Augustus the Third374 having enjoyed but for few months the cessation of war, and of those misfortunes which a vain and impertinent favourite375 had drawn down upon him, died about this time, leaving Poland at liberty to get rid of a family who had sacrificed their religion for a crown, without obtaining essential benefits for themselves, or conferring any on subjects so dearly purchased. The new Elector of Saxony, his son, was infirm in mind and body, and survived his father not a year.
We, on whom an empty favourite had heaped little less disgrace by peace than Count Bruhl had inflicted on Saxony by war, had occasion to feel how wide the terror of our arms had extended our influence. The Duke of York, making the tour of the Mediterranean, and being expected at Florence, the Pope376 ordered Cardinal Albani to inform Sir Horace Mann, the King’s minister in Tuscany, that his Royal Highness, if he pleased to visit Rome, would be received there with all the honours due to his birth. The nuncio at Florence was commanded too to wait on the Prince, and repeat the same; to invite him to Rome, and to assure him of all safety, honours, and amusements. His Royal Highness accepted the invitation; and the son of James the Second, and his grandson, a cardinal of that very church, had the mortification of being forced to retire to Albano, where they had a villa, lest they should see a heretic Duke of York courted and treated in that holy city whence the thunders of the Vatican had been hurled against the great Elizabeth. But this was not the last nor least humiliation which the wretched and helpless line of Stuart received from the hands of their Pontiff, and from that church for which they had sacrificed themselves, their crowns, and their posterity.
On the 3rd of November Charles Yorke resigned the post of Attorney-General, alleging to Mr. Grenville that his father and the Duke of Newcastle had insisted upon it. Yorke, on the trial of the printers, had made a warm speech against Wilkes, and was to carry on the prosecution. The father and the sons were certainly in their hearts inclined to prerogative; but interest so swayed their actions, and it was so much the point of the whole family that Charles Yorke should be Chancellor, that we shall find one perpetual stream of dubitation and trimming run through their conduct. The father, indeed, more soured, and with pride more affronted, towards this close of his life, grew more settled in his asperity towards the Court. Nor was he the only instrument of prerogative whom the Court lost because it could not reward all its devotees up to their ambition.
In Ireland the scene commenced unfavourably. The new Lord Lieutenant, the Earl of Northumberland,377 lost a question the first day in the House of Commons there by so considerable a number as forty, who would not suffer the word adequate to be applied to the Peace in the address.
CHAPTER XXII.
Opening of Parliament.—Lord Gower and Lord Temple.—Wilkes’s “Essay on Woman” laid before the House of Lords.—Hypocrisy of Lord Sandwich.—Bishop Warburton.—Kidgell.—Persecution of Wilkes.—He complains in the House of Commons of a breach of privilege in the seizure of himself and his papers.—Warm Debate on the question.—Mr. Pitt’s Speech.—Arguments of Lord North and others.—Wilkes wounded in a duel by Martin.—The King’s Speech read to the Commons.—Pitt’s obscure Speech.—Speech of Grenville.—Postponement of the farther hearing on Wilkes.—Bestowal of the Bishoprick of Osnabrugh.
But in the Parliament of England lay the chief seat of the war; and with very extraordinary scenes did the campaign open. The Houses met November 15th, Lord Hilsborough and Lord Suffolk moved the Address of the Peers. Lord Temple censured the Peace; and the Duke of Bedford defended it with temper. Lord Gower attacked Lord Temple for his disrespect to the King. He denied that he had ever shown any disrespect; and said that he and his family had been attached to this royal family full as long as his lordship’s family had (who were very recent converts from Jacobitism).
As soon as the Address was voted, Lord Sandwich produced a poem, called an Essay on Woman, with notes pretended to be written by Bishop Warburton. It was a performance bawdy and blasphemous to the last degree, being a parody of Pope’s Essay on Man, and of other pieces, adapted to the grossest ideas, or to the most profane. Wilkes and Potter,378 son of the late Archbishop of Canterbury, had formerly composed this indecent patchwork in some of their bacchanalian hours; and Wilkes, not content with provoking the vengeance of the King, of the Princess, of the Favourite, of twenty subaltern ministers, and of the whole Scottish nation, had, for the amusement of his idle hours, consigned this innocent rhapsody to his own printing-press—a folly unparalleled, though he had intended to restrain the edition to twelve copies. However, as he could not commit a wanton imprudence without giving birth to some villainy or tyranny in others, this very poem was now laid before the House of Lords in consequence of a train of both kinds. One of the copies had been seized among his papers by Philip Carteret Webbe. Still was even that ministry ashamed to accuse Wilkes on evidence which had fallen into their hands by such illegal means—unanswerable proof that they were conscious of their guilt, and knew they could not justify their proceedings. But the blood-hounds having thus fallen on the scent, were not to be turned aside by delicacies. Could they procure another copy the business would be effected—and effected it was. Carteret Webbe set his tools to work, for even hangmen have deputies. There was one Kidgell, a dainty priggish parson, much in vogue among the old ladies for his gossiping and quaint sermons, and chaplain to the Scotch379 Earl of March. This fellow got at a proof-sheet; and by the treachery of one of Wilkes’s printers, who thought himself ill-used, and by the encouragement of his patron, who consulted Lord Bute and Lord Sandwich, and was egged on by them to proceed, Kidgell and Webbe purchased the whole poem: and now did Sandwich, who had hugged this mischief for months in his breast, lay open the precious poem before his brother Lords in strains of more hypocrisy380 than would have been tolerable even in a professed Methodist. Parts of it were read, most coarsely and disgustingly blasphemous. Lord Lyttelton groaned in spirit, and begged they might hear no more. Bishop Warburton, who had not the luck, like Lord Lyttelton, to have his conversion believed by any one, foamed with the violence of a Saint Dominic; vaunted that he had combated infidelity, and laid it under his feet; and said, the blackest fiends in hell would not keep company with Wilkes, and then begged Satan’s pardon for comparing them together.
Lord Temple had got no intelligence of this bomb, and knew little what to say; but concluding, justly, that the piece had been found among Wilkes’s papers, condemned the means by which it was obtained. It was instantly voted blasphemous, and a breach of privilege against the person of the Bishop of Gloucester. Lord Sandwich then moved that Wilkes should be voted the author; but even Lord Mansfield condemned so hasty and arbitrary a course, and said it was previously necessary to hear the accused person in his own defence: on which the proceeding was adjourned to the next day but one. I was in a division in the lobby of the House of