Other persons preferred on the new settlement were Lord Egmont to the head of the Admiralty, and Lord Hyde to be joint-Postmaster.
CHAPTER XXI.
Secret power of Lord Bute.—His rupture with Pitt.—The late Prince of Wales’s character of Bute.—Extraordinary Anecdote.—Mr. Legge’s imprudent Manœuvre.—Unanimous attempt to destroy Wilkes.—Governor Johnstone.—General Wall.—The Comte de Guerchy.—His character.—Madame de Guerchy.—The Duke de Nivernois, and the Chevalier d’Eon.—Death of Augustus the Third, of Saxony.—The Pope invites the Duke of York to Rome.—Humiliation of the helpless Line of Stuart.—Charles Yorke resigns the Attorney-Generalship.—Trimming conduct of the Yorke Family.—Unfavourable Commencement of the new Lord-Lieutenant’s power in Ireland.
Still did the same grievance remain, the favour and secret power of Lord Bute. Grenville and Lord Halifax insisted that he should go abroad; and it was said to be promised. At least his refusal, or breach of promise, was made the pretence for depriving him of the custody of the King’s Privy-purse, an office he yet retained. The nomination of a successor showed how little the ministers had gained, and how vainly they endeavoured to destroy his credit, the Purse being immediately given to Sir William Breton, who was Groom of the Bedchamber to the King, as he had been to the King’s father, and who was a most devoted tool of the Princess and her favourite. A stronger proof of the latter’s confidence in his own power was given by himself. George Grenville having written a very voluminous letter to Sir John Phillips, giving an account of the negotiation with Mr. Pitt and its miscarriage, of which letter the King had seen and approved every paragraph, Sir John wrote a warm expostulation to Lord Bute (who he did not know had been concerned in that treaty), blaming the timidity of sending for Mr. Pitt. Lord Bute returned a haughty answer, in which he said, whatever the ministers might think, they should find he himself was minister still. A memorable sentence, confirmed by facts, and of which the contrary assertion was vainly attempted afterwards to be imposed upon the world.
The mysteries of this man’s conduct, and the reserve and eccentric starts of Mr. Pitt, have made any lights valuable that can be thrown on this part of our history. Mr. Pitt’s was the character suited to support and colour over the pusillanimity of the Favourite, but his jealousy and their mutual pride threw them at a distance. The affair of Lord George Sackville, who was attached to Lord Bute, and proscribed by Pitt in compliment to Prince Ferdinand, had given the finishing stroke to their rupture; hastened too, by that very attachment of Mr. Pitt to the foreign house of Brunswick. Nor, with all the disposition of Pitt to forgive the Favourite’s offences, could they meet again, while Lord Temple hung upon his brother-in-law, and was the sine quâ non of Mr. Pitt’s return to Court. On every occasion of moment appeared the justness of the character drawn of Lord Bute by the late Prince of Wales, who did not want parts, nor ill-nature to sharpen those parts, nor insolence to utter what either of them dictated. Growing tired of Lord Bute a little before his death, he said to him, “Bute, you would make an excellent ambassador in some proud little Court where there is nothing to do.” It had been happy for England, and for Lord Bute too, if the Prince could have made that destination of him—I mean, without living to execute it himself.
I shall relate another very extraordinary anecdote, which will not be mentioned improperly in this place, though I do not know the precise time in which it happened. The Princess Dowager dreamed that she was in the palace of Saxe Gotha: the window was open, and the moon, level to it, shook with a tremulous motion before her eyes, to her great disquiet. She bade Lord Bute try to fix it. Extending his arms to stop its motion, it burst in his hand into ten thousand fiery splinters; on which, turning to the Princess, he said reproachfully, “See, Madam, to what you have brought me!” This dream was the Princess so weak as to repeat the next morning to some of her women; one of whom, I guess the wife of Velters Cornwall, told it to Lady Suffolk,365 who trusted it to me. She did not name her authority, but said she heard it from one of the Princess’s bedchamber; and Mrs. Cornwall I know was the one with whom Lady Suffolk was the most connected. I repeat this vision, not as prophetic or divine, but as a strong picture of what passed in the mind on which it painted itself.
Before I close this account of the negotiation, I ought to assign the reason why Mr. Pitt had so slightingly or offensively mentioned Mr. Legge, the second in Opposition, and long the second to Mr. Pitt himself. With all his abilities, Legge was of a creeping underhand nature, and aspired to the lion’s place by the manœuvre of the mole. While yet connected with Mr. Pitt, and before he had lost favour at Leicester House,366 he had, before the late King’s death, brought about a secret interview with Newcastle; but with so much circumspection, that meeting him at Lord Duplin’s, Legge had insisted the conversation should pass without candles and in the dark. The Duke was charmed with the mystery, and with the pleasure of betraying it to Mr. Pitt. Mr. Elliot, as he told me himself, discovered it too, and acquainted Lord Bute—and thus with both was Legge ruined. I now return to the common occurrences of the year.
In one point the Favourite and his rivals agreed; that is, in the destruction of Wilkes. The rashness and despotic conduct of the triumvirate had made them parties in the same cause; they pursuing him with what they called Law, and the Scotch without attention to any law. Johnstone, one of Lord Bute’s American governors,367 had the same view with Forbes, but took a looser plan. Having been reflected on in a North Briton, I think then no longer written by Wilkes, he challenged the author, whoever it was; and, to be sure of provoking at least one person, threw out in his challenge printed in the newspapers, severe sarcasms on Lord Temple’s want of spirit.
About this time General Wall,368 a true friend to the union of England and Spain, finding the French interest daily making greater progress at Madrid, desired leave to resign on pretence of failure of his eyesight. Grimaldi369 was immediately ordered home from Paris to succeed him; a man devoted to France. To that Court Lord Hertford set out on the 13th of October, and Monsieur de Guerchy arrived thence. The Comte de Guerchy370 was an amiable soldier; not to be named for parts, but far better qualified for his situation than his own Court believed, having a good knowledge of the world, a perpetual attention to his employment, consummate discretion, much natural ease in his behaviour, with either no impertinence, or with thorough mastery of it, and a complaisance so properly applied that he was agreeable to all parties, and yet always well with the reigning ministry here. It gave him a ridicule at home, that he was enslaved to a penurious and deformed wife; but that dominion of Madame de Guerchy was his greatest felicity. She had an excellent understanding, and a talent for learning the tempers, humours, and connections of England; her constant application to which, and the necessary curiosity in consequence, were concealed by the natural coldness and reserve of her disposition. Nor did her attention to their fortune ever disgrace her husband, nor throw even an air of economy on his table. At Paris her devotion and domestic retirement had passed for insipid virtues that prevented her good sense from being so much as suspected. At the Count’s first audience he told the King, with pleasant candour, that it was a proof of his master’s intentions to preserve the peace, that he was sent over, who was no man of talents or intrigue.
Thus formed to succeed and never to offend, no man was more unfortunate than this ambassador; and it required not only dexterity, but the simplicity of his conduct, to surmount the most cruel and disagreeable ideas, first carelessly dropped, and then maliciously dispersed to his prejudice. The Duc de Nivernois had brought over and left here, to manage the affairs of their Court till M. de Guerchy’s arrival, the Chevalier D’Eon,371 a military man, but who had been much employed in secret negotiations in Russia, for which he had been largely praised and very ill paid. The man had notable parts, great appearance of bashful merit, and learning enough to charm the superficial pedantry of the Duke, who had treated him with a fondness and intimacy that was ridiculous; and that, by being over kind, proved cruel: for having to serve him made D’Eon the courier of the peace, the Duke went farther, and procured him to be styled plenipotentiary during the absence of the ambassador. Vigils and vanity turned the poor young man’s head, which was by no means ballasted by a good heart. He mistook the road of fortune for fortune itself,