Memoirs of the Reign of King George the Third (Vol. 1-4). Horace Walpole
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to conciliate the King.—Archbishop Secker.—Character of George III.—Intended Duel between the Earl of Albemarle and General Townshend.—Cause of the Quarrel.—The King’s Speech.—Pitt and Beckford.—Increase of the Court Establishment.—The Dukes of Richmond and Grafton.—Interview between Lord Bute and the Duke of Richmond.—Advice to the latter by the Duke of Cumberland.—The King’s Revenue.—The Princess Dowager’s Passion for Money.—The Earl of Lichfield.—Viscount Middleton.—Partiality to the Tories.—Inconsistency of the Duke of Newcastle.—Irish Disputes.—The King of Prussia’s Victory over Marshal Daun.—Mauduit’s Pamphlet on the German War.—Ways and Means for the ensuing Year.
The countenance shown to the Tories, and to their citadel, the University of Oxford, was at first supposed by those who stood at distance from the penetralia, the measure of Mr. Pitt, as consonant to his known desire of uniting, that was, breaking all parties. But the Tories, who were qualified for nothing above a secret, could not keep even that. They came to Court, it is true; but they came with all their old prejudices. They abjured their ancient master, but retained their principles; and seemed to have exchanged nothing but their badge, the White Rose for the White Horse. Prerogative became a fashionable word; and the language of the times was altered, before the Favourite dared to make any variation in the Ministry.
These steps did not pass unnoticed: nor was the nation without jealousy, even in the first dawn of the reign. Papers were stuck up at the Royal Exchange and in Westminster-hall, with these words, no Petticoat Government, no Scotch Favourite. An intemperance which proceeded so far afterwards, that, as the King passed in his chair to visit his mother in an evening, the mob asked him if he was going to suck? The Princess herself was obliged to discontinue frequenting the theatres, so gross and insulting were the apostrophes with which she was saluted from the galleries.
The views of the Court were so fully manifested afterwards, that no doubt can be entertained but a plan had been early formed of carrying the prerogative to very unusual heights. The Princess was ardently fond of power, and all its appanages of observance, rank and wealth. The deepest secrecy and dissimulation guarded every avenue of her passions; and close retirement was adapted to these purposes. She could not appear in public (after the arrival of the Queen) as the first woman of the kingdom: her unpopularity made her pride tremble; and privacy shrouded such hours as were not calculated to draw esteem; and it contracted her expenses. After the King’s marriage she appeared seldom or never at St. James’s, nor deigned to accompany the ceremony of the coronation. The attendance of her ladies was dispensed with except on drawing-room days; and by degrees even her maids of honour and women of the bedchamber were removed from her palace, where she lived in a solitude that would have passed for the perfection of Christian humility in the ages of monkish ignorance. Jealousy of her credit over her son made her impose almost as strict laws of retirement on him. He was accessible to none of his Court but at the stated hours of business and ceremony: nor was any man but the Favourite, and the creatures with whom he had garrisoned the palace, allowed to converse with the King. Affection had no share in this management.
The Princess, who was never supposed to disclose her mind with freedom,18 but on the single topic of her own children, had often mentioned her eldest son with contempt; and during the life of her husband, had given in to all his partiality for the Duke of York. When her views of governing by her husband were cut off, she applied to the untutored inexperience of his heir: and the first step towards the influence she meditated, was by filling his mind with suspicions and ill impressions of all mankind. His uncle, the Duke of Cumberland, was made another instrument. The young Prince had a great appetite: he was asked if he wished to be as gross as his uncle? Every vice, every condescension was imputed to the Duke, that the Prince might be stimulated to avoid them.
The Favourite, who had notions of honour, and was ostentatious, endeavoured to give a loftier cast to the disposition of his pupil, though not to the disparagement of the vassalage in which he was to be kept. Lord Bute had a little reading,19 and affected learning. Men of genius, the arts and artists were to be countenanced. The arts might amuse the young King’s solitary hours: authors might defend the measures of government, and were sure to pay for their pensions with incense, both to their passive and active protectors. The pedantry and artifice of these shallow views served but to produce ridicule. Augustus fell asleep over drawings and medals, which were pushed before him every evening; and Mæcenas had so little knowledge, and so little taste, that his own letters grew a proverb for want of orthography; and the scribblers he countenanced, were too destitute of talents to raise his character or their own. The coins of the King were the worst that had appeared for above a century; and the revenues of the Crown were so soon squandered in purchasing dependents, that architecture, the darling art of Lord Bute, was contracted from the erection of a new palace, to altering a single door-case in the drawing-room at St. James’s. Yet, his emissaries the Scotch were indefatigable in coining popular sayings and sentences for the King. It was given out that he would suffer no money to be spent on elections. Circumstances that recoiled with force, when every one of those aphorisms were contradicted by practice.
But the chief engine to conciliate favour was the King’s piety. The Princess, no doubt, intended it should be real, for she lived in dread of a mistress. But mankind was not inclined to think that her morals could have imprinted much devotion on the mind of her son: nor was any man the dupe of those professions but Secker, the Archbishop, who for the first days of the reign flattered himself with the idea of becoming first minister in a Court that hoisted the standard of religion. He was unwearied in attendance at St. James’s,20 and in presenting bodies of clergy; and his assiduity was so bustling and assuming, that having pushed aside the Duke of Cumberland to get at the King, his Royal Highness reprimanded him with a bitter taunt. The prelate soon discovered his mistake. Nor were the Princess or the Favourite inclined to trust the King in the hands of a Churchman, whom they knew so well, and whose sanctity was as equivocal as their own.
As far as could be discerned of the King’s natural disposition, it was humane and benevolent. If flowing courtesy to all men was the habit of his dissimulation, at least, it was so suited to his temper, that no gust of passion, no words of bitterness were ever known to break from him. He accepted services with grace and appearance of feeling: and if he forgot them with an unrestrained facility, yet he never marked his displeasure with harshness. Silence served him to bear with unwelcome ministers, or to part with them. His childhood was tinctured with obstinacy: it was adopted at the beginning of his reign, and called firmness; but did not prove to be his complexion. In truth, it would be difficult to draw his character in positive colours. He had neither passions nor activity. He resigned himself obsequiously to the government of his mother and Lord Bute: learned, and even entered with art into the lessons they inspired, but added nothing of his own. When the task was done, he relapsed into indifference and indolence, till roused to the next day’s part.21
The first gust of faction that threatened the new era, was an intended duel between the Earl of Albemarle22 and General George Townshend.23 A pamphlet was published against the latter,24 reflecting bitterly on the vanity with which he had assumed a principal share in the conquest of Quebec, though the honour of signing the capitulation had only fallen to him by the death of Wolfe and the wounds of Monckton; an honour so little merited, that he had done his utmost to traverse Wolfe’s plans. The pamphlet, too, set forth the justice of taking such freedom with a man whose ill-nature had seized every opportunity of ridiculing those he disliked by exhibiting their personal defects in caricatures, which he had been the first to apply to politics. His uncle the Duke of Newcastle, the Duke of Cumberland, and Mr. Fox, had been the chief objects of those buffoon satires. The pamphlet was certainly written under the direction of the last, and could not fail to be agreeable to the partizans of the second. It wounded