The Letters of Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford Volume I Part 6

Quarrel between George the First and his Son-Earl of Sunderland-Lord Stanhope-South Sea Scheme-Death of Craggs-Royal Reconcilement-Peerage Bill defeated-Project for seizing the Prince of Wales and conveying him to America-Duke of Newcastle-Royal Christening-Open Rupture-Prince and Princess of Wales ordered to leave the Palace.

One of the most remarkable occurrences in the reign of George I.

was the open quarrel between him and his son the Prince of Wales.

Whence the dissension originated; whether the prince's attachment to his mother embittered his mind against his father, or whether hatred of' his father occasioned his devotion to her, I do not pretend to know. I do suspect front circ.u.mstances, that the hereditary enmity in the House of Brunswick between the parents and their eldest sons dated earlier than the divisions between the first two Georges. The Princess Sophia was a woman of parts and great vivacity: in the earlier part of her life she had professed much zeal for the deposed House of Stuart, as appeared by a letter of hers in print, addressed to the Chevalier de St.

George. It is natural enough for all princes,-who have no prospect of being benefited by the deposition of a crowned head, to choose to think royalty an indelible character. The Queen of Prussia, daughter of George I. lived and died an avowed Jacobite.

The Princess Sophia, youngest child of the Queen of Bohemia, was consequently the most remote from any pretensions to the British crown; (83) but no sooner had King William procured a settlement of it after Queen Anne on her Electoral Highness, than n.o.body became a stancher Whig than the Princess Sophia, nor could be more impatient to mount the throne of the expelled Stuarts. It is certain, that during the reign of Anne, the Elector George was inclined to the Tories, though-after his mother's death and his own accession he gave himself to the opposite party. But if be and his mother espoused different factions, Sophia found a ready partisan in her grandson, the Electoral prince; (84) and it is true, that the demand made by the Prince of his writ of summons to the House of Lords as Duke of Cambridge, which no wonder was so offensive to Queen Anne, was made in concert with his grandmother, without the privity of the Elector his father. Were it certain, as was believed, that Bolingbroke and the Jacobites prevailed on the Queen *85) to consent to her brother coming secretly to England, and to seeing him in her closet; she might have been induced to that step, when provoked by an attempt to force a distant and foreign heir upon her while still alive. The Queen and her heiress being dead, the new King and his son came over in apparent harmony; and on his Majesty's first visit to his electoral dominions, the Prince of Wales was even left Regent; but never being trusted afterwards with that dignity on like occasions, it is probable that the son discovered too much fondness for acting the king, or that the father conceived a jealousy of his son having done so. Sure it is, that on the King's return great divisions arose in the court; and the Whigs were divided-some devoting themselves to the wearer of the crown, and others to the expectant. I shall not enter into the detail of those squabbles, of which I am but superficially informed.

The predominant ministers were the Earls of Sunderland and Stanhope. The brothers-in-law, the Viscount Townshend and Mr.

Robert Walpole, adhered to the Prince. Lord Sunderland is said to have too much resembled as a politician the earl his father, who was so princ.i.p.al an actor in the reign of James II. and in bringing about the Revolution. Between the earl in question and the Prince of Wales grew mortal antipathy; of which -,in anecdote told me by my father himself will leave no doubt. When a reconciliation had been patched up between the two courts, and my father became first lord of the treasury a second time, Lord Sunderland in a t'ete-'a-t'ete with him said, "Well, Mr. Walpole, we have settled matters for the present; but we must think whom we shall have next" (meaning in case of the King's demise).

Walpole said, "Your lordship may think as you please, but my part is taken;" meaning to support the established settlement.

Earl Stanhope was a man of strong and violent pa.s.sions, and had dedicated himself to the army; and was so far from thinking of any other line, that when Walpole, who first suggested the idea of appointing him secretary of state, proposed it to him, he flew into a furious rage, and was on the point of a downright quarrel, looking on himself' as totally unqualified for the post, and suspecting it for a plan of mocking him. He died in one of those tempestuous sallies, being pushed in the House of Lords on the explosion of the South Sea scheme. That iniquitous affair, which Walpole had early exposed, and to remedy the mischiefs of which he alone was deemed adequate, had replaced him at the head of affairs, and obliged Sunderland to submit to be only a coadjutor of the administration. The younger Craggs, (86) a showy vapouring man, had been brought forward by the ministers to oppose Walpole; but was soon reduced to beg his a.s.sistance on one (87) of their ways and means. Craggs caught his death by calling at the gate of Lady March, (88) who was ill of the small-pox; and being told so by the porter, went home directly, fell ill of the same distemper, and died. His father, the elder Craggs, whose very good sense Sir R. Walpole much admired, soon followed his son, and his sudden death was imputed to grief; but having been deeply dipped in the iniquities of the South Sea, and wishing to prevent confiscation and save his ill-acquired wealth for his daughters, there was no doubt of his having despatched himself.

When his death was divulged, Sir Robert Owned that the unhappy man had in an oblique manner hinted his resolution to him.

The reconciliation of the royal family was so little cordial, that I question whether the Prince did not resent Sir Robert Walpole's return to the King's service. Yet had Walpole defeated a plan of Sunderland that @would in future have exceedingly hampered the successor, as it was calculated to do; nor do I affect to ascribe Sir Robert's victory directly to zeal for the Prince: personal and just views prompted his opposition, and the commoners of England were not less indebted to him than the Prince. Sunderland had devised a bill to restrain the crown from ever adding above six peers to a number limited., (89) The actual peers were far from disliking the measure; but Walpole, taking fire, instantly communicated his dissatisfaction to all the great commoners, who might for ever be excluded from the peerage. He spoke, he wrote, (90) he persuaded, and the bill was rejected by the Commons with disdain, after it had pa.s.sed the House of Lords.

(91)

But the hatred of some of the junta at court had gone farther, horribly farther. On the death of George 1. Queen Caroline found in his cabinet a proposal of the Earl of Berkeley, (92) then, I think, first lord of the admiralty, to seize the Prince of Wales, and convey him to America, whence he should never be heard of more. This detestable project copied probably from the Earl of Falmouth's offer to Charles II. with regard to his Queen, was in the handwriting of Charles Stanhope, elder brother of the Earl of Harrington: (93) and so deep was the impression deservedly made on the mind of George II. by that abominable paper, that all the favour of Lord Harrington, when secretary of state, could never obtain the smallest boon to his brother, though but the subordinate transcriber. (94) George I. was too humane to listen to such an atrocious deed. It was not very kind to the conspirators to leave such an instrument behind him; and if virtue and conscience will not check bold bad men from paying court by detestable offers, the King's carelessness or indifference in such an instance ought to warn them of the little grat.i.tude that such machinations can inspire or expect.

Among those who had preferred the service of the King to that of the heir apparent, was the Duke of Newcastle;, (95) Who, having married his sister to Lord Townshend, both his royal highness and the viscount had expected would have adhered to that connexion-and neither forgave his desertion.-I am aware of the desultory manner in which I have told my story, having mentioned the reconciliation of the King and Prince before I have given any account of their public rupture. The chain of my thoughts led me into the preceding details, and, if I do not flatter myself, will have let you into the motives of my dramatis personae better than if I had 'more exactly observed chronology.- and as I am not writing a regular tragedy, and profess but to relate facts as I recollect them; or (if you will allow me to imitate French writers of tragedy) may I not plead that I have unfolded my piece as they do, by introducing two courtiers to acquaint one another, and by bricole the audience, with what had pa.s.sed in the penetralia before the tragedy commences?

The exordium thus duly prepared, you must suppose, ladies, that the second act opens with a royal christening The Princess of Wales had been delivered of a second son. The Prince had intended his uncle, the Duke of York, Bishop of Osnaburg, should with his Majesty be G.o.dfathers. Nothing could equal the indignation of his Royal Highness when the King named the Duke of Newcastle for second sponsor, and would hear of no other. The christening took place as usual in the Princess's bedchamber.

Lady Suffolk, then in waiting as woman of the bedchamber, and of most accurate memory painted the scene to me exactly. On one side of the bed stood the G.o.dfathers and G.o.dmother; on the other the Prince and the Princess's ladies. No sooner had the Bishop closed the ceremony, than the Prince, crossing the feet of the bed in a rage, stepped up to the Duke of Newcastle, and, holding up his hand and fore-finger in a menacing att.i.tude, said, "You are a rascal, but I shall find you," meaning, in broken English, "I shall find a time to be revenged."-"What was my astonishment,"

continued Lady Suffolk, "when going to the Princess's apartment the next morning, the yeOMen in the guard-chamber pointed their halberds at my breast, and told me I must not pa.s.s! I urged that it was my duty to attend the Princess. They said, 'No matter; I must not pa.s.s that way.'"

In one word, the King had been so provoked at the Prince's outrage in his presence, that it had been determined to inflict a still greater insult on his Royal Highness. His threat to the Duke was pretended to be understood as a challenge; and to prevent a duel he had actually been put under arrest-as if a Prince of Wales could stoop to fight with a subject. The arrest was soon taken off; but at night the Prince and Princess were ordered to leave the palace, (96) and retired to the house of her chamberlain, the Earl of Grantham, in Albemarle Street.

(83) It is remarkable, that either the weak propensity of the Stuarts to popery, or the visible connexion between regal and ecclesiastic power, had such operation on many of the branches of that family, who were at a distance from the crown of England, to wear which it is necessary to be a Protestant, that two or three of the daughters of the king and Queen of Bohemia, though their parents had lost every thing in the struggle between the two religions, turned Roman Catholics; and so did one or more of the sons of the Princess Sophia, brothers of the Protestant candidate, George I.

(84) Afterwards George II.

(85) I believe it was a fact, that the poor weak Queen, being disposed even to cede the crown to her brother, consulted Bishop Wilkins, called the Prophet, to know what would be the consequence of such a step. He replied, "Madam, you would be in the Tower in a month, and dead in three." This Sentence, dictated by common sense, her Majesty took for inspiration, and dropped all thoughts of resigning the crown.

*86) James Craggs, Jun, buried in Westminster Abbey, with an epitaph by Pope. [Craggs died on the 16th of February, 1721.

His monument was executed by Guelphi, whom Lord Burlington invited into the kingdom. Walpole considered it graceful and simple, but that the artist was an indifferent sculptor. Dr.

Johnson objects to Pope's inscription, that it is partly in Latin and partly in English. "If either language," he says, "be preferable to the other, let that only be used; for no reason can be given why part of the information should be given in one tongue, and part in another, on a tomb more than in any other place or any other occasion: such an epitaph resembles the conversation of a foreigner, who tells part of his meaning by words, and conveys part by signs."]

(87) I think it was the sixpenny tax on offices.

(88) Sarah Cadogan, afterwards d.u.c.h.ess of Richmond.

(89) Queen Anne's creation of twelve peers at once, to obtain a majority in the House of Lords, offered an ostensible plea for the restrictions.

(90) Sir Robert published a pamphlet against the bill, ent.i.tled, "The Thoughts of a Member of the Lower House, in relation to a project for restraining and limiting the powers of the Crown in the future creation of Peers." On the other side, Addison's pen was employed in defending the measure, in a paper called "The Old Whig," against Steele, who attacked it in a pamphlet ent.i.tled "The Plebeian."-E.

(91) The effect of Sir Robert's speech on the House," says c.o.xe, "exceeded the sanguine expectations: it fixed those who had before been wavering and irresolute, brought over many who had been tempted by the speciousness of the measure to favour introduction, and procured its rejection, by a triumphant majority of 269 against 177." Memoirs, Vol. i.-E.

(92) James, third Earl of Berkeley. knight of the garter, etc.

In March 1718, he was appointed first lord of the admiralty, in which post he continued all the reign of George the First. He died at the castle of Aubigny in France in 1736.]

(93) William Stanhope, first Earl of Harrington of that family.

(94) c.o.xe states, that such was the indignation which the perusal of this paper excited, that, when Sir Robert espoused Charles Stanhope's interest, the King rejected the application with some expressions of resentment, and declared that no consideration should induce him to a.s.sign to him any place of trust or honour.- E.

(95) Thomas Holles Pelham, Duke of Newcastle, lord chamberlain, then secretary of state, and lastly, first lord of the treasury under George II.; the same King to whom he had been so obnoxious in the preceding reign. He was obliged by George III. to resign his post.

(96) "Notice was also formally given that no persons who paid their respects to the Prince and Princess of Wales would be received at court; and they were deprived of their guard, and of all other marks of distinction." c.o.xe, vol. i. p. 132.-E.

CHAPTER IV.

Bill of Pains and Penalties against Bishop Atterbury-Projected a.s.sa.s.sination of Sir Robert Walpole-Revival of the Order of the Bath-Instance of George the First's good-humoured Presence of Mind.

As this trifling work is a miscellany of detached recollections, I will, ere I quit the article of George I., mention two subjects of very unequal import, which belong peculiarly to his reign.

The first was the deprivation of Atterbury, Bishop of Rochester.

Nothing more offensive to men of priestly principles could easily have happened: yet, as in a country of which the const.i.tution was founded on rational and liberal grounds, and where thinking men had so recently exerted themselves to explode the prejudices attached to the persons of Kings and churchmen, it was impossible to defend the Bishop's treason but by denying it; or to condemn his condemnation, but by supposing illegalities in the process: both were vehemently urged by his faction, as his innocence was pleaded by himself. That punishment and expulsion from his country may stagger the virtue even of a good man, and exasperate him against his country, is perhaps natural, and humanity ought to Pity it. But whatever were the prepossessions of his friends in his favour, charity must now believe that Atterbury was always an ambitious, turbulent priest, attached to the House of Stuart, and consequently no friend to the civil and religious liberties of his country; or it must be acknowledged, that the disappointment of his ambition by the Queen's death, and the proscription of his ministerial a.s.sociates, had driven on attempts to restore the expelled family in hopes of realizing his aspiring views. His letters published by Nichols breathe the impetuous spirit of his youth. His exclamation on the Queen's death, when he offered to proclaim the Pretender at Charing Cross in pontificalibus, and swore, on not being supported, that there was the best cause in England lost for want of spirit, is now believed also. His papers, deposited with King James's in the Scottish College at Paris, proclaimed in what sentiments he died; and the facsimiles of his letters published by Sir David Dalrymple leave no doubt of his having in his exile entered into the service of the Pretender. Culpable -is he was, who but must lament that so cla.s.sic a mind had only a.s.sumed so elegant and amiable a semblance as he adopted after the disappointment of his prospects and hopes? His letter in defence of the authenticity of Lord Clarendon's History, is one of the most beautiful and touching specimens of eloquence in our language.

It was not to load the character of the bishop, nor to affect candour by applauding his talents, that I introduced mention of him, much less to impute to him -,my consciousnesses of the intended crime that I am going to relate. The person against whom the blow was supposed to be meditated never, in the most distant manner, suspected the bishop of being privy to the plot-No: animosity of parties, and malevolence to the champions of the House of Brunswick, no doubt suggested to some blind zealots the perpetration of a crime which would necessarily have injured the bishop's cause, and could by no means have prevented his disgrace.

Mr. Johnstone, an ancient gentleman, who had been secretary of state for Scotland, his country, in the reign of King William, was a zealous friend of my father, Sir Robert, and who, in that period of a.s.sa.s.sination plots, had imbibed such a tincture of suspicion that he was continually notifying similar machinations to my father, and warning him. to be on his guard against them.

Sir Robert, intrepid and unsuspicious, (97) used to rally his good monitor; and, when serious, told him that his life was too constantly exposed to his enemies to make it of any use to be watchful on any particular occasion; nor, though Johnstone often hurried to him with intelligence of such designs, did he ever see reason, but once, to believe in the soundness of the information.

That once arrived thus: a day or two before the bill of pains and penalties was to pa.s.s the House of Commons against the Bishop of Rochester, Mr. Johnstone advertised Sir Robert to be circ.u.mspect, for three or four persons meditated to a.s.sa.s.sinate him as he should leave the house at night. Sir Robert laughed, and forgot the notice. The morning after the debate, Johnstone came to Sir Robert with a kind of good-natured insult, telling him, that though he had scoffed his advice, he had for once followed it, and by so doing preserved his life. Sir Robert understood not what he meant, and protested he had not given more credit than usual. to his warning. "Yes," said Johnstone, "but you did; for you did not come from the House last night in your own chariot."

Walpole affirmed that he did; but his friend persisting in his a.s.severation, Sir Robert called one of the footmen, who replied, "I did call up your honour's carriage; but Colonel Churchill being with you, and his chariot driving up first, your honour stepped into that, and your own came home empty."

Johnstone, triumphing on his own veracity, and pushing the examination farther, Sir Robert's coachman recollected that, as he left Palace-yard, three men, much m.u.f.fled, had looked into the empty chariot. The mystery was never farther cleared up; and my father frequently said it was the only instance of the kind in which he had ever seen any appearance of a real design.

The second subject that I promised to mention, and it shall be very briefly, was the revival of the Order of the Bath. It was the measure of Sir Robert Walpole, and was an artful bank of thirty-six ribands to supply a fund of favours in lieu of places.

He meant, too, to stave off the demand for garters, and intended that the red should be a step to the blue, and accordingly took one of the former himself. He offered the new order to old Sarah, d.u.c.h.ess of Marlborough, for her grandson the duke, and for the Duke of Bedford, who had married one of her grand-daughters.

(98) She haughtily replied, they should take nothing but the garter. "Madam," said Sir Robert coolly, "they who take the bath will the sooner have the garter." The next year he took the latter himself with the Duke of Richmond, both having been previously installed knights of the revived inst.i.tution.

Before I quit King George I. I will relate a story, very expressive of his good-humoured presence of mind.

On one of his journeys to Hanover his coach broke. At a distance in view was the chateau of a considerable German n.o.bleman. The king sent to borrow a.s.sistance. The possessor came, conveyed the king to his house, and begged the honour of his Majesty's accepting a dinner while his carriage was repairing; and, while the dinner was preparing, begged leave to amuse his Majesty with a collection of pictures which he had formed in several tours to Italy. But what did the king see in one of the rooms but an unknown portrait of a person in the robes and with the regalia of the sovereigns of Great Britain! George asked whom it represented. The n.o.bleman replied, with much diffident but decent respect, that in various journeys to Rome he had been acquainted with the Chevalier de St. George. who had done him the honour of sending him that picture. "Upon my word," said the king instantly, "it is very like to the family." It was impossible to remove the embarra.s.sment of the proprietor with more good breeding.

(97) At the time of the Preston rebellion, a Jacobite, who sometimes furnished Sir Robert with intelligence, sitting alone with him one night, suddenly putting his hand into his bosom and rising, said, "Why do not I kill you now?" Walpole starting up, replied, "Because I am a younger man and a stronger." They sat down again, and discussed the person's information But Sir Robert afterwards had reasons for thinking that the spy had no intention of a.s.sa.s.sination, but had hoped, by intimidating, to extort money from him. Yet if no real attempt was made on his life, it was not from want of suggestions to it: one of the weekly journals pointed out Sir Robert's frequent pa.s.sing a Putney bridge late at night, attended but by one or two servants, on his way to New Park, as a proper place; and after Sir Robert's death, the second Earl of Egmont told me, that he was once at a consultation of the Opposition, in which it was proposed to have Sir Robert murdered by a mob, of which the earl had declared his abhorrence. Such an attempt was actually made in 1733, at the time of the famous excise bill. As the minister descended the stairs of the House of commons on the night he carried the bill, he was guarded on one side by his second son Edward, and on the other by General Charles Churchill; but the crowd behind endeavoured to throw him down, as he was a bulky man, and trample him to death; and that not succeeding, they tried to strangle him by pulling his red cloak tight-but fortunately the strings broke by the violence of the tug.

(98) Wriothesly, Duke of Bedford, had married Lady Anne Egerton, only daughter of Scroop, Duke of Bridgewater, by Lady Elizabeth Churchill, daughter of John, Duke of Marlborough. See VOL. I. 8.

CHAPTER V.

Accession of George the Second-Sir Spencer Compton-Expected Change in Administration-Continuation of Lord Townshend-and Sir Robert Walpole by the Intervention of Queen Caroline-Mrs. Howard, afterwards Countess of Suffolk-Her character by Swift-and by Lord Chesterfield.

The unexpected death of George I. on his road to Hanover was instantly notified by Lord Townshend, secretary of state, who attended his Majesty, to his brother Sir Robert Walpole, who as expeditiously was the first to carry the news to the successor and hail him King. The next step was, to ask who his Majesty would please should draw his speech to the Council. "Sir Spencer Compton," replied the new monarch. The answer was decisive, and implied Sir Robert's dismission. Sir Spencer Compton was Speaker of the House of Commons, and treasurer, I think, at that time, to his Royal Highness, who by that first command, implied his intention of making Sir Spencer his prime-minister. He was a worthy man, of exceedingly grave formality, but of no parts, as his conduct immediately proved. The poor gentleman was so little qualified to accommodate himself to the grandeur of the moment, and to conceive how a new sovereign should address himself to his ministers, and he had also been so far from meditating to supplant the premier,(99) that, in his distress, it was to Sir Robert himself that he had recourse, and whom he besought to make the draught of the Kin(,'s speech for him. The new Queen, a better judge than her husband of the capacities of the two candidates, and who had silently watched for a moment proper for overturning the new designations, did not lose a moment in observing to the King how prejudicial it would be to his affairs to prefer to the minister in possession a man in whose own judgment his predecessor was the fittest person to execute his office. From that moment there was no more question of Sir Spencer Compton as prime-minister. He was created an earl, soon received the garter, and became president of that council, at the head of which he was much fitter to sit than to direct. Fourteen years afterwards, he was again nominated by the same Prince to replace Sir Robert as first lord of the treasury on the latter's forced resignation, but not -.is prime-minister; the conduct of affairs being soon ravished from him by that dashing genius the Earl of Granville, who reduced him to a cipher for the little year in which he survived, and in which his incapacity had been obvious.