following letter : — " Je suis fachee, mon cher fils, quand vous me consul tez, que je ne puis pas toujours vous donner le conseil qui vous plairoit le plus, meme dans les bagatelles : mais considerant les ordres que vous avez reques du Roi, par le Due de Grafton,10 il est impossible que je puisse approuver votre dessein d'aller vous etablir a Londres pendant que je resterais encore a Kensington. Quant a la proposition que je vous ai faite, que la Dame11 de la Princesse sera toujours recue a, la table de ma Dame ici, je ne l'aurois jamais faite si je ne m'etois pas souveniie que dans le tems du feu Roi a Hampton Court ma Dame etoit recue les jours publiques, de meme, par son ordre, a la table de son gentilhomme de la chambre ; et je puis vous 10 Ante, p. 118. n This was obviously some additional tracasserie of the Prince about the Princess's Lady in Waiting — probably Lady Archibald Hamilton. 1736. THE QUEEN AND THE PRINCE. 193 assurer, mon cher fils, que comme amie et comme mere, vous me trouverez toujours prete a faire toute chose non seulement pour votre interet, mais aussi pour votre plaisir, dans toutes les occasions." The Prince made no answer in writing immediately to this letter, but told the Queen, when he saw her that day at dinner, that as she had not ordered him to send any answer in writing, he did not care to give her the trouble of one ; and now again renewed his importu nity to desire her to declare her pleasure what he should do, adding, that if she would lay her commands upon him to stay at Kensington, he would certainly obey them. The Queen said she had desired no answer to her letter, because she never insisted upon anything from him merely as point of form, and that as his going or staying was the only subject of her letter, his conduct would be the answer ; that as to her pleasure in it, there never could be any exception to the general desire she had for the Prince in all things to obey the King ; and that for adding her commands upon any occasion to the King's, she could not help thinking it quite unnecessary with regard to the Prince, and not right to the King, to imagine that the addition of her orders could give force to his. Here ended this conversation ; and the next morning the Prince wrote the Queen the following letter : — " Madame, " Apres avoir considere tout ce que votre Majeste m'a dit sur ma proposition d'aller a Londres, j'ai resolu de faire le palais de Kensington, pendant que vous y resterez, mon prin cipal sejour, malgre tous les inconveniens que j'y trouve ; et je me soumets en cette occasion, non pas de peur des conse quences qui pourroient en arriver si je ne le faisois pas, ni par VOL. II. O 194 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS, Chap. XXVI. esperance d'aucun avantage que je pourrois tirer en le faisant, mais par le principe de cette soumission qu'un fils doit a ses parens. " Etant avee beaucoup de respect, Madame, " De votre Majeste, &c, " Frederick." The copies of these two letters cannot be very exact, as the Queen showed them to me but once ; but, as I wrote them down from memory immediately after I came from the Queen, the difference between them and the originals I believe is only verbal, and very minute ; for the main substance of them, I am sure, was just as I have given it. The next time the Queen saw the Prince after his sending her this letter, she told him it was very well written, and asked him if he had written it himself? The Prince coloured from a mixture of shame and anger, and asked her why she thought him incapable of writing it ? She said she did not think him at all incapable of writing everything in it that was well ; but that the expression of un fils a ses parens was not French, but a translation from English, which had made her imagine it was written by some Englishman.12 When she showed Lord Hervey these letters, she asked him who he thought had written his Royal High ness's ? Lord Hervey said the Prince was not now well enough with Lord Chesterfield to have consulted him ; and, besides that, Lord Chesterfield would have 12 This would be slender evidence, for, though parent in the singular always means a relation, it sometimes is used in the plural for parents (Diet, de VAcaMmie') ; but if Lyttelton or Pitt suggested the reply, they no doubt wrote it in English, and the Prince would be at least the trans lator, and of course responsible for the French. 1736. CHARACTER OF THE PRINCE. 195 written better French, as well as with more turns and points ; that Mr. Lyttelton would have been more verbose ; and therefore that he should imagine it was the work of young Pitt, who was now perpetually with the Prince, and at present in the first rank of his favour. Pursuant to the purport of this letter the Prince made Kensington his sSj our principal (as he called it) for the rest of the time the Court stayed at Kensington, that is, he left the Princess's maids of honour and some of the under servants constantly there ; but the Princess and he seldom lay there above one or two nights in the week. # * * * 13 And when I have mentioned his [the Prince's] temper, it is the single ray of light I can throw on his character to gild the otherwise universal blackness that belongs to it ; and it is surprising how any cha racter made up of so many contradictions should never have the good fortune to have stumbled (par contre-coup at least) upon any one virtue ; but as every vice has its opposite vice as well as its opposite virtue, so this heap of iniquity, to complete at once its uniformity in vice in general, as well as its contra dictions in particular vices, like variety of poisons, —whether hot or cold, sweet or bitter, — was still poison, and had never an antidote. 13 Here again there is a chasm in the MS., which no doubt contained some additional instances of disrespect and dislike from the Prince towards the Queen, sufficient to justify, in Lord Hervey's opinion, the following bitter strictures, and, it is to be hoped, exaggerated censure on his Royal Highness's character. o 2 196 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXVI. The contradictions he was made up of were these : — He was at once both false and sincere ; he was false by principle, and sincere from weakness, trying always to disguise the truths he ought not to have concealed, and from his levity discovering those he ought never to have suffered to escape him ; so that he never told the truth when he pretended to confide, and was for ever telling the most improper and dishonest truths when anybody else had confided in him. He was at once both lavish and avaricious, and always both in the wrong place, and without the least ray of either of the virtues often concomitant with these vices ; for he was profuse without liberality, and avaricious without economy. He was equally addicted to the weakness of making many friends and many enemies, for there was nobody too low or too bad for him to court, nor nobody too great or too good for him to betray. He desired without love, could laugh without being pleased, and weep without being grieved; for which reason his mistresses never were fond of him, his com panions never pleased with him, and those he seemed to commiserate never relieved by him. When he aimed at being merry in company, it was in so tiresome a manner that his mirth was to real cheerfulness what wet wood is to a fire, that damps the flame it is brought to feed. His irresolution would make him take anybody's advice who happened to be with him ; so that jealousy of being thought to be influenced (so prevalent in weak people and consequently those who are most influenced) always made him say something depreciating to the next comer of him that advised him last. 1736. CHARACTER OE THE PRINCE, 197 With these qualifications, true to nobody, and seen through by everybody, it is easy to imagine nobody had any regard for him: what regard, indeed, was it possible anybody could have for a man who had no truth in his words, no justice in his inclination, no in tegrity in his commerce, no sincerity in his professions, no stability in his attachments, no sense in his conver sation, no dignity in his behaviour, and no judgment in his conduct ? Neither the Queen nor Princess Caroline loved the Prince, and yet both of them had by fits a reste of management14 for his character, which made them, though they were very ready to allow all his bad qua lities, mix now and then some good ones, which he had very little pretence to. They used to say that he was not such a fool as one took him for ; that he was not wise neither ; that he could sometimes be very amusing, though often very ennuyant ; and that in everything he was made up of such odd contradictions, that he would do the meanest, the lowest, and the dirtiest things about money, and at other times the most generous ; that his heart was like his head, both bad and good ; and that he very often seemed to have a worse heart than he really had, by being a knave when he thought he was only avoiding the character of being a dupe ; and by doing things to people without reflecting enough on what he was doing, to know he was hurting them so much as he really did. Lord Hervey said that was an excuse one might make at any time, without a possibi lity of being disproved, for any action in anybody ; but 14 A Gallicism— menagement — an indulgent reserve. 198 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXVI. that if he saw any one of thirty years old picking out people's eyes with a pair of scissors, it would be very difficult for a stander-by to persuade him that the per son who was performing that operation thought he was paring their nails. The Queen said that would indeed, she believed, be something difficult ; but if, in paring their nails, he only cut into the finger a little, one might sure imagine that wounding the flesh was acci dent, and that in reality he only thought of cutting their nails too close to scratch him ; " and this I firmly believe was sometimes the case. When he betrayed you,15 laughed at Dodington, and gave up Lord Ches terfield, he was certainly very false to every one of you, one after another ; but when he was so, he thought of nothing more than clearing himself of the suspicion one might have of his being weak enough to be go verned." Lord Hervey told the Queen she was the best apologist he knew in the world, but said the conse quences of the Prince's conduct were equally preju dicial to his Royal Highness's character, let the motive be what it would ; and that it could never be so fatal to any Prince to have it thought he was to be governed as to have it known he was not to be trusted ; which was certainly the Prince's case, and said of him by every- is This is one of the few notices of the quarrel between the Prince and Lord Hervey, but it affords little light as to the cause. In the case of Miss Vane, the Prince seems to have been the person duped or betrayed ; but the quarrel was earlier than that, and I suspect that the Prince may have betrayed some political confidence of Lord Hervey's, before the latter had accepted office. However that may be, it is plain that Lord Hervey's character of the Prince is written with great personal acrimony. 1736. CHARACTER OF THE PRINCE. 199 body that ever spoke of him, and thought even by many who did not speak of him. " This will certainly, too, Madam, as well as his inconstancy, make anybody who shall get a temporary possession of him when he comes to be King think of nothing but their own inte rest, and pushing it as fast as they can, without any view of what becomes of him, or any remorse for any inconveniences they may draw him into." — " This, my dear Lord," said the Queen, " is what I have often told him ; and, as I hope the King will live yet a great while, experience and growing wiser will, I hope, make this poor young man feel the truth of what he imagines now one always tells him with some view to one's own advantage, and not with any regard to his. I believe, too, what I dare say you do not, that there is nothing he dreads more at present than the King's death." — " I am so far from believing it," said Lord Hervey, " that I cannot comprehend your being serious when you say it is your opinion, and am firmly persuaded there is nothing he wishes so much ; and that he does not esteem himself less capable of ruling wisely than Cae sar." — "You are mistaken," said the Queen: "besides, the great debts he has contracted, payable at that time, make him apprehend this period still more." — "If that were any reason," said Lord Hervey, " for his wishing the King's life, he would wish it every day more than another, as it is a reason that, I fear, will be ever increasing, as long as the King and he shall live. And, since your Majesty has mentioned this, I must say one thing, which I have often thought of with great' anxiety, and that is the danger there is of the King's days some how or other being shortened by those profligate usurers 200 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXVI. who lend the Prince money upon these terms. I am sure, if I guess right, there are some who deal with the Prince for money payable at the King's death with most extortionate interest, who would want nothing but a fair opportunity to hasten the day of payment ; and the King's manner of exposing himself a thousand dif ferent ways would make it full as easy for these fellows to accomplish such a design as their conscience would to form it." — " What you say," replied the Queen, " is certainly true. But what can be done ?" — " Why, if no other means," said Lord Hervey, " can be found to put a stop to this every day increasing danger to the King's life, I am sure, for my own part, I would make no scruple of moving for an Act of Parliament to make it capital for any man to lend money for a premium at the King's death." — " To be sure," replied the Queen, "it ought to be so; aud pray talk a little with Sir Robert Walpole about it." The Queen used to speak to Lord Hervey on this subject with as little reserve when the Princess Caro line was present, as when alone ; but never before the Princess Emily, who had managed her affairs so well, as to have lost entirely the confidence of her mother, without having obtained the friendship of her brother ; by trying to make her court by turns to both, she had by turns betrayed both, and at last lost both. Princess Emily had much the least sense, except her brother, of the family, but had for two years much the prettiest person. She was lively, false, and a great liar ; did many ill offices to people, and no good ones ; and, for want of prudence, said as many shocking things to their faces, as for want of good nature or truth 1736. THE PRINCESSES. 201 she said disagreeable ones behind their backs. She had as many enemies as acquaintances, for nobody knew without disliking her.16 Lord Hervey was very ill with her : she had first used him ill, to flatter her brother, which of course had made him not use her very well ; and the preference on every occasion he gave her sister, the Princess Ca roline, completed their mutual dislike. Princess Caroline had affability without meanness, dignity without pride, cheerfulness without levity, and prudence without falsehood.16 The Queen kept the King's birthday in London, but came from Kensington only that morning, and returned thither after the ball at night. There 'was a very thin appearance, and as little finery as if the same sumptuary law forbidding gold and silver, that subsists at this time in the Court of Spain, was in force here. Sir Robert Walpole went the day after the birth day as usual into Norfolk for three weeks, the Duke of Devonshire to Newmarket, the Duke of Grafton and Lord Lifford to fox hunt in Suffolk, and nobody being left but the Duke of Newcastle at Court, the Queen desired Lord Hervey, who was to have gone into Suffolk for a fortnight to his father, to make his excuse, to say she had absolutely forbid him to leave her, and not to stir from Kensington. Accordingly he did so, and was with her Majesty not only every day, but almost all the day, talking over in different con- 16 These two characters of the Princesses are on a separate paper, and probably filled a portion of the chasm in page 195 ; but as the connecting words are lost, I have placed them here in conjunction with the nearest men tion of their names. 202 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXVI. versations a thousand particulars relating to the sub jects I have here treated in short and thrown together in a loose way, that I might not, by a more accurate manner of ranging them, deviate from the manner in which these conversations passed. And as I look upon these papers rather as fragments that might be wove into a history, than a history in themselves, so I generally put down such little parti culars as can come to the knowledge of few historians ; whilst I omit several which may be learned from every Gazette, and cannot fail to be inserted in the writings of every author who will treat of these times. I am very sensible too what mere trifles several things are in themselves which I have related ; but as I know that I myself have had a pleasure in looking at William Rufus's rusty stirrup, and the relics of a half worm-eaten chair in which Queen Mary sat when she was married in the Cathedral of Winchester to King Philip of Spain, it is for the sake of those who, like me, have an unaccountable pleasure in such trifling particulars relating to antiquity, that I take the trouble of putting many of the immaterial incidents I have described, into black and white, and am very ready to give up the dignity of my character as an historian to the censures of those who may be pleased on this account to reflect upon it ; let them enjoy their great reflections on great events unenvied, and seek them elsewhere ; and let those only hope for any satisfaction or amuse ment in my writings, who look with more indifferent eyes on the surface of those splendid trifles, and pry less metaphysically into the bottom of them, for it is to those only I write, who prefer nature to gilding, 1736. APOLOGY FOR THESE MEMOIRS. 203 truth to refinement, and have more pleasure in looking upon these great actors dressing and undressing, than when they are representing their parts upon the public stage. Let Machiavels give rules for the conduct of princes, and let Tacituses refine upon them ; let the one embel lish their writings with teaching, and the other with commenting on these great personages ; let these make people imagine that lettered theory can be reduced to common practice, and let those pretend to account for accidental steps by premeditated policy, whilst I con tent myself with only relating facts just as I see them, without pretending to impute the effects of chance to design, or to account for the great actions of great people always by great causes ; since the highest rank of people have as many and the same passions as the lowest ; and since the lowest have five senses, and none of the highest that I know of have six. I look upon the world, and every incident in it, to be produced as much from the same manner of thinking, as I do the operations of kitchen-jacks and the finest repeating watches from the same laws of motion and the same rules of mechanism — the only difference is a little coarser or finer wheels. The intrigues of Courts and private families are still the same game, arid played with the same cards, the disparity in the skill of the gamesters in each equally great; there are excellently good and execrably bad, and the only difference is their playing more or less deep, whilst the cutting and shuffling, the dealing and the playing is still the same, whether the stakes be halfpence or millions. 204 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXVII. CHAPTER XXVII. The King announces his return— The Queen's altered feelings— The King supposed to be in danger at sea— Indecent conduct of the Prince — The Queen's anxieties— Lord Hervey's speculations on the King's loss— The King at sea, but driven back by a great storm— The Prince affects popu larity — His conversation with Walpole — The King returns. But to return to my narrative from the imperti nence of these reflections. The long-deferred, not much expected and less wished-for orders of his Ma jesty for the yachts to set out for Holland, at last arrived. The Queen gave these orders this year a very different welcome from that with which she re ceived them the last; last year she felt a sort of triumph in his return, when all the enemies of the Court had flattered themselves he would then defer his return in the same manner he had done now; the Queen too had flattered herself that he would come back from this gallantry as he had done from former excursions of the same sort, and that in returning to her presence he would return to her arms and his former conjugal attachments ; but as she had found herself so terribly deceived in these hopes and expectations the last year, and had so much less reason to form them this, she had nothing before her eyes for this winter but the revolution of the coldness she had felt the last ; she considered this return only as a transition from the ease and liberty in which she had passed the summer, 1736. SUPPOSED DANGER OF THE KING. 205 to an uninterrupted scene of disquiet and constraint ; and knew the change for which she was to prepare was, from receiving homage to paying it, and that she was to quit the company of those who were perpetually endeavouring, and with success, to please her, for the company of one whom she should be constantly endea vouring to please, and without success. Between the 7th and 8th of December, in the night, after a great ball and a great supper, the King set out from Hanover, and arrived Friday the 1 1 th at Helvoet- sluys. The Princess Royal four days before, after a terrible labour and being in great danger of her life, had been brought to bed at the Hague of a daughter, which Dr. Sands, a very eminent man-midwife sent from hence by the Queen, had been obliged to squeeze to death in the birth, to save the mother. These circumstances did not, after all his former affection professed for his dear daughter Ann, awaken paternal love sufficient in his Majesty to engage him to make any visit at the Hague. He could say to Ma dame Walmoden, like Sappho to Phaon, all other loves are lost in thine} The next Tuesday [the 14th], after he came to Hel- voetsluys, whilst the people in England were employed in nothing but looking at weathercocks, and talking of tides and winds and moons, the wind changed on this side of the water for about eight or nine hours to the east, and everybody of course concluded his Majesty at sea : on Tuesday night it changed again, and a violent storm arose, which lasted four days, during which time there i Pope's translation of Ovid's " Multarum quod fuit, unus habes." 206 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXVII. was not the least tidings of his Majesty. A hundred messages a-day passed between the Admiralty Office and St. James's Palace; and a thousand conjectures were made with regard to the danger and safety of his Majesty, just as the different hopes and fears that were busy on this occasion, led people to wish or apprehend the one or the other. Many wagers were laid, and almost all the seafaring men laid that he was em barked. The alacrity of the Prince and his Court on this occasion was not so ill-founded as it was indecent, nor so improperly felt as it was improperly shown. The wind continuing very strong and contrary, every hour that brought no news added to the apprehension of bad news. On Friday the 17th, during this consternation, the Prince gave a great dinner 3 to the Lord Mayor of London, and all the Aldermen, at his house in Pall Mall, on their presenting him with the freedom of the City ; a compliment which the Queen told me he had asked of my Lord Mayor by his saddler ;3 her Majesty adding at the same time the comment of its being a very princely request, and made in a very princely manner. There was another reflection she made on this occasion, which though she said it made no impres sion upon her, one plainly saw it left some. The re flection was this, that King Charles I. when he was 2 No blame is imputable to the Prince for the choice of this day, which had been fixed long before ; and to have put off the ceremony on the supposition of the King's danger might have been liable to a still worse imputation. s This, too, is a misrepresentation. The Prince had been, some time before, presented with the freedom of the Saddlers' Company, and had dined at Guildhall on Lord Mayor's Day ; so that the freedom of the City followed very naturally. 1736. QUEEN'S SUPERSTITION. 207 Prince of Wales, and King James II. when he was Duke of York, were the only two sons of kings that ever had had this freedom ofthe City conferred upon them.4 But as this remark was a sign of some relics of that Germanic superstition which the whole nation imbibe in their infancy, and few of them have sense enough to rub off when they are grown up, so I must own it was one which was much more natural for her to make, considering her education than considering her understanding. Lord Hervey dined this disagreeable Friday at Sir Robert Walpole's. As they were going together from Court thither in the chariot, Sir Robert seemed full of many melancholy reflections, and to wish the King's safety much less for the sake of the King than for the rest of his family. He said, and very truly, " If any accident should happen to our sweet master, whom I feel more peevish with than I can express, I do not know, my dear Lord, any people in the world so much to be pitied as that gay young company [the Duke and Princesses] with which you and I stand every day in the drawing-room, at that door from which we this moment came, bred up in state, in affluence, ca ressed and courted ; and to go at once from that into dependence on a brother who loves them not, and whose extravagance and covetousness — alieni appetens, sui profusus, — (greedy of other people's money, and lavish of his own) will make him grudge every 4 The Queen and Lord Hervey seem to have forgotten that Frederick was, except those two, the first King's son who had attained the age of twenty-one since the sons of Henry IV., when, I suppose, complimentary freedoms were unthought of. 208 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXVII. guinea they spend, as it must come from out of a purse not sufficient to defray the expenses of his own vices. On the other hand, what a situation is the Queen's, between the Scylla and Charybdis of falling into the hands of a son who hates her, or receiving a husband whom she has as much reason to hate ; and who, if one was to see her heart, perhaps she loves the least of the two, as she thinks she has not been better used by him when she has deserved everything from him ! What will be the Prince's case ? A poor, weak, irresolute, false, lying, dishonest, contemptible wretch ; that nobody loves, that nobody believes, that nobody will trust, and that will trust everybody by turns ; and that everybody by turns will impose upon, betray, mis lead, and plunder. And what then will become of this divided family, and this divided country, is too melan choly a prospect for one to admit conjecture to paint it." Lord Hervey said, that with regard to the avarice and profusion of the Prince, he agreed it would make him do a thousand wrong things, and by the by said, he wondered that that part of Catiline's character, drawn by Sallust, should be thought so extraordinary a one, when, iu his opinion, there were no two qualities oftener went together. " But, Sir," continued Lord Hervey, " there is one very material point in which I differ from you, and that is concerning the influence the Queen would have over the Prince if ever he came to be King ; I am far from believing her interest there would be so low as you imagine." " Zounds, my Lord," interrupted Sir Robert, very eagerly, " he would tear the flesh off her bones with hot irons ; the notion he has of her making his father do everything she has a 1*736. CONDUCT OF THE PRINCE. 209 mind to, and the father doing nothing the son has a mind to, joined to that rancour against his mother which those about him are continually whetting, would make him use her worse than you or I can foresee ; his resentment for the distinctions she shows to you too, I believe, would not be forgotten. Then the notion he has of her great riches, and the desire he would feel to be fingering them, would make him pinch her and pinch her again, in order to make her buy her ease, till she had not a groat left." This conversation broke off by their arrival at Sir Robert's house. The Queen, at St. James's, passed her common evenings just as she had done at Kensington: that is, in her private apartment at quadrille with her lady-in- waiting, Mrs. Schutz,5 and Lady Charlotte de Roussie ; whilst the Princess Caroline, Miss Dives (one of her maids of honour,6) and Lord Hervey played pools at cribbage ; and the Duke, Princess Emily, and the rest of the chance-comers of the family played at basset. Mondays and Fridays, however, there were public drawing-rooms in the great apartments, in the same manner as when the King used to be in London. This Friday, therefore, that the Queen might betray no ap prehension or disquiet, there was a public drawing- room as usual, to which neither the Prince nor Prin cess came; the Prince made no excuse, the Princess pleaded a cold, but the only marks of it that appeared was a black-hood. The next morning the Queen sent for Lord Hervey 5 I suppose the wife of Mr. Augustus Schutz. 6 Miss Dives was the niece of Lady Sundon. VOL. II. P '210 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXVII. earlier than usual, and nobody but the Princess Caroline being by, they talked very freely of the present situation of affairs. The Queen asked Lord Hervey if he had heard any of the particulars of yes terday's feast in Pail-Mall ; whether he knew if the Prince went thither to toast in the afternoon, and what healths were drank. Lord Hervey said he had heard the Prince's speech in the morning was the most in gratiating piece of popularity that ever was composed ; and that, if he did go to his guests after dinner, he con cluded the healths were in the same style ;7 and neither the " Prosperity of the City of London " — " the Trade of this Country" — ¦" the Naval Strength of England" — " Liberty and Property " — nor any popular toasts of that kind were omitted. " My God," says the Queen, " popularity always makes me sick ; but Fritz's popu larity makes me vomit. I hear that yesterday, on his side of the house, they talked of the King's being cast away with the same sang-froid as you would talk of a coach being overturned ; and that my good son strutted about as if he had been already King. Did you mind the air with which he came into my drawing-room in the morning, though he does not think fit to honour me with his presence or ennui me with his wife's of a night? I swear his behaviour shocked me so pro digiously, that I could hardly bring myself to speak to t The Prince's answer, as given in the prints of the day, is very decent : he thanks them for " this new mark of their duty and loyalty to the King, and of their affection to him." To be sure he concludes with the usual professions of " his constant zeal for the liberties of his country." As to the subsequent entertainment, it was not the etiquette that the Prince should entertain the City in person ; they dined with the noblemen of his house hold, and after dinner it seems his Royal Highness joined the party. 1736. LORD HERVEY'S SPECULATIONS. 211 him when he was with me afterwards ; I felt something here in my throat that swelled and half-choked me." " I presume," said Lord Hervey, " your Majesty and the Princess Caroline are not of that opinion still, on which I disputed with you at Kensington. You do not imagine, I believe, now, that the Prince has all that horror of being King which you then supposed." " Oh ! " replied the Queen, " he is such an ass that one cannot tell what he thinks : and yet he is not so great a fool as you take him for neither." " There is one thing in which I think of him very differently from your Majesty, and which proves I think him wiser than you do." " What is that ?" said the Queen. " It is, replied Lord Hervey, " that your Majesty in a month, if he came to the crown, would have more weight with him than anybody in England." " Oh," interrupted the Princess Caroline, " my good Lord, you must know very little of him if you believe that ; for in the first place he hates Mama; in the next, he has so good an opinion of himself that he thinks he wants no advice— and of all advice no woman's ; for the saying, no woman ought to be let to meddle with business or ever did any good where they did meddle, is perhaps the only thing in which I have not heard him ever contradict himself." The Queen exclaimed, too, against Lord Hervey's opinion, and asked him upon what it was possible for him to found it. He said, " Upon knowing, Madam, how susceptible he is of impressions, and how capable your Majesty is of giving them : he is, Madam, a mere bank of sand, and anybody may write upon one as easy as the other." "And what one writes p2 212 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXVII. is as easily, too," said the Queen, "rubbed out of one as the other. Besides, they would never let him come near me." "They would try, I acknowledge," replied Lord Hervey, " if they were wise and not your friends, to hinder him coming near you, for fear that if you got one inch of footing you might disturb the motions of their little globe ; but it would not be in their power to hinder him." " For my part," inter rupted the Princess Caroline, " I should desire to run out of the house au grand galop, as fast as I could." " No," said the Queen, " I would not stir before my proper time out of the house ; but supposing I stayed in it," continued her Majesty, turning to Lord Hervey, "why do you imagine I should see him ? " " Because I am sure," answered Lord Hervey, " I know just how he would think and reason upon that occasion. He would think to conciliate the great king and the dutiful son, and would say he would come and show your Majesty all the respect due to a mother; but if you offered to meddle with business, he would insist on the respect due to the dignity of his own character as king, and impose an absolute silence upon you with regard to any matters of that sort ; and as I know the preva lence of truth, and the art your Majesty has of letting it lose none of its weight in your hands, you would, under a justification of your past conduct, make him see the things he had most objected to in so different a light from that he had before viewed them, and make him so sensibly feel the propriety and necessity of those parts of your conduct which he had most disliked, that you would soon bring him to hear you on present circumstances after you had reconciled him to past 1736. LORD HERVEY'S SPECULATIONS. 213 occurrences. You would let him know that the prompt violences of the King's temper, and the factious turbu lent spirit of this nation, had made the part you had to act so difficult, that, in order to make the whole go on, you had been often forced to suffer several particular wheels to take a course which, if it had not been with a view to the not obstructing the motions of others, you would certainly have tried to turn differently ; and as the good of the whole had always been your primary view, you would then appeal to his recollection whether anything you had ever done had not tended to the welfare and security of your family in general: and whether you had ever submitted to anything that had lessened the dignity and rights of the Crown, or attempted anything that might hurt the liberties or infringe the privileges of the people. You would bid him then reflect on your conduct either as a queen, a wife, or a mother, and desiring him to lay all general charges and insinuations aside — which might always be endless, and consequently unanswerable — you would ask him to name any particular action where you had acted unbecoming the duties of those several stations. It would afterwards be very natural for your Majesty to add, that as you could have nothing at heart but the quiet continuance of your family upon this throne, whilst every other body about him must have some private views and interests of their own to serve, so it could never be of any prejudice to him to hear what you had to tell him, whether he paid any regard to it or not ; and it would then be as natural for him to hear you as it must be for everybody to regard you when they have heard you." 214 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXVII. "My Lord," said the Queen, "you have spoken a great deal better for me than I could do for myself; but could I speak as well, I promise you it would be to no purpose. The chief objection he makes to the King's conduct at present is the confidence the King has in me." " Supposing that to be the present case," replied Lord Hervey, "there is no judgment to be made from thence of his future conduct; for his opinions are so fluctuating, and his sentiments so variable, that if one body had saved his life at the peril of their own, and another had been suspected of bribing one of his pages to infuse arsenic in his chocolate, and the King were to die a week after these incidents, one of these people would stand just as good a chance as the other to be employed by him. Besides, your Majesty being au fait of all transactions both foreign and domestic for these last ten years, he would naturally come to you for intelligence — if not for advice ; and as the manner of giving intelligence is often advice without wearing the appearance of it, I am very apt to believe your Majesty would often be able to mix what he would not be able to separate." The Queen said Lord Hervey imagined she should give herself much more trouble about these matters than he would find, if ever the case happened, that she should be inclined to do. Lord Hervey answered, that he imagined he should always find her Majesty acting the part that became her ; and as it would be her duty to her son, to herself, and her whole family, her adherents, and, indeed, to the nation, to speak her mind freely on these things, to check the indiscretions of her son by showing him the risks he ran, and con- 1736. THE KING'S SUPPOSED DANGER. 215 vince him of his errors by representing truth to him — he was very sure he should never see the Queen indolently looking on whilst the Prince was endanger ing the whole ; but that she would endeavour to prevent the wreck which so unskilful a pilot left to himself would, in all probability, bring upon all that were embarked in the same bottom. The Queen sighed, and said she hoped all this was mere specula tion, and that she should never live to see the case happen ; but that if she did, she was sure she would never silently be witness to his taking such steps as might shake her family's possession of the throne, but would certainly do all she could to prevent his pur suing any measures that she thought led to such dangerous consequences. " But what do you think of the King's being embarked," continued the Queen, " from all you have heard ? For my part I own I am sometimes staggered." Lord Hervey said he firmly believed he was not at sea. In the afternoon, however, that is this Saturday, the 18th, the Prince came to the Queen with a letter he had got, written to one Mrs. Cowper, from a correspondent of hers at Harwich; in which it was said that in the middle of the foregoing night, during the storm, guns had been heard at sea, which were taken for guns of distress: and that there was no doubt made at Harwich but that these guns be longed to part of the fleet that was to come with the King, and had been dispersed — if not to the yacht on which the King was himself on board. Lord Balti more, who was a great sailor himself, and thought- to have great skill in sea-affairs, told Lord Hervey this 216 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXVII. very night, at the Opera, that it was impossible but that the King must have been embarked ; and advised Lord Hervey to speak to the Queen for some ships to be immediately sent out to see what was become of him. Lord Hervey said it was impossible, he thought, if the King had set sail, that the whole fleet should be lost, or that some one ship should not have made to shore in some part of the island, by which it would have been known at least that the King had left the Dutch coast. Lord Baltimore said that in this storm, with a full westerly wind, which had now lasted four days and nights, it was absolutely impossible for any ship to have put in to any port on the English coast. From the Opera Lord Hervey went directly to the Queen's apartment, where she was already at play, as usual, to tell her what he had heard ; but he had not been in the room three minutes before a messenger, in his dirty boots, arrived, to the great joy of the whole company, with a letter to the Queen from the King, to let her know he had never stirred out of Helvoetsluys, and that the weather was so uncertain he did not know when he should. This messenger had been three days at sea, and, with this storm full in his teeth, had landed by miracle (as all the skilful in maritime affairs called it) at Yarmouth. The joy the Queen was in when she saw this messenger come into the room, and heard everybody crying "The King is safe! The King is safe ! " showed that her apprehension had been greater than she ever owned it ; for upon reading the King's letter, she said, "J'ai toujours dit que le Roi n'etait pas embarque : on a beau voulu m'effraier cet apres-diner avee leur lettres, et leur sots gens de Har- 1736. THE KING SAFE. 217 wich ; j'ai continue a lire mon Rollin, et me moquois de tout cela." Sir Robert Walpole was gone to Richmond Park (which, by the by, the Queen did not take very well), so Lord Hervey despatched a messenger immediately to him to let him know the good news, but did not venture to tell him that he found the Queen looked upon his retirement with Miss Skerrett to Richmond Park just at this juncture as a piece of gallantry which — considering the anxiety in which he left her Majesty — might have been spared, as well as the gallantry of his Majesty's journey to Hanover which had occa sioned that anxiety. As the Prince's fears for the King's safety had been so busy in communicating themselves this afternoon to the Queen, her Majesty thought the least she could do for so dutiful a son was to take the first opportunity to quiet them ; as soon as ever she had read the King's letter, therefore, she sent Lord Grantham (her lord chamber lain) to the Prince's apartment to communicate the most material part of the contents of it, which was, his Majesty being safe in the harbour of Helvoetsluys. The joy of this news lasted not long, for early on the Monday morning following (which was the 20th), the wind coming easterly, and continuing so till night, there was now no doubt made by anybody of the King's being embarked ; and upon the wind changing at night to north-west, and blowing a most prodigious storm, as little doubt was made of his being in great danger. Till Friday, the 24th, there was no news of him at all, and then none that was very agreeable ; for a sloop, with some clerks belonging to the secretary's office on 218 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXVII. board, that had sailed with his Majesty from Helvoet- sluys on Monday, and continued with the fleet till the storm arose, brought intelligence (being thrown without masts and extremely shattered on this coast) that the master of this sloop had seen the King's yacht tack about, but they knew nothing more either of him or any other ship in the fleet. In order to give the Queen as little alarm as possible, Sir Robert Walpole and Lord Harrington agreed to prevent the Queen seeing these clerks, and to take their account in writing, — which was barely this, that on the first shifting of the wind they had seen the yachts on a signal tack about for Helvoetsluys, and that no doubt was to be made of the King's being now there. The next day (which was Christmas Day) four of the men-of-war that made part of his Majesty's convoy were thrown upon this coast, and made shift, after being obliged, too, like the sloop, to cut all their masts, to scramble into four different harbours. All the news any of these ships could give of the King or the rest of the fleet was, that about six o'clock on Monday night a gun was fired by Sir Charles Wager's order as a signal, on this stress of weather, for every ship to take care of itself, and that soon after they were all separated, the tempest continuing its violence (the wind still at north-west) for forty-eight hours after. One of the letters that brought this intel ligence was written by Lord Augustus Fitzroy, second son to the Duke of Grafton, who, though but twenty years of age, was captain of [the Eltham] one of these men-of-war, and had with great difficulty this morning got into Margate. There was another to the Duke of Richmond from Mr. Clayton, one of the King's equer- 1736. THE KING IN DANGER AT SEA. 219 ries, who was waiting with his Majesty's relays at Harwich, that gave the same account of this prodigious tempest, from the captain of another ship that had put in at Harwich : and as there were many other accounts, all to the same effect, from several other seaports, the whole town was in agitation, inquiring what was be come of the King — some hoping, others fearing, and most people believing he was at the bottom of the sea. As there could be nothing done immediately, either to get certain intelligence what was become of the King, or to provide for his safety, it was determined not to tell the Queen this news to-night, as it could have no effect but keeping her awake all night to no purpose. She and her daughters therefore passed this, like other evenings, at play ; whilst Sir Robert Wal pole, the Dukes of Newcastle, Grafton, Montague, Devonshire, Richmond, and Lord Hervey, with very heavy hearts, put on the cheerfulest countenances they could, and talked of many things, whilst all their thoughts were employed only on one. The next morning (Sunday, the 26th) Sir Robert Walpole came at nine o'clock to the Queen, and ac quainted her with all he knew and all he feared. The Queen no longer endeavoured to constrain her self and wear the appearance of ease on this news, but gave a loose to her tears, which indeed flowed in great abundance. On the Prince's side there was nothing to be seen but whisperers, messengers running backwards and forwards, and countenances that seemed already to belong to those who had the dominion of this country in their hands, and the affairs of Europe revolving in their minds. 220 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXVII. The Queen determined she would go to chapel as usual — for no good reason, in my opinion, since it was just as natural for the anxiety and concern she was in to keep her in her apartment, as it was for her to feel that anxiety and concern in the present uncertain state of the King's welfare. The reason she gave to some about her for setting herself up to be stared at in public in these disagreeable circumstances was, that she would not suppose her husband drowned before it was sure he was so ; and that, as he had given the Government into her hands, she would perform the duty of those who had that honour till the law took it from her and trans ferred it to another : but this manner of reasoning was, I think, rather dictated by her pride than by her under standing. She had not been half an hour in the chapel before an express arrived from the King to her Majesty, to let her know that, after setting sail from Helvoetsluys on Monday morning at eight o'clock, he had with great difficulty regained that port the next day at three in the afternoon ; that the storm had been very violent, and he very sick ; that one of the yachts, called the Charlotte, was missing ; and that they knew nothing of any of the men-of-war, but were in hopes, as they were better able to resist the tempest than the yachts, that they had by this time made some harbour. The King in his letter said too that he had not insisted on embarking when he did, but had done it in pursuance of Sir Charles Wager's directions, who had sent to him twice to make what haste he could on board, the wind and tide being then favourable. The Queen, after communicating the principal con- 1736. THE KING'S IMPATIENCE. 221 tents of this letter (which was the King's safety) to everybody about her at chapel, and after chapel in the circle in the drawing-room, owned she had gone to chapel with a heavier heart than she had ever before felt in her breast ; that she really thought the King had been lost, and would willingly have compounded for his being in Norway or any the remotest part of the world, and that all she wished was to be sure that he was still in being. These are exactly her own words. To many she said, that to be sure her particular loss would have been very great, but that the King's death would have been a loss which not only she, but this whole kingdom, and Europe itself at this juncture, would have felt most sensibly ; and that her chief con cern had been not so much for any particular consider ation as for the whole. She then told everybody how glad she was to find by the King's letter that the damage that had been done, the danger of so many lives, and the loss of some, had not been owing to the King's impatience to set sail, for that his Majesty had submitted himself entirely to Sir Charles Wager's government, and embarked in conse quence of his directions. But this account of the King's patience and ductility nobody believed ; by which means the Queen on this occasion, as it often happens on many others, weakened the King's justification by endeavouring to strengthen it ; for had she stuck to the truth of the fact, and not to the letter of his account, it would have been a much better, as well as a sufficient apology for the King ; it would have thoroughly disculpated his Majesty, and not left him chargeable with any of the disagreeable 222 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXVII. consequences of his embarkation : for the real state of this case was that he had been very impatient to set sail for England, and Sir Charles Wager as obstinate in preventing him till it was proper he should ; and when he did embark, the wind had been fair for several hours. What made the Queen's account of the King's pa tience more ridiculous was, that there was nobody in the room who had not heard, and few who had not seen, accounts from all about his Majesty at Helvoetsluys, that his impatience was insupportable ; Sir Charles Wager's and Horace Walpole's letters were full of no thing else ; examples, too, were given of it. It was known by everybody from these letters that the King had declared if Sir Charles Wager would not sail, his Majesty would go in a packet-boat; that he had told Sir Charles he would go ; and that Sir Charles, in his laconic Spartan style, had told him he could not ; that the King had said, " Let it be what weather it will, i" am not afraid ,•" and that Sir Charles Wager had re plied, " If you are not, lam;" that his Majesty had sworn he had rather be twelve hours in a storm than twenty-four more at Helvoetsluys ; upon which Sir Charles had told him he need not wish for twelve, for four would do his business ; and that, when the King by the force of importunity had obliged Sir Charles Wager to sail, Sir Charles had told him, "Well, Sir, you can oblige me to go, but I can make you come back again." These dialogues and bon-mots were in all the private letters but his Majesty's, and in everybody's mouth ; so what faith any report of his Majesty's pa tience met with is easy to be imagined. Even the 1736. PUBLIC DISSATISFACTION. 223 King in his letter owned to the Queen that he had told Sir Charles Wager he wished to see a storm at sea ; and that Sir Charles, immediately on his return to Helvoetsluys, had asked him if his curiosity was satis fied — to which his Majesty said he had answered, " So thoroughly satisfied that I do not desire ever to see ano ther." Sir Charles Wager, in his letter that gave this account of what had passed between him and the King subsequent to this storm, added that his Majesty was at present as tame as any about him — an epithet for his behaviour that his Majesty, had he known it, would, I fancy, have liked, next to the storm, the least of any thing that happened to him. As to his danger, by all accounts that I heard of it, it is impossible for any I can give to exaggerate it ; after the report made by the ships that came in on Saturday, there were very few people who imagined it possible his Majesty should have escaped : they were near knocking the fine apart ment built for him in his own yacht on the quarter deck all to pieces, and throwing all the wood materials as well as all the rich furniture overboard. The skill and conduct of [Sir Charles Hardy] the Captain of his Majesty's yacht, as well as Sir Charles Wager's beha viour, was extremely commended. The King's danger did not in the least soften the minds of the people towards him ; a thousand imperti nent and treasonable reflections were thrown out against him every day publicly iu the streets, such as wishing him at the bottom of the sea — that he had been drowned instead of some of the poor sailors that had been washed off the decks — and many other affectionate douceurs in the same style. Somebody asking, two or 224 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXVII. three days after the tempest, How the wind was now for the King? was answered, "Like the nation — against him." There was a fellow too, who, coming into an ale house where several soldiers were drinking, said, " I suppose you are all brave English boys, and therefore conclude you will pledge me, — ' Here is damnation to your master.' " The soldiers at first suspected it was somebody sent to try and ensnare them ; but the fellow persisting, and saying the King hated the nation, and he saw no reason why the nation should not hate him ; that he was gone to Hanover only to spend English money there, and bring back a Hanover mistress here, the soldiers began to believe him thoroughly in ear nest; upon which a Serjeant among them went and fetched a constable, and had him apprehended. When the serjeant went and told Sir Robert Walpole what had passed, Sir Robert rewarded him, but bid him, in the affidavit he was to make, leave out the account of the English money and Hanover mistress; the rest being enough to make the fellow punishable, without descending into these particulars. The Queen, notwithstanding she was not unac quainted with this almost universal dissatisfaction of the nation towards the King, was in great spirits for two or three days after the news came of his being safe returned to Holland ; and perhaps the apprehension she had been in for his Majesty's life was the only thing that could have made her look on his return to England not as the greatest misfortune that could befal her. She said the agitation she had been in, twice within 1736. QUEEN'S APPREHENSIONS. 225 this fortnight, first for fear of her daughter's dying in childbed, and next for fear of her husband being drowned, had left her so stupified that she could not recover her spirits, though her fears no longer sub sisted. She owned, too, that what she felt for the King was so much more than what she had felt for the Princess Royal, that from the Friday when the sloop came in (notwithstanding the account it brought had been so softened to her) till the messenger came on Sunday, she had entirely forgot that the Princess Royal was in her bed, or that there was any such body in the world. It is sure that nothing could exceed the appre hension the Queen had at this time of her son's ascending the throne, as there were no lengths she did not think him capable of going to pursue and ruin her. Lord Hervey, when she told him of these apprehen sions, still persisted in saying, as he had done before, that he was sure there would be nobody in a week who would have had so good an interest in the Prince, if this accident had happened, as herself; and that he was so convinced of it, and thought it so advantageous not only for her own family but for the whole nation that she should have that interest with her son, that he had determined to absent himself from her for some time, in case the King had been lost, that the par tiality she showed him might have been no addi tional irritation of circumstances between her and her son. He was going on, but the Queen stopped him short, and said, " No, my Lord ; I should never have suffered that : you are one of the greatest pleasures of my life. But did I love you less than I do, or like less to have you about me, I should look upon the suffering VOL, II. Q 226 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXVII. you to be taken from me, or the suffering you to take yourself from me upon such an occasion, after the manner in which you have lived with me and behaved to me, to be such a reflection upon me, and to betray such a meanness and baseness in me, that I assure you, you should not have stirred an inch from me. You and yours should have gone with me to Somerset House ;8 and, though I have neither so good an apartment for you there as you have here, nor an employment worth your taking, I should have lodged you as well as I could, and given you at least as much as you have now from the King ; and should have thought this the least I could do for my own honour, and the best thing I could do for my own pleasure. Sir Robert Walpole, too, I know, said he would retire ; but I assure you I would have begged him on my knees not to desert my son." Many more things passed on these subjects in this conversation ; but, as I have already extracted the quintessence in what I have said, I pass over the rest of the particulars, to avoid prolixity and repetition. The letter the Queen wrote to the King on his danger and her fears, his escape and her joy, was full of all the blandishments which ingenuity, art, insinua tion, and flattery could suggest; with a most ample account not only of the conduct, but even of the coun tenances, of everybody belonging to the Court, each being particularly specified by name. I did not see this letter ; but the King's answer was so minute to every article which the Queen's letter had contained, that, the style and turn of the phrases excepted, any- 8 The old palace of Somerset House, her assigned jointure house. 1736. KING'S LETTER TO THE QUEEN. 227 body was as well acquainted with the one by seeing the other as if they had read both. The passion and ten derness of the King's letter to her, which consisted of thirty pages, must be incredible to any one who did not see it. Whoever had read it without knowing from whom it came, or to whom it was addressed, would have concluded it written by some young sailor of twenty to his first mistress, after escaping from a storm in his first voyage. " Malgre tout le danger que j'ai essuie dans cette tempite, ma chere Caroline, et malgre tout ce que j'ai souffert, en etant malade a un point que je ne croiois pas que le corps humain pourroit souffrir, je vous jure que je m'exposerois encore et encore pour avoir le plaisir d'entendre les marques de votre tendresse que cette situation ma procure. Cette affection que vous me temoignez, cette amitie, cette fidelite, cette bonte inepui- sable que vous avez pour moi, et cette indulgence pour toutes mes foiblesses, sont des obligations que je ne sqaurai jamais recompenser, que je ne sqaurai jamais meriter, mais que je ne sqaurai jamais oublier non plus." His Majesty then spoke of his extreme impatience for their meeting, and in a style that would have made one sup pose the Queen to be a perfect Venus, her person being mentioned in the most exalted strains of rapture, and his own feelings described in the warmest phrases that youthful poets could use in elegies to their mistresses. Added to these things, there was an exact diary in this letter of everything he had heard, done, or said for five days ; which concluded with a pathetic petition to the Queen not to believe the length of this letter was owing to idleness and leisure, but to the earnest desire he always had of hiding no thought from her, and that he q 2 228 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXVII. never was more desirous than at that moment of open ing his heart to her, because it had never felt warmer towards her. Whoever reads this account of the King's conduct and letters can possibly make no other comment upon it than, " Quel galimatias I quel potpourri?' When the Queen gave Sir Robert Walpole the King's letter to read she said, " Do not think, because I show you this, that I am an old fool, and vain of my person and charms at this time of day. I am reason ably pleased with it, but I am not unreasonably proud of it." When Sir Robert Walpole and Lord Hervey talked over this letter, they both agreed they had a most incomprehensible master, and, though neither of them were very partial to his Majesty, they also agreed that, with a woman who could be gained by writing, they had rather have any man in the world for a rival than the King. Nor, indeed, in the gift of writing love-letters do I believe any man ever surpassed him. He had the easiest, the most natural, and the warmest manner of expressing himself that I ever met with, with the prettiest words and the most agreeable turns I ever saw put together. By the accounts from both sides of the water it appeared, though there had been many men lost in the late storm, that all the vessels were safe, though exces sively shattered. The Charlotte yacht was the last heard of;9 but, after being a fortnight missing, they had an account of her from a port she had made in Zealand. But whilst the King remained at Helvoetsluys, he had s She had anchored, dismasted, about nine miles from the Dutch coast, in what her log calls " a dismal great sea." 1737. PRINCE'S EFFORTS AT POPULARITY. 229 the mortification of seeing the Princess Louisa, one of the ships ordered back to Holland from hence to con voy his Majesty to England, together with a merchant ship, lost on the sands, just as they were entering the port, by the fault of a drunken pilot. Seventeen men were drowned. The water was not the only element at present that made its rigour talked of; for a fire at this time ^Tuesday, 4th January] breaking out at the Temple, it burnt for several hours with such fury, that it was feared the whole building would have been con sumed. The Prince went at nine o'clock at night, and stayed till five in the morning, to assist with his skill, advice, and authority to extinguish it ; and to his timely care in ordering a hundred and fifty men from the Savoy he and many others imputed the Temple being saved, after the loss of five or six houses. The Queen had ordered a guard from St. James's on the first news of the fire breaking out ; but all merit of assistance was given to the Prince. He exerted himself so much there, that, as he and his people said, several of the mob cried out, Crown him ! crown him ! but whether this really happened I am unable to affirm : it is certain it was reported to have happened among all ranks of people through the whole town, and generally believed. But what induces me to think it was not true is, that the Princess Caroline told Lord Hervey she knew her brother or some of his people had said, about a fortnight ago, that the same exclamation of Crown him ! crown him ! was made at the play ; and that she knew from people who had been there that it was a lie, and nothing like it had passed. The Prince, 230 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXVII. the morning after the fire had happened, when he came to give an account of it to the Queen, said not one word of this crowning incident, though in no other par ticular did his report at all diminish the honours which had been paid him, the pains he had taken, the use he had been of, or the great service he had done the public. Among other things, he pretended to have received two great blows on his head whilst he was assisting the firemen to convey the water ; and, upon the Queen's asking whereabouts he had received those blows, he directed her fingers through his periwig to the places where he pretended to have been struck ; whilst she (who told Lord Hervey afterwards that she felt nothing at all) cried out, "Really that is no jest: there are two bumps as big as two eggs." Lord Hervey told the Queen he did not at all won der at the Prince's conduct, or that he was drunk with vanity, considering the cordials with which the people about him were perpetually plying that passion ; nor was it at all surprising he should believe (when it had been so often by these creatures inculcated) that he was so much beloved by the nation, and the King so much hated, that it was nothing but the popularity of the son that kept the father upon the throne :10 — to which she very pertinently answered, that according to the reports at present of the son's popularity, that popularity, in stead of keeping the father upon the throne, was to depose him. This naturally brought on again the conversation of 10 Amongst other popular acts the Prince sent on the 11th of January 500Z. to the Lord Mayor for the relief of poor debtors. 1737. QUEEN'S ANTICIPATIONS. 231 what a deplorable situation this country would have been in had the King been drowned ; for, as the Prince was known to be so unstable, so false, and consequently so dangerous, few people, it was agreed, who were not very necessitous in their circumstances, if they had sense, till they saw the first turbulency of his reign a little subsided, would have coveted being employed under him, as it would be staking their head against the poor prospect of a temporary power, and very uncertain gain. The Queen said her son's situation would not be more to be envied than the nation's ; for, as he would at first think himself capable of managing and conducting everything, and soon find himself ca pable of managing and conducting nothing, so his timi dity (for you know, said she, he is the greatest coward in the world) will make him commit his affairs to any body that happens to be next him, and will take the charge of them, and, when he has done so, it is a hun dred to one it is to somebody that would not be capable of serving him if he would allow them the proper means, and very sure that, if they had the capacity, his impa tience would not allow that capacity time to operate. She intimated that his betters had found themselves in the same difficulties ; though, by a prudent and happy choice of a minister to do what they had vainly fancied they could do alone, they had extricated themselves out of them, as well as by a firmness, which was the quality in the world most necessary to support a Prince in this country, and one which she feared her son could never be reasoned into. Lord Hervey said, that everybody knowing beforehand in that case how short the opportu nity they were to profit by was likely to be, they would 232 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXVII. certainly do by the Prince as the mob do at a funeral, — every one would enrich themselves with any bit of him they could catch, and not care a farthing what they tore or spoiled. The Queen told Lord Hervey that it behoved everybody who had any valuable possessions in this country, or any regard to the quiet of it, to pre vent that havoc, whether they had any regard for the Prince or not ; for as he could not be ruined without endangering their security, so, when once he was King, it would be wise and prudent in everybody to keep him from tottering, as it would be for a ship's crew to take care of the main-mast to which the principal sails and tackle were fastened, and that could not fall without endangering many lives, and making not only the course of the ship less steady, but even its safety very precarious. Lord Hervey said, in some storms at sea, though it was a desperate remedy, people found them selves obliged to cut away the mainmast;11 and, though danger attended the doing it, there was more some times in letting it alone. " In short," said the Queen, " a popish King will be surer ruin to this country than any other can bring upon it ; and whenever you change a King of this Family, it will neither be for no King, nor for any other Protestant King. All sensible people, therefore, must think of the Prince in this way : — there he is ; he must be King, and we will make the best we can of him, though we cannot make him so good as we would." Lord Hervey did not tell the Queen that this was 11 Lord Hervey was here, I suspect, slily flattering what he thought the Queen's secret passion for seeing her son William preferred to the Crown of England before her son Frederick — he would rather have cut away the mainmast than the mizen. 1737. KING'S UNPOPULARITY. 233 at present the case of the father, and that those who seemed most attached to his interest, were really so only upon this foot ; but had he made her this answer, it would only have been improper, not untrue — his Ma jesty's character with all ranks of people being fallen so low, that the disregard with which everybody spoke of him, and the open manner in which they expressed their contempt and dislike, is hardly to be credited. The enlightened state of the nation with respect to any reverence due to the Crown farther than the merit of the head that wore it might claim, made very little come to his Majesty's share ; his conduct of late had convinced the distant part of the nation of what those who had the honour to be more near him had dis covered long ago, which was his preferring his German to his English subjects at least as much as his father had done. Those about him knew too that he cared for no one of them, that he thought them all overpaid in their several stations for whatever service they did him, and as he looked upon them all with as little mixture of favour as he did on his chairs or tables, or any piece of necessary furniture, so he was perpetually grumbling at Sir Robert Walpole on account of the price he paid for the one, in the same manner as he would have done at a joiner for having charged him too much in any article of his bill for the other. This made even the most sensible people about him feel no affection for him ; and those who were less so, were fond of declaring the opinion they had of him for fear of being thought his dupes, and ran into the other ex treme, as some people declare themselves atheists for fear of being thought bigots. 234 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXVII. On Saturday morning at four o'clock an express arrived at St. James's to acquaint the Queen that the King had landed the day before about noon at Lowestoff, after having been detained five weeks at Helvoetsluys, and now obliged at last to come with a contrary wind all the way. The Queen had been ill the day before, had not rested in the night, and when Sir Robert Wal pole came at nine in the morning to concert what was to be done on the King's arrival, her Majesty was trying to sleep, with the Princess Caroline only with her reading at her bedside; at the same time the Prince coming to wish his mother joy of this good news, and meeting Sir Robert in the antechamber, he made him sit down, and they two, with the Princess Emily only present, had a conference that lasted till the Queen waked and called for them in, which was at least two hours and a half. Many things were dis coursed of, but the quintessence of the conversation which Sir Robert Walpole related to me in detail was, that the Prince told Sir Robert he had always looked upon him as one of the ablest men in England, that he had always had the greatest regard for him imaginable, and that if ever his looks or actions seemed to speak his sentiments to be different from what he now professed, that they were neither what he would have them be, nor faithful interpreters of his thoughts. Sir Robert thanked him for his good opinion, and the honour he did him ; said he had always endeavoured to serve the King to the best of his ability ; that all Kings were obliged to take measures which often they could not, and often they would not explain their motives for, though the more those motives were explained, perhaps the 1737. CONVERSATION OF THE PRINCE AND WALPOLE. 235 more justifiable the measures would appear ; but though that sometimes should happen not to be the case, he would venture to affirm that, considering the disputed title to this Crown, considering the temper of this nation, their readiness to disapprove, and their love of change, it could never be the interest of the Prince of Wales to quarrel with his father, for private reasons, and that whoever flattered the Prince by telling him he could be a gainer by opposing his father's measures must either be the worst or the weakest of mankind. 236 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXVIII. CHAPTER XXVIII. The King's good humour — His illness— Meeting of Parliament— Lord Carteret moves an inquiry into the riots — The Prince resolves to bring forward his claim for a larger income — Views of this measure by different persons and parties. This day [15?A January, 1737] about two o'clock the King arrived at St. James's. The Queen attended by all her children and servants went down into the colon nade to receive him just as he alighted from his coach, and the whole ceremony of the meeting passed, kiss for kiss (the Prince's cheek not excepted), just as it had done the year before ; but his Majesty's temper was very different, for as last year nobody had the good fortune to catch one smile from his Majesty, so now there was nobody who had the mortification to meet with one frown. Everybody was astonished at all this unexpected sunshine, but the warmest of all his rays were directed towards the Queen. He said no man ever had so affectionate and meritorious a wife, or so faithful and able a friend. He took Sir Robert by the hand next morning in the circle at his levee, and whispered him in the ear that the Queen had given him a full account of his behaviour at every juncture, that he knew that he had behaved like a great and a good man, and that he should always remember it and love him for it. When Sir Robert told me this, he said, to be sure 1737. KING'S ILLNESS. 237' one had always rather the Prince one served was kind to one than brutal ; but for dependence on his favour he never had any, for he knew he loved nobody. * * * 1 The King brought a bad cold home with him, and whilst he grew every day worse and worse, it was every day by the Queen and Princesses given out that he was better and better ; very few people saw him, and all those who did had more than hints given them before they went in to be sure to take care not to ask him how he did. Poor Lord Dunmore, one of his Lords of the Chamber, the first day of his week's waiting, having not received these instructions or ne glecting them, as soon as he went into the King, told his Majesty how extremely sorry he had been for his indisposition, and said he hoped his Majesty was much better; to which the King made not one word of answer, and the moment Lord Dunmore went out of the room he sent for Lord Pembroke, and bid him as Groom ofthe Stole to say he would take this week's waiting, his Majesty adding that his reason for giving these orders to Lord Pembroke was that he might not see any more of those troublesome, inquisitive puppies who were always plaguing him with asking impertinent, silly questions about his health like so many old nurses. Sir Robert Walpole continued every day plaguing the Queen, and whenever she told him the King was better than he had been, or better than people thought him, he used to answer her only with shaking his head, and saying, " Do you flatter me, Madam, in telling me i Here again there is a chasm in the MS. of two or three pages. 238 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXVIII. what you do not believe, or do you flatter yourself and believe what you say ?" This often made the Queen peevish with him and complain of him to Lord Hervey, telling Lord Hervey at the same time: "You often pity me for the snubs and rebukes I meet with from the King, but I assure you the affronts I meet with there are nothing compared to what I receive from your friend Sir Robert. I cannot imagine what ails him, or who it is he listens to. In the first place, he wants to persuade me the King is dying ; in the next, that he knows him better than I do ; and what is more extraor dinary still, is telling me every time he sees me that my being from morning to night in the King's room is owing to my forcing myself upon him, and that he had much rather be without my company." Lord Hervey did not tell Sir Robert Walpole again what the Queen had said to him in the last article ; but in general let him know that he often found the Queen dissatisfied with the incredulity she said she always found in Sir Robert Walpole when she made any reports from the King's bedchamber ; to which intima tions from Lord Hervey Sir Robert Walpole always answered with complaining of her unreasonableness, her blindness or hypocrisy in all these points, and said he would continue to tell her the truth, let her take it as she would ; but notwithstanding this way of talking to Lord Hervey, and defending what he had done, he changed his manner of acting towards the Queen, which plainly showed he thought he had been in the wrong, which at the same time demonstrated that, as difficult as it is for people to correct their faults, it is more difficult still to own they want correction, since 1737. PRINCESS OF WALES. 239 he could bring himself to the one though he could not to the other. During the King's confinement, the Princess wrote to the Queen, to desire she might be permitted to make Mrs. Townshend (against whom the King had objected in the first regulation of her family) her Bedchamber woman. The Queen thought the application at this time a little unseasonable, and returned for answer to the Princess, that the King was at present so much out of order, that she could not think of troubling him with any solicitations in his present situation, but would take the first proper opportunity to let him know what the Princess had desired ; though the King had for merly declared himself so explicitly on this head, that she did not believe he would easily be brought to con sent to what was proposed. The Princess's letter was not only of the Prince's ordering and inditing, but as the Queen told me, of his own hand-writing, and very little disguised. The Queen's answer to it the Prince complained of, as very hard usage ; and said, as he found he could never expect in any thing to have com mon justice shown him by the King and Queen, he must apply for it elsewhere. This speech, with a great many others of the like nature, were conveyed to the King and Queen, who always hated their son with out any interruption, but despised and feared him by turns. The meeting of the Parliament having been already put off to the 1st of February, and the supplies of the year necessary to be granted making it impossible to postpone it longer, the Parliament was opened by Commission. The King, in the Speech delivered by 240 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXVIII. his order by the Lords Commissioners, took notice of the disorders and commotions there had been this summer in various parts of the kingdom, and recom mended to the Parliament the care of putting a stop to these every day increasing insults offered to the Go vernment. Soon after the Parliament met, Lord Carteret, in the House of Lords, moved for a day to take the King's Speech into consideration. The night before the day appointed for that purpose, there was a meet ing at Lord Harrington's, where there were present seven or eight of the Cabinet Council, Lord Cholmon- deley [Chancellor of the Duchy], Lord Delaware [Treasurer of the Household], and Lord Hervey [Vice-Chamberlain], who were convened to settle what was to be done the next day ; but nobody knowing what point Lord Carteret intended to go upon, these Lords parted in just the same situation they had met. This was the last time Lord Chancellor Talbot went abroad ; he was then ill, and died of a pleuritic fever in a very few days after [14th Feb.], universally lamented. Lord Hardwicke alone, and he only internally, rejoiced at this incident ; there had ever been a rivalry between these two great men, and of course that hatred ever con sequential to rivalry, which is always as strong, though not always so conspicuous, among great as little men. Lord Hardwicke, too, had sense enough to know, that as there were but these two considerable law lords in the House of Lords, the authority there of him that was left must be greatly increased, when there was nobody to be put in of equal consequence either to him that remained, or him that was taken away. 1737. LORD CARTERET ON THE RIOTS. 241 Lord Hardwicke was very soon after made Lord Chancellor, and not only felt, but often too plainly showed he felt, how considerable he was become. When Lord Carteret came to declare what part of the King's Speech he intended to consider, it proved to be that paragraph relating to the riots; and after mentioning every one which I have before given an account of in these papers, he said, as that in Scotland was of the most flagitious kind, he thought it was what chiefly deserved the animadversion of Parliament, and ought to be first inquired into. He seemed in his Speech to threaten Scotland extremely, and speaking of the enormous behaviour of the City of Edinburgh in this^ transaction, said that many cities (and gave examples) had been totally disfranchised for much less crying offences. He then descanted on the trial of Captain Porteous, and said he thought he had not only been illegally put to death, but illegally condemned, and hoped the House would take the trial into consideration as well as the murder ; adding, that if Captain Porteous had been condemned according to law, he was sure the cri minal law of Scotland was so defective as to require great alterations; and if he had been unjustly con demned, that it would become the legislature to call his judges to an account. At the conclusion of this speech he made two motions — one to order the Lord Provost and the four bailiffs to attend the House on that day month ; the other for an authentic copy of the proceedings at the trial of Captain Porteous. Lord Carteret's reason for stirring this inquiry was, because he hoped by these means either to force the VOL. II. R 242 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXVIH. Administration to anger Scotland by punishing, or to be too strong for them if they endeavoured to screen. He hoped too to show the Scotch that, by taking the Campbells to govern them, they had chosen governors that could not protect them ; and he fought with more alacrity on this occasion, from having learned that he was got upon a point that was not disagreeable to the King and Queen, whatever it was to their Minister. Sir Robert Walpole had two reasons for being sorry this inquiry was set on foot: in the first place, he dreaded this affair becoming national, which must have bad consequences ; and in the next, he feared it might hurt Lord Isla, for he had no more a mind to be thought incapable of protecting Lord Isla, than Lord Isla had a mind to be thought incapable of protecting the Scotch — Lord Isla having been of great use to him, ever since he had employed him in the manage ment of the Scotch elections, both for Peers and Com moners. During this month given for the coming up of the Provost and bailiffs of Edinburgh, an affair of yet greater moment was brought on the tapis — the Prince and his friends having determined to lay his dispute with his father about the 100,000£ a year before the Parliament. Lord Hervey was the first who told the Queen that it was certainly a measure agreed upon. The way he came to know of it was this: the Prince, who solicited every mortal to be for him on this occasion, sent the Duke of Marlborough to Mr. Henry Fox (the youngest of the two brothers, Lord Hervey's most intimate 1737. THE PRINCE'S CLAIMS. 243 friends, often mentioned in these papers2) to desire him to vote for him ; and at the same time sent Mr. Hamil ton, a brother of Lady Archibald Hamilton, to Mr. Stephen Fox, the elder brother. The Duke of Marl borough meeting with Mr. Henry Fox before Mr. Ha milton found the other brother, Mr. Henry Fox came immediately to Lord Hervey, told him what had passed, and said the answer he had given to the Duke of Marlborough (and he never wanted a quick and a proper one) was, that he should certainly do as his brother did, whatever that should be. Lord Hervey said this affair had been so often talked of, and so often dropped, that he could not believe it would be brought into Parliament ; but Mr. Henry Fox assured him it certainly would ; and that the Prince's people must have conducted their affairs very secretly and cleverly, or the Ministers have been fast asleep, or had very bad intelligence, if they did not know it would be so, since he believed there was not one man in Opposition who had not been already spoken to and solicited. He gave Lord Hervey leave to tell the thing to the Queen, but not to name the Duke of Marlborough. Accordingly, Lord Hervey went di rectly to her Majesty, waited till she came on some errand out of the King's bedchamber (where she was shut up all day), and then told her of this measure being certainly taken. She would not at first believe it, gave the same reasons for her incredulity to Lord 2 Henry Fox is not before mentioned in these papers as we have them — he may have been in some of the passages that are lost. There are extant many private letters from Lord Hervey to Henry Fox, but more to Stephen, who, though a later friend, seems to have been a much closer one. He was created Lord Ilchester in 1740, chiefly through Lord Hervey's intercession. r2 244 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXVIII. Hervey, that he had done for his to Mr. Fox ; but at last, like him too, began to change her opinion. Lord Hervey begged her not to tell the King of it that night, as it could be of no service, and would certainly set him a fretting, probably keep him awake, and of course increase his fever; which would answer one of the ends he believed was proposed by the timing this measure; which was, knowing the King's warm prompt temper, to put him in such a passion as, in his present weak condition, and which they thought weaker than it was, might go a good way towards killing him. The Queen assured Lord Hervey she would not name it to the King that night; and Lord Hervey said it was silly as well as impertinent for him to pre tend to direct her what was the best way to behave on any occasion to the King ; but that he could not help adding on this, that when she did break it to him, he hoped it would be in the gentlest way she could, or it would certainly do him more hurt than his fever and piles put together, and prevent all the surgeons, doctors, and apothecaries in town doing him any good. The Queen bid Lord Hervey be sure to go early the next morning to Sir Robert Walpole, to tell him all he knew about this affair, and wished him a better night than she said she hoped to have herself; she was very lavish in her abuse on her son, but not more so than her daughter Caroline, to whose apartment Lord Hervey went directly from the Queen, to communicate what had passed. The next morning Lord Hervey went to Sir Robert, who told him, he had from two channels the night before had intelligence that confirmed all Lord Her- 1737. THE PRINCE'S CLAIMS. 245 vey reported ; and said he had long told both the King and Queen that this measure would sooner or later infallibly be taken ; and that the many douceurs shown to people in the son's conduct, and the few in the father's, would make this a troublesome point to the latter, notwithstanding his superior power. Lord Hervey went back immediately to St. James's, to acquaint the Queen with what Sir Robert had de sired him to tell her, and found her at least as impa tient as he expected to receive farther intelligence of the true state of this affair ; she said she had not yet broken it to the King, but would go and prepare him for Sir Robert's arrival, who Lord Hervey told her would come to Court that morning at the usual hour. The King took the first notice of this business with more temper and calmness than any body expected he would ; and the Queen, from the beginning of this affair to the end of it, was in much greater agita tion and anxiety than I ever saw her on any other occasion. Nothing was ever more universally talked of, or more strongly solicited ; the Prince himself was as busy as his emissaries, closeted as many members of either House as he could get to come to him, and employed all his servants and friends to speak to every mortal on whom they thought they could possibly prevail ; and many, even where there was not that possibility. The general tenor of his applications was, how sorry he was to have it so little in his power at present to show his good will to his friends, and offering carte blanche for promissory notes of payment when he came to the Crown, with strong insinuations at the same 246 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXVIII. time how near the King's health seemed to bring that happy day. Many on the King's side fearing the Prince would carry this point in the House of Commons, if it came to be tried there, all means were used to prevail on the Prince to desist. Lord Hervey advised the Queen to send for the Prince, and speak to him herself, to set forth how dear the victory would cost him, supposing he could gain it, and how little he would get by it ; to tell him it would weaken, if not destroy the interest of his family in general in this country, and that it would be impossible for him to get anything by it, as the King would certainly part with his crown rather than give him what he wanted or demanded ; to tell him too that the King, if he should be brought to the disagree able necessity of not complying with an address of Par liament, would still have the resource of dissolving that Parliament and calling another ; and that by changing hands, the King would always have it in his power to get the better of him, as there were none of those who now seemingly stood by him, though they only in reality made a fool of him, who would not give him up to come into power ; and that the King, if driven to ex tremities, would buy them to give up his son, not his son to give up them, since the danger was in the party, not in him; and as it was, he made use of their strength, not they of his; the yielding, if there was any, would be to them, not him. The Queen told Lord Hervey that her speaking to the Prince would only make him more obstinate; and besides that objection, that he was so great a liar it made it extremely unsafe for her to venture any con- 1737. LORD SCARBOROUGH INTERFERES. 247 ference with him, as there was nothing he was not capable of asserting had passed between them, not even that she had attempted to murder him. The Excise year she said she had sent for him, and on that occa sion she was so sensible of his being capable of denying everything he had said or had been said to him, and relating what had never been mentioned, that she had left the door from her bedchamber into her dressing- room (where she saw him) half open, and placed the Princess Caroline behind it, to hear and be a witness to everything that passed — as the Princess Caroline had before told me. The Queen therefore determined she would not see him, though Sir Robert Walpole did all he could too to persuade her, and told Lord Hervey, when Lord Hervey reported to him what I have here related, that he had spoken to the Queen to the same effect, and that he believed besides the reasons she had given to them for not speaking to her son, that she had two more which she had not given — the one her pride, the other the apprehending the King on this occasion might have some jealousy of any private conference between the Prince and her at this juncture. However, that the Prince should be spoken to by somebody to the effect I have mentioned, was judged by everybody to be proper ; and Lord Scarborough by everybody thought a proper man for that purpose. The Queen, after making Lord Scarborough a thou sand compliments on his integrity, his understanding, his weight, and good intentions for the service of her family, desired him on this occasion to represent to the Prince the folly as well as impiety of what a 248 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXVIII. parcel of boys and flatterers had put him upon— to show him the impossibility of his being a guinea the richer for it, whether he carried this vote or not, and the certainty of weakening the interest of his family by trying it, which, next to the King, it was more his interest than anybody's in the kingdom not to shake. Lord Scarborough did so, talked to his Royal High ness very freely and very warmly, and told him too that there never was a measure taken since the Hano ver family was on the throne, which, were he a Jacob ite, would have given him half so much pleasure, as it was the strongest blow that had ever been given to the Whig party, by whom alone the Hanover family could be safely or long supported. But all Lord Scar borough's rhetoric was employed in vain ; the Prince had had his lesson given him, and when anybody talked to him in this strain, he stuck to this answer : That he did not in the least design to distress his father's mea sures in any one point ; that he thought 100,000/. a-year was his due, and designed for him by the Parlia ment when the Civil List was given ; that he believed there was not a man in the kingdom who was not of the same opinion ; but since the King did not understand it so, or would not comply with the intention of the Parliament if he did understand it like every other body, he hoped there was no great crime in only desir ing the Parliament to expound their own acts ; and if there was any ill consequence attended such an applica tion, it was not the fault of him, but of those who drove him to that only method he had left to obtain justice and what was his due, and consequently such persons were to answer for any ill effect it might have, — not he. 1737. LORD SCARBOROUGH INTERFERES. 249 When Lord Scarborough found he could not alter him he took his leave by telling his Royal Highness he wished he might not have reason to repent of his perseverance, and that for his own part he would do all he could whenever things came to an open rupture between him and his father to support his father against him ; that he had seen in the late reign how much a family quarrel had cooled the affections of the people to the family in general ; and that he should not wonder if the bulk of mankind, who were attached to no family but for their own interest, would be glad to have any family here rather than one who entailed from one generation to the other the hereditary curse of driving their friends always to that disagreeable option of mak ing themselves desperate either with the Prince who wore the Crown or the heir apparent to it. Before Lord Scarborough was sent to the Prince on this errand Sir Robert Walpole had desired Lord Bal timore, one of the Prince's Lords of the Chamber, and Mr. Hedges, his treasurer, to try their skill and inte rest with his Royal Highness, and see what they could do towards diverting him from this measure ; but they both reported much the same success of their embassy, — said his Royal Highness had hardly patience to hear them speak, but stormed and strutted, and bounced, and said he should look upon those who advised him against this only way he had of doing himself justice, to be as much his enemies as those who had driven him to the necessity of taking it ; and Sir Robert Walpole himself told me that the King and Queen, in their sal lies against their son, let so many things drop to the Princess Emily (who could keep nothing), or to some 250 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXVIII. other body, by whom they got round, relating to these negotiations he had with the Prince's servants, that he was determined to break them all off, as it was impos sible for him to carry them on without communicating them to the King and Queen, unless he would expose himself to their suspicions in case they got intelligence of them in any other way ; and by communicating them he exposed his friends in the Prince's family to the same inconveniences there. Lord Chesterfield and the young men were thought to be the chief stimulators of the Prince in this mea sure ; that is, the Dukes of Marlborough and Bedford, and Messrs. GrenviUe,3 Lyttelton, and Pitt. Lord Carteret it was thought was not much for it ; and Mr. Pulteney against it, having told the Prince with regard to the Whig party when he was first consulted, much the same things that Lord Scarborough had done. Besides this, Pulteney was apparently much softened with regard to the Court in his way of talking this year 4 — was certainly no Jacobite (at present at least), though things this year seemed to favour that cause more than he wished, and had listened to and encou raged a sort of treaty that was under hand carrying on to make him a peer, buy his silence, and give him rest; but when it came to [the point] he could not stand the reproach he thought he should incur by striking this bargain, and, with that irresolution that was always the predominant defect in his conduct, went on without having courage sufficient either to quite make it or quite break it. 3 Richard, afterwards Earl Temple. * See ante, vol. ii. p. 86, n. 2. 1737. STEPHEN FOX. 251 The eldest Mr. Fox was offered by the Prince the absolute promise of a peerage, but refused it. Lord Hervey did not let him lose this merit with the King and Queen, and said it was certainly the greatest sacri fice Mr. Fox could make, as there was nothing but that which, to a man of his fortune, could be worth his receiving from a Court, or at least nothing else com parable to it. But even this could not draw the costive nature of the King's ungiving spirit into a promise of rewarding Mr. Fox for refusing such an offer on one side of the house 5 by making it on the other. When Lord Hervey told Sir Robert Walpole of the offer made to Mr. Fox, he told him likewise, " Mr. Fox's friendship to me, Sir, made him leave the answer he shall give to the Prince entirely to my direction. And what can I say ? " Sir Robert answered — " I know what some people should say." "And why," replied Lord Her vey, " do you not make those people say what you own they ought to say ? " " Because," replied Sir Robert, " it is hard to make them say what they should, on any giving chapter, because, my Lord, they are as reluc tant to bestow honours as money, and are more set against making peers than against any measure I could propose to them ; and from this general maxim — that it is increasing the price of everybody they are to buy and not paying them." " I will remove that difficulty on this occasion," said Lord Hervey, " with regard to Mr. Fox, by pawning my honour Mr. Fox shall never ask anything of you besides (if this is done) as long as * The Prince was still living in the palace. 252 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXVIII. you are a Minister ; and further will engage, if the King is afraid of losing a vote in the House of Com mons, that Mr. Fox shall for nothing bring in anybody you will name in his room at Shaftesbury." This conversation ended with Sir Robert's promising Lord Hervey he would do all in his power to bring this matter to bear ; and Lord Hervey often spoke to the Queen on this subject to the same effect ; and since the rewarding the elder brother must be postponed, often pressed both her and Sir Robert to show some mark of favour in the interim at least to the younger brother, that it might appear to the world that two men of their figure, understanding, and character, who had served the Court so long, so faithfully, so assidu ously, and so expensively to themselves as well as cre ditably for those they served, were not totally neglected ; and that Sir Robert Walpole and the King might not show all young men of distinction and fortune in Eng land who were coming into the world and had their plis to take, that it was their interest not to attach themselves to the reigning Prince or the present Minis ter. Lord Hervey added too, that his own character and credit were in a great degree concerned in this question ; for if nothing was done for these young men, it must be concluded by all the world that nothing could have kept them down but the interest of the Duke of Newcastle being so much superior to his — that if anybody who deserved ever so well of the Court attached themselves to him, it should be sufficient to defeat the pretensions of any merit and services. I mention this solicitation so particularly, to show with what difficulty even at this time any favour was 1737. THE KING'S HEALTH. 253 extorted from the Court ; and it is easy to guess how unsuccessful many solicitations, the accounts of which are too tedious and too little interesting to be here inserted, must have been, when even this, for men of the consideration of these two brothers, and backed by the almost quotidian application of Lord Hervey's interest, moved so slow a pace. It being thought that the report of the King's state of health, which was imagined by everybody out of the palace, and many in it, to be much worse than it really was, aided the Prince's solicitations; everybody about the Queen who had her ear, advised her to persuade the King if it was possible, to keep himself no longer locked up in his bedchamber, but to come out and show himself; as the belief of his being in a declining condition made many people less willing to resist the importunities of the heir apparent to the Crown on this occasion, than better informed of the state of the King's health they possibly would be. The King therefore was prevailed upon to have levees, and see everybody in a morning as usual ; and though he looked pale and was much fallen away, he looked much better than those who had not seen him during his confinement expected. He was much more gracious too, to everybody, than he used to be; and from the first day he came out began to recover his looks, flesh, and strength, much faster than could have been expected. But notwithstanding all this, there were few on his side so sanguine as not to apprehend his son's carrying his point in the House of Commons. All the lists made by the Prince's people gave him a majority of 254 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXVIII. near forty ; and by Mr. Winnington's list, who was reckoned one of the best calculators on the King's side, the Prince had a majority of ten. These calculations alarmed Sir Robert Walpole, who thought, not unrea sonably, that his fate, at least as a Minister, depended on this question. The King behaved in public with great seeming un concern, and even in private with unaccountable temper ; the Queen well in public, but to those before whom she appeared with less constraint, her invectives against her son were incessant and of the strongest kind ; and her concern so great, that more tears flowed on this occasion than I ever saw her shed on all others put together. She said she had suffered a great deal from many disagreeable circumstances this last year : the King's staying abroad ; the manner in which his stay had been received and talked of here ; her daughter the Princess Royal's danger in lying-in ; and the King's danger at sea ; but that her grief and appre hensions at present surpassed everything she had ever felt before ; that she looked on her family from this moment as distracted with divisions of which she could see or hope no end — divisions which would give the common enemies to her whole family such advantages, as might one time or other enable them to get the better of it ; and though she had spirits and resolution to struggle with most misfortunes and difficulties, this last she owned got the better of her — that it was too much for her to bear — that it not only got the better of her spirits and her resolution, but of her appetite and her rest, as she could neither eat nor sleep ; and that she really feared it would kill her. 1737. QUEEN'S INVECTIVES AGAINST THE PRINCE. 255 The Princess Caroline, who loved her mother and disliked her brother in equal and extreme degrees, was in much the same state of mind as the Queen ; her consideration and regard for her mother making her always adopt the Queen's opinions, as well as share her pleasures and her afflictions. They neither of them made much ceremony of wishing a hundred times a day that the Prince might drop down dead of an apo plexy — the Queen cursing the hour of his birth, and the Princess Caroline declaring she grudged him every hour he continued to breathe ; and reproaching Lord Hervey with his weakness for having ever loved him, and being fool enough to think that he had been ever beloved by him, as well as being so great a dupe as to believe the nauseous beast (those were her words) cared for anybody but his own nauseous self — that he loved anything but money — that he was not the greatest liar that ever spoke — -and would not put one arm about anybody's neck to kiss them, and then stab them with the other, if he could * * *.6 She protested that from the time he had been here six months — so early had she found him out — she had never loved him better or thought better of him than at that moment.1 6 A few words illegible. ' No doubt the previous conduct of the Prince might naturally excite some alarm as to the extent that so large an increase of income might enable him to embarrass his father's government ; but I cannot account for the early date and intensity of the Queen's animosity. Nor can I help wonder ing that Lord Hervey gives us no satisfactory clue to it — unless indeed he may have done so in some of the missing passages. 256 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXIX. CHAPTER XXIX. The Prince's claim continued — Walpole proposes a compromise — Disliked by the King and Queen — King's message to the Prince — His answer — Discussion between the Queen and Lord Hervey on this point — The debate in the Commons — Pulteney's speech— Walpole's answer — The Prince defeated. [On Monday the 21st February,] the day before that which was appointed for the great debate of this im portant question in the House of Commons — all hopes being now lost of preventing its coming there by any methods which had hitherto been tried — Sir Robert Walpole, who feared extremely, unless something was done to alter the present situation of things, the King's party would be beaten, resolved to persuade the King to send a message to the Prince to make a sort of treaty of composition. He sent for Lord Hervey early in the morning, com municated this design to him, and told him the parti culars of this overture of accommodation were — for the King to tell the Prince he would settle a jointure forth with on the Princess (which really had been under con sideration), and at the same time to let the Prince know he would settle the 50,0007. a-year he now gave him, out of his power. Lord Hervey said in the first place he believed Sir Robert would find great difficulty in bringing the King into this measure ; in the next, that he did not believe it would alter a vote— that everybody would call it a 1737. WALPOLE'S PROPOSITION. 257 show of yielding in the King, and giving nothing : but that what he feared most of all was, lest the King and Queen, who hated their son so inveterately, might con strue it to be a management for their son in Sir Robert Walpole, and never forgive it him. To this Sir Robert answered, that without a measure of this kind he should certainly to-morrow lose the question — that the great cry of the most moderate people was composed of the injustice of having yet given the Princess no jointure, and the Prince being only a pensioner at pleasure on the King, by having nothing secured to him ; and though, in reality, what he proposed was, as Lord Hervey said, giving the Prince nothing, and the 100,000/. was the chief point, yet these two objections and complaints which he had mentioned being removed by the King's sending this message, it would disarm the Prince's party of two arguments against which there was no answer to be found ; that as to the umbrage the King and Queen might take at it, and the jealousies it might infuse in their minds of his having underhand any management for the Prince, he must risk it and do as well as he could to combat those consequences ; " and as it is my way, you know, my dear Lord, and when you come to be in my place I advise you to make it your way too, to provide against the present difficulty that presses, I think I shall by this message either get the Prince to postpone to-mor row's affair and enter into treaty, or have it to say for the King to-morrow that he had made the first step to peace, and that his son had refused to parley, and sounded this Parliamentary trumpet to battle." Lord Hervey said Sir Robert Walpole was a much vor,. II. s 258 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXIX. better judge what to do in this case than he pretended to be, but it was his opinion the message would neither put off the battle, nor get him one deserter ; and that to his own troops it would have an air of diffidence and retreat ; besides the danger which he mentioned before, and what he thought most to be avoided, which was, giving a distrust of his favouring the Prince to the King and Queen, who were too apt to be suspicious on all occasions, and were particularly so he knew "wherever their son was concerned. Sir Robert said he had talked of this measure last night to the Pelhams, and that they were both ex tremely for it. " You will say, I know (says he), they are always of the temporising and palliating side, and I grant you they are so, and generally there are points too on which we differ, but I really think now it is all we have left for it ; and as there is no time to be lost, I will dress, go to Court this moment, and go to work upon our stubborn master." Accordingly they went together to St. James's, where Sir Robert Walpole, by the same arguments I have already mentioned, first brought the Queen into this measure, and then the King. The Dukes of Grafton and Devonshire (Lord Chamberlain and Lord Steward) were first sent to the Prince to let him know the Ca binet Council had a message to deliver to him from the King, and to desire to know when they might wait on him ; and the Prince saying they might come whenever they pleased, the Lord Chancellor,1 Lord President, Lord Steward, Lord Chamberlain, Dukes of Richmond, 1 Lord Hardwicke had on that morning received the Great Seal, and this was his first official act. 1737-. THE KING'S MESSAGE. 259 Argyle, and Newcastle, Earls of Pembroke and Scar borough, and Lord Harrington repaired immediately to the Prince's apartment, and Lord Chancellor from a written copy read the following message to his Royal Highness : — " His Majesty has commanded us to acquaint your Royal Highness, in his name, that, upon your Royal Highness's mar riage, he immediately took into his royal consideration the settling a proper jointure upon the Princess of Wales ; but his sudden going abroad, and his late indisposition since his return, had hitherto retarded the execution of these his graci ous intentions ; from which short delay his Majesty did not. apprehend any inconvenience could arise ; especially since no application had in any manner been made to him upon this subject by your Royal Highness ; and that his Majesty hath now given orders for settling a jointure upon the Princess of Wales, as far as he is enabled by law, suitable to her high rank and dignity : which he will, in proper time, lay before his Parhament, in order to be rendered certain and effectual for the benefit of her Royal Highness. " The King has further commanded us to acquaint your Royal Highness that, although your Royal Highness has not thought fit, by any application to his Majesty, to desire that your allow ance of fifty thousand pounds per annum, which is now paid you by monthly payments, at- the choice of your Royal High ness, preferably to quarterly payments, might, by his Majesty's farther grace and favour, be rendered less precarious, his Majesty, to prevent the bad consequences which he apprehends may follow from the undutiful measures which his Majesty is informed your Royal Highness has been advised to pursue, will grant to your Royal Highness, for his Majesty's life, the said fifty thousand pounds per annum, to be issuing out of his Majesty's Civil List revenues, over and above your Royal High ness's revenues arising from the Duchy of Cornwall ; which his Majesty thinks a very competent allowance, considering his nu merous issue, and the great expenses which do and must neces sarily attend an honourable provision for his whole family." s 2 260 LORD HERVEY S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXIX. To this message his Royal Highness returned a verbal answer, which the Lords of the Council who attended him, immediately after they received it, with drew to put into writing to the best of their recollec tion, and delivered it to the King in the following words : — ¦ " That his Royal Highness desired the Lords to lay him, with all humility, at his Majesty's feet, and to assure his Majesty that he had, and ever should retain, the utmost duty for his royal person ; that his Royal Highness was very thank ful for any instance of his Majesty's goodness to him or the ¦Princess, and particularly for his Majesty's intention of settling a jointure upon her Royal Highness : but that, as to the mes sage, the affair was now out of his hands, and therefore he could give no answer to it." After which his Royal Highness used many dutiful expres sions towards his Majesty ; and then added, " Indeed, my Lords, it is in other hands — I am sorry for it : " or to that effect. His Royal Highness concluded with earnestly desiring the Lords to represent his answer to his Majesty in the most respectful and dutiful manner. It was very plain by this answer that the Prince was very willing and ready to receive any favour the King pleased to bestow upon him, and to return as good words as he received, but not to take words instead of money, or to recede from any step he had taken, or to slacken his pace in what he had resolved to pursue. The King and Queen were both extremely enraged at this reception of the message. The King reproached Sir Robert Walpole a little roughly for having per suaded him to send it ; to which Sir Robert Walpole answered that the good he expected from it was to be reaped to-morrow, not to-day ; and that he had pro- 1737. QUEEN'S INDIGNATION. 261 posed to bring the House of Commons to reason by it, not the Prince. The Queen was more particularly piqued at the Prince's behaviour on this occasion from a circum stance that did not appear in the drawing up the Prince's answer, which was his stepping forward, whilst the Lords of the Cabinet Council were with him, and saying in a sort of whisper to my Lord Chancellor that he wondered it should be said in the message that he had made no application to the King on this business, when the Queen knew he had often applied to his Majesty through her, and that he had been forbidden by the King ever since the audience he asked of his Majesty two years ago at Kensington relating to his marriage, ever to apply to him again any way but by the Queen. To which speech of the Prince's Lord Chancellor very prudently made no other answer than asking the Prince aloud if what he had said to him was part of the answer he designed should be conveyed to the King, and if it was, he desired his Royal Highness would be so good to repeat it to all the Lords of the Council. But the Prince said " No, my Lord ; I only said it to inform you how that matter stood." The Queen said on this occasion she had always known her son to be the most hardened of all liars, but did not imagine even he was capable of exposing him self as such on so solemn an occasion to all the Lords of the Cabinet Council ; and did protest that directly nor indirectly he had never desired her at any time to speak to the King about the increase of his income ; and that if he persisted in saying he had, she would be glad to have him asked where and when ; and who was 262 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXIX. by ; or, if he said it had been always at tete-a-teie, the dispute must then remain on the evidence of her word against his ; but that it was very odd if he had made this application so often, nobody should ever happen to have been present, especially when she did not remem ber she had ever seen him so often alone as to make frequent applications with nobody present possible. She said before he was married he had, before his sisters, often talked to her of his debts and his ex penses and his poverty, but never even then desired her to speak to the King to increase his allowance; but since the increase of it at his marriage he had not even talked to her in that strain. All this the Queen said to Sir Robert Walpole, and most of it to the Lord Chancellor, to the Bishop of Salisbury, to the Master of the Rolls, and to several other people separately whom she saw in private, and has many times to me sworn to the truth of every word of it ; adding always, to everybody she spoke to on this subject, that she was sorry to be forced to expose her son in this manner, but that he had made it unavoid able by endeavouring to lay the whole blame of this dispute between him and his father to her charge ; but what his pique to her could be, she said, she could not imagine, since she was sure it had never been her incli nation, any more than it was her interest, to widen any breach between him and his father : and she has often told me that she never had been snapped by the King on any ten subjects put together so often as she had been on that one of trying to palliate the conduct of her ungrateful son. The next morning after the message, which was the 1737. THE QUEEN'S AND LORD HERVEY'S OPINIONS. 263 day this great point was to be opened in the House of Commons, the Queen sent for Lord Hervey the moment she was up, to inquire what people said in the town of the message that had been sent the day before ; expressing herself great disapprobation of the measure, and saying, "All you other great and wise people were for it, and so one was forced to give way ; but I knew my good son so well that I was sure he would only be more obstinate on any step taken to soften him : you know as well as I that there is no way of gaining any thing of him but by working upon his fear. But what do people say of the impertinent, silly answer he sent yester day ? and of the King's message ? do not people think it was great condescension in the King ?" " Madam," replied Lord Hervey, " those that are with us magnify the merit of it extremely ; and those that are against us say it has an air of condescension, but, in reality, is giving nothing ; for as the King could not have taken away the 50,000/. a-year and leave his son to starve or beg, nor could the Parliament have suffered it, so the settling it is only making a show of a new concession, without really having made any ; and as to the jointure, they say there is no sum named, consequently that part of the message is worth as little as the other ; and if there is any advantage accrues to the Prince by this con cession (as it is called), I suppose those who have put the Prince upon bullying have sense enough to impute all the merit of it to themselves ; and to tell the Prince if anything is got by it, it is those who put him upon bullying who have got it for him. I suppose they tell him (at least I would in their place if I had a mind to keep him warm) that he sees the only way to get any- 264 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXIX. thing is to bully ; that he would never have been mar ried if he had not frighted the King into it by the audience they made him ask two years ago at Ken sington ; that by marrying he got his allowance more than doubled ; that if he had not frighted the King by this step of appealing to Parliament, he never would have got even this 50,000^. a-year secured to him, nor a jointure for the Princess ; and that if he will listen to them and go on menacing, and bullying, and frighting, and appealing, he will at last get everything he wants." " Why, then (said the Queen), you do not approve the message? " " I cannot say," replied Lord Hervey, "I approve or disapprove it : it is above me ; and to be able to determine whether it was a proper measure or not, I must have talked to as many members of the House of Commons as Sir Robert Walpole has done, must be able to know what effect it will have on their opinions and conduct, and what alteration it is likely to produce in the calculation made before this measure of the votes which are to be given this day ; of all which things there is nobody in England but Sir Robert who can be a competent judge." " But was there ever anything so weak " (said the Queen) "as saying, as he does in his answer, that the affair is no longer in his hands, and that he is sorry for it ? Is not that saying that he is to be governed by these people, not they by him ? In whose hands is he ? and how came he so much in their power ?" Lord Hervey said, " The worse his answer is, Madam, the better for those to whom it was sent. Had I been to have given it, it should have been very different, and embarrassed the Court much more than it will now do. 1737. THE QUEEN'S AND LORD HERVEY'S OPINIONS. 265 In the first place if the Prince had had any sense or any good advisers, he would have desired time to give his answer in writing to a written message, and upon mature consideration, and consulting all the best heads about him, I doubt not but he would have been advised to express himself" with the utmost duty to the. King, to bewail his hard fate in having his designs represented to the King as undutiful, which (as appears by the words in the King's message) had been his misfortune, and that nothing but the King's absolute commands should or could have hindered him from applying to his Majesty in the first place either for any favour or justice he thought he might expect from his goodness, and that any roundabout way (which was the only one his Majesty's injunctions had left him) he had found so fruitless and ineffectual, that a modest and humble request to the Parliament of England, who had given the Crown to his family, and who had given all that was to support the honour and dignity of it, he hoped could never be construed an indecent step, especially when it was to ask nothing of them but to explain their own acts ; and that if there was any dispute between him and his father, that he knew no mediator so proper as the Parliament, nor any arbitrator to whose decisions he should so cheerfully and implicitly submit, especially since he could not hope to find any proper ambassador about the King to plead his cause, after the fatal expe rience of those who had his ear having advised him to forbid his son making any application to him in person, and representing his conduct in so unjust and false a light as to provoke the King to give it the hard and undeserved title of undutiful." The Queen interrupted 266 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXIX. and said there was enough — and that she was very glad he had not been so advised, or rather that he had thought his own wise head so able to guide him, as to have allowed himself no time to ask any advice. " But tell me, do you think the fool can have interest enough to carry this point ? Do not people know him ? What do they think of him and what do they say of him ? " " Madam," replied Lord Hervey, " whatever they think of him or whatever they say of him, the people in Opposition will doubtless, for two reasons, be glad to have him join them ; in the first place to swell their party, and in the next to wipe off the imputation of Jacobitism." "These are your nasty favourites the Whigs," said the Queen ; " they are always squabbling with one another. The King has shown he would stand by them and would support them ; but if they will not stand by him and support him, he has but one party to take — he must employ the Tories. The Tories are ready to come ; there they are ; he has but to beckon them, and there is not one but will come to St. James's the moment he calls. The Whigs have forgotten the four last years of Queen Anne's reign ; they want to feel the oppression again of Tory masters to teach them what they owe to a King that has supported them ; and if they are of such a nature as never to know the value of the favour of the Crown, whilst they enjoy it, they may thank themselves for being taught their duty by ill usage." Lord Hervey said, " There is nobody, to be sure, Madam, who wishes well to the present Establishment, who could advise your Majesty to continue the Whigs in power, if it appeared they were so broken among 1737. THE QUEEN'S AND LORD HERVEY'S OPINIONS. 267 themselves as to be unable longer to carry on the King's business; but hitherto, I own, I can see no foundation for that complaint, or that they have not been as ready to support all the rights of the Crown as any set of people who boast their zeal for prerogative the most. It is true, whenever I speak to any Whigs to influence them in this disputed point between the King and the Prince, I always try to alarm them by saying, if the Prince should carry this point, the King must afterward look upon this Parliament as his son's Parliament, not his ; that he would consequently be obliged to dissolve it ; and that nobody can imagine he would dissolve one Whig Parliament to choose another Whig Parliament, but would certainly employ the Tories. But I am far from thinking the King need be driven to this desperate remedy merely on losing this question, unless the same majority distressed him in others ; and I call taking the Tories a desperate remedy, because I believe they will never be long found willing to support a Revolution-Government, nor will your Majesty find any disputes among the majority, that may arise in a Tory Administration, to be about one branch of your family against another, but against your whole family in favour of another. If this was the case in the four last years of the Queen's reign, you will find it again so whenever the same party is in power ; for as the majority of the Tories are certainly Jacobites, so when they act as a party they must act according to the principles and sentiments of the majority of that party, not of the few." While Lord Hervey was speaking — the Queen and he both standing at the window of her dressing-room — 268 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXIX. the Prince happened to walk undressed across the court ; the Queen spied him, and said, trembling with * * * 2 It is certain that the King and Queen were both somewhat shaken in their confidence in Sir Robert Walpole by the course which this affair had taken ; and if Bishop Sherlock had known how to improve the opportunity for the furtherance of his own interests — if in his frequent interviews with the Queen, he had railed at Sir Robert Walpole for advising the King to send the message, and told her Lord Carteret and the Tories would carry this matter with a higher hand — ¦ I know not what would have been the consequence ; but with all his parts, Bishop Sherlock had the weak ness perpetually to share the demerit of those whom he wanted to ruin, and to dip himself in those measures which he ought to have exploded and laid hold of to distress his enemies by combating ; and instead of saying that the King and Queen had been advised by Sir Robert Walpole to do too much, he advised more to be done, and told the Queen the only safe way she could take to end this dispute was to persuade the King to allow his son something more, which, how right soever it might have been for their interest, was certainly not right for his point — which was the ruin of Sir Robert Walpole,3 whom at this time he could no 2 Here there is another chasm— not much to be regretted. We have had quite enough of the Queen's feelings towards the Prince ; unaccom panied as they are with any explanation of the original cause. a Here again we see (as we shall too frequently) the evident prejudice and probable injustice of Lord Hervey's conjectural interpretations of Bishop Sherlock's conduct and motives. On this occasion he censures the 1737. THE QUEEN'S AND LORD HERVEY'S OPINIONS. 269 way so efficaciously or at least so hopefully have attacked as by endeavouring to persuade the Queen that Sir Robert showed a much greater regard and tenderness towards the Prince in this dispute than was necessary. There was one material thing Lord Hervey said to the Queen this morning, in the conversation I have just given an account of, which I forgot to insert ; but not piquing myself much upon method in these papers, and relating things only just as they occur to my me mory, and as I happen to have leisure to set them down, without giving myself the trouble, and indeed without having time to go back and interweave them in their proper places, I shall mention it here. Part of Lord Hervey's answer to her Majesty's in vective against the Whigs for dividing on this question was, "that he would never say it out of that room ; but to be sure the misfortune of their splitting at this time, was in reality owing to the King and the Prince ; to the latter, for appealing to Parliament without having first tried all other methods, and to the first for not giving the 100,000^. a-year to the Prince at the time he gave the 50,0001., when indisputably it was under stood at the time the Civil List was settled, that the Prince should have so much allowed for his mainte nance, as his father had had when he was Prince of Wales ; and though I grant, Madam, that this was not a condition or appropriation mentioned in the Act of Parliament that settles the Civil List, nor do I re member it was particularly mentioned, yet when this Civil List was asked and the reasons for asking it Bishop for not having given selfish and mischievous advice. See also post, p. 299. 270 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXIX. were opened by Sir Robert Walpole, it must be under stood, that if the additional expense incurred by there being a Queen Consort was a reason for a larger Civil List, it must be upon a supposition that all other ex penses were to be the same as they had been in the late reign, otherwise it could be no argument for in crease ; for if the Queen and Prince together were to have no more than the Prince alone had before, the same sum would be sufficient to defray the expenses of the King's family in this reign that did suffice in the last." To this the Queen answered, "You sometimes, my dear Lord, despise the Master of the Rolls extremely, and now you talk just like him." Lord Hervey found he had gone too far, but softened what he had said and retrieved himself a little by adding, " that there was, notwithstanding what he had advanced, a very material difference at this time between his way of thinking and that of the Master ; for though, Madam," continued Lord Hervey, " I cannot help thinking, if anybody had been asked to enumerate the articles that made up the expenses of the Civil List when it was asked, they would have named 100,000^. a-year to the Prince as one of them, and consequently, that it might be thought the King should have given it, yet I am far from being of the Master of the Rolls' opinion, that the King ought to suffer it to be extorted from him in this manner; or that his conduct, whatever people may think of it, must not now be defended." The Queen said, " The Civil List was given to the King, with a discretionary power to do what he thought fit with it ; and that the Parliament, since they had made it his property without conditions, had no 1737. MR. PULTENEY'S SPEECH. 271 more business now to meddle with it, than they had to meddle with the private property of any other man in the kingdom, and that they might with as much justice cut and carve out of the estate of every father in Eng land what they thought a proper provision for his eldest son, as in this instance." " I grant it, Madam," replied Lord Hervey ; " and whatever people may think of the equity of the King's voluntarily giving or not giving the 100,000^. a-year, I do admit that the Parliament has no right now to force him." Mr. Pulteney, notwithstanding his having advised the Prince not to stir this affair in Parliament, when it came into Parliament was the mover of it in the House of Commons. Lord Hervey at present, not withstanding former quarrels, wished him better suc cess, in case of Sir Robert Walpole's death, than he did to any other man who put in for the reversion of Sir Robert's power ; and to Lady Hervey (who wished him still better than her Lord, and with whom, when ever they met in third places, he used to talk with great friendship, familiarity, and confidence) he said, on her reproaching him with the indiscretion of dip ping himself in this affair, that since, contrary to his opinion and counsel, the Prince would have the motion made, he could not oppose it, and thought he should make a better figure in taking the lead, than in fighting an underpart, and acting as a subaltern. He began with great pomp, and said he had a matter to offer to the consideration of the House, of greater importance perhaps than anything that ever had been moved there, as it concerned persons of the first rank in the kingdom, as well as the favourite and 272 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXIX. most valuable privilege of that House, which was the appropriation of money they gave, and seeing those appropriations strictly observed and complied with. He then proceeded to show from our English histories, running through the dynasties of most of our kiugs, that it had been the practice and policy of all times to put the heir-apparent to the Crown in a state of inde pendency, and give him an established revenue of his own. He then came down to precedents of later date since the Restoration, and mentioned the Post Office and wine, licences given to the Duke of York, who was but heir-presumptive to the Crown, in the reign of his bro ther, King Charles II. Another instance he gave of an independent settlement made by Parliament on one who was but heir-presumptive to the Crown, was the 50,000^. a-year given by Parliament in the reign of King William and Queen Mary to the Princess Anne of Denmark, the late Queen. He then descanted on the establishment made on this King at the beginning of the reign, setting forth how much greater it was than any other king ever had ; and how little reason there would have been for making it so, if it could ever have been supposed the expenses of it were to be so much less in so material an article as the provision for a Prince of Wales ; the support of whose honour and dignity the Parliament was concerned for next to the King's, more than any person's in the kingdom ; nor could he see or imagine what reason could be given why as ample a provision should not be made for this Prince of Wales as had ever been made for any other, or for his father before him ; he then threw in some personal compliments to the Prince of Wales, but 1737. MR. PULTENEY'S SPEECH. 273 sparingly ; and dwelt chiefly on the design of the Par liament when the Civil List was granted, to have 100,000^. a-year given to the Prince when he should come over, be married, and settled here, insisting upon it, that though this he acknowledged was only a tacit condition in the grant of the Civil List, yet as it was at the same time, though a tacit condition, a condi tion that was universally understood, so it behoved the Parliament, in justice to themselves as well as to the Prince, to make such an Address to the King as he mentioned in the motion he concluded with ; which was humbly to beseech his Majesty to settle 100,000^. a-year on the Prince, in the same manner that his Ma jesty had enjoyed it when he was Prince of Wales, and to settle the same jointure on the Princess of Wales as was settled on the Queen when she was Princess of Wales. I have only given the substance of the mo tion, which was extremely well drawn, and which any body who has a curiosity to see it may turn to in the Journals of the House of Commons. In Mr. Pulteney's speech, which lasted above an hour and a half, there was a great deal of matter and a great deal of knowledge, as well as art and wit ; and yet I cannot but say I have often heard him speak infi nitely better than he did that day : there was a languor in it that one almost always perceives in the speeches that have been so long preparing and compiling. Men of great talents and quick parts, who have knowledge and readiness, a natural eloquence, a lively imagina tion and a command of words, always in my opinion, which is founded on my observation, speak best upon the least preparation, supposing them masters of their VOL. n. T 274 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXIX. subject ; for, besides their thinking with less vivacity and emotion on subjects they have often thought of, their growing tired of them, and having their fancy palled to them, in these cases of preparation their me mory works more than their invention ; and they are hunting the cold scent of the one, instead of pursuing the warm chace of the other : and as most orators warm others in the degree or in proportion to the degree in which they themselves are warmed, so they can never affect their audience so much with things they have thought of till they are unaffected with them them selves, as they will with those which they utter at the time that they are most affected with them themselves, which is generally in the first conception of them. And it is from this cause that all good speakers, in my humble opinion, speak better on a reply than at any other time : though Sir Robert Walpole on this occasion, even in replying, lost these advantages I have mentioned ; for, as he knew beforehand all the argu ments to which he was to answer this day, so his answers were as much prepared and thought of as those things to which he was to answer ; and, to my ears at least, there was the same languor, and that same want of the vivida vis, which appeared in the perform ance of Mr. Pulteney, and which I have often heard both of them speak without wanting, and possess su perior, I think, to any two men I ever heard, and at least equal I believe to any two men that ever had the gift of speech. Sir Robert Walpole, very early in his answer to Mr. Pulteney, told the House the orders he had received from the King to communicate to them the message 1737. WALPOLE'S ANSWER. 275 his Majesty had sent the day before to the Prince, and the answer he had received to it ; Sir Robert Walpole read both the one and the other to the House as part of his speech, and commented on both as he read them very emphatically, making use of all his oratory, art, and Parliamentary skill, when he came to that part of the Prince's answer where his Royal Highness says and repeats, "Indeed, my Lords, it is in other hands; I am sorry for it." — This message, Sir Robert said, was at once an answer to two parts of Mr. Pulteney's motion and arguments, which were those relating to the Prin cess's jointure, and the independent establishment of the Prince ; what therefore remained for him to con sider was only the quantum allowed to the Prince, and the propriety of the House interposing in that matter, considering the manner in which the Civil List had been granted to, and was enjoyed by, his Majesty. As to all Mr. Pulteney had quoted from the Eng lish history relating to the settlements made by Parlia ment on the heir-apparent to the Crown, from the time of Edward III. (for so high the instances given by Mr. Pulteney had been traced), Sir Robert said they were none of them parallel to the present case, nor examples that would justify the step Mr. Pulteney now proposed the Parliament should take ; since all those settlements out ofthe several Kings' revenues had been made by Parliament- by an original motion from the Crown, desiring the Parliament only to confirm grants made by the Crown ; and not by the Parliament first making application to the Crown, and cantoning out the possessions and property of the Crown in the manner and degree that the Parliament thought fit ; that after the t2 276 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXIX. Restoration the revenues from the wine-licences and Post-office were given to the Duke of York by Parlia ment immediately after the Restoration, and not by Parliament addressing King Charles to part with what they had before made his property without conditions ; and that the instance of the 50,000Z. a-year paid out of the Civil List of King William to the Princess Anne of Denmark, though it seemed at first sight to be the nearest a parallel to the present case, was in the most material circumstance no parallel at all — since the Parliament gave it (as appears from the words of the resolution), not out of what they had already given to the King, but whilst the revenue was settling, and made the appropriation of this money at the same time they made the grant of it : if therefore what is now proposed (continued Sir Robert), had been proposed on the present King's first accession to the throne, whilst the Civil List was settling, I would have ad mitted that the instance of what was done in the reign of King William would have been a case in point, but now it is widely and essentially different; for as the words of the Civil List Act show that the Civil List is given to the King to support the honour and dignity of the Crown, and the maintenance of his royal family in general, without any particular appropriation to par ticular branches of the royal family, so any future ap propriations would, as far as they extend, be so many resumptions of the grant of the Civil List made to the King, and an infringement of what was now the King's property ; nor could there be any reason given if the Parliament now took upon themselves to look into the allowance made by the King out of his own property 1737. WALPOLE'S ANSWER. 277 to the Prince, why the Parliament might not as well examine what he allowed to the Queen, the Duke, or any of the Princesses — why they might not make them selves judges of that too, and direct, in all those in stances as well as this, by the same parity of reasoning, what the King should allow to any one branch of his family. As to what had been said of the present Civil List being so much greater than that of the late King, Sir Robert said " at a medium, even with the 1 15,000?. included, what the Civil List Revenues had brought in during the King's whole reign did very little exceed 800,000?. per annum ; and though the late King had but 600,000?. a year, yet when the Prince's 100,000?. per annum was added to that, together with the million of the Civil List lottery, and the 300,000?. given by the two offices of insurance to pay the debts of the Civil List (which two sums, amounting to 1,300,000?., and the late King having reigned thirteen years, made an addition to the Civil List of 100,000?. per annum more), it did appear that in reality the late King had had a Civil List of 800,000?. per annum as well as the present King; if, therefore, the income of the two Kings was equal, and the disbursements out of the Civil List of the late King to the maintenance of his Royal Family was only 100,000?. to the Prince, the late King having no wife and but that one child, it was plain he had 700,000?. per annum left for himself; and consequently 100,000?. per annum being given out of the Civil List by this King (50,000?. to the Queen and 50,000?. to the Prince), his present Majesty would not have more left for his own use than his father had had ; 278 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXIX. and farther, as his present Majesty, besides this esta blishment on the Queen and Prince, paid to the Duke [of Cumberland] an establishment of 8000?. per annum (which must soon too be an increased expense), as his Majesty paid likewise 5000?. per annum to the Princess Royal, 5300?. to the two eldest Princesses, and 2000?. to the two youngest • — here was a disbursement of 20,000?. per annum out of his Civil List towards the maintenance of his Royal Family more than was paid out of his father's — (which, by the bye, was not true, the late King having ever after the quarrel maintained the three eldest Princesses out of his own income to the day of his death ; but this blot was not hit by any body that answered Sir Robert Walpole4). Sir Robert having thus answered Mr. Pulteney, laid the great stress of his arguments first on proving that the King could not afford to allow the Prince more than 50,000?. per annum ; and next, that as the allowing him ] 00,000?. was not mentioned in the Act of Parliament which settles the Civil List, nor even by any body who spoke on that occasion; and as the Civil List was given to the King unconditionally for life, for the sup port of the honour and dignity of the Crown and the maintenance of his Royal Family at his own discretion ; so it would be an unjust infringement of the King's legal property for the Parliament to pretend now to appropriate what had been given him without appro- 4 Sir Robert Walpole's statement meets the real point of the case, and is not impugned by Lord Hervey's parenthetical remark ; for if George I. did " maintain " the three Princesses, it was for a short and compara tively unexpensive period of their lives, when they could probably not have cost him more than a very few thousands a year ; and of course an incon siderable proportion of the whole 100,000/. 1737. LORD BALTIMORE'S SPEECH. 279 priation ; and an unreasonable taxing of his Majesty's discretionary power (all circumstances considered) to say or to insinuate that he had not made a right and proper use of that power in what he now allowed to the Prince. There were a great many good things in Sir Robert Walpole's speech, and a great many bad ; all the little detail that he entered into of the King's expenses in the establishment of his household was trifling and low, and more like a steward or a housekeeper to a private man than a first minister to a King : all the latter part of what he said was pathetic, eloquent, artful, and great, lamenting as a blow to those who acted on the principles of supporting the Revolution Government, that this question was moved at all; and fearing it might prove, considered only as a family dispute be tween a father and a son, immedicabile vulnus, and that a common friend must bewail a dispute where a victory to either might prove ruin to both. Lord Baltimore, one of the Prince's lords of the chamber, spoke in answer to part of what Sir Robert Walpole had advanced, and said he had the Prince's commands to acquaint the House that from the small allowance the King had made him he had been obliged to run in debt ; that he thought 100,000?. per annum was what the Parliament had designed him ; that his establishment came to 60,000?. (which was not true) ; that he had often made application by the Queen to have his allowance increased (which was not true neither) ; and that he had told the Lords ofthe Council so yesterday (which was lie the third). His Royal Highness ordered Mr. Hedges to say the same things 280 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXIX. that Lord Baltimore had said ; and they both of them, that they might not be disavowed afterward by the Prince in what they had said, put his Royal Highness's directions into writing, then asked him if that was what he would have them say, and spoke in the House from that paper. The Master of the Rolls spoke and acted on this occasion in his usual double, balancing character, for he argued on both sides and voted for neither. The de bate lasted till past eleven o'clock ; and on the division, the question for the address was lost by a majority of thirty [234 to 204]. The King and Queen were extremely pleased with this victory and by so unexpected a majority. Most people thought it cost a great deal of money ; 5 but Sir Robert Walpole and the Queen both told me sepa rately that it cost the King but 900?. — 500?. to one man and 400?. to another ; and that even these two sums were only advanced to two men who were to have received them at the end of the Session had this question never been moved, and who only took this opportunity to solicit prompt payment. When the King after this complained of the usage he met with from the Whigs in distressing his measures and maintaining his rascally puppy of a son (as he called the Prince) against him, Sir Robert said it was 8 It seems to have been produced by a more obvious and honourable cause, to which Lord Hervey does not allude. " This small majority would have been reduced to a minority but that forty -five of the Tories, consider ing the interference of Parliament hostile to the Constitution, highly demo cratic, and so dangerous an innovation, quitted the House in a body before the division — an act highly honourable to those who refused to sacrifice their principles to their party." — Coxe, i. 532. 1737. THE PRINCE DEFEATED. 281 not altogether just to reproach any party with a distress brought upon him merely by his own family, and de sired the King to reflect that 900?. was all this great question had cost him; "and to show you, Sir, how little this was a party or a ministry point, I am very sure if I had lost the question relating to the Prince, the very next moment a question would have been put upon me ; and I am as sure I should, though I had lost the other, have carried that by 100. And what must have been the consequence ? I must have quitted your Majesty's service to show I was not betraying you, and giving you up to secure myself; for how can any mi nister serve a Prince and say he can carry his own points and not his master's ? " 282 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. CHAr. XXX. CHAPTER XXX. Anger of the King and Queen — Restrained by Walpole— Debate on the Prince's claim in the Lords — Defeated again — Protest — Army voted — Walpole's favour diminished — His conversations with Lord Hervey and the Queen on that subject. The Queen, who before this debate was extremely angry at what the Prince had said to my Lord Chan cellor, was yet more incensed and exasperated against him for making Mr. Hedges and Lord Baltimore re peat it in the House of Commons, seeing very plainly, on her name being publicly introduced there and in such a manner, that there was no medium between the audience considering her one of the worst of women, or her son one of the worst of men ; as she must either have merited this heavy charge of having received all his solicitations without transmitting them, and drawing the King into asserting to the whole world he had never received any applications from his son ; or that the son, conscious how improper it was for him to make his first application to Parliament, resolved, at the ex pense of his own truth and his mother's character, to disculpate himself by a feigned imputation of all the fault being in her, and making her responsible for all the ill consequences which might flow from this pro ceeding. Both King and Queen were inclined at first to pro ceed to the last extremities against the Prince, and for 1737. CONDUCT OF THE KING AND QUEEN. 283 turning him immediately out of St. James's. Sir Robert Walpole dissuaded them from taking this step ; said it would put their son more out of their power, in crease his party, give him the eclat of a separate Court, furnish many people with arguments to inveigh against their rigour and keep up the spirit of this dispute in the world, if not in their family, much longer than otherwise it would subsist ; that the suffering their son to remain in the palace would have an air of lenity in the eyes of some, of contempt in the opinion of others ; and that the pushing things to extremity after they had already carried their point, would put them in the situ ation which hitherto their Majesties' friends had repre sented the Prince, and perhaps make the Parliament itself less willing to support them when they were op pressing their son than it had been to maintain their Majesties' cause when they were only defending them selves. Sir Robert Walpole prevailed, and the Prince re mained in St. James's : he came to the drawing-rooms as usual, led the Queen, dined with the King and Queen in public, and sometimes too came to the King's levee, but the King never seemed to see or know he was in the room ; and the Queen, though she gave him her hand on all these public occasions, never gave him one single word in public or private. The next difficulty Sir Robert Walpole lay under was to bring the King to perform what he had pro mised in his Message, which was the settling a jointure on the Princess and the giving the 50,000?. per annum to his son out of his own power to be resumed or stopped. 284 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXX. The King said in common sense or reason every body, considering when this Message was sent and how it was worded, must look upon it as an offer made by him of accommodation with his son, and these points as articles of treaty on his part to prevent the Prince's bringing this affair to be discussed in Parliament; that since the Prince, notwithstanding, had proceeded, and, like a silly puppy and undutiful, insolent rascal, had brought the question into Parliament, this non-compli ance on the part of the Prince with the offer made by his Majesty must be looked upon, the King said, as a release from obligation of performing the conditions on his part, and that he would leave things just where they were. Sir Robert said that no such condition was actually expressed in the Message, nor had it been so opened or argued upon by those who had pleaded it in Parlia ment ; nor would the Parliament, he feared, any more than the rest of the world, look upon the Message as anything more than a temporary trick to amuse, if the promises therein contained were not performed. And if this matter should another year be brought into Par liament, how would those who had now carried this point for his Majesty by a majority only of thirty be able to support it, divested of those arguments which (he must in justification of the Message say) he be lieved were the only arguments which could have given his Majesty the victory ? He farther added, that all that part of mankind who did not cry out against his Majesty receding from what he had promised must at least be silent, for that it was impossible to justify it; neither would his Majesty gain anything by receding, 1737. CONDUCT OF THE KING AND QUEEN. 285 since the allowance to the Prince, whether secured or left at large, could never be stopped ; and that a jointure on the Princess must be given, and the whole world would say ought to be given, let the Prince's behaviour be what it would. The King said, " I see my affairs, then, are upon that foot that I must yield in everything." And Sir Robert was extremely alarmed and hurt at this an swer ; looking upon this victory over the King as the King did on his over his son, which was — a victory that gave him little pleasure, and was more an indication of future mortification than a subject for present triumph. Sir Robert Walpole's misfortune at this time was, that he had not now the resource he used to have on all other occasions, which was making use of the alkali of the Queen's temper to sweeten the acid of the King's ; for her Majesty needed an alkali to take off the sharp ness of her own as much as his Majesty ; and Sir Robert found her not as usual an auxiliary on his side, but an other opponent he had to conquer : and though he could make the conquest, he apprehended himself to be in the same sort of situation with Louis XII. after the Battle of Ravenna, who said, when he was felicitated on his victory, that such another would ruin him.1 There was a council called of all the Prince's friends, 1 I know not where this is attributed to Louis XII., but Plutarch tells us Pyrrhus had made a similar exclamation after the battle of Asculum. It is odd that Lord Hervey does not mention his own pamphlet written at this juncture, but not published till 1739, called " An Examina tion ofthe Facts and Reasons contained in ' A Letter to a Member of Par liament on the motion for settling 100,000?. per annum on the Prince of Wales,' " — of which some of the most remarkable passages were supplied by Sir Robert himself (Coxe, i. 532). In this pamphlet we find the same allusion to the battle of Ravenna. 286 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXX. a great consultation held, and various opinions (or at least various advices) given concerning the measure of moving the same question in the House of Lords re lating to the 100,000?. that had been moved in the House of Commons. Those who considered only the Prince's interest and credit, advised against exposing him to a second defeat, where the majority would be so much stronger against him than it had been in the first, and which would make the same question, when it should be brought again into the House of Commons, come with less weight. But the Commoners in the Prince's interest not caring to engross all the odium of having pushed this business, and to be the sole objects of the King's resentment, insisted on the same motion being made in the House of Lords that had been made in the other, that the Peers in this party might be as deeply dipped as themselves ; and, in order to carry their point, they persuaded the Prince, that since every body knew it was a measure once taken to move this question in both Houses, that the dropping it in the House of Lords on his defeat in the House of Com mons would either be construed fear, or as an acknow ledgment of his being in the wrong and giving the thing up. The Prince therefore resolved to try his cause like wise in the House of Lords, where Lord Carteret [on the 23rd February] took the lead and made the motion. His introduction was methodized much after the manner of Mr. Pulteney's speech ; he pursued the same progress through the English history in examples of the inde pendent settlements of other heirs apparent and pre sumptive to the Crown ; and insisted in the same 1737. THE SAME QUESTION IN THE LORDS. 287 manner that Mr. Pulteney had done on the design of the Parliament with regard to this 100,000?. per annum to the Prince when the Civil List was granted. And though he was guarded in most part of his speech, and seemed determined to give as little offence as was pos sible on the King's side of the palace at St. James's ; yet in the heat of his oratory (though in most parts it was but a cold performance) an expression escaped him which the Queen took mortally ill, and which, as he must know she would do so, I believe he heartily repented afterward. In speaking of the reasons Edward III. had for making so large a settlement on the Black Prince, he said that great and wise king did it that his son might not be dependent on his minister, his mistress, or his queen ; which, as it seemed to put these three charac ters on the same foot, was a way of arguing that nobody thought very respectful to her present Majesty; and as she was not addicted to think less respect due to the character of a Queen than other people thought be longed to it, she was not more ready to forgive this liberty than those who were less concerned in it were to approve it, The Duke of Newcastle took upon him to speak after Lord Carteret, but neither Sir Robert Walpole's example in public, nor his documents in private, en abled his Grace to answer him. My Lord Chancellor therefore supplied that part, and spoke as well as ever I heard him. Lord Scarborough made use of many strong expressions on this occasion ; and to show how much depends on the lips that pronounce, as well as the words that are uttered, he said things with success and applause which, if any other body had ventured, 288 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXX. they would infallibly have met with censure and dis grace. He said, amongst many other things, that he thought it impossible for the House of Lords, if they had any regard for the King's interest or Government, to give into a motion of this kind ; and declared if he was to hear from Persia or China that a Parliament there had carried such a question against the Prince upon the throne in favour of his son, he should con clude the next post would bring the news of the father's being deposed and the son being crowned ; and after many more expressions not quite so strongly zested, though but few degrees weaker, he concluded with saying he had spoke the naked sentiments of his heart on this matter to the House, and should sleep the better that night for having communicated his thoughts so freely to their Lordships. The division in the House of Lords on this question was, for the King 79, Proxies 24, in all 103. For the Prince 28, Proxies 12, in all 40. As the protest on this occasion illustrates still more than I have done the general tenor of the debate upon it, I have transcribed it ; and must mention its having been remarked that the words at the end prevented its being signed by any Tories in the division ; they not caring to declare it their opinion that under this Royal Family only they could live free. " Dissentient, — " 1. Recause this House has an undoubted right to offer, in an humble Address to his Majesty, their sense upon all subjects in which this House shall conceive that the honour and interest of the nation are concerned. " 2. Recause the honour and interest of the Nation, Crown, 1737. LORDS' PROTEST. 289 and Royal Family can be concerned in nothing more than in having a due and independent provision made for the first- born Son and Heir Apparent to the Crown. " 3. Recause, in the late King's reign, 100,000/. a year, clear of all deductions whatsoever, was settled upon his present Majesty when Prince of Wales, out of a Civil List not exceed ing 700,000/. a year. " 4. Recause his present Majesty had granted to him by Parliament several funds to compose a Civil List of 800,000/. a year ; which, we have very great reason to believe, bring in at least 900,000/., and are more likely to increase than to diminish. " 5. Because, out of this extraordinary and growing Civil List, we humbly conceive his Majesty may be able to make an honourable provision for the rest of his Royal Family, with out any necessity of lessening that revenue which, in his own case, when he was Prince of Wales, the wisdom of Parliament adjudged to be a proper maintenance for the first-born Son and Heir Apparent of the Crown. " 6. Because it is the undoubted right of Parliament to ex plain the intention of their own Acts, and to offer their advice in pursuance thereof : and though, in the inferior court of West minster Hall, the Judges can only consider an Act of Parlia ment according to the letter and express words of the Act, the Parliament itself may proceed in a higher way, by declaring what was their sense in passing it, and on what grounds ; espe cially in a matter recent, and within the memory of many in the House, as well as out of it. " 7. Recause there were many obvious and good reasons why the sum of 100,000/. per annum for the Prince was not specified in the Act passed at that time, particularly his being a minor, and unmarried; but we do apprehend, that it is obvious that the Parliament would not have granted to his Majesty so great a revenue above that of the late King but with an intention that 100,000/. a year should, at a proper time, be settled on the Prince, in the same manner as it was enjoyed by his Royal Father when he was Prince of Wales ; and his Royal Highness, being now thirty years old, and most VOL. II. u 290 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXX. happily married, we apprehend it can no longer be delayed without prejudice to tbe honour of the family, the right of the Prince, and intention of the Parliament ; and as in many cases the Crown is known to stand as trustee for the public upon grants in Parliament, the Crown stands as trustee for the Prince for the aforesaid sum. " 8. Because we do conceive that the present Princess of Wales ought to have the like jointure that her present Majesty had when she was Princess of Wales ; and that it would be for the honour of the Crown that no distinction whatsoever should be made between persons of equal rank and dignity. " 9. Because we apprehend that it has always been the policy of this country, and care of Parliament, that a suitable provision, independent of the Crown, should be made for the Heir Apparent, that, by showing him early the ease and dig nity of independence, he may learn by his own experience how a great and free people should be governed ; and as we are convinced in our consciences that if this question had been passed in the affirmative, it would have prevented all future uneasiness that may unhappily rise upon this subject, by removing the cause of such uneasiness, and give his Royal Highness what we apprehend to be his right, we make use of the privileges inherent in members of this House to clear ourselves to all posterity from being concerned in laying it aside. " 10. Lastly. We thought it more incumbent upon us to insist upon this motion, for the sake of this Royal Family, under which alone we are fully convinced we can live free, and under the Royal Family we are fully determined we will live free. " Winchelsea and Bridgewater, Nottingham, Bedford, Berkshire, Weymouth, cobham, bathurst, Chesterfield, Coventry, Cardigan, Ker, Marlborough, Suffolk." Carteret, 1737. DEBATE ON THE ARMY. 291 People's thoughts were so engaged on the Prince's affair, that the debate this year on the continuance of a standing army of near 18,000 men was not much laboured or attended to : the question came into the House of Commons but two days before that on the 100,000?.; and everybody was so warm on the one that they had no fire to spare for the other,2 and in the House of Lords there was scarce one single word said upon it. The riots and tumults that had happened this last year in so many parts of the kingdom, and the absolute necessity everybody allowed there had been of calling in the King's forces on these occasions, without which the laws could not have been executed or the peace of the kingdom preserved, made the Court party stand upon better ground than usual in arguing for their continuance ; since they had it to say that it must certainly encourage these seditious spirits if, before there appeared a greater disposition in them to subside than anybody could yet say there was, any reduction should be made of that force which had been the chief, if not the only, power capable of checking these licen tious proceedings, and preventing the nation from falling into anarchy and confusion, and a general disso lution of all government. Lord Hervey told Sir Robert Walpole he perceived both the King and Queen were less satisfied with his conduct in the Prince's affair, than they were apt to be with his behaviour on other points. Sir Robert said he perceived it too : but thought their suspicions of his having had any management or tenderness towards 2 There was a very warm debate on the Army vote, and a division of 246 to 178. U 2 292 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXX. their son were most unjust and unreasonable. " For sure, my Lord," continued he (these were his words), " if ever any man in any cause fought dagger out of sheath, I did so in the House of Commons the day his Royal Highness's affair was debated there." Lord Hervey said, " the Duke of Newcastle had certainly talked in his usual palliating style, and hinted to the Queen that the best way of putting an end to this matter was to allow the Prince something more ; and as his Grace is thought to speak your sentiments, Sir, I believe the Queen imagines you have set him to feel her pulse and prepare your way." Sir Robert said, " My Lord, I cannot mend the Duke of Newcastle's understanding ; and if he will not believe what I have told him, that that nail will not drive, I cannot help it. But I am determined to have a full explanation with the Queen this very night on all these entangled affairs, and not to let things go on longer in this disagreeable way. And for the Duke of Newcastle, I know him as well as you do, and see very plainly his manner of working; he is linking himself with the Chancellor, and thinks to stand by that help on his own legs without me." Lord Hervey said his Grace's conduct was not hard to fathom ; and that besides cultivating the Chancellor, his courting the Bishop of Salisbury in the manner he did, showed plainly he proposed to keep an interest at Court by the means of the greatest enemy Sir Robert had there ; and that the remarkably good correspondence he kept up with Lord Carteret as plainly demonstrated that, as his Grace thought Lord Carteret's a better life than Sir Robert's, he deter mined not to be desperate with the reversionary 1737. WALPOLE'S CONFERENCE WITH THE QUEEN. 293 Minister any more than with the reigning one; and that the obligations he had to the one could not prevent his turning his eyes towards the other. Sir Robert Walpole this night told the Queen that, though she knew he was not apt to be suspicious, yet she could not imagine him so insensible as not to perceive some little relaxation in that flood of favour with which she used to receive him ; " Nor could I, Madam," said he, " though I were ever so blind in this room, not feel by what passes on the King's side of the house that my good-will towards your Majesty's service has not the same degree of good fortune it used to meet with. I know when the King speaks his own thoughts, and when he speaks yours ; and have not had the honour of serving him and you so long without being able to distinguish between the warm sallies of his own temper when he contradicts me and recedes, and the cooler reasoning objections communicated to him by your Majesty : which I feel the force of, and know by the source from whence they arise that, though they flow with less vehemence, I shall find it much harder to turn their course." The Queen said she had certainly felt very uneasy ever since this affair of her son had been started; and owned that she thought thirty a very small majority, especially since the King had paid so dearly for it, as making the conces sion he did in the message he had sent the day before this affair came into the House. Sir Robert Walpole desired she would remember that all the King had paid was in words, for the Prince had the 50,000?. a-year before, and to the voters her Majesty knew it had cost the King but 900?. " And where, Madam, there can 294 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXX. be nothing but good words and promises on one side, and that they are so profusely lavished — whilst on the other there is nothing given by the King, who has it in his power to give things so much better than words and promises — can you wonder that many fly to your son on this occasion to see what they can get there, though it be only words and promises ? Every body comes to a court to get, and if they find there is nothing to be got in present, it is natural to look out for reversions. Whilst, therefore, the King loses his interest in people by not bestowing what it is in his power to give, your son makes interest by promising what yet is not in his power ; and let him be ever so lavish and profuse in these promises, he runs no risk at present, because he can never forfeit his credit for non-performance till the day of payment is come." The Queen said nobody thought that these promises were worth much. Sir Robert replied, that was very true ; but everybody who could get no ready money had rather have a bad promissory-note than nothing. " However, Madam, I own you must get the better of your son : things are come to that pass that the King must conquer him or be conquered ; but consider how that is to be done. I know my Lord Carteret has offered to sell your son to you, and I know the hands through which he has tried to make the bargain with you." The Queen owned to him that Lord Carteret had en deavoured to excuse taking the Prince's part, by sending her word that he was driven to it. "He says," continued the Queen, "that he found you were too well established in my favour for him to hope to supplant you ; and, upon finding he could not be first, 1737. WALPOLE'S CONFERENCE WITH THE QUEEN. 295 that he had mortified his pride so far as to take the resolution of submitting to be second; but if you would not permit him even to serve under you, who in this house could blame him if he continued to fight against you?" Sir Robert said it was impossible the King's business could go on long with him and Lord Carteret both in the King's service ; that he knew Lord Carteret thoroughly ; and that knowing this was an impracticable scheme, and that a reconciliation of this kind would be nothing more than a short intro duction to a new rupture, he must beg leave to tell her Majesty (as impertinent as it might sound), that she must take her choice between them ; for that he never could serve with Lord Carteret, but was very ready if she thought it for her interest and her service to quit. "I know, Madam," continued Sir Robert, "how in decent it is generally for a minister and servant of the Crown to talk in this style, and to say there is any body with whom he will not serve. I therefore ask your pardon ; but I thought I should be still more in the wrong if I suffered your Majesty to make any agreement with Carteret, and afterwards quitted your service on that event without having previously told you I would do so. What I have said, therefore, Madam, was in order to take the method I thought most just to your Majesty, and by which I should incur the least reproach ; and I give your Majesty my word I will never speak of quitting again till I do it. I know, Madam, too," continued he, " that Bishop Sher lock and Carteret have offered your Majesty to bring in the Tories, and fight this battle for you against your son ; but consider before you embark how this matter 296 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXX. will stand. In the first place they cannot answer for the party ; in the next place, if they could, in what manner is this to be done ? Are you to turn out all those who voted for you when you carried it by thirty, to take in those who voted against you in order to carry it by a greater majority ? How are they to save appearances in their own conduct but by advising you to give 20,000?. a-year more to your son, and will that quiet him ? No ; you will then have done what you have now avoided, and will have your son just as ready to fight for the rest as he is now, and more able. Besides, Madam, the very changing your measures is acknow ledging a defeat ; if your son forces you to do anything you would not have done without his stirring in this affair, he has conquered — I say he has conquered — for forcing you to change your administration is conquest. You know he said so himself when Mr. Hedges spoke to him on this affair, and tried to divert him from pur suing it in Parliament by telling him it was impossible he could ever get the money ; your Majesty knows his answer was — ' At least I shall show I can do more by opposing than the Opposition have been able to do in sixteen years without me : I shall turn out Walpole, and by showing I have weight enough . to make my father change his administration, shall make a much better figure than I can do by being quiet.' Consider, too, Madam, what you would do by taking a Tory admi nistration : you would bring people into your service who never can be in your interest; and the Whig party, which is the natural support of your family, and in my opinion can only support it, you would unite in the interest of your son against you. What is the 1737. WALPOLE'S CONFERENCE WITH THE QUEEN. 297 case of the Whig party ? — not that the Tories are too strong for them, for the Whigs are divided, and yet, though divided, support you ? Do not flatter yourself then, Madam, that a party that is strong enough in this country to support you though divided will not be strong enough to distress you if you unite them against you. I know the distrust that always attends their way of arguing who argue for themselves, but I think what I have said is so manifestly true, that it must remove that distrust with which I own it is natural your Majesty on this occasion should hear me. Weigh it, Madam, and make your own determination upon it ; at the same time I promise you, let me but do as I will, and you shall conquer this son ; and give me leave to say this one thing more — as impertinent as it is to be talking of oneself — that I think it would be a hard fate for a Minister who has served you as I have done, if not with ability at least with such success in all public affairs either foreign or domestic, to be ruined at last by a family quarrel ; by your enemies, not by your friends ; and by an event I foresaw, by one you know I foretold, and by one I advised you to prevent." Sir Robert Walpole, who came immediately down from the Queen to Lord Hervey's lodgings after this conversation, gave him this account of it, and told Lord Hervey at the same time that he thought what he had said had made all the impression upon her he could desire ; for that the Queen had dismissed him with the strongest assurances it was possible to make, of satisfaction in his conduct, and promises to protect and support him. 298 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXXI. CHAPTER XXXI. Prosecution of the Porteous Riot — Opinions and Intrigues about it — Lord Hervey takes up the cause of the Scotch Magistrates with Lord Isla and the Duke of Argyle — Bishop Sherlock zealous on the other side — Car teret courts the Queen, and retreats out ofthe Scotch Question. When the day came that had been appointed by the House of Lords to enter into the examination of the Scotch affair, Lord Carteret, before the provost and bailies of Edinburgh were called to the Bar, proposed a string of questions to the House that he said he thought it was proper these magistrates should be asked in order to clear up this matter, and for a ground work for the House to proceed upon, saying at the same time, though he had done his duty as a member of the House of Lords in bringing this matter before them, yet, now it was there, he should not think him self more obliged than any other Lord in the House to take the lead in the promotion of it ; and that those who had the honour to be employed by the Crown, as they must by their station have more lights than other people to go by, in his opinion ought to be the" foremost in instructing the House on this occasion, and were doubly bound to sift it to the bottom, as it concerned the honour of the Government by whom they were employed that such an insult to Government should not pass unpunished ; and that the honour of the House of 1737. PROSECUTION OF THE PORTEOUS RIOT. 299 Lords was likewise concerned, since they had under taken this business, to go through with it, and show that they had power to punish the guilty, as well as zeal for the discovery of those who were so. Lord Carteret's reason for declining an active part for the future in the punishing those concerned in this abominable murder was, that he found all parties in Scotland, however divided in other matters, were united in their desire to have the death of Porteous unre- venged. He therefore reserved all his fire to be played upon the Judges when the trial of Porteous should come under consideration, the chief of these Judges (Andrew Fletcher, Lord Justice-Clerk) being a creature of Lord Isla's, and one whom for that reason Lord Carteret had a mind to fall upon and ruin. My Lord Chancellor, who disliked Lord Isla partly, upon his own account, from a dispute they had had last year on the Smuggling Bill, and partly from the instigations of the Duke of New castle, declared to the House of Lords that he thought the trial of Captain Porteous highly deserved their con sideration ; for if Porteous had been condemned accord ing to the law of Scotland, he was very sure the law ought to be altered ; and if he had not been condemned according to law, he was sure some censure ought to be passed on the Judges, and the sentence they had given reversed by Act of Parliament. The Bishop of Salis bury was one of the warmest in the pursuit of both parts of this Scotch business, desiring to revenge on the country and the brother of the Duke of Argyle the affronts which the bishops and clergy of England had received last year from his Grace when the Mortmain and Quakers' Bills were depending. 300 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXXI. By the examination of the provost1 and bailies of Edinburgh, it appeared to the House very plainly that this murder of Porteous was wished by ninety-nine in a hundred throughout all Scotland, and that those who had not been active in it were at best passive, the rumour of such a thing being intended having been universal for many weeks before it was perpetrated, and no measure taken by any magistrate to prevent it: in short, the grossest neglect, not to say connivance, appeared in the magistracy ; and the House of Lords was enraged to that degree that, if their anger had been judiciously made use of the enemies of the Scotch might have led the House of Lords where they pleased. Lord Hervey was the single English lord of any con sideration who stuck in every point throughout this affair to the two brothers, the Duke of Argyle and Lord Isla; and as they were conscious that the same things on this occasion would not come with the same weight out of Scotch lips as out of English, they put him in the front of every skirmish and every battle during the whole progress of this business, and took great pains to instruct him in everything that related to it ; and as they had no access to the Queen in private, they depended on him likewise to combat in the palace the representations made there by Bishop Sherlock and the Duke of New castle. Sir Robert Walpole, though he had no mind to give up Lord Isla, mortally hated the Duke of Ar gyle, and the Duke of Argyle him : this hatred had lately been increased by two accidents ; the one was, Sir Robert Walpole's having said this year in the House 1 The Provost was Mr. Alexander Wilson. 1737. MOTIVES OF DIFFERENT LORDS. 301 of Commons, in the debate on the army, when he was again reproached with the old story of the disgrace of Lord Cobham and the Duke of Bolton, that any Mi nister must be a pitiful fellow who would not show military officers that their employments were not held on a surer tenure than those of civil officers ; which had been represented to the Duke of Argyle by some in a way as if Sir Robert Walpole had called the military officers pitiful fellows ; and by others as if he had said that a Minister must be a pitiful fellow who would suffer military men to meddle out of their province, and concern themselves with civil affairs. The other reason the Duke of Argyle had for feeling additional dislike to Sir Robert Walpole at this time was, that he had a mind, on the death of Lord Orkney, to be set at the head of the army ; and imputed his not being so to Sir Robert Walpole, though in reality, had Sir Robert loved him as much as he hated him, it would not have been in his power to do it : in the first place, as he had little power in military affairs ; and in the next, because the King determined to have nobody at the head ofthe army but himself, would do everything there by his own authority, and without any advice ; and last of all, be cause, if his Majesty would have given any authority or taken any advice in these matters, he disliked the Duke of Argyle so much, that he was the last man in England to whom he would have delegated the one, or from whom he would have received the other. The Duke of Argyle loved his brother Lord Isla much better than he was beloved by him ; and Lord Isla made the passions of his brother, though he was always condemning him for his heat and his impracti- 302 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXXI. cability, of great use to him ; for whenever Sir Robert Walpole asked him to do anything he had no mind to, he always pretended to be willing himself, and to lay his not doing it on the impossibility of bringing his hot, obstinate brother to comply with him ; and at the same time owned to me that he had had such precaution in the choice of those men whom he had brought into either House of Parliament, that, knowing his brother's vio lence and sudden turns (these were his words), " I have contrived it so that if my brother should run mad, and break with the Court, there are not three people in Par liament who will follow him unless 1 go along with them." At this time Lord Isla and Lord Hervey on one hand were always telling Sir Robert Walpole that Lord Chancellor and the Duke of Newcastle were laying schemes to govern independently of him, and that they were certainly in good intelligence with Sherlock and Carteret ; whilst on the other hand the Duke of New castle and Lord Chancellor were telling him that the House of Lords and the nation expected Scotland should receive some punishment for such a behaviour, and that Lord Isla and Lord Hervey were so obstinate that they would come into nothing, though all the rest of the King's servants were so desirous some censure might be passed, and some mark of the resentment of the Legis lature shown on this occasion, that it was certainly as little for the interest of the King as for the honour of the House of Lords to let such an outrage go off with impunity. Lord Isla told Sir Robert he would consent to any punishment being inflicted on Scotland but such a one as would make the whole nation disaffected, and render 1737. BILL AGAINST EDINBURGH. 303 the government of it quite impracticable ; that my Lord Chancellor abused Scotland every day in such strong invectives, and behaved himself with such pride and such arrogance, that there was really no temper could bear it with patience ; that if Sir Robert would suffer it, Lord Isla said he must quit and give up the whole, for that he would not continue in the King's service only to irritate people against him, when he had neither power enough to defend himself, nor interest enough to engage others to do it. He said Lord Hervey was the only man almost in the King's service that did not talk and act as if Scotland was to be torn to pieces for this transaction, and desired Sir Robert Walpole to consider well before things were brought to that pass as to force Scotland into a rebellion, and whether, for the sake of Lord Chancellor's and the Duke of Newcastle's pique to him, he would resolve for the future to rule Scotland upon the foot of a conquered country ; for that must be the case if he ruled it at all, and things were suffered to go on in the violent track the House of Lords seemed to be pursuing at present. In the palace the Queen was beset by the Duke of Newcastle and Bishop Sherlock on one hand, and Lord Hervey on the other, in the same manner that I have described Sir Robert Walpole ; but Sir Robert Wal pole not being very well at present with the Duke of Newcastle, and always hating Sherlock, the Queen was brought to think that the less was done on this occasion to punish Scotland, provided anything was done, the better. The method of proceeding occasioned as much diffi culty as the matter. This affair, first being taken up 304 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXXI. in the House of Lords, made an impeachment impos sible, unless the House of Lords had dropped it entirely, and that the prosecution were left to begin de novo in the House of Commons. Formerly, the House of Lords in cases like these used to order the Attorney-General to exhibit articles, and proceed in that manner ; but this method being now obsolete, it was not judged proper to revive it. The third and only way there was besides of proceeding was by Bill ; and this was the method resolved upon. The substance of the Bill, as Lord Chancellor had first framed it, was to disable the pro vost and the four bailies of Edinburgh from ever holding any office in Great Britain, and to imprison them ; and to pull down one of the gates of Edinburgh called the Nether-Bow Port, in order to leave a free and open access at all times to the King's troops to enter the town whenever they should be called for. The provost not being a friend of Lord Isla's, he did not care much what they did with him ; but the four bailies being all men whom he had put in and protected, he was very soli citous to save them. Lord Isla came to Lord Hervey and told him what he wished, and Lord Hervey assured him he would not vote for the Bill if they were left in ; but desired Lord Isla, in order to enable him to prevail with the Queen to have them left out, to consent to the taking away the town-guard in lieu of punishing the bailies : Lord Isla did consent ; and Lord Hervey told the Queen this was an exchange that would be greatly for the advantage of the Government ; for that it would be of no use to the Government to punish shoemakers and cheesemongers, but of great utility to get rid of a guard which was for ever made a pretence to hinder the 1737. BILL AGAINST EDINBURGH. 305 entrance of the King's forces, and was a guard so con stituted, that, when they were in the hands of the friends to the Government, they were of no more use than the worst of militia, and, whenever they had been at the direction of the enemies to the Government, had been put upon the foot of the best disciplined troops. "To what purpose, then, or with what policy," said he, " can the Court desire to continue the use of a weapon which has always been blunt when employed for you, and pointed when it has been directed against you?" Lord Hervey told her Majesty, too, that though he believed, in case she desired him to bring off anybody that was guilty, he should certainly do it, yet he neither could nor would upon any account join in punishing anybody as guilty that he did not think was so ; and let the pro vost be ever so guilty, and the bailies have been ever so passive, yet, as they had no authority to give orders when the provost was present, so he could no more in justice and conscience vote for the punishing them on this occa sion than he could vote for punishing subalterns in an army for not commanding when their general was pre sent. The Queen consenting to this exchange, and Lord Hervey declaring to Lord Chancellor and the Duke of Newcastle he would oppose the Bill in every step if the bailies were inserted, they were left out, and the abolishing the town-guard was a clause put in instead of the other. The Duke of Argyle opposed the bringing in of the Bill, and every step it took in its progress. One of the reasons he gave for doing so, which he dwelt much upon and often repeated, I own was a very impudent one ; since it was from a pretended opinion of being in gene- VOL. II. x 306 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXXI. ral against all bills of this sort, though there never had been a Bill of Pains and Penalties since he sat in the House for which he had not voted, and some he had even brought in ; and this, though everybody knew, yet nobody had courage to say in answer to him. Lord Isla neither spoke nor voted on any of the questions that arose in the progress ofthe Bill, thinking himself obliged, since he had by a sort of compromise consented in private council to the bringing it in so mitigated, not to oppose it, and not daring, for the sake of his interest in Scot land, to be for it even so mitigated. Lord Hervey, though he voted for the Bill for the same reasons that Lord Isla did not oppose, spoke, at the bringing it in, very long and vehemently against Bills of Pains and Penalties in general ; abusing every one that had ever passed in Parliament, from that against Lord Strafford, in King Charles I.'s reign, down to the present times. For this reason, though he concluded his speech with saying he acquiesced under this Bill, as the only way every lord in the House agreed there was now of punishing this atrocious crime committed in Scotland, yet everybody who was for the Bill reproached him with having said as much against it as anybody who had voted against it. Lord Chancellor answered Lord Hervey, and justified the Bill in all its parts with such a parental partiality that nobody who heard him could be at a loss to guess who was the political father of the parliamentary child.2 2 I have not been able to trace why Lord Hervey should have taken any peculiar and personal interest in this Scotch affair ; but that he did so is evident from the text, and still more so, I think, from the following note, which I find amongst his letters to Lady M. W. Montagu, and which seems to belong to this period : — "Lord H[ardwicke], I fancy, is immoveable. I have some notion, too, 1737. BILL PASSES THE LORDS. 307 There were several debates on this Bill, in which the Duke of Argyle and Lord Chancellor had several dis putes, carried on with as great decency as if there had been no rancour, and, to a discerning eye, with as much rancour as if there had been no decency. All of the sixteen Scotch Peers that were present, except Lord Isla, who did not vote at all, voted for the bringing in of the Bill ; but after the second reading, when counsel was heard against it, they all voted against it, pretending to have changed their opinion on what they had then heard, though there was not one single thing said at that time that had not been said before, one single piece of evidence invalidated, or one circumstance in any one fact that I remember differently stated. My old Lord Findlater,3 with a little insignificant knowledge in the civil law, and my young Lord Crawford,4 without any knowledge at all, made so many long, dull, absurd speeches in broad Scotch against the Bill, that they fretted everybody who was of their side, exasperated everybody that was against them, and made the two parties of a mind in nothing but wishing them dumb : in short, the Bill passed the House of Lords framed as I have before related — that for disabling the provost and imprisoning him for a year, for abolishing the city guard, and taking down the Nether-Bow Port.5 that he had a hand in drawing the bill: if so, that is a sort of parental fondness that seldom gives way. Upon the whole, I am determined not to let it go off without giving it one kick more ; though whether I shall be able to do it any hurt, I know not." s James Ogilvy, fifth Earl of Findlater, born in 1689. 4 John Lindsay, thirteenth Earl of Crawford, born in 1702. He served several campaigns as a volunteer with the Austrian and Russian armies, and was severely wounded near Belgrade in 1739. He commanded the British Life Guards at Dettingen ; and died in 1749. 5 " It is remarkable that in our day the magistrates of Edinburgh have x2 308 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXXL During the examination that preceded the bringing in this Bill, it appeared that the Lord Justice-Clerk had refused sending an order to General Moyle for the King's troops to march, when Moyle, on Lindsay's coming to him during the tumult, had sent to the Lord Justice-Clerk to demand one. Those who were warmest in this prosecution took hold of this circumstance to move the House of Lords, at ten o'clock at night, after a long examination that had set the House in a situation which the anti-Scotland men thought fitted them for any violent step, that my Lord Justice-Clerk should be immediately sent for up from Scotland. Lord Lovel moved this, and was seconded by the Duke of Montague, whose zeal against Scotland opened a mouth that had been shut for fifty odd years, and which (like that of Balaam's ass) now opened for the last time as well as the first. The Duke of Richmond, Lord Pembroke, Lord Delaware, and several others in the first employments at Court, were very zealous in this question. Lord Isla spoke against it, and said, " If, my Lords, it is only on account of my Lord Justice-Clerk not sending the order to Moyle that he is to be sent for up, I declare he was in the right, my Lord Justice-Clerk having no authority I know of to send such an order ; and had I been there myself, who am the first Criminal Judge in Scotland,6 I would not have sent it. When I am absent, my Lord Justice-Clerk is the first Judge ; and I know no law in Scotland to oblige, or even to justify, his sending such an had recourse to these two latter measures — held in such horror by their predecessors — as necessary steps for the improvement of the city." — Scott, note to 'The Heart of Mid- Lothian.' s Lord Isla was Lord Justice-General of Scotland. 1737. LORD HERVEY DEFENDS THE MAGISTRATES. 309 order; I hope, therefore, your Lordships will not put such an indignity on an innocent man as to send for him as a criminal for not doing what he would have been criminal if he had done." This did not satisfy the warm men: they argued in general that the honour of the House of Lords was concerned to sift this matter to the bottom; that it was the deepest and darkest scene of villany that had ever been concerted in any country ; that the House of Lords wanted more light ; and that the Lord Justice-Clerk could possibly give them more, as he was in so great a station, and plainly appeared to have had a part, whether innocent or guilty, in this transaction ; and therefore they insisted on the motion made to bring him. Lord Hervey, who was the first Englishman who opposed this motion, said " He desired the House of Lords would a little consider, before they sent for a man in so high a station from Scotland, on what foot it was to be done. I desire to know" (continued he), " before I can give my consent to this motion, that it may be explained whether the Lord Justice-Clerk is to be sent for as a criminal or as an evidence, or merely to satisfy the curiosity of the House of Lords ? If as a criminal, let the crime be specified and the charge laid ; if as an evidence he is to come, I desire to know to what fact ? and if out of curiosity he is to be sent for, I do not think it is very prudent to send for a man of that rank on such light motives ; or that it is treating Scotland with a due respect to send for the first Judge at present in the country in such a manner ; or that it is likely to give the people a due regard for the laws of their country, when they see a man at the head of those laws treated with so little regard 310 . LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXXI. by the House of Lords. Besides, may it not be sus pected that, as the magistrates of Edinburgh were sent for upon suspicion only, and that a charge of guilt is now exhibited against them, founded contrary in most cases (I will not arraign the proceedings of the House of Lords by saying in all cases) to the first rules of natural justice, by making their own confession (and a confession extorted from them) the groundwork of that charge ; and if this has been done with regard to the magistrates, may not the people of Scotland appre hend the same thing is going to be done with the chief of their judges ? I do therefore think that, before your Lordships have determined whether you will send for this great magistrate as a criminal, or a witness, or an informer, and settled as to what facts in any of these cases he is to be examined — it is highly improper to send for him at all." These were the heads on which Lord Hervey preached in opposition to this motion. Lord Chancellor did not say the Lord Justice-Clerk ought not to be sent for ; but said, if it should be found necessary to examine him, that he thought, as Lord Hervey had urged, it would be proper first for the House to determine on what points, and consequently that he hoped the motion would be withdrawn that night, in order to give the House time to weigh the reasons for coming into such a resolution. The Duke of Newcastle, who took no share in this debate till Lord Chancellor had spoke, having neither courage enough to follow his inclination in sup porting the question, nor to do his duty in opposing it, repeated as well as he could what Lord Chancellor had said; but Lord Chancellor himself neither having been, 1737. DISCUSSION AT SIR R. WALPOLE'S. 311 nor desiring to be, very clear on the subject, when the Duke of Newcastle's puzzled conception came with a puzzled utterance to endeavour to echo him, he made such abominable confused work of it, as made even confusion surprise, though it came out of his lips. On the division it was carried against the motion.7 This happening on a Friday night [18£/i March], and Sir Robert Walpole, as usual, passing Saturday and Sunday at Newpark, the Duke of Newcastle went thither from Claremont and told Sir Robert that, though they had been able on Friday to pre vent the Lord Justice-Clerk being sent for, it was only by saying the resolution would have too preci pitate an air if taken that night ; and that it would be impossible to prevent its being carried the next week. His Grace took Lord Chancellor with him to talk in the same style; and as Sir Robert Walpole was brought by their reports to believe this was the case, Sir Robert said it would be better to yield in this matter than to be beaten ; and that it was more advis able for somebody of our side to move that the Lord Justice-Clerk and two other Judges should attend to give information to the House in points of Scotch law, the trial of Porteous being then under consideration, than that the enemy should get him up alone, or on any other pretence. This was agreed to by Lord Isla, whom Sir Robert sent for immediately to consult ; at the same time he 7 This is not quite exact — the division 65 to 48 was on the question of adjournment moved by the Duke of Newcastle. Lord Hervey, in order to aggravate the inconsistency which he charged on the Duke, chose to consi der it as ^negative on the original motion, which strictly it was not. 312 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXXI. sent a message to Lord Hervey to desire him to meet him early on Monday morning at his return to London. When Lord Hervey came to Sir Robert's he found Lord Isla there ; and, as soon as he was acquainted with the resolution that had been taken, began to abuse Lord Isla for being such a fool to agree to it, asking him if anybody, after standing a battle and gain ing a victory, ever gave up what they had fought for ; and why he suffered Sir Robert Walpole to be imposed upon by such strange misrepresentations ; telling them both at the same time that he had made the King and Queen declare themselves publicly against all these hot, violent proceedings, and that my Lord Isla and Sir Robert were going to do that against themselves which their enemies had tried to do in vain. Lord Hervey then asked Sir Robert Walpole if he had taken the resolution to submit to that government which he had long told him the Duke of Newcastle and Lord Chan cellor were usurping ; and if Sir Robert would never make use of his own power and his own understanding, but commit the one perpetually into the hands of those to whom he could not give the other. Sir Robert said, "They don't govern me, nor they shan't govern me ; but you hate the Duke of Newcastle, and therefore never will imagine it possible he can do anything right. I see what he is about as plain as you do, but I am not prejudiced ; and you see Lord Isla has consented to this step, and approves it." " I acquiesce" (interrupted Lord Isla), " but I assure you I am far from approving, and only consent because I am weary of dissenting to no purpose." In short, the Duke of Newcastle got the better of Lord Hervey, and this motion was made next day 1737. LORD HERVEY'S SPEECH. 313 in the House by the Duke of Newcastle, to the great triumph of those who were now running riot on this Scotch scent, and hoped to bring disgrace on Lord Isla. Lord Carteret spoke after the Duke of New castle, and said he was very glad to find his Grace on more mature deliberation had found out the pro priety of doing what he had opposed on Friday ; and, with some banter on the fluctuation of the Court measures, said it was never too late to do right ; adding, too, that he was sure, whatever might have been said of the Lord Justice-Clerk's being sent for by a message on Friday, might just as well be said upon it though it went on a Tuesday ; that the alteration in the day would make none in the disgrace, if there was any disgrace incurred ; and that for his part he was consist ent in his conduct on both days, and uniform in his opinion, and therefore seconded his Grace's motion. The Duke of Newcastle said nothing at all by way of reply ; but Lord Hervey took notice that there was not all that inconsistency which Lord Carteret would insinuate in the conduct of those who had voted against the motion made on Friday, and yet were for the motion proposed to-day ; there being a very essential difference between calling the Lord Justice-Clerk alone to the bar as a criminal, and the desiring his presence, with two other judges, to give the House instruction in the Scotch law, in the same manner the English judges were there to give their opinions to the Lords on points relating to the English law ; as in one case it was sending for him to answer for his conduct to the superior power of the Lords, in the other to regulate the conduct of the Lords by his superior knowledge. His Lordship expatiated a 314 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXXI. good deal on these distinctions, which, to be sure, were nothing more than distinctions in wrords ; for in reality the enemies of Lord Isla and my Lord Justice-Clerk had in this circumstance carried their point, and brought thus far all the disgrace on these two men that they had aimed at ; which was showing the world that the one stood in need of protection, and that the other had not credit enough at present to give it him. Lord Hervey, however, had better success in the im pressions he tried to make on the Queen on this occa sion than on Sir Robert. She took Lord Isla's part very warmly, and said she would not positively have him given up, nor coolly supported ; and though they had, by a jumble she did not understand, brought up these Scotch judges, that they should not be treated with dis respect. She sent for the Duke of Newcastle and schooled him very severely. "What the devil," said the Queen to him, " signifies all this bustle about the Scotch judges ? Will worrying the Scotch judges be any satis faction to the King for the insult offered to the Govern ment in the murder of Porteous ? Will that tend to bring any of the offenders concerned in that crime to justice ? Will it be any atonement for what is passed, or strengthen the hands of the Government in order to pre vent such outrages for the future ? It is just in the same style as your silly proposal to put the bailies into the Bill ; and I must say the King has great obligations to Lord Hervey, who insisted, instead of punishing the bailies, which would have done the King no good, to take away their nasty town-guard, which will be a real good to the Government. Believe me, my Lord, I understand all this very well ; you hate Lord Isla, and you want to 1737. THE QUEEN AND THE DUKE OF NEWCASTLE. 315 take this occasion to do disagreeable things to him, and make it impossible for him to carry on the King's busi ness in Scotland ; but Lord Isla has been too good a servant to the King for the King to let any such schemes take effect; he will support my Lord Isla, and will, I assure you, take it very ill of anybody who goes about to hurt him. The business of Princes is to make the whole go on, and not to encourage or suffer little, silly, imper tinent, personal piques between their servants to hinder the business of the Government being done ; there will always be opposition enough given by the enemies of the King to his measures and his Ministers ; and you may depend upon it he will never bear it from those who ought to be his friends : you comprehend me very well, and I hope we shall have no more of this childish fiddle-faddle silly work." The Duke of Newcastle said that my Lord Chancellor had told him that Captain Porteous was very unjustly condemned, and that it would be a shame for the Legislature if such a scandalous trial was before the House of Lords and passed without any animadversion. The Queen replied, " My Lord, you have drawn my Lord Chancellor into this business, and now you want to lay the fault upon him. It is cer tainly just that Scotland should receive some punish ment for the abominable murder that has been committed there ; but there is no reason why the Scotch should be exasperated by drawing into that punishment men of figure and rank in their country who had nothing to do with it, only to make this affair more national than it need be, which is just what those who oppose the Court want to bring about, and what those who serve the King wisely and faithfully would avoid. In short, I do not 316 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXXI. like this meddling with the Scotch judges : I think my Lord Isla an excellent servant to the King, and that the complaint he makes is a very just one — that, whilst he is attacked by the enemies of the King's Government for having served the King steadily and thoroughly, the King's servants who ought to defend him are running upon him too." As I wrote down this conversation immediately after the Queen gave me an account of it, which was the same day it was held, I believe it is very exact. The Queen sent also for Bishop Sherlock, and talked to him much in the same strain, adding that she knew his reason for taking part so warmly in this prosecution ; that it was to revenge his church-quarrels, and to wound the Duke of Argyle through Lord Isla's side ; but she de sired him to consider he was wounding the Government too : " And believe me, my Lord," continued the Queen, " this zeal for punishment does not become your profession; and all this bustle about the Scotch law, how does it come apropos to your character, unless it is to show that you have lived so long at the Temple ?8 You know I wish you well, and I am sorry you so often give a handle to those who wish you ill to say how troublesome you make the King's business to those who are concerned in it; and I beg, my Lord, you would not make me, who am always ready to excuse your conduct, find it so often necessary to give you up. As these reprimands, given by the Queen to these two men, had very different spirits to work upon, as s Sherlock was Master of the Temple, and made it his usual town resi dence till his promotion to London. 1737. THE QUEEN AND THE CAMPBELLS. 317 well as men in very different situations, the one being Secretary of State, and the other Bishop of Salisbury, upon very different tenures, so these reprimands and admonitions had very different effects : the Duke of Newcastle was frighted, changed his conduct, and re ceded ; the Bishop of Salisbury was undaunted, justified his conduct, and persevered. Lord Hervey told the Duke of Argyle and Lord Isla how strenuously the Queen espoused their cause, and let the Queen know he had done so, and at the same time assured her how sensible they were of her favours, and how gratefully they spoke of them. " You know," said the Queen, " I have not always loved my Lord Isla much ; but I assure you I have a great opinion of his ability, and know he has been so useful to the King, that I have got over all my silly prejudices ; and for the Duke of Argyle, I don't know what is come to him ; for though he hardly ever used to come near me, and when he did come did not do me the honour to look at me, I now see him every day, and with a douceur,9 that it is as if he was fallen in love tout d'un coup with my wrinkles and my grey hairs." Lord Hervey said this change was easily accounted for. " The Duke of Argyle thought formerly that neither the 9 As Sir Walter Scott's beautiful novel of ' The Heart of Mid- Lothian' has been already referred to in history (Mahon, ii. 285), and as it indeed professes to follow the historical facts as he understood them, I may be forgiven for observing that he supposes a state of estrangement between the Queen and the Duke of Argyle at this time, which we see did not exist. He also commits a slight anachronism in making "Lady Suf folk " the Queen's attendant — " Lady Sundon " would have been more chronologically correct. It is better worth notice that the Richmond Lodge, where George II. and Queen Caroline occasionally resided, was not, as Scott describes it, in Richmond Park, but in Richmond Gardens, on the river side, near Kew. It was pulled down in 1772. 318 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXXI. King nor your Majesty cared for him ; and when people have things given them without being loved, it is no wonder they receive them without being obliged ; but as your Majesty's behaviour in these Scotch affairs has shown you are no enemy to the name of Campbell, his Grace desires to show he can feel favours as well as re ceive benefits." When the day came that had been appointed by the House of Lords for taking the trial of Captain Por teous into consideration, Lord Carteret, who, thinking he should have the Duke of Newcastle, my Lord Chancellor, and the Bishop of Salisbury of his side, had studied the point thoroughly, laboured it in the House in a very long speech ; he entered into a disquisition of the criminal law of Scotland, and pointed out many particulars in which he said it bore so hard upon the subject that it ought to be amended ; and he then en deavoured to show that the Scotch judges in this trial had been so hard upon Porteous, that they had even stretched the law, which was of itself too hard, in order to condemn him ; but, after all this, concluded without making any motion, saying he had only laid, his thoughts on these matters before the House, and left it to their Lordships' wisdom and discretion to do what they thought fit, without pretending to advise or direct them. Lord Hervey, who had been instructed for this pur pose by Lord Isla and one Erskine10 (soon after made Lord Advocate of Scotland), an admirable good lawyer, i» Charles Erskine, or, as he generally spelled his name, Areshine, M.P. for Dumfriesshire, Solicitor-General in 1725, Lord Advocate June, 1737, a Judge in 1744 by the name of Lord Tinwald, and in 1748 Lord Justice-Clerk. He drew up the narrative of the transaction which Scott appended to the acknowledged edition of the ' Heart of Mid-Lothian.' 1737. DEBATE IN THE LORDS. 319 answered Lord Carteret, drawing a parallel between the criminal law of Scotland and England, and showing how in many points the criminal law of Scotland was more favourable to the subject than that of England. He showed, also, that in many particulars Lord Carteret had advanced he had misrepresented the law of Scotland ; and then endeavoured to prove that the judges, to act con formable to the law and practice of the criminal courts in Scotland, could have done nothing on the trial of Porteous but just what they did. Bishop Sherlock spoke after Lord Hervey, and made a very fine oration, tending to inflame his audience first against the Scotch judges, and then against Scotland in general ; but there was little or no argument in anything he advanced. Lord Isla spoke after Sherlock, and abused his ignorance in facts, and his indecency in descanting on them, very freely. He spoke a great while ; but having given the greatest part of his ammunition to Lord Hervey, and not caring to repeat what had been said by him, he did not speak (his abuse on Sherlock excepted) so well as usual. The Duke of Newcastle was quite silent ; and my Lord Chancellor, after expatiating a great while on what had been advanced against the English law by Lord Hervey, and against the Scotch law by Lord Car teret, said that to be sure there was no body of laws, nor no forms of law, to which some objections might not be found ; but alterations in standing laws, or in long usage, ought never to be made without the most mature deli beration ; and therefore declared he was very glad Lord Carteret had concluded without any motion, as that would give the Lords time to receive information from the Scotch judges before it would be necessary to re- 320 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXXI. ceive or reject any proposal that should be made for any change in the laws of that country. He owned, too, that he had been of opinion that the first interlocutor n in the trial of Porteous had borne very hard upon him, thinking it had circumscribed him within much narrower bounds in making his defence than he found it did when he came to read and consider the evidence Captain Porteous in consequence of that interlocutor had been allowed to give : he therefore concluded with saying that, though he still thought that interlocutor very inac curately penned, yet he did not retain the opinion he had at first conceived of the judges not having left all the scope to Captain Porteous's evidence that justice and equity required, or that the criminal himself could de sire. So this day's debate was finished without anything being done, and even without anything being proposed to be done. When the questions relating to points of Scotch law, and arising from circumstances contained in the trial of Porteous, were to be put to the Scotch judges, great disputes arose in the House about the manner in which the judges should be admitted. Some were for having the Scotch, like the English judges, brought by the King's writ upon the Woolsack ; but my Lord Chancellor starting a difficulty whether the Crown had a legal right to summon them in this manner, that proposal was laid 11 An interlocutor is a decision of the Court on some preliminary or col lateral circumstance. In this case the interlocutor was something in the nature of the finding of a grand jury, and was blamed — first for not stating the case as fairly toward Porteous as the facts required, and secondly be cause it seemed to restrict him as to the exculpatory evidence which he should be allowed to offer ; and although he was eventually suffered to produce that evidence, the interlocutor was certainly objectionable. 1737. BISHOP SHERLOCK'S MOTION. 321 aside : the only remaining dispute then was, whether they should be heard, in the common way of all other examinations, at the bar, or have the distinction shown them of being brought to the table, — a compli ment that had been paid (as appeared on the journals) in some few instances. There was a long debate and a division on this question, but it was carried for the bar ; however, Lord Isla and Lord Hervey had the satisfac tion of seeing the Queen's lecture to the Duke of New castle had had so good an effect that he did not dare to vote with the majority, but was forced to sneak out with them in the minority. So the Scotch judges were called to the bar, and there interrogated. The next day the Duke of Argyle moved the House that, as the law of England was so very doubtful in some points relating to the conduct of the soldiery, the judges might be asked how far an officer would be justi fied in using force when called in aid of the civil power by the civil magistrate ; how far the officer was safe in obeying that authority ; or if he was safe in refusing to obey it ? When the House consented to these questions, and some more of the like nature, being put to the English judges, the Bishop of Salisbury, who had a mind to give the Scotch judges the trouble, and, as he thought, the disgrace, of being brought again to the bar of the House of Lords,12 moved that these questions might also be put to the Scotch judges. Some other Lord (I have forgot whom) moved that the Scotch 12 This gives an invidious turn to what seems a natural and necessary inquiry. Could anything be more absurd than in this peculiar Scotch case to have consulted the English judges on the law of England, and not to have asked the Scotch judges the law of Scotland ? VOL. II. Y 322 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXXI. judges might deliver their opinion in writing. With this proposal Lord Isla closed, saying it would not then be necessary for them to appear, but to send their opi nions to be read by the clerks; and Lord Hervey moved that, as there were only three of the Scotch judges in England, they might not be debarred of the same advantages the English judges had, of consulting the rest of their brethren on such important as well as doubt ful points, but that they might have leave to go down into Scotland again, in order to consult their records as well as their brother judges, and to give the House the best information that could be had on these questions. The Bishop of Salisbury, who saw Lord Hervey's drift, opposed this motion, and said it would sound very odd for the House of Lords to send for the Scotch judges up from Scotland only to ask them questions relating to the Scotch law, and then to send them back again to Scotland to answer them. Lord Hervey replied, that there would be no inconsistency at all in this conduct, because the words of the order of the House by which the Scotch judges were sent for were, to inform the House with regard to the trial of Porteous, which he supposed the Bishop had forgot; and as he concluded these judges, before they came, had taken the opinions of the other judges, and made themselves masters of the points in that trial which they were called to explain, and had in consequence of these steps given the House thorough satisfaction, so on this new point, for which they were not called, and for which, to be sure, they were not prepared, he hoped the same advantages would be allowed them by the House, and doubted not but in that case the same satisfaction would be given to the House. 1737. THE QUEEN'S PERPLEXITY. 323 Lord Hervey's proposal for these reasons was agreed to, and the Scotch judges in two or three days after set out on their return to Scotland, getting their release and their quietus by this turn being given to a motion made by one who wished only to give them new trouble, and expose them to repeated disgrace ; and for this service the three Scotch judges came next morning to St. James's to return Lord Hervey their thanks. Lord Carteret came to Lord Hervey after the de bate was over, and told him, "Well, my Lord, you have outwitted the Bishop." Lord Hervey said he had only convinced him. " You have convinced," replied Lord Carteret, "the Duke of Newcastle too." Lord Hervey smiled, and said he believed other people had convinced him. " You saw," said Lord Carteret, "I found how it went, and made my retreat. Whilst Lord Chancellor and the Duke of Newcastle went along with me, I thought I could deal with you ; but when my Lord Chancellor came to find fault with the style of the judges instead of their conduct, and to say the in terlocutor was only inaccurately penned, I found my Lord Isla and you had got the better of him and the Duke of Newcastle at St. James's ; and when I felt how matters stood, I retired too." " But if this was your opinion," said Lord Hervey, " how came you not to let your friend Sherlock into the secret ? why did not you tell him that half the pack and those hounds on whom you most depended were drawn off, and the game escaped and safe, instead of leaving his Lordship there to bark and yelp by himself, and make the silly figure he has done ?" " Oh !" said Lord Carteret, " he talks like a parson ; and consequently is so used to talk to y2 324 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXXI. people that don't mind him, that I left him to find it out at his leisure, and shall have him again for all this whenever I want him." Such speeches require so little commenting upon that I never affront my readers so much as to add any reflections or explanations to things which speak their own sense so plainly that I could suggest nothing which would not be anticipated by their own imagination before I could mention them. After this affair of the judges was over, the Queen told Lord Hervey she should be glad to know the truth, but be lieved she should never come at it, — Whether the Scotch judges had been really to blame or not in the trial of Captain Porteous ? " for between you and the Bishop of Salisbury," said she, "who each of you con vince me by turns, I am as much in the dark as if I knew nothing at all of the matter : he comes and tells me they are all as black as devils ; you, that they are as white as snow, and whoever speaks last I believe. I am like that judge you talk of so often in the play (Gripus,13 I think you call him), that, after one side had spoke, begged t'other might hold their tongue, for fear of puzzling what was clear to him. I am Queen Gripus ; and, since the more I hear the more I am puzzled, I am resolved I will hear no more about it ; but, let them be in the right or the wrong, I own to you I am glad they are gone." !3 Gripus, in Dryden's play, puzzled between the two Amphitryons. 1737. REDUCTION OF INTEREST. 325 CHAPTER XXXII. Sir J. Bernard's proposition for the reduction of the interest of the funds to 3 per cent. — Opposition of Walpole and the King and Queen — Their motives — The Porteous Riot Bill — Mitigated in the Commons— Zeal of the Duke of Argyle against it — Carteret retreats from the Scotch ques tion — Bill for licensing Plays and Players — Official changes — The King and Lady Deloraine — The Princess's pregnancy announced — Carteret courts the Queen — He, Chesterfield, and Bolingbroke supposed to be writing Memoirs of their own time. Whilst these Scotch affairs were going on in the House of Lords, a scheme was proposed by Sir John Bernard (one of the City Members in the Opposition) to reduce the interest of the National Debt [from four] to three per cent. — a proposal evidently so beneficial to the national interest, and that of the landed men, that it was at first received in the House with all the applause and satisfaction imaginable. Sir Robert Walpole, for private and personal, and perhaps ministerial reasons, tried to stop it, but could not, and a Bill was ordered to be brought in to put the scheme in execution. Sir Robert had, I believe, two reasons for endeavouring to defeat this project : one, the envying Sir John Bernard the honour and popularity of doing what seemed more naturally the business of the First Commissioner of the Treasury, and of him who was at the head of the management of the revenue ; the other, the fear of disobliging the moneyed men in the House of Commons by giving in to a scheme that was 326 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXXII. at once to lop off a fourth part of their income. The first of these reasons it is easy to imagine he would own to nobody, and the last he could only own in private. He told the King and Queen that this scheme, if it took effect, would have very bad consequences ; for, though it was not proposed by him, yet, as everybody would imagine it could not be carried through without his consent and acquiescence, so it would certainly make many of the moneyed men, who now served the Court for nothing, turn against them. Sir Robert Walpole told them, too, that though he confessed a saving of 500,000?. a-year, unappropriated and ready for any exigence or to spare the land for the current service, was a very desirable thing for the Government, yet, as that 500,000?. must come out of many people's pockets, so most of those who paid their quota to it would look upon the Government as the occasion of their being pinched to furnish it ; that this would so vastly increase the disaffection in the nation, that he did not know what turn it might take or what conse quences it might have ; and as things of this nature should always be done gradually to be done safely, so it could never be the interest of any Government to stand the shock of doing them wantonly at a jerk, when the Government was not in immediate want of the money, and when it was at best only for public good, which nobody was ever thanked for, and when it would be evidently to the detriment and loss of so many par ticulars, of which (let who will be to blame) the Government always incurred all the clamour and the odium. These arguments and suggestions were suffi cient to make the King and Queen zealous in desiring 1737. ARGUMENTS FOR AND AGAINST. 327 this project should be defeated ; and as they were both of them extremely free in-publicly declaring themselves against it, most people imagined their Majesties' reason for being so warm was their having a great deal of money in the funds, and their choosing the nation should rather continue to pay four per cent, interest instead of three for a debt of near fifty millions than that they should receive three per cent, instead of four for their private treasure. The arguments used against this proposal — consider ing it only in a national light — were so weak and so absurd that I am almost ashamed to mention them ; but let anything ever so beneficial be proposed for the benefit of the public, if particulars are to be prejudiced by such a proposal, those particulars will always exclaim against it, yet never confess it is on their own particular account they do so, which might be excused, but pre tend it is for the sake of the public, which can never be believed. Those, therefore, who knew their income must be lessened a fourth part by this reduction of the national interest, instead of giving their true and natural reason against this project by saying they had rather the Government should not retrench its expenses than that they should be obliged to retrench theirs, went about saying that this reduction was contrary to national faith, and would ruin the national credit ; and when it was answered that the public had, by contract with their creditors, a right to pay its debts whenever it was able, it was answered the public had a right to redeem, but not to reduce. To this the espousers of the re ducing scheme replied that there was nothing obligatory in the reduction, and all that was desired was to ask 328 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXXII. the creditors of the public whether they would be contented to take three per cent, for their principal, which nobody pretended the public had a right to force them to take ; or whether they would have their prin cipal paid them, which everybody knew the public had a right to force them to take whenever the public had it to give. This appearance of an option, it was said by those who argued against the project for reduction, was unjust, because in reality it was no option ; the public, in case the creditors chose to have their prin cipal, not having money in their hands to give what was chosen. This proposal, therefore, of a seeming option, it was said, would only be a method the Parlia ment would take to fright those public creditors into consenting to a reduction whom the Parliament could not compel to submit to one ; and, as Sir Robert Walpole rather ingeniously than truly expressed it, would be like a hawk in the air, which, though it did not destroy the birds, made them lie quiet whilst the net was thrown over them, in which, without that terror, they would never have been taken. All these objections of injustice were certainly fully answered by those who were for this project asserting that the Parlia ment had indisputably not only a right, but were by duty bound, as trustees for the public, not to pay four per cent, for money they could have at three. It was said, too, that, if an option given to the creditors, whether they would have their principal-money or con tinue creditors at three per cent., was thought a hardship on the creditors, or an iniquity when it was meant as a favour, the giving that option might be omitted ; and all that was contended for was this plain 1737. WALPOLE OPPOSES IT. 329 simple method — that subscription-books might be opened by authority of Parliament at the Exchequer, and everybody at liberty to subscribe what money they thought fit into those books at three per cent. If the subscription did not fill, the public would only be in the same situation it was at present, the Parliament having done its duty by trying to get money as cheap as it was to be had; and if it did fill, the Parliament, as fast as that money at three per cent, was subscribed in, might discharge the debts of the public that were now standing out at four. There being no possibility of combating in general the reasonableness of this proposal, the Bill, as I have said before, was ordered by a great majority [220 to 157J to be brought in ; but Sir Robert Walpole, whilst the Bill was drawing and preparing, having time to go about to talk to people, to solicit, to intimidate, to argue, to persuade, and perhaps to bribe, so managed matters (by changing his battery from finding fault with the pro posal into attacking the manner of executing it — by not saying one word against the design of the Bill, but exploding the scheme of it — by passing over in silence the propriety of such a Bill, yet showing or endeavour ing to show the impracticability of executing this project in the way the several clauses of this Bill tended to put it in execution — by making use of all his oratory to persuade, and all his Exchequer knowledge to puzzle) that this Bill, after his talking for above two hours in a debate that lasted many more, was most unaccountably, on the second reading, thrown out by very near as great a majority as it was ordered to be brought in. What were Sir Robert Walpole's real and private 330 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXXII. reasons for acting this part on this occasion, I shall not pretend to determine ; whether, as I have said before, he grudged Sir John Bernard the reputation of being the first mover of this public benefit, and therefore resolved to defeat it ; whether he was afraid of having it said, whilst he had the demerit and the discredit of having never reduced the principal of the National Debt, that another had the merit at least of reducing the interest ; whether he had great sums of money himself in the funds, and prevented the scheme for that reason taking place ; or whether he apprehended, as he told the King and Queen, that several moneyed men, who had stood by them in the question relating to the Prince's 100,000?. without any reward, would leave the Court in that and all other questions if not indulged in the defeat of this scheme, — I say, which of these reasons, or what other reasons, or whether all these and other reasons joined, influenced Sir Robert on this occasion, I know not; but some strong reasons undoubtedly he must have to act contrary to the opinion and advice of most of his friends 1 to labour such an up-hill game in Parliament, and to forego such an opportunity of saving near 500,000?. a-year of the interest now paid for the Na tional Debt, and having that sum ready on any exigence to be employed for the service of the Government, without laying any new tax upon the people. Yet this would evidently have been the case ; for if two millions are now paid for the National Debt at four per cent., and that interest was reduced to three, it is plain, supposing i Mr. Walpole tells us that he and Henry Pelham voted in the majo rity against Sir Robert and Sir William Yonge — " persons," he adds, " who never had separated before." — Coxe 's Lord Walpole, i. 369. 1737. THE QUEEN DISPLEASED AT MR. WALPOLE. 331 the whole debt now to be at four per cent., the saving on that reduction would be 500,000?. a-year to the public ; so that what the saving would be less than that sum would be in proportion only to those parts of the debt that are already at three per cent. Mr. Pulteney acted a very mean part on this occa sion: first pretending to be for the reduction of interest ; then saying he was only for it on a supposition that a reduction of taxes was to be the immediate consequence of it ; and, in short, talking and acting in such a manner as let all the world see, that after bellowing for the public and professing patriotism for so many years together, he was governed by his private interest (a great part of his estate being in the funds) as much as any of those poor pensioned commoners whom he had so often in his philippics abused, and called the corrupt tools of a Minister, or the hireling slaves to a Court. To his wife's importunity it was thought his conduct on this occasion was in a great measure owing, she having a good deal of money of her own separate fortune in the stocks, and being of a sordid avarice that for a hundred pounds would have sold her own person or her husband's character to any body that would bid for it. The Pelhams and Horace Walpole tried all they could to bring Sir Robert into this reducing scheme, but to no purpose. Harry Pelham had voted for the bringing in the Bill, and was absent the great day of the debate when it was to be thrown out. Harry Pelham the Queen never loved ; and this conduct of the Duke of Newcastle on the three per cent, scheme, in opposi tion to her inclinations, coming so quick upon his 332 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. CHAr. XXXII, disapproved behaviour in the Scotch business, put him at present so ill with her Majesty, that she abused him in private as freely as most other people had long done in public ; and of course his interest at Court, to put its decay in the strongest light, was now little superior to his reputation out of Court. Lord Hervey at first was as zealous as anybody for this scheme taking effect, but, when he found how determined the Queen and Sir Robert were to obstruct and defeat it, he took a very short turn, and told them both, whatever his opinion had been in the gross question, since they had reasons that induced them to think it would be prejudicial to the interest of the Court and the Administration to have it succeed, as he wished to do them service, and con cluded they knew best what was most for their service, he should talk on the subject and influence the people he had any interest in just as they would have him ; his Lordship determining not to do as the Bishop of Salisbury had done in several points mentioned in these papers, which was to share an odium at Court incurred by those whose interest he wished weakened, and at the same time tread in the very steps by which he hoped they would weaken it. Horace Walpole, though his brother made him vote against2 the three per cent., did it with so ill a grace and talked against his own conduct so strongly and so fre quently to the Queen, that her Majesty had him at present in little more esteem or favour than the Duke 2 Mr. Walpole, as we have just seen, voted for the 3 per cent, against his brother in the first division— perhaps he voted against the second read ing of the bill when it was lost— not (as Lord Hervey says) " by almost as great a majority " as had been for it, but by a much greater— 249 to 1 34. 1737. QUEEN'S DISPLEASURE AT MR. WALPOLE. 333 of Newcastle. She told him, because he had some practice in treaties and was employed in foreign affairs, that he began to think he understood everything better than anybody else ; and that it was really quite new his setting himself up to understand the revenue, money- matters, and the House of Commons better than his brother. "What are you," said the Queen, "without your brother ? Or what are you all but a rope of sand that would crumble away in little grains one after another, if it was not for him ?" And whenever Horace had been with her speaking on these subjects, besides telling Lord Hervey, whenever he came to her, how like an opinionative fool Horace had talked upon them, she used to complain of his silly laugh hurting her ears, and his dirty sweaty body offending her nose, as if she had never had the two senses of hearing and smelling in all her acquaintance with poor Horace till he had talked for three per cent. Sometimes she used to cough and pretend to reach as if she was ready to vomit with talking of his dirt; and would often bid Lord Hervey open the window to purify the room of the stink Horace had left behind him, and call the pages to burn sweets to get it out of the hangings. She told Lord Hervey, too, she believed Horace had a hand in the "Craftsman," for that once, warmed in disputing on this three per cent, affair, he had more than hinted to her that he guessed her reason for being so zealous against this scheme was her having money herself in the stocks. Nor was the Duke of Newcastle on this occasion much better treated by her Majesty than Horace : she said his Grace was such a mixture of fiddle-faddle and 334 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXXII. popularity that there was no making anything of him ; for that he had sometimes so many scruples whether he should do the King's business or not, and at other times was so desirous to undertake more than he could do, that, between his objections to some things and his inca pacity in others, he never did any. The Scotch affairs, and his declaring himself unneces sarily (for it did not come into the House of Lords) so much against the opposition Sir Robert Walpole made to the three per cent, scheme, together with the stories which Lord Isla and Lord Hervey were perpetually telling Sir Robert of the assiduous court he paid to Lord Carteret and the Bishop of Salisbury, made Sir Robert Walpole more uneasy with his Grace at present than he had ever been before ; and an incident happened at this time that would certainly have completed his Grace's ruin at Court had it not been for that politic disposition in Sir Robert Walpole (falsely called for bearance) which always inclined him to go on with cracked leagues and alliances, and try to make them hold by patching and cementing, rather than risk the shock of breaking them quite and the hazard of forming new ones. The incident I mean was this : one night that the Duke of Newcastle came half-drunk from a Westminster-School feast, where he and Lord Carteret (being both Westminster scholars) had dined together, he went directly to Sir Robert Walpole's, and made a tender in form of Lord Carteret's service, offering at the same time to be surety for his good behaviour; which Sir Robert Walpole took with a high hand, and told his Grace (Mr. Pelham and Horace Walpole only being present), "lam glad, my Lord, you have given 1737. PORTEOUS RIOT BILL. 335 me this opportunity once for all to let you know my determined sentiments on this matter, and without further expostulation on what you would have me do which I will not do, or what I would hinder you doing and cannot, — that your Grace must take your choice between me and him ; and if you are angry at my saying this, I care not : I have said it to your betters, and I '11 stick to it." When Sir Robert Walpole told this to Lord Hervey, he said, at the same time, that the Duke of Newcastle's interest was at so low an ebb at Court, that to expel the House of Pelham from St. James's, if he went about it, would not cost him twenty-four hours' work. But he added too, that he was too old to form new schemes and new plans of government, and therefore must rub on with this as long as it would go, and when it would last no longer he must throw up his cards. He said all this, too, to Lord Isla, who told it to Lord Hervey, not knowing Lord Hervey had had it from Sir Robert himself. When the Scotch Bill went down to the House of Commons, all the Scotch members being against it on a national consideration, and all the Tories, from their general principle of opposing all bills of pains and penalties, it was impossible for the Court to pass the Bill in the form it was sent down ; and as the Court was earnestly solicitous that the Parliament, after this long inquiry, should not let so atrocious a crime and so impudent an insult to the Government pass without any mark of censure, or even a show of punishment, so Sir Robert Walpole was forced to labour very hard to prevent the Bill from being entirely flung out. After 336 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXXII. many days spent in long debates on several points in the Bill, many more passed in hearing counsel and evidence for and against the personal and town parts of it, many divisions — and most of them very near ones — and several very warm contests, a Bill (for it would be very improper to call it the Bill, considering the changes made therein) passed the House of Commons, consisting only of these two articles : the one to disable Mr. Alex ander Wilson, late Provost of Edinburgh, from ever holding for the future any office of profit or trust in Great Britain, or Ireland, or any of his Majesty's dominions ; and the other to fine the town of Edin burgh two thousand pounds, and give it to the widow of Captain Porteous. This last article was originally intended to be in the Bill, but, being a money-matter, was left to be added in the House of Commons, that no offence might be given to endanger the Bill on account of those pecuniary privileges of which the Commons were so jealous and on all occasions so im- moveably tenacious. The Duke of Newcastle and my Lord Chancellor were very angry to see the child which the one had begot, and both of them had nursed with so much care and tenderness in the House of Lords, so mutilated and defaced in the House of Commons ; and the generality of mankind, who looked on these great transactions in cool blood, were not a little jocose on the two Houses of Parliament having been employed five months in declaring a man should never again be a magistrate who had never desired to be one, and in raising two thousand pounds on the city of Edinburgh to give the cook-maid widow of Captain Porteous, and make her, 1737. MR. PULTENEY. 337 with most unconjugal joy, bless the hour in which her husband was hanged. Mr. Pulteney's conduct in all these Scotch affairs was as little to be approved as in the three per cent. business, and less to be accounted for ; since the reason why he who proposed one day to govern this country should have taken this opportunity to ingra tiate himself with the Scotch is very evident ; and why he should have acted the absent neutral part he did, in never attending any one of the debates on this subject, I believe nobody would be able to assign any satisfac tory cause.3 Forty-five members in one House, and sixteen in another, make too considerable a body of men to be neglected, especially considering how unitedly they generally move ; and the opportunities of joining them in opposition to a court are so few, that Mr. Pulteney's slipping this was, in my opinion, as great a solecism in politics as any man could be guilty of. The Prince made the same blunder ; for had his Royal Highness, instead of lying quiet, and not interesting himself one way or other in this question, united his little band and fought under the Scotch banner in this contest, it is not impossible but that some of the Scotch Members — as rarely as gratitude influences Scotch con duct — might, when his 100,000?. came to be again under 3 This observation might, I think, have been turned the other way ; for if Mr. Pulteney and the Prince (whom Lord Hervey in the next paragraph brings under the same censure) thought of having " one day to govern the country," they might naturally dislike the precedent of such a scandalous transaction escaping with so inadequate a punishment, though, on the other hand, they were reluctant to support their personal and political enemy the Minister. VOL. II. Z 338 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXXII. parliamentary consideration, not only have remembered, but endeavoured to repay, this obligation. When the Bill, with all these alterations, came back to the House of Lords, the Duke of Argyle opposed its passing, even thus blunted, as strongly as he had done before its edge was so effectually taken off; and took this opportunity to evacuate his long silent and treasured spleen against the Duke of Newcastle in so barefaced and provoking a manner, that most people condemned the one for offering this affront, and everybody the other for not resenting it. He began with turning the Bill, as it now stood, into ridicule ; and then, directing his eyes4 and his words to the Duke of Newcastle, said "it would be a very dangerous precedent to punish everybody in office for not acting as if they had sense ; of the two it would be more reasonable to punish those who put them there ; but he was not for punishing either ; for everybody knew that there might be very good reasons for giving people employments in the State besides their having sense : they might have great titles, great estates, great property, great zeal to serve whoever 4 This seems to imply that Lord Hervey was present at the scene, but it is certain that either on the reality or pretence of his father's illness (see post, 345), he was at Ickworth about the middle of June, when the bill came back from the Commons ; and Lord Bristol afterwards wrote to Lord Hervey — " It has been told me with strong assurance that you have been severely frowned on at Court for pretending you were sent for by an express from hence, that I might see you before I died ; whereas, it seems, it has been found out that you had only a mind by your absence at that juncture to avoid being concerned in the Scotch affair." The generous old Earl goes on to say, that if the King's displeasure should make Lord Hervey wish to leave his servile, disparaging connexion with those selfish, ungrateful people, which he always detested, "you shall always be sure to find not only my house and arms open to receive you and yours with the utmost joy and tenderness, but my purse too, to enable you to live quite as well as you do, let the difference be what it will." 1737. ARGYLE'S ATTACK ON NEWCASTLE. 339 was in power; nay, some — I won't say all" — (con tinued his Grace) " may, with very little sense, have great integrity and good characters; and such men it may be very proper for a Government to employ in offices where sense is not much wanted ; and for the men of rank, titles, and estates, — they, too, may often be put very properly into places that require some ta lents, though their own may be very unfit for such places ; because we all know there are people of very mean parts who will condescend to bear the name of offices whilst others do the business,5 and let the Govern ment have all the advantage of their estates without exposing the Government to the disadvantages of being modelled by their understandings. But if such men were to see that they were to be responsible, like this poor provost, for not acting with all the circumspection of able men, when everybody knows they might as well pretend to infallibility as ability, I think it would pre vent many people from entering into the service of the Government whom it is very right from their property to attach to the interest of the Government: and I think besides it would be as great an injustice for the House of Lords to punish a man for being a fool as for having the gout ; they are both infirmities, not faults ; they are the misfortunes, not the transgressions, of those who are infected with them, and make them much more proper objects of compassion than of resentment." His Grace of Argyle enlarged much on these topics, and stared the Duke of Newcastle in the face every time he said anything he designed should be applied to 5 Perhaps an allusion to the suspicion mentioned ante, p. 1 54, n. 23, z2 340 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXXII. him, and particularly the name of fool,- — the Duke of Newcastle all the while appearing under the utmost uneasiness, not knowing what to do, what to say, which way to look, and, doubling the rapidity of all those graceful motions and attitudes which, even when he was not out of countenance, used to take their turn in his figure, whilst he picked his nose, his ears, &c. When the Duke of Argyle had finished, the Duke of Newcastle, thinking himself obliged to say something, got up, and articulated so incoherently and so unintelligibly for half an hour together, that this strange harangue seemed a caricature even of his own usual strange performances, and looked (as Shakspeare makes Caesar say of Cas- sius's smiles) as if he mocked himself. Most people blamed the Duke of Argyle for so squab an attack ; and those who had a mind to blame him most called it quite unprovoked. Provocation that day, nor any day in public, the Duke of Argyle had certainly received none ; but he told Lord Hervey that to his certain knowledge the Duke of Newcastle had often, in repeating what had been said in debates, misreported things that had fallen from him, not only to the King and Queen, but to Sir Robert Walpole, which he had known again by his brother Lord Isla ; " and, my Lord," continued he, " it was my brother, as little as he thinks him his friend, and as little as he deserves he should be so, who pre vented me once this winter from breaking this stick which you see in my hand over his Grace's head." The Scotch Bill, however, passed just in the shape it came up new-modelled from the House of Commons ; and thus ended this long examination into the murder of Porteous, which had made so great a noise in the 1737. LICENTIOUSNESS OF THE STAGE. 31 1 two Houses of Parliament and the two kingdoms, of whose blood thousands were guilty, though not one drop was shed to atone for it. I think I cannot, therefore, conclude this narrative better than with the words of Lucan — " Quicquid multis peccatur, inultum est."6 At the end of the session a Bill was passed to settle a jointure of 50,000?. a-year on the Princess; and an other Bill, which was hurried almost as fast through both Houses, to put all players whatever under the direction of the Lord Chamberlain, and to prevent even his having a power to license any company of actors in any part ofthe kingdom but in the city of Westminster, or where the King should reside. The present great licentiousness of the stage did cer tainly call for some restraint and regulation; and besides the general liberty that was taken at this time with Religion as well as Government in the theatrical re presentations, Sir Robert Walpole had got into his hands two plays in manuscript, which were the most barefaced and scurrilous abuse on the persons and characters of the King and Queen and the whole Court, and made these insults on their Majesties a plea for having re course to Parliament to put a stop to their being acted, saying he had tried all other methods, and found every other would be ineffectual to prevent these pieces coming on the stage. In the House of Commons little opposition was made to this Bill by anybody of note but Mr. Pulteney, nor in the House of Lords but by Lord Chesterfield, who made one of the most lively and ingenious speeches against it I ever heard in Parliament, full of wit, of the 6 " All go free where multitudes offend." — Rowe, Phars. v. 260. 342 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXXII. genteelest satire, and in the most polished, classical style that the Petronius of any time ever wrote :7 it was extremely studied, seemingly easy, well delivered, and universally admired. On such occasions nobody spoke better than Lord Chesterfield ; but as he never could, or at least never did, speak but prepared, and from dis sertations he had written down in his closet and got by heart, he never made any figure in a reply, nor was his manner of speaking like debating, but declaiming. Lord Carteret, through his emissaries to the Queen's ear, pleaded great merit at Court from his having said no thing against this Bill, which he knew was a favourite point at St. James's ; and desired those who had the care of his cause on this occasion not to forget to put her Majesty in mind of the same tacit compliment he had paid the Court this year in the question on the army. The mentioning this last circumstance puts me in mind of a thing Lord Aylesford,8 an old Tory Lord in the Opposition, said to Lord Carteret on that occasion in my hearing after the division was over: — "By — , Carteret, I know not what you mean by this ; but whatever you mean, I believe after this you will not find it very easy i This speech as we have it seems hardly entitled to the high praise which its delivery extorted from Lord Hervey. The only passage that can be selected as wit must, indeed, have told well : — " This bill is not only an encroachment on liberty, but it is likewise an encroachment on property: wit, my lords, is a sort of property — the property of those who have it, and too often the only property they have to depend on. It is indeed but a precarious dependence. Wa, my lords, thank God! have a dependence of another kind." — Works, ii. 336. Maty says (i. 155) that the report was not corrected by Lord Chesterfield, and afterwards (ii. 320) that it was ; but no report can ever preserve the lighter and more brilliant graces of an oration. The arguments, however, are but weak, and expe rience has proved their futility. s Heneage Finch, second Earl. He, while Lord Guernsey, had had office under Queen Anne's last ministry. 1737. LORD CARTERET.- — SIR GEORGE OXENDEN. 343 to get any party or any set of men to trust you again. lam sure I will not ; and where you will find fools that will, I don't know." Lord Carteret only smiled, and said he was ready to fight if anybody would have begun the battle ; but he would not always be thrust forward like the forlorn-hope on every attack. To this my Lord Aylesford replied, "Why, did not Bathurst begin and make a motion for 12,000 men only ? No, that excuse won't do. By — , Carteret, we all know you ;" and then walked off; after which Lord Carteret turned to us who were sitting by him, and said, with a cheerful uncon cern, not at all affected or put on, but quite natural — " Poor Aylesford is really angry." At the end of this session [21st June] the King in his Speech thanked both Houses of Parliament for their conduct in his son's affair, without naming it directly, but in a manner nobody could mistake, any more than the hint he gave them, at the end of his Speech, of his hoping such an extraordinary question would never be moved again : but notwithstanding this hint, nobody had the least doubt of its being one of the first questions that would be moved in the next session. Sir George Oxenden,9 a Lord of the Treasury, having voted for the Prince on this question, was turned out just before the Parliament rose, and Mr. Earle put in his place.10 This 9 Fifth Baronet ; born in 1694. It was he who moved the impeachment of Lord Chancellor Macclesfield in 1725. io Giles Earle, M.P. for Marlborough, an early friend of the Duke of Argyle. He afterwards attached himself to Walpole, and was Chairman of the Committees of the House of Commons from 1727 to Walpole's over throw in 1741, of which Earle"s ejection from that office was the first mortal symptom. He was a man of a coarse, broad wit. Sir C. H. Wil liams bas preserved a lively image of his style and sentiments, which fully confirms Lord Hervey's character of him. — Works, i. 30. See also Suffolk Correspondence, i. 10. 344 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXXII. Earle was originally a dependent on the Duke of Ar gyle, a man of no great abilities, of a sordid avaricious temper, a very bad character, and as profligate in his discourse as his conduct; professing himself always ready, without examining what it was, to do anything a minister bid him : by which means he had worked himself so well into Sir Robert's good graces, that, merely by his own personal interest there (which even his attachment at the same time to the Duke of Ar gyle could not outweigh), he got himself preferred to this high post, the whole world exclaiming against such a prostitution of the office. Lord Hervey solicited it for the eldest Mr. Fox, but Sir Robert Walpole, having a mind to take Earle, instead of the immediate gift of this employment, gave Lord Hervey an absolute pro mise of a peerage for Mr. Fox (though undated) when ever he should make any new peers. A peerage being what Lord Hervey had always most desired for Mr. Fox, he entered readily into this composition ; but said, as he had asked nothing for himself, and had only the two Mr. Foxes and his own brother under his protec tion, he should think it very hard if nothing this year was done for any of them ; and intimated, though he should always serve Sir Robert to the best of his power himself, that he could not answer for their doing so ; and owned he could not be so little a friend to them as to advise or desire men of their age to make them selves reversionally desperate with the Prince without any acquisition or reward in present. Lord Hervey pushed this expostulation in several conferences with Sir Robert so far that Sir Robert took it ill of him ; but did that from being displeased with Lord Hervey, 1737. SIR GEORGE OXENDEN. 345 which, to show how little the favours and friendships of ministers sometimes correspond, I believe he would not have done had he been better satisfied with him ; for Sir Robert gave the youngest Mr. Fox the employment of Surveyor of the King's Works [17 th June], which was an office not only very creditable, but worth above eleven hundred pounds a-year ; to the eldest brother he confirmed the Peerage promise he had made before through Lord Hervey ; and to Mr. Hervey11 he gave a sum of money in present, and a promise to provide for him the. first vacancy. When Lord Hervey, who was now in Suffolk (where he had been sent for on his father's being ill), wrote to the Bishop of Norwich to complain in his name to Sir Robert Walpole that nothing more was done for his brother, Sir Robert told the Bishop he could not help it ; that there was but this one employ ment he had to give ; that if Lord Hervey had been in town he would have given him his choice between Mr. Fox and his brother ; but the time pressing for making out the writ for a new election had made him choose as he thought Lord Hervey would approve, as Mr. Hervey would take money in the mean time till another employment fell, and the other would not. Sir George Oxenden nobody was sorry for, for he was a very vicious, ungrateful, good-for-nothing fellow. There was a great similitude between the character of this man and that of Clodius : 12 he passed his whole n No doubt his brother, the too celebrated Tom Hervey, who succeeded him in the representation of Bury, and who soon became so remarkable for the elegance of his manners, the brilliancy of his parts, and, to call them by the gentlest name, the eccentricities of his conduct. — See notes to Croker's Boswell, pp. 183, 684. 12 Lord Hervey had here made a comparison of some circumstances of Sir 346 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXXII. life, like Clodius, in all manner of debauchery and with low company ; he had had two children by the wife of his most intimate friend Mr. Thompson,13 from whom, upon Sir George Oxenden's account, she was separated, and died in childbed. Besides this, as Clodius had debauched the wife of his friend Caesar, Sir George Oxenden had done the same favour to the wife14 of the eldest son of his friend, benefactor, and patron, Sir Robert Walpole, for Sir Robert had always been partial to Sir George Oxenden, taken him from his first entrance into the world under his protection, and, by his favour, early and undeservedly raised him into this office in the Treasury. This intrigue with Lady Walpole, and her having but one son, which the world gave to Sir George Oxenden, is alluded to in these two lines, in a copy of verses written by Lady Mary Wortley,15 wherein she supposes Sir Robert Walpole speaking of Sir George Oxenden : — " Triumph enough for that enchanting face, That my damnation must enrich his race." George Oxenden's life and character with those of Clodius as described by Velleius Paterculus (ii. 45), which are so obviously and indecently overstrained — and, indeed, in the main points untrue — that I have thought myself justified in omitting them. 13 Edward Thompson, M.P. for York, married in 1725 Arabella Dunch, daughter and co-heiress of Edmund Dunch, Esq., M.P., Master of the Household to George I. Lady Mary Wortley wrote prophetically of this match, "Ned. Thompson is as happy as the money and charms of Belle Dunch can make him, and a miserable dog for all that," ( Works, ii. 169,) and she also lamented the lady's misfortune in " An Epitaph on Mrs. Thompson " (Ib. iii. 403), which this statement explains, but it gives no hint that her frailty had been marked by any peculiar scandal, which the words that I have suppressed impute to the parties. i* Margaret Rolle, a great heiress, married very young, whose adventures and misconduct, probably attributable to insanity, make so great a figure in the correspondence of her brother-in-law, Horace Walpole the younger. is I cannot find these lines in any of Lady Mary's published pieces. 1737. SIR GEORGE OXENDEN. 347 But supposing it were so, I do not imagine, since this boy would, as well as any other, transmit the name of Wal pole to posterity, with the title Sir Robert had got for his son, that Sir Robert cared very much who had begot him ; and I have the more reason for being of this opinion, as Sir Robert Walpole more than once, in speaking of this child to me, has, with all the sang froid imaginable, called him that boy, got by nobody knows who, as if he had been speaking of a foundling.16 But had Sir Robert Walpole been more solicitous about the father of this boy, he would not have been without comfort ; for though the public, from the little propen sity it has to err, had always rather give a child to any father than the man whose name it bears, and did pretty currently impute this to Sir George Oxenden, yet, from the extreme aversion my Lady Walpole showed to this poor little animal from the very hour of its birth, all judicious, candid, and unprejudiced commentators saga ciously and naturally concluded that she, at least, who must be the ablest judge, entertained no doubt of its being her husband's. Sir George Oxenden was a pretty figure, and, notwithstanding his profligate conduct and character, was modest in his public behaviour; but, though not wanting parts, was much inferior in this article to his likeness, Clodius. Lord Westmoreland was likewise at this time turned out of being captain of the fourth troop of Horse- Guards for having voted for the Prince. The Duke of Montague was put in his place ; and his Grace having is All this corroborates the anecdotes told in Lady Louisa Stuart's Intro duction to the last edition of Lady Mary Wortley's Works of the strange laxity of Sir Robert Walpole's ideas on all such matters. 348 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXXII. formerly sold his troop to Lord Pembroke, and Lord Westmoreland having originally bought into the army, this change gave the old Duchess of Marlborough occa sion to say, not amiss, that the Court had taken away a troop of Horse-Guards from Lord Westmoreland, who never had anything in the army but what he had bought, to give it to the Duke of Montague, who never had had anything but what he had sold. Lord Archi bald Hamilton was the only one who had not voted for the King in the Prince's question who was not turned out : he had only been absent ; but for this sin of omis sion had certainly been put out of the Admiralty, had Sir Robert Walpole's good-nature, or policy, I know not which, or both together, not saved him — for the King was set upon doing it, and the Queen not averse. As soon as the Parliament was up, the Court removed to Richmond ; and though it was rumoured among people in the town, and suspected by some in the pa lace, that the King would go to Hanover this year, yet it was by those only who knew nothing of the present carte du pais, for Madame Walmoden seemed to those who knew the King best to be quite forgot ; nobody had named her these six months ,• not the King himself had this great while mentioned her to the Queen ; and he seemed so thoroughly easy, that those who observed his Majesty most narrowly imagined he thought as little as he spoke of her : the child she had had by him (as he thought at least) was dead :17 and the most incredu- 17 If this was so, it must have been to a subsequent son that Horace Wal pole's anecdote (ante, vol. i. p. 99) relates, though he would hardly be old enough to be called a lad, for even the elder would have been under eleven when Lord Chesterfield is said to have mistaken Sir W. Russell for him. 1737. LADY DELORAINE. 349 lous now began to cease doubting of his Majesty's taste for Lady Deloraine18 — not merely from her taking Lady Suffolk's place in the evening, in the country, next the King at the commerce-table among the maids of ho nour — but her walking tSte-a-tete with him often at Richmond, and her own manner of talking, at this time, at last convinced everybody of what she had long taken infinite pains to prevent their being deceived in. She told Lady Sundon, with whom she was very little ac quainted, that the King had been very importunate these two years ; and had often told her how unkind she was to refuse him : that it was mere crossness, for that he was sure her husband (Mr. Windham, who was Sub-Governor to the Duke) would not take it at all ill. Lady Sundon was so extremely surprised at this very communicative conversation of Lady Delo- raine's, that she knew not what answer to make to her ; and told me she muttered something, but could not really remember what. Lady Deloraine, speaking one day at Richmond to Lord Hervey of the King, in a room full of company, said to him, in the midst of her conversa tion (in a very abrupt whisper), " Do you know the King has been in love with me these two years ?" To which Lord Hervey, a little embarrassed for fear of shocking her vanity by seeming to doubt it, or drawing on farther marks of her confidence by giving seriously in to this, only answered with a smile, " Who is not in love with you ?" Sir Robert Walpole one day, whilst is See ante, p. 36, n. 6. A marginal note of Lord Hervey's states that the King had at an earlier period boasted of his success, but that his Lord ship doubted his Majesty's veracity on his point : those doubts, it seems, had now vanished. 350 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXXII. she was standing in the hall at Richmond, with her little son, of about a year old, in her arms, said to her " That's a very pretty boy, Lady Deloraine ; whose is it ?" To which her Ladyship, before half-a-dozen people, without taking the question at all ill, replied, " Mr. Windham, upon honour;" and then added, laughing, " but I will not promise whose the next shall be." However, in private, when she spoke seriously to Sir Robert Wal pole, she pretended not to have yet yielded ; and said " she was not of an age to act like a vain or a loving fool, but if she did consent that she would be well paid ;" adding, too, that "nothing but interest should bribe her; for as to love, she had enough of that, as well as a younger man, at home ; and that she thought old men and kings ought always to be made to pay well ;" which, considering whom she spoke to,19 as well as whom she spoke of, made this speech doubly well judged. To many people, from whom it used to come round in a whisper to half the inhabitants of the palace, she used to brag of this royal conquest, and say she thought Eng land in general had great obligations to her, and parti cularly the Administration ; for that it was owing to her, and her only, that the King had not gone abroad. Everybody knew, she said, that Sir Robert Walpole and the Queen had done all they could to hinder his jour ney to Hanover the year before to no purpose ; and they would have attempted it again to no purpose this year, had it not been for the King's attachment to her. In short, her daily and hourly conversation was all in the same strain ; for which reason, I think, it would be 19 Allusion to Sir Robert's affair with Miss Skerrett. 1737. MRS. TOWNSHEND. 351 great tautology in me to add to this account that her Ladyship was one of the vainest as well as one of the simplest women that ever lived : but to this wretched head there was certainly joined one of the prettiest faces that ever was formed ; which, though she was now five- and-thirty, had a bloom upon it, too, that not one wo man in ten thousand has at fifteen ; and what is more extraordinary * * * 20 Whilst the King and Queen were at Richmond, the Prince and Princess were at Kew; and having, soon after they came, declared Mrs. Townshend (to whom the King had twice refused his consent) woman of the Bedchamber to the Princess, they sent her with Lady Effingham, the lady in waiting on the Princess, to Rich mond to be presented to the King and Queen. The King was so angry at this, which he thought done, as to be sure it was, on purpose to shock him, that, hearing Mrs. Townshend was in the drawing-room, and on what errand, he sent Lord Harcourt, his lord in waiting, to let her know he would not allow her to be presented ; upon which, without saying one word, Lady Effingham and she went out of the room and returned to Kew to give an account of their expedition : but, notwithstand ing this new bustle, the Prince and Princess, without taking the least notice of what had happened, put Mrs. Townshend into waiting, and continued themselves to come to the Lodge every Sunday and Thursday to make a visit for five minutes before dinner to the King and Queen, who both of them always spoke to the Princess, but neither of them one word to the Prince, though the Queen was only mute, whilst the King was absolutely 2° Here there is a chasm apparently of a page or two. 352 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXXn. blind too, not seeming even to know he was in the room. There had been various opinions for many months passed on the Princess's being with child ; but whilst the Court was at Richmond, a few days before Sir Robert Walpole went his usual summer journey into Norfolk, the Prince wrote the following letter to the Queen, and sent it by my Lord North, his lord of the Bedchamber then in waiting : — " Madame, " De Kew> ce 5 de Jnillet. " Le Dr. Hollings et Mrs. Cannons21 viennent de me dire qu'il n'y a plus a douter de la grossesse de la Princesse ; d'abord que j'ai eu leur autorite, je n'ai pas voulu manquer d'en faire part a votre Majeste, et de la supplier d'en informer le Roi en meme tems. Je suis, avee tout le respect possible, " Madame, " De votre Majeste " Le tres-humble et tres-obeissant fils et serviteur, " Frederick." The next time the Princess came to Court after the Queen had received this letter, her Majesty, after making her Royal Highness rather the proper compliments than her sincere felicitations on this occasion, asked the Princess when she was to lie in ? To which her Royal Highness answered, " 1 don't know." The Queen then asked " if she was quick," and was again answered, " / don't know." " Is it, then, the beginning of your being with child ?" said the Queen ; but the variation in the question produced none in the answer, which was still " / don't know :" from which the Queen concluding the 21 A midwife. — Lord Hervey. 1737. LORD SCARBOROUGH. 353 Princess had received from conjugal authority absolute commands to make no other reply than " I don't know," whatever should be asked, her Majesty gave over her interrogatories, and began to talk of something else. About this time Lord Scarborough was seized with an illness in his head, which everybody thought was madness, and everybody, consequently, who said what they thought, called by that name ;22 but as many people had a real regard for Lord Scarborough, and many more thought it a good air to affect it, they took advan tage of an overturn in a coach which he had had some days before this disorder grew strong enough to confine him, and imputed all these symptoms, which had been upon him in a less degree for many months before, to this accident. The Queen, who never loved Lord Scarbo rough for the merits he had, and yet believed he had one which he had not (which was a personal attach ment to the King), affected being extremely concerned for him, and sent, for a fortnight together, once or twice a-day to London, to inquire after his health. Both she and the King were equally lavish on this occasion in their encomiums on Lord Scarborough's worth and value, but not equally sincere in them ; when they used to talk in their private hours to Lord Hervey of the affection he had personally for the King, Lord Hervey (from a rule he had laid down, of never, unprovoked, doing anybody any ill offices, where ill offices were of so much consequence) always gave in to it ; though, the very day before Lord Scarborough was confined, Lord Hervey had gone with him tSte-a-tite from Richmond 22 There can be little doubt that it was so. See ante, vol. i. p. 289, n. 13. VOL. II. 2 A 354 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXXII. to London, and their whole discourse was how unami- able the King was, and how he contrived (notwithstand ing he had some good qualities, which everybody must esteem) to make it absolutely impossible for anybody to love him : for example, they both agreed that the King certainly had personal courage, that he was se cret, and that he would not lie — though I remember, when I once said the last of these things to Sir Robert Walpole, he said, " Not often" — but Lord Hervey and Lord Scarborough both agreed, too, that notwithstanding these good qualities, which were, like most good quali ties, very rare, and consequently very respectable, his Majesty's brusqueries to everybody by turns, whoever came near him, his never bestowing anything from favour, and often even disobliging those on whom he conferred benefits, made him so disagreeable to all his servants, that people could not stand the ridicule even of affecting to love him for fear of being thought his dupes ; and thus, those whose interest it was to hide his faults, and support his character in the world, were often the very persons who hurt it most ; as people at a distance, who railed at him, might be thought to do it from ignorance or pique ; whilst all his own servants giving him up in the manner it was the fashion to do, must be concluded by all the world to proceed from their thinking it impossible to conceal it, or from their hating him too much to desire it. What gave rise to this conversation was a thing (in the style of many his Majesty uttered) which he had said that very day, at his dressing, before, at least, half- a-dozen people, upon Lord Hervey's telling his Majesty that he believed he was very glad, after so long a ses- 1737. THE KING'S RUDENESS. 355 sion, to get a little fresh air in the country ; to which his Majesty very naturally, but very impoliticly, replied, " Yes, my Lord, I am very glad to be got away, for I have seen of late, in London, so many hungry faces every day, that I was afraid they would have eat me at last." The number of things of this kind he used to be perpetually saying would fill volumes if I were to recount them all ; for between those he affected to advance by way of showing his military bravery, and those which flowed naturally from his way of thinking and absolute incapacity of feeling, nobody could be with him an hour without hearing something of this kind that would give them an ill opinion of him for their lives. I once heard him say he would much sooner forgive anybody that had murdered a man, than anybody that cut down one of his oaks ; because an oak was so much longer growing to a useful size than a man, and, conse quently, one loss would be sooner supplied than the other : and one evening, after a horse had run away, and killed himself against an iron spike, poor Lady Suffolk saying it was very lucky the man who was upon him had received no hurt, his Majesty snapped her very short, and said, "Yes, I am very lucky, truly: pray where is the luck ? I have lost a good horse, and I have got a booby of a groom still to keep." But that I may not tire myself with writing, and others with reading, more samples of his Majesty's tenderness to humankind in general, and to those who served him in particular,23 1 shall return to the thread of my historical narrative. 23 Lady Louisa Stuart tells us that Lord Hervey's own conversational ex aggerations were sometimes misunderstood and distorted by dull people into 2 a2 356 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXXII. Soon after the Court removed from Richmond to Hampton Court, Sir Robert Walpole returned from Norfolk, and told Lord Hervey he found, as usual, that in his absence strong attacks had been made upon his interest at Court. His reasons for saying so were that the King had recurred to finding fault with the message Sir Robert had made him send in the winter to the Prince ; that the Queen had told him Lord Carteret's constant conversation at present was in praise of her ; that she knew he was writing the history of his own times, and had told it to those who had related it again to her that he would make her Majesty's name famous to all posterity ; that she knew Pulteney and Wynd ham — allowing Lord Carteret superior abilities and thinking he had a superior interest to them at Court — had entered into an agreement with him to act in concert with him and under his direction ; but that Carteret, at the same time, had said he knew Pulteney very well, that he was a very useful second in Opposition, but a man who had such flights and starts that no minister could ever depend upon him, and such impracticable fits of popularity that no Court could ever keep him long. To this Sir Robert answered, " Madam, I understand all this perfectly. People who serious offences. I cannot but think that he from personal pique does the King the same injustice. The two boutades, here noticed are obviously mauvaises plaisanteries, and indicate rather a coarse taste than a bad heart. I remember to have heard a Parisian wit professing to lament some trees of the Boulevard that were destroyed by Fieschi's bullets, more than the people, because, he said, " One could collect as great a crowd again in five minutes, but could not replace the trees in fifty years ;" but no one thought the worse of the wit's heart for this paradox, which is very like his Majesty's estimate of the value of his oak. 1737. CARTERET COURTS THE QUEEN. 357 wish Carteret well, and me ill, have made this report to your Majesty to set off the dexterity of my Lord Carteret ; but it is mere dexterity on one side I believe, and I hope it is so on the other ; for he tries this way of bragging of his power over Pulteney and Wyndham to get an interest with your Majesty ; and boasts to them of his interest in your Majesty in order to get a weight with them, which I am convinced he has not ; but, supposing it true, and that Pulteney did speak favourably of Carteret and resolve to submit to him, and that Carteret spoke with so little regard of Pulteney, what would these two circumstances, taken for granted, amount to farther than this — that Pulteney says that of Carteret's interest with you which Carteret has made him believe ; and that Carteret, to recommend himself to you, speaks of Pulteney as he imagines you, who do not love Pulteney, think of him yourself and like to hear him say of him ?" These reports Sir Robert suspected to be made to the Queen by Sir Luke Schaub,84 Monsieur de Montandre, and Lady Sundon ; and when he told Lord Hervey that he believed the last had the greatest share in them, added, " I know you have a partiality for her, but she is a damned inveterate bitch 25 against me, and I know where and when she has seen Carteret lately more than once or twice." Lord Hervey owned he had a partiality for her : he said she had, unasked by him, and 24 Schaub was a Swiss, a native of Basle, who had been private secre tary to Lord Stanhope, and was afterwards employed as Envoy at Madrid, and in 1722, through Lord Carteret, as Minister in France ; but was super seded next year by Horace Walpole, upon Carteret's change from being Secretary of State to the Lord Lieutenancy of Ireland. 25 See ante, p. 184, n. 5. 358 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXXII. unboasted of by her, done him several times, the summer after he had quarrelled with the Prince, many good offices with the Queen, which he had heard of since by the Queen and the Princess Caroline ; and that he should think himself very ungrateful not to feel obligations of that kind laid on him at a time when few people took his part, and when he could not speak for himself. Sir Robert said everybody had their parti alities, and few for so good reasons as Lord Hervey had given. " But your partialities, my Lord, should not blind you : 1 remember you would not believe she had spoke to the Queen against Madame Walmoden's coining over." " Nor do I believe it now," replied Lord Hervey. " Why, then, my Lord, the Queen told me herself she had." Lord Hervey said, " I have done, Sir ; you have stopped my mouth." But I must here observe, by the by, that Lord Hervey was sure Sir Robert must have lied on this occasion, because both the Queen and Lady Sundon had told him that she had never, to the Queen, named Madame Walmoden directly or indirectly on any occasion in her life. However, in this affair relating to Lord Carteret, Lord Hervey (though he neither said he disbelieved Lady Sundon's part in it, nor owned the reason he had not to doubt it) easily gave credit to all Sir Robert Walpole said upon it, because Lady Sundon herself, as well as Sir Robert Walpole, had told Lord Hervey that she had met Lord Carteret twice on the Queen's gravel walk in St. James's Park that runs behind their two houses, and because, both from Lady Sundon and the Queen, Lord Hervey had heard that particular of Lord Carteret's writing the history of his own times — 1737. BOLINGBROKE!, CARTERET, CHESTERFIELD. 359 from Lady Sundon the very night Lord Carteret said it ; and with the addition of " Madam, if you dare own at Court you talk to so obnoxious a man as I am, you may tell the Queen I have been giving her fame this morning." This the Queen also told to Lord Hervey, so that he had it from all three without any one of the three knowing that he had had it from the other two. The Queen, at the same time she told Lord Hervey this cir cumstance, said she heard Carteret gave himself great airs of resolving, if ever he came into the Administration, to support her ; and added, " An impertinent coxcomb I I think it is rather me that must support him :" which looked as if those who had endeavoured to make his court by this report, had not done it in very judicious terms. One morning when she was talking to Lord Hervey of this History, and Carteret's bragging he would make her famous to posterity and many future ages, when nobody was present but the King, his Majesty said, " Yes, I dare say he will paint you in fine colours, that dirty liar I" " Why not ?" said the Queen ; " good things come out of dirt sometimes ; I have ate very good asparagus raised out of dung." Lord Hervey said he knew three people that were now writing the History of his Majesty's Reign who could possibly know no thing of the secrets of the palace and his Majesty's closet, and yet would, he doubted not, pretend to make their whole history one continued dissection of both. " You mean," said the King, " Lords Bolingbroke, Chesterfield, and Carteret." " I do," replied Lord 360 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXXII. Hervey.26 " They will all three," said the King, "have about as much truth in them as the Mille et Une Nuits. Not but I shall like to read Bolingbroke's, who, of all those rascals and knaves that have been lying against me these ten years, has certainly the best parts and the most knowledge : he is a scoundrel, but he is a scoundrel of a higher class than Chesterfield. Chesterfield is a little tea-table scoundrel, that tells little womanish lies to make quarrels in families ; and tries to make women lose their reputations, and make their husbands beat them, without any object but to give himself airs ; as if anybody could believe a woman could like a dwarf-baboon."27 The Queen said all these three Histories would be three heaps of lies, but lies of very different kinds ; she said Bolingbroke's would be great lies, Chesterfield's little lies, and Carteret's lies of both sorts. " But which," said the Queen to Lord Hervey, " for the style, should you like best to read ?" Lord Hervey said, " I should certainly choose Lord Bolingbroke's ; for, though Lord Bolingbroke has no idea of wit, yet his satire is keener than anybody's that has. Besides, his writings are always larded with a great deal of knowledge as well as seasoned with satire ; his words 26 We have seen nothing of Lord Carteret's memoirs, which it seems he was actually writing ; nor of Bolingbroke's, which he was only supposed to be writing ; nor of Chesterfield's, anything more than half-a-dozen charac ters — and particularly of the King and Queen — written, I presume, in his old age, with as much candour and impartiality as could have been ex pected, and with none of the affectation of point or wit which Lord Hervey foretold. All this is curious from him who was the real memoir writer. 27 This seems to confirm Lord Hervey's unfavourable description of Lord Chesterfield's personal appearance, ante, i. 96, and indeed Horace Walpole's, who says he was " unlovely in his person." 1737. BOLINGBROKE, CARTERET, CHESTERFIELD. 361 are well chosen, his diction extremely raised,28 and his style so flowing that it does not seem at all studied or forced ; and when he makes use of uncommon words, seems to do it from not being in a common way of think ing, rather than seeking them. Lord Chesterfield's Me moirs will have a great deal of wit in them, but you will see in every page he resolves to be witty ; every para graph will be an epigram. His style for short treatises is excellent, but in a long work all that labour and polish ing, which he bestows on everything he writes, will ap pear stiff and tiresome. Connection will be wanting ; and that want of transition which is so pardonable when it proceeds from haste, or a little negligence in running quick from one subject to another, will have an abrupt air and a disagreeable broken effect, in such a con strained studied style, that it has not in writings of a looser and more natural sort. For Lord Carteret's work, I am not so capable of conjecturing what it will be, as I have seen very few things of his writing ; but what I have, always seemed to me inaccurate, with a strong touch of bombast mixed with vulgarisms ; and like some ungenteel people's dress, whom one sees at once over-fine and yet fine but by halves, in a coat embossed instead of embroidered, and a dirty coarse shirt." 28 Elevated. 362 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXXHI. CHAPTER XXXIII. Princess's pregnancy — Kept secret — The Royal Family suspect that a fraud is intended — She is taken in labour at Hampton Court, and hurried by the Prince to St. James's — Details of this affair — Birth of a Princess — The Queen's Night Visit to the Princess — Indignation of the King and Queen — Opinions of the Queen, Walpole, and Lord Hervey on this matter — Lord Hervey's hatred of the Prince. I am now come to a very extraordinary occurrence, in which I shall be very particular. It had been long talked of that the Prince intended the Princess should lie-in in London; and the King and Queen having resolved she should not, measures were concerting to prevent her doing so. It was at last resolved — that is, the King and Queen and Sir Robert Walpole had agreed — that the King should send a message to the Prince to tell his Royal Highness that he would have the Princess lie-in at Hampton Court. Lord Hervey told the Queen and Princess Caroline that, notwith standing this message, he would answer for it the Princess would not lie-in where the King and Queen resided. The Queen asked him how he could imagine, as insolent as the Prince was, that he would venture to disobey the King's positive commands on this point. Lord Hervey said the Prince would pretend it was by chance; for as Dr. Hollings and Mrs. Cannons would be made to say that exercise was good for the Princess in her condition, she would be carried once or twice a-week to Kew or London, and, whichever 1737. THE PRINCESS'S PREGNANCY. 363 of these two places the Prince intended she should lie-in at, he would make her, when she was within a month of her time, affect to be taken ill; and as nobody could disprove her having the pains she would complain of, the King and Queen could not take it in prudence upon them to say she should be removed ; and there, of course, her Royal Highness would bring forth. "Well, if it is to be so," replied the Queen, "I cannot help it; but at her labour I positively will be, let her lie-in where she will ; for she cannot be brought to bed as quick as one can blow one's nose, and I will be sure it is her child.1 For my part, I do not see she is big ; you all say you see it, and therefore I suppose it is so, and that I am blind." The Queen was every day pressing Sir Robert Wal pole to have this message sent to the Prince : saying, " Sir Robert, we shall be catched ; he will remove her before he receives any oaders for her lying-in here, and will afterwards say that he talked so publicly of his intentions, he concluded if the King had not ap proved of them he should have heard something of it." Sir Robert said, as the Princess did not reckon till the beginning of October, that it was full time enough ; and in this manner, from day to day, this intended message was postponed, till it never went ; for on Sunday, the 31st of July [at Hampton Court], the Princess was 1 It appears from a marginal note of Lord Hervey's that the Queen and Princess Caroline had a strong suspicion that the Prince's wife was never likely to be pregnant, and that they, and (as will fully appear in the sequel) the King also believed that the Prince was capable of at tempting to introduce a supposititious child into the family. The strange delays and mysteries of all his proceedings with respect to the Princess's pregnancy increased that absurd prejudice, which Lord Hervey endea voured to combat, but in vain, till the birth of the child. 364 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXXIII. taken in the evening, after having dined in public that day with the King and Queen, so very ill, with all the symptoms of actual labour, that the Prince ordered a coach to be got ready that moment to carry her to London. Her pains came on so fast and so strong, that * * * *2 before they could get her out of the house. However, in this condition, M. Dunoyer, the dancing-master, lugging her down stairs and along the passages by one arm, and Mr. Bloodworth, one of the Prince's equerries, by the other, and the Prince in the rear, they, with much ado, got her into the coach ; Lady Archibald Hamilton and Mr. Towns hend remonstrating strongly against this imprudent step, and the Princess begging, for God's sake, the Prince would let her stay in quiet where she was, for that her pains were so great she could not set one foot before the other, and was upon the rack when they moved her. But the Prince, with an obstinacy equal to his folly, and a folly equal to his barbarity, insisted on her going, crying " Courage ! courage ! ah, quelle sottise I " and telling her, with the encouragement of a toothdrawer, or the consolatory tenderness of an exe cutioner, that it would be over in a minute. With these excitations, and in this manner, after enjoining all his servants not to say one word what was the matter, for fear 2 A physical detail is here (and in several subsequent passages) omitted, but its place is here marked and its nature thus hinted at in order to prove the extravagant and otherwise incredible obstinacy and indelicacy of the Prince's conduct. The main fact has hitherto been enveloped in the general terms commonly used on these occasions, and some defence for the Prince was, at the time, attempted under the idea suggested by those general terms, that the danger was not so immediate — whereas it is impossible to express with decency how not only imminent, but even present, the danger was. 1737. THE PRINCESS'S ACCOUCHEMENT. 365 the news of the Princess's circumstances should get to the other side of the house, and their going should be prevented, he got her into the coach. There were in the coach, besides him and her, Lady Archibald Hamilton, and Mrs. Clavering and Mrs. Paine, two of the Princess's dressers ; Vreid, his valet-de-chambre, who was a surgeon and man-midwife,3 was upon the coach-box; Mr. Bloodworth, and two or three more, behind the coach; and thus loaded he ordered the coachman to drive full gallop to London. About ten this cargo arrived in town. When the coach stopped at St. James's, the Prince ordered all the lights to be put out, that people might not have ocular evidence 4 which would otherwise have been exhibited to them of his folly and her distress. When they came to St. James's, there was no one thing prepared for her reception : the midwife came in a few minutes; napkins, warming-pan, and all other necessary implements for this operation, were sought by different emissaries in different houses in the neigh bourhood ; and no sheets being to be come at, her Royal Highness was put to bed between two table cloths.5 At a quarter before eleven she was delivered of a little rat of a girl,6 about the bigness of a good 3 Ante, p. 23. 1 Several ofthe details alluded to in the last page have been again omitted. s These details, though not of so gross character as the former, I should have suppressed, but that they are important to the history of the transac tion, as the Prince's defence was that there was nothing ready for such an event at Hampton Court, and that everything had been prepared at St. James's : and it must not be forgotten that the Prince had a residence and establishment at Kew, about half way between Hampton Court and town. 6 Afterwards the Duchess of Brunswick, who died in Spring Gardens in London in March 1813. The " little rat " grew up a fine woman, of 366 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXXIII. large toothpick-case ; none of the Lords of the Council being present but my Lord President Wilmington, and my Lord Godolphin, Privy Seal. To the first of these the Prince, at leaving Hampton Court, had de spatched a messenger to bring him from his villa at Chiswick ; and the last, living just by St. James's,7 was sent for as soon as the Prince arrived in town. He sent also to the Lord Chancellor and the Archbishop ; but the one was gone into the country, and the other came a quarter of an hour after the child was born. In the mean time, this evening, at Hampton Court, the King played at commerce below stairs, the Queen above at quadrille, the Princess Emily at her com merce-table, and the Princess Caroline and Lord Hervey at cribbage, just as usual, and separated all at ten of the clock ; and, what is incredible to relate, went to bed all at eleven, without hearing one single syllable of the Princess's being ill, or even of her not being in the house. At half an hour after one, which was above two hours after the Princess had been brought to bed, a courier arrived with the first news of her being in labour. When Mrs. Tichburne, the Woman of the Bedchamber, came to wake the King and Queen, the Queen, as soon as she came into the room, asked what was the matter that occasioned their being waked at so unusual an hour ; and, as the most natural question, inquired if the house was on fire; a good figure and handsome countenance, as may be seen by her portrait in Knapton's poorly painted but very interesting picture of the Prince's family at Hampton Court ; and when I saw the Duchess of Brunswick about 1809 she had still the air of having been like that portrait. 7 Godolphin House, in the Stable-yard, pulled down in our time to make way for the house built by the Duke of York, now the Duke of Sutherland's. 1737. THE QUEEN'S NIGHT VISIT TO THE PRINCESS. 367 when Mrs. Tichburne said the Prince had sent to let their Majesties know the Princess was in labour. The Queen immediately cried, " My God, my nightgown ! I'll go to her this moment." " Your nightgown, Ma dam," replied Mrs. Tichburne, " and your coaches too ; the Princess is at St. James's." " Are you mad," inter rupted the Queen, " or are you asleep, my good Tich burne? you dream." When Mrs. Tichburne insisted on its being certainly true, the King flew into a violent pas sion, and, in German (as the Queen told me afterward), began to scold her ; saying, " You see, now, with all your wisdom, how they have outwitted you. This is all your fault. There is a false child will be put upon you, and how will you answer it to all your children ? This has been fine care and fine management for your son Wil liam ; he is mightily obliged to you : and for Ann,8 I hope she will come over and scold you herself; I am sure you deserve anything she can say to you." The Queen said little, but got up, dressed as fast as she could, ordered her coaches, and sent to the Duke of Grafton and Lord Hervey to go with her ; and by half an hour after two her Majesty set out from Hampton Court with the two eldest Princesses, two of their ladies, the Duke of Grafton, Lord Hervey, and Lord Essex (the King's Lord of the Bedchamber in waiting), who went to be despatched back again by the Queen as soon as she got there, to acquaint the King how matters went. By four o'clock they all got to St. James's. When they arrived they asked how the Princess did, and, being told very well, concluded either that everything had 8 See ante, i. 438, n. 6. 368 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXXIH. not been ready for a trick, or that the Princess's pains were gone off, and that they had taken this journey for nothing. Lord Hervey told the Queen, as she was going up stairs, that he would order a fire and choco late for her in his own apartment, concluding she would not stay long with her son. " To be sure," replied the Queen, " I shall not stay long ; I shall be mightily obliged to you :" then winked, and said in a lower voice, " nor you need not fear my tasting anything in this side of the house." When they came up stairs the Prince, in his night gown and nightcap, met the Queen in the Princess's antechamber, kissed her hand and her cheek according to the filial fashions of Germany, and there told her the news of the Princess's being brought to bed of a daugh ter, as well as who was present when she was delivered, and at what hour. The Queen expressed some little surprise that no messenger should have reached Hamp ton Court with the news of the Princess's being brought to bed before her Majesty came from thence, when there had been three hours between the one and the other ; upon which the Prince assured her Majesty the messenger had been despatched as soon as ever he could get his letters to her and the King ready, and, as he had written but three lines, they had been finished in three minutes. The Queen knew this must be a lie, but did not eclaircir upon it, having determined (as she said afterward at Lord Hervey's lodgings) not to dis pute, or contradict, anything his Royal Highness should advance, let it be ever so extravagantly absurd, or ever so glaringly false. I must observe, too, that these were the first words her Majesty and his Royal Highness 1737. THE PRINCESS'S CHILD. 369 had exchanged since the day his affair had been moved in Parliament. The Queen went into the Princess's bedchamber, wished her joy, said she was glad she had escaped so well ; and added, " Apparemment, Madame, vous avez horriblement souffert." " Point de tout," replied the Princess, "ce n'est rien." Then Lady Archibald Hamilton brought in the child, which had yet no clothes but a red mantle and some napkins, nor any nurse. The Queen kissed the child, and said, " Le bon Dieu vous benisse, pauvre petite creature ! vous voila arrivee dans un desagreable monde." The Prince then began to tell the whole story of the labour and the journey ; and not only owned that on the Monday and Friday before he had carried the Princess to London, upon thinking, from some slight pains she then complained of, that her labour was coming on, but also wisely acquainted the Queen that * * * before the Princess left Hampton Court, that her pains in the coach were so strong he thought he should have been obliged to carry her into some house upon the road to be brought to bed, and that, with holding her and her pillows in the coach, he had got such pains in his own back he could hardly stir. He added many more par ticulars, on which the Queen made no comments, never asking why he did anything he had done, or left un done anything he had not done ; and only said, at the end of his Royal Highness's every way absurd narra tive, it was a miracle that the Princess and the child had not been both killed. Her Majesty then added, " At the indiscretion of young fools, who knew nothing of the dangers to which this poor child and its mother were exposed, 1 am less surprised; but for you, my VOL. II. 2 B 370 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXXIII. Lady Archibald, who have had ten children, that with your experience, and at your age, you should suffer these people to act such a madness, I am astonished; and wonder how you could, for your own sake as well as theirs, venture to be concerned in such an expedition." To this Lady Archibald made no other answer than turning to the Prince, and saying aloud to him, " You see, Sir;" which was so prudent and so judicious an answer, as it intimated everything that could be urged in her justification, without directly giving him up, that I cannot help thinking chance put it into her mouth. The Prince, immediately upon this, began to talk to the Queen in German ; which she afterwards said was nothing more than to repeat again all * * * what had passed in the coach, more in detail. The Duke of Grafton, Lord Essex, and Lord Hervey were called into the Princess's bedchamber to see the child ; and the door, both before and after, being open, they could hear everything that passed there. The Queen stayed not long in the Princess's apartment, saying rest was the best thing for the Princess in her present circumstances; and, just before her Majesty went away, she went up to the bedside, embraced the Princess, and said to her, " My good Princess, is there anything you want, anything you wish, or anything you would have me do ? Here I am ; you have but to speak and ask ; and whatever is in my power that you would have me do, I promise you I will do it." The Princess thanked her Majesty, said she had nothing to trouble her Majesty with, thanked her for the honour she had done her, and hoped neither she nor the Princesses would be the worse for the trouble they had been so 1737. THE PRINCESS'S CHILD. 37 1 kind to give themselves. All this passed in German, but the Queen and the Princess Caroline told it me just in the words I have related it. The Prince waited on the Queen down stairs, and said he hoped her Majesty and the King would do him the honour to christen his daughter; and the Queen promised him to take care of that affair. He then said he intended to come to Hampton Court that day, to ask this honour of the King and her in form. To which the Queen replied, " I fancy you had better not come to-day ; to be sure the King is not well pleased with all this bustle you have made ; and should you attempt coming to-day, nobody can answer what your reception may be." The Prince then named Thursday, and the Queen said Tuesday or Wednesday she thought would be better. The Prince being in his undress, the Queen insisted on his not coming out of his house, advised him to go to bed, and walked, herself, across the courts to Lord Hervey's lodgings.9 As soon as she got thither she wrote a short letter to the King, and despatched Lord Essex with it back to Hampton Court. She then said to the Duke of Grafton and Lord Hervey (nobody being present but the two Princesses), " Well, upon my honour, I no more doubt this poor little bit of a thing is the Princess's child, than I doubt of either of these two being mine ; though, I own to you, I had my doubts upon the road that there would be some juggle : and if, instead of this poor, , little, ugly she-mouse, there had been a brave, large, fat, jolly boy, I should not 9 A celebrated aggravation of the Prince's misconduct which Horace Walpole, and after him all the historians, attribute to this visit, really oc curred, as we shall see (p. 409), on a subsequent occasion. 2 b 2 372 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXXIII. have been cured of my suspicions ; nay, I believe they would have been so much increased, or, rather, that I should have been so confirmed in that opinion, that I should have gone about his house like a madwoman, played the devil, and insisted on knowing what chair man's brat he had bought." Lord Hervey said, he really did believe, too, from what he had seen, that it was the Princess's child; though not in the least be cause it was a girl ; for, as a girl would do just as well for the Prince's purpose as a boy, and that it would give less suspicion, so anybody who had advised him wisely would have advised hiin to take a spurious girl rather than a spurious boy. "But, altogether," said the Queen, " was there ever such a monstrous conduct ? such a fool, and such an insolent, impertinent fool? and such an impudence, to receive us all with such an ease, as if no thing had happened, and that we were the best friends in the world?" The whole company were very free in their comments on his Royal Highness's behaviour throughout this whole affair ; all abused him very freely, and said, very truly, that they believed, take all its absurdities together, nothing like it ever had happened before, or ever would happen again ; since his Royal Highness had at once contrived to be guilty of the greatest piece of inhumanity, as a husband and a father, with regard to his wife and his child ; the greatest im pertinence and insolence, as a son and a subject, to his father and his mother, his King and his Queen ; and the most egregious folly, as a Prince of Wales and heir to the Crown, by doing all he could contrive to make the birth of that child suspected, which he proposed should give him such additional weight in the kingdom, 1737. CONFERENCE OF THE QUEEN AND WALPOLE. 373 and make him of so much more importance than he had hitherto found himself. They all agreed that he had done much more towards making the world believe this was a spurious child, than Queen Mary had done at the Pretender's birth ; and, consequently, wisely contrived, if ever this Crown came to be fought for, to have the dispute be whether the people would have the Whig bastard or the Tory bastard. After the Queen had passed about an hour at Lord Hervey's lodgings in drinking chocolate and expatiating on these particulars which I have related, Sir Robert Walpole arrived, who had been sent for from Richmond Park ; but a little before he came, I must not forget to relate that, the Duke of Grafton and the Princess Emily being gone into the next room to drink some tea with the Princess's two Ladies of the Bedchamber, the Queen said to Lord Hervey (the Princess Caroline only being present), " Be sure you do not ever say you foretold this would happen. I foresaw it too ; and told it to Sir Robert Walpole, who was certainly in the wrong to delay sending the message to order the Princess to lie in at Hampton Court, since, if that message had gone, they would have been still more in the wrong, and we had had still more reason to resent what they have done ; and no longer ago than when he went away from Hampton Court last Friday, I said, ' Pray, Sir Robert, think of this message ; indeed we shall be catched ; you do not know my son so well as I do.' And he only answered, ' Pray stay a little ; indeed, Madam, 'tis time enough.' And now you see — but, in short, it is over — and Sir Robert Walpole will take it ill of you if you ever talk of this omission ; so be sure you never name it." As soon as Sir Robert came into 374 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXXIII. the room, the Queen laughed, and only said, " Here we are, you see ; am I in the right ? what do you say now ?" Sir Robert smiled too, but looked vexed and out of coun tenance, and said, " When anything very improbable happens, Madam, I do not think it is a great disgrace for anybody not to have foreseen it would happen."10 He then told the Queen that Lord Harrington, having lain this night at Petersham, was sent for at the same time that he had been, and that they came to town together. The Queen asked him what they had said to all this as they came along : to which Sir Robert answered, that Harrington, as usual, had lent his ear ; " But, to speak in the sportsman's style," said he, " Madam, he has not given tongue often." He then told her Majesty that the Prince (informed as he supposed by some of his servants that Lord Harrington and he were there) had ordered them to be called up ; that the Prince was in bed, and had desired them to sit down by his bedside, which they had declined, not caring to enter at present into conversation with him; but, that notwithstanding this endeavour to shorten the interview, the Prince had told them all the same particulars (except that of * * * ) which he had before told the Queen — that is, of all that passed in the coach, who had been present at the labour, of the Princess having been ill Monday and Friday, and his having brought her to London both those days, thinking her complaints were the symptoms of approaching labour. "Take it altogether," said the Queen, "do you think there ever was so insolent as well as silly a behaviour ? w It must be recollected that Sir Robert had been led to think that the event was not expected before October, ante, p. 363. 1737. CONFERENCE OF THE QUEEN AND WALPOLE. 375 Really they must be made to feel a little, for one is quite weary of being so very prudent and so very tame." " It is true," replied Sir Robert; "itis really, Madam, toomuch ; it is intolerable. Here was the Princess, in the first place, within a month of her time before her being with child was notified to your Majesty (for the letter my Lord North brought I think is dated the 5th of July) ; and then on the 29 th, without any notification either of her departure or of her being in labour, she is hurried away from under the roof where your Majesty and the King reside, and brought to bed in an hour after at St. James's ; whilst the first news you have of her being gone, or her being in labour, comes two hours at least after the time you ought to have had the news of her being brought to bed." " My God !" interrupted the Queen, " there is really no human patience can bear such treatment ; nor indeed ought one to bear it ; for they will pull one by the nose in a little time, if some stop is not put to their imper tinence. Besides, one is really ashamed for the figure one makes in foreign Courts, when such a story is told of the affronts one receives in one's own family. What must other Princes imagine of one ? I swear I blush when I think of the post going out, and carrying the account of such a transaction into other countries." " It is all very true, Madam," said Sir Robert Walpole ; " but then consider a little whether you would just take this opportunity of quarrelling openly with the Prince, and turning him out of your house, when an heir to the Crown is born. People already talk enough of the partiality the King and your Majesty have for the Duke ; and should all your anger break out at this time, they will be apt to say that your anger is principally 376 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXXIII. occasioned by the Prince's having a child to disinherit your favourite." " My God !" interrupted again the Queen, " if one is always to bear affronts because some thing false may be said of one for resenting them, there are none one must ever resent." "Nay," replied Sir Robert, " I give no opinion yet, Madam ; I only speak my present thoughts just as they occur, and quite unweighed." Lord Hervey said there was nothing contradictory in what Sir Robert Walpole had said to what the Queen proposed ; since paying all the honours to the child that were possible to be shown to it, at the same time that a resentment was shown to the Prince's conduct, would take off Sir Robert Walpole's objection, and would demonstrate that the King and Queen did not confound the innocent with the guilty, nor punish the sins ofthe father upon the child, but felt as they ought to do towards both. Sir Robert again repeated that he as yet gave no opinion, and that it was a matter that required being very maturely considered. " However," said the Queen, " I am glad we came ; for though one does not care a farthing for them, the giving oneself all this trouble is une bonne grimace pour le publique; and the more impertinences they do, and the more civilities we show, the more we shall be thought in the right, and they in the wrong, when we bring it to an open quarrel." " That is so true," said Lord Hervey, " that upon the whole I think their behaviour is the luckiest affront any Court ever received, since everybody must condemn their behaviour in this particular, which will consequently put them, who were on the attack in the quarrel, now upon the defensive ; and if they do bring their money question next year into Parliament, his asking for an 1737. LORD HERVEY SENDS FOR H. FOX. 377 augmentation of a father he has not only offended but affronted will not be thought quite so reasonable a re quest as when he could pretend to have never failed in his duty." The Queen then sent for Lord Harrington, saying he would take it ill if she did not see him ; and when he came, in the midst of all this anger and bustle, she began to joke with him upon his gallantry,11 and said she be lieved it was the first time he had ever been sent for at midnight to a young lady in the Princess's circumstances. She stayed not long in Lord Hervey's lodgings after Lord Harrington came, and by eight o'clock got back again to Hampton Court. Sir Robert Walpole, before he followed the Queen, was to go to Lord Godolphin to ask an account from him of what had passed whilst he was present at the Princess's delivery. Just as they were all separating, Lord Hervey sent Mr. Harry Fox to desire Sir Robert Walpole, the first thing he did when he came to Hampton Court might be to send for him, that he might speak to him before he saw the King. Mr. Harry Fox Lord Hervey had sent for, the moment he came to town, thinking there would be some juggle (as the Queen apprehended) about a false child, and that he should want some sensible, clever body he could trust to employ in making discoveries. Lord Godolphin told Sir Robert Walpole that Lord Wilmington and he had been in the Princess's bed chamber a quarter of an hour at least before the child was born ; that they were on the same side of the bed with the midwife, and very near her, and the Prince n See, in the Dramatic Scenes, ante, p. 169, the Queen's notice of Lord Harrington's gallantries. 378 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXXIII. close to the bed on the other side ; that the Princess, in her manner of complaining, marking one pain she had much stronger than any of the former, the Prince said, " Is the child born ?" to which the midwife replied, " Don't you hear it cry ?" and then immediately brought it from between the sheets, and gave it into my Lord President's hands. The Prince then asked if it was a boy or a girl ; and the midwife said, the Princess, in her pre sent circumstances, must not be surprised with either the joy or the mortification of knowing which it was. As soon as Sir Robert Walpole had learnt these parti culars from Lord Godolphin, he set out for Hampton Court, and, as soon as he arrived there, sent for Lord Hervey. In this conference Lord Hervey reminded Sir Robert how often he had told him that within these few months, on many occasions, both the King and the Queen had seemed to relax a little in the degree of favour they had formerly shown him ; that it had always been on their son's chapter they had done so, and from his appearing either too unwilling to gratify their re sentment against him, or too forward in proposing palliatives to an evil to which they were so strongly in clined to apply more violent medicines. " And though," continued Lord Hervey, " you can divert them from pur suing the measures they are inclined to, you cannot cure them of their desire to pursue them, nor make them relish those which you have interest enough to persuade them to follow in their stead." " My Lord," replied Sir Robert, " I have seen and felt the truth of what you say ; and the King is never out of humour with me on these occasions that he does not recur to the message sent to the Prince last winter, and tell me 'tis I who 1737. CONFERENCE OF WALPOLE AND HERVEY. 379 have made his son independent ; 'tis I have put it in the Prince's power to dare to use him as he does, and put it out of his power to punish him for it. I then tell him, ' Sir, the giving the 50,000?. at that time and in that manner saved your 100,000?.' But, my Lord, I know the meaning of all this ; it is the single thing I ever did against the Queen's will and without her consent, and that's the reason this sin is not forgiven. She begged, that morning the message was sent, I would defer the measure at least till next day. I said, ' Ma dam, to-morrow it will be too late : there is no time to deliberate ; we must act.' She then said, ' It is such a mean condescension in the King to follow this advice that I can never consent to it.' I then told her, ' Ma dam, 'tis all you have for it ;' and went out of her room directly to the King's closet; where, after reasoning, and hearing him bluster and swagger, I was forced to say, when he had done nothing but oppose me, ' Sir, I ask your pardon ; I must not give you time to retract your consent : the Lords of the Council are in the next room, and I will give them your orders this minute, for time presses — you have none to lose.' And in this manner, my Lord, supposing him to have given consent when he had given me nothing but contradiction, I got the thing done." I must here remark that Sir Robert Walpole, as often as he had talked of this transaction of the message to Lord Hervey, had never related it in this manner before. He had always spoke ofthe Queen's consent as extorted, but not denied ; and I believe he only put it in this light now, that he might make people think it was her pride, not her judgment, that made her still condemn ss 380 - LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXXIII. a measure he could not retract, and would not give up. Lord Hervey said, " Sir, you will certainly ruin your interest here if you go on in combating the King and Queen's inclinations in this quarrel : those who have a mind to hurt you will take such advantage of their passions and what they will call your phlegm, that they will either say your conduct proceeds from management of the Prince, or that old Ministers dare venture on no vigorous measures ; that new ones can do anything they please at setting out, and that, if the King and Queen will give them power, they will lay their son in tears and penitence at their Majesties' feet." " What, then," interrupted Sir Robert Walpole, " would you have me say ? would you have me advise a separation, and the turning the Prince out of St. James's?" "No," replied Lord Hervey ; " if you give it as your judgment and your advice, you charge yourself with the consequences, and lose the merit of the compliance. I would there fore in your place tell them, that, though in public matters and parliamentary affairs it is your business to advise, yet in their family affairs it is your duty to obey ; and that, as you are always ready to give counsel in the one, you are equally ready to receive orders in the other. In any point where abilities, penetration, or judgment are requisite, I am sure, Sir, I am unable to offer any thing that can be of use to you ; but as the present point, with regard to you, turns chiefly on the temper of the King and Queen, I see so much of them, and hear so much of their sentiments in this question (for you know they talk or think of nothing else), that it is impossible, unless I was deaf and blind, but that I must be able to 1737. CONFERENCE OF WALPOLE AND HERVEY. 381 guess a little how they stand affected, more perhaps even than they suffer to appear to you, and more even perhaps than they would have appear to me." " You are so much in the right," said Sir Robert Walpole, " that I know, even after the question last year was carried against the Prince, upon my desiring them to be satisfied with victory, and not to push victory to oppression — upon my advising the execution of the articles of the message, and saying that execution was unavoidable, I know the King and Queen deliberated whether they should not at once change the Ministry, disavow me in that step, and make the supporting them in a non-performance of those articles the first condi tion with my successors. But here, my Lord, lies the disagreeable difficulty of my situation : when I tell them if they will arm me with power I will conquer and humble their son, I receive such a flow of grace and good words, such a flood of promises and favour, that I could dictate nothing stronger ; yet, whenever I propose anything particular, I am answered short by the King, ' i~ will not do that.' How many people there are I could bind to me by getting things done in the army you may imagine, and that I can never get any one thing done in it you perhaps will not believe ; but it is as true as that there is an army, that I never ask for the smallest commission by which a Member of Parliament may be immediately or collaterally obliged, that the King's answer is not ' / won't do that ; you want always to have me disoblige all my old soldiers ; you understand nothing of troops ; I will order my army as I think fit ; for your scoundrels of the House of Commons you may do as you please ; you know I never interfere, nor pretend 382 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXXIII. to know anything of them, but this province I will keep to myself.' Now, if I, my Lord, should advise, or, without advising, only obey orders in separating the Courts, there is all the Prince's family, be they more or less, thrown in every question into the Opposition ; and how is the loss of those votes to be replaced ?" Lord Hervey replied, " Sir, I do not pretend to counsel or to judge ; I only state the facts I know, and represent some circumstances which may escape you, and leave you afterward, as the fittest and ablest judge I know, to weigh those particulars with others, and make your own determination. I can see your difficulties, but I am sure I am incapable of helping you in the least to extricate yourself out of them." " In short, my Lord," interrupted Sir Robert, " the King, on one hand, is so peremptory in what he will have done, and so costive in furnishing the means to do it, expects so much and furnishes so little ; and the Queen, on the other, is so suspicious of one's sincerity, and gives one so much reason to doubt of hers, fancies often she sees so much more than there is to see, and gives me often occasion to see so much more than I dare own I see, that I am quite weary of my situation, and have been much nearer than you think of throwing it all up, and going to end my days at Houghton in quiet." Lord Hervey said, " To be sure, Sir, there are things in your situation you would be glad to alter, but what Minister has not such things ? and sure, since it is impossible not to meet with some difficulties, you ought to reflect with pleasure and satisfaction that your good fortune has exposed you to as few as any Minister ever had, and your good sense enabled you to get better through them. Besides, Sir, 1737. WALPOLE'S VANITY. 383 you have so many people dependent upon you that your good nature to them will hinder you from leaving them to shift for themselves." "I know," replied Sir Robert, " that chance and concurring circumstances have put me in such a situation that (as much vanity as there may seem in saying it) I am certainly at present in a situation that makes me of consequence to more people than any man before me ever was, or perhaps than any man may ever be again ; but yet, my Lord, to anybody at my age, who has been plagued with the thorns and glutted with the fruits of power as long as I have been, ease and safety are considerations that will, one time or other, outweigh all others." Neither was this the first or second time Sir Robert Walpole had, to Lord Hervey, launched out into such a dissertation on his own importance, which Lord Hervey could not, to be sure, in decency, but give into, whatever he might inwardly think of the double vanity this great man was guilty of in believing what he said, and saying what he believed. Caesar's vanity swallowed as much when Cicero told him it was true he had lived enough for fame and for himself, but not for his country ; but Sir Robert Walpole, I believe, was the first man who ever said so much of himself; which makes the one yet more extraordinary than the other, as Tully only hoped to be believed in what he said without believing it himself, whilst Sir Robert Walpole did both: whereas, with regard to states and nations, nobody's understanding is so much superior to the rest of mankind as to be missed in a week after they are gone ; and with regard to particulars, there is not a great banker that breaks who does not distress more people than 384 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXXIII. the disgrace or retirement of the greatest Minister that ever presided in a cabinet; nor is there a deceased ploughman, who leaves a wife and a dozen brats behind him, that is not lamented with greater sincerity, as well as a loss to more individuals, than any statesman that ever wore a head, or deserved to lose it. Rochefoucault says, "What makes other people's vanity insupportable is, that it wounds our own :" but this stroke of Sir Robert Walpole's had a quite different effect on Lord Hervey, as it was a weakness that made him feel the difference between them less. But if at this time Sir Robert Walpole's vanity deceived him in imagining he was, to England, what the spring is to a watch, and that all the wheels moving round him would stand still if he was taken away, in another point Lord Hervey, I believe, flattered himself to the full as grossly ; for, as much as he valued himself on being constitutionally unrevengeful (for he did not pretend it was from the Christian principle of turning the other cheek, but merely from a natural incapacity of hating long) — as much, I say, as he valued himself upon this temper, I doubt much whether, in the present transactions, he was not as little free from resentment in what he did, as Sir Robert from vanity in what he said : for the pains he took to bring Sir Robert into every scheme to mortify the Prince, and the zeal with which he laboured every project to distress his Royal Highness, would not, I believe, if one could have dived into the deepest source of every action, have been found to proceed merely from his desire to prevent Sir Robert Walpole's losing his interest with the King and Queen, any more than I imagine all the severe and bitter things 1737. THE PRINCE'S LIES OF LORD HERVEY. 385 he said to the King and Queen at this time of their son flowed solely from a desire to make his court to their passions, and not a little to indulge the dictates of his own. The truth is, if his temper was susceptible of provo cation, he might, without being capable of feeling long provoked at the same circumstance, have continued long warm in his resentment against the Prince, since scarce a day passed without some new lie the Prince had made of him during the quarrel, as well as some virulent thing he now said of him, being reported to Lord Hervey by the Queen or the Princess Caroline, who both hated the Prince at this time to a degree which cannot be credited or conceived by people who did not hear the names they called him, the character they gave him, the curses they lavished upon him, and the fervour with which they both prayed every day for his death. It would be endless to endeavour to repeat all the lies Lord Hervey at this time heard the Prince had coined of him, but one or two of the most remarkable I will insert. The Prince told the Queen and all his sisters that Lord Hervey had told him everybody said his Royal Highness was known to have such a partiality for the Princess Royal, and to be so incapable of concealing anything from her, that nobody doubted * * * * * * i«_ Another was that Lord Hervey, from the moment he first came about him, had been always endeavouring to give him ill impressions of the Queen and all his sisters ; to blow him up against his father ; 12 Eight lines obliterated and illegible. VOL.11. 2 C 386 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXXin. and a hundred times endeavoured to persuade him to make a party to move for his 100,000?. a-year in Parliament, as well as brought offers to him from people in the Opposition, and made use of Miss Vane's in terest13 to get them accepted. I do not relate these things as any justification of Lord Hervey's conduct at this time ; for if personal resentment, and a desire to vex and mortify the Prince, had any share in his views and counsels at this juncture, I own he is not justifiable, as nothing can justify the meanness of a man of sense desiring, from a principle of revenge, to hurt those by whom he has been injured, further than self-preservation requires, or the silly received laws of mistaken customary honour enjoin : but take this particular (with regard to the Prince) out of Lord Hervey's character, and I believe it would be impossible to give another instance of the same sort of wrong to anybody in any part of his conduct ; though few people had more enemies, or had reason to be irritated against more people, if being abused is allowed to be a reason. It will be very natural for people to wonder for what purpose, or to what end, the Prince was guilty of this most egregious piece of folly (which nobody did, and nobody could, justify) in hurrying his wife in these circumstances to London, to the manifest peril both of her life and that of the child ; and the reason of such an extraordinary step I take to have been this. The Prince's counsellors, who at this time did all they could 13 All this must have related to some period of closer intercourse with the Prince than Lord Hervey has before mentioned. 1737. THE PRINCE'S FOLLY. 387 to blow up his pride and put him upon everything they thought would mortify the King's, had talked him up into asserting his own independency on this occasion ; and told him the most effectual way to do it, and to show he was his own master, and accountable to nobody for the direction of his own family, would be to make the Princess lie-in in London, without communicating his design to the King and Queen, consulting their opinion, or asking their consent. This advice, I con clude, was so grateful to the Prince, that, at all hazards, he was determined to follow it ; and, notwithstanding circumstances which could his advisers have foreseen they would indisputably have desired him not to follow their own counsel, he judiciously put it in practice.14 i* The Prince's conduct does, at first sight, look like insanity ; but be sides the possibility of the birth's having occurred two months before it was expected, there is another consideration that seems not to have oc curred to Lord Hervey, and, though it would be no excuse, may help to account for the Prince's conduct. If he was aware of the absurd and injurious suspicions entertained of him by his family (ante, p. 363, n. 1), he may have been piqued to resist a system of surveillance which he would consider, and which indeed would have been in every way, so insulting to him. 2 c 2 388 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXXIV. CHAPTER XXXIV. Proceedings and Correspondence on the Prince's Conduct — Prince con sults his Friends in Opposition — They disapprove, but agree to support — Pulteney reluctant — Further Correspondence — The Prince's hosti lity directed against the Queen — Lord Hervey's conferences with the Queen and Walpole — His hatred of the Prince induces him to urge severe measures — Double dealing of Carteret — His views and hopes aided by Lady Sundon — Dunoyer, the dancing-master, a spy of both Courts — Contemptible hypocrisy of the Prince. The Queen, at her return to Hampton Court, found the two following letters, that had arrived from the Prince to her and the King just after she had set out, to ac quaint their Majesties with the Princess's delivery : — " Madame, " St. James's, de Juillet 31, 1737. " La Princesse s'etant trouvee fort mal a Hampton Court cette apre dinne, et n' ayant personne la pour l'assister, je l'ai amene directment en ville pour sauver le temps que j'aurois perdu en faisant chercher Mrs. Cannons. Elle a ete delivree une heur apres, fort heureusement, d'une fille, et tous deux se portent, Dieu merci, aussi bien qu'on peut attendre a cette heur. La Princesse m'a charge de la mettre avee son enfant aux pieds de votre Majeste, et de la supplier de nous honorer tous trois de ses bontees maternelles, etant, avee beau coup de soumission, " Madame, " Votre tres humble et tres obeissant fils et serviteur, " Frederick." " Sire, " Cest avee tout le respect possible que je prends la liberte de mander a votre Majeste que la Princesse est, Dieu 1737. PRINCE'S LETTERS TO THE KING AND QUEEN. 389 merci, aussi bien qu'on peut etre, depuis qu'elle a ete delivree d'une fille, qui se porte bien aussi. Elle me charge de la mettre avee son enfant aux pieds de votre Majeste, et de la suplier de nous honorer tous les trois de ses bontez paternelles, etant, avee toute la soumission possible, " Sire, " De votre Majeste, " Le tres humble, tres obeissant fils, " et serviteur, et sujet, " De St. James's, le 31 de Juillet, 1737." " FREDERICK. These letters are bad French, and ill spelt ; but it is not owing to the copyist, but the author. What passed this morning between the King and Queen at her Majesty's return from London, between her and Sir Robert, or between Sir Robert and the King, it is unnecessary for me to particularize, since these conferences were made up only of repetitions of what I have already related, interlarded with the appel lations of scoundrel and puppy, knave and fool, liar and coward, which were seasonings thrown with no sparing hand into every conversation at this time in which the Prince's name was ever used, when his Majesty made one of the company. The result of these consultations, in short, was, that Lord Harrington and Sir Robert Walpole should state, in writing, what the Prince had said to them, as corro borative evidence of what he had said to the Queen before his sisters ; and that, when the Prince came to Hampton Court, the King should send Lord Essex, his Lord of the Bedchamber in waiting, with a message in writing to tell his Royal Highness the King would not see him : and this being settled, the Lords ofthe Cabinet 390 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXXIV. Council, according to custom, were to be called to give their sanction to this measure, that they might, as usual, have their share in being responsible for what in form and appearance only they ever had any share in advis ing or concerting. The message Lord Essex was to deliver was as follows : — "The King has commanded me to acquaint your Royal Highness — " That his Majesty most heartily rejoices at the safe delivery of the Princess, but that your carrying away her Royal High ness from Hampton Court, the then residence ofthe King, the Queen, and the Royal Family, under the pains and certain in dication of immediate labour, to the imminent danger and hazard both of the Princess and her child, and after sufficient warnings for a week before to have made the necessary pre parations for that happy event, without acquainting his Majesty or the Queen with the circumstances the Princess was in, or giving them the least notice of your departure, is looked upon by the King to be such a deliberate indignity offered to him self and to the Queen that he has commanded me to acquaint your Royal Highness that he resents it to the highest degree, and will not see you." Minutes of Lord Harrington's and Sir Robert Walpole's Con versation with the Prince by his bedside, Aug. 1st, about five in the morning, and taken down in writing about three hours after. " August l, 1737. " The Prince of Wales this morning, about five o'clock, when Lord Harrington and Sir Robert Walpole waited upon him at St. James's, among other things said, he did not know whether the Princess was come before her time or not ; that she had felt great pain the Monday before, which it being apprehended might prove her labour, of which opinion Lady Archibald Hamilton and Mrs. Payne1 declared themselves to be, but the i One of her bedchamber- women. 1737. PRINCE'S LETTER TO THE QUEEN. 391 physicians were then of another opinion, he brought her fi-om Hampton Court again. " That on the Friday following, the Princess's pains return ing, the Prince carried her again to St. James's, when the physicians, Dr. Hollings and Dr. Broxolme, and Mrs. Cannons, were of opinion it might prove her labour, but, those pains likewise going off, they returned again to Hampton Court on Saturday ; that he should not have been at Hampton Court on Sunday, but, it being public day, he feared it might be liable to some constructions ; that, the Princess growing ill again on Sunday, he brought her away immediately, that she might be where proper help and assistance could be had." The Prince, on the Monday evening after the Queen, upon hearing the Princess was in labour, had been in town, wrote her Majesty the following letter (which he sent by Lord Jersey2), to thank her for this visit : — From the Prince at St. James's to the Queen at Hampton Court. " Madame, " Aug. 1, 1737. " Comme vos commandemens m'ont empeche de venir aujourd'hui a Hampton Court, je prends la liberte de vous remercier tre3 humblement, par ces lignes, de la bonte que votre Majeste a eu de venir voir cette nuit la Princesse. Elle continue de se porter, Dieu merci, parfaitement bien, et l'enfant de meme. Nous nous recommendons tous trois aux bontes du Roi et de votre Majeste ; et je suis, avee tout le respect possible, " Madame, " Votre tres humble et tres obeissant fils et serviteur, " Frederick." The Queen saw Lord Jersey, and, having said she 2 William, third Earl of Jersey, one of the Lords of his Royal High ness's Bedchamber. 392 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXXIV. was glad to hear the Princess and the child were well, dismissed him. In the mean time the Prince at St. James's summoned all his present advisers to Council — Lord Carteret, Lord Chesterfield from Thistleworth [Isleworth], and Mr. Pul teney from Tunbridge ; who none of them flattered him so far as not to tell him he had made a false step, which would give the great and common enemy at Hampton Court an advantage over him which they ought not to have had ; however, they promised him their aid and advice to retrieve his affairs, but none of them had prudence enough to advise (or interest enough to succeed if they did advise it) that he should immediately write to own he had been guilty of great faults, but that it was owing to the confusion he was in, and that he hoped the King and Queen would forgive what nothing but that confusion could have made him guilty of, and what he would not pretend to justify. His Royal Highness denied absolutely what he had said to the Queen about * * * 3 before the Princess left Hampton Court, and said * * *3 in the coach: he denied too that the Princess at Richmond had answered "¦ I don't know" to all the questions the Queen had asked her relating to the time she was gone with child ; and said that the Princess had answered only that the physicians had not yet pretended to make an exact calculation. He told everybody about him too that he had had address enough to satisfy the Queen perfectly with regard to his conduct, and that she had undertaken to satisfy the King. All this he said to Sir Luke Schaub, who told it to the Queen, from whom I had it. 3 The same details as in p. 364, &c. 1737. PRINCE'S LETTER TO THE KING. 393 As the Prince did not attempt coming to Hampton Court on Tuesday, and that the King and Queen heard he designed coming on Thursday, which was a public day, the King, to avoid making a bustle before so many people (among which would be all the Foreign Ministers, and a deputation from the City with congratulations on the birth of the new Princess), sent Lord Essex on Wednesday morning with the foregoing written message, striking out only the words at the latter end, where his Majesty says he would not see him. Lord Essex, when he returned, said the Prince was in such confusion that he could not take upon him to re peat what his Royal Highness answered to the message, farther than that he muttered several expressions of surprise at the King's anger, sorrow for having offended him, and general words of that kind. In the evening the Prince sent Lord Jersey, his Lord in waiting, to Hampton Court with two letters — one to the King, and the other to the Queen — which were as follows : — The Prince to the King, Aug. 3, 1737, by Lord Jersey, from St. James's. "Sire, " Cest avee toute la mortification possible que je vois, par le message que my Lord Essex m'a porte, que ma venue en ville avee la Princesse a eu le malheur de deplaire a votre Majeste. Permettez-moi, Sire, de vous representer, que dans le cas pressant ou je me trouvais Dimanche, sans sage-femme ni aucune assistance, il m' etoit impossible de m' arreter un moment : sans cela je n'aurois jamais manque de venir moi- meme en faire part a, votre Majeste, outre que la plus grande expedition du monde n'auroit jamais pu amener Mrs. Cannons que deux ou trois heures apres la naissance de l'enfant. Comme la Princesse avoit eu la colique pendant quelques jours, Mrs. 394 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXXIV. Cannons et les Docteurs Hollings et Broxome furent consulted plusieurs fois, qui m'assurerent tous qu'elle n'etoit pas si proche encore de son terme, ce que les deux medecins etoient d'opinion encore le Dimanche a midi ; mais qu'en cas qu'elle eut des peines differentes de la colique, on lui dut dormer un cordial et l'amener en ville aussitot qu'on pourroit. J'ai suivi ceci en tout point, et suis tres afflige qu'il est arrive un cas ou ma tendresse pour la Princesse pouvoit paroitre d'ecarter un moment la premiere pensee que j'ai sans cela, toujours de montrer mon devouement envers votre Majeste. D'ailleurs, si j'ose dire, la Princesse m'a le plus instamment desire dans ce moment de l'amener a Londres, ou toute assistance lui etoit plus proche, que je n'y ai pas pu resister, car je n'aurois jamais pu me pardonner si, en consequence de mon refus, aucun mal- heur lui fut arrive. J'espere que tout ceci touchera votre Ma jeste, et qu'elle me permettra de me mettre a. ses pieds demain a. son lever, ce que je n'aurois pas manque de faire Lundi passe si la Reine ne m'avoit ordonne de ne le faire que comme aujourd'hui. La seule chose qui m'en a empeche est la peur que j'ai eu depuis que j'ai vu my Lord Essex de deplaire a votre Majeste en me presentant devant elle avant d'avoir pris la liberte de lui expliquer, avee toute soumission, l'unique et veritable motif de la demarche dont elle m'a paru offensee. Je suis, avee tout le respect imaginable, " Sire, " De votre Majeste " Le tres humble et tres obeissant fils, " serviteur, et sujet, " Frederick." From the Prince at St. James's to the Queen at Hampton Court, by Lord Jersey, Aug. 3, 1737. " Madame, " Vous ne sauriez croire comme la message que my Lord Essex m'a apporte m'a afflige. Je me flattois que les raisons que j'ai pris la liberte de donner a votre Majeste quand elle a eu la bonte de venir voir la Princesse avoit justifie mon 1737. KING REFUSES TO SEE THE PRINCE. 395 depart de Hampton Court aupres du Roi : je prends la liberte de les recapituler dans ma lettre que je me suis donne I'honneur de lui ecrire sur ce sujet, me flattant que votre Majeste aura la bonte de les appuyer. Je suis, avee beaucoup de respect, " Madame, " Votre tres humble et tres obeissant fils et serviteur, " Frederick." When these letters came to be considered in order to determine what answer should be sent, the first deter mination was to send no answer in writing : and as the Prince in this letter never once admitted he had com mitted a fault, but pretended to justify what he had done, by giving reasons for it, pleading the direction of the doctors and the desire of the Princess ; and as he added to this obstinacy the abominable falsehood, which the King and Queen knew to be such, of this surprise only making him seem to forget his duty, when they knew he had before been determined to give them no notice of his going, whenever he went ; and as this appeared, by his own confessing to the Queen, his sisters, Sir Robert Walpole, and Lord Harrington, that he had already, twice in the preceding week, carried the Princess in expectation of her labour without telling it before or after to the King or Queen ; so the King determined to refuse giving him leave to come to Hampton Court, and sent no other answer by Lord Jersey to the Prince than, tout court, that he would not see him. The Queen's answer to his Royal Highness requesting her good offices with the King was verbal too, and nothing more than that she was sorry the Prince had put it out of her power to make them effectual. After this Lord Jersey was dismissed, much, I believe, 396 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXXIV. to his personal satisfaction (though not as an am bassador), for he had waited long for the answer, had a foot as big as his head with the gout, and, the night being very cold, rainy, windy, dark, and blustering, it is easy to imagine he was thoroughly impatient to be in a warm bed in London. The King was rather irritated than appeased by these letters ofthe Prince's, as it was plain the Prince resolved not to own he had been in the wrong, but hoped to amuse the King with a verbiage of sorrow for his Majesty's anger, without confessing he had deserved it ; and at the same time to load the Queen with indirect reproaches at least by insinuating that she had done nothing towards softening the King, and intimating that she had sunk things that might have done it. Sir Robert Walpole fortified them both in their resentment of such usage, and said nothing but a thorough confession of error on the part ofthe Prince, and acknowledging what everybody knew was the case, could entitle him to the King's pardon. The next day the Prince sent another letter to the King, but none to the Queen, nor any message ; nor was she mentioned in the King's letter. Lord Jersey was so ill after his expedition the preceding night, that he kept his bed; so this letter was brought by Lord Carnarvon, another Lord of the Prince's Bedchamber, and was as follows : — " Sire, " St. James's, Aug. 4, 1737. " Me permettrez-vous de mettre ma douleur devant vos pieds du refus que j'ai eu hier au soir de vous faire ma cour aujourd'hui. Je ne saurois exprimer combien je souffre d'etre 1737. PRINCE'S LETTER TO THE KING. 397 prive de cette honneur, et de me voir hors des bonnes graces de votre Majeste. Si quelquechose pouvoit me consoler dans mon malheur, c'est l'innocence de mes intentions, lesquels je supplie votre Majeste de croire ne peuvent jamais etre de vous offenser. Je ne prends pas la liberte de recapituler les raisons qui m'ont induits a quitter Hampton Court si subitement, mais je me flatte que votre Majeste m'accordera plus facilement le pardon que je lui demande quand elle reflechira a l'etat ou je me trouvois alors avee la pauvre Princesse dans un temps qu'il ne m' etoit pas permis de m'arreter un moment. J'ose done conjurer instamment votre Majeste de me retablir dans vos bonnes graces, et de me permettre de vous faire ma cour demain a, votre levee, jusqu'a quel temps je ne saurai etre en repos. Je suis, avee tout le respect imaginable, " Sire, " De votre Majeste " Le tres-humble et tres-obeissant fils, " serviteur, et sujet, " Frederick." The King was at dinner, in public, when Lord Car narvon arrived with this letter ; and, as soon as he rose from table, he sent for Lord Carnarvon into the Queen's gallery, and dismissed him whilst he read the letter. After he had read it his Majesty sent Lord Essex to Lord Carnarvon, to let him know that, as the purport of this letter was just the same as that of the night before, it required no other answer. Lord Carnarvon insisted on Lord Essex's giving him this answer in writ ing ; upon which Lord Essex returned, with a pen and ink to the King, to tell his Majesty that Lord Carnar von desired he might have the answer in writing. But before the King (who was reading some letters that were just arrived by the German post) could refuse or comply with this request, the Queen (in whose dressing- 398 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXXIV. room the King now was) asked Lord Essex for what he was returned ; and Lord Essex telling, and asking, at the same time, if he should call one of the Ministers, the Queen said, " For what ? to give an answer to Fritz ? Does the King want a Minister to tell him what answer he likes to give to his son ? or to call a council for such a letter, like an affair d'dtat?" (I relate this in the words the Queen related it just now to me.) And the King, whilst they were speaking, turn ing about and asking what was the matter, the Queen told him for what Lord Essex was returned, and, that the King might not mistake what he had a mind to do, added, " But I suppose, Sir, you will not write to your son, and I have already told Lord Essex that I believed he would trouble you upon this subject to very little pur pose." Accordingly the King, being thoroughly, by this hint, apprised what he was to have a mind to, told Lord Essex he should give no other answer than what he had given already, and in no other manner. When Lord Essex went back, Lord Carnarvon still insisted, very wrongheadedly, that he would have his directions in writing ; and, after squabbling a good while, at last took a pencil out of his own pocket, and, writing down what Lord Essex had told him, showed it Lord Essex, and asked him if those were the words ; and so they parted — Lord Carnarvon angry with Lord Essex that he had done no more, and the King and Queen angry with him that he had done so much. The Queen said Lord Essex should have only invited my Lord Carnar von to dine with him when Lord Carnarvon asked him to write, and then gone to dinner, with or without him, just as Lord Carnarvon pleased. 1737. PRINCE'S HOSTILITY AGAINST THE QUEEN. 399 Sir Robert Walpole, who was in the outward room while all this passed in the gallery and the Queen's bedchamber, came up to Lady Sundon whilst she was talking to Lord Hervey, and said, " There is the letter received, and the answer given, without my seeing King or Queen ; and yet, Lady Sundon, if the answer is disapproved, you'll hear me blamed for it." Lady Sundon answered, " That may well be your fate when such an insignificant creature as I am hear myself blamed for things they have done, which I had never known were done till the blame and the knowledge came together." 4 It grew, now, very plain that the whole war was to be made upon the Queen ; and the turn everybody took at the Prince's Court was saying the Queen had blown up the King first into this violent resentment, and by her art now kept him inflexible. The Queen asked Lord Hervey if it was not surprising to see that all their rage seemed pointed at her ; and he said, " Not at all ; for if wise people had a mind to hurt effectually, they would certainly strike at one's head, and not at one's elbow or one's knuckles." The Queen said, if his counsellors thought she had any interest, sure this was not the way to gain her. To which Lord Hervey replied, " Perhaps they thought to carry her by storm ; and as nobody was to be gained but by love or fear, as they despair of infusing the one, they might hope to ex cite the other." The Queen said, if that was their scheme, they would find themselves mistaken ; for she 4 Allusion to the conversations (ante, p. 184 and 357) which Lord Hervey had probably communicated to her. 400 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXXIV. would never offer terms to her enemies in order to give up her friends. The Duke of Newcastle, my Lord Chancellor, the Duke of Grafton, and many others, were much against bringing things to an extremity by a total separation of the two Courts in form ; and were always talking how much they wished some means of accommodation might be found out, but never pretended to suggest what those means could be. On the other hand, the passions of the King and Queen made Sir Robert Walpole afraid of offering or giving into any palliating schemes ; and Lord Hervey was perpetually telling him that, un less the bringing the question of the 100,000?. no more into Parliament could be made one of the terms of the reconciliation, he could see no advantage could accrue to Sir Robert or the King from an accommodation in the family-point ; and since that battle was to be fought again, that he thought Sir Robert would fight it to a greater advantage in an open rupture, in the foundation of which everybody must own the Prince had been the aggressor, than in the same situation in which it had been fought before : that it would be losing all the advantage the Prince's imprudence had given ; that he would never give another handle of this kind ; and that, without doubt, there would be much more to be said against giving the Prince an augmentation when he was upon the terms of an open breach with his father, than when the question ofthe 100,000?. was the only dispute between them. Lord Hervey told Sir Robert Walpole, too, that whilst everybody might go to both Courts, everybody would ; and that all the opportunities that liberty gave people of making their court often to 1737. CONFERENCE OF WALPOLE AND HERVEY. 401 the Prince, and taking occasion to say how sorry they were that things could not be made up, would only make the resentment of the Prince still stronger against, Sir Robert, and those few who did not dare to act the same part : that as to Sir Robert's having advised the King and Queen, in the winter, against turning the Prince out of St. James's, the case was widely dif ferent ; and that it would seem no inconsistency in his conduct to the King and Queen, if he gave into con trary measures at present — since there was a very essential difference, as well as plain distinction, between turning the Prince out of their house on account of a question moved in Parliament which he might say, and had said, was no fault of his, as he could not prevent it, and the turning him out for a fault which every body must acknowledge was a fault, and a fault merely and solely his own. Sir Robert Walpole said he had considered all these things ; that he did feel and see every day how much heavier other people's managements with the Prince had made his Royal Highness's resentment fall upon him ; and that, to his knowledge, the Prince had within these few days asked one of the King's Ministers (which was my Lord Chancellor) whether he had any hand in the message the King had sent him, intimating at the same time his great indignation against those who had. This also the Queen told Lord Hervey, saying at the same time, this was such a degree of insolence, to pretend to question and bully and frighten the King's Ministers, as was not to be suffered, and added that it was high time his Royal Highness should be well lashed. VOL. II. 2 D 402 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXXIV. Lord Hervey agreed with her, but said, too, " Madam, I own you must conquer at any rate, but you must at last too forgive : for your own sake and your own honour you must conquer, and for the sake of your family, and the security of the common interest, you must for give. You may do things when you have conquered that it would be meanness to do before ; what will be lenity in one case would appear only timidity in the other ; and what would be yielding now will be only forbearance then." The only objection Sir Robert Walpole told Lord Hervey he had to separating the Courts, and setting the Prince at defiance, was that, as all the virulence of the Prince's counsels was at present aimed at the Queen, and everything that was done esteemed her doing, this step would occasion such a heap of treasured vengeance against her, that he did not know what might one day or other be the consequence of it. Lord Hervey said that was a very remote consideration, as it must suppose both her and the Prince to outlive the King, and that for her doing so it was a very unlikely case to happen, and even the Prince was not likely soon to see that happy day ; and that, if Sir Robert Walpole was to start this difficulty even to the Queen herself, she would be far from imputing what he said to a tenderness for her, but would rather think he was alarming her fears to bring her into measures which he proposed only from a tenderness to himself, and a view to being first Minister to the third generation. Sir Robert replied, " It would make her look at me a little more earnestly whilst I was speaking, my Lord, but it would not go so far as you say. I own she has 1737. DOUBLE DEALING OF CARTERET. 403 governed the King so long by deceiving him, that it makes her suspect a little of the same play from every body else, as well as exercise a little of it to everybody else herself ; which makes her often both have and give suspicions that are very inconvenient to her, as it takes off the confidence she ought to have in others, and lessens that which they would otherwise have in her. Lord Chesterfield at this time said, " Lord Carteret governed everything at the Prince's Court ; he is our sole adviser, all our measures are of his dictating, and I have not the vanity or insincerity to claim any of the merit that belongs to such counsels : all the honour of them is his own." On the other hand, Lord Carteret, to everybody whom he thought ready to do him good offices to the King and Queen, declared his disapprobation of this step the Prince had taken ; and at first succeeded so well, that the Queen, to everybody she discoursed with on these subjects with any freedom, said, though Car teret was a great knave, yet she did not believe he was so silly a knave as to have advised the Prince in this measure, or to have had any hand in the letters ; and the King told Sir Robert Walpole, " / know Carteret disapproves this whole affair." Both to the King and Queen on this occasion Sir Robert Walpole answered, smiling, " Lord Carteret has very good luck if, whilst he is doing everything he can to distress your Majesty, he can make those very measures part of his merit, by disavowing them here whilst he advises them there." And Sir Robert told Lord Hervey, he was sure it was Lady Sundon had done Lord Carteret this piece of service with the Queen ; " For, as I can," said he, " my 2 d 2 404 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXXIV. Lord, get many things (in more places than one) out of the husband which I can never pump out of the wife, so the good Lord (I had almost said King5) Sundon told me this morning, as he came from London with me in my chariot, that he heard my Lord Carteret disap proved extremely the Prince's conduct, and said it was very imprudent and very unjustifiable." Lord Hervey told Sir Robert that, when the Queen had talked in this strain to him, he had said it was not very probable the Prince, who, she knew, was the greatest coward in the world, should not have asked advice on an occasion where he had reason to be, and was, more frighted than he had ever been before ; nor was it very pro bable his Royal Highness should have sent for Lord Carteret, Lord Winchelsea, Lord Chesterfield, Mr. Pul teney, and the Duke of Marlborough, only to consult them about a nurse for his new daughter. He told Sir Robert, too (to save Lady Sundon), that he believed the principal infusers of these opinions in the Queen, in favour of Lord Carteret, were Sir Luke Schaub and Monsieur de Montandre, who were really of that class, and the chief; but Lady Sundon, too, had her share in these intrigues.6 However, it being notorious that Lord Carteret went every day to the Prince, and for many hours, whilst he made his emissaries at Hampton Court 5 I dare say this expression alluded to the anecdote told by Horace Wal pole, and which, probably, Lord Hervey had never heard : — " Sir Robert told me that Lady Sundon, in the enthusiasm of her vanity, had proposed to him to unite with her and govern the kingdom together. He bowed, begged her patronage, but said he knew nobody fit to govern the kingdom but the King and Queen." — Letter to Mann, 7 Jan., 1742. 6 This should be noticed in reference to Lord Hervey's former defence of Lady Sundon against the suspicions of Sir Robert. 1737. DOUBLE DEALING OF CARTERET. 405 say he never went above once a-week, and that only in form, and that he would have nothing to do in so silly an affair, the King and Queen at last began to be un deceived. The Princess Caroline said she did not think this impudence at all extraordinary in Lord Car teret; " For if mama was to see him there," said she, "he is capable of endeavouring to persuade her the devil had taken his figure, seulement pour lui rendre un mauvais office aupres d'elle." This shallow artifice, there fore, of Lord Carteret's, in denying what could not long be concealed, lost its effect so soon where only it was designed to operate, and where it astonishingly did ope rate for some time, that both King and Queen recurred to their former way of talking of him, and said he was lately become un menteur si outre, qu'il y avoit aussi peu de bon-sens que de bonne-foi dans sa conduite ; and Lord Hervey mentioning at this time, with some pity, a family misfortune that had happened to Lord Car teret, by his only son being run away from school, not to be heard of, and thought to be married privately and meanly, the King said, " Why do you pity him ? I think it is a very just punishment that, whilst he is acting the villanous part he does in debauching the minds of other people's children, he should feel a little what it is to have an undutiful puppy of a son himself." Mr. Pulteney owned publicly that the Prince had been in the wrong, but said he had made such ample sub missions that the King and Queen ought to look upon them as a full atonement. When Lord Hervey said to the Queen that he thought Pulteney's behaviour and discourse much the most reasonable and sensible on this occasion, the 406 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXXIV. Queen replied, " Oh, my Lord, you are partial to Mr. Pulteney, but I have done with him." Lord Hervey said he certainly had great faults both to himself and to other people, from his passions and his irresolution ; but that he was sure he had no reason to be partial to him, and yet could not help thinking him much the ablest man that he knew of any figure or note in the Opposition, as well as the most beloved. The Princess Emily not only at this time was ex tremely out of her brother's favour, but had long been so ; and had contrived her affairs so ill, that, whilst her brother was railing at her for having betrayed him when she played the mediatrix and was pretending to serve him, her mother trusted her as little as her bro ther declared he ever would do for the future ; nay, her brother went so far as to say, that, if ever he came to an eclaircissement with the King, he would let his Majesty know there was nothing she could now say to the dis advantage of the son that she had not before said of the father ; and, though the Prince's credit for truth was not at present very high, yet the known character of her Royal Highness the Princess Emily would have authenticated most things in that style he could have related to her prejudice. The Princess Caroline spoke of her brother with very little reserve, but her conduct was uniform. She had never been his friend, nor ever affected it ; she had always loved her mother, and always professed it ; and as all the rancour of the Prince seemed directed against the Queen, the Princess Caroline could not speak of him with common temper, and hardly, indeed, with common decency. She bid Mr. Dunoyer, the dancing- 1737. DUNOYER, THE DANCING-MASTER. 407 master, who (except the hours he was obliged to be at Hampton Court7) was the Prince and Princess's con stant companion, tell the Prince, when he asked him what they said at Hampton Court of his late expedition to London, that the Princess Caroline declared they all, except the Princess, deserve to be hanged ; and added, " I know, Monsieur Dunoyer, you would tell this again, though I did not give you leave ; but I say it with no other design than that you should repeat it :" and, the next time Dunoyer came to Hampton Court, the Princess Caroline asked him if he had delivered her message. " Oui, Madame," said Monsieur Dunoyer. " Et I'avez vous dit dans les memes paroles?" asked the Princess. " Oui, Madame; j'ai dit, ' Monseigneur, savez vous ce que Madame la Princesse Caroline m'a charge de vous dire ? File dit, Monseigneur, sauve le respect queje vous dois, que votre Altesse Royale merite d'itre pendu.'" "Ft qu'est-ee qu'il a repondu ?" "Madame, il a crache dans le feu, et puis il a repondu, '¦Ah ! vous savez la maniere de la Caroline ; elle est toujours comme qa.' " She re plied, " Quand vous le reverrez, Monsieur Dunoyer, vous n'avez qua, lui dire encore de ma part que sa reponse etoit aussi sotte que sa conduite." Monsieur Dunoyer, who was a sort of licensed spy on both sides, told the Princess Caroline, too, that the Princess, having by chance overheard some whis per she was not designed to hear, had got some little suspicion of the King and Prince being ill together, and that there was some new bustle since she was brought to bed ; upon which she had watched her op- 7 Attending the younger Princesses. 408 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chaf. XXXIV. portunity when the Prince and Lady Archibald were retired, and he only left with her Royal Highness, to ask him what was the matter, adding, with great vehe mence, that she would know ; and, when he pretended ignorance, she burst into tears, flew into a greater pas sion than he thought her capable of, and by these means had forced him, half out of fear and half out of pity, to tell her all he knew. This must seem incredible to anybody who knows not that the Prince kept this gilded piece of Royal con jugality in such profound ignorance of all his political affairs, that, at the time I am now writing, I believe she has yet never heard of the dispute, last session, be tween her husband and her father-in-law in Parliament. His Royal Highness looked upon this conduct towards his wife as a piece of manly grandeur, and used always to say a Prince should never talk to any woman of po litics, or make any use of a wife but to breed ; and that he would never make the ridiculous figure his father had done in letting his wife govern him or meddle with business, which no woman was fit for. The ninth day after the Princess was brought to bed the Queen with her two eldest daughters went again from Hampton Court to see the Princess. The Prince, when they came to St. James's, went no farther than the door of his wife's bedchamber to meet her Majesty, and the whole time she stayed (which was about an hour), spoke not one single word either to her or his sisters ; but was industriously civil and affectedly gay with all those of their suite who were present. Lady Archibald Hamilton brought in the child, and showing the Queen its hands, asked her Majesty if she did not think the 1737. PRINCE'S CONTEMPTIBLE HYPOCRISY. 409 Princess had the prettiest little hand she had ever seen, and exactly like the Prince's. The Queen asked once or twice for her coaches, which were gone to have the horses changed ; and said she feared she was troublesome, fears which nobody in the room endeavoured to remove, by saying one word in answer ; and when she went away, the Prince, who could not avoid leading her to her coach, though he had not spoken one word to her, yet at the coach door, to make the mob believe he was never wanting in any respect, he kneeled down in the dirty street, and kissed her hand : as soon as this operation was over, he put her Majesty into the coach, and then returned to the steps of his own door, leaving his sisters to get through the dirt and the' mob, by themselves, as they could ; nor did there come to the Queen any message either from the Prince or Princess, to thank her afterwards for the trouble she had taken, or for the honour she had done them in this visit. It is easy to imagine, after such a reception, that the Queen made no more of these trips to St. James's.8 8 Though Horace Walpole mistook (ante, p. 371) the visit at which this scene was acted, his description is very accurate, and his observations are worth quoting: — "What," says he, " could excuse, what indeed could provoke, the senseless and barbarous insult offered to the King and Queen, by Frederick taking his wife out of the Palace of Hampton Court in the middle of the night, when she was in actual labour, and carrying her, at the imminent risk of the lives of her and her child, to the unaired palace and bed at St. James's ? Had he no way of affronting his parents but by venturing to kill his wife and the heir to the crown ? A baby that wounds itself to vex its nurse is not more void of reflection. The scene which commenced by unfeeling idiotcy closed with paltry hypocrisy. The Queen, on the first notice of her son's exploits, set out for St. James's to visit the Princess by seven in the morning. The gracious Prince, so far from attempting an apology, spoke not a word to his mother, but on her retreat gave her his hand, led her into the street to her coach — still dumb — but a crowd being assembled at the gate, he kneeled down in the dirt, and humbly kissed her Majesty's hand. Her indignation must have shrunk into contempt." — Reminiscences. 410 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXXV. CHAPTER XXXV. Conference of Walpole and Hoadley on the Test Act — Proposed dis junction of Hanover from England— Christening of the Child — Con tinuation of the Prince's Correspondence — Rhyming Parody of his Letters — His disrespect to the Queen — Resolution taken to expel him from St. James's — Lord Hervey drafts a Message — Discussion of the King, Queen, and Cabinet on the Draft — Walpole's jealousy of Lord Hervey increased — The Message sent — The King's Character of the Prince's Advisers— Lord Hervey's Character of Lord Bristol — Notice given that those who should wait upon the Prince would not be received at St. James's — Other marks of displeasure — The Prince's minor Council. Upon a report at this time, that the Prince, who determined to make himself popular wherever he could, at his father's expense, intended to set himself at the head of a party next Session to repeal the Test Act, Sir Robert Walpole sent to Bishop Hoadley to desire to speak with him, knowing, if any such resolution was taken, that he would be one of the first people who would be acquainted with it. There had been long (as I have before related) a coldness between Bishop Hoadley and Sir Robert Walpole, which even his making him Bishop of Winchester had not removed ; and as soon as the Bishop came into the room, his Lordship began with thanking him for this renewal of an honour, and mark of friendship, which it was so long since he had received ; and when Sir Robert opened to him the occasion of his sending for him, the Bishop assured Sir Robert Walpole he had not yet heard any thing from the Prince about it ; and added, though he 1737. WALPOLE'S CONFERENCE WITH HOADLEY. 411 always had been, and always should be, in conscience and opinion for the Repeal of the Test Act abstractedly considered, yet he had always too been so strongly of opinion that the Prince should not be set up in opposition to the King, that he thought it would be buying even the Repeal of the Test Act too dear, to make the King's distress in a family quarrel the price of it ; and would therefore give no encouragement to it upon that foot, but declare to the Prince, as he had done on several other occasions, and particularly that of his Royal Highness making his son, Mr. Hoadley,1 his chaplain, that no new obligations whatever should make him at any time forget those he had to the King in putting him where he was. Sir Robert Walpole was so pleased with the Bishop of Winchester's behaviour in this conference, that he told Lord Hervey, " You know I have not ever disguised to you my being dissatisfied with your friend, nor do I now say it to flatter you, that, upon my word, it was impossible for any man to behave better than he did to me yesterday at Chelsea ; and you will find by the King and Queen, that I do not deceive you, in saying I have done him ample justice there, and given him all the merit you or he could wish : though I need not tell you that neither I nor you can ever make them love him." Among many other things that were said to make this new-born Princess a favourite of the public, it was remarked by some of the Prince's Court, that if ever she came to the Crown, what had been so much i John, who published his father's works, and died in 1774—" the last of his name," which, though generally, and by Lord Hervey always, spelled Hoadley, they wrote Hoadly. 412 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXXV. wished ever since the Hanover family came to the throne, by every one who understood and wished the interest of England, must happen ; which was, the dis joining the Electorate of Hanover from the Crown of England. It was certainly a great omission in the Act of Succession, that a renunciation of that Electorate was not made one of the original conditions in the Act of Settlement ; and as it was to be wished that oversight, or neglect, might be retrieved by some Act in present, yet with a male heir apparent it was thought impossible.2 When the Queen told Lord Hervey it was a thing the King had once resolved to go about, not to be done in present, but to mortify his eldest son, and provide for his second ; Lord Hervey had done all he could to forward the scheme, being delighted to have such an opportunity at once to gratify his hatred and resentment against the Prince, and lend his aid and assistance to so public a benefit. But though the King was very willing to put this project 2 George I., in his enmity to George II., entertained some idea of separating the sovereignty of England and Hanover (Coxe's Walpole, p. 132) ; and we find from Lord Chancellor King's ' Diary,' under the date of June, 1725, " a negotiation had been lately on foot in relation to the two young Princes, Frederick and William. The Prince (George II.) and his wife were for excluding Prince Frederick, but that after the King and the Prince he should be Elector of Hanover, and Prince William King of Great Britain ; but that the King said it would be unjust to do it without Prince Frederick's consent, who was now of an age to judge for himself, and so the matter now stood " (Campbell's ' Chancellors,' iv. 318). Sir Robert Walpole, who communicated this to the Chancellor, added that he had told George I. that " if he did not bring Prince Frederick over in his life-time, he would never set his foot on English ground." This early enmity of his parents to Frederick Lord Campbell cannot explain : " but the Prince had his revenge by perpetually dis turbing the government of his father till, in 1751, the joyful exclamation was uttered, ' Fritz is dead!' "—ib. 1737. PROPOSED DISJUNCTION OF HANOVER. 413 in execution, the Queen, either from fearing the ven geance of the Prince, or from a qualm of conscience, which she said was her reason, demurred in giving her consent, saying, notwithstanding the behaviour of the Prince, she could not bring herself to think it just to deprive him of what he was born to. Lord Hervey, hearing at this time a slight report that the friends of the Prince had persuaded him to make the offer in Parliament of giving up the succession of the Electorate of Hanover to his brother, on condition he might have his 100,000?. a year in present, told the Queen what was said. The Queen said there were few marks of folly she did not believe her son capable of giving, but this was too extravagant to find credit with her. Lord Hervey said that he knew the Prince so capable of being persuaded to anything by those who had the present possession of him, though that possession was so pre carious, that he did not think it at all impossible the Prince might now have such intentions, though he might not pursue them. The way Lord Hervey came to know there was such a talk in the Prince's Court was by one Dr. Clark,3 a clergyman, to whom Mr. Oglethorpe,4 a member of Parliament, had told it, assur ing him, at the same time, that he had been consulted about it, and that the pulse of other members of Parlia ment, to his knowledge, had been felt upon the subject, to try how such a proposal would be relished. The Queen asked Lord Hervey how he could believe there 3 Dr. Alured Clark, at this time Deputy-Clerk of the Closet, and soon after Dean of Exeter. He was a friend of Lady Sundon's. 4 The celebrated long-lived General Oglethorpe. See Boswell's John son, p. 35. 414 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXXV. was any foundation for such a report, and what induce ment it was possible the Prince could have to make such a voluntary abdication ; telling Lord Hervey, at the same time, that she was sure the Prince looked upon Hanover as a retreat in case the Jacobites in England ever got the better; and that the Prince, the Excise year, had told her that Sir Robert Walpole had managed matters so, that his Royal Highness believed the whole family would be driven out of the kingdom, and that, for his part, he would be one ofthe first to run to Hanover, as if the devil was at his heels. Lord Hervey replied, that the Prince had at present so high a notion of his own popularity here, that how disagreeable soever his father might be, or how likely soever to be sent out of the kingdom, his Royal High ness thought himself in no such situation, and in no danger of incurring the same fate. In the next place, said Lord Hervey, your Majesty knows how much he is set upon making himself popular ; the people about him tell him nothing can so effectually gratify that desire as this step ; that what he gives up is at best a reversionary, remote, uncertain possession, and that what he will get for it will double his present income ; and that, as things now stand, this is the only chance he has to obtain this augmentation, the principal object of his present wishes. " The mean fool (interrupted the Queen) — the poor- spirited beast ! I remember you laughed at me when I told you once, this avaricious and sordid monster was so little able to resist taking a guinea on any terms, if he saw it before his nose, that if the Pretender offered him 500,000?. for the reversion of this Crown, 1737. PROPOSED DISJUNCTION OF HANOVER. 415 he would say, ' Give me the money.' What do you think now ? " "I think (replied Lord Hervey) just as I did, Madam, upon that question — because it would not be enough: but I think the present a very dif ferent case." "Well (said the Queen), I thought it cruel and unjust to pull out his eyes ; but if he likes to pull one of them out himself, and give it my dear William, I am satisfied ; I am sure I shall not hinder him, I shall jump at it : for though, between you and I, I had as lief go and live upon a dunghill myself, as go to Hanover, yet for William it will be a very good morsel ; and, for the 50,000?. a year, I dare say the King will be very glad to give it; and, if the silly beast insists upon it, I will give him 25,000?. more, the half of my revenue, and live as I can, upon shil lings and pennies." The Queen then bade Lord Hervey tell Sir Robert Walpole what he had heard; but to both of them Lord Hervey refused to tell how he had heard it. Sir Robert Walpole told Lord Hervey he did not think it at all unlikely for the Prince to make this bar gain, if it was proposed to him ; or to offer to make it, if he was advised so to do : but that he did not see what interest his present counsellors could have in advising it. Lord Hervey replied, that their interest and view was, showing the people of England they could, even out of power, do this country more good than the Ministers could do, or, at least, had done, in power. " But their interest, whilst in opposition (said Sir Robert Walpole), is not to do anything to end the dispute, and make up the quarrel between the King and the Prince." "Nor will this measure have that 416 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXXV. effect (replied Lord Hervey) ; it will only make the head of their party stronger by 50,000?. a year ; remove the danger of his deserting them to get it ; and they will afterwards go on in opposing, with greater riches and greater popularity on their side. Besides this, there will be another piece of policy in this proceeding, for as there neither is nor ought to be any thing so much desired by the people of England as the dis junction of the Hanover dominions from this Crown, so, besides the merit the Prince will have in making this sacrifice, it must double the odium of the King's reign, as the King's life alone will be the means of postponing so desirable an event; and, consequently, the Prince must imagine, when he has once consented to this separation, the nation will be as impatient for his father's death as himself, for fear anything should happen to defeat so desirable an expectation, and con tinue so inconvenient a union." Sir Robert Walpole then asked Lord Hervey how he thought the King and Queen would relish this scheme ; to which Lord Hervey replied — " I am sure, Sir, the King had a mind to execute it himself last winter ; but how far the Prince's having a mind to it, or the proposal coming from his Royal Highness, or the paying 50,000?. for it, may alter his Majesty's inclina tion, I am unable to guess. As to the Queen, she has always wavered ; from what motive I know not : she says the injustice of the scheme towards the Prince has prevented her from lending her aid to make it effectual, and that it was upon that account she had never pro duced some deed, instrument, or writing (I know not what it is) that she had got drawn for this purpose. 1737. PROJECTED DISJUNCTION OF HANOVER. 417 You know, Sir, she expresses herself so by halves some times, that one cannot comprehend her perfectly ; and one does not care either to say, ' Madam, I do not understand what you design to tell me ;' or, ' Madam, I desire to understand a little more than you seem to design to tell me.' " " Do you then (interrupted Sir Robert Walpole) imagine this thing ever went so far as to have any method for effecting it put into writ ing ? " Lord Hervey, finding by this question that Sir Robert knew nothing of this writing, and that he had gone too far, tried to recede, by saying, " I did really, Sir, imagine there was, but it was only, as I told you before, from collecting, not from being told, and making conjectures from half words and distant hints from the Queen ; which, to be sure, since you know nothing of this writing, I must have mistaken." " I dare say (replied Sir Robert) you have mistaken, for I do not believe there ever was any such thing."5 In what form this writing was I know not, but that there was something of this kind in the Queen's pos session is certain ; and, I believe, drawn either by Mr. Poyntz or some of the German ministers. The Queen told Lord Hervey there was such a paper; she told him she had burned two drafts, and had now another by her ; but not explaining in what manner it was done. Lord Hervey, who had such frequent oppor tunities with the King and Queen of knowing things by pieces, made it a general rule, and swerved not from it, never to seem inquisitive by pressing to know 5 It is evident from Lord King's note (ante, p. 412), that Sir Robert was earlier and more deeply acquainted with this matter than he now chose to let Lord Hervey see. VOL. II. 2 E 418 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXXV. one circumstance more than was told him voluntarily and without asking ; nobody liking those by whom, on reflection, they find they were drawn in to tell more than they designed, or than they were willing to com municate : for, besides the disagreeable circumstance of thinking, on such occasions, one is more in the power of another than one desires to be, there is added to that, the mortifying reflection of imagining it was their superior skill that put one so ; which, of course, makes one love that person less for what is past, and sets one more upon one's guard for what is to come ; and though, therefore, from anybody who is to give one information casually on any particular occasion, it is right and politic to get anyway all one can out of them, yet the manner of behaviour to people from whom one seeks accidental intelligence, and those with whom one desires to live in habitual confidence, ought to be very different, as in one case the present is the only consideration, and in the other it is one of the least ; s ince I had rather discover in anybody I wanted to have confide in me a hundred marks of omitting to confide in me, than one of their having confided and repenting it. Sir Robert Walpole said he doubted not but, in case this proposal was ever made in Parliament, it might be carried with universal concurrence and approbation. " Carried? (replied Lord Hervey) there is indeed no doubt of that : but should it be proposed, could you stop it, if you had a mind?" "Oh, my Lord (answered Sir Robert), there is nothing I cannot stop in Parlia ment, if I set my face to it heartily ; but, should this be done, it will ever after be such a series of rapacious- 1737. PROJECTED DISJUNCTION OF HANOVER. 419 ness to hoard at Hanover for the Duke's grandeur and profit, and the Queen's security and retreat ; and Hanover in all foreign negotiations would so cross on all our measures, that it is impossible to foresee half the difficulties it would bring upon us ; not but that I own, at the same time, it would in futurity be the greatest real benefit the sagacity of all mankind com bined could procure for this country." " I am sure (said Lord Hervey) I am firmly of that opinion, and therefore heartily for the thing being any way done ; and for risking all the present little inconveniences — which I call little because I am far (perhaps from less penetration) from seeing them in so strong a light as I perceive they glare upon you. In the first place, as to Hanover crossing on all your foreign negotiations, and your finding it mixed, and troublesomely mixed, in every consideration. Is it not so now? Has it not been so ever since the Hanover family came here? and will it not continue so as long as the union of the dominions continues ? And as to the Queen's hoarding there for herself; believe me, Sir, she will never go there : though she would look on her English son as the devil, and her Hanover heir as an angel, she will stay in this paradise with her devil, sooner than go to that hell with her angel. She has too much pleasure in grandeur to exchange that she has been accustomed to in this country for the mean indigent scenes she knows she would be reduced to there." " Oh ! my Lord (interrupted Sir Robert), you know not what fear will do even against her pride ; and with a promise from the Prince of quiet and safety there, and menaces of perpetual plaguing and harassing here, believe me, she 2 e 2 420 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXXV. would prefer the first, with her 100,000?. a year, besides a good round sum of ready money, there, to anything she could propose to herself, subject to so many hazards, here." Lord Hervey said he should think her 100,000?. a year would run much greater hazards there, the people grumbling at so great a sum going every year out of the kingdom, and the Prince ready to redress that grievance, not so much for the good of England, as to gratify his revenge upon her : and that if nothing but the security of her jointure was in question, those who advised her best would advise her to stay here. Sir Robert said it was a question of great moment, but that the principal point for him to consider was what the King and Queen wished really should be done in it. This he said, too, to the Queen, when he talked to her upon this subject, adding, " Pray, Madam, therefore, consider well before you determine, and let me know, when you have determined, without any disguise, what you wish should be done, and whatever that is, I will answer for it, it shall be done." In all the conferences he had with the King and Queen on this matter, if any thing passed more than what I have related, I know it not ; for nothing more was mentioned to me, either by the Queen or Sir Robert Walpole, in their reports, than turning and repeating all the particulars I have already set down, one only excepted, and no immaterial one, which I had forgot, and just now recurs to my memory, which was Sir Robert's flattery to the King and Queen by telling them both that he saw no reason, if this bargain was to be struck, why the nation should not pay the purchase money to the Prince, of 50,000?. a-year, since the benefit of the bargain was to accrue to 1737. LETTERS OF THE KING AND THE PRINCE. 421 the nation ; and that there could be no pretence for the King's giving it out of his Civil List, when he was to get nothing by it. On the 20th of August, in the morning, the King sent another written message to the Prince by his Lord in Waiting, as follows : — From the King at Hampton Court to the Prince at St. James's, by Lord Dunmore, Aug. 20, 1737. " It being now near three weeks since the Princess was brought to bed, his Majesty hopes there can be no inconve nience to the Princess, if Monday the twenty-ninth instant be appointed for baptizing the Princess, his grand-daughter ; and having determined that his Majesty, the Queen, and the Duchess-Dowager of Saxe-Gotha shall be Godfather and God mothers, will send his Lord Chamberlain to represent himself, and the Queen's Lady of the Bedchamber to represent the Queen, and desires the Princess will order one of the ladies of her bedchamber to stand for the Duchess-Dowager of Saxe-Gotha, and the King will send to the Archbishop of Canterbury to attend and perform the ceremony." In answer to this message, in the evening, the Prince, by Lord Carnarvon, sent again two letters to the King and Queen : — The Prince to tlie King, Aug. 20, 1737. "Sire, " La Princesse et moi prenons la liberte de remercier tres-humblement votre Majeste de I'honneur qu'elle veut bien faire a notre fille d'en etre parrain. Les ordres que my Lord Dunmore m'a apporte sur ce sujet seront executes point a point. Je me conterois bien heureux si a. cette occasion j'osois venir moi-meme me mettre a vos pieds ; rien ne m'en pourroit empecher que la seule defense de votre Majeste. D'etre prive de vos bonnes graces est la chose du monde la plus affligeante pour moi, qui non seulement vous respect, mais, si j'ose me servir de ce terme, vous aime tres-tendrement. Me permettrez-vous 422 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXXV. encore une fois de vous supplier tres -humblement de me par- donner une faute dans laquelle du moins l'mtention n'avoit pas de part, et de me permettre de vous refaire ma cour a votre levee. J'ose vous en conjurer instamment, comme d'une chose qui me rendra le repos. Je suis, avee toute la soumission possible, " Sire, de votre Majeste, " Le tres-humble et tres-obeissant fils, " sujet, et serviteur, " FREDERICK." To the Queen, the same date. "Madame, " Permettez moi de vous remercier tres-humblement de I'honneur que vous voulez bien faire a. la Princesse et a moi d'etre marraine de notre fille. J'ai pris la liberte d'en faire nos remercimens au Roi par ecrit ; j'y ai ajoute mes dou- leurs de la situation ou je me trouve. Je vous supplie encore une fois, Madame, de m'y assister de vos bons offices, qui ne peuvent jamais etre employe dans un cas plus essentiel a, votre fils, qu'a le remettre dans les bonnes graces de son pere. Je suis, avee tout le respect possible, " Madame, " Votre tres-humble et tres-obeissant fils et serviteur, " Frederick." Though this letter to the King was conceived in these submissive terms, yet the coldness of that to the Queen, and the silly omission in never saying to her your Majesty, from one end of the letter to the other, pro voked the King so much that, after the receipt of these two letters, he seemed more angry with his son than ever; and the Queen, by her seeming indifference to this treatment, and desiring the King not to resent this childish ill-judged impertinence, incensed the King still more. She had often told Lord Hervey that the Prince had 1737. LORD HERVEY'S RHYMING PARODY. 423 several times formerly given her to understand that his rank was superior to hers, and that properly the Prince of Wales's place was between the King and the Queen : how he made it out God knows ; or by what way of reasoning, when he allowed her to be called Queen, he could dispute the title of your Majesty being her due, I do not comprehend. The Queen one day, in one of these disputes, told him she could not imagine why he laboured this point so much in endeavouring to prove his rank superior to hers, " Since, believe me," said she, " my dear Fritz, let your quality be ever so great, the King, if I was to die, would never marry you." Soon after the receipt of these letters the Queen fell ill of a violent fit of the gout ; and on this occasion she first broke through the etiquette of the Court, by seeing Lord Hervey in her bed ; but as she was confined to it for several days, she said it was too much to be in pain and ennuyer herself for want of company ; besides, as she was too old to have the honour of being talked of for it, she would let Lord Hervey come in, and accord ingly had him in her bedchamber almost the whole day, during the time of her confinement. When Lord North was sent from the Prince to inquire after her health, Lord Hervey said he was sure he could dictate a much sincerer message from the Prince on this occasion than Lord North had delivered. Upon which the Queen and the Princess Caroline begging him to do it, he went with the Princess Caroline into the next room, and there wrote the following letter to the Queen, in the name of the Griff, which was a nick name the King had long ago given the Prince. This is the original paper : — 424 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXXV. The Griff to the Queen. " From myself and my cub, and eke from my wife, I send my Lord North, notwithstanding our strife, To your Majesty's residence call'd Hampton Court, Pour savoir, au vrai, comment on se porte. For 't is rumour'd in town — I hope 't is not true — Your foot is too big for your slipper or shoe. If I had the placing your gout, I am sure Your Majesty's toe less pain should endure ; For whilst I 've so many curs' d things in my head, And some stick in my stomach (as in Proverbs 't is said), No just or good reason your good son can see Why, when mine are so plagued, yours from plagues should be free. Much more I 've to say, but respect bids be brief : And so I remain your undutiful Griff." 6 The Queen was extremely diverted with this letter, but Lord Hervey insisted upon having it back again to burn it. On the 29th of August the christening was per formed; the Duke of Grafton stood for the King, Lady Burlington for the Queen, and Lady Torrington, one of the Princess's ladies, for the Duchess-Dowager of Saxe-Gotha. The young Princess was christened Augusta ; and the Prince, as soon as the christening was over, sent his treasurer, Mr. Herbert, to tell everybody belonging to his family then at Court, that the Prince would not have his daughter called Princess Augusta, but according to the old English fashion, the Lady Au gusta, and that she should be called her Royal Highness, 6 It seems not unnecessary to explain that the intended point of these uncouth and ill-natured lines is the supposed wish of the Prince that the gout could be removed from the Queen's foot to the more mortal regions of the head or stomach. 1737. PRINCE'S LETTER TO THE KING. 425 though his sisters had not been so when his father was Prince of Wales. This Mr. Herbert was a commoner of a great estate, who had voted for the Prince last year in the question of the 100,000?. ; and to reward that service, Mr. Hedges dying just at the rising of the Parliament, the Prince nominated, the day Hedges died, Mr. Herbert to succeed him ; though Mr. Herbert had not voted against the Court in any one vote but that of the 100,000?., and declared he never would. The day after the christening, the Prince sent Lord North with two more letters to Hampton Court to the King and Queen, to thank them for the honour they had done his daughter, which letters were as fol lows : — The Prince to the King, by Lord North. " St. James's, ce 30 d'Aoiit, 1737. "Sire, " Cest avee tout le respect possible que j'ose remercier encore une fois votre Majeste de I'honneur qu'elle a bien voulu faire a la Princesse et a, moi d'etre parrain de notre fille. Je ne saurois laisser passer cette occasion sans reiterer ma de- mande du pardon que je lui ai demande si souvent. Je sou- haiterois trouver des paroles qui puissent flechir le cceur paternel de votre Majeste; s'il y en avoient qui puissent marquer davantage ma douleur et mon respect envers vous, je puis assurer votre Majeste que je m'en servirois. II ne me reste done plus rien a dire que de vous conjurer encore une fois de me retablir encore dans vos bonnes graces, et de vous assurer que rien au monde ne changera le tendre respect que je vous dois, etant, avee beaucoup de soumission, " Sire, de votre Majeste, " Le tres-humble et tres-obeissant fils, " sujet, et serviteur, " Frederick." 426 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXXV. The Prince to the Queen, by Lord North. " St. James's, ce 30 d'Aout, 1737. " Madame, ' " Je crois etre de mon devoir de vous remercier encore une fois tres-humblement de I'honneur que vous avez fait a la Princesse et a moi d'etre marraine de notre fille. Je suis tres- mortifie que la defense du Roi m'empeche de le faire de bouche : rien ne m' arretera sans cela. Je me flatte que la continuation de vos bons offices, joint a. la lettre que je me suis donne I'hon neur d' ecrire au Roi sur ce sujet, m'en procureront la permis sion, et que j'aurai bientot la satisfaction de reparoitre devant vous. Je suis, avee tout le respect imaginable, " Madame, " Votre tres-humble et tres-obeissant fils et serviteur, " Frederick." The Prince avoiding in this letter to call the Queen your Majesty, as he had done in the last, plainly showed that the other was not accident, but that he had on pur pose taken this simple method of showing his resent ment. The Queen sent these letters by Lord Hervey to Sir Robert Walpole, and bid Lord Hervey tell Sir Robert not to fail to let her see him before he saw the King. What her Majesty wanted with Sir Robert was, to agree with him on the substance of a message to be sent to the Prince to turn him out of St. James's, be fore Sir Robert spoke to the King upon it. When Sir Robert Walpole came back from this interview with the Queen, having been also afterward with the King, he told Lord Hervey that the resolution was to leave the child with the Princess, and not to take it (as the late King had taken this King's children, upon the quarrel in the last reign) lest any accident might happen to this royal little animal, and the world in that case accuse 1737. PROPOSED MESSAGE TO THE PRINCE. 427 the King and Queen of having murdered it for the sake of the Duke of Cumberland. Besides that the Queen, to give her her due, though she always spoke of the Princess as a driveller, always spoke of her, too, as one whom she would not displease, one who had never of fended her, or done anything wrong ; and, consequently, one who did not deserve such harsh usage as the being separated from her only child. Sir Robert Walpole told Lord Hervey he liked, on every occasion, to hear other people's opinions whilst he was forming his own; and, therefore, de sired him to put down in writing what, if he were to advise the King on this occasion, he would have him say ; and though the other messages had been all drawn in the third person, in the nature of memorandums only for the messenger, yet, as this was to go in the King's own name, and to be signed by him, Sir Robert Walpole bid Lord Hervey draw it up in the form of a letter, which Lord Hervey did in the following words ; not a little pleased with a commission that put it in his power to make use of the King's character and autho rity to express and gratify his resentment against the Prince : — " It is in vain for you to hope I can be so far deceived by your empty professions, wholly inconsistent with all your ac tions, as to think they in any manner palliate or excuse a series of the most insolent and premeditated indignities offered to me and the Queen, your mother. " You never gave the least notice to me or the Queen of the Princess's being breeding or with child till about three weeks before the time when you yourself have owned you expected her to be brought to bed, and removed her from the place of 428 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXXV. my residence for that purpose. You twice in one week carried her away from Hampton Court with an avowed design of having her lie-in in town without consulting me or the Queen, or so much as communicating your intentions to either of us. At your return you industriously concealed everything relating to this important affair from our knowledge ; and, last of all, you clandestinely hurried the Princess to St. James's in circum stances not fit to be named, and less fit for such an expedition. " This extravagant and undutiful behaviour in a matter of such great consequence as the birth of an heir to my crown, to the manifest peril of the Princess and her child (whilst you pretend your regard for her was your motive), inconsistent with the natural right of all parents, and in violation of your double duty to me as your father and as your King, is what cannot be excused by any false plea, so repugnant to the whole tenor of your conduct, of the innocence of your intentions, or atoned for by specious pretences or plausible expressions. " Your behaviour for a long time has been so void of duty and regard to me, even before this last open proof you have given to all the world of your contempt for me and my au thority, that I have long been justly offended at it ; nor will I suffer any part of any of my palaces to be longer the resort and refuge of all those whom discontent, disappointment, or disaffection have made the avowed opposers of all my mea sures ; who espouse you only to distress me, and who call you the head, whilst they make you the instrument of a faction that acts with no other view than to weaken my authority in every particular, and can have no other end in their success but weakening the common interest of my whole family. " My pleasure, therefore, is that you and all your family remove from St. James's as soon as ever the safety and con venience of the Princess will permit. " I will leave the care of my grand-daughter to the Princess till the time comes when I shall think it proper to give direc tions for her education. " To this I will receive no reply. When you shall, by a consistency in your words and actions, show you repent of your past conduct and are resolved to return to your duty, paternal 1737. PROPOSED MESSAGE TO THE PRINCE. 429 affection may then, and not till then, induce me to forgive what paternal justice now obliges me to resent." 7 Sir Robert Walpole, after two days' consideration, made several alterations in this paper, and every one of them an amendment, and then showed it again to Lord Hervey, desiring him, at the same time, not to own to anybody, not even the Queen, that he had seen it. " I need not tell you," said he, " that she is main good (that was his expression) at pumping ; but be sure you do not let her get it out of you. I shall not show it to her herself till the Duke of Newcastle and my Lord Chan cellor have seen it. I shall only talk with her again upon the matter which it is to contain ; for should I show her the paper itself, the Chancellor and his Grace would complain they were tied up from giving any opi nion on alterations, because it would be combating hers ; and, therefore, I will be able to say to them it is open to their free correction." On the other hand, the Queen telling Lord Hervey ? See in Coxe,\. 540, an account ofthe discussion on what he calls "the harsh, improper, and indecorous expressions " of the original draft of the message, extracted from the Hardwicke papers. The Chancellor was the chief critic and moderator, and, after all amendments, thought the message sent too strong. He adds in his 'Diary' this remarkable note: — " Sir Robert Walpole informed me of certain passages between the King and himself, and between the Queen and the Prince, of too high and secret a nature ever to be trusted to this narrative; but from thence L found great reason to think that this unhappy difference between the King and the Queen and his Royal Highness turned on some points of a more interesting and important nature than have hitherto appeared." See also Lord Hardwicke's narrative in extenso in Harris's ' Life,' iii. 161 et seq. ; but it affords no explanation of this mysterious passage. Like the communication to Lord Chancellor King (ante, p. 412), it may perhaps have related to the proposed separation of England and Hanover — but, even if it were so, we are still left to inquire what could have given rise to such a proposition, made long before the Prince had come to England. 430 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXXV. of this paper, gave him the same injunctions Sir Robert had done, not to own to anybody, not even to Sir Ro bert, that she had spoke to him about it ; and by her, too, Lord Hervey found, notwithstanding what Sir Ro bert had said, of concerting only the substance with her, that she had seen it in writing. These sort of transactions often put Lord Hervey in a very disagree able, as well as delicate, situation, from his hearing so many things from Sir Robert and the Queen, some of which he might confer upon in common with them, others which he might not ; some that had particular circumstances only which he was to seem ignorant of, others which he was often at a loss to remember who had told him ; but the most general rule he had to go by was, never to begin any of these subjects before the King, and always, when they were begun, to seem as if it was the first time he had heard of them. As the Queen's confidence in Lord Hervey every day increased, Sir Robert Walpole's jealousy8 of him increased too, not from his being in the rank of a rival in his power, but from a weakness in this great man's composition, which made him grudge this show of fa vour even where, I believe, he had not the least suspi cion — or where, I am very sure, at least, he had no reason given him to justify suspicion — that this favour would ever be employed to his disservice : for Lord Hervey always looked upon Sir Robert as his bene factor, who had placed him in that situation ; as an able master, from whom he had learned all he knew in the beginning of the secrets of the Court, and most of what 8 See ante, pp. 186, 188. 1737. KING'S MESSAGE TO THE PRINCE. 431 he knew of the policy requisite for his conduct there ; and was sensible it was to his favour, protection, and commendations, that he owed originally his having any credit there. But that credit was now higher than Sir Robert wished it ; and though Lord Hervey did not know that he endeavoured to destroy or weaken it, yet he plainly perceived' — after the Queen had accidentally told Sir Robert Walpole of her having talked of things to Lord Hervey which Sir Robert had not commu nicated to him or sent messages by him to Sir Robert — that Sir Robert did not like it: which made Lord Hervey always cautious of bragging of such favours ; but he could not venture to desire the Queen to be more cautious in concealing them: and as Sir Robert knew he did not want any assistance from Lord Hervey, he was uneasy at his having any power to hurt him, though he was not apprehensive of its being so em ployed. When the Lord Chancellor and the Duke of New castle had perused and cooked this message, it was shown to the King ; and the Cabinet Council, the day before it was to be sent, was summoned to make it their act. At this meeting of the Cabinet Council, Sir Ro bert Walpole, who did this sort of work with more strength and perspicuity than any man I ever knew, ran through every step of the Prince's conduct this sum mer, by way of preface to reading the paper which he said he had drawn up in pursuance of the King's posi tive commands, who was determined to suffer the Prince no longer to reside in any of his palaces. There were many of the Cabinet, as the Duke of Newcastle, the Duke of Richmond, and Lord Pembroke, who spoke 432 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXXV. as if they wished this measure had not been insisted on by the King, and that some means could be found out to make up the quarrel ; and all were for softening as much as possible, if it was absolutely necessary these orders should go, the terms in which they were sent. Sir Robert Walpole said the Cabinet Council was summoned by the King, not to give advice whether these orders should be sent or not, but on the form and mode of executing them. * * * #9 The following paper was at last agreed upon and sent : — From the King at Hampton Court to the Prince at St. James's, Sept. 10, 1737, by the Duke of Grafton, Lord Chamberlain, the Duke of Richmond, Master of the Horse, and Lord Pem broke, Groom of the Stole. " The professions you have lately made in your letters of your particular regard to me are so contradictory to all your actions, that I cannot suffer myself to be imposed upon by them. " You know very well you did not give the least intimation to me or to the Queen that the Princess was with child or breeding until within less than a month of the birth of the young Princess ; you removed the Princess twice in the week immediately preceding the day of her delivery from the place of my residence, in expectation, as you have voluntarily de clared, of her labour ; and both times upon your return you industriously concealed from the knowledge of me and the Queen every circumstance relating to this important affair ; and you at last, without giving any notice to me or to the Queen, precipitately hurried the Princess from Hampton 9 Here three or four pages, or perhaps more, of the MS. are wanting, which is to be more regretted than most other of the chasms, as they seem to have detailed the proceedings in the Cabinet. 1737. KING'S MESSAGE TO THE PRINCE. 433 Court in a condition not to be named.10 After having thus, in execution of your own determined measures, exposed both the Princess and her child to the greatest perils, you now plead surprise and your tenderness for the Princess as the only mo tives that occasioned these repeated indignities, offered to me and to the Queen your mother. " This extravagant and undutiful behaviour in so essential a point as the birth of an heir to my crown is such an evidence of your premeditated defiance of me, and such a contempt of my authority and of the natural right belonging to your parents, as cannot be excused by the pretended innocence of your intentions, nor palliated or disguised by specious words only. " But the whole tenor of your conduct for a considerable time has been so entirely void of all real duty to me that I have long had reason to be highly offended with you. " And until you withdraw your regard and confidence from those by whose instigation and advice you are directed and encouraged in your unwarrantable behaviour to me and to the Queen, and until you return to your duty, you shall not reside in my palace, which I will not suffer to be made the resort of them who, under the appearance of an attachment to you, fo ment the division which you have made in my family, and thereby weaken the common interest of the whole. ' ' In this situation I will receive no reply ; but when your actions manifest a just sense of your duty and submission, that may induce me to pardon what at present I most justly resent. "In the mean time it is my pleasure that you leave St. James's with all your family, when it can be done without pre judice or inconvenience to the Princess. " I shall for the present leave to the Princess the care of my grand-daughter, until a proper time calls upon me to con sider of her education." The Duke of Grafton, taking place by his office of both the other messengers, was ordered to read the mes- 10 See ante, p. 364, n. 2. VOL. II. 2 F 434 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXXV. sage to the Prince, and then leave it with him. It was said his Royal Highness changed colour several times in this interview ; and told the messengers, though he knew it would have been his duty to have sent an an swer in writing, if the King had not in his letter forbid him, yet, since his Majesty had done so, he had nothing to trouble them with. His Royal Highness then asked if there was any time fixed by the King for his depar ture from St. James's, to which Lord Pembroke an swered that the King had only in the message said it should be when it could be done without prejudice or inconvenience to the Princess. The Prince then desiring the Lords Messengers to present his duty to the King, and say he was very sorry for what bad happened, dis missed them ; and they all three returned that night immediately to the King, to let him know what I have related. The first question the King asked was, whe ther the Prince had made them wait, which the Prince had not done ; but Lord Pembroke told me if he had, that they had all agreed to lie and say he had not. He told me, too, that the Prince's behaviour had been very civil, and very decent. The next morning the Queen, at breakfast, every now and then repeated, " i" hope, in God, I shall never see him again;" and the King, among many other paternal douceurs in his valediction to his son, said, " Thank God, to-morrow night the puppy will be out of my house." The Queen asked Lord Hervey if he thought the Prince would be mortified. " For my part," said she, " I believe he will be very glad ; for I am sure last winter he wished to be turned out." Lord Hervey said, "There is a great deal of difference, 1737. THE PRINCE'S FRIENDS CHARACTERISED. 435 Madam, between his being turned out on a parliament ary quarrel and for a personal family misbehaviour ; and though he might wish it therefore in one case, he may be very sorry for it in the other. Those about him must see and feel this distinction, and cannot fail, though he should not find it out, to represent it to him." " Who about him," says the King, " will tell it him, or who about him indeed has sense enough to find out anything ? Who is there but boobies, and fools, and madmen that he ever listens to ? " Lord Hervey laughed, and the King went on : " Why, is it not so ? Am I not in the right? There is my Lord Carnarvon,11 a hot-headed, passionate, half-witted coxcomb, with no more sense than his master ; there is Townshend,12 a silent, proud, surly, wrong-headed booby ; there is my Lord North,13 a very good poor creature, but a very weak man ; there is my Lord Baltimore,14 who thinks he understands everything, and understands nothing — who wants to be well with both courts, and is well at neither — and, entre nous, is a little mad ; and who else of his servants can you name whom he listens to, unless it is that stuttering puppy, Johnny Lumley ? "15 As soon as the King went out of the room the Queen desired Lord Hervey to send a copy of this message to his father the Earl of Bristol, saying, " I know your 11 Henry, Marquis of Carnarvon, son of James first Duke of Chandos, Lord of the Prince's Bedchamber. 12 See ante, i. 212, and ii. 120. 13 Francis, seventh Lord North and first Earl of Guildford, born in 1704, Lord ofthe Bedchamber, afterwards Governor to George III. when Prince, and father to the celebrated minister. He lived till 1790. 14 Ante, p. 19. 15 Groom of the Prince's Bedchamber, fourth brother of Lord Scar borough, whose nervous affection he seems to have in some degree shared. 2 f2 436 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXXV. father to be a very honest, well-intentioned man, and such men one is always glad to have think one in the right ; though I will tell you his faults as well as his merits. He is very Sensible, and means very well ; has always been a well-wisher to our family, and I am sure would go as far as anybody to support us if he thought the family in danger ; but he is so wedded to what he calls the old Whig principles,16 that, for fear of departing from them, he would never consent to the taking ofthe steps necessary to preserve us till it would be too late ; and he imagines that the present times will admit of the same measures and manner of acting that were proper just after the Revolution ; whereas things are in a very different situation. At that time the majority of the nation were apprehensive of Popery and tyranny, and were afraid, if King James should come back, that he would have more power than ever he had, and the Crown be absolute. The party against the Jacobites was then therefore more numerous and more united ; whereas now the Whigs are divided, and those that are against our family are always telling those whom they want to seduce, that a new revolution would bring the power of the Crown still lower, as the Pretender would be glad of the Crown on any terms ; so that the same arguments that were made use of to keep out King James are now employed to bring back his son. Your father will not believe this to be the case ; but from his general notions about liberty, and the constitution, and standing armies, would, without weighing the consequences, disband the army. And !« See Introductory Notice. 1737. CHARACTER OF LORD BRISTOL. 437 with regard to this family quarrel, with all the fine messages your silly mother carries him from my silly son, I am sure he thinks that monster very good- natured, a little weak perhaps, but very ill-used." Lord Hervey replied : " Your Majesty knows I always speak to you with very little disguise both of my family and your own ; and since you allow me to be so very sincere upon the subject of the last, I think I owe it to you not to be reserved in the first ; and with regard to my father, though I love him very sin cerely, I do not believe I am at all partial either to his head or his heart. He has certainly as good natural parts as any man that ever was born. They have been extremely well cultivated by a life spent for many years together not only in good company, but in much reading, made more useful by a very happy memory ; this joined to a natural cheerfulness, a natural complaisance, and as good a natural temper as your own (I can say no better of it), makes him very entertaining, very accommodating, and never offensive ; and as he has all his senses as perfect, his conception as quick, and his memory as good as ever it was at thirty years old, so — apart from his being my father, and his loving me better than anybody else in the world, which I firmly believe he does — I do assure you I know nobody's company out of this room in which I am better pleased, or half so easy ; for what ever I know he knows, and as he is too sensible to expect anybody to be faultless, I talk to him of all my own weaknesses, and passions, and follies with as much unconcern as I do of other people's : in short he is safe, affectionate, and sincere, and I live with him just as 438 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXXV. your daughter Caroline does with you. And as to his politics, I assure your Majesty there are very, very few things on which we do not think just alike ; and though I, from desiring to make a general system go on, which upon the whole I approve, am forced to con sent to many spokes in that wheel which I had rather were left out ; yet he not having the same connection with the people in power that I have, it is very natural for him to speak of every point as a detached point, and not as a part of a general system, and as I myself should speak of them were I not in the King's service and consequently not under an obligation to avoid obstructing a general scheme from my particular opinion on particular points. And as to the army, I believe he is no more against the army, from the silly notion of its being dangerous to the liberties of this country, as things now stand, than I am ; but he thinks, and so do I, that the expense of the army should, if it could, be reduced ; and that the people of England in general are so averse to standing armies, and have had that aversion so strongly and so long inculcated, that, whether reasonably or not, a standing army gives umbrage and gives a handle to the enemies of the Government to increase the disaffection. And here, perhaps, he and I differ in opinion ; he may think it safer, these things considered, to reduce the army, but I own to you, from whatever cause the disaffection or the turbulent, seditious spirit at present in this nation originally sprung, it is now come to such a height, that I should think reducing the army a very dangerous experiment. As to the messages he may have had from the Prince by Lady Bristol, I know nothing particu- 1737. MARKS OF THE KING'S DISPLEASURE. 439 larly; but I believe, Madam, he knows both these people as well as we do ; and though two heads, accord ing to the proverb, are always better than one, this case is an exception to that rule, for their two heads, be lieve me, will never impose upon his. He is a wise man and an honest man, and he has always been a true friend to the Revolution principles and government, though he never had an employment himself under any of the Princes that have sat on the throne since the Revo lution. He is judicious, dispassionate, just, humane, and a thorough good and amiable man, and has lived long enough in the world to have this character of him (though given by his son) uncontroverted by anybody else." The Queen let fall some tears whilst Lord Hervey was speaking, and said : " He is a happy as well as a good man to have as well as to deserve such a son ; and your mother is a brute that deserves just such a beast as my son. I hope / do not : and wish with all my soul we could change, that they who are so alike might go together, and that you and I might belong to one another." The day after the message was sent to the Prince, it was signified by the Secretaries of State to all the foreign Ministers, that it would be agreeable to the King if they would forbear going to the Prince ; and a message was sent in writing to all Peers, Peeresses, and Privy Counsellors, that whoever went to the Prince's court should not be admitted into the King's presence. The guard too was taken away from the Prince ; and though Sir Robert Walpole, at the insti gation of the Duke of Newcastle and Duke of Grafton, 440 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXXV. endeavoured to persuade the King and Queen to let the Prince take the furniture of his apartments away with him, it was not allowed. The King said he had given the Prince 5000/. when he married out of his pocket to set out with, besides 5000/. which was his wife's fortune ; and that it had cost him above 50,000/. more for one thing or other on that occasion, and posi tively he would not let his son carry the things away ; and the Duke of Grafton [Lord Chamberlain] was ordered to take care that nothing did go. When Lord Hervey, who was by when these orders were given, said that chests and those sort of things, which were not ornamental, but to hold the Prince and Princess's things, must not be understood to be included, as their clothes could not be carried away like dirty linen in a basket, he was answered, " Why not ? A basket is good enough for them." Sir Robert Walpole, in order to induce the King and Queen to consent to this carrying away of the furniture, had told them it would disarm the Prince's party in Parliament of the argument of the necessary additional expense the Prince had this year incurred by being turned out of his father's house, and being obliged to buy everything new for another ; but all would not do. The Queen pretended to consent (as Sir Robert told me), but I am sure she was as much against it as the King; and the King's perse verance in being against it, is a demonstration she was so. Lord Carteret was at this time at his own house in Bedfordshire ; Lord Chesterfield ill of a fever ; and Mr. Pulteney gone to take the diversion of shooting in Norfolk ; so that there was nobody about the Prince 1737. PRINCE'S MINOR COUNCIL. 441 but the minor Council, who were all in the same strain of flattery, talking of the magnanimity and fortitude with which his Royal Highness received this shock. Lord Baltimore (the Queen told me) had compared his Royal Highness's bravery and resolution to that of Charles the Twelfth of Sweden ; but where he found a particular similitude in their characters I know not. All the letters that passed this year and the last between the King or Queen and the Prince or Princess are copied in these memoirs from the originals, which Lord Hervey had many days in his possession, given him by the Queen to range them in order ; and who ever hereafter sees the originals will find them all docketed in his hand-writing, assisted by the King in some parts, where he had forgotten by whom some particular papers were sent ; and those names which are not in his hand-writing, though mixed with it, are written by the King himself. The originals Lord Her vey had orders to give to Sir Robert Walpole ; and when he obeyed those orders, Sir Robert Walpole told him, " When the Duke of Newcastle sees these letters indorsed by the King and you in conjunction, it will put him out of humour for a week at least ; he '11 say you are Closet Secretary to the King, whilst he is only Office Secretary." 442 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXXVI. CHAPTER XXXVI. The Prince consults the heads of the Opposition — Further Correspondence — Walpole jealous of Carteret — Remonstrates with the Queen— Thinks her too easily swayed — Conduct of different Members of the Cabinet— The Chancellor and Duke of Newcastle — Duke of Grafton and Lord Pembroke — Character of these— Walpole dissatisfied with Newcastle- Reasons for not breaking with him— Sir C. H. Williams— Correspond ence continued — Lord Hervey advises to stop it — The Queen's short answer— The Prince denies his own statements— City Address— The Correspondence printed — Walpole resolved never to act with Carteret. On Monday, September 12, the Prince and Princess and their whole family removed from St. James's to Kew ; and Lord Carteret, Sir William Wind ham, and Mr. Pulteney having been sent for by expresses from the Prince as soon as he had received the King's message, they all immediately repaired to Kew. When Lord Hervey, who had met some of these people upon the road going to Kew, told his Majesty of it, the King's remark was that he believed they would all soon be tired of the puppy ; " for, besides his being a scoundrel, he is such a fool," said the King, " that he will talk more fiddle-faddle nonsense to them in a day than any old woman talks in a week." On Tuesday, in the evening, Lord Baltimore wrote to Lord Grantham to let him know he had a letter from the Prince to the Queen, and desired to know, since by the King's late orders he was forbid waiting on his Lordship at Hampton Court, how he should get 1737. FURTHER CORRESPONDENCE. 443 it conveyed to him for his Lordship to deliver to the Queen : — Copy of Lord Baltimore's Letter to Lord Grantham. "London, Sept. 13, 1737. " My Lord, " I have in my hands a letter from his Royal Highness to the Queen, which I am commanded to give or transmit to your Lordship ; and as I am afraid it might be improper for me to wait on you at Hampton Court, I must beg you will be so good as to let me know how and in what manner I may deliver or send it to you. If I may presume to judge of my royal master's sentiments, he does not conceive himself precluded by the King's message from taking this, the only means, of en deavouring as far as he is able to remove his Majesty's dis pleasure. "lam " Your Lordship's very humble servant, " Baltimore." A great consultation was held whether the Queen should receive or refuse this letter. She was inclined to refuse it, and Sir Robert said he thought it right she should do so, as the making her the mediatrix on this occasion could do her no service, and might furnish matter for drawing her into difficulties. It was there fore resolved that Lord Grantham should copy the following letter, drawn by Sir Robert Walpole, to Lord Baltimore : — Lord Grantham to Lord Baltimore. "Hampton Court, Sept. 15, 1737. " My Lord, " 1 have laid your Lordship's letter before the Queen, who has commanded me to return your Lordship the following answer : — 444 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXXVI. " ' The Queen is very sorry that the Prince's behaviour has given the King such just cause of offence, but thinks herself restrained by the King's last message to the Prince from re ceiving any application from the Prince on that subject.' " I am, my Lord, " Your Lordship's, &c. " Grantham." After the copy of this letter was seen and approved, the Queen sent Lord Hervey to Sir Robert Walpole to bid him be sure to send somebody to watch and in struct Lord Grantham whilst he was copying it ; to tell him an o was to be made like a full moon, a c like a half-moon, an m with three legs, and an n with two, with other writing-master's maxims, or that Grantham's production would never be legible. Lord Hervey said he believed the caution was very neces sary, and that as this was the first example, and he believed would be the last, of Grantham's literary cor respondence that would ever appear in history and be transmitted to posterity, it would be pity not to have it perfect. Before this answer was returned, Sir William Irby, Vice-Chamberlain to the Princess, brought Lord Pem broke a letter from her Royal Highness for the King, which Lord Pembroke gave the King on the 15th of September: the letter had no date, and was in sub stance to assure his Majesty nothing but the fear of offending should have prevented her coming to Hamp ton Court and returning these thanks at his feet by word of mouth. She then went on and said how sorry she was that the Prince's tenderness for her had made her the innocent cause of a division in the family ; and i i 1737. PRINCESS'S LETTER TO THE KING. 445 how particularly unfortunate it was that this should happen on an occasion otherwise so happy for her, and so agreeable to the public. She added too, that she doubted not, could she see the King, but that she could explain the Prince's conduct in a manner that would satisfy his Majesty. Copy of the Princess's Letter to the King, delivered by Lord Pembroke, Sept. 15, 1737. " Sire, " Cest avee tout le respect possible que je prens la liberte de remercier tres-humblement votre Majeste de I'hon neur qu'elle a bien voulu me faire d'etre parrain de ma fille. Je n'aurois pas manque de venir moi-meme vous rendre mes devoirs a Hampton Court pOur vous en remercier de bouche ; mais, comme j'ai le malheur d'etre privee de cet honneur a pre sent, j'espere que votre Majeste ne trouverez pas mauvais que je prenne la liberte de le faire par ecrit. Ma douleur est d'au- tant plus grande que par la tendresse du Prince je me vois la cause innocente de sa disgrace ; et je me flatte que si j'avois eu la permission de me mettre aux pieds de votre Majeste, j'aurois pu expliquer la demarche du Prince d'une maniere a adoucir le ressentiment de votre Majeste. Que je suis a plaindre, Sire, quand une circonstance si flatteuse pour moi, et en meme temps si agreable au publique, est malheureusement devenue le triste sujet d'une division dans la famille ! Je n'importunerai pas davantage votre Majeste que pour vous assurer que, comme je vous dois tout mon bonheur, je me flatte que je vous devrai aussi bientot le repos de ma vie. Je suis, avee tout le respect imaginable, " Sire, de votre Majeste, " La tres-humble et tres-obeissante fille, " sujette, et servante, " AUGUSTE." In this letter, not the least mention being made of thanks to the Queen for having stood godmother, nor 446 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXXVI. any acknowledgments to the King for his goodness in leaving the child, the King was very far from taking it as an indication of the Prince being at all humbled by his exile, and I believe the omission of any acknow ledgments to the Queen did not make it likely to have any omissions to the King overlooked. The mention ing the birth of this httle brat, too, as an incident so grateful to the public, was another air of grandeur in the Princess's letter that did not contribute greatly towards its meeting with a very kind reception. The Queen sent Lord Hervey to Sir Robert Walpole (to whom the King had given the Princess's letter to con sider what answer he should make) to desire Sir Robert would not forget some slaps for all these impertinences ; but Sir Robert told Lord Hervey he would only do it in general, without particularising ; that the King might not, after he had got rid of his son, be drawn into a paper-war with his daughter-in-law, which was the point he chiefly endeavoured to avoid. The draft of the King's letter to the Princess, which was after ward to be put into French, was as follows : — The King to the Princess at Kew, from Hampton Court, Sept. 18, 1737, sent by Lord Pembroke to Sir William Irby. " Madam, " I am sorry that anything should happen to give you the least uneasiness. It is a misfortune to you, but not owing to me, that you are involved in the consequences of your hus band's unpardonable conduct. I pity you to see you first ex posed to the utmost danger in the execution of his designs, and then made the plea for a series of repeated indignities offered to me. I wish some insinuations in your letter had been omitted, which, however, I do not impute to you, for " I am," &c. 1737. WALPOLE JEALOUS OF CARTERET. 447 Translation. " Je suis fache, Madame, qu'il soit arrive aucune chose a vous donner la moindre inquietude. Cest un malheur pour vous, mais qui ne vient pas de moi, que vous etes implique dans les consequences de la conduite inexcusable de votre mari. Je vous plains d'avoir ete premierement exposee aux plus grands dangers en execution de ses desseins, et puis d'avoir servi de pretexte pour une suite d'indignites reiterees qui m'ont ete faites. Je souhaiterois que quelques insinuations dans votre lettre eussent ete omises, lesquelles, cependant, je ne vous im pute pas, etant convaincu qu' elles ne viennent pas de vous. "G. R." This letter Sir Robert Walpole had ended in this manner : — " There are some things in your letter I wish had been omitted, which I resent in him, but do not impute to you." The words " which I resent in him " Lord Hervey desired might be left out, saying they would certainly draw on an answer from the Princess to say how sorry she was to have heightened a resentment she had endeavoured to appease; and that, considering the letter was to a lady, it was better to insinuate what those words imported than to express it so squabbly ; and that the meaning, though not the expression, would be full as strong without them. In the conversation on the copy of this letter, Sir Robert Walpole told Lord Hervey that the King and Queen were again relapsed into their justification of Lord Carteret, and complained of the Queen's injustice in defending the conduct of a man who was at this time generalissimo of her son's army, and ordering all the batteries to be levelled at her. " Sir Luke Schaub," added he, " my Lord, every Saturday brings messages to her from my Lord Carteret, by which she is weak 448 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXXVI. enough to be imposed upon, and at the same time weak enough to repeat. She told me that Lord Carteret said he used to think her a wise woman, but her infatuation in risking everything and making the whole world her enemy, for the sake of one man, was such an infatuation, that it was impossible to reconcile it to good sense. Upon which, my Lord, I asked her : — ' Madam, is this a quarrel of mine ? Was it begun on my account ? Was it fomented by me ? Was it instigated, widened, or kept up by me ? Are you exposed upon my account? Or am I, after a great deal of good fortune (for I am not vain enough to impute my success in your service to skill), am I, after having the good luck whilst I have had the honour to preside in your councils to ward off foreign dangers, and carry you through domestic difficulties, at last brought to have my fate depend on no dispute of my own — on what you know I foresaw — what I advised you to avoid — and what if you will now vest me with power I will get the better of? Your heart, Madam, is set upon getting the better of your son — will it be getting the better of him to discard your Minister and take his ? What one vote can my Lord Carteret make in parliament by his personal interest ? Is your son to be bought? If you will buy him, I will get him cheaper than Carteret ; and yet, after all I have said, if your Majesty thinks he can serve you better than me in this contest with the Prince, I own it is of such consequence to you to conquer in this strife, that I advise you to discard me and take Carteret to-morrow.' " " And what answer, Sir," said Lord Hervey, " did you receive to all this ? " " Oh, my Lord," replied 1737. DUKE OF RICHMOND AND LORD PEMBROKE. 449 Sir Robert, " as usual ; a flood of grace, good words, favour, and professions ; saying she only related these things as stories that were going about the world, and not as things that had made any impression upon her." Sir Robert then began upon a subject he often launched into, which was with how much facility any body who got about the Queen could give her ill impressions of people, and how indelible those impres sions were when once they were made. "For ex ample," says he, " my Lord, it is prodigious with what acrimony she has spoken of Lord Pembroke and the Duke of Richmond on this occasion, only for showing a desire of a reconciliation." " You have saved the Duke of Newcastle and Lord Chancellor then, Sir ? " replied Lord Hervey. " You would not, I find," said Sir Robert. " Not alone," answered Lord Hervey; " but if the present fate of two of the four had been to be changed by me, I assure you, Sir, it would not have been theirs, nor have I, upon my word, to the Queen ever tried to heighten their demerit on that score." Lord Hervey found by this conversation that Sir Robert Walpole had forgotten he had told him he did not design to report to the Queen what had passed in council ; but Lord Hervey gave his memory no assist ance now, any more than he had before given his design credit. As to what Sir Robert said afterwards of having persuaded the Queen to be blind to this conduct in the Duke of Richmond and Lord Pembroke, Lord Hervey believed it ; because he knew the Queen had adopted Sir Robert's expressions to him about an hour before, when she said to him : " People who keep hounds VOL. II, 2 G 450 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXXVI. must not hang every one that runs a little slower than the rest, provided in the main they will go with the pack : one must not expect them all to run just alike and to be equally good." And when Lord Hervey told Sir Robert this, and that he knew his style, and where she had learned this figure, Sir Robert said he was always glad when he heard she repeated as her own any notion he had endeavoured to infuse, because it was a sign what he had laboured had taken place. But Lord Hervey did not tell Sir Robert how un mercifully at the same time the Queen had abused both these great Lords. Lord Pembroke (she said) was the best creature in the world, and meant very well ; but, with all his good meaning, if one desired him to shave anybody, he was capable of cutting off their chin or their cheek, and falling a-crying afterwards and saying he took it for their beard. " Poor man ! he wishes very well, but he is as odd as his father was, not so tractable, and full as mad.1 And for your friend the Duke of Richmond," said she, " my good Lord Hervey, he is so half-witted, so bizarre, and so Grand- Seigneur, and so mulish, that he is as troublesome from meaning well and comprehending so ill, as if he meant as ill as he comprehends. But, in short, there they are, and one must do as if one did not see what they are, but commend their good intentions, make them go on, and in the civilest way in the world never do what they would have one, and in the softest way in the world never let them do what they have a mind to." This morning, too, the Queen had told Lord Hervey 1 See some anecdotes of Lord Pembroke's eccentricities in the Walpoliana, vol. i., §93. 1737. WALPOLE DISSATISFIED WITH NEWCASTLE. 451 that she heard the Prince threatened furiously what he would do with all his family except the Duke if he came to be King. " For the Duke," said she, " I hear he always speaks of him with great affectation of kind ness ; but for me I am to be fleeced, and flayed, and minced ; for Emily, she is to be shut up between four walls; and for Caroline, she is to be sent to starve. For the others,2 he does not deign to know that they exist : but I would be glad to know what hurt he can do any of them ; and for good, I do not desire or expect he should do them any ; nor, whilst I live, shall they want him, or trouble him." This morning when Sir Robert Walpole had told Lord Hervey how perpetually he was inculcating to the King and Queen the necessity and expediency of being blind to the failings of people who were good in the main, and whom, for that reason, they intended to continue in their service, — Lord Hervey agreed with him that this was a very good maxim for Princes, but one which he thought Sir Robert had pushed some times too far as a Minister ; " for though Princes," said he, " always have it in their power to part with such servants, yet Ministers may not always have it in their power to part with such associates, who find they can with impunity grapple for power with those who are their superiors in power." Sir Robert said he under stood Lord Hervey. "But since I resolve," continued he, " to go on with the Duke of Newcastle and the Lord Chancellor, to what purpose, my dear Lord, should I sour them by letting them know I saw last winter what 2 The younger Princesses, Mary and Louisa, now about 14 and 13 years old. 2 g2 452 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXXVI. they were nibbling at?" " That they may not," re plied Lord Hervey, " believe one of these two things : that they are either dexterous enough to blind you, or that they are too considerable for you to dare to sour them." " In short," said Sir Robert, " I resolve to go on with them, and I have in all my experience never known eclaircissements make people more one's friends, and have often known them make men more one's enemies." However, as cautious as Sir Robert Walpole de signed to be, or affected to be, upon this occasion, he gave some proofs, under his hand too, and very strong ones, of his being thoroughly dissatisfied with the Duke of Newcastle's conduct towards him, of which I could cite many instances, but will relate only one of the strongest. Whenever the King was to acknowledge Don Carlos King of Naples in form, it would be ne cessary to send somebody from this Court in form to his Neapolitan Majesty with a compliment ; and for this embassy Sir Robert pitched on one Mr. Williams,3 a young man with a great estate, who had ever since he was in Parliament voted with the Court, and, con- » Afterwards Sir Charles Hanbury Williams, K.B. He had come, on the death of his father, Mr. Hanbury, into Parliament in 1733 ; having taken the name of Williams for a large estate in Monmouthshire, left to him by a godfather, who was no relation. After his celebrated political poetry in ridi cule of Walpole's antagonists, having unluckily lampooned Isabella, Duchess of Manchester, with her second husband, Mr. Hussey, an Irish gentleman, and his countrymen, he retreated, with too little spirit, from the storm that threatened .him into Wales, whence he was afterwards glad to accept mis sions to the courts of Dresden, Berlin, and Russia. He was always flighty, and died mad in 1759. His political squibs are some of the most lively and vigorous in our language. I have already (ante, i. 491) noticed his epitaph on Mr. Winnington ; and a poetical panegyric on Sir Robert Walpole (Works, i. 206 j and Coxe, i. 763) has some striking lines. 1737. SIR C. H. WILLIAMS. 453 trary to most people who did so, had never received any favour or employment from the Court. Sir Robert had told Mr. Williams, too, that he should have 4000?. to pay the expenses of his journey ; and at the same time bid him go to the Duke of Newcastle, in whose province, as Secretary of State, Naples was, to ask his recommendation to the King, which Williams did, and was refused it, the Duke of Newcastle telling him that he was already engaged to another ; and in order to have that other succeed, the Duke of Newcastle went immediately to the King, and told him that Mr. Fane, his Majesty's Minister at Florence, whom he would re commend to him for this embassy, would cost his Majesty but 500?. ; whereas, if the King should send anybody from hence, it would cost him 5000?. The difference between 500?. and 5000?. was sufficient to turn the balance in favour of any person or any soli citation thrown into the scale of the former ; and Sir Robert Walpole, upon hearing what the Duke of New castle had done, wrote to Mr. Williams, telling him how ashamed he was of not being able to keep his word with him, told him the whole transaction, and said the Duke of Newcastle had within this twelvemonth played him several of these rascally tricks, and thwarted him in many things in order to make difficulties in his administration of the King's affairs, which he ought rather to help him in removing. The next time Sir Robert saw Mr. Williams he repeated all this to him by word of mouth, adding a great many other accusa tions ofthe Duke of Newcastle's conduct, and showing not a little acrimony against him for several things his Grace had done. Sir Robert told Mr. Williams, too, 454 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. CnAr. XXXVI. that the Duke of Newcastle was making great court to my Lord Chancellor, and that he proposed by that means to work himself into more power at present, and to be able to form a ministry of his own with my Lord Chancellor, in case any accident happened to Sir Robert. All that I have here related was told by Mr. Wil liams to Lord Hinton, and by Lord Hinton to me; and Sir Robert, though he did not care to turn the Duke of Newcastle out, contrived matters so that both the King and Queen spoke of him in a manner that plainly showed — as little as princes generally think like their subjects, yet with regard to the Duke of New castle even the public, that seldom makes false judg ments, paid no more deference to the Duke of New castle's character at present than their Majesties.* The Duke of Newcastle still kept well with the Princess Emily, whom he had begged for God's sake, just before the King's last message to the Prince, if she had any interest with her mother, that she would use it to prevent that message going, and to persuade the Queen to make things up with the Prince before this affair was pushed to an extremity that might make the wound incurable, which petition to the Queen did the Duke of Newcastle more hurt with her, though it came through the hand of a friend, than all the stories his enemies could tell put together. On Sunday the 18th of September, in the morning, just after Lord Hervey was gone from the King and Queen, and before they went to church, there came 4 The meaning of this sentence is clearer than its grammatical con struction. 1737. PRINCESS'S LETTER TO THE QUEEN. 455 another letter by Sir William Irby from the Princess to the Queen, which was given by him to Lord Grantham, and by Lord Grantham to the Queen. These were the contents of it: — The Princess to the Queen. " Kew, le 17me Sept., 1737. " Madame, "Je prens la liberte de remercier tres-humblement votre Majeste de I'honneur qu'elle m'a fait deux fois de me venir voir, et aussi d'avoir bien voulu etre maraine de ma fille. Je suis tres-mortifiee de ne pouvoir le faire en personne, comme j'aurois certainement fait si par les ordres du Koi il ne m'eut ete defendu. Je suis tres-affligee de la maniere dont la con duite du Prince a ete representee a, vos Majestes, et surtout dans 1' article des deux voyages que nous fimes de Hampton Court a Londres la semaine avant mes couches. J'ose assurer votre Majeste que les medecins et la sage-femme furent alors d'opinion que je n'accoucherai pas avant le mois de Septembre, et que le mal dont je me plaignois etoit seulement la colique ; et en effet, Madame, est-il croyable que si j'etois allee deux fois a Londres, dans le dessein et l'attente d'accoucher, je serois retournee a Hampton Court ? Je me flatte que le temps et les bons offices de votre Majeste apporteront un heureux change- ment a, une situation d'affaires d'autant plus douleureux pour moi que j'en suis la cause innocente. Je suis, avee tout le respect imaginable, " Madame, " Votre tres-humble et tres-obeissante " fille et servante, " Auguste." The Queen sent the letter immediately to Sir Robert Walpole, who was just come to Hampton Court, from his bower of bliss5 at Richmond Park ; and as soon as 5 See ante, p. 217. This sarcasm was the sharper from the fact that his first wife, Catherine Shorter (the mother of Horace), had not been a month dead. She died at Chelsea on the 20th of August. 456 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Cuap. XXXVI. Sir Robert came into the closet at chapel, the Queen asked him what he thought of this last performance. He said he looked upon it, put into plain English, to be nothing more or less than saying, " You lie, you lie, you lie," from one end to the other. The Queen agreed with him that it would admit of no other con struction, and desired him to take the letter with him to Richmond Park (where he was to return as soon as he had dined), and there consider of an answer against the next morning. The King and Queen were both of them more angry at this letter than at any they had yet received. Sir Robert Walpole showed Lord Hervey the letter behind the King and Queen's chairs whilst they were at dinner, but that place was too public for them to talk of it. The next morning at breakfast the Queen talked of nothing else, and with more warmth than she had ever done of anything that had yet passed. Lord Hervey said it was certainly a most abominable piece of impu dence ; but that it would be just as reasonable to be angry with the paper it was writ upon, or the pen that wrote it, as with the poor Princess, which made it a little difficult to answer, since the answer must be directed to her. The Queen said it was impossible to have the lie given one without returning it, let it come from what hand it would, to which Lord Hervey agreed ; but said he considered the Princess only as the involun tary vehicle, and would consequently write as civilly to her as if she was out of the question. " And of all things, Madam," continued Lord Hervey, "I would advise your Majesty to avoid being so particular in your answer as to draw on expostulations and replies. In 1737. PRINCESS'S LETTER TO THE QUEEN. 457 the first place, it would be furnishing the Prince with means to evade the King's order in one of the most essential parts, and to evade it too in the most advan tageous way for himself; for if after the King in his message has said, in this situation he will receive no reply, and the Prince, by changing the names of the correspondents, and transferring this literary commerce from himself and the King to the Princess and your Majesty, can contrive, notwithstanding this prohibition, still to keep up the correspondence, he not only has outwitted you by forcing you to correspond with him whether you will or no, but does it in a way that makes even the prohibition of use to him ; for as all his rage is levelled against your Majesty, he has by these means opportunities of saying things to you by his wife which he would not dare to say to the King from himself. And why should your Majesty desire to keep up a correspondence by which you can be no gainer in any light, and by which you may expose yourself a thou sand ways, in writing something or other they may take hold of? You are sure they will never own again so much as they have owned already, for which reason you can get nothing from them, and they may get something from you : therefore I think it is better to cut this matter short. In the next place, if you speak in soft and palliating terms of the Prince's conduct, they will say you retract, and dare not stand to what you have said ; and if you urge with any strength the facts against him in retorting this lie that you find so hard to digest, and paint this canaille of a prince, as you are pleased to call him, in his true colours, people will certainly lay hold of that to blame you, and say 458 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXXVI. you were not satisfied with turning him out of the house and blowing up his father against him, but that you also endeavoured to set his wife against him too, and to make him uneasy there, by telling her she was married to a knave, a fool, and a liar." " What sort of answer, then," said the Queen, " would you have me write ?" " If I were to advise," replied Lord Hervey, " I would have your Majesty, with great ease and cool ness, tell her you are glad to hear she is so well after her lying-in ; call her ma chere Princesse ; and tell her that, as she is a bonne bete, you are not at all angry with her, and would be glad to do anything to serve or please her; that you wish, for both your sakes, her husband was moins sot and better advised ; and as to the representation of the two London journeys, I would tell her in a graver style, without entering into par ticulars, that when she comes to be truly informed to whom and by whom those representations were made, she will not complain of the partiality of them. After this I would throw out a small hint of its neither being proper nor useful, in your Majesty's situation and hers, to carry on this correspondence ; and enter into no ex postulations on the Prince's conduct, and then give her U bon jour." The Queen made Lord Hervey repeat several times the substance of this letter ; and when Sir Robert Wal pole came afterwards with the copy of a letter he had drawn in English, in a very formal style, and entering minutely into all the particulars of the Prince's con versation (the morning after the Princess was brought to bed) with the Queen, his sisters, Sir Robert Walpole, 1737. QUEEN'S LETTER TO THE PRINCESS. 459 and Lord Harrington, the Queen made Lord Hervey's proposal her own, said she would write in a more easy style, and not descend into any particulars for fear of continuing a correspondence which she could get nothing by, and to which she was determined to put an end. Accordingly in the afternoon, after telling Sir Robert Walpole she would collect, from what they had said and he had written, the substance of a French letter, the Queen wrote and sent the following letter to the Princess : — De la Reine a Hampton Court a la Princesse a Kew. " Hampton Court, le 20me Sept. " Je suis ravie, ma chere Princesse, de vous savoir parfaite ment remise apres vos couches. Vous pouvez etre assuree, comme vous n'avez jamais offense ni le Roi ni moi, je ne man- querai jamais de vous donner des marques de mon egard et de mon affection. Je crois qu'il nous seroit mal-seant a toutes les deux que j'entrasse en discussion avee vous sur les malheur eux differents entre le Roi et mon fils : quand vous serez informee au juste des difierentes declarations qui ont ete faites au sujet de vos voyages de Hampton Court, et par qui et a qui, vous serez convaincue que la conduite de votre mari n'a ete nulle- ment mise dans un faux jour. J'espere que le temps et une mure consideration portera mon fils a de justes sentimens de son devoir envers son pere ; e'est la le seul moyen de procurer cet heureux changement, lequel vous ne sauriez souhaiter plus sincerement que je le fais. " Cakoline." When the Prince showed Lord Baltimore the copy of the Princess's letter to the Queen (to which this was the answer) the Prince asked him how he liked it ; to which Lord Baltimore answered, he could neither ap prove nor disapprove, without being master of the facts, 460 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXXVI. and asked the Prince, to whom he had ever spoken of those two journeys to London ; to which the Prince said, " To nobody whatever." Then Lord Baltimore desired the Prince to recollect; but the Prince per sisted that he was very sure he had spoken of them to nobody belonging to the King's court. All this Lord Baltimore told Lord Harrington, upon Lord Harring ton's telling him what had passed between him, Sir Robert Walpole, and the Prince, and between the Queen and the Prince, immediately after the Princess's delivery. Lord Baltimore said he did not believe there was one body of the Prince's council, nor three in his family, that so much as knew the Prince had even seen Lord Harrington and Sir Robert Walpole that morning in St. James's. Lord Jersey told Sir Robert Walpole the same thing that Lord Baltimore had told Lord Harring ton ; and when Sir Robert Walpole said this was a most surprising piece of folly as well as impudence in the Prince, the King and Queen both told him they who knew him were not at all surprised at it, and that if there was anything he could be guilty of that was more impudent and more foolish, Sir Robert might depend on his committing it the first opportunity; and the Queen added, " I must do Lord Hervey the justice to say, that when I told him I did not believe anybody had advised Fritz to write these letters, Lord Hervey answered, he believed nobody could have been fool enough to advise him to write them had they known all previous circumstances ; but that he was sure Fritz had never owned to anybody the folly he had been guilty of in those two conversations 1737. PRINCE RECEIVES THE LORD MAYOR, ETC. 461 that first night with me, and with Lord Harrington and you." Whilst the Prince was at Kew, he and Lady Archi bald Hamilton, and Dunoyer the dancing-master, and the Princess, used to walk three or four hours every day in the lanes and fields about Richmond. The young Princess falling ill there, the Prince sent to the King and Queen to beg they would give leave to Yager, their German house-apothecary at Hampton Court, to come and see her, which accordingly they did — Sir Robert Walpole having " very politely," as the Queen told me, come and tapped her on the shoulder whilst she was at chapel, to deliver this message from the Prince, and ask her permission and the King's to send Yager immediately. The Lord Mayor and Aldermen of the City of London having sent, soon after the Princess was brought to bed, to know when his Royal Highness would give them leave to wait on him with their congratulations, the Prince sent them word he would let them know as soon as the Princess was well enough to see them with him ; and in consequence of that message he and the Princess went from Kew [on Thursday the 22nd Sep tember] to Carlton House (so his house in Pall Mall was called6) to receive them. Lord Carteret, Lord Chesterfield, the Duke of Marl borough, and others of the Prince's present Council, stood close by his Royal Highness at this audience, and 8 So called from Henry Boyle, Lord Carlton, who dying unmarried in 1725, it came to his nephew, Lord Burlington, who gave it to his mother, the old .Couatess, of whom the Prince bought it in 1732 — Lord Hervey says (ante, i. 434), of Lord Chesterfield; but Pyne's ' History of the Royal Residences ' states that Lord Chesterfield was only the negotiator, buying it for the Prince. 462 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXXVI. distributed to everybody there printed copies of the King's last message to turn the Prince out of St. James's, commenting very pathetically on the cruel usage his Royal Highness had received from his father — Lord Carteret adding at the same time, " You see, gentle men, how the Prince is threatened if he does not dismiss us ; but we are here still, for all that. He is a rock : you may depend upon him, gentlemen : he is sincere : he is firm." The Prince made them a long speech in great form, in which he made many professions of his regard to the trade and prosperity ofthe City of London ; telling them lie knew their importance in this kingdom, and the value of their friendship, and should never look upon them as beggars — alluding in this expression to a report which had been industriously spread of Sir Robert Walpole's having called the citizens the Excise year a parcel of sturdy beggars. When Sir Robert Walpole reported all this to the King and Queen, he told them Carteret had got the message printed for this occasion ; but Sir Robert Wal pole having told Lord Hervey, above a week before, that he designed to let this message slip into print as by accident, I am apt to imagine he put that upon Lord Carteret which was entirely his own doing. When he came out of the King's closet from making this report, he told Lord Godolphin, Lord Hervey, and Mr. Pelham, what he had been saying to the King; and when he 7 He certainly did — and, considering the violence of the petitioners, not unjustly. " Gentlemen," he said, " may give these petitioners what name they please, and say that they come hither as humble suppliants; but I know whom the law calls sturdy beggars," — alluding to the statute of Eliza beth against " Rogues, Vagabonds, and Sturdy Beggars." 1737. WALPOLE'S AVERSION TO CARTERET. 463 came to that part of the relation that mentions Lord Carteret's having said, "The Prince is firm — he is a rock" — Sir Robert said, " The Prince can never be more firm in maintaining Carteret than I am in my resolution never to have anything to do with him. / am a rock : I am determined in no shape will I ever act with that man." 464 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXXVII. CHAPTER XXXVII. The Prince hires Norfolk House, and reduces his Establishment— His Popularity— His Complaints against the King— George I.'s Will- Garbled copies of the Correspondence printed by the Prince — The originals translated by Lord Hervey and published — Copies of the Cor respondence on the quarrel between George I. and the Prince of Wales — Nefarious design against the latter — The Prince's new Court — Bishop Sherlock offends the Queen — Madame Walmoden— Spanish Depreda tions — The Queen's Conference with Lord Isla — Her opinion on the Separation of England and Hanover. The Prince took the Duke of Norfolk's house in St. James's Square for his town dwelling,1 and Cliefden for his country habitation, having given unregarded hints to the Duke of Bedford of his desiring to have Southampton House ;2 but before the Duke of Norfolk would consent to the Prince having his house, the Duchess of Norfolk came to Hampton Court to ask the Queen, whom she saw in private, if it would be disagreeable to her and the King; and the Queen assuring the Duchess of Norfolk it would not, and thanking her for the civility she had shown to the King and her, the Duke of Norfolk let the Prince know his house was at his Royal Highness's service. The Prince reduced the number of his inferior ser- 1 I suppose while Carlton House was under some additional repairs ; it had been already considerably altered and enlarged in 1735. 2 Which with its court and garden occupied the site, since built over, between Bloomsbury and Russell Squares. 1737. PRINCE REDUCES HIS ESTABLISHMENT. 465 vants, which made him many enemies among the lower sort of people, and did not save him much money. He put off all his horses too that were not absolutely ne cessary ; and farmed all his tables, even that of the Princess and himself. I have already taken notice that nobody was ordered by the King to quit the Prince's service, and that par ticular leave was given to every one who had employ ments at both Courts to go to both ; yet many people quitted the Prince's service, nobody the King's : some through fear of disobliging the King, if they made use of the permission they had to remain, and others from being so ill-used by the Prince, who wanted to pique them into quitting, that there was no possibility of their staying there. Lady Irwin3 was not in the last class ; for though she was as ill-used as anybody, she deter mined to stand it all, and remained Lady of the Bed chamber to the Princess. Lady Torrington4 and Lady Effingham5 laid down that office : the first because her husband, partly from jealousy and partly from policy (both ill-founded), obliged her to it ; and the latter only because the other had set her the example. Jemmy Pelham, Secretary to the Prince, was one of those the Prince teased into quitting ; and Mr. Lyttelton was im mediately put into his place. Mr. CornwaUis, Equerry to the Prince, and a Member of Parliament, quitted be cause the pension he had from the King was more than 3 Anne Howard, daughter of Lord Carlisle, and widow of Richard, Vis count Irvine, remarried in 1737 to Colonel Douglas. She was an author, and wrote a poetical answer to Pope's ' Characters of Women.' — See Parke's ' Royal and Noble Authors,' v. 155. * Lady Charlotte Montague, wife of Pattee, second Viscount. 5 Jane Bristow, wife of the first Earl. VOL. II. 2 II 466 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXXVII. the salary from his place ; and he feared if he continued in the one, the other would be stopped. The Prince went from Kew to the play at London, and was not only clapped at his coming into the house, which was the absurd compliment usually paid to any of the Royal Family on those occasions, but was also huzzaed ; and in that part of the play (which was Cato) where Cato says these words — -" When vice prevails, and impious men bear sway, the post of honour is a private station" — there was another loud huzza, with a great clap, in the latter part of which applause the Prince himself joined in the face ofthe whole audience. When the King and Queen were told of this by Sir Robert Walpole, they expressed great resentment, and seemed to wish as well as expect that his Royal High ness would push this affectation of popularity and vio lence against his father at last to treason, though the turn the Prince himself took, as well as all his people, was to excuse and speak well of the King, to lay every wrong upon the Queen, and declare Sir Robert Wal pole the chief object of their resentment ; though no body ever taking Sir Robert Walpole for a fool, and he having no possible interest in dividing the Whigs or the Royal Family, or in officiously irritating the successor to the Crown, nobody who gave themselves time to reflect, or was capable of judging when they did reflect, ever could bring themselves to believe Sir Robert Walpole would endeavour to raise the King or Queen's resentment, how necessary soever he might find it to gratify and serve that resentment when it was raised. The Queen told Lord Hervey that the three things 1737. GEORGE I.'S WILL. 467 of which the Prince accused the King, besides the robbing him ofthe 100,000?. a-year, were, his Majesty's having thrice cheated him — by his sinking the late King's will and the Duke of York's will, and by seizing the revenues of the Duchy of Cornwall ; and as to the two first articles, she said the Prince was not named in either of the wills, and that the Duke of, York (who died the year after the present King came to the throne) in his will had left everything he had, which came to about 50,000?., to his present Majesty, except his jewels, and his jewels he left to the Queen of Prussia, to whom the King had delivered them, after satisfying the King of Prussia (who before the King showed him the will had a mind to litigate it in favour of his wife) that the will would admit of no dispute ;e and as to the King's seizing the revenues of Cornwall, all he had done was to take care, on the receiver of the revenues for the Duchy of Cornwall having em bezzled some of the money, that, as his Majesty's arrears was the debt first incurred, that debt should be first paid. Whilst the Queen was telling this one morning to 6 The Queen says nothing of the suppression of George I.'s will ; but Walpole, who relates the whole story in the Reminiscences, says that Lady Suffolk made " the only plausible shadow of excuse that could be made for George II. — that George I. had burned two wills made in favour of his son — probably those of the Duke and Duchess of Zell — or one might be that of their daughter, his mother." It is certain that Lord Hervey believed, perhaps knew, of the suppression of the will ; for I find a fragment of the memoirs (part no doubt of one of the lost passages) highly blaming " George I I.'s injustice in sinking his father's will." Walpole also states the threat of the King of Prussia to go to law ; but says it ofthe will of George I., instead of that of his brother the Duke of York. 2h 2 468 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXXVII. Lord Hervey, the King opened the door at the farther end of her gallery, upon which the Queen chid Lord Hervey for coming so late, saying she had several things to say to him, and that he was always so long in coming after he was sent for, that she never had any time to talk with him ; to which Lord Hervey replied, it was not his fault, for that he always came the mo ment he was called ; that he wished with all his heart the King had more love, or Lady Deloraine more wit, that he might have more time with her Majesty, but that he thought it very hard that he should be snubbed and reproved because the King was old and Lady Deloraine a fool. This made the Queen laugh, and the King asking when he came up to her what it was at, she said it was at a conversation Lord Hervey was reporting between the Prince and Mr. Lyttelton on his being made Secretary, and left Lord Hervey, on the King's desiring him to repeat it, to invent one : telling Lord Hervey the next time she saw him, " / think I was even with you for your impertinence." To which Lord Hervey replied, " The next time you serve me so, Madam, perhaps I may be even with you, and desire your Majesty to repeat as well as report." Soon after the message got into print, some of the Prince's letters were likewise printed. Those that had the greatest air of submission were picked out on this occasion in order to move the compassion of the public, and being published in English, the Prince's party, who published them, took the liberty, under the pretence of a translation, to deviate a little from the original, and give them yet a stronger air of submission than they 1737. CORRESPONDENCE TRANSLATED. 469 had in the French. In one very material part, too, they absolutely falsified the original ; for whereas the Prince, in the original of the first letter he wrote to the King after the first message by Lord Essex, says, " He should have come the Monday before to Hampton Court to throw himself at the King's feet at his levee if the Queen had not ordered him to defer it till Wednesday " — in the translation the words " to defer it till Wednes day " were left out, and the sentence running thus, " That he should have thrown himself at the King's feet on Monday at the levee if the Queen had not forbid him," it had an appearance to all the world, and was so descanted upon by the Prince's emissaries, that the Queen had taken upon her the very night she went to London to the Princess's labour to forbid the Prince the King's presence. This and other circumstances made the King and Queen determine to have all the original letters and messages printed that had passed since the first night, and verbal translations of the letters together with the originals. Lord Hervey the Queen desired might trans late them ; and when Sir Robert Walpole brought her Majesty's commands to him, he made him the compli ment of beginning his speech by that passage in Horace to Maecenas, " Docte sermones utriusque linguce.""1 Lord Hervey lost no time, but translated them all by the next morning ; and telling Sir Robert Walpole that it would be to no purpose to print the letters if the Prince's declaration to him and Lord Harrington was not printed with them, to show what contradictory 7 " In either language skilled, my Lord." — Francis, Od. iii. 8. 470 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXXVII. stories the Prince had told on this occasion, Sir Robert said he was in the right, and Lord Hervey had the satisfaction of being employed to give the Prince the lie in print, by the authority of the Government ; and because the stronger the lie was given, the better he liked his commission, he advised Sir Robert Walpole to get the Queen's consent to put a N.B. at the end of the declaration made to him and Lord Harrington, to certify to the public that the same declaration had been made the same morning by the Prince to the Queen and the two eldest Princesses, which he told Sir Eobert would be absolutely necessary to prevent the world saying the Queen had retracted, and made Lord Har rington and Sir Robert own her lie ; and at the same time would show that what was done, was done by her authority, and make it more impossible for the Prince to deny what he had said. This proposal, therefore, Sir Robert relished extremely, and got the Queen's consent for the N.B., which accordingly was inserted — Lord Hervey, for fear of accidents, and being after wards disavowed in it, or accused for wording it too strong, getting Sir Robert in his own hand-writing to give him the words in which this N.B. was to be ex pressed ; which he kept by him. The Duke of Newcastle sat in consultation with Sir Robert Walpole and Lord Hervey, when Lord Plervey was to receive his ultimate directions the night before he was to deliver these papers to the printer, the cor rection of the press being left to his care ; and the two points on which his Grace solely descanted were these : first, the settling and giving many excellent reasons to support his opinion how the original or 1737. DUKE OF NEWCASTLE'S ABSURDITY. 471 translation should be placed in the paper on the right side or the left : for the paper being to be printed in two columns on each side of each leaf, the originals and translations were to be placed by the side of one another. His Grace's next difficulty, which he said was really an insurmountable one, was, that by the N.B. having a reference to the declaration made by the Prince to Lord Harrington and Sir Robert Walpole, it could only be put at the bottom of it, which, his Grace very judiciously observed, would be highly improper : " for between two declarations, one made to the Queen and the other only to two subjects, how very disrespect ful," said his Grace, " will it be to the Queen to give the precedency to the declaration that was only made to two subjects before that made to her, and yet how is it possible to avoid it ? " This egregious folly and formal absurdity in a man that had been fifteen years Secretary of State is so incredible, that I do not flatter myself that it will not be much more natural to conclude I am a great liar than that he could be so great an idiot. The Queen and the Princess Caroline, to whom I related this little anecdote, would not, till the Queen asked Sir Robert Walpole about it, believe it was literal. The King and Queen were full as well pleased with giving Lord Hervey this commission to call their son a liar in print, as he was to receive it, and charged him not to embellish the fool's letters in the translation, or to mend the spelling in the original. Lord Hervey took occasion upon this subject, among many other things, to say, he did not believe there ever was a father and a son so thoroughly unlike in every par- 472 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXXVII. ticular as the King and the Prince, and enumerated several points in which they differed, as little to the advantage of the Prince as to the dispraise or dis pleasure of the King. The King said he had really thought so himself a thousand times, and had often asked the Queen if the beast was his son. Lord Hervey said that question must be to very little pur pose, for to be sure the Queen would never own it if he was not. The King said the first child generally was the husband's, "and therefore," says he, "I fancy he is what in German we call a Weckselbalch ; I do not know," continued he, " if you have a word for it in English : it is not what you call a foundling, but a child put iri a cradle instead of another." " That is a changeling," replied Lord Hervey. The King was ¦ extremely pleased with this translation, and said, " I wish you could prove him a changeling in the German sense of the word as easily as anybody can prove him so in the other ; — though the Queen was a great while before her maternal affection would give him up for a fool, and yet I told her so before he had been acting as if he had not common sense." Lord Hervey said the Queen had often last year done the honours of his Royal Highness's understand ing to him, and was very loth to give it quite up, but that of late he had not perceived she had any hope left «f disguising it. "My dear Lord," replied the Queen, " I will give it you under my hand, if you are in any fear of my relapsing, that my dear first-born is the greatest ass and the greatest liar, and the greatest canaille, and the greatest beast in the whole world, and that I most heartily wish he was out of it." 1737. WALPOLE'S DELAYS. 473 The letters, though translated and ready for the press, were not yet printed, and I suspect the reason of this delay to have been Sir Robert Walpole's having no mind to give the Prince the lie in print, and yet not knowing how to avoid, in case the letters were published, the publishing also the declaration made to him and Lord Harrington. It was said by many and thought by some that Lord Harrington had some scruples of this kind, but I know those reports were ill-founded. The Queen thought the delay proceeded from Lord Hervey's not having finished the trans lations, and one Sunday morning that he came back from London, where he had been for two days, she accosted him, half in jest and half in earnest, in this manner : " Where the devil are you, and what have you been doing ? You are a pretty man to have the justification of your friends committed to your hands. There are the letters which you have had this week to translate, and they are not yet ready to be dispersed, and only because you must go to London to divert yourself with some of your nasty guenipes, instead of doing what you have undertaken." Lord Hervey made the Queen no other answer than repeating some sentences out of Shakespear,8 which he tacked together thus : " Go tell your slaves how choleric you are, and make your bondmen tremble. Your anger passes by me like the idle wind, which I regard not." The s " Brutus. Go, show your slaves how choleric you are, And make your bondmen tremble. There is no terror, Cassius, in your threats ; For I am arm'd so strong in honesty, That they pass by me as the idle wind, Which I respect not." — Jul. Cms., iv. 3. 474 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXXVII. Queen laughed and said, " You are so impertinent and so saucy, there is no living with you ; but what do you say for yourself?" "I say," replied Lord Hervey, " that they have been out of my hands these six days, and were finished by me in twelve hours." " Then I shall fall upon Sir Robert," replied the Queen. But she did not scold him so much, though she was less satisfied with his conduct in this affair, guessing a little, I be lieve, that he had a mind to shuffle off the publication of them. At last all these messages and original letters that passed between the King, Queen, Prince, and Princesses, with the translations, were printed, and many copies of them dispersed over the whole kingdom at the expense of the King. What people will say of them I do not yet know, for though they are already printed they are not, whilst I am now 9 writing, yet circulated. The Queen told me at this time she heard the Prince's people intended to print the letters the present King, when he was Prince of Wales, wrote to the late King upon the quarrel in the late reign, and said, she concluded if they did, Lord Chesterfield must have got the copies of them from the Duchess of Kendal ; for, as to the originals, all the letters the present King had written to the late King had been found among the late King's papers when he died, and the present King had made her burn all of them except three. However, soon after printed they were, together 9 This must have been written on or about the 22nd of October, 1737, for I find a note from Lord Hervey of that date to Dr. Middleton, saying, " Since I wrote you this morning I have received instructions not to give any copies of the paper I enclosed to you till some alterations are made in it." 1737. QUARREL BETWEEN GEORGE I. AND II. 475 with the late King's message to the Prince to turn him out of St. James's,10 and a sort of circular letter by Mr. Addison, then Secretary of State, by the late King's orders, to all the English Ministers in foreign Courts to give an account of the whole transaction ; and, as I imagine a short narrative of so material and interesting an occurrence cannot be unentertaining, I shall here insert it. Message in writing from the late King to the Prince of Wales, by his Vice- Chamberlain, Mr. Cook, December 2, 1717. " The Vice-Chamberlain is ordered to go to my son and to tell him from me that he and his domestics must leave my House. He is likewise commanded to go to the Princess to tell her from me that, notwithstanding the order sent to my son, she may remain at St. James's until her health will suffer her to follow her husband. He is, moreover, commanded to tell the Princess from me that it is my pleasure that my grandson and grand-daughters remain at St. James's, where they are, and that the Princess is permitted to come to see them when she has a mind, and that the children are permitted from time to time to go and see her and my son. The Vice-Chamberlain must further tell the Princess that, in the present situation of my family, I think that whilst she stays at St. James's she would do well to see no company." Copy of the Circular Letter from Mr. Addison, Secretary of State, to the English Ministers in Foreign Courts. " Sir, " His Majesty having been informed that many reports are spread, for the most part ill grounded, relating to what has passed in the Eoyal Family, has ordered me to send you the inclosed account thereof. " I am, with a great deal of respect, Sir, " Your most obedient and most humble servant, " Jo. Addison." "> Ante, i. 38, n. 7. 476 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXXVII. " London, December 3, 1717. " As soon as the young Prince was born the King informed himself what was the custom in the like case in the kingdom with regard to the ceremony of baptism, and having found by the registers that when it was a boy and that the King was godfather, it was usual for him to name for second godfather one of the chief Lords of the Court, and oftenest the Lord Chamberlain, he named for that office the Duke of Newcastle, who is possessed of that employment, at the same time naming the godmother, the Duchess of St. Alban's, Groom of the Stole to the Princess. Nevertheless, his Royal Highness the Prince of Wales was so chagrined at it that, Thursday last, after the solemnity of the baptism was over, being no longer able to master his resentments, he came up to the Duke of Newcastle, and gave him very injurious language, supposing that he had made interest for that honour contrary to his Highness's in clinations. The King was then in the chamber, but not near enough to hear what the Prince said to the Duke. The latter thinking himself obliged to inform the King of it, and the Prince having owned the facts to the Dukes of Kingston, Kent, and Roxborough, whom his Majesty sent that morning on that occasion, his Majesty ordered him by a second message not to go out of his apartment till further orders. On Saturday the Prince wrote a letter to the King, and on Sunday morning wrote another ; but Iris Majesty not having found them satis factory, and having besides many reasons to be discontented with tbe Prince's conduct in several other particulars, signified to Mm yesterday afternoon by his Vice-Chamberlain, Mr. Cook, that he must go out of the palace of St. James's, and to the Princess that she might stay as long as she thought proper. But as to the Princesses his grand-daughters, and the young Prince, it was the King's will that they should stay near him in the palace, and that the Princess should be permitted to see them as often as she desired. Nevertheless, the Princess being unwilling to quit the Prince her husband, retired with him to Lord Grantham's, her Great Chamberlain, in whose house tlieir Royal Highnesses lay last night." 1737. QUARREL BETWEEN GEORGE I. AND II. 477 The Prince of Wales to the King. "Sir, " I received with all submission your Majesty's com mands, confining me to my own apartment till your Majesty should signify your further pleasure to me. So great a mark of your Majesty's displeasure surprised me extremely, never having entertained a thought of your Majesty unbecoming a dutiful son. I was made to believe your Majesty appeared easy in the choice I had made of the Duke of York to be god father to my son, and that the Duke of Newcastle might re present him, and not be godfather himself. Being persuaded of this I could not but look upon it as an unaccountable hardship that he would be godfather in spite of me ; but when your Majesty thought proper to command it I submitted. This treatment of the Duke of Newcastle touched me sensibly, and so far raised my indignation that, at the sight of him upon this occasion, I could not help showing it. But as the respect I have always had for your Majesty hindered me from expressing my resentments against him, whilst he was charged with your Majesty's orders, I hope your Majesty will have the goodness not to look upon what I said to the Duke privately as want of respect to your Majesty, which was contrary to my intentions. I ask your pardon, and beg your Majesty would be persuaded that I am, with the greatest respect," &c. The Prince of Wales to the King. " Sir, " I hope your Majesty will have the goodness to excuse me if, in the condition I was in yesterday, when I took the liberty to write to your Majesty, I omitted to mention that I will show no resentment to the Duke of Newcastle upon what has passed, and I take this opportunity to assure your Majesty of it, being, with profound respect, " Sir," Ac. 478 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXXVII. The Prince of Wales to the King. " Sir, " I have just now obeyed your Majesty's orders, having left St. James's. The Princess goes along with me, and our servants shall follow with all imaginable expedition." It was believed that the Prince's people at this time got the papers printed which I have just now related. I am not of that opinion, though I never heard of any body else that doubted it. To what end, indeed, should they have printed them ? It was said to fret the Duke of Newcastle — a poor reason for giving themselves this trouble, especially since the Duke of Newcastle neither was nor deserved to be, either from his capacity or his inclination, one of the principal objects of the resent ment of the Prince or his counsellors at this time. Why Sir Robert Walpole should get them printed, I can easily see cause, as they showed how much more roughly the present King had been used in the quarrel in the last reign than the Prince of Wales was treated in the present disputes; and besides this reason, the circumstance of those three letters only being printed which the Queen had saved from the flames, was a strong reason for suspicion that the publisher of these papers had his materials out of the Hampton Court shop. There were some more circumstances relating to the letters found in the late King's closet which I never knew till now, and are too curious for me not to relate. One was, that in a letter from Earl Stanhope to the late King, when things were pushing to an extremity against the then Prince of Wales, there were these 1737. THE PRINCE'S NEW COURT. 479 words :• — " II est vrai c'est votre fils, mais le Fils de Dieu meme a ete sacrifie pour le salut de genre humain." In another letter it was said, " II faut Venlever ; et my Lord Berkley le prendra sur un vaisseau, et le conduira en aucune partie du monde que votre Majeste Vordonnera." It was no wonder, if11 the King and Queen believed this to be true — that Sir Robert Walpole, weak as his interest was at the beginning of this reign, had power sufficient to remove Lord Berkley from the head of the Admiralty. It is certain that Earl Stanhope and Lord Sunder land were both so afraid of the Prince of Wales at that time, and so inveterately his enemies, that nobody doubted of their being willing and capable to undertake anything to secure themselves, gratify their resentments, and deprive the Prince ofthe succession to the Crown. But to return to the present times. The little Court at Kew had as many subdivisions in it, in proportion, as that of Hampton Court. Lady Archibald Hamilton had interest enough to suffer nothing to be done but by her influence ; and things were asked which the people who asked them thought they had a right not to have refused to them, and yet they were not granted. The Duke of Marlborough asked for his sister, Lady Bate- man, to be Lady of the Bedchamber to the Princess ; and Lord Carteret made the same request for his 11 See ante, i. 51, n, 20. Lord Hervey, by the use of this conjectural " if," seems to leave a kind of doubt over this strange story ; but I think that, coupling the whole statement in this place with Horace Walpole's version in the Reminiscences, we may conclude that the main fact is certain, and that Lord Hervey must have derived his information from the Queen herself— while Horace had it with less accuracy of detail from Sir Robert. 480 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXXVII. daughter,12 Lady Dizard; Lord Chesterfield asked that employment for Lady Frances Shirley,13 and Lady Pem broke for her sister-in-law, Lady How ; to Lady Tor- rington the Prince had promised to keep her employ ment vacant, and to Lady Archibald to bring in Lady Charlotte Edwin :u so that for these two vacancies in the bedchamber the Prince had made six absolute promises, four of which of course it was impossible he could com ply with. The only one that was complied with (be sides that to Lady Torrington, which was performed by chance and not from principle) was the promise he made to Lady Archibald in favour of Lady Charlotte Edwin, the Duke of Hamilton's sister, whom Lady Archibald prevailed with the Prince to employ as Lady of the Bedchamber though she was not declared, and persuaded the Prince to make economy his excuse for adding at present no more ladies to the Princess's bed chamber — everybody, whilst he made this excuse, knowing the true reason, and reverencing his Royal Highness accordingly. Besides these difficulties, those men of the Prince's !2 Lady Grace Carteret married in 1731 Lionel Earl of Dysart. I have the rather preserved this instance of the lax orthography of the day, because Lord Hervey has so emphatically noted the bad French and bad spelling of the Prince — forgetting that his own spelling, like everybody else's in those times (Pope's, for instance), was by no means unexceptional. is Fourth daughter of the first Earl Ferrers, celebrated in one way by her long flirtation with Lord Chesterfield, and in another by her subse quent enthusiasm for Whitfield and the Methodists. H. Walpole, her neighbour in later life, writes in his ' Twickenham Register,' (1759) — " Here Fanny, 'ever blooming fair,' Ejaculates the graceful prayer ; And 'scaped from sense — with nonsense smit, For Whitfield's cant, leaves Stanhope's wit." "Ante, p. 121, n. 24. 1737. THE PRINCE'S COURT. 481 family who did not wish the Prince should go thoroughly into the Opposition — that is, those who had ever acted with the Whigs, had been placed about him by the present Administration, were obliged to Sir Robert Walpole, and wished him well — were very uneasy at Mr. Lyttelton's being declared Secretary to the Prince, as there was nobody more violent in the Opposition, nor anybody a more . declared enemy to Sir Robert Walpole. It was said, and I have reason to believe truly, that on Mr. Lyttelton's being declared Secretary to the Prince, Lord Carnarvon, Lord Baltimore, Mr. Her bert, Mr. Montague, and Mr. Evelyn,15 who used always to vote with the Court, met and consulted on the present posture of affairs ; and all agreed to acquaint the Prince by deputation (making Mr. Herbert, his Treasurer, their deputy) that they were afraid, by this step of taking Mr. Lyttelton into his service, his Royal Highness designed to go entirely into the measures of those who opposed the Court ; and for that reason they thought it their duty to give him the earliest notice, that though they should ever adhere to his Royal High ness in any question in Parliament where he was per sonally concerned, yet they could not possibly, in public matters, act in any manner different from the principles by which their conduct had hitherto been influenced, and must always support the King's Government and Administration in the same manner they had formerly done. 16 The two Lords were of the Prince's Bedchamber. Charles Montagu, M.P. for St. Germains, was Auditor of the Duchy ; and John Evelyn, M.P. for Helston, was Groom ofthe Bedchamber. VOL. II. 2 I 482 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXXVII. What his Royal Highness's answer was I know not, nor could the Queen, Sir Robert Walpole, Mr. Fox, or Mr. Winnington, who all told me the rest, inform me anything about it. The Princess at this time was said to be extremely uneasy ; but as everybody agreed she was of a sullen, silent temper,16 nobody knew whether her uneasiness proceeded from jealousy, or from dislike ofthe Prince's measures, or from these domestic and public reasons both joined together. Lady Archibald had her un easinesses too. She began to be afraid of Lord Car teret, who consulted her in nothing, and had told the Prince he must not promote nobody but Hamiltons,17 and have a Scotch colony about him. Lady Archibald began therefore to see too late her error in letting the Prince go so strongly into the Opposition, as she only now began to apprehend that all his favours would be dis posed of, not by her to her favourites, but by Lord Carteret on parliamentary considerations. She there fore at present railed at Lord Carteret as much as at Sir Robert Walpole, and gave the Prince all the ill impressions of him she could. In this loose, broken, distracted situation were the little affairs of this little Court. Bishop Sherlock, who had, contrary to his own custom, as well as to the custom of most of the Bishops, 16 Which Horace Walpole more justly calls " her quiet good sense," auguring that " she would turn out a Caroline." — Lett., 24th June, 1745. And in the Mem. Geo. II. i. 66, he again praises " the inoffensive good sense of the Princess, who had never said a foolish thing nor done a dis agreeable one since her arrival." — See ante, p. 116, n. 4. 17 Sir William Stanhope, brother to Lord Chesterfield, a noted humorist, was forbidden the Prince's court because he went about addressing every body he met there as Mr. or Mrs. Hamilton. 1737. MADAME WALMODEN AGAIN. 483 resided a great part of the summer in his diocese, came to the Queen a little before she left Hampton Court, and was. very far from obliging her in delivering his sentiments on all this bustle; for though he was far from justifying the conduct of the Prince, yet the com ment that accompanied his condemnation of it was very unsatisfactory, and as little adroit as it could have been had he never lived out of his diocese. He told the Queen, if the Prince had taken any advice on this occasion, it could not be from any able counsellors ; for by the steps he had taken he had very weakly played the game into the King's hands, and made a blunder he would never be able to retrieve. To which the Queen (as she told me next day) replied, in a very severe tone, " I hope, my Lord, this is not the way you intend to speak your disapprobation of my son's measures anywhere else; for your saying that by his conduct lately he has played the game into the King's hands, one would imagine you thought the game had been before in his own ; and though he has made his game still worse than it was, I am far from thinking it was ever a good one, or that he had ever much chance to win." Madame Walmoden's name had not been mentioned for a long time, when Sir Robert Walpole told Lord Hervey that he had had the King's orders to buy one hundred lottery-tickets for his Majesty, to send to her as he supposed, for he had pressed Sir Robert to get them by the Friday following, and given for his reason that Friday was the German post-day. Sir Robert told Lord Hervey, too, that he had acquainted the Queen with this commission, to avoid her suspecting he had 2i2 484 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXXVII. any secret managements for this lady, or was employed in any transactions relating to her which he did not communicate to her Majesty. He also told Lord Hervey that the King, to save making this 1000?. dis bursement out of his privy purse, had ordered him to charge the purchase-money of these tickets in the secret service — adding, that his Majesty, like all other covet ous people, fancied always that he gave less when he gave out of a stock which, though equally his own, was money he had never fingered. When first Sir Robert began this account to Lord Hervey, he called Madame Walmoden only the " King's favourite," which Lord Hervey mistaking for Lady Deloraine, said he did not think his Majesty went so deep there ; to which Sir Robert, setting him right, replied, " No, I mean the Hanover woman. You are indeed in the right to ima gine he does not go so deep to his lying fool here : he '11 give her a couple of tickets, and think her generously used." Just before the King left Hampton Court a depu tation of sixteen merchants came to him in great form with a petition signed by several hundred, to complain of the Spanish depredations in the West Indies, and beg his Majesty's protection and redress. The petition, which specified no particular facts, but was conceived in the strongest general terms, was referred to the Cabinet Council, and orders given by the King for a very strict examination to be made into the allegations of it.18 And the truth of the fact I believe was, that is The petition is to be found in the Gentleman's and London Maga zines for October, 1737. 1737. SPANISH DEPREDATIONS IN THE WEST INDIES. 485 many of our merchants carrying on an illicit trade there, and being a sort of national smugglers, the Spa niards, irritated at this proceeding, had confounded the innocent with the guilty, and often seized ships they had no right to seize as well as those they had, and this way revenged themselves upon England for such illicit traders as had escaped them. Besides this, many of the Spanish Governors in the West Indies, finding their account in conniving at this illicit trade in many in stances by receiving money from the English mer chants not to prevent it, the merchants were often secure in the ports where they ought to have been searched and stopped, and were all indiscriminately annoyed on the high seas, where the proper distinction was harder to be made. And the Court of Spain cer tainly acted unjustly to suffer this national havoc to be made by their guarda-costas, instead of hanging their own Governors for making this the only method of preventing this illicit trade from being carried on with impunity. I suppose this matter will be thoroughly sifted this year in Parliament.19 The Court came to town [on the 2Sth October] as usual two days before the King's birthday, and Sir Robert Walpole being in too deep mourning for his wife to appear on that occasion, he set out for Norfolk the day before the King left Hampton Court. Those who were in the King's service, or espoused 19 Lord Hervey, we see, was writing de die in diem. This affair was blown up by faction into a most serious one — it ended in a war with Spain, and indirectly led to the overthrow of Walpole's Administration. See Burke's able and eloquent observations upon this subject in the first ' Letter on a Regicide Peace.' Works, viii. 145. 486 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXXVII. his cause in the quarrel with his son, piqued themselves on contributing to make up the crowd on this first show-day after the separation of the courts, and by these means the drawing-room, to the great satisfaction both ofthe King and the Queen, was much fuller than ever it had been on any other 30th of October since the first after his Majesty's accession to the Crown. The night before Lord Isla was to follow Sir Robert Walpole into Norfolk, the Queen saw him in the even ing in private, for the first time I believe in her life, and to the infinite dissatisfaction of his Grace of New castle. Had he known how the Queen treated him in this conference it would have added to his disquiet, for as her Majesty and Lord Isla both told me afterwards, she gave up the Duke of Newcastle without any reserve ; insomuch that the comment Lord Isla made on her conduct was, that he should have been better pleased had she said less, as what she said, had she thought it at all, must have been more than she could believe of one she let continue in the King's service. But one thing she said to Lord Isla I am sure was in general true, which was, that she had often schooled the Duke of Newcastle for his behaviour towards him and Lord Hervey, and had assured him — if he persisted in endea vouring to make the King's servants uneasy in his service and the execution of their duty, when his only quarrel to them was serving too well — that the King would not endure it. When the Queen related this to Lord Hervey, she repeated what she had often said on these occasions before : that the poor silly Duke of Newcastle fancied she would not dislike his using Lord Isla ill because 1737. QUEEN'S CONFERENCE WITH LORD ISLA. 487 he had once made his court to Lady Suffolk, as if she cared for that now ; or, if he was able and willing to do the King any good service at present, that she was fool enough to consider what he had said, Or done, or been formerly. " Or if I had reasoned in that way," said she, " I wonder what the Duke of Newcastle himself would have been now. One must take people as one finds them, and when they can be of use to make the whole™ go on, one must not embarrass one's self by thinking of little silly particulars, that are or ought to be out of the question." Lord Isla in this conference told the Queen, who was very inquisitive how his brother the Duke of Argyle talked at this time, that with regard to the present disputes between the King and the Prince it was impossible for anybody to talk more reasonably or to be more listed in that cause than his brother ; but that his brother had declared too, upon a rumour being spread of some proposal to be made in Parliament to detach the Hanover dominions after the death of the King from the Crown of England, that he would cer tainly, as far as he could, promote any such scheme. Lord Isla told Lord Hervey afterwards that the Queen had seemed much set against this scheme ; that she had said the Parliament had nothing to do with it, since it was not one of the original conditions in the Act of Settlement. " And though they," continued her Majesty, "who are for promoting this scheme, may allege that it is no injury to the King, since the sepa ration is not proposed to be made till his death and his successor will consent to it, yet so far it is certainly an 20 " The whole" was a phrase in common use at this time to mean all the interests bound up with the Hanoverian succession. 483 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXXVII. injury, that if the fine scheme (as I hear it is) of my son's consenting to this proposal is to be bought by the King's giving him 50,000?. a-year more in present, then they take that out of your King's pocket : and who has given the Prince a right to dismember the dominions of his family ? I know he would sell not only his re version in the Electorate, but even in this kingdom, if the Pretender would give him five or six hundred thou sand pounds in present ; but, thank God ! he has neither right nor power to sell his family — though his folly and his knavery may sometimes distress them. However, my Lord, you may assure yourself the King will never hear of any such proposal with patience, but will look on such a motion in Parliament as the highest indignity and insult to him and his family, and all the promoters of it as people who make a pre tence of the interest of England to distress and affront him." When the Queen told Lord Hervey next morning what had passed between her and Lord Isla on this subject, Lord Hervey said he did not very well understand the constitution of the Empire, but said he should imagine it would not be in the power of the Parliament, even with the King and Prince's consent, to alter the succession to the Electorate ; that he should naturally think the consent of the Empire and Emperor must be necessary to such a transfer ; and if so, that the same policy which might induce some people here to make it, would prevail at the Court of Vienna to prevent it : for if it was thought that the King of England being at the same time Elector of Hanover made him more liable to the influence and power of the Emperor than he 1737. SUCCESSION TO THE ELECTORATE. 489 would be if he was only King of England, it must be as much the interest of that Court to keep such an influence as it could be the interest of this country to get rid of it. It is certain, however, notwithstanding all I have related, that the King did often deliberate in private upon a method to give his German dominions from his eldest to his second son, and had actually sketches of instruments drawn for that purpose ; but this was a transaction known to very few, and guessed at only even by Sir Robert Walpole, not communicated to him. The Queen never came thoroughly into this scheme, although she wished some safe way of effecting it could be hit upon for the sake of her second son.21 21 See ante, p. 417, n. 5. It will be observed that there is a good deal of inconsistency in the statements of the Queen's feelings on this subject ; she probably had formed no settled opinion. The project seems to have been revived by Walpole after the Queen's death as a popular measure that might, he hoped, avert his own fall. See Speaker Onslow's remarks in Coxe, ii. 571 ; and Lord Mahoris History, iii. 32. 490 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXXVIII. CHAPTER XXXVIII. The Queen taken ill — Princess Caroline ill also — Arrangement of attend ance — The Queen grows worse— Sir R. Walpole sent for— The Queen reveals her secret disease, a Rupture— The Prince's request to be ad mitted to see her refused— Progress of the disease — History of her Rupture — Her obstinate reluctance to confess it — Her danger grows imminent— Legal doubts as to the succession to the Queen's property- Lord Hervey consults the Chancellor— Surgical operations. On Wednesday, the 9th of November, the Queen was taken ill in the morning at her new Library in St. James's Park; she called her complaint the cholic, her stomach and bowels giving her great pain. She came home, took Daffy's Elixir by Dr. Tesier,1 the German and house-physician's advice ; but was in such great pain, and so uneasy with frequent Teachings to vomit, that she went into bed. However, when the clock struck two, and the King proposed sending Lord Grantham to dismiss the company, and declare there would be no drawing-room, she, according to the custom of the family, not caring to own, or at least to have it generally known, how ill she was, told the King she was much better — that she would get up and see 1 George Lewis Tessier, M.D., F.R.S., Physician to the Household. It seems strange that none of the King's or Queen's Physicians in Ordinary — though they were all eminent men, particularly Mead and Wilmot — were called in, except Sloane, who was almost superannuated, and even he was not called in at first. 1737. THE QUEEN'S ILLNESS. 491 the company as usual. As soon as she came into the drawing-room she came up to Lord Hervey and said, " Is it not intolerable at my age to be plagued with a new distemper ? Here is this nasty cholic that I had at Hampton Court come again." The Queen had twice this summer at Hampton Court been seized with a vomiting and purging, which had lasted in the most violent manner for three or four hours, and then left her so easy and well, that she had played the same night in the drawing-room as usual, and talked with almost the same cheerfulness. This made Lord Hervey less alarmed than he otherwise would have been at her present disorder, for she looked extremely ill, and com plained much more than was her custom to do when she suffered most. Lord Hervey asked her what she had taken, and when she told him, he replied, " For God's sake, Madam, go to your own room ; what have you to do here ? " She then went and talked a little to the rest of the company, and coming back again to Lord Hervey, said, " I am not able to entertain people." " Would to God," replied Lord Hervey, " the King would have done talking of the Dragon of Wantley, and release you." (This was a new silly farce2 which every body at this time went to see.) At last the King went away, telling the Queen as he went by, that she had overlooked the Duchess of Norfolk. The Queen made her excuse for having done so to the Duchess of Norfolk, the last person she ever spoke to in public, and then retired, going immediately into bed, where she grew worse every moment. 2 A burlesque on the Italian Opera by Henry Carey, first played at Covent Garden the 26th of October, 1737. 492 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXXVIII, At seven o'clock, when Lord Hervey returned to St. James's from M. de Cambis's, the French ambassador's, where he dined that day, he went up to the Queen's apartment and found her in bed, with the Princess Caroline only in the room, the King being gone, as usual at that hour, to play in the Princess Emily's apartment. The Queen asked Lord Hervey what he used to take in his violent fits of the cholic ; and Lord Hervey imagining the Queen's pain to proceed from a goutish humour in her stomach that should be driven from that dangerous seat into her limbs, told her nothing ever gave him immediate ease but strong things. To which the Queen replied : " Pshaw ! you think now like all the other fools, that this is the pain of an old nasty gout." But her vomitings, or rather her Teachings, together with such acute pain, continuing in a degree that she could not lie one moment quiet, she said about an hour after to Lord Hervey, " Give me what you will, I will take it;" and the Princess Caroline bidding him not lose this opportunity, he only said to the Queen he would fetch the strongest thing he could get, telling her at the same time that his former experience of violent fits of the cholic was such that he was sure all the angels in heaven together could not procure her immediate ease without it. He fetched some snake-root3 and brandy, and asking Dr. Tesier, who was in the outward room, whether he might venture to give it her, Dr. Tesier, who was naturally timid, and made more so by the manner in which he had been talked to in the King's illness last 3 Polygala senega — still used as a stimulant. 1737. THE QUEEN'S ILLNESS. 493 year, said the Queen's pulse was very high and feverish, and as she was unused to drinking anything strong, he could not affirm that this very strong cordial would do her no hurt. Lord Hervey then asked him if he should propose to the King to call in another physician, and if he had any objection to Broxholme ;4 and Dr. Tesier saying he wished it extremely, but did not dare to propose it himself to the King, Lord Hervey told Princess Caroline what had passed ; that he did not dare to take upon him to give the snake-root without Tesier's consent ; and would, if she approved, propose to the King that Dr. Broxholme might be called in. The Princess Caroline consented, and Lord Plervey speaking to the King, who was now returned from Princess Emily's apartment, and began to be alarmed, Dr. Broxholme was immediately sent for by Lord Hervey. When he came, Tesier and he agreed to give the Queen immediately some snake-root with Sir Walter Raleigh's cordial ;5 but this cordial being long in preparing, and Ranby, house-surgeon to the King, a sensible fellow and a favourite of Lord Hervey's, telling Lord Hervey that insisting on these occasions upon a cordial with this name or other name was mere quack ery, and that no cordial was better than another in these cases but in proportion to its strength, Lord Hervey got some usquebaugh immediately, and telling * Dr. Noel Broxholme was First Physician to the Prince. 5 Sir Walter Raleigh professed to have a sovereign cordial, which was administered in extremis to Henry Prince of Wales, but with no other effect than to increase King James's antipathy to Raleigh — Sir Walter having unluckily accompanied the medicine with a boast — that " it would certainly cure him or any other of a fever — except in case of poison !" A medicine of that name is still to be found in the old-fashioned Pharmacopoeias. 494 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXXVIII. Princess Caroline what Ranby had said, the usque baugh was immediately given to the Queen, who kept it about half an hour, which was about twenty-nine minutes longer than she had kept anything else, but then brought it up. Soon after the snake-root and Sir Walter Raleigh's cordial arrived from the apothe cary's; it was taken and thrown up about an hour after. All these strong things, twice Daffy's Elixir, mint-water, usquebaugh, snake-root, and Sir Walter Raleigh's Cordial, had, without easing the Queen's pain, so increased her fever, that the doctors ordered Ranby to bleed her twelve ounces immediately. * 6 * The Princess Caroline had been extremely ill all this summer at Hampton Court of rheumatic pains, and growing every day worse, notwithstanding all the medi cines that had been given her in what the physicians call a regular way, Lord Hervey upon her coming to town had persuaded her to take Ward's Pill, a nostrum belonging to one Ward,7 an excellent medicine not only in rheumatism but in several cases, which, for being so, all the physicians and surgeons endeavoured to decry. Princess Caroline, persuaded by Lord Hervey, had taken this medicine since her arrival in London, with the privity rather than consent of the King and Queen, and keeping it a secret to everybody else ; but in four times taking only, she had found such benefit, that s I have here omitted, and shall subsequently, without further notice, omit, as much as possible of disagreeable medical and surgical details. Too many will still remain ; but I could not venture to interfere further with this striking though painful picture. i Ward was a celebrated quack, who was in 1716 returned to Parliament, but was unseated on petition. — Beatson, Tit. Marlborough. His pill was a favourite medicine in the Hervey family. 1737. THE QUEEN'S ILLNESS. 495 notwithstanding she had been unable to walk or get up from her chair without help when she began it, she was now quite free from pain, and could walk almost as well as she ever could have done in her life. How ever, her recovery being not yet perfect, the King and Queen were both extremely solicitous to have her go to bed, which she did not do till two o'clock in the morning. The King, inconveniently both to him self and the Queen, lay on the Queen's bed all night in his night-gown, where he could not sleep, nor she turn about easily. Early in the morning of Thursday the 10th the Queen was blooded twelve ounces more, upon which her fever, that had been very high all night, abated, and everybody but herself thought she was better. When the King went to his own side to change his linen, she told the Princess Caroline it signified nothing what they did to her, for she should certainly die, and added, " Poor Caroline I you are very ill too ; we shall soon meet again in another place." Her vomiting was suspended for a few hours this morning ; but [an obstinate internal obstruction was not removed]. However, on this amendment, as everybody called it, but few really thought it, the King resolved to have a levee, and that the Princess Emily should see the company at the usual hour of the Queen's going into her drawing-room ; and to show what odd and inconsistent particulars we are all composed of, this being the day the Foreign Ministers came to Court, the King, in the midst of all his real and great concern for the Queen, sent to his pages to bid them be sure to have his last new ruffles sewed on upon the shirt he was to put on 496 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXXVHI. that day at his public dressing. Such sort of particulars will seem very trifling to those who do not think, like me, that trifling circumstances often let one more into people's tempers and characters than those parts of their conduct that are of greater importance, from which one frequently knows no more of their natural turn of mind than one does of their natural gait whilst they are dancing. Mrs. Herbert,8 sister-in-law to Lord Pembroke, hap pened to be the Bedchamber-Woman in Waiting this week on the Queen, and though she was a personal and warm enemy, and had long been so, to Sir Robert Walpole, yet she was so sensible, so well-bred, so handy, so cheerful, and so agreeable to the Queen, that the Queen desired if she should continue ill longer than that week, that Mrs. Herbert would continue in waiting. Mrs. Herbert, Mrs. Selwyn, and Mrs. Brudnal were the only Bedchamber- Women who attended the Queen during her whole illness, Lady Sundon being very ill at Bath, and the rest absent elsewhere. None of the Ladies of her Bedchamber were admitted to her at all. Lord Hervey asked the Duke of Newcastle this morning if he would not send for Sir Robert Walpole, and the Duke of Newcastle said he had mentioned it, but that the Princess Emily had told him the King and Queen would both dislike he should ; but his Grace added, he would write that night to Houghton to say how the Queen was, and disguise nothing. He did 2 Mary, daughter of Speaker Smith. She was a particular friend of the Duchess of Queensberry and Gay, and, of course, not favourable to " Bob tlie poet's foe." 1737. THE QUEEN'S SECRET. 497 so, and Princess Emily added a postscript in the letter, softening the state of things, and begging Sir Robert Walpole by all means not to think of coming to town. Lord Hervey wrote that night, softening nothing, and advising him by all means to come, but did not then tell Sir Robert what he thought he plainly per ceived, that the Princess Emily and the Duke of New castle had no mind he should come : the Princess Emily hoping, I believe, that the Queen would not take his staying at Houghton well ; and the Duke of Newcastle, joined to that reason, proposing perhaps by Sir Robert's absence to have the King more to himself. If that was his scheme, he was disappointed ; for after this day the King saw no Minister, nor any one man-servant that belonged to him but Lord Hervey, who was never out ofthe Queen's apartment for above four or five hours at most at a time during her whole illness, and some times not two in the twenty-four, and never went from the King without his desiring him to come back as soon as he could. This evening, whilst the Princess Caroline and he were alone with the Queen, she complaining and they comforting, she often said, " / have an ill which nobody knows of;" which they both understood to mean nothing more than that she felt what she could not describe, and more than anybody imagined. Princess Caroline's extreme concern and almost continual weeping gave her a return of her rheumatism, which settled in her back ; and added to this, she had from this violent and perpetual weeping a frequent bleeding at her nose, and in great quantities. The King and Queen, therefore, VOL. ii. 2 K 498 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXXVIII, both persuaded her to go to bed, and insisted on her doing so about midnight, Lord Hervey promising her to sit up, and giving his word he would frequently come and inform her how the Queen was exactly, and without the least disguise. This night two more physicians were called in, Sir Hans Sloane and Dr. Hulst,9 who ordered blisters and aperients : these came up, like every other thing, soon after she had swallowed it, and the blisters, though a remedy to which the King and Queen had often de clared themselves very averse, were put upon her legs. Lord Hervey went once or twice in the night, as he had promised, to Princess Caroline ; the King sat up in the Queen's room, and Princess Emily lay on a couch in Mrs. Herbert's. At six o'clock on Friday morning [the 11 th~\ the Queen was again blooded, upon which her fever went almost entirely off; but the total stoppage and fre quent vomitings still continued. On Friday Lord Hervey again desired the Duke of Newcastle to send an express for Sir Robert Walpole, which his Grace at last thought fit to do ; but sending the messenger round by Euston, where the Duke of Grafton then was, and the messenger by accident or order loitering on the road, Sir Robert Walpole had not these letters till Saturday evening, and set not out for London till Sunday morning. On Friday Lord Hervey hearing the Prince was come from Kew to Carlton House in Pall Mall, sus pected he had done so in order to come to St. James's 9 Edward Hulse, M.D., created a Baronet in February, 1739, in conse quence, it is said, of his attendance on the Queen. 1737. PRINCE'S MESSAGE TO THE KING. 499 to inquire after the Queen, and perhaps to ask to see her; and that no resolution on such step might be taken by the King in a hurry, Lord Hervey told the King his conjecture, and asked his Majesty, in case it should prove a true one, what he would have done. The King said, " If the puppy should, in one of his im pertinent affected airs of duty and affection, dare to come to St. James's, I order you to go to the scoundrel and tell him I wonder at his impudence for daring to come here ; that he has my orders already, and knows my pleasure, and bid him go about his business : for his poor mother is not in a condition to see him act his false, whining, cringeing tricks now, nor am I in a humour to bear his impertinence ; and bid him trouble me with no more messages, but get out of my house." About an hour or two afterwards, whilst Lord Hervey was sitting with the Duke [of Cumberland], drinking tea in the Queen's outer apartment, a message came by one ofthe Queen's pages to the Duke to tell him Lady Pembroke, the Queen's Lady then in waiting, desired to speak with his Royal Plighness in the passage. Lord Hervey, telling the Duke he suspected this might prove something relative to the Prince, said he would go with him. Accordingly he went, and Lady Pembroke told the Duke, Lord North had just been with her from the Prince to desire her, in the Prince's name, to let the King and Queen know his Royal Highness was in the utmost affliction upon hearing of the Queen's illness, was come to London in order to hear more frequently how she did ; aiid that the only thing that could alle viate his great concern at this time was to be admitted to the honour of seeing her. 2 k 2 500 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXXVIII. The Duke said, " I am not a proper person, Madam, to take the charge of this message, but there is Lord Hervey, who is the only one of papa's servants that sees him at present, and is just going to him ; if you will deliver it to him, he will certainly let the King know." Accordingly, Lady Pembroke repeated the message over again to Lord Hervey, and Lord Hervey assured her he would take the first opportunity to acquaint the King with it. When Lord Hervey told the King what had passed, his Majesty flew into as great a rage as he could have done had he not been prepared. " This," said he, " is like one of the scoundrel's tricks ; it is just of a piece with his kneeling down in the dirt before the mob to kiss her hand at the coach-door when she came from Hampton Court to see the Princess, though he had not spoken one word to her during her whole visit. I always hated the rascal, but now I hate him yet worse than ever. He wants to come and insult his poor dying mother ; but she shall not see him ; you have heard her, and all my daughters have heard her very often this year at Hampton Court, desire me, if she should be ill and out of her senses, that I would never let him come near her ; and whilst she had her senses, she was sure she should never desire it. No, no ! he shall not come and act any of his silly plays here. Besides, supposing the Queen loved him as much as she hates him, it would be as improper for her to see him in that case as it is now. She is not in a condition to bear the emotion. Therefore, my Lord, you know my thoughts. I have told you already the answer I would 1737. KING'S ANSWER TO PRINCE'S MESSAGE. 501 have given ; you have but to tell it my Lord North, and be sure not to forget to say I will be plagued with no more messages." Lord Hervey told the King, if he delivered a verbal message only, that the Prince and his people would certainly engraft a thousand lies upon it, and without a possibility of being disproved. " It is no matter for that," replied the King. " I will not honour him with another written message, nor have the appearance of giving myself at this time so much trouble about him." " Nor would I have your Majesty," answered Lord Hervey ; " but if you will give me leave, as for the help of my own memory, to put your Majesty's com mands down in writing, and only let me read that paper, without delivering it, your Majesty will at once show that you will neither honour them with a written message nor trust them with a verbal one." " You are in the right," said the King : " do so. Put down in writing what you are to say, and pray see who are in the rooms ; and take two people of quality and credit along with you, to be by when you read the paper to Lord North, that they may be witnesses to what passes ; for else that pack of knaves and liars {Cartouche's gang, as the poor Queen always calls them) are capable of reporting you to have said things you never thought of." Lord Hervey went immediately to put down what he was to say in writing, and desired the Duke of Newcastle and Lord Pembroke to go along with him to Lord North ; telling them that he had already named them to the King for that purpose, and acquainting 502 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXXVIII. them at the same time with all the material part of what I have already related concerning this trans action. Lord Pembroke, Lord Hervey chose as a man of credit ; and the Duke of Newcastle because he thought it would mortify him to play subaltern in an occurrence where Lord Hervey acted the principal part — apetitesse in Lord Hervey's way of thinking, but one he liked to indulge. The message Lord Hervey drew was as follows : — Message delivered by Lord Hervey by word of mouth to Lord North at St. James's, on Friday, November 11, 1737, in the presence of the Duke of Newcastle and Lord Pembroke. " I have acquainted the King with the message sent to Lady Pembroke, and his Majesty has ordered me to say that in the present situation and circumstances his Majesty does not think fit that the Prince should see the Queen, and therefore expects he should not come to St. James's." The King thought this draft much too mild, but after a little persuasion consented to it : as also (at Lord Hervey's request) to see the Duke of Newcastle and Lord Pembroke only for a minute, to read this paper to them, to tell them he had ordered Lord Hervey to deliver this message, and to order them to be present when he did so ; and the King again, in their presence, repeated his commands to Lord Hervey to be sure not to give a copy of that paper, with his reasons, already mentioned, why he would not have it done, as well as those for his ordering the Duke of Newcastle and Lord Pembroke to be witnesses to what passed at this inter view — cutting Lord Pembroke very short, who would have offered some palliatives to the wording of the 1737. KING'S ANSWER TO PRINCE'S MESSAGE. 503 message, and telling him, " My Lord, you are always for softening, and I think it is much too soft already for such a villain and a scoundrel ; it is much softer than I ordered Lord Hervey to prepare it ; so pray go, and let it be given this moment, and be sure I am plagued with no more impertinence of this sort, for I will neither have the poor Queen disturbed with his silly noise, nor will I be troubled with it again myself." When Lord Hervey delivered the message, Lord North desired he might have a copy of it in writing, to which Lord Pembroke answered that Lord Hervey had the King's positive commands not to give it in writing ; and Lord Hervey added that he would read it as often as Lord North pleased, and after hearing it three or four times, Lord North took his leave. In the afternoon the Queen said to the King, she wondered the Griff (the nickname of the Prince) had not sent to ask to see her yet, it would be so like one of his paroitres ; " but sooner or later I am sure one shall be plagued with some message of that sort, be cause he will think it will have a good air in the world to ask to see me ; and perhaps hopes I shall be fool enough to let him come, and give him the pleasure of seeing my last breath go out of my body, by which means he would have the joy of knowing I was dead five minutes sooner than he could know it in Pall Mall." The King then bid her not be under any apprehen sions of a trouble of this kind, for that he had already taken care to prevent it ; and then related to her every circumstance of the message he had received, and the answer he had returned by Lord Hervey. The King 504 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXXVIII. told the Queen, too, that if she had the least mind to see her son, he had no objection to it, and begged her to do just what she liked. " I am so far," said the Queen, "from desiring to see him, that nothing but your absolute commands should ever make me consent to it. For what should I see him ? — For him to tell me a hundred lies, and to give myself at this time a great deal of trouble to no purpose. If anything I could say to him would alter his behaviour, I would see him with all my heart ; but I know that is impos sible. Whatever advice I gave him he would thank me for, pleureroit comme un veau all the while I was speaking, and swear to follow my directions ; and would laugh at me the moment he was out of the room, and do just the contrary of all I bid him, the moment I was dead. And, therefore, if I should grow worse, and be weak enough to talk of seeing him, I beg you, Sir, to conclude that I doat or rave. — " * *10 The whole of Friday the Queen grew worse every hour. Next morning, 12^ November, when the King came into the room he whispered to her that he was afraid her illness proceeded from a thing he had promised never to speak of again ; but that now his duty to her called upon him to tell the phy sician all he knew and all he apprehended. She begged and entreated him, with great earnestness, that he would not; and spoke with more warmth and peevishness than she showed at any other minute during her whole illness. However, he sent for Ranby the 10 Here a chasm of a page or two. 1737. THE QUEEN'S SECRET REVEALED. 505 surgeon, and told him he apprehended the Queen had an umbilical rupture, and bid him examine her. The Queen carried her desire to conceal this complaint so far, that when Ranby came to feel her she laid his hand on the pit of her stomach, and said all her pain was there ; but Ranby, slipping his hand lower, kept it there in spite of her, some little time ; and then, with out saying one word to the Queen, went and spoke softly to the King at the chimney, upon which the Queen started up, and sitting in her bed, said to Ranby, with great eagerness, " I am sure now, you blockhead, you are telling the King I have a rupture." " I am so," said Ranby, "and there is no more time to be lost: your Majesty has concealed it too long already ; and I beg another surgeon may be called in immediately." The Queen made no answer, but lay down again, turned her head to the other side, and, as the King told me, he thinks it was the only tear he saw her shed whilst she was ill. The King bid Ranby send imme diately for old Busier11 the surgeon, whom, though four score years old, the King and Queen had a great opinion of, and preferred to every other man of his profession. Busier not being immediately to be found, and the King very impatient, he bid Ranby go and bring the first surgeon of any note and credit he could find ; and n Paul Bussiere, F.R.S., a French refugee, and the first who ever gave surgical lectures in England. He was the surgeon who attended Harley when wounded by Guiscard. It seems extraordinary that the celebrated Cheselden, at the time Surgeon to the Queen, and in special favour with her, should not have been consulted. He had been recently appointed chief surgeon to Chelsea Hospital, and, having given up general practice, may have been absent. Ranby was Surgeon to the Household. 506 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXXVHI. whilst Ranby was absent on this errand, the King told Lord Hervey the whole history of this rupture. " The first symptoms I ever perceived of it," said he, " were fourteen years ago,12 just after the Queen lay in of Louisa ; and she then told me, when I spoke to her of it, that it was nothing more than what was common for almost every woman to have after a hard labour, or after having many children. This made me easy, and it grew better, and continued better afterwards for several years. When it grew worse again, I persuaded her to consult some surgeon, which she declined, and was so uneasy whenever I spoke to her on this subject that I knew not how to press her ; but when I came from Hanover the last time but one, I found it so much worse than ever that I again spoke to her, told her it was certainly a rupture, and that she ran great risks in taking no care of it. She was so very uneasy upon my saying this — telling me it was no such thing, and that I fancied she had a nasty distemper which she was sure she had not, and spoke so much more peevishly to me on this occasion than she had ever done in her life upon any other — that upon my renewing my soli citations to her to let somebody see it, and her growing every time I mentioned it more and more hurt and angry, I at last told her I wished she might not repent her obstinacy, but promised her I never would mention this subject to her again as long as I lived." i* Princess Louisa was born on the 7th of December, 1724, and therefore not quite 13 years ago. This settles what I have always suspected, that Mrs. Clayton's influence did not arise, as Horace Walpole understood Sir Robert to have said, from having " wormed herself into the secret" ofthe Queen's rupture, for her favour was eminent many years before the rupture. The favour probably produced the confidence, but certainly not the confi dence the favour. — Ante, i. 89, n. 3. 1737. PROGRESS OP THE DISEASE. 507 The King, in as plain insinuations as he could with out saying it in direct terms, did intimate to Lord Hervey that the Queen had received what he had said to her on this subject, upon his return from Hanover, as if she had reproached him with being grown weary of her person, and endeavouring to find blemishes in it that did not belong to her. I do firmly believe she carried her abhorrence to being known to have a rupture so far that she would have died without declaring it, or letting it be known, had not the King told it in spite of her ; and though people may think this weakness little of a piece with the greatness of the rest of her character, yet they will judge partially who interpret this delicacy to be merely an ill-timed coquetry at fifty-four that would hardly have been excusable at twenty-five. She knew better than anybody else that her power over the King was not preserved independent, as most people thought, of the charms of her person ; and as her power over him was the principal object of her pursuit, she feared, very reasonably, the loss or the weakening of any tie by which she held him. Several things she afterwards said to the King in her illness, which both the King and the Princess Caroline told me again, plainly de monstrated how strongly these apprehensions of making her person distasteful to the King worked upon her. When Ranby returned he brought one Shipton with him, a City surgeon, and one of the most eminent and most able of the whole profession. By this time, too, Busier arrived, and these three attended her constantly. After they had examined the Queen, they all told the King she was in the utmost danger. Busier proposed 508 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXXVIII, making [an operation with the knife, to enable them to replace the protrusion,] which Ranby opposed [as full of immediate danger, and thinking that the tumour might be reduced by less violent means]. Shipton in clining to Ranby's opinion, this method was pursued. In the mean time, Lord Plervey telling the King that he had heard it said among some lawyers, that if the Queen died Richmond Gardens13 would come to the Prince, the King ordered Lord Hervey to go immedi ately to my Lord Chancellor, and ask his opinion upon it. Lord Hervey accordingly went to Westminster Hall, where my Lord Chancellor then was trying a cause in the Court of Chancery. Lord Hervey sent for him off the bench, and Lord Chancellor stopping the proceedings, retired into a private room with Lord Hervey, and told Lord Hervey he would look into the deeds and Act of Parliament by which Richmond was settled on the Queen, and should then be able to give his opinion more particularly ; but in the mean time bid Lord Hervey tell the King, whatever the settle ment was, it could not be altered by any will the Queen should make ; and that whatever she died possessed of, that was unsettled, would go to the King if she died without a will, or even with one, if that will was not made in consequence of powers given her by his Majesty.14 13 The Queen had purchased the ground on which Richmond Lodge and Gardens were made out of her own allowance, and by a privilege of Queen- consort they were her separate property and would go to her heir-at-law if there was no testamentary disposal of them ; but in any case her hus band would, by courtesy of England, have them for life. She had, however, made a will leaving everything to the King. h I do not quite understand the latter part of this opinion. All the books say that the Queen-consort can make a will independently of the King. It 1737. THE QUEEN DESPAIRED OF. 509 This answer made the King easy as to everything belonging to the Queen except Richmond ; and when my Lord Chancellor had examined all the settlements relating to that, it came out that Richmond would be long to the King for his life, but that after his death nothing could prevent its going to the Prince. The King told the Queen of this transaction, to set her mind at ease from doubts she had conceived, and fears she had formed, of the Prince being any way pecuniarily the better for her death. About six o'clock this Saturday evening the sur geons [performed a very painful operation, but without any material effect, or giving] them any great hope of her recovery. The Princess Caroline's nose bled so violently and almost constantly this whole day that she was but little in the Queen's bedchamber, but stayed in the outward room of her Majesty's apartment, and was again blooded with much difficulty, for Ranby was forced to prick her in both arms, and even at both the blood was so thick he could get but little. However, her mother being so ill, no persuasions could prevail with her to go to her own side to bed : she lay all night on a couch in the outward room. Princess Emily sat up with the Queen, the King went to bed, and Lord Hervey lay on a mattress on the floor, at the foot of Princess Caroline's couch. seems, however, the notion had got abroad ; for the Duchess of Marl borough says that, " during her last illness, the Queen asked and received the King's permission to make a will ;" and from this anxiety about the will, her Grace tries to accredit the vulgar calumny against the Queen, of having hoarded enormously. (Opinions.) In fact she died in debt. 510 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXXIX. CHAPTER XXXIX. The Queen grows worse — Mortification declared — The Queen's parting interview and advice — Her presentiment that she should die on Wednesday — Walpole arrives — His interview- — The Queen recommends the King and Kingdom to his care — The King and Queen displeased at the inquiries of the Prince's family— The King's superstition — The Queen's fortitude and resignation — Question about religious offices — The Archbishop sent for — The Queen recommends Dr. Butler by name, and her other servants generally. About four o'clock on Sunday morning the 13th, the Queen complaining that her wound was extremely painful, and desiring to have it dressed, Ranby and Shipton were called in to her, and upon opening the wound declared it had already begun to mortify. Hulst, whose turn it was that night to sit up, was sent for into the Queen's bedchamber, and acquainted by the sur geons with the situation she was in. Hulst came to the Princess Caroline, and told her this terrible and dreaded news, upon which she bid him and Ranby go immediately and inform the King. All this passed in the room without Lord Hervey's waking, who was fallen asleep quite exhausted by con cern and watching. Princess Caroline, as soon as the surgeons and Plulst were gone to the King, waked Lord Hervey, and told him, if ever he saw the Queen again, it must be immediately, for that the physicians and surgeons had declared the mortification already begun, and were gone to tell the King that it was im possible for her to live many hours. 1737. QUEEN TAKES LEAVE OP HER FAMILY. 511 When Hulst and Ranby came back to Princess Caroline (the King being already up, and gone to the Queen), Princess Caroline and Lord Hervey asked Hulst if there was no possibility left of her recovery, and he answered, " None." Lord Hervey then asked Ranby if they were never deceived in the signs of a mortification, to which Ranby, shaking his head, re plied, " We know them but too well." The Queen finding the wound still so uneasy, sent again to have them open and dress it ; but Hulst said it was to no purpose to do anything more, and Ranby assured the Princess Caroline he could do nothing that would not give the Queen more pain without a possibi lity of doing her Majesty any good. However, the Queen insisting on having the wound cleaned at least, the King, who had told the Queen all that the surgeons had told him, came out, called in Ranby and Hulst, and made them comply with her request. Lord Hervey went in with them, just to see the Queen once more, looked at her through his tears for a moment, and then returned to his mattress. As soon as the surgeons had applied some of their lenient ointments and anodyne preparations, they left the room, came to Lord Hervey, and confirmed their former report of the impossibility of her holding out many hours. Nobody now remained in the room with the Queen but the King, the Duke, and her four daughters, of whom she took leave in form, desiring they would not leave her till she expired. She told the King she had nothing to say to him. " For as I have always," said she, " told you my thoughts of things and people as fast as 512 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXXIX. they arose, I have nothing left to communicate to you. The people I love and those I do not, the people I like and dislike, and those I would wish you to be kind to, you know as well as myself; and I am persuaded it would therefore be a useless trouble both to you and me at this time to add any particular recommenda tions." To the Princess Emily she said nothing very par ticular ; to the Princess Caroline she recommended the care of her two younger sisters, and said, " Poor Caro line, it is a fine legacy I leave you — the trouble of educating these two young things. As for you, Wil liam," continued she to the Duke,1 " you know I have always loved you tenderly, and placed my chief hope in you ; show your gratitude to me in your behaviour to the King ; be a support to your father, and double your attention to make up for the disappointment and vexation he must receive from your profligate and worthless brother. It is in you only I hope for keeping up the credit of our family when your father shall be no more. Attempt nothing ever against your brother, and endeavour to mortify him no way but by showing superior merit." She then spoke of the different tempers and disposi tions of her two youngest daughters, and the different manner in which they ought to be treated — cautioning the Princess Caroline not to let the vivacity of the i The Duke of Cumberland was now 16 years and 7 months old, being born in April 1721. He remembered his mother's injunction. " His maxim," says Horace Walpole, " was to bear anything from his brother if he lived to be King, rather than set an example of disobedience to the Royal authority." Mem. George II., i. 88. 1737. THE QUEEN TAKES LEAVE OP HER FAMILY. 513 Princess Louisa2 (the youngest) draw her into any in conveniences, and desiring her to give all the aid she could to support the meek and mild disposition of the Princess Mary.3 She then took a ruby ring off her finger, which the King had given her at her coronation, and, putting it upon his, said, " This is the last thing I have to give you — naked I came to you, and naked I go from you. I had everything I ever possessed from you, and to you whatever I have I return. My will you will find a very short one : I give all I have to you." She then asked for her keys, and gave them to him. All this and many more things of the like nature — whilst she expatiated on the several rules and instructions she gave to her children, according to their different ages, situations, and dispositions — passed in this inter view, which the King and the Princess Caroline repeated to me, who told me there were during this conference no dry eyes in the room but the Queen's, who, as they could perceive, shed in all this touching scene not one tear. It is not necessary to examine whether the Queen's reasoning was good or bad in wishing the King, in case she died, should marry again : — it is certain she did wish it; had often said so when he was present, and when he was not present, and when she was in health, and gave it now as her advice to him when she was dying — upon which his sobs began to rise and his tears to fall with double vehemence. Whilst in the midst 2 Born in 1724 ; married in 1751 to the Prince Royal of Denmark, after wards Frederick V. 3 Born 1723 ; married in 1740 Prince Frederick of Hesse-Cassel. VOL. II. 2 L 514 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXXIX. of this passion, wiping his eyes, and sobbing between every word, with much ado he got out this answer : " Non, j'aurai des mattresses." To which the Queen made no other reply than " Ah ! mon Dieu ! cela n'em- pSche pas." I know this episode will hardly be cre dited, but it is literally true. When she had finished all she had to say on these subjects, she said she fancied she could sleep. The King said many kind things to her, and kissed her face and her hands a hundred times ; but even at this time, on her asking for her watch, which hung by the chim ney, in order to give it him to take care of her seal, the natural brusquerie of his temper, even in these moments, broke out, which showed how addicted he was to snapping without being angry, and that he was often capable of using those worst whom he loved best ; for on this proposal of giving him the watch to take care of the seal with the Queen's arms, in the midst of sobs and tears he raised and quickened his voice, and said, "Ah! my God! let it alone: the Queen has always such strange fancies. Who should meddle with your seal ? Is it not as safe there as in my pocket ?" The Queen after this fell into a sort of dozing, during which time the King often said, "She is dying; she will go away in this sleep ; it is over ; she will suffer no more." However, when she waked, she said she found herself refreshed and much better, adding, " I know it is only a reprieve to make me suffer longer, and therefore I wish it was at an end ; for I cannot re cover : but my nasty heart will not break yet." She then added that she believed she should not die till Wednesday, for that all the remarkable occurrences 1737. HOPES OF THE QUEEN'S RECOVERY. 515 of her life had happened on that day ; that she had been born on a Wednesday, married on a Wednesday, and brought to bed of her first child on a Wednesday ; that she had heard the first news of the late King's death on a Wednesday, and been crowned on a Wed nesday, and for this reason believed she should die of a Wednesday. This I own showed a weakness in her, but one which at this time might be excused, as most people's minds are a little weakened on these occasions, and few people, even of the strongest minds, are alto gether exempt from some little taint of that weakness called superstition. Many people have more of it than they care to let others know they have, and some more of it than they know themselves. On Sunday morning, about nine o'clock, the sur geons, upon opening the Queen's wound, found the mortification was not spread ; and upon cutting off what was already mortified, declared she might recover. This appeared so inconsistent with their declarations some few hours before, and in my opinion showed so much ignorance, that if a life of this consequence, com mitted to the care of four of the best physicians and three of the best surgeons in England, received no better assistance from their skill, how natural it is to deplore the situation of those whose safety depends on the sagacity of these professions, and how reasonable to despise those who put their trust in such aids ! Not that I am so unjust to surgery as to put that science upon the same foot with physic ; and for my own part I firmly believe there was not the least mortification begun, when they ignorantly pronounced there was; and that what they cut off was not mortified, and only 2 l 2 516 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXXIX. declared so, to conceal the mistake they had made the night before in saying it was. On Monday morning the 14th Sir Robert Walpole arrived from Houghton. The Queen had mentioned him but twice during her illness : once to say she hoped they would not send for him ; and the day before he came, upon hearing he had been sent for, to ask if he was come. The King, when she asked that question, de sired to know if she had anything she wanted to say to him, to which she answered, " No, nothing : my asking if he was come was mere curiosity." Lord Hervey told the King Sir Robert was in the outward room, upon which his Majesty ordered Lord Hervey to bring him in. Sir Robert with some diffi culty, from his great bulk and natural awkwardness, knelt down and kissed his Majesty's hand ; but with much less difficulty (for he was at present thoroughly frighted) dropped some very proper tears and asked, " How is the Queen ? " To which the King replied, " Come and see yourself, my good Sir Robert ; " and then carried him to the Queen's bedside. The inter view was short, but what the Queen said was material — for these were her words : " My good Sir Robert, you see me in a very indifferent situation. / have nothing to say to you, but to recommend the King, my children, and the kingdom to your care." 4 — As soon as Sir 4 Horace Walpole relates this anecdote with some slight variations : — " The day before she died, as the King and Sir Robert were alone, standing by her bedside, she pathetically recommended not the minister to the sovereign, but the master to the servant. Sir Robert was alarmed, and feared the recommendation must have left a fatal impression ; but a short time after the King, reading with Sir Robert some intercepted letters from Germany, which said, that now the Queen was gone Sir Robert would 1737. THE KING DISPLEASED AT WALPOLE. 517 Robert came out of the room he told Lord Hervey what had passed, who asking him what he thought of the Queen, he said, " My Lord, she is as much dead as if she was in her coffin ; if ever I heard a corpse speak, it was just now in that room." He then repeated again what the Queen had said to him in the presence of the King and the Princesses, which Lord Hervey found made a great impression on his pride, whatever it did on his tenderness ; for he repeated it to every body he saw for a fortnight after. Vain of this reception, and presuming upon the strength of it, he came in the evening, without being sent for, into the room where Lord Hervey used to be with the King whenever his Majesty was not with the Queen. Lord Hervey knew the King would not like this, but was afraid to tell Sir Robert so, lest Sir Robert should think him proud of an honour he was not to partake, and fool enough to be pleased with a distinction which had no other consequence than making those who thought it of more importance than he knew it was, envy, fear, and hate him ; and indeed the nature of Lord Hervey's interest with the King was such as might make him many enemies but few friends ; for as it was much easier to make the King hate than love, so Lord Hervey (had he been disposed to it) could with very little industry have prejudiced his Majesty against whom he thought fit, but with no pains whatever could bring him to bestow any material marks of favour on those he loved best. When the King found Sir Robert Walpole in the have no protection : ' On the contrary,' said the King, ' you know she re commended me to you.' " — Reminiscences. See also post, p. 541, n. 3. 518 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXXIX. evening in this room, he gave him a very cold recep tion, and every time Sir Robert spoke and offered his advice, or told his opinion with regard to the Queen's illness, or the manner in which she was treated, his Majesty gave him very short answers, and not in the smoothest terms.5 The next morning, however, the King found him there again, and with him the Duke of Grafton, whom the King had not yet seen since his return from the country ; he spoke very coldly to both, and going soon back to the Queen's bedchamber, he complained there that the outward room was so full of people one could not stir for them. Upon which the Princess Caroline, by the Queen's order, immediately sent to bid the room be cleared of everybody who did not use to be there; and from this time nobody attempted to come there any more. Monday and Tuesday [the 14th and 15th] the Queen was what the doctors, surgeons, and courtiers called better, there being no threatening symptoms in her wound, and her vomitings being much slackened ; but, [the obstruction still continuing,] those who judged by essential circumstances, and not on the hourly variation of trifles, whatever they might say from fashion or to please, could not in reality believe the Queen's condi tion more hopeful, or less dangerous, whilst that main point of the internal stoppage continued in the same situation ; and whenever the King used to tell her how much better the doctors and surgeons said she was, and the hopes they gave him, the moment his back was turned she used to look at the Princesses, shake her 5 This, I suppose, would confirm, if it did not create Walpole's alarm, mentioned in the last note. 1737. THE PRINCE'S FAMILY INTRUDE. 519 head, and bid them not flatter themselves, and often in the day used to tell them : " Believe me, my dear children, it won't do : at twenty-five I might have struggled through it, but at fifty-five I cannot resist." During this time the Prince's family had by little and little, under the pretence first of inquiring of the Queen's health as from the Prince or Princess, and after wards for themselves, got into possession of coming every day and all day to St. James's, till there was no part of the day in which there were not three or four of them dangling in that part of the Queen's state apartment where the Lady of the Bedchamber sat to receive all those who came to inquire about the Queen, and give the no-intelligence of the doctors' verdict on her Majesty's situation. This evasion of the King's order (which, though it only literally forbid those who went to the Prince's Court coming into the King's presence, was certainly meant to forbid them coming to St. James's) made the King extremely angry, and more especially because the King knew they only came to inquire if the Queen was better, in hopes of hearing she was worse ; and as the Queen herself said (when she heard of their being daily and hourly there), to watch her last breath, in order to have the merit to their master of bringing the first news of her death. The King sent Lord Hervey to Sir Robert Walpole to know what way he should take to prevent these scoundrels (as he called them) coming every day to St. James's, in defiance of his order, to insult him and the Queen in their present distress. Sir Robert Walpole asked Lord Hervey what he would advise on this 520 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXXLX. occasion ; and Lord Hervey, who was always ready to give the Prince a slap, and knew how uneasy their coming to St. James's made the Queen, said that he thought they ought to be forbidden ; but Sir Robert Walpole, who had no mind unnecessarily to shock the Prince — especially at this time, when he thought the spur that used to urge him on to those attacks was going to be blunted — told Lord Hervey that the Prince's servants would certainly pretend they came out of respect and concern for the Queen; that therefore there would be an air of hardness in forbidding them at this time, since nobody could disprove that pre tended motive. He added, too, that they had not transgressed the literal sense of the order which only forbade them the King's presence ; and as the King might very well be supposed to know nothing of their coming, he thought it would be better for the King just at this time not to mix any marks of resentment against his son with those of affection for his wife, nor give people a handle to say "No situation of distress can soften him enough to make him forget to hate one moment." This advice Lord Hervey conveyed to the King, who took it with as much reluctance as his Lordship brought it ; though not with so good an excuse to himself for sacrificing his inclination to his fear, espe cially when he found it made the Queen so uneasy that she often asked if nobody would turn those ravens out of the house, who were only there to watch her death, and would gladly tear her to pieces whilst she was alive. " I hope, at least, it will not be thought proper to let them come into my room, if they should have a mind to it." — The Queen guessed very truly 1737. PRINCESS ROYAL'S INTENDED VISIT. 521 the reason of their coming, for the Prince all this while used to sit up at his house in Pall Mall almost the whole night and every night, sending messengers con tinually to St. James's, showing the utmost impatience for their return, and saying with equal prudence and humanity to the people who were with him, " Well, sure we shall soon have good news ; she cannot hold out much longer ;" and talked all day long in the same strain to everybody about him. This the Duke of Marlborough told Harry Fox, and Harry Fox to Lord Hervey; and some time after the Duke of Marl borough told it to Lord Hervey himself. Poor Mr. Hamilton only,6 when he was told such reports were spread, doubted of the truth of them, and said the Prince was in the utmost concern for his mother ; but when Lady Archibald was asked if the Prince was really concerned for the Queen, she laughed, and said " He is very decent." Many letters were written, and great care was taken by the Princesses, to prevent the Princess Royal making her mother's illness an excuse for coming to England at this time ; everybody knowing the very indifferent reception she would meet with on her arrival from her father, who, not being apt to retain much affection for people who gave him any trouble or put him to any expense, and as little addicted to speak of them in a softer manner than he thought of them, had often lately expressed himself upon the Princess Royal's chapter in terms not altogether so paternal with regard to the affection thev contained as with regard to the authority 6 I suppose Mr. Charles Hamilton, Lady Jane's brother, who was in the Prince's family. See ante, p. 481. 522 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXXIX. they expressed ; and positive orders were sent to Horace Walpole, if persuasion failed, to stop her by force, which orders he communicated to the Prince of Orange, who immediately told them (though desired not) to his wife : the consequence of which was her venting all the passion and anger raised against those who had sent the orders on him who received them.7 On Wednesday morning [the 16^/*] the Queen sent for Sir Robert Walpole, who saw her alone, but not for above a quarter of an hour. What really passed I know not but by conjecture ; but have reason to think it was only to desire Sir Robert Walpole to examine what was to become of Richmond after her death. Sir Robert told the King this was all, and at first he told Lord Hervey so too. The King also told Lord Hervey that the Queen had told him this was all she had sent for him for ; but when Sir Robert went from the Queen to the King, the King (as Sir Robert told Lord Hervey) used him worse than ever he had done in his life ; and when Sir Robert told him he had been sent for by the Queen, the King forbade him going any more without first acquainting him, and said he would not have the Queen plagued now with business, adding that she was too weak to bear it ; which was very true — but he him self, whenever he was in the room, was always asking her so many questions, talking so fast and in so loud a voice, and teasing her to eat and drink so many different things, that the Princesses, by Lord Hervey's 7 She, however, did come over, under the pretence that her health re quired the Bath waters ; but the King, offended at her disobedience and her object, obliged her to go direct to and from Bath, without stopping in London ; and never forgave her. — Walpole, Mem. George II., i. 181. 1737. WALPOLE'S PROSPECTS. 523 advice, got the doctors to make it one of the articles in their written prescription for the Queen that she should not be talked to more than was absolutely necessary, and always in the lowest voice ; and this prescription, with the rest, after it had been shown to the King, was pinned up on the curtain of the Queen's bed. But this prescription had as little effect on the King as the rest of their prescriptions had on her. Sir Robert waited at night at St. James's till Lord Hervey came from the King, and then asked him if he could comprehend what had put the King into such a devilish humour in the morning, when the Queen was so much better. Lord Hervey said he could as little comprehend any turns in the King's temper as he could Sir Robert's giving in to the ill-founded opinion of thinking the Queen better ; " for till [the obstruction is removed,]" continued he, " I cannot think her vomit ing a little more or a little less of any consequence, or that it signifies much that the external circumstances of her wound are something less threatening, when all the internal symptoms remain just in the same unknown and dangerous condition they were." " Oh! my Lord," said Sir Robert, "if this woman should die, what a scene of confusion will here be ! Who can tell into what hands the King will fall ? or who will have the management of him ? I defy the ablest person in this kingdom to foresee what will be the consequence of this great event." " For my own part," replied Lord Hervey, " I have not the least doubt how it will be. He will cry for her for a fort night, forget her in a month, have two or three women that he will pass his time with ; but whilst they have 524 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXXIX. most of his time, a little of his money, less of his con fidence, and no power, you will have all the credit, more power than ever you had, and govern him more absolutely than ever you did. Your credit before was through the medium of the Queen, and all power through a medium must be weaker than when it ope rates directly. Besides, Sir, all princes must now and then be deceived by their ministers, and as the King is much easier deceived than the Queen, so your task, whenever that task is deceiving, will be much less difficult than it was before. In the first place, because the King is naturally much less suspicious than the Queen ; in the next, because he is less penetrating ; and lastly, because he cares much less to converse with different people, and will hear nobody talk to him of business but yourself." — " Oh ! my Lord," interrupted Sir Robert, " though he will hear nobody but me, you do not know how often he refuses to hear me when it is on a subject he does not like ; but by the Queen I can with time fetch him round to those subjects again ; she can make him do the same thing in another shape, and when I give her her lesson, can make him propose the very thing as his own opinion which a week before he had rejected as mine. The many opportunities and the credit she has with him, the knowledge of his temper, the being constantly at him, and the opinion he has both of her judgment and her pursuit of his interest and his pleasure as her first objects, make this part easy for her ; but I have not the same materials to act it, and cannot do without somebody that has leisure to operate slowly upon him, which is the only way he can be effectually operated upon : for he is neither to be per- 1737. THE KING'S SUPERSTITION. 525 suaded nor convinced ; he will do nothing to oblige anybody, nor ever own or think he has been in the wrong ; and I have told the Queen a thousand times that it is not to be wondered at that he should be of that mind, when she, whom he believed sooner than any other body in the world, never heard him broach the most absurd opinion, or declare the most extravagant design, that she did not tell him he was in the right." — "Not withstanding all this," replied Lord Hervey, "I am convinced if the Queen should die (which I firmly believe she will), that you will have him faster than ever, and yet I am sincere enough to own to you I heartily wish she may recover." — This conversation lasted two or three hours, and kept Lord Hervey out of bed much longer than he desired : this being the first night since the Queen was ill that he had been dis missed so early, or had a prospect of passing so many hours undisturbed. The King had been particularly anxious this whole day from what the Queen had said with regard to her dying of a Wednesday, which could not be much won dered at, since a mind much less addicted to super stition than his Majesty's might have been a little '¦. affected by a smaller hint that had fallen from one they loved in such circumstances, and on an occasion of so much importance to them. Could it then be surprising that a man who believed in ghosts and witches, should not be proof against a weakness that might have ap peared in one exempt from many more than his Majesty's best friends can deny him to labour under ? On Thursday [the 17th] the Queen's vomitings re turned with as much violence as ever, and in the 526 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXXIX. afternoon [there was some internal rupture], though the surgeons could not by any probing certainly tell whereabouts the fracture was. The running at the wound was immense. * * * * * Some ignorant people about her who knew not from what cause this discharge proceeded, told the Queen they hoped this relief would do her good, to which the Queen replied very calmly, she hoped so too, for that it was all the relief she should ever have. Every day once at least, and sometimes oftener, from the first of her being under the surgeons' hands, they were forced, or thought themselves so, to make some new incision ; and before every operation of this kind which she underwent, she always used to ask the King if he approved what the surgeons proposed to do ; and when he said they had told him it was necessary, and that he hoped she would consent to anything they thought so, she always submitted immediately, and suf fered them to cut and probe as deep and as long as they thought fit, with the utmost patience, resignation, and resolution. She asked Ranby once, whilst he was dress ing her wound, if he would not be glad to be officiating in the same manner to his own old cross wife that he hated so much ; and if any involuntary groans or com plainings broke from her during the operations, she used immediately after to bid the surgeons not mind her, and would make them apologies for interrupting them with her silly complaints, when she knew they were doing all they could to help her. On Wednesday some wise, some pious, and a great many busy, meddling, impertinent people about the 1737. RELIGIOUS OFFICES. 527 Court, asking in whispers everybody they met whether the Queen had had anybody to pray by her, and won dering at the irreligion of the Queen for thinking she could pray as well for herself as anybody could pray for her, and at those about her for not putting her in mind of so essential a duty, Sir Robert Walpole de sired Princess Emily to propose to the King or Queen that the Archbishop [of Canterbury, Dr. Potter] should be sent for, in order to stop people's impertinence upon this subject ; and when the Princess Emily made some difficulty about taking upon her to make this proposal to the King or Queen, Sir Robert (in the presence of a dozen people who really wished this divine physician for the Queen's soul might be sent for, upon the foot of her salvation) very prudently added, by way of stimulating the Princess Emily, " Pray, madam, let this farce be played : the Arch bishop will act it very well. You may bid him be as short as you will. It will do the Queen no hurt, no more than any good ; and it will satisfy all the wise and good fools, who will call us all atheists if we don't pretend to be as great fools as they are." After this eloquent and discreet persuasion — the whole company staring with the utmost astonishment at Sir Robert Walpole, some in admiration of his piety and others of his prudence — the Princess Emily spoke to the King, the King to the Queen, and the Arch bishop was sent for, who continued afterwards to pray by her morning and evening, at which ceremony her children always assisted ; but the King constantly went out of the room before his episcopal Grace was ad mitted. But all this was thrown away, for the people 528 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XXXIX. that had whispered, and wondered, and clamoured at no prayers, were now just as busy, and as whispering, and as wondering about no sacrament. Some fools said the Queen had not religion enough to ask to receive the sacrament : some other fools said she had asked for it and that the Archbishop had re fused to give it her unless she would first be recon ciled to her son; and this many idiots believed, and many who were not idiots told, in hopes of finding credit from those that were.8 There were some who were impertinent enough to ask the Archbishop him self why he would not advise the Queen to be recon ciled to the Prince, and more than hinted to him that he would be wanting in his duty if he did not ; to which his Grace very decently and properly answered, that whenever the Queen had done him the honour to talk to him upon that unhappy division in the family, she had always done it with so much sense and goodness s Walpole, after mentioning the influence of " Lady Sundon and the less believing clergy over her," adds, " The Queen, however, was so sincere at her death, that when Archbishop Potter was to administer the sacrament to her she declined taking it — very few persons being in the room. When the prelate retired the courtiers in the ante-room crowded round him, cry ing, ' My Lord, has the Queen received ?' His Grace artfully eluded the question, only saying most devoutly, ' Her Majesty was in a heavenly dis position,' — and the truth escaped the public." — Reminiscences. Whatever the motive was, it is now certain that the Queen did not receive the sacra ment, though the Archbishop continued to attend her every morning and evening, — and that the last word she ever spoke was Pray. And it is remarkable that, when Lord Hervey submitted to the critical judgment of his father his elaborate " Epitaphium Reginm Carolina," Lord Bristol hinted that he was afraid the world would not ratify the assertion " Chris- tianem religionem sincere sancteque coluit." Lord Hervey, however, adhered to the statement and translated it in his own English version, " the Christian religion she firmly believed and strictly practised." The truth, I suppose, is, that she had read and argued herself into a very low and cold species of Christianity. 1737. DR. BUTLER. 529 that he never thought she wanted any advice. The Queen desired the Archbishop, if she died, to take care of Dr. Butler, her Clerk of the Closet ;9 and he was the only body I ever heard of her recommending particu larly and by name all the while she was ill. Her ser vants in general she recommended to the King, saying in general terms he knew whom she liked and disliked, but did not, that I know of, name anybody to him in particular.10 9 The celebrated author of the Analogy. He had been brought to the Queen's personal favour by his merit, set off by a pleasantry. He was rector of the rich but remote living of Stanhope, in Durham, when the Queen, not having for a long time heard of him, happened to ask Black burn, Archbishop of York, whether he was dead. " No, Madam," the Archbishop replied, " but he is buried." The Queen immediately disin terred him, and made him her Clerk of the Closet ; and it is creditable to all parties that the Queen's deathbed recommendation of him was not forgotten. He was made next year Bishop of Bristol, in 1746 Clerk of the Closet to the King, and in 1750 Bishop of Durham. 10 I fear Lord Hervey's silence must be taken as strong evidence against Horace Walpole's apologetical statement — adopted and amplified by Coxe — " that she sent her blessing and forgiveness to her son, and told Sir Robert that she would have seen him with pleasure, but prudence forbade the inter view, as it might irritate and embarrass the King." This is certainly pro bable, and might have passed at the interview which Sir Robert had with the Queen alone, and he may, for obvious reasons, not have repeated it at the time to Lord Hervey ; but, as the town had a story of the same kind (Ford's letter to Swift, 22nd Nov., and Mahon, ii. 316), his Lordship could hardly have failed to hear it, and would surely have related it, had it been true. We must therefore admit that his silence countenances, at least, the direct sarcasm of Lord Chesterfield, — " And unforgiving, unforgiven, dies!" And Pope's more bitter irony, — " Hang the sad verse on Carolina's urn, And hail her passage to the realms of rest, All parts perform'd, and all her children blest!" VOL. II. 2 M 530 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XL. CHAPTER XL. A mystery now made of the fatal symptoms — The King's panegyric on the Queen — His strange mixture of brutality and tenderness — Princess Emily's disrespect — The Queen grows weaker and weaker — The dying scene — Her death —The King's grief — He sees only his children and Lord Hervey — Conjectures as to who might succeed to the Queen's influence — Walpole's coarseness disgusts the Princesses — Lord Hervey supposed to be in great favour — Knows that it is fallacious — Expostulates with Walpole on his long neglect — Some friends incite him to overthrow Walpole and step into his place — Such projects injudicious and imprac ticable — Conclusion . From the time of the [internal rupture last mentioned,] the physicians and surgeons — who had hitherto, without any disguise or reserve, talked over all the particulars of the Queen's case to anybody that asked them any questions — were absolutely forbidden by the King to reveal this circumstance, or to give any other answer for the future, to anybody whatever who inquired concern ing the Queen's health, than the general one of her being much as she was. Had these restrictive orders been issued by his Majesty on the first discovery of the Queen's rupture, considering her delicacy on this point, and his passion for a mystery on every point, it would have been easy to account for this edict being given out ; but after her case had been talked over for five days, as publicly and as minutely as if she had been dissected before St. James's gate, I own I was at a loss to comprehend why these orders were issued, especially 1737. KING'S PANEGYRIC ON THE QUEEN. 531 when this circumstance was not by the physicians or surgeons pronounced so inevitably mortal as I should have thought it natural for them to judge it. The King told it to Lord Hervey, and Ranby to Sir Robert Walpole. Lord Hervey ventured to reveal it to the Princess Caroline ; but the King not telling it himself to any of his children, none of the rest of them knew it, but were extremely surprised, as well as the rest of the Court, at the sudden reserve of the physicians and surgeons iii their present accounts of the Queen's situation. During this time the King talked perpetually to Lord Hervey, the physicians and surgeons, and his children, who were the only people he ever saw out of the Queen's room, of the Queen's good qualities, his fond ness for her, his anxiety for her welfare, and the irre parable loss her death would be to him ; and repeated every day, and many times in the day, all her merits iii every capacity with regard to him and every other body she had to do with. He said she was the best wife, the best mother, the best companion, the best friend, and the best woman that ever was born ; that she was the wisest, the most agreeable, and the most useful body, man or woman, that he had ever been acquainted with; that he firmly believed she never, since he first knew her, ever thought of anything she was to do or to say, but with the view of doing or saying it in what manner it would be most agreeable to his pleasure, or most serviceable for his interest; that he had never seen her out of humour in his life ; that he had passed more hours with her than he be lieved any other two people in the world had ever 2 m 2 532 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XL. passed together, and that he never had been tired in her company one minute ; and that he was sure he could have been happy with no other woman upon earth for a wife, and that if she had not been his wife, he had rather have had her for his mistress than any woman he had ever been acquainted with ; that he be lieved she never had had a thought of people or things which she had not communicated to him ; that she had the best head, the best heart, and the best temper that God Almighty had ever given to any human creature, man or woman ; and that she had not only softened all his leisure hours, but been of more use to him as a minister than any other body had ever been to him or to any other prince ; that with a patience which he knew he was not master of, she had listened to the nonsense of all the impertinent fools that wanted to talk to him, and had taken all that trouble off his hands, reporting nothing to him that was unneces sary or would have been tedious for him to hear, and never forgetting anything that was material, useful, or entertaining to him to know. He said that, joined to all the softness and delicacy of her own sex, she had all the personal as well as political courage of the firmest and bravest man; that not only he and her family, but the whole nation, would feel the loss of her if she died ; and that, as to all the brillant and enjoue- ment of the Court, there would be an end of it when she was gone ; and that there would be no bearing a drawing-room when the only body that ever enlivened it, and one that always enlivened it, was no longer there. " Poor woman, how she always found some thing obliging, agreeable, and pleasing to say to every- ll737- KING'S SALLIES OF TEMPER. 533 body, and always sent people away from her better satisfied than they came ! Comme elle soutenoit sa dig- nite avee grace, avee politesse, avee douceur!" These were the terms in which he was for ever now talking of the Queen, and in which he likewise talked to her ; and yet so unaccountable were the sudden sallies of his temper, and so little was he able or willing to com mand them, that in the midst of all this flow of tender ness he hardly ever went into her room that he did not, even in this moving situation, snub her for something or other she said or did. When her constant uneasiness, from the sickness in her stomach and the soreness of her wound, made her shift her posture every minute, he would say to her, " How the devil should you sleep, when you will never lie still a moment ? You want to rest, and the doctors tell you nothing can do you so much good, and yet you are always moving about. Nobody can sleep in that manner, and that is always your way : you never take the proper method to get what you want, and then you wonder you have it not." And as the doctors said she might eat or drink any thing she had a mind to, or could swallow, the King was ever proposing something or other, which she never refused, though she knew it would only lie burning in her stomach for half an hour or an hour, and then come up again. When she could get things down, not withstanding these effects (which to other people she said she knew they would have), her complaisance to him made her always swallow them ; and when he thanked her for so doing, she used to answer, " It is the last service I can do you." But when her stomach recoiled so that it was impossible for her to force any- 534 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XL. thing down her throat which he had given her, and that she only tasted it, and gave it away, he used peevishly to say, " How is it possible you should not know whether you like a thing or not ? If you do not like it, why do you call for it ; and if you do, why will you give it away?" To which she would only answer, " I am very silly and very whimsical, for a degout takes me in a moment, for what I think, a minute before, I have a mind to." Notwithstanding the constant pain she was in, and her great want of rest, the physicians never gave her opium but one night. She herself was not much in clined to take it ; and the physicians; thinking it inight possibly, from its binding quality, prevent the relief she so much wanted, were not very forward to, prescribe it. She had not rested with it all night, and when the King; came into her room in the morning, as she lay with her eyes fixed at a point in the air — as people often do in those situations, when they are neither enough at ease to shut their eyes and sleep, nor enough themselves to prevent their thoughts wandering, or to see the things they seem to look at — the King, with a loud and quick voice, said to her, "Mon Dieu I qu'est ce que vous re- gardez ? Comment peut-on fixer ses yeux comme qa ? Vos yeux ressemblent a ceux d'un veau a qui on vient de couper la gorge ! " There was, besides this mixture of brutality and ten derness towards the Queen, at this time in the King's conduct and conversation, another mixture full as natural to him and much less extraordinary, which was the mixing constantly some praises of himself with those he bestowed on her. He never talked of her 1737. KING'S INTREPIDITY. 535 being a good wife without giving strong hints of his deserving a good one, and being at least as good a husband; and gave people to understand, when he commended her understanding, that he did not think it the worse for her having kept him company so many years. He plainly showed, too, that he not only wished other people should believe, but did himself believe that her whole behaviour to him was the natural effect of an amorous attachment to his person, and an adora tion of his; great genius. When he mentioned his present fears for the Queen, he always interwove an account of the intrepidity with which he waited his own fate the year before, both in the storm and during his illness afterwards, giving tiresome accounts with what resolution and presence of mind he talked to his pages on shipboard during the tempest ; and for a proof of his own courage, and the want of the same magna nimity in them, told us that when he saw La Chaux, one of his pages, pale and trembling in the corner of the cabin, he said to him, " Comment as tupeur?" To which La Chaux (said he) replied, " Oui, Sire, vrai- ment, et je crois qu'il n'y a que votre Majeste dans le vaisseau qui ne I'a pas." From which history, the con clusion the King proposed one should draw was much less natural than that which most people would draw, which was that his Majesty had a mind to seem on that occasion to have more courage than he had; and that the valet-de-chambre very adroitly made his court by pretending to have lessi As to his behaviour during his illness, what fears he had I know not, but the Queen and everybody about him said he always seemed to think himself much worse 536 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XL. than he was ; and for the accounts of his peevishness and impatience, they could with great difficulty, ac cording to his own confession, exceed reality, for he himself told me that he found such an abominable fro- wardness in himself, that in the intermissions of it (which was not easy to catch) he had told his pages not to mind him when he was unreasonably chiding and swearing at them, for that it was part of his dis temper, and that he could not help it. There was a mixture of good-nature and good sense in this apology, that I own I, who knew him, should rather have taken for an accidental distemper than the other — for it was much less of a piece with his conduct in health than what he endeavoured to excuse. One night whilst the Queen was ill, as he was sitting in his nightgown and nightcap in a great chair, with his legs upon a stool, and nobody in the room with him but the Princess Emily, who lay upon a couch, and Lord Hervey, who sat by the fire, he talked in this strain of his own courage in the storm and his illness, till the Princess Emily, as Lord Hervey thought, fell fast asleep, whilst Lord Hervey, as tired as he was of the present conversation and this last week's watching, was left alone to act civil auditor and adroit courtier, to applaud what he heard, and every now and then to ask such proper questions as led the King into giving some more particular detail of his own magnanimity. The King, turning towards Princess Emily, and seeing her eyes shut, cried, "Poor good child! her duty, affec tion, and attendance on her mother have quite exhausted her spirits." And soon after he went into the Queen's room. As soon as his back was turned, Princess Emily 1737. PROCESS EMILY'S DISRESPECT. £37 started up, and said, " Is he gone ? How tiresome he is!" Lord Hervey, who had no mind to trust her Royal Highness with his singing her father's praises in duetto with her, replied only, " I thought your Royal Highness had been asleep." " No," said the Princess Emily ; " I only shut my eyes that I might not join in the ennuyant conversation, and wish I could have shut my ears too. In the first place, I am sick to death of hearing of his great courage every day of my life ; in the next place, one thinks now of Mama, and not of him. Who cares for his old storm ? I believe, too, it is a great lie, and that he was as much afraid as I should have been, for all what he says now ; and as to his not being afraid when he was ill, I know that is a lie, for I saw him, and I heard all his sighs and his groans, when he was in no more danger than I am at this moment. He was talking, too, for ever of dying, and that he was sure he should not recover." All this, considering the kind things she had heard the King say the minute before, when he imagined her asleep, Lord Hervey thought a pretty extraordinary return for her to make for that paternal goodness, or would have thought it so in anybody but her ; and looked upon this openness to him, whom she did not love, yet less to be accounted for, unless he could have imagined it was to draw him in to echo her, and then to relate what he said as if he had said it unaccompanied. Whilst she was going on with the panegyric on the King which I have related, the King returned, upon which she began to rub her eyes as if she had that in stant raised her head from her pillows, and said, "I have really slept very heartily. How long had Papa been 538 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XL. out of the room ?" The King, who had very little or rather no suspicion in his composition, took these ap pearances for realities, and said, " It is time for us all to take a little rest. We will all go to bed, for by staying here we do the poor Queen no good, and ourselves hurt." And so dismissing Lord Hervey, they all retired. I will relate no further particulars how the two fol lowing days [Friday and Saturday, the 18th and 19th] passed, as such a narration would be only recapitulating a diary of the two former, without any material varia tion. The Queen grew so perceptibly weaker every hour, that every one she lived was more than was expected. On Sunday the 20th Nov., in the evening, she asked' Dr. Tesier — with no seeming impatience under any article of her present circumstances but their duration — how long he thought it was possible for all this to last ? to which he answered, " Je crois que votre Majeste sera bientot soulagee." And she calmly replied, " Tant mieux." About ten o'clock on Sunday night — the King being in bed and asleep on the floor at the feet of the Queen's bed, and the Princess Emily in a couch-bed in a corner of the room — the Queen began to rattle in the throat ; and Mrs. Purcel giving the alarm that she was expir ing, all in the room started up. Princess Caroline was sent for, and Lord Hervey, but before the last arrived the Queen was just dead. All she said before she died, was, " I have now got an asthma. Open the window." Then she said, "Pray." Upon which the Princess Emily began to read some prayers, of which she scarce repeated ten words before the 1737. THE QUEEN'S DEATH. 539 Queen expired.1 The Princess Caroline held a looking- glass to her lips, and finding there was not the least damp upon it, cried, "'Tis over:" and said not one word more, nor shed as yet one tear, on the arrival of a misfortune the dread of which had cost her so many. The King kissed the face and hands of the lifeless body several times, but in a few minutes left the Queen's apartment and went to that of his daughters, accompanied only by them. Then advising them to go to bed, and take care of themselves, he went to his own side ; and as soon as he was in bed sent for Lord Hervey to come and sit by him, where after talking some time, and more calmly than one could have ex pected, of the manner of the Queen's death,, he dis missed Lord Hervey,. and sent for one of his pages to sit up in his room all night, which order he repeated for several days afterwards; and, by the bye, as he ordered one of them, for some time after the death of the Queen, to lie in his room, and that I am very sure he believed many stories of ghosts and witches and: apparitions, I take this order (with great deference to his magnanimity on other occasions) to have been the result of the same way of thinking that makes many weak minds fancy themselves more secure from any supernatural danger in the light than in, the dark, and in company than alone. Lord Hervey went back to the Princess Caroline's bedchamber, where he stayed till five o'clock in the morning, endeavouring to lighten her grief by indulging it, and not by that silly way of trying to divert what •T have selected this passage for afac simile ot the original Manuscript. 540 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XL. cannot be removed, or to bring comfort to such afflic tion as time only can alleviate. The King passed every day, and all the day (ex cepting the time he was at dinner, and the hour or two he slept after dinner), till the Court went into mourning, in the apartment of the Princesses, and was only called from thence for a few minutes when any of the Ministers wanted to speak with him about business, whilst every new body who was admitted to him on these occasions threw him into a new flood of tears. The grief he felt for the Queen, as it was universally known, and showed a tenderness of which the world thought him before utterly incapable, made him for some time more popular and better spoken of than he had ever been before this incident, or than I believe he ever will be again. He was thoroughly unaffected in his conduct on this occasion, and by being so (as odd as it may seem to say this) perplexed those who were about him more to form an opinion of him than per haps they would have been had he appeared to them in a less natural shape ; for his sudden transitions from tears to smiles, from a sighing pensive silence to a loud talkative conversation on things foreign to what one imagined at other times engrossed all his thoughts — the tender manner in which he related a thousand old stories relating to his first seeing the Queen, his mar riage with her, the way in which they lived at Hanover, his behaviour to her when she had the smallpox, and his risking his life by getting it of her (which he did) rather than leave her ; and the next moment talking, with the most seeming indifference and calmness, of her being opened and embalmed, of the method of her 1737. THE QUEEN'S BURIAL. 541 ladies and maids of honour keeping watch by the body, and all the minutiae relating to the regulation of the funeral ; — I say his talking with so much emotion and concern of old stories, and with so little on present circumstances which affected everybody in the room but himself, and perhaps the more for their seem ing to affect him so little, puzzled one's judgment of the situation of his mind extremely, and made it vary as often as these circumstances on which it was to be formed.2 One day he came into the room at once weeping and laughing, and said, " Vous me croirez fou, je crois, mais je viens de voir le pauvre Horace Walpole pour la premiere fois, et il pleure de si mauvaise grace, qu'au milieu de mes larmes il m'a fait rire." 3 2 The Queen was buried on Saturday, the 17th of December, in a new vault, in Henry VII.'s Chapel, where the King himself was afterwards buried, by her side. Mr. Milman, Prebendary of Westminster, has favoured me with the following interesting note on this subject : — " George II., as the last proof of his attachment, gave directions that his remains and those of Queen Caroline should be mingled together. Accordingly, the two coffins were placed in a large stone sarcophagus, and one side of each of the wooden coffins withdrawn. This was a tradition at Westminster Abbey, of which I myself have seen the confirmation, in my opinion conclusive ; and as the royal vault in Westminster Abbey may never be again opened, it may be curious to preserve the record. On the occasion of the removal, in 1837, of a still-born child of the Duke of Cum berland (King of Hanover) to Windsor, a Secretary-of-State's warrant (which is necessary) arrived, empowering the Dean and Chapter to open the vault. I was requested by the Dean to superintend the business, which took place by night. In the middle of the vault, towards the further end, stands the large stone sarcophagus, and against the wall are still standing the two sides of the coffins which were withdrawn. I saw and examined them closely, and have no doubt of the fact. The vault contains only the family of George II.— H. H. Mij.man." 3 Mr. Walpole has left an account of this interview in a letter to Mr. Trevor, in which he says that " the King's inexpressible grief burst into 542 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XL. The King often said, and to many people at this time, that not only he and his family should have a great loss in the Queen's death, but the whole nation : and would instance occasions where he owned her good sense' and good temper had kept his passions within bounds which they would otherwise have broken. And during this retirement (in which he was infinitely more talkative than I ever knew him at any other time of his whole life) he discoursed so constantly and so openly of himself, that if anybody had had a mind to write the memoirs of his life from his cradle to the present moment, the Princesses and Lord Hervey could have furnished them with materials of all the occur rences, transactions, and anecdotes, military, civil, amo rous, foreign, and domestic, that could be comprehended in such a work, from his own lips : excepting what re lated to his mother, whom on no occasion I ever heard him mention, not even inadvertently or indi rectly, any more than if such a person had never had a being.4 He always spoke well and with respect of her father, the Duke of Zell : said that the Duke of Zell was fond such a torrent of tears as put me at the same time into such a situation as to want comfort as much as his Majesty ;" and then he relates the Queen's recommendation of the King, her children, and the kingdom to Sir Robert, in the very words of Lord Hervey's report. — Coxe's Lord Walpole, i. 397. 4 This is remarkable, and seems hardly reconcilable with the strong opinion of her innocence and the affectionate regard for her person attri buted to him in the Reminiscences. "The second George loved his mother as much as he hated his father ; and purposed, it was said, if she had sur vived, to have brought her over and declared her Queen-Dowager. Lady Suffolk told me her surprise on going to the new Queen the morning after George I.'s death, at seeing hung up in the Queen's dressing-room the whole-length of a lady in royal robes, and in the bed-chamber a half-length of the same person, which Lady Suffolk had never seen before." They were of his mother, which the Prince had till then kept concealed. 1737. THE KING'S OPINIONS OE HIS FAMILY. 543 of him, but had often told him, as well as he loved him, if he ever found him guilty of a base action, and that he should prove a liar or a coward, he would shoot him through the head with his own hand. Of his aunt, the Queen of Prussia, too he spoke well, who, by what I heard from others, and particularly the Queen, was a very vain, good-for-nothing woman. For his sister, the present Queen of Prussia, he had the contempt she deserved, and a hatred she did not deserve. What he thought and said of the King of Prussia was much the same as what the King of Prussia thought and said of him ; that he was a proud, brutal, tyrannical, wrong-headed, impracticable fellow, who loved nobody and would use everybody ill that was in his power. How far these two Kings were in the right in this point, or how little they were so in every other, is not my business here to determine. He always spoke of his father as a weak man rather than a bad or a dishonest one ; and said though his father had always hated him and used him ill, that on one point he had always done him justice, for that he knew when that scoundrel, and puppy, and knave, and rascal, my Lord Sunderland, had endeavoured to fix some lie upon him (the particulars of which story he had now forgot), that the late King had answered, " Non, non, je connois mon fils ; il n'est pas menteur, il est fou, mais il est honnete homme."b 5 " George I. did sometimes so much justice to his son as to say, ' II est fougueux, mais il a de I'honneur.' For Queen Caroline, to his confidants he always called her cette diablesse Madame la Princesse." — Reminiscences. It is a curious point whether, in these two versions, the syllable after fou was added by Walpole or omitted by Lord Hervey. I believe the latter. 544 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XL. Whilst the days and evenings passed in these con versations in the apartments of the Princesses, the Ministers and courtiers and politicians without doors were speculating, conjecturing, and reasoning by whom the power and credit the Queen had had was likely to be inherited. The Dukes of Grafton and Newcastle laboured, by assuring Sir Robert Walpole it would fall upon the Princess Emily," to persuade him to play it into her hands, and by early applications there to secure her, and make her believe she owed that to his assistance, which she would certainly acquire whether he assisted her or not, and which would be employed against him, if she did not imagine in some measure she had ob tained it by him. Sir Robert Walpole, in his short, coarse way, said he should look to the King's mistress as the most sure means of influence. "I'll bring Madame Walmoden over, and I '11 have nothing to do with your girls : I was for the wife against the mistress, but I will be for the mistress against the daughters." And accord ingly he advised the King, and pressed him to send for Madame Walmoden immediately from Hanover ; said he must look forward for his own sake, for the sake of 6 " Princess Amelia was well disposed to meddle, but was confined to receiving court from the Duke of Newcastle, who pretended to be in love with her, and from the Duke of Grafton, in whose connexion there was more reality." — Reminiscences. See also, in the Mem. Geo. II, i. 157, a more particular account of this project, and of the extent of the Duke of Grafton's favour with Princess Emily. The old Duchess of Marlborough wrote at this juncture: — " Some people have a notion that the Princess Amelia will be employed by the Minister to do everything with the King, but I think she has not experience enough ; and though with great reason his Majesty was influenced by the Queen, yet his Majesty, having so great a capacity himself, can never be much influenced by a daughter of twenty- five." — Opinions. 1737. WALPOLE'S COARSENESS. 545 his family, and for the sake of all his friends, and not ruin his health by indulging vain regret and grief for what was past recall. The King listened to this way of reasoning more kindly every time it was repeated ; but Sir Robert Walpole tried this manner of talking to the Princesses, not quite so judiciously, respectfully, or suc cessfully ; for when he talked to them of looking for ward, drying up their tears, and endeavouring to divert their father's melancholy by bringing women about him; when he equally and shockingly told them that though he had been for the Queen against my Lady Suffolk and every other woman, yet that now he would be for Madame Walmoden ; and added that he would advise them in the mean time to bring my Lady Deloraine to their father, for the sake of his health (saying, in his polite style, that " people must wear old gloves till they could get new ones ") — when he spoke to them in this absurd style, the pride of the Princess Emily and the tenderness of the Princess Caroline were so shocked, that he laid the foundation of an aversion to him in both, which I believe nobody will live to see him ever get over. Lord Hervey, whilst all the world was speaking of him at this time as the King's first favourite,7 knew his own situation too well to think the interest he had in his Majesty worth anything to one whose vanity could not be pleased with the eclat of appearances, when he knew there was nothing essential to be depended upon at the bottom. The letter he wrote at this time to Sir Robert Walpole will explain his own sentiments of his i The Duchess of Marlborough says that Lord Hervey had been, up to the Queen's illness, exceedingly disliked by the King, but was now always with his Majesty, in vast favour, and would be of use to Walpole, unless he should have the vanity to set up for a great man himself.— Opinions. VOL. 11. 2 N 546 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XL. present situation so well, that I need add nothing by way of comment to the following copy of it. Lord Hervey to Sir Robert Walpole. " Sir, "December 1, 1737. " As I never did nor ever will deceive you by misrepre senting or concealing my thoughts upon any occasion, so I can not resist troubling you with them upon this, and choose to do it in writing, not only as the surest way of not being prevented in the attempt, but because you should not imagine, what often happens in speaking, that they are sudden starts and not my coolest sentiments and reflections. " That you have had a very sensible and affecting loss is certain ; the loss of a great, a good, a wise, a kind, and a powerful friend must ever be esteemed such ; but as to the loss it will be in points where people who look from a great dis tance, and consequently see imperfectly, imagine it will hurt you, you know I told you before this unfortunate event, and I am every hour more confirmed in that opinion, that it will be far from affecting you as some of your sanguine ene mies hope, or some of your misjudging friends may apprehend. It may occasion many difficulties in the exercise of your power, but no danger to the possession of it. I need not expatiate on all the particular reasons on which this opinion is founded — you would not Hke I should — and I have already in conversation told you twO which alone would be sufficient to demonstrate the truth of it, and these are, the Queen's recommendations of you, and the King's desire to refute the insinuations frequently made when she was living, that you were her minister, not his — forced upon him by her influence, not distinguished by his choice. "This being the case, you are as secure as ever — perhaps more so, and you know I have my reasons, and good ones, for saying so ; but, indeed, I have often said of you, though never before to you, what I really think true, that your great talents and abilities are so much superior to any body I ever knew, or I believe ever shall know, that the loss of them is the only essential loss in the ministerial character you can ever feel, and that whilst you keep them you may meet with rubs, but you will never find a stop. 1737. HERVEY'S EXPOSTULATION TO WALPOLE. 547 " As to my own situation (it is the last time I will trouble you upon it, so bear with me), it is as well known to me as yours. I have long made it my sole business to please the Queen and you : how well or how ill I succeeded in the first is now immaterial; but that I have on every occasion endea voured to gain your friendship and on some lately to move your good-nature, and have succeeded alike in both, is, I fear, too true. Some honorary trifles you have refused me, and other more essential favours which you have denied, leave me too little room to doubt that either those who have always been giving you ill impressions of me have made you afraid or un willing to distinguish me, or that your own judgment and knowledge of me have convinced you that I am fit for nothing but to carry candles and set chairs all my life, and that I am sufficiently raised, at forty years old, by being promoted to the employment of Tom Cook,8 and designed, like him, and on the same terms, to die in it. My situation often puts me in mind of three fines in Dryden, where a Prince, speaking of a very contemptible appurtenance to his Court, says — ' The Court received him first for charity, And since with no degree of honour graced, But only suffer'd where he first was placed.' " I promised you I never would ask anything for myself of the Queen but through you, and kept my word ; but I own to you I feel my pride so shocked by many things that have hap pened to me of late, that nothing but my not being able to afford to quit has prevented me ; 9 not that in quitting I should have acted in anything differently from what I have done and shall now do, but would that way only have endeavoured to make you regret the slighting me for the sake of others, whom I wish you may always find deserve as well of you. I once had it in my power to serve you (or my vanity gave me the plea sure of thinking so) ; that time is over. I know I am now as 8 Thomas Coke, last Vice-Chamberlain to George I. 9 There was certainly some higher reason ; for it was but a little before the date of this letter that the good old Earl made him the generous offer mentioned ante, p. 338, n. 4, which he earnestly repeated on the Queen's death. 2 n 2 548 LOED HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XL. insignificant as any other of the dignified ciphers about you— as insignificant as their envy can wish me or as anything can make me ; for as for the little distinctions the King has shown me during the poor Queen's illness or since her death, they are such as may serve for food to the envy of some fools of our acquaintance, but are not what I am fool enough, I promise you, to think of more value in point of an interest than the sheet of paper I am writing upon ; but my interest at Court, like this paper, might have been of some consequence to me, since you might have written what you pleased upon it, though you have thought fit to leave it a blank. " You will be tired of reading, and I am tired of writing. Do not torture any expression in this letter, for I am not in a situation of mind to weigh or choose my words, and all I mean to say is, that I will be refused or disappointed no more, for I will ask and expect no more ; that my enemies shall not con quer, for I will not struggle ; that I could have made my peace with my greatest enemy,10 if I would have done it at your expense ; that I scorned it, and do not repent the part I have acted ; that I submit to be a nothing, and wish whoever you honour with your confidence, or benefit with your favour, may always serve you with as honest a mind, as warm a heart, and as unshakable an attachment as you have been served by your neglected," &c. To this letter Sir Robert Walpole sent no answer in writing, but by a verbal message desired to speak with Lord Hervey early the next morning, and then told him, with a very well acted concern, that of all the things he had ever met with in business, this letter had surprised and afflicted him the most ; that after his own children, there was nobody in England he loved so well, nor anybody to whom he thought he had done more obligations than to Lord Hervey. " As to the opinion I have of your worth and integrity, my Lord, the things with which I have trusted you, are a suffi- i° I suppose the Prince, or perhaps Pulteney. 1737. ITS CONSEQUENCES. 549 cient proof. I mean to serve you, I wish to please you, for God's sake go on with me as you used to do ; and leave it to me, pray trust me to show the sincerity with which I speak to you. Let us have no e'clair- cissemens on what is past ; commit your future interest to my care, and give me leave to think, what I wish to believe, that all the dissatisfaction expressed in your letter is rather the effect ofthe melancholy present turn of your mind on this unhappy event, than a distrust of my friendship and sincerity." It would be very tedious to relate all the parti culars of this long conversation, which ended in an extorted promise from Lord Hervey that he would not alter his conduct, make any complaints to any body, or relate what had passed between them, unless he thought he had any fresh reason to be displeased with Sir Robert Walpole's behaviour ; and though Lord Hervey now began to know Sir Robert Wal pole too well to depend much on the most lavish professions of kindness and esteem, yet he had some satisfaction in Sir Robert Walpole's behaving in a manner that saved him the trouble of coming to a rupture with him, at a time when it was certainly his interest as well as his inclination to lie by and be quiet. It will be natural, then, to ask, if these were Lord Hervey's sentiments, why he wrote this letter ? The answer to which is, that he thought the letting Sir Robert Walpole see he was sensible he had not been well used, was the likeliest way to prevent his being worse used ; knowing that fear was the only check upon a man who was so apt to conceive jealousies and sus picions, and whose temper, though it could from that 550 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Chap. XL. motive of fear long suspend resenting, seldom or never failed from any other to annoy and depress those against whom these jealousies and suspicions were conceived. Several of Sir Robert Walpole's enemies, as well as some of Lord Hervey's injudicious friends, tried to stimulate and persuade Lord Hervey at this time to endeavour to ruin Sir Robert Walpole in the palace, to make use of his perpetual access to the King to this purpose, and told him, as the Princesses were so irritated against Sir Robert, from his ungrateful behaviour to their mother's memory, and his indecent conduct to wards themselves, that they would certainly join with Lord Hervey in promoting any scheme that tended to the subversion of his power and the punishment of his insolence ; at the same time blowing up Lord Hervey's vanity and ambition, by telling him how capable he was of stepping into Sir Robert's place, and how glad the at present broken Whig party would be to unite under his banner, if he would but set up his standard. But these people know little of the true situation of things: the Princess Emily not daring to speak of business to the King, and the Princess Caroline not caring how things went, engrossed by her melancholy, and in so bad a state of health, that nobody imagined, any more than herself, that her life would be of any long continuance.11 11 She lived, however, though in seclusion and ill health, twenty years longer, dying on the 28th of December^ 1757, in the 45th year of her age. [ The conclusion seems a little abrupt ; but the appear ance of the Manuscript indicates that Lord Hervey con sidered his work as complete.] !740. MINUTES OF CABINET. 551 SUPPLEMENTAL CHAPTER. List of the Cabinet— Naval forces of England, Spain, and France— Minutes of Cabinet Councils— Letters to Lord Bristol on Lord Hervey's dismissal from office. [ What Lord Hervey designated as his Memoirs end with the Queen's death, but he left some notes and letters which carry us on to the close of his own political life, and which seem therefore to deserve a place in these volumes. See the ' Biographical Notice.'] List of the Cabinet Council, April 28, 1740. Potter, Archbishop of Canterbury. Lord Hardwicke, Lord Chancellor. Earl of Wilmington, Lord President of the Council. Lord Hervey, Lord Privy Seal. Duke of Dorset, Lord Steward.1 Duke of Grafton, Lord Chamberlain. Duke of Richmond, Master of the Horse. Duke of Devonshire, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. 1 These great household officers were at this period always in what was called the Cabinet ; but there was an interior Council — of Walpole, the Chancellor, and Secretaries of State — who, in the first instance, consulted together on the more confidential points. 552 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Sup. Chap. Duke of Newcastle, Secretary of State. Earl of Pembroke, Groom of the Stole. Earl of Isla, as First Minister for Scotland. Lord Harrington, Secretary of State. Sir Robert Walpole, Chancellor of the Exchequer. Sir Charles Wager, First Commissioner of the Admiralty. (Sir John .Norris,8 called in as an auxiliary when any thing was under deliberation relative to our present maritime war with Spain.) May 7. The Duke of Montagu, made Master of the Ord nance in the place of the Duke of Argyle, became of course one of the Cabinet Council. May 8. The Duke of Bolton, without a right to it from his office of Captain of the Band of Pensioners, in which employment he succeeded the Duke of Montagu on his removal to the Ordnance, was likewise admitted of the Cabinet Council, because he had been of it seven years ago, at the time he was turned out of all his employments. An Account of the present Naval Strength of England. With Mr. Haddock in the Mediterranean, 32 ships, — 22 of the line, 5 twenty-gun ships, 3 fire-ships, 2 bomb-vessels. All these are at present with Haddock to defend Minorca, except four left at Gibraltar with Captain William Hervey, brother to Lord Hervey, which properly belong to [Sir Challoner] Ogle's squadron of 10, who went with the other 6 to join Haddock. Balchen and Maine had 10, to cruize on the north-west of Spain, near Cape Finisterre and Ferrol; but Maine's 5 are returning home to refit. At home there are 30 ships for the Channel, to guard our own coasts and protect this country ; but 20 only being manned, one-third of the nominal strength is absolutely useless. In the West Indies there are now with Vernon 9 ships of 2 A distinguished officer : he had been many years a Lord of the Admi ralty, was now Admiral of the Fleet, and was appointed in the summer to the command of the Channel Fleet. 174°- MINUTES OF CABINET. 553 the line, 5 fire-ships, and 2 bomb-vessels ; and dispersed in the West Indies about 16 ships more of different sizes. Spanish Strength in Europe. At Carthagena 5 ships of the line, commanded by Clavijo, who commanded the Cales [Cadiz] squadron last year. The Cales squadron, 9 ships of the line, 3 frigates, commanded by Pintada. The Ferrol squadron, 6 ships of the line, and the 3 Assogue ships3 refitting, and 16,000 men in Galicia. On the Catalonia side of Spain several transport ships, 3 men of war, 7,000 men in Majorca ; and another body of troops, commanded by Count Clemis, in Catalonia, ready for an embarkation at Barcelona, which Spain dare not hazard for fear of Haddock's squadron ready in those seas to intercept them. Their strength, or rather their weakness in Spain, un certain. French Strength in Europe. France has at Brest, ready to sail, commanded by Mons. D'Antin, a squadron of 22 ships ; the lowest accounts say 18 ; and at Toulon 12, all great ships from 54 to 74 guns. Minutes of what passed in the Cabinet Council from the time the King made Lord Hervey Keeper of his Privy Seal, April 23, 1740. Monday, April 28, 1740. 8 at night, at the Cockpit. Two letters were produced by Sir Charles Wager and read ; the first importing that the Cales squadron of nine ships of the line, and three frigates (believed before to have sailed to 3 The Azogue (quicksilver) ships, which plied annually between Vera Cruz and Cadiz, and the interception of which had been an early object of the British Government ; but, having heard of the hostilities, they left their usual track, made the coast of Ireland, and thence ran down the coast of France, and got safe into Santander. 554 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Sup. Chap. America), were now thought to be gone to Ferrol, to join a squadron there of six men-of-war, already fit to put to sea, and three more, which were the Assogue ships, refitting for that purpose. The second letter, of a later date, confirmed this news of the junction of these two Spanish squadrons ; both letters what they call ship-news. Upon this the Duke of Newcastle proposed to Sir Charles Wager to send orders to Admiral Haddock (now lying with part of his squadron, 19 ships of the line, besides some smaller vessels, in the Mediterranean to defend Minorca against the attempts expected to be made by Spain by an embarkation from Barcelona) not to send the ten ships which he had been ordered about a fortnight ago to send to America, because (says his Grace) you know as soon as those first orders were gone we changed our minds, and thought it better to send ten ships from hence to America, to reinforce Vernon, and prevent the ill effects of the Cales squadron arriving there ; but as on changing our minds we forgot to change the first orders to Haddock, if we do not send soon, those orders will be followed, and instead of ten ships being sent to America, twenty will go, ten from hence and ten from Haddock. Sir Charles Wager muttered something in answer to this, most of it so inarticu lately, that it seemed like sounds without words, and where the articulation was plain it seemed words without sense. Then he gave another letter to be read, from a captain of a ship ordered to cruize off Cape St. Mary's, in which the captain said he could neither sleep day nor night for fear of finding what he was ordered to search for ; since he had been forced to leave fifty men sick at Gibraltar, that he wanted originally thirty-eight of his complement, and had besides thirty sick in bed on board ; so that he was so far from being in a fighting condition, that he had hardly hands to work his ship. Then it was proposed to send to Balchen (who was to have scoured the seas on the coast of Spain from Lisbon northward) to keep out of the way of the enemy, for fear of being destroyed by this junction of the Cales and Ferrol squadrons ; but no orders were given upon this, any more than the counter orders to Haddock relating to the ten ships. After this the Duke of Newcastle produced a copy of the 1*740. MINUTES OE CABINET. 555 speech the King was to make next day to both Houses of Par liament upon putting an end to the Session. There were several wise dissertations held on verbal alterations, all of them equally important with the two I am going to mention ; which were, first, whether the King should say I have frequently or for merly recommended to you union and unanimity among your selves, &c. ; secondly, whether he should say my enemies or our enemies. On each of these material disputes were wasted at least twenty minutes, and as many hundred words, among which were those by which his Grace of Richmond showed in this debate that he thought himself no incompetent judge of style. At the end of the Speech there was a paragraph, originally inserted to notify the King's wise, brave, and prudent resolu tion of going this summer to Hanover ; but as Sir Robert Wal pole did not yet totally despair of something possibly happening that might hinder this monstrous intention, he had prevailed with the King to leave it out, by telling him it was more for his grandeur to go without telling his Parliament, or to make people believe it was some sudden resolution taken when he did go, on some occasion or occurrence he had not foreseen. When the Duke of Newcastle came to this paragraph (which was the last), he stopped short, said nothing of it, but turned and whispered my Lord Chancellor for some time, then looked notable and said to him aloud, You take me ; my Lord Chan cellor looked wise, took snuff, nodded, and then dropped his head on his left shoulder, but made not one word of answer. The rest of the Lords of the Council looked at one another with joint admiration at his Grace of Newcastle's giving them this proof both of his good breeding and his good sense ; in the first place for showing he would not trust them with part ofthe Speech, and in the next for seeming to make a mystery of that which every one at the table knew, all of them three days, and some of them above three weeks ; and for myself, I knew of it before he did. Tuesday at noon, April 29, at St. James's. The Speech read before the King. I was absent. 556 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Svp. Chap. Wednesday at noon, April 30, at St. James's. Report on the malefactors.4 I was absent. Ditto at night, at the Cockpit. I was absent. Orders sent to Balchen to return home with his five ships, to secure himself from being attacked where he was by a su perior force from Ferrol, and to guard the Channel. Monday, May b, at night, at the Cockpit. There is a treaty subsisting between England and Denmark, by which the latter is obliged to furnish 6000 men to the former for a subsidy of 52,000Z. per annum. This treaty was made for three years. One year and a half is expired, and by good intelligence we know that France has engaged Denmark, at the expiration of our term of three years, to let these troops to her. The question in Council was, whether we should stop the payment immediately of the subsidy to Denmark on this intel ligence, half a year being now due to Denmark ; and whether it was not absurd for us to pay troops for another year and a half, which we knew, after that time was expired, would be engaged against us ? The difficulty was this : if we stopped the English payment, without being able to prove the French treaty, we should lie under the imputation of having broke the treaty ; and if Denmark has entered into this reversionary treaty with France, in reality she has broken the treaty first, because there is an article in our treaty with Denmark that says both parties shall keep themselves at liberty, till within three months of its expiration, to renew it ; and if Denmark has promised these troops to France at the end of our term of three years, she has broken that article of the treaty, because she is no longer at liberty to renew this treaty. Before pay ment of this last half-year should be made, therefore, and on the intelligence of this treaty with France, Lord Harrington had 4 Recorder's report. 1>?40- MINUTES OP CABINET. 557 been ordered to write to the Court of Denmark, to know if the King had begun or concluded any such treaty ; to which he had received this evasive answer, that his Danish Majesty had not begun and concluded any treaty with France for these troops ; by which answer Denmark hoped to get the money due from England without telling a flat lie, or revealing the truth, which was, that such an engagement was entered into be tween France and Denmark for the reversion of these troops, as was understood on both sides, though no direct treaty was concluded in the common forms. Lord Harrington, therefore, had been ordered to write again, for a more explicit answer, to know whether any negotiation was on foot between Denmark and France for these troops ; and when the Danish minister pressed, as he did, every day for the payment of the half-year now due, it was agreed in Council that the answer should be, that it could not be paid till we received an answer from the Court of Denmark to Lord Harrington's last letter : whilst his Danish Majesty, by a very odd-turned conscience, seemed to scruple telling a direct falsehood by his Ministers in a letter, at the same time that he had not scrupled acting one, by breaking an essential article of a treaty he had signed. Sir Robert Walpole then acquainted the Lords of the Coun cil, that the King had received an offer from the King of Sweden, as Landgrave of Hesse,5 to let his Majesty have 6000 Hessians, but required an immediate answer. Sir Robert Walpole was clear, he said, in his opinion, that since Sweden was our avowed enemy, Denmark no longer our friend, and Russia upon the point of being reconciled to Sweden, that we ought to accept this offer made by the King of Sweden, partly to thwart the views of the present reigning party in the Swedish senate, who have reduced him to an absolute cipher in the state ; and partly induced by the ties of this new alliance of his heir and nephew, Prince William of Hesse, with the Princess Mary of England, now on the point of being married. The whole Council unanimously agreed with Sir Robert Wal- 5 Frederick, Landgrave of Hesse Cassel, married Ulrica, sister and suc cessor of Charles XIL, and in right of her was declared King of Sweden in 1720. 558 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Sup. Chap. pole, that the King should be advised to close with this pro posal of the King of Sweden without loss of time. After this came on several questions relating to the mar riage of the Princess Mary, which the King had ordered for next Thursday, though it was not yet known nor determined whether she was to be married or only contracted, nor whether the Archbishop, as head of ecclesiastical affairs, or the Bishop of London, as Dean of the Royal Chapel of St. James's, where the ceremony (whatever it was) was to be performed, should officiate. Both these prelates claimed the honour of officiating, and had produced a great deal of Church-learned rubbish to support their pretensions. The Duke of Newcastle, the Duke of Grafton, and Duke of Dorset were for the Bishop of Lon don ; and Sir Robert Walpole for the Archbishop. All this had been talked over in private, and Sir Robert Walpole told me it was very hard and very disagreeable, that whenever any body had been impertinent to him, those who ought to be his friends were always ready to support such people in any dis pute they had, and that his being against any one was enough to make others partial to them. I told him, since both these troublesome persons submitted to the King's decision, the short question was, whether he should advise the King to please one he could not oblige, or oblige one whom, since he was Arch bishop, it was his interest to please, and whom he might make his tool, if not his friend.6 The other difficulty, whether the Princess should be married or only contracted by solemn espousals, arose thus. The King long ago determined that Prince Frederick should not come over to marry his daughter, because he would not be at the expense of it ; and now he was as peremptory in saying his daughter should be married before she went, because it was below his dignity to send his daughter to a man who, when she came to him, had it in his power to call her his wife or not. The eccle siastics first started the objection to the Princess being married by proxy, saying there was no precedent for it since the Re formation ; but as ecclesiastics, where they give up no power or " It will be recollected that Lord Hervey was a personal friend of Potter and an enemy of Gibson. 1740. MINUTES OF CABINET. 559 profit, are not addicted to being very stiff in their opposition to the will of a Court, this difficulty was soon got over ; when an other arose from the lawyers, who said, if the Princess was married here only by proxy, it would call in question the right of her descendants to this Crown, if ever the right should de volve there ; and more remote branches had, by the extinction of others, often come to such right. For the Act of Succession that settles the Crown on this family, in order to secure the Protestant religion, according to the established Church of England (to protect which this family was introduced here), does say that all the marriages of the Royal family performed in England shall be according to the form of the Church of England ; and for this form, by the Act of Uniformity of the 13th and 14th Charles IL, the Common Prayer-Book is re ferred to, and the Service for Matrimony, as well as all others, must be performed in the words as they stand in that book ; which could not be if the Princess was married by proxy only, many words in that form being to be altered for a marriage by proxy. All this Sir Robert Walpole told to the King, whom he could not make comprehend it, and told all the Lords of the Cabinet Council, with more sincerity than prudence, that the King had said to him that morning, " I will hear no more of your Church nonsense, nor of your law nonsense — I will have my daughter married here, and ivill have the marriage complete ;" all wliich his Majesty persisted in, not only against the evident words of the Acts of Succession and Uniformity, which would have illegitimated his daughter's posterity with regard to the inheritance of this Crown, but even against the previous articles of marriage which he had signed, and pursuant to which the powers sent to the Duke [of Cumberland], the Prince of Hesse's procurator [proxy] , were drawn ; those powers going no further than an autho rity for solemn espousals here, in order to her being married when she came to Hesse-Cassel. At last it was agreed in Council to represent to the King, that the precedent of the Princess Mary, Henry VII.'s daughter's espousals here, and marriage afterwards in France to the King of France, was the only precedent in this case (as things now stood) which could be followed ; and his Ma- 560 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Sup. Chap. jesty's impatience to go to Hanover, and to hear of no more difficulties, together with the reflection that his daughter, with out lessening his dignity, might do what the daughter of Henry VII. did, got the better of his usual inflexibility ; and he consented that this precedent should be followed, which may be seen in Rymer's ' Fcedera,' vol. xiii. p. 432. This precedent too, it is said in the Cabinet, avoided a decision in the dispute between the Archbishop and the Bishop of London, since a Secretary of State, and not an ecclesiastic, would be to officiate at the ceremony of these espousals in the Chapel ; but as the Archbishop, at the end of the ceremony, was to pro nounce the benediction and to bless the nuptials, after making a Latin speech, I think it did manifestly decide the episcopal dispute, and in favour of the Archbishop ; but his Grace fearing other people might not be as clearly of my opinion, took care to engraft some hors d'osuvre prayers in the ceremony, to put it out of dispute, and wisely chose for one of those prayers, to open the whole nuptial ceremony, that which begins thus, — " Prevent us, O Lord, in all our doings." 7 The Bishop of London was absent. Tuesday, May 6, at night, at the Cockpit. My Lord Harrington said he had spoke that morning with the King of Sweden's minister about the treaty for the 6000 Hessians, and that he insisted on all the levy-money, if the treaty was only for three years, but would be contented with half (as proposed) if it was for four. That he would have an article to stipulate that these troops should not be employed against Sweden, or any of the provinces belonging to Sweden. These articles were agreed to in gross ; but I proposed that when the sense of the last came to be reduced to words, it might run, that these troops should not be employed to attack Sweden, or any of the provinces, &c. For otherwise, if, on peace being made between Sweden and Russia, the reigning party in 7 The whole detail of the ceremonies, prayers, and speech (in Latin and in English), are to be found in the ' London Magazine ' for May 1740. 1740. MINUTES OF CABINET. 561 Sweden should, to maintain their power at home, by some po pular act, attack Bremen and Verden, under the pretence of recovering the dismembered parts of their monarchy ; the King of England, by a looser way of wording this stipulation, would be precluded from calling for these Hessians to defend their places so attacked, which would defeat what, we all knew, was the sole view in taking them into our pay. Most of the Lords seemed to stare and wonder at my speak ing so plain ; but I insisted on the word attack being in this clause of the treaty ; and when Sir Robert Walpole gave his opinion that it should be so, all the mutes and starers at once said, " To be sure, to be sure ; these sort of things can never be made too plain." After this the Duke of Newcastle read several letters from Lord Waldegrave, in which his Lordship said that they knew nothing in France yet, whether the Cales squadron and the Ferrol squadron were joined, where either of them was, or for what they were designed. From which his Grace inferred, contrary to all other intelligence, and the probability from all other circumstances, as well as the opinion of Sir Charles Wager, Sir John Norris, and Sir Robert Walpole, that they were not joined. Sir Robert Walpole said, very sensibly and reasonably, " that though he did not pretend to say how these fleets would be employed upon their union, yet he made no doubt of their being united ; for as they had been hitherto use less from their being separate, it must have been in common sense the policy of Spain, as soon as she could, to unite them ; and afterwards to determine whether they should be employed in an invasion of England or Ireland, or to prevent the expe dition of Lord Cathcart,8 ready now to sail with the new-raised marines to the West Indies ; or make the best of their way im- 8 A formidable expedition against Spanish America, the troops com manded by Lord Cathcart, the fleet by Sir Chaloner Ogle. It did not sail till the 26th of October, though said to have been ready in April, and was dispersed by a severe storm five days after, and did not join Admiral Ver non at Jamaica till the 9th of January, 1741. Lord Cathcart having died on the passage, the command devolved on General Wentworth ; and be tween him and Vernon this the greatest force that ever appeared in those parts entirely failed in its object. vol. n. 2 o 562 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Sup. Chap. mediately to America, to attack our settlements there, or find out Vernon :"9 and concluded with saying, that if they should be joined by the Brest squadron, and make any attempt here, that we had not a naval force to resist them ; for as we wanted a third of our complement of seamen, so, though we had thirty ships at home, we could have the use only of twenty. "Therefore, Sir Charles and Sir John, I must (says he) again add, what has been the burden of my song in every Council these four months — Oh ! seamen, seamen, seamen !" 10 I must here add too, that most people in Council thought (that is, of those few who ever thought) that Lord Walde- grave's letters did not prove the present ignorance of France with regard to the situation of the Spanish affairs, which the Duke of Newcastle read them to prove ; but manifested rather his Lordship's own ignorance, proceeding either from very bad in telligence, or from the care the Cardinal [Fleury] took to let him know nothing he could hide from him, or both ; which extreme caution and secrecy in the Cardinal must naturally make one suspect and conclude that France has now some material mea sure under deliberation, which we must every day expect should break out. But as they know now in France of the King's prudent intention of going this summer to Hanover, in all pro bability they will not strike the meditated blow till he leaves England ; judging his absence the most favourable opportunity to molest those whom he seems to think it so httle his business to guard and protect, and whose resentment for such usage may produce such discontents at home as will facilitate the success of any attempts from abroad. After the Council had treated this subject speculatively for about an hour and a half, without doing anything ; and stated the dangers which they took no care to provide against and avert ; the Duke of Newcastle renewed the vieillerie of asking their Lordships when they would think fit to advise the King to 9 Admiral Vernon, who had become so popular by the taking of Porto Belloat the close ofthe preceding year, was now threatening other portions of the Spanish Main. 'o This answers all the censure which has been cast on Walpole on this very point of the undermanning the ships. 1740. MINUTES OF CABINET. 563 send the counter orders to Haddock relating to the ten ships, and what further orders should be given relating to his conduct and Ogle's ; and as his Grace never omitted any opportunity to exhibit his own works to their Lordships' perusal, and con sequently, as he thought, to their admiration of his parts and style, he begged leave again to read, what he had already read so often, that the worst memory at the Board must have got by heart, wliich was that letter of his, that conveyed those orders which were now to be revoked. This letter gave Haddock orders to detach Ogle immediately from his squadron with ten ships, and to give him discretionary and eventual orders, when he arrived before Cales, to follow the Cales squadron if he heard it was gone to America ; to Ferrol, if he was informed it was there ; and if by intelligence he learned that it was sailed towards England or Ireland, to make the best of his way home. After this letter was read, a long, total, and profound silence ensued, which I broke by asking the date of this letter ; and his Grace of Newcastle saying it was dated April 18th, — I begged leave to observe, that counter orders now to Haddock could be of no use, since his part in detaching the ten ships must necessarily be already executed ; and that what orders were now to be given should be sent to Ogle, who in all proba bility was at this time coming or was already come to Ferrol ; Where, with ten ships only, he was certainly outnumbered by the Spanish sqUadfOns, since they were joined, and run great risk of being overpowered by them. His Grace to this an swered, with retrospective wisdom (the easiest of all wisdom, and consequently the only wisdom he could have the appear ance of possessing), "Aye, these are our difficulties, and brought upon us by the fatal steps of Ogle leaving Cales, and Maine coming home with Ms five ships f and leaving Balchen, whom for these reasons we have been forced to recall too." Upon which Sir Robert Walpole interrupted him, and said, — " For God's sake, my Lord, let us do the best we can ourselves, and leave off arraign ing and condemning the conduct of those [officers] to whont the care of this country is committed, who are employed and trusted by the Crown, and who do the best they can ; who, as the best judgments are fallible, may have misjudged ; but who, as they are better informed than we are, at present, of all the circum- 2 o 2 564 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Sup. Chap stances that were to determine their judgments, may have judged better of what was to be done in the situation they then were, than we now judge of them : let us look forward, let us do our best in ordering, and conclude, since nobody doubts of these officers meaning well, that they do their best in execut ing." His Grace upon this was angry and silent ; two tilings he had always better join, though he seldom did. After two hours' more talking on these subjects — and little to the purpose, it was agreed that no further orders should be sent either to Haddock or Ogle, till we could learn with more certainty the motions and designs of the Spanish fleet, and the intentions of France. That something of moment was now under deliberation in France, was probable from the great caution used in every thing that was said there by the Cardinal to Lord Waldegrave, as well as from the improbable ignorance he affected of some circumstances upon which he did not care to talk at all. But Lord Harrington in my ear, after the Council was broke up, told me a thing he had learned by letters from Holland, which was a still stronger indication of some negotiation of great im portance being now in agitation between France and Spain; which was — that it was a certain fact, that three couriers from France arrived lately at Madrid in the compass of four days : which fact Lord Harrington learned from the Pensionary in Holland, who at this time gave us intelligence of all that passed at the Court of Madrid, which Vandermeer, the Dutch minister there, could get to the knowledge of. Just as Sir Robert Walpole was upon his legs to go away, the Duke of Newcastle said, " If you please, I would speak one word to you before you go ;" to which Sir Robert Walpole replied, "I do not please, my Lord; but if you will, you must." — "Sir, I shall not trouble you long." — "Well, my Lord, that's something ; but I had rather not be troubled at all : won't it keep cold till to-morrow ?"— " Perhaps not, Sir." — " Well, come then, let 's have it," — upon which they retired to a corner of the room — where his Grace whispered very softly, and Sir Robert answered nothing but aloud, and said no thing aloud, but every now and then, " Pooh ! — Pshaw ! — O Lord ! O Lord ! — Pray be quiet. — My God, can 't you see it 11 i0- MINUTES OF CABINET. 565 is over?"11 This secret was, that Lord Pembroke had proposed privately that all the Lords of the Cabinet should join in remon strating against the King's journey to Hanover; which Sir Robert Walpole said would now have no other consequences than irritating and provoking the King in private, and loading him more in public; two things that wanted no additional weight to strengthen them, but rather all our care to soften them. Thursday eveniny at 7, at the Cockpit. May 22, 1740. The King waiting for a wind at Sheerness. The Duke of Newcastle read all the letters received from Lord Waldegrave since the last meeting ofthe Cabinet Council ; which contained, first an account of the Spanish fleet having gained a complete victory over Balchen and his five ships, and the general joy there was in France at Court and at Paris on the arrival of this news. The next letters contradicted the re port of this engagement, but confirmed the part France took in inclination, though not in fact, in the interest of Spain against England, by saying the melancholy on the news of this Spanish victory being contradicted, was as manifest as the joy on the belief of it. Another letter from Lord Waldegrave said, that Monsieur D'Antin had received orders to repair immediately to his command of the Brest squadron, which was forthwith to sail, and it was thought to the Baltic. His next letter contradicted this account too, and said Mon sieur D'Antin's departure from Paris was suspended. In this he gave an account of some disputes too between the Courts of Madrid and Versailles, relating to their treaty of commerce, and that each was much dissatisfied with the con- u Such scenes as this— for which the latter parts of the Memoirs had already prepared us — exhibit a state of feeling which may account for Horace Walpole's reiterated assertions that Sir Robert's fall was produced by the treachery of Newcastle. But it is clear that, without supposing any treachery in the case, Walpole and the Duke could not have much longer continued to act together. 566 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Sup. Chap. duct of the other — an intelligence, I fear, as little to be de pended upon as the rest. Another letter gave an aceount, new to Lord Waldegrave, though very stale here, of the junction of the Cales and Ferrol squadrons. Letters from Italy were read, relating the return of the Pre tender's eldest son frona Civita Vecchia to Albano, the Pre tender's hunting-seat near Rome : and informing us that nobody paid the Pretender and his sons greater distinctions than the Prince of Craon, the great Duke's master of the horse, and sole director of Ms affairs in Tuscany, who was now at Rome, j It was resolved in Council to write to Mr. Robinson,1* the English minister at Vienna, not to make a formal complaint at that Court of this conduct of the Prince of Craon, but to give intimations of its being known here, and not well taken. Letters from Holland said that Vandermeer had acquainted the Pensionary, that the Duke of Ormond had been ordered to set out forthwith from Madrid to take the command ofthe troops in Galicia, but that he had refused to go till the arrears due to him were paid to defray the expense he must be at in this journey ; and till some scheme was set on foot for the payment of the troops he was to command, as well as for their subsistence, which was now so scanty, that it was thought another month's sojourning there would starve them. After this the two questions were again debated, which had been so often started, relating to the manning of the fleet, and the orders that should be sent to Ogle what he was to do with the ten ships under his command, that had been- detached by the orders of the 18th of April from Haddock's squadron. With regard to the first, Sir Robert Walpole said it was the most necessary point of all to be considered, as the deficiency of men was so great, and the recruits made by the present me thod of pressing so slow and so few, that a third part of our ships at home were absolutely useless for want of men only ; and that all the new men we now get, hardly answered the numbers that died or fell sick. His proposal, therefore, was to withdraw, or rather to overrule, all protections now standing out, 12 Afterwards first Lord Grantham of that name. 1740. MINUTES OF CABINET. 567 to despise the clamour there would be on this occasion, and not to be courting popularity when this island was at stake ; 13 but to apply ourselves in the first place to the view of its defence, ex clusive of all others. He said, by the junction of the two squadrons, that the Spaniards had now a naval strength at Ferrol equal to England ; and if the Brest squadron should join them, greatly superior ; and as he did not doubt but that our present situation was as well known to France as to ourselves, he feared, notwithstanding the pacific disposition of the Cardinal, that this temptation of being able to distress us with so little risk to France, might induce him to take that part, which every man in France, but himself, had long wished might be taken. Sir John Norris said, he feared this method proposed by Sir Robert Walpole, of getting seamen by overruling the protections, would be too slow to serve our present purpose and answer the immediate exigency ; and said he had prepared a scheme for manning seventeen of the home ships for instant service, by putting two battalions of foot on board them, joined to a draught of 1800 men out of the body of marines, which would come to 3000 men ; and as these seventeen ships wanted only 2465 men of their complement, this proposal, if accepted, would more than answer the demand. The Duke of Newcastle, the Lord Chancellor, and the Duke of Richmond gave immediately into the scheme of Sir John Norris. Sir Robert Walpole adhered to his own, of withdrawing the protections ; and said, in the first place, he did not believe the King would at all relish the scheme of putting his land-forces aboard the fleet ; in the next, that if a descent should be made upon England, he did not believe we should find we had more land-forces than were absolutely necessary for our defence against such an attack ; and lastly, that he thought it was always most natural and best to get seamen for sea service, if they were to be had, and never have recourse to landmen for that service till all methods for seamen had been tried in vain. !s It must be remembered that it was not till the defeat of the rebellion of 1745 that the tenure of the House of Hanover was considered as quite secure. 568 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Sup. Chap. To the first of these objections, Sir John Norris said that we first sat there to give the King the best advice we could for his service and the service of the nation, and not to consider what advice he would like best ; that when we had given the best, it was not our fault if he would not take it ; and that, all things considered, he saw no way so quick and so sure to get men for the fleet as this. To Sir Robert Walpole's second objection, the Lord Chan cellor answered, that in case of a descent, these troops, as they were to be put on board the squadron for home service, might be relanded. And to the third, the Duke of Newcastle said, that all other methods had been tried already in vain, as embargoes, press ing, &c. ; and that this method would certainly be the quickest, as well as surest, to get men. Then the Lords of the Admiralty, who had been ordered to attend, were called in — Sir Thomas Lyttelton, Lord Harry Poulet, and Lord Vere Beauclerk ; and after a long unme thodical examination, in which several very impertinent, useless questions were asked, whilst Sir Thomas Lyttelton slowly stut tered an opinion, not worth asking,14 — Lord Vere gave his un asked, and Lord Harry Poulet had none to give — it appeared, that to fit out only seventeen men of war to defend this island, 2465 men were wanting ; that to man twenty-five now in com mission, there was a deficiency of 4698 men ; that the protec tions now standing out amounted in all to 14,800, for colliers, coasters, fishers, and outward-bound vessels, of which the two first required only 7000. That our new complement of men was about 500 men to a ship,15 our old about 400, and the Spanish complement 620. That the marines already draughted from the Isle of Wight were so bad, from size, youth, and sickness, that by the report of Admiral Cavendish (to whom they were sent) !¦* Sir Thomas (father of Lord Lyttelton) was a country gentleman, who, though he had been thirteen years one of the unprofessional Lords of the Admiralty, could have no weight on naval points. Lord Vere and Lord Harry (afterwards Duke of Bolton) were sea Lords. is This refers to the third-rates, of which the larger class had 520 and the smaller 450 men. 1740. MINUTES OF CABINET. 56 they were useless, and most of them at the hospital ; and that there were seven Spanish privateers in the mouth of the Channel molesting every ship of ours, even upon our own coasts, of which the Admiralty received every day advice and complaint, and caused a clamour throughout the whole kingdom. Such at this time was the situation, and these the circumstances, of the maritime strength of this island, that had so long been boasting of its being singly a match by sea for the united naval power of all Europe ; and at this hour encountering Spain alone, if the Ferrol squadron was to sail to our coasts, and all the men-of- war about our coasts which we can man were drawn out, we should certainly be outnumbered, and consequently lucky if we were not overpowered ; and owe our success (as most people do, both in public and private occurrences) rather to the want of skill, industry, and vigilance in our enemies, than to our own possession or exertion of those qualifications. When the Lords of the Admiralty were withdrawn, I pro posed, since the fleet was in so bad a situation with regard to men, that Sir Robert Walpole's advice to overrule the protec tions should not be laid aside, even though the resolution should be taken by the King to put the two battalions and 1800 marines on board. I said, I saw no reason why one pro ject should be taken as a succedaneum to the other, and thought more especially that we should not content ourselves with a scheme which would at best man but seventeen ships, when we wanted men and nothing but men for thirty ; and that I saw no reasons to expect that these marines so draughted, would be better than those the fleet had already received ; and conse quently, that I looked upon them as what might answer in number to what was proposed, but in no other particular. After much reasoning, or rather talking, on both sides of this question, it was resolved to stick for the present to the recruit expected from the two battalions and the marines only, and to have recourse to the other method of withdrawing the protec tions according as we should afterwards find it necessary ; and after I had defended Sir Robert Walpole's opinion against the Duke of Newcastle, not alone for that reason, though that alone perhaps would have been sufficient, I concluded by saying, since this seemed to be the opinion of the majority of their 570 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Sup. Chap. Lordships, that the land-forces were to be taken to supply the fleet, before all ways had been tried to supply the sea the na tural way by seamen, I acquiesced ; but since, in case of an invasion, they were to be relanded, I thought this method, and depending on this only, would reduce us to the dilemma of the sea-service robbing the land, or the land the sea. Sir Robert Walpole then proposed that Ogle, with his ten ships, should be immediately sent for home by a packet-boat dispatched specially for that purpose. The Duke of New castle proposed to have Ogle sent to the West Indies to rein force Vernon — all his Grace's politics being founded on short maxims of policy, gleaned in private conferences in the House of Lords during the Session from Lord Carteret, who had over and over again told him, " Look to America, my Lord; Europe will take care of itself. Support Vernon, and you will want no support here." Sir Robert Walpole insisted, however, on send ing for Ogle home ; he said, no Spanish recruits being gone to America, no English recruits were wanting there. That we were at the mercy of France for want of strength here. That the whole was in danger here ; and that as the consideration of the whole should always take place of the consideration of a part, we wanted strength, and must get what strength we could at home ; and since the Lords of the Council would not come into his proposal to augment our strength by getting more seamen here, we must send for those we could get from abroad ; and as the Ferrol squadron was now superior to Ogle and Balchen both, the sooner we could get them home the better, as they were useless there, and wanted here. I sup ported Sir Robert AValpole, and said, that I thought the pre sent posture of affairs in Europe required all our attention here ; and that our only dispute at present ought to be whether we should send for Ogle and Balchen home with their fifteen ships, or send ten from hence to join them and make a blockade before Ferrol, as we had done formerly before Cales : and though I had never heard this last scheme of blocking up the Cales and Ferrol squadron at Ferrol mentioned in Council ; yet if it was feasible (though the feasibility I did not pretend to judge of), it was a measure to be preferred to any other what ever, as it would enable us with twenty-five ships to defeat all •1740. MINUTES OF CABINET. 571 the three views Spain might have, of going to America, dis turbing my Lord Cathcart's expedition, or making a descent pn England or Ireland ; whereas if their fleet could come out, we should not have a naval force sufficient for three distinct branches of strength to oppose these views, and wherever we employed what strength we had, we should be vulnerable in the two other places. April 29. Session ended. May 8. Princess Mary married. May 13. King embarked at Gravesend. May 24. King landed [at Helvoetsluys]. May 26. Regency opened.16 May 27. 11,000 men in Ireland. Want arms. No man-of- war on the coasts. Papists searched in vain. 13,000 arms here for land service ; 5,000 for sea service. 5,000 in Ire land, 2,000 useless. 5,000 more demanded from hence. Con tract with Board of Ordnance to deliver 12,000 arms between September 1739 and September 1740 ; 8000 ought in conse quence to have been delivered ; 300 at most have. Utrecht and Liege to be tried by letter to Mr. Trevor from Duke of Newcastle. Spaniards, 3 men-of-war only at Catalonia. [June] 1st. Relating to corn insurrections. Attorney and Solicitor consulted. Spy to be continued on the Pretender's son. Repeat orders, and promises of reinforcement to Vernon. Hope. Both squadrons at Ferrol in a bad condition. Dutch ships forbid to enter Gibraltar with corn. Mr. Trevor to be written to on this, and to know what arms may be had in Holland or Flanders. [Here end the Cabinet Minutes ; and it is much to be regretted that Lord Hervey's papers afford us no further is Of which the Privy Seal was, of course, one. 72 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Sup. Chap. insight into the two important years that preceded Wal pole's fall. On the assembling of a new Parliament in December, 1741, the Minister found himself in repeated minorities, and was forced reluctantly to retire. On the 9th of February he was created Earl of Orford, and on the 11th resigned. Lord Hervey had no inclination, it appears, to follow him in his retreat ; and the following letters to his father will best explain the circumstances under which, after a long struggle, he was at length dis missed, and replaced by Lord Gower — who, from being a Tory, had joined the Whig coalition, to the great scandal of all the Tories and the mortification, as we shall see, of at least one of the Whigs.] LORD HERVEY TO THE EARL OF BRISTOL. J£y Lord ' Kensington Gravel Pits, July 5, 1742. Being quite tired of waiting in expectation of knowing something decisive with regard to the present disagreeable impending affair, in order to the sending back of your Lord ship's messenger, I have determined to keep him no longer ; but unfit as I am for writing myself, my temper being so ruffled, and my mind so agitated by the constant hurry I have lived in of late, I am forced to make use of a secretary to ac quaint your Lordship with the remarkable particulars of what passed between the King and me in his closet upon this occasion. When I first went in, I began by saying, " I hope your Ma jesty does not imagine I am impertinent enough to have given 1 The reader is not to think from the formality of the address that there was any coolness between the father and son — quite the reverse, they were on the easiest and most affectionate terms ; but this was the style of the day. 1742. LORD HERVEY'S LETTER TO HIS FATHER. 573 you the trouble of this audience in order to expostulate with you, whether it is fit or not for your Majesty to remove me out of that office in which I have now the honour to serve you : I am not one of those2 who think they have a right to dictate to your Majesty who you shall or shall not employ ; and however successful those who have acted in that manner have lately been, I envy them not their success by such methods, and upon such terms : the very words of the tenure by which we hold our offices, is during your Majesty's pleasure, and when that alters, I know of no privilege any one has to ask your Majesty your reasons ; and since this change from me to my Lord Gower has been so represented to your Majesty, as to induce you one moment to beUeve that there is a chance for any one obstacle, that now obstructs your Majesty's measures, or any one difficulty, in which you find yourself now entangled, to be removed by putting this change in execution, I am so far from desiring your Majesty to let your partiality to me prevent your trying it, that there is nobody in your Majesty's councils can press you more strongly to put it to the trial than I would do if there was occasion, — nay, I will go still farther, and say, since your Majesty has been told that you are putting me in one scale in balance against the whole Tory party in the other, and risking even your crown to support me ; that I would, for the first time in my life, though your Majesty commanded me to stay, disobey your orders and resign my office, since it is much too great a weight for me to take upon me to be responsible for all the difficulties your Majesty in futurity may meet with, and for your Ministers to say, what I can never be able in the nature of things to disprove, that all these misfortunes were owing to their advice not being followed in the measure they have now proposed ; and as all I could urge relating to the expediency of this measure, considered in a political light, might be thought to proceed from personal motives, as I am personally concerned, I shall not enter into the discussion of that point, but leave your Majesty to be convinced by future experi ence, whether personal or political reasons have induced your 2 Allusion to the imperious terms which Pulteney imposed on the King. 574 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Sup. Chap. Ministers to push it. I do not therefore complain of the thing itself, but of the manner of doing it." Here the King interrupted me, and said, " My Lord, if my Lord Carteret did not bring my message to you in a manner that showed that I have been forced into this thing, among many others that I have been obliged to do, quite contrary to my inclination, and in a manner that showed how sensible I am both of your desire and abilities to serve me, he did not obey my orders ; since I charged him to assure you, that there was nothing in my power to make you easy in the manner of making this change, that I would not do to oblige you." I thanked his Majesty for his kind disposition and intentions towards me, and said, " My Lord Carteret had done that in the most ample manner ; that I had nothing to complain of, or object to my Lord Carteret, who had behaved on this occasion to me, not only like a man of sense, but with the utmost polite ness, and a regard for me which from him I had no reason to expect or right to claim. But what I complain of, Sir, is, that as your Majesty, before I went into the country to my father, notwithstanding the frequent opportunities you had from seeing me in private, never gave the least hint that you should be forced to yield, and give me up in this attack ; and that upon my return to London, the first news I should hear of it should be from the Prince and his people publicly singing their songs of triumph throughout the whole town for this victory being at last obtained over your Majesty and me, and that your own Ministers should be whispering it about to every one in your antechambers that this thing was done, before I had received any intimation from your Majesty that it was even designed." 3 Here the King again interrupted me, and said, " The reason why he had not mentioned it to me before I went into the country, was because he had positively refused, for tliree months together, in the most peremptory manner, ever to take this step, and did not intend to depart from that reso- 3 Horace Walpole wrote to Mann on the \7th June, " Lord Gower is to be Privy Seal, and was to have kissed hands last Friday (11th June), but Lord Hervey had taken the Seal with him to Ickworth ; but he must bring it back." 1742. LORD HERVEY'S LETTER TO HIS FATHER. 575 lution. That, as to his son, I knew he was a vain puppy, and so great a liar that there was no dependence to be had on any thing he said ; and, for his own Ministers, if they had spoken of this thing as a tiling done, they were as great liars, for that they all very well knew he had told them that it should not be done till I was made easy in the manner of doing it ; and that he had commanded my Lord Carteret to let me know that such was his intention and resolution." I said, " My Lord Carteret had done so ; but that when I had pressed my Lord Carteret to name what that method was to be which was to make me easy, he had named nothing but a pen sion of 3000/. a-year, which I flatly refused, and said, I looked upon in a light so different from an equivalent and compensation for what I was to give up, that I could consider it only as an additional disgrace ; since from the moment I corisented to be rolled in the dirt of that pensionary gutter, though I should speak afterwards in the House of Lords in support of his Majesty, his measures, or his interest with the brains of a Solomon, and the lips of a Tully, it would not be in my power to be of more use to his Majesty than my Lord Willoughby ; and as I had nothing in public Ufe at heart but the keeping up my own credit and reputation and the being able to serve his Majesty, so all I desired was an honourable and plausible pretence to remain in his service, and support him and his measures with the same zeal and attachment wliich I had hitherto done. But as possibly the Prince might think his triumph over the ashes of a dead mother and the authority of a living father incomplete, unless he was gratified in the manner of my removal as well as the removal itself, and in sisted on my being kicked out of his Majesty's Court as well as removed from my employment, so possibly his Ministers, who had pressed the one, might likewise have promised the other, and would consequently obstruct everything that could be pro posed towards defeating his Royal Highness's intentions or the executing his Majesty's, since I did not perceive any one step they had taken, or any one piece of advice they had given, since Lord Orford retired, that did not tend to the exalting Ms son's power and to the lowering of his own ; that I would ven ture to prove to the ablest of his Majesty's Ministers (which, 576 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Sup. Chap. putting my Lord Carteret out of the question, I looked upon to be no very bold encounter), that the whole progress of their conduct has been to advise a series of concessions on the part of his Majesty, without taking care of one single return that was to be made. " Your Majesty very well knows the progress of these coun sels, where they take their rise, and how they are pursued; for, though seemingly and politically blind for prudential reasons at this time, your Majesty cannot possibly be actually so to what all the world sees and knows. Your Majesty cannot but be sensible that in all these changes, removals, and promotions, you have not been able to protect any one man they had determined to disgrace, or prefer one whom they resolved should not come in ; all that has been left to be done in your Majesty's closet has been to force you to give your fiat to what has been previously concerted and settled by your son and Mr. Pulteney at Carlton House, and conveyed to your Majesty by the Duke of Newcastle and Mr. Pelham, who are to have all the merit with the Prince of promoting his plea sure, his measures, and his creatures, and shelter themselves from your Majesty's anger, whilst they are gaining his favour, by ex claiming themselves against what they propose, and saying it is intolerable, unreasonable, and unjust ; but that Mr. Pulteney's authority, weight, consideration, and power, is such in the House of Commons, that there is no withstanding it at present, and that his demands, though ever so exorbitant, must be com plied with. " This being the present situation of affairs, I only desire to give your Majesty a short sketch of the true state of this king dom and your palace at the present juncture. " As to Government, the present posture, or rather no- posture, but chaos of things, cannot deserve the name, for Go vernment there is none. The titles of Government belong not to persons who exercise all the authority of it : your Majesty bears the name of King and wears the crown, whilst all the authority of the one, and the power of the other, is exercised by another. My Lord Carteret has the credit in your closet and the name of your Minister, whilst Mr. Pulteney possesses and exercises the power of both. Parliament there is none : 1742. LORD HERVEY'S LETTER TO HIS FATHER. 577 the Secret Committee' has absorbed and engrossed the whole power and authority of that body into their narrow faction. " Your Court is divided into classes, knots, parties, and cabals of men, all with different views, different principles (if they have any), and different interests, contending with one another for power, each thinking to deceive and overreach the other, and all pursuing their own private personal interests, and their own short and narrow views, without considering your Majesty's, the national and general interest, one moment in any one action. " When I consider the individuals that compose your Ad ministration, I find nothing but men of as different complexions there. Some concealed Jacobites, some avowed Republicans, some treacherous friends and cowardly enemies ; others who, having forced themselves into your Majesty's service (or, more properly speaking, into employment), think they have no obligation to your Majesty for being there, feel and know themselves disagreeable to you now they are there, and con sequently think of nothing but themselves, and remaining there upon the same foot of force and constraint by which they got in. " How long such a Government, such a Court, and such an Administration can subsist upon the foot it now stands, or rather totters, must be obvious to the meanest capacity, and the meanest judgment of those titled ciphers about your Ma jesty's palace and person, who are really become the best people there, because, from having too little sense to have any meaning at all, they mean no hurt, but are equally incapable of doing any good. " A ship may weather one or two storms, but no ship can long live in perpetual tempests, nor any Government subsist in per petual fermentation, struggle, and tumult; and where these commotions will end I pretend not to say, and defy the wisest to foresee. " I have laid these particulars before your Majesty, and opened this scene with the same fidelity that I have always served you, giving you the best intelligence I am able, without considering who it may oblige or disoblige, and leaving your 4 Appointed to examine into the conduct of Walpole. VOL. II. 2 V 578 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Sup. Chat. Majesty's better judgment to form your own opinion and take your own measures upon such representations. I belong to no class, faction, or party ; have no attachment but to your ser vice ; no connexion but with your interest and inclination ; belong to you and to no other, and am attacked and pursued for no other reason. But if these are principles, and this a conduct, by which I cannot be supported in your Majesty's Court, the sooner I am out of it the better, for I can change neither, and desire to be supported on no other. I have from the beginning of last winter committed myself entirely to your Majesty's protection : I knew if there was a disposition in your Majesty to do me right, there was nothmg could hurt me that was said or done by my enemies, and that if that disposition was wanting, nothing that was said or done by me could do me any good. I therefore leave myself and my cause just where it was ; and do not pretend to say I am so made as to be able to forget or forgive, if I am ill used, those who can prevail with your Majesty to put me in that situation, but will do them all the hurt I am able, and distress them in every article I can contrive ; and as all men are vulnerable in some place or at some time or other, and that every Achilles has his heel, so patience and good sense will always wait and find an oppor tunity where the strongest may be come at." Having related to your Lordship the most material particu lars of this very long conference with the King, I shall descend into no more minute detail. He seemed thoroughly satisfied with my conduct, and assured me, over and over again, that this removal should be made as easy to me as he could contrive. Upon reading over this letter, I recollect two things I had omitted, wliich are of as much importance as any. The one is, that when I represented the state of his Majesty's palace, and pictured with indignation and contempt the men who compose his Administration, I always took care to confine myself to the home affairs, and to except Lord Carteret5 out of every fault I 6 I cannot but suspect that this was not altogether a new-born preference of Lord Carteret, and that Lord Hervey in his secret displeasure with Wal pole had favoured the intrigues of his friend Lady Sundon to reconcile Lord Carteret to the Queen. See ante, 857, 404. And he now was additionally disposed to propitiate him for two reasons : first, the King's personal favour 1742. LORD HERVEY'S LETTER TO HIS FATHER. 579 laid to his Ministers' charge, saying I knew him to be the only man of sense about his Majesty, and that I really believed his judgment was good enough to know that whilst his Majesty thought fit to employ him, the interest of his master must be the first article of his own interest ; but that, conscious of the difficulties in which the home affairs were at present involved, he had wisely taken the part of confining himself to foreign transactions, in which I own the advice given to his Majesty had been bold, the undertaking hazardous, but steadily con ducted, and hitherto most fortunately prosecuted ; but this, I said, will avail him as a Minister, or your Majesty as a King, but little, unless you can put things upon a more steady, quiet, and permanent foot at home. Whilst Hannibal abroad was humbling the Romans, conquering all Italy, and crowned with laurels in every undertaking, those laurels served but for a chaplet to adorn his sacrifice when he was ruined by a faction in the senate at Carthage : this would be the case if even the success abroad should continue ; but if any alteration should happen there, Lord Carteret's ruin would be yet more pre cipitate. The other thing I had forgot to mention was, that when the King, in the progress of our conversation, told me it had been said, that it was impossible I could object to the scheme of bringing in these men in point of pohcy, because I had been the first who proposed it to his Majesty,6 I said I had resolved not t6 enter into the expediency of this measure at present as an act of state, because I was personally concerned ; yet, since his Majesty had made it necessary for me to break that reso lution by what he had just said, my answer was this : — " In the first place, when I proposed this scheme to your Majesty, it was only in case the Whig party could not be united — was all towards Carteret; and, secondly, Lord Hervey had irremediably broken with every one else. 6 Lord Hervey seems here to assert that he was the first to propose the settling the new Administration on what was called the Broad-bottom of including Tories ; but considering that the triumphant opposition had been composed alike of Whigs and Tories, it seems that it would have been im possible to exclude the Hanover Tories from a share of the fruits of a vic tory which they had taken so large a part in winning. 2 p2 580 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Sup. Chap. which union, I appeal to your Majesty, was always the measure I preferred to all others, and which might have been effected, had it not been for the private grudges and personal piques of those who profess themselves the warmest champions for the Whig party, which prevented it : but in case that union could not be brought about, then, and then only, I proposed this measure, as the single way to prevent a flood of Tories coming in, and to put the party of Tories in the hands of your Majesty instead of putting you into their hands : and, as this advice must either have been good or bad, I desire to ask your Majesty's Ministers, if it was good, why it was then opposed ? if it was bad, how comes it to be now adopted ? and if it was good, can it be just in your Majesty to make the first adviser the first sacrifice ? I have heard of ' Necis artificem arte perire sua,' but that ' salutis artificem' should undergo the same fate is a maxim I never heard advanced, and, till my own case, never knew practised. But I will go still further, and prove to your Majesty that when I proposed this scheme it was good ; and that now they who then opposed it have urged it, it is bad : for when I advised it, it would have been thought a grace and favour from the Crown ; it is now looked upon as a new vio lence and imposition upon the Crown. It is known to be the act of Carleton House, not of Kensington, and whatever thanks are paid from the men that come in of the Tory party, they are paid to the Prince, and not to your Majesty ; consequently, the executing this scheme at this time is strengthening his hands and widening his interest ; whereas, when I mentioned it, it would have strengthened your Majesty's and widened your basis." I summed up the whole by telling his Majesty all that I desired was that he would demonstrate to the world that my removal was a measure of government, not an act of inclination — merely political, not personal — and that though I might be lowered in my employment, that I was not lowered in his favour ; and provided this was effectually done, it was quite indifferent to me in what way; and that, if it was not to be done, the sooner I knew it the better : that long ill health had pretty well blunted the appetite of ambition ; that the usage I had met with had pretty well cured me of my taste for 1742. LORD HERVEY'S LETTER TO HIS FATHER. 581 courts f and that the infinite goodness of my father had made my circumstances so very easy, that I was as much above want ing the profits of a Court, as I was from trying to obtain them any way but by the creditable and honest methods I had hitherto pursued whilst I had been there. LORD HERVEY TO THE EARL OF BRISTOL. My Lord, Kensington Gravel Pits, July 15, 1742. The day after I wrote to your Lordship I heard, from very good intelligence, that my enemies at Court, the leading men in the present motley Administration, had resolved to take a new turn in order to remove the impression which they found my audience had made upon the King : but, before I relate to your Lordship the resolutions they came to, I must acquaint you in what manner all their most secret transactions came to be known. Their sanctum sanctorum is composed of, my Lord Carteret, Lord Winchelsea his adherent, the Duke of New castle and his quibbling friend my Lord Chancellor, Mr. Pulteney, and Harry Pelham. Lord Carteret, Duke of New castle, and Mr. Pulteney, whilst they act seemingly in concert at this juncture, having distinct views and different interests of their own to pursue, are all striving to deceive and overreach one another ; and each separately relating to their own private friends what passes at these conferences conducive to their own points, the whole of the conference, through different channels, flows mto the world. Lord Carteret, feehng he has the strength of the closet and the confidence and favour of the King, whilst 7 How men deceive themselves ! What but ambition, or interest, or a " taste for courts " could prompt a man who had filled so high a rank as that of Privy Seal to strive so hard for a lower employment? But this was the fashion of the time. He was, I have no doubt, acting on the principle of Lord Carteret, that to remain in court on any terms was an advantage which no prudent politician should resign ; and he had the precedent of his greater friend, Walpole, who at the accession of George II. had con descended to ask for a " White Stick." Ante, i. 32. 582 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Sup. Chap. he is making his court by foreign pohtics, hates and detests Mr. Pulteney for all the trouble he gives him in pursuing his points at home ; and knowing that, the moment Mr. Pulteney goes into the House of Lords, he will become an absolute nullity, he is ready to feed the exorbitant appetite of his demands with any morsels it craves for at present, provided in return he can gain that one point of Mr. Pulteney's going into the House of Lords.8 On the other hand, Mr. Pulteney, knowing he has at present the House of Commons in his hands, and seeing too plainly that though he has the power of the closet, he has none of the favour, and that every point he carries there is extorted, not granted — carried by .force, not by persuasion — hates my Lord Carteret for engrossing that favour which he proposed at least to share, if not to engross himself; and whilst he is forcing seven or eight of his followers into employment, proposes to remain himself in the House of Commons in order to retain the same power to force a new batch of his friends, three or four months hence, in the same manner upon the King, which reduces the struggle between Lord Carteret and him to this short point, that if Mr. Pulteney goes into the House of Lords, Lord Carteret dupes him ; if he does not, he dupes my Lord Carteret. The Duke of Newcastle, whose envy is so strong that he is jealous of everybody, and whose understanding is so weak that 8 Here we find direct proof of what, indeed, an examination of the dates and circumstances had long since convinced me — the inaccuracy of Horace Walpole's story of his father's having duped and " turned the key of the Cabinet" upon Pulteney by "persuading the King to insist, as a pre liminary to the change, that Pulteney should go into the House of Lords." — Reminiscences. Sir Robert resigned on the 11th of February, and Pul teney's peerage was, we see, still doubtful up to the middle of July ; and in the conclusion of this letter Lord Hervey asserts that it was he who at this time pressed the King to drive Pulteney into the House of Lords. Sir Robert may have made or conveyed some such suggestion to the King, but it could have had no share in excluding Pulteney from office — which he had declined from the first, having for many years declared that he would not take office, but looked to a peerage. H. Walpole says in a letter to Mann that the rumour was that Pulteney had wished to take the office of Privy Seal himself; but I see no ground for such a supposition. The fact evidently was that he would not give up his hold in the House of Commons till his friends were all satisfactorily placed in the new Administration, and this arrangement was delayed by Lord Hervey's tenacity. 1742. LORD HERVEY'S LETTER TO HIS FATHER. 583 nobody is jealous of him, is reciprocally made use of by these two men to promote tlieir different ends ; and being jealous of Lord Carteret from feeling his superior interest with the King, and jealous of Mr. Pulteney from his superior interest to his brother [Mr. Pelham] in the House of Commons, is like the hungry ass in the fable, between the two bundles of hay, and allured by both without knowing which to go to, tastes neither, and will starve between them. He wants Mr. Pulteney's power in the House of Commons to be kept as a check and bridle upon Lord Carteret, who has outrun him so far in the Palace, and yet wants Mr. Pulteney out of the House of Commons to strengthen his own power there by the proxy medium of his brother. Thus stands the private contest and seeming union among these present rulers, or rather combatants for rule. One point the Duke of Newcastle, Mr. Pelham, and Mr. Pulteney certainly agree in, which is to get me from the King's ear, and not to suffer the traversing power to all their schemes, which they have felt in so many instances I have there,9 to maintain its hold, if they by any means can eradicate it, nor to suffer any man about the King who will tell his Majesty their true reasons and motives for every thing they propose to him, whilst they are endeavouring to deceive him with false ones ; but as it was impossible for them to urge the same arguments to the King, to defeat my expectations and break through his promises in the compen sation that was to be made me for my removal, which they made use of to effect the removal itself, that they could not say to the King it was a measure of government, an act of policy to disgrace as well as to remove a man with whose services and conduct and principles the King declared himself thoroughly satisfied, they were forced to change their battery, and make objections to everything that was proposed in my favour, one by one, saying at the same time, they thought it highly reason able something should be done ; and knowing I had declared that if that something I was to receive did not accompany what 9 This is an important admission. It affords at once a clue to Lord Hervey's motive for clinging to office, and the anxiety of all the other parties to oust him ; and justifies both. 584 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Sup. Chap. I was to give up, that I should look upon myself as disgraced, and carry on no further negotiation, they knew their point was carried if they could by any means contrive to bring the King to complete my removal, leaving the compensation to future consideration : in order therefore to effect this, they told the King that the whole machine of government at present was at a stop merely upon my account ; that all the changes could not be made without Lord Gower's being immediately brought in; that till all the changes were perfected, the Parliament could not rise ; that till the Parhament rose, that dreaded rod of the Secret Committee would be held over the Court and the Par liament, as in truth it was only adjourned from time to time, which gave scope to the Secret Committee to find out new matters to distress the Court. By these methods and sug gestions they alarmed the King's fear — a sensation which in him will ever get the better of all others — and brought him to listen, contrary to his resolution and repeated promises, to the methods they proposed for getting rid of the Secret Committee at any rate. Knowing this to be my present situation with the King, I wrote him the following letter : — "Sir, "July 6, 1742. " Relying entirely on your Majesty's promise by Lord Carteret, and repeated to me by yourself, that something should be found out to make this very mortifying removal in the least mortifying manner, and your Majesty having given me your word that you would do anything in your power to make me easy, and laid your commands upon me to name something, I proposed the Vice-treasureship of Ireland — as what Lord Sunderland and Lord Rochester had both accepted in my situation, wliich was being removed from Privy Seal without being disgraced ; but, after suffering the mortification of having Lord Gower preferred to me, I was forced to undergo the humbling situation not only of standing a contest with Harry Vane, but to have him like wise preferred to me by the present all-ruling influence of Mr. Pulteney :10 this I had yesterday from your Majesty's own lips, 10 See ante, vol. ii. p. 23. 1742. LORD HERVEY'S LETTER TO HIS FATHER. 585 whilst you regretted at the same time your own situation and mine, that you could not give what you wished to bestow as much as I could wish to receive. Upon this, and your Majesty's desiring me to think of something else, I left this affair yester day with your Majesty, on a very short issue, which was, to whom you would give the preference in the other half of this office, Lord Torrington or me. But, to remove all difficulties in these two points, I will name a third way, which indisputably must depend merely on your Majesty's inclination ; and that is, if your Majesty, to prove I am not banished your presence and councils, will make me a Lord of your Bedchamber ; and to show you do not mean to hurt me in my circumstances, will add a pension of 2000Z. per annum for thirty years on Ireland — though by this I shall fall so much in rank, and lessen my present income six or seven hundred pounds a year, yet as I desire nothing but a creditable and plausible pretence to sup port your Majesty's measures with the same steadiness I have hitherto done, so I think I can justify the acceptance of this small compensation for the hardship the whole world allows has been inflicted upon me ; and the pecuniary part of my de mand being what your Majesty, in more than one instance, has thought fit to grant to those whose services, I think, are not much more meritorious than mine, even as an addition to what they before possessed, sure it is much more reasonable to give it as an equivalent for what your Majesty yourself owns is unjustly (though not in your power to avoid) taken from me. Which of these three ways your Majesty thinks fit to choose, is quite indifferent to me, as they will any of them produce the same effect in the main point of my remaining with honour in your Majesty's service. " As to the difficulties in which your Majesty's own affairs are at present involved, the scene of which I had the honour to open yesterday to your Majesty, with regard to your Govern ment, your Palace, and your Administration, if there was any body about your Majesty that had sense, resolution, and fidehty, besides Lord Carteret (who, I believe, wants none of the three), your Majesty might easily surmount and be extri cated out of them— the whole is at present in your hands— unless your Majesty will throw yourself and the whole again 586 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Sup. Chap. into those hands that have brought those difficulties upon you. " I look upon this week as the great crisis in which it is to be determined whether your Majesty is ever to be really King and supreme Governor again in this country, or not ; and whether the nerves and essence of government shall again be united to the titles and show of government, or remain in different conflicting situations. It is very plain the methods your Ma jesty has lately been advised to take will not produce that union — it is evident to all eyes, and the topic of all con versations. " It is as necessary, too, to the safe and quiet conduct of your Majesty's affairs, that you should unite in the same person the favour of your closet and the power of it : at present, the favour is all bestowed on Lord Carteret, and all the power exercised by Mr. Pulteney. This cannot last ; favour and power must go on together, or neither can go on long. It is as essential, therefore, towards constituting a Minister who can subsist, to vest him with these two things, as it is to the fixing your Ma jesty's own power to reunite the authority of the Crown to the name of King. I will open myself more fully either to your Majesty or Lord Carteret, which you think fit, upon the me thods to attain these ends, which I do not think hard at the present juncture to arrive at ; but desire, when Lord Carteret relates my conversation to your Majesty, that nobody may be by, lest in that case your Majesty, he, and I, may be betrayed to the very man you want to get rid of, and must subdue or be subdued yourself — a treachery I am well warranted to suspect in those whose whole life has been one continued series of treachery and betraying since they first came into the political world.11 One who was introduced into it under the wing of Lord Townshend ; who, when he found Lord Townshend's interest tottering, be trayed him to Lord Stanhope and Lord Sunderland ; who, from the same motives, afterwards betrayed Lord Sunderland back again to Lord Townshend and Sir Robert Walpole ; who has since betrayed Sir Robert Walpole to Lord Carteret, would betray Lord Carteret to anybody he thought it his interest, and The Duke of Newcastle. 1742. LORD HERVEY'S LETTER TO HIS FATHER. 587 does actually betray his King and his Master to bis son and successor. I am, with the greatest respect and fidelity, Sir, " Your Majesty's, &c. &c." I will, in as short manner as I can, relate to your Lordship how I explained the political latter part of this letter to the King the next time I saw him. I said, as he was most reason ably uneasy at the power Mr. Pulteney really possessed and that wliich he assumed, and was justly sensible that whilst that Tribune of the Commons had a veto on all his measures, that the principal point he had now to consider was, how to subdue and get rid of him ; that there were two ways of doing this : — the one was, for his Majesty to talk very roundly to Mr. Pulteney, and tell him he would prefer those he recommended, provided Mr. Pulteney would go into the House of Lords ; which was a condition his Majesty, as well as I, knew that his Ministers had never yet dared directly to propose to him ; that if Mr. Pulteney consented to this stipulation, the thing was done, since from that moment he would be nothing but a mere Lord with one vote, and his influence in the House of Commons quite at an end. If Mr. Pulteney refused to comply, his Ma jesty had nothing to do, but, with a high hand, to prorogue the Parliament without promoting any of Mr. Pulteney's people — what would be the consequence of this ? The Secret Com mittee had already sat so long without doing anything essential or answering anybody's expectations, that they had raised the indignation of all their own friends, and were become the con tempt of all his Majesty's, except some few Court cowards who were nearest his person. In the meantime Mr. Pulteney would bounce, bluster, and clamour, but that bis Majesty would have four months beforehand to bring him to reasonable terms, or to order his affairs so as to bid him defiance. That if his Majesty got the Prince and his family, with my Lord Cobham and his adherents, the Court party in the House of Commons would be too strong for Mr. Pulteney in numbers. Besides, his Majesty's having all the tolerable speakers there on his side, and suppos ing the worst to happen that could happen, his Majesty could but be obliged to treat with Mr. Pulteney at the opening of the next Session ; and never could have worse terms then imposed 588 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Sup. Chap. upon him than what were now insisted on, if Mr. Pulteney was not to go into the House of Lords, and seven or eight of his followers were notwithstanding to be brought into employment. His Majesty felt the force of this reasoning ; and whilst for two or three days he was turning it in his own thoughts, all his Ministers were complaining of his ill humour ; that they could not get him to do any one thing, and were at a loss to imagine in what manner this devil had been raised. On Friday last [9th July] he followed my advice, spoke to Mr. Pulteney plainly and strongly, and carried the point of his going into the. House of Lords, promising at the same time to comply with all Mr. Pulte ney's demands in the changes that were to be made, and put them on Monday in execution. Here follows what I am ashamed to repeat : he profited of the advice, and made the adviser the first victim, for late on Saturday night I received a letter from Lord Carteret, to tell me his Majesty's pleasure was, that I should bring the Privy Seal on Monday morning and deliver it to him. Pursuant to these commands I waited on his Majesty, and, delivering the Seal, said I was at first a httle surprised, after the many repeated promises I had received from his Majesty by Lord Carteret, and from his own lips, that some equivalent or compensation should be found out to satisfy me. That in Lord Carteret's letter no mention was made of what I was to receive as well as what I was to give up ; but concluding afterwards that his Majesty, from his great goodness, had chosen to com municate the harsher part of his pleasure by another, whilst he reserved the communication of what was more agreeable for his own lips, I begged to know what Ms resolution and deter mination was. He said, " My Lord, you know I have resisted this measure as long as ever I could ; I am now forced to bring it to immediate execution. I hope in time to be able to do something you may like ; and in the meanwhile am very ready to give you a pension of 3000/. a-year."12 I told his Majesty that 12 In reply to this portion of Lord Hervey's letter, Lord Bristol an swered that he highly approved his rejecting that proposal, but that he insisted on adding 3000/. a year to Lord Hervey's allowance. I must, however, confess that I cannot see how a pension of 3000/. a year during 1742. LORD HERVEY'S LETTER TO HIS FATHER. 589 the pension was what he knew I could not possibly bring myself to accept, as I thought it would hurt my character, wliich I was determined to maintain in the best manner I could ; that it was in the power of a Court to disgrace me, but in nobody's but my own to discredit me ; that I had made different proposals to his Majesty in what manner he might perform his promise of doing anything in his power on this occasion to satisfy me. He said it was impossible for him to comply with any of those proposals. I answered, that with regard to Mr. Vane impossible might be the case, as his Majesty might not have power to resist Mr. Pulteney ; but with regard to the other two, they were both in his Majesty's power, and his inclination could only be wanting to do either of them. He still recurred to this sentence, " My Lord, they are all impossible." I then said, " If that is the case, that none of these things are to be done, that I must look upon myself as disgraced ; and that it was very plain his Ma jesty had promised to do what in one case he could not, and in two others what he would not perform ; and as I had acquainted all my friends with the promise he had made me, I was reduced to the disagreeable necessity of proving that his Majesty had altered his mind, and gone back from that promise, or I must take a he upon myself (which it was impossible for me to do) by acknowledging I had reported what I had not been war ranted to affirm ; and for these reasons I thought it had been much better for his Majesty, and kinder to me, in the first step of this affair, to have ordered Lord Carteret to tell me I must deliver the Seal with only some general words, expressing his Majesty's reluctance to take this step, saying, it was one among many others that he was forced to, contrary to his inclination, and then this matter would have been at a much quicker, as well as more agreeable end. He always dwelt upon his sorrow in general for what I pro posed being impossible, or his hopes of something happening that might be agreeable to me, commendations of my conduct, acknowledgment of my services, and thanks to me for my attach ment and fidelity. Many more things passed in the course of pleasure could " hurt " Lord Hervey's " character " more than a place during pleasure in addition to a pension of 2000/. for thirty years. 590 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Sup. Chap. this interview, with the recital of which I shall not now trouble your Lordship. One tiling more only that I said, I would acquaint you with : I told his Majesty that I really thought my honour, credit, and character, quite out of this question ; for that the question was not whether he would or would not show personal favour to my Lord Hervey, but whether he would show the world that the assiduity and fidehty with which all mankind knew, and he acknowledged, I had served him, were the two most dangerous qualities any man could bring into liis Court ; for if that was the case, his Court could only be filled with bullies, knaves, and fools; and that I thought his honour doubly engaged, as he had given his pro mise to show that he would not suffer a servant of his to be discarded and punished for no other reasons than having served him well, and him only. " For supposing, Sir (I continued), one of your Majesty's footmen had been beaten for trying to keep an insolent mob off your coach, which mob had shown that they were endeavouring to approach your coach only to insult you — to force you to let them drive it, or else to attempt to overturn it — could your Majesty possibly, at the instigation of that very mob, turn away such a footman with the same marks of your displeasure that you would do any servant who deserved such treatment by the worst behaviour, and keep those only in your service who had, underhand, encouraged that mob which he had resisted ? " The strange weak answer he made to this can never be guessed, and will scarcely be credited, when I say it was, " My Lord, there would not be so much striving for a footman's place." 13 Upon taking my leave I said, " All my friends had told me, and I myself beheved, that after the very particular manner in which I had lived with and served him for so many years ; after the good opinion his Majesty had to everybody declared he had of me, and the repeated promises he had made me by himself 13 But was it not quite apropos to Lord Hervey's own illustration? And having seen the way in which he had been for so many years thinking and writing about the King, I cannot, I confess, sympathize in his grievance. 1742. LORD HERVEY'S LETTER TO HIS FATHER. 591 and Lord Carteret, it was impossible he should part with me in any manner that would disgrace me, and without giving me something that would show that was not his intention. But I hoped it would be thought no disrespect to say to his Majesty on this occasion what is said in the gospel of God himself, that I found with kings all things were possible." I did not care to break into this narrative of my transactions with the King, by giving your Lordship any account, wliich would have seemed digression, of some concomitant steps I took with Lord Carteret whilst this affair was depending ; but when I found that he had been very backward in pushing those points with the King, which I had flattered myself, from what he had said to me, he would have been glad to promote, at the same time I wrote my last letter to the King, I sent the follow ing letter to Lord Carteret : — "My Lord, "July 7, 1742. " The alteration in your Lordship's manner of acting has made so great a one in my manner of thinking (the one, as I always told your Lordship, being dependent on the other), that I have now no inclination or desire about tins disagreeable ne gotiation but to have it concluded — in what manner, I am thoroughly indifferent ; since, either way, the part I have to act is a very plain one, and as I perceive it clearly, I shall pursue it resolutely— two things which I cannot help valuing myself upon, since clear and resolute are, I see, at present so httle the characteristics of anybody's opinions or actions but my own. I am not vain enough to fancy myself, in our commotions, of as much consequence as the King of Prussia in those of Europe, to whom one may apply that line in Lucan, where he says— Momentumque fuit mutatus Curio rerum ; but I am not humble enough neither to think I shall be quite a feather in whatever scale your Lordship chooses to throw me. However, as my chief point is not to be kept here longer in suspense, losing my time and hurting my health, in dangling after an affair I am most heartily tired and sick of, and that the cross or pile u decision of it will not give me one moment's 14 Toss-up. 592 LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS. Sup. Chap. uneasiness, I must end where I began, and entreat your Lordship that I may at least have this obligation to you, of deferring no longer to let me know what is determined. " I am, with great respect, " My Lord, &c. &c." To this letter I received the following answer : — " My Lord, "lam extremely sorry that your Lordship should think there is the least alteration in my manner of acting towards you. If you think me mysterious because I do not explain, your Lordship does me great injustice ; for the truth is, that I am quite ignorant as yet whether the Vice-Treasurer's place will be given to your Lordship or not. Your Lordship, I hope, will be so good as to believe that whatever is the case, it is far from being my choice that your Lordship should be thrown, as you express it, into a contrary scale. The moment that I know what will be the turn which his Majesty will give to this affair, I will do myself the honour to acquaint you. And am, " My Lord, " With the greatest respect and truth, " Your Lordship's most humble " and most obedient Servant, " Carteret." I must tell your Lordship that in all my conferences with Lord Carteret, he understood my situation with regard to him, and I his with regard to me, to be this : I told him always, if I could not remain at Court agreeably to him, that I did not care how soon I quitted a place where I knew I had and desired to make no other friend ; he always telling me that there was no man in England he wished more to make his : and said, even in our first conference, his situation was the oddest in the world, for that he was forced by a combination of circumstances to join in a measure of which he approved neither the pohtical nor personal part, and to run the risk of disobliging one whom he knew could serve him, for the sake of people who could not serve him if they would, and who, he knew, would take the first occasion to hurt him if they could. 1742. LORD HERVEY'S LETTER TO HIS FATHER. 593 , A thousand particulars relating to this negotiation occurring every minute to my memory, if I was not so fatigued as to be unable to transmit more of them, I believe this letter would swell to the size of M. de Thou's History ; but the rest I will reserve for a verbal conference with your Lordsliip, and will only add that notwithstanding the little sleep I have by night, and all these mortifications I meet with by day, my looks, strength, and spirits are so visibly and perceptibly mended, that it is as surprising to other people as unaccountable to, My Lord, Your Lordship's most obedient and dutiful Son, Hervey. P.S. I have at Lord Carteret's earnest entreaty deferred resigning my son's commission till the Parliament rose, but shall then immediately send it to the King, and have this com fort at least in the result of all these transactions, that there will be that one circumstance of getting him out of the army (so much wished by your Lordship15) agreeable to you, though there is no one circumstance throughout the whole agreeable to me. I hear of nothing, wherever I go, but Lord Carteret's encomiums on my conduct in every step of this affair, to which he gives such epithets as I am neither vain enough to repeat nor to think I deserve. 15 It appears that Lord Bristol's hostility to standing armies had been latterly so sharpened, that the only serious difference that he ever had with Lord Hervey was on account of his obtaining this commission for his eldest son, George (afterwards second Earl). It soured for a time the intercourse between them, and the old Lord went so far as to make on this account some penal alterations in his will: on this announcement, how ever, ofthe resignation ofthe commission, he cancelled the hostile will, and renewed his former disposition altogether in Lord Hervey's favour. His descendants now inherit the united fortunes of the Herveys, the Carrs, and the Feltons. THE END. VOL. II. 2 Q London : Printed by William Clowes and Sons, Stamford Street. 5839