Memoirs of the Reign of King George the Third (Vol. 1-4). Horace Walpole
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displayed the malignity of not being content with ruining him, without proceeding to the grossest defamation. Mr. Conway, too, by my advice, called upon the detractors to avow themselves, and, if they dared, take up the weapons like men, which soon silenced that dirty kind of war.
But these prosperous beginnings were almost all I could accomplish. Every step I took I found discouragement and disappointment. There was no union in our party, nor could I bring about any. At first I laboured to form a little junto of the most considerable of our friends in the House of Commons, who should plan our future measures and conduct them. But of those I could not prevail on any three to assemble and enter into concert. Legge was dying; Charles Yorke was proud, insincere, waiting for an opportunity of making his own bargain, and offended that Mr. Pitt was disposed to make Pratt Chancellor; though the latter, for the good of the cause, was willing to waive the Seals. Charles Townshend, neglected by the Court, seemed zealously attached to us; unfortunately, we could neither do with him nor without him; yet his jealousy of Grenville and fear of Mr. Conway would have fixed him, if anything could. There was another man of whose art and abilities I had a high opinion, and who was as practicable as the others I have mentioned were little so,—I mean Lord George Sackville. But insuperable difficulties kept him from us too. Pitt had proscribed him; Newcastle did not love him; the Duke of Devonshire was too cautious to join him; and Conway, knowing Lord George had been his enemy, though it had never come to an open rupture, would not listen to any connection with him, but pleaded the stains on his character, and the enmity borne to him by Prince Ferdinand. I lost my temper at finding that, whilst our enemies stuck at nothing, every phantom and every fancy was to clog our councils and retard our advances. The dignity of great Lords, and their want of sense, the treachery of some, the piques of others, all had their operation, and not a single prejudice was removed to facilitate our attempts. I had surmounted my repugnance to Newcastle, and, though in truth to little purpose, had consented to advise with him. He was still the same; at once busy and inactive, fond of plotting, but impossible to be put in motion. Nor, indeed, propose what I would, could I obtain to have a single measure carried into execution.
But what hampered us most was Mr. Pitt. He justly resented having been abandoned by Newcastle, Devonshire, and the Whigs. He despised both Charles Yorke and Charles Townshend; and though he expressed civil applause of Mr. Conway, would neither connect with him nor see him. He at once talked of an Administration to be composed of great Whig Lords, and of his own resolution not to force himself on the King; that is, he wished the great Lords should force him on the King without his concurrence, that he might have the merit of disavowing them, and of profiting of their weight. Conway was as difficult as Pitt, and too proud to make any advances to him. Thus, wherever I turned, there were no facilities. Even Lord Temple, accustomed to run and meet faction in the highways, seemed cold and indisposed to connection with us. At the same time I heard that a treaty was carrying on between him and his brother George; a report which, though true, greatly deceived me; for, concluding that Lord Temple was too firmly united with Mr. Pitt to negotiate without him, I imputed the coldness of both to an approaching league of the whole family; whereas the truth was, though then a secret to all the world, that Mr. Pitt and Lord Temple were on bad terms; the former disapproving the violence of Temple; and Temple being enraged that Mr. Pitt would not lend himself to all his passions.
Perceiving so little hope of union amongst ourselves, I conceived a better prospect from the factions of the Court, which, by every art I could devise, I endeavoured to inflame. I soon learned how wide the breach was growing between Lord Bute and Grenville; and though I then looked on the former as the more dangerous of the two, and of all men was determined not to connect with him; yet to his friends I held a plausible language, insinuating that it was possible he might be forgiven by our great Lords, and left them to think that, if the Favourite withdrew his protection from Grenville and the Bedfords, his case would by no means be desperate with the Opposition. In the same kind of style I talked to the friends of Grenville; still imputing Mr. Conway’s disgrace alternately to the other faction, accordingly as I conversed with either. I saw that, hostile as they were, despair must cement their union. Both would be more prompt to quarrel if they thought themselves not proscribed by us.
An incident fell out favourable to this plan. Grenville, ever averse to Lord Holland, had destined his place of Paymaster to be shared between Lord North and Stanley, and they had even taken joy on it. But Lord Bute had prevented it being carried into execution; and Lord Holland now came from France, stung with this insult: though as the passing of his accounts was in agitation, he for the present stifled his resentment, and affected to pay court to Grenville. As, however, to hoodwink me to his own share in that business, and to inflame my anger to Grenville, he laid the chief blame of Conway’s disgrace on the latter, I indulged him, as usual, in the imagination that he deceived me; and, as if to vent my own passion, blew up his as high as I could against Grenville. From Lord Holland I heard what had escaped me. Conway at the end of the Session, on a motion for thanking the King for reducing the German demand, had made a panegyric on Prince Ferdinand and the hereditary Prince, saying how hard it was that their country, which had suffered so much for us, should not have ample indemnification. Grenville had answered, that surely if the King had been content to lower the demands for Hanover, he was at liberty to reduce those of Brunswick. This had passed in a thin debate; nor had I been present. But Lord George Sackville had remarked, and said, “Conway has undone himself.” It was, it seems, an irremissible crime to applaud the hero who had commanded our armies and given them victory; and to plead for another hero who had married the King’s own sister and fought his battles!
I shall omit the detail of many other stratagems that I formed for annoying the Administration, they having been damped or annihilated by the supineness of my confederates. The summer was in every respect unfortunate to us; and by the Session following, we scarce deserved the name of a party. Death took off some of our chief leaders, who, though they would not lead us, yet, by the sanction of their names, had kept together an appearance of numbers, which dwindled away as our hopes of success vanished. What farther regards us as a party will be mentioned in its place. I now return to the other occurrences of the year.
Two vacant garters were bestowed on the Duke of Mecklenberg476 and Lord Halifax. About the same time died at Paris the King’s mistress, Madame de Pompadour. She retained her power to the last, though their amour had long been exhausted. The Duc de Choiseul, whom she had destined for Minister, succeeded her in the King’s confidence without a rival.
May 4th, Beardmore, one of the persecuted writers, carried his cause against the messengers, and recovered one thousand pounds for damages.
On the 9th Mr. Conway’s late regiment was given to the Earl of Pembroke; not without occasioning remarks a little disadvantageous to the standard of his Majesty’s piety. Lord Pembroke, one of the wildest young men of the times, had been dismissed from the King’s bedchamber for debauching and eloping with a young lady of distinction, though married to a more beautiful woman, sister of the Duke of Marlborough. Nobody could tell what the King had to do to interfere in that intrigue: but having done so, it seemed little consistent to reward a young profligate477 with the spoils of a man strictly virtuous and conscientious. It was now remembered that at the beginning of this reign, the Earl of Dartmouth, a young nobleman as pious as Lord Pembroke was licentious, had applied to be of the King’s bedchamber, but had been rejected by Lord Bute, lest so sanctimonious a man should gain too far on his Majesty’s piety. An instance that if it proved the religion of the King, did not bear witness to that of the Favourite. But in such a theatre of hypocrisy, it mattered little who was the principal impostor.
On the 15th died Dr. Osbaldiston, Bishop of London; and the next day Lord Chancellor Henley was created Earl of Northington, a step not communicated to the Duke of Bedford, who much resented it. But Grenville was more mortified, who found himself excluded from the nomination of the new Bishop of London. He had wished to raise Newton478 to that mitre, but Lord Bute procured it for Terrick. This man, with no glimmering of parts or knowledge, had, on the merit of a sonorous delivery, and by an assiduity of back-stairs address, wriggled himself into a sort of general favour; and by timing his visits luckily, had been promoted by the Duke of Devonshire to the See of Peterborough. Yet he had been of the first, notoriously obliged to that Duke, to abandon him on his fall, sailing headlong with the tide after the Favourite’s triumph. Again, when the Favourite retired,