Читать книгу The History of King George the Third - Horace Walpole - Страница 22

Table of Contents

The Bedford Faction.—Ambition of the Duchess of Bedford.—The Dukes of Marlborough and Rutland.—Lord Gower.—Fox raised to the Peerage.—Ingratitude of his friends, particularly of Calcraft and Rigby.—Mr. (afterwards Sir Charles) Bunbury.—Lord Hertford and Mr. Conway.—Charles Townshend’s presumption.—Reversions granted by Lord Bute.—Walpole’s feelings towards that Minister.—His Political acts.—Death of Lord Waldegrave.—His character.

The Bedford faction were not to be contented with empty honours or slight emoluments. They sent for their Duke from France, who, to grasp the more by seeming moderation, resigned the Privy Seal, as most men thought, with views on the Treasury itself; at least, his squadron vaunted that they had two or three administrations in readiness before the King should be obliged to employ the Opposition. The Favourite, from the first moment of his power, had made it a point to gratify, nay, to outrun, the Duke of Bedford’s largest wishes. Nothing he had asked, nothing his creatures were immodest enough to demand, had been denied; yet Lord Bute was balked in his hopes of purchasing the attachment of that connection—not from their usual perfidy; he had lost them before they suspected the smallest diminution of his omnipotence. He had not gratified the ambition of the Duchess.318 She had marked for herself the first post in the Queen’s family; but with more attention to her pride than to her interest, had forborne to ask it, concluding it must be offered to her. The Princess and Lord Bute, either not suspecting, or glad to be ignorant of her views, were far enough from seeking to place so dangerous a woman in the very heart of the palace. This neglect the Duchess deeply resented, and never forgave. She was even so weak as to declare that inveteracy in a letter to her sister, Lady Elizabeth Waldegrave, from Paris; which Lord Bute intercepting, there first learned what an aspic was lodged near his bosom.

But though the Favourite, persuaded of the Duchess’s implacability, dropped all correspondence with that faction, he was far from checking the stream of the Crown’s graces towards them. The King begged the support of the Duke of Marlborough,319 and offered to make him Master of the Horse, if the Duke of Rutland320 could be induced to part with it. The latter consented to exchange it for Lord Chamberlain; but that post the Duke of Bedford insisted upon for Lord Gower.321 After a warm struggle, Lord Gower obtained the Chamberlain’s staff; the Duke of Rutland remained in his old situation; and the Duke of Marlborough, though so very young, was appointed Lord Privy Seal; and his brother, Lord Charles Spencer, was made Comptroller of the Household.

Fox obtained his barony, and retained his place, but not without experiencing such a scene of ingratitude as could scarce happen but to a man who had selected his friends more for their utility than their merit. In the discussion, and during the defending and proving what he had or had not said relative to the cession of the Paymaster’s place, Calcraft,322 his own creature, his cousin, raised from extreme indigence and obscurity to enormous wealth, to opulence so excessive that the vast number of regiments to which he was agent, and the outrageous plurality of places he held, were universally believed to be deposited with him only for Fox’s use,323 took part with Lord Shelburne, and witnessed to the latter’s tale. Fox ordered Calcraft to make up his accounts, dismissed him worth near 300,000l., and, though so rich himself, grew almost justified; and, though so hated, grew almost pitied; but this was not all. The man he most loved was Rigby; and though Fox had not crammed him with wealth in the same lavish guise with which he had enriched Calcraft, he had assisted in Rigby’s promotions, and wished to push him forwards, and to be strictly connected with him in every political walk. In the height of his quarrel with Shelburne and Calcraft, Fox, walking along St. James’s Street, met and stopped Rigby’s chariot, and, leaning on the door of it, began to vent his complaints; when the other, unprovoked and unconcerned in the dispute, interrupted him with these stunning sounds, “You tell your story of Shelburne; he has a damned one to tell of you; I do not trouble myself which is the truth;”—and pushing him aside, ordered his coachman to drive away. From that moment Rigby became the enemy of Fox.324 The necessity of relating this story will appear hereafter.

The Earl of Hertford was named to succeed the Duke of Bedford at Paris. Fox, in the midst of his quarrels and mortifications, found leisure to think of his friends, and to think of gratifying his hatred. He procured his wife’s brother-in-law, Mr. Bunbury, to be imposed on Lord Hertford as secretary of the embassy; an affront Lord Hertford was advised not to digest: but, though he acquiesced in it, he treated Bunbury with such obstinate coldness, that the latter was glad to quit the employment. I never knew why Fox was on all occasions the personal enemy of Lord Hertford and Mr. Conway; neither of them being hostile to him, and both most inoffensive men. The elder brother was even a good courtier, and never in union with Fox’s enemies. Mr. Conway’s character was indeed a reproach to that of Fox, and antipathy is as often the cause of enmity as offence is. The decorum and piety of Lord Hertford occasioned men to wonder, when, in the room of Bunbury, he chose for his secretary the celebrated free-thinker David Hume, totally unknown to him; but this was the effect of recommendations from other Scots, who had much weight with both Lord and Lady Hertford.325

While the arrangement of the new drama was thus settling, there was an important actor to be made easy; but it was one who, whenever he appeared of most consequence, was sure of rendering himself insignificant. This was Charles Townshend. After his usual fluctuation, he accepted the post of First Lord of the Admiralty, and actually went to St. James’s to kiss hands for it. Presuming that nothing would or could be refused to him, without asking it, without even naming it to any minister, and as if the seats of his colleagues at that Board were in the nomination of the First Commissioner, he carried to court with him a Mr. Burrel, one of his followers, intending the latter should kiss hands along with himself as another Lord of the Admiralty. Thinking his honour engaged to carry through this absurdity, he would not kiss the King’s hand unless Burrel was admitted too. It was flatly refused, and Townshend was told that the King had no further occasion for his service. Lord Shelburne was immediately named to succeed him at the head of the Board of Trade, and Lord Sandwich to fill up the place destined to Townshend at the head of the Admiralty.

These were all the public promotions calculated to oil the new springs of Government. But the Favourite did not close the scene of his administration without conferring still more solid marks of his power and friendship on his family and intimate dependents. The reversion of Auditor326 of the Imprest was obtained for his own son Lord Mount-Stewart. My place of Usher of the Exchequer was granted in reversion to Samuel Martin;327 and a place328 in the Custom-house, held by my brother, but the far greater share of which had been bequeathed to me by my father for my brother’s life, was also granted in reversion to Jenkinson.329 I was, I confess, much provoked at this last grant, and took occasion of fomenting the ill-humour against the Favourite, who thus excluded me from the possibility of obtaining the continuance of that place to myself in case of my brother’s death; but in truth, except in the want of that attention, I had no reason to complain. I had refused to accept the grant330 from Fox, and I had in terms told Lord Bute that I would accept no favour from him, though with great civility, and without acting in any shape as hostile to him. Thus my resentment kept no deep root: and I can say with the utmost truth, that as I afterwards, though never connected with him, was on many occasions friendly to that great favourite, so no word in these Memoirs to his prejudice has been dictated by a vindictive spirit, but the whole narrative is faithfully the representation of what I knew and heard of him. Infinite ill has he occasioned to this country, in which light only it is my intention to pass sentence on his character. In other respects, the meanness of his abilities and the poorness of his spirit place him below resentment. His private virtues, the long and bitter persecution he has undergone, and many domestic misfortunes, would extract every sting which exact or necessary justice did not sharpen. The last transaction I am going to mention flowing notoriously from his dispensation, was of a nature not to be palliated or forgotten. To see it in its full force of indignity offered to so mighty a country, the reader must place himself at the moment when England, triumphant over France and Spain, had annihilated their navies, and sat sole arbitress of peace and war, absolutely secure that Europe combined could not wrench her conquests from her, and sure of proving her moderation by consenting to peace on almost whatever terms she should please to dictate.

At that moment did a pusillanimous favourite not only make peace, relinquishing the greater and most valuable part of our acquisitions, but (what never entered into the imagination of distress and slavery itself) he purchased that scandalous peace of the envoy of a little prince, who was not even a party in the war! In short, it now came out, that a pension on Ireland of one thousand pounds a year for thirty-one years to Count Virri,331 the Sardinian Minister, through whose hands the real negotiation332 had passed, was the price and tribute of that shame which Lord Bute, by the treaty of Paris, heaped on Great Britain!

The very day on which the Favourite resigned the reins of government died the man who, of all England, would perhaps have rejoiced the most to behold that event. James Earl Waldegrave was carried off by the small-pox, April 8th. With unbounded benevolence, and of the most flowing courtesy to all men, Lord Waldegrave, whose penetration no weakness could escape, nor art impose upon, though vice he overlooked, and only abstained sometimes from connecting with black and bad men,—Lord Waldegrave, I say, had been so thoroughly fatigued with the insipidity of his pupil the King, and so harassed and unworthily treated by the Princess and Lord Bute, that no one of the most inflammable vengeance, or of the coolest resentment, could harbour more bitter hatred and contempt than he did for the King’s mother and favourite. This aversion carried him to what I scarce believed my eyes when he first showed me—severe satires against them. He has left behind him, too, some Memoirs333 of the few years in which he was governor to the Prince, that will corroborate many things I have asserted, and will not tend to make these Anecdotes be reckoned unjust and unmerciful.

Lord Waldegrave died most unseasonably for his own honour. He stood so high in the esteem of mankind for probity, abilities, and temper, that, if any man could, he might have accomplished a coalition of parties, or thrown sense into that party, which, though acting for the cause of liberty, rather wounded than served it, so ill were they formed for counsel or conduct. Had he lived still longer, he must, by the deaths of the chiefs, been placed incontestably at the head of that party himself. Indeed, but just before his illness, he was much looked up to by very different sets. Lord Bute himself had thought of him for a considerable share on his own retreat; and, but the day before Lord Waldegrave was seized with the small-pox, he had been offered the Embassy to France or Lord-Lieutenancy of Ireland, both which he peremptorily declined. And yet after his death the Court boasted they had gained him,—a report much resented, and eagerly contradicted by his friend the Duke of Cumberland. But let us now turn to the opening of the new Administration.