The fairness of the Duke’s character, his decent and timid caution, and the high rank in which he stood with the party, made the measure much wondered at; yet it was far from producing such open offence as might have been expected, nor did the consequences spread. The Marquis of Rockingham, five days afterwards, resigned the Bedchamber; but, offering to explain his disgusts, the King with much haughtiness refused to hear him—another strain of authority much vaunted, and not without effect. The Peerage itself kissed the rod, which was declared to be held out to humble them. Nor did they take the alarm, though the rigour towards the Duke of Devonshire was prosecuted farther; for, a Privy Council being summoned November the 3rd, the King ordered the Duke’s name to be struck out of the Council-book: a severity of which there had been no precedent in the last reign but in the cases of Lord Bath and Lord George Sackville; the first, in open and virulent opposition; the second on his ignominious sentence after the battle of Minden. John Duke of Argyle,250 when his regiment was taken from him, was not thus affronted; nor had George the First refused to admit Lord Oxford251 to kiss his hand on the Queen’s death, nor denied an audience to the Earl Marichal252 involved in Jacobitism.
CHAPTER XIV.
Preliminaries of Peace with France and Spain.—Secret springs of Political actions.—Embassy to the Court of Spain offered to Lord Sandwich.—Insult to the Duke of Cumberland.—Honours and Preferments.—Resignation of Lords Ashburnham and Kinnoul.—Lord Lincoln’s ingratitude to the Duke of Newcastle.—Bait offered to Lord Granby.—Mr. Conway.—The Duke of York obliged to go to Italy.—Profusion exercised by the Court.—Charles Townshend’s want of judgment.—His bons mots.—Attempt to propitiate Walpole.—Correspondence between him and Fox respecting the Rangership of the Parks offered to Lord Orford.—Conduct of the latter.
On the 8th of the month a courier arrived with the preliminaries signed by France and Spain. I shall not detail those preliminaries, too well known, and to be found in all common histories. It is my part to explain, as far as I could know them, the leading motives of actions and events; and, though the secret springs are often unfathomable, I had acquaintance enough with the actors to judge with better probability than the common of mankind; and where these memoirs are defective or mistaken, still they may direct to the inquiry after sounder materials, and prove a key to original papers that may appear hereafter.
The peace with Spain, as it opened a door for an embassy to that Court, afforded Mr. Fox a new opportunity of revenge; and as this measure at least he could not waive the honour of having suggested, so did it corroborate the belief of his being the author of the other too.253 He immediately offered that embassy to Lord Sandwich,254 who as greedily accepted it. Sandwich, rejected and exploded by all mankind, had been adopted, fostered, patronized in the most kind and intimate manner by the Duke of Cumberland; nor had he the confidence now to consult his Royal Highness, or to venture in person to notify to him his desertion. He wrote. The insult was too glaring, and could not be pardoned to either Fox or Sandwich, both of whom were for ever excluded from the Duke’s presence but at his public levées, and there underwent the most mortifying neglect from him; though Fox often sued in most abject manner to be forgiven.
Severity gratified, honours and preferments were amply proffered, and but few rejected. The Duke of Manchester255 had been named to the Bedchamber the instant Lord Rockingham had quitted it. The Duke of Marlborough256 and the Earl of Northumberland257 were made Lords Chamberlains to the King and Queen; the latter of which posts Lord Bristol had refused to accept, from attachment to Mr. Pitt. Lord Egmont was made Postmaster in the room of Lord Besborough. The seals of Secretary of State, with the feuille de bénéfices, were once more offered to the Duke of Newcastle; but he replied, it would be time enough to talk of business when the Parliament met. His friend, Lord Ashburnham,258 resigned: and so did his other friend, Lord Kinnoul,259 who, though his bosom-confident, dwelling in his very house, had borne his disgrace, and now affected to forget him, and to plead obligations to the Duke of Devonshire, at the same time declaring his reluctance to break with the Court; a reluctance so decisive, that he retired into Scotland, and came no more to London till the year 1770.
Lord Lincoln,260 Newcastle’s favourite nephew and heir, displayed more open ingratitude. He asked an audience of the King, called his uncle a factious old fool, and said he could not forget a message which himself had brought from his uncle to his Majesty in the year 1757, in which the Duke had signified to his then Royal Highness, that, if he would not disturb the tranquillity of the rest of his grandfather’s reign, the Duke, in or out of place, though he hoped the latter, would support his measures to the utmost. It was justice, to recollect this promise; but Lincoln’s subsequent conduct, at the same time that it was inconsistent, was honourable neither towards the King nor his uncle. He had a second audience, in which he told the King that the Duke insisted on his resigning; “but if I must,” said he, “I will show but the more warmly the next day that I remember the message, of which I have kept a copy in writing.” The third time, when he went to resign, he said he must oppose. The King told him his tone was much changed since his first audience. But the Court never had much reason to complain of Lord Lincoln’s hostilities. His exceeding pride kept him secluded from the world, and rarely did he appear either at Court or in Parliament. For some time he fluctuated between Lord Bute and Mr. Pitt, to the latter of whom he at last attached himself; but with constant derision of, and insult to, his uncle, and, whatever were the Duke of Newcastle’s faults, cruel and unmerited. The truth was, Lord Lincoln’s avarice was as unbounded as his haughtiness. Though possessed of two places for life, and one of them the most lucrative in England, the auditorship of the Exchequer, which never produces less than eight thousand pounds a year, and during the war had brought in at least twenty, he had resented the Duke’s not bestowing on him two more places for the lives of his younger sons.
As every door was to be opened or barricaded that could admit or exclude friends or enemies to the preliminaries, messengers were stationed at the sea-ports to waylay Lord Granby on his return from the army, with the most advantageous offers, as the Ordnance and command of the army, setting aside the worthy old Marshal Ligonier261 with a large pension; a bait gulped by the former without scruple. Mr. Conway, to whom they did the honour of thinking they could not bribe him, (and whoever they could not bribe, they concluded, could not approve their treaty,) was decorated with the empty honour of conducting home the army; which would and did prevent his return before the discussion of the preliminaries in Parliament. And the Duke of York, whom they would not silence by favours, they obliged to go on an idle expedition to Italy.
The profusion exercised on this occasion, and which reduced the Court to stop even the payments of the King’s bedchamber, made men recall severely to mind the King’s declaration on the choice of the Parliament, that he would not permit any money to be spent on elections.
Their greatest difficulty was with Charles Townshend, who slipped through their fingers at every turn, and could be held down to no decision. He refused to be First Lord of Trade with the same power over the colonies as had been granted to Lord Halifax. At the same time he was loth to resign, though in that quarter the needle rested at last,—a mark of that want of judgment that was conspicuous in all his actions; for, having fluctuated from uncertainty of the issue, he chose the losing side but the very day before the great victory of the Court on the preliminaries. His post of Secretary at War was soon after given to Ellis.262 Townshend’s bons mots wounded where his conduct could not. It being reported, to justify the treatment of the Duke of Devonshire, that the King complained he had been kept prisoner; “True,” said Townshend, “he is a prisoner, but he mistakes his jailor.” Another of his sayings had not only proved a prophecy, but was often applied in the following years. He had