CHAPTER VIII.

The Lord Mayor attends the House.—Violent Discussion.—Alderman Oliver sent to the Tower.—Blow to the Influence of Wilkes.—Riot and Attack on Lord North.—Lord Mayor Committed to the Tower.—His Injudicious Conduct.—Desultory Discussions and Riots.—Lord Rockingham Visits the Lord Mayor in the Tower.—Princess Dowager and Lord Bute Burnt in Effigy.—Weakness of the Opposition in spite of the favourable Opportunity.—Observations on the Conduct of the Court.—Education of the Prince of Wales.—Character of Mr. Smelt.—Debate on the King’s Friends.—Alderman Oliver declines to stand as Sheriff with Wilkes.—Dissolution of the French Parliament.—Bill for an East Indian Regiment rejected.—Motion for an Inquiry into the Murder of Allen.—Bill for Triennial Parliaments.—Lord Chatham moves a Resolution tending to a Dissolution.—Lord Chatham and the Pynsent Estate.—Instances of the Partiality of both Houses.—Prorogation of Parliament.—Controversy between Horne and Wilkes.—Deaths of Lord Strange, the Earl of Halifax, and the Bishop of Durham.—The Duke of Grafton accepts the Privy Seal.—Visit of the Prince of Wales to Gravesend.—Wilkes and Bull elected Sheriffs.—“Adventures of Humphrey Clinker.”—The Chevalier D’Eon supposed to be a Woman.—State of Affairs in France.—Character of Chancellor Maupeou.—Disgrace of the Bishop of Orleans.—The Abbé du Terray.—Madame du Barry and her Governess.—Madame de Mirepoix.—Popularity of the Duc de Choiseul.—Unpopularity ofthe King.—Dissolution of the Parliaments of Bourdeaux and Toulouse.—Bold Conduct of Choiseul.—Disturbed State of France.—General Dislike of the Mistress.

1771.

On the 25th the Lord Mayor attended the House. He was now accompanied by a prodigious concourse of people, who insulted both Lords and Commoners, hissed Lord Rochford, and ill-treated Lord March and George Selwyn, the latter of whom they mistook for George Onslow. He collared and struck one of the rioters, and was with difficulty saved from their rage. The Lord Mayor told the House that he had brought no counsel with him: first, because he was cramped in his defence by their vote; and secondly, because the two advocates he should have chosen were gone the circuit. Ellis then moved a resolution that the imprisonment of their messenger by the Lord Mayor was a breach of privilege; but before they could proceed farther, the Lord Mayor was so ill that they suffered him to retire. The debate, however, continuing, Sir George Saville moved the previous question, because, the Lord Mayor being restrained in his defence, it would be a partial trial. This being rejected on a division of 272 to 90, Sir George, with six or seven of his friends, protesting against their proceedings, walked out of the House. Alderman Oliver was thencalled on; he adhered to his assertion of having acted according to his duty, oath, and conscience. The Ministers wished only to reprimand him; and Sir John Wrottesley,171a young member, told him the House would be contented if he would but say he was sorry for what he had done; but he replied, he had done what he thought right, and would do it again. Sir Gilbert Elliot, whether to inflame his offence, or to induce him to yield, repeated the same offer—in vain. T. Pitt and James Grenville172the younger, who spoke with great applause for the second time, endeavoured to moderate; but the warm men prevailing, Colonel Barré rose and said he would have nothing to do with such infamous proceedings—that nohonestman could sit amongst them, and walked out of the House with four or five more. At that moment arrived Alderman Townshend, pale and ghastly from a sick-bed, his hair lank, and his face swathed with linen, having had his jaw laid open for an inflammation. He said directly that all those arbitrary proceedings were owing to the baneful influence of the PrincessDowager of Wales, and that he would move for an inquiry into her conduct. Yet all these insults could not dismount the passive phlegm of the Ministers; Lord North alone said, that Townshend could not know the truth or falsehood of his assertion, and for himself, in five years that he had been in the Administration, he had seen no influence of the Princess. At four in the morning they sent Alderman Oliver to the Tower, and ordered that the Lord Mayor should attend them again on the 27th.

Still would not Wilkes obey their summons, nor did they dare to force him before them. Sir Joseph Mawbey again pressed it, but Lord North shuffled it off by saying Wilkes was so desperate that what would be punishment to others, would be an advantage to him. The courtiers repeated this, but it only displayed their timidity; and happy was it for the constitution that so much pusillanimity reigned in their conduct. Yet the Scotch wanted to come to blows, and were at least not sorry to see the House of Commons so contemptible.

But the victory which the Court did not dare to push over Wilkes, his rash and abandoned conduct threw into their hands. Shelburne’s faction, covertly under Townshend, and undisguisedly under Horne, was warring with him in the midst of their common attack in the House of Commons. The Society of the Bill of Rights happened to be adjourned;Horne and his partisans summoned a special meeting to reward the persecuted printers, and voted a sum of money to them. Wilkes, as if he grudged that any money should be expended but on himself, advertised against this step, as the measure of an irregular meeting. His antagonist replied, and published the names on each side, which proved not to be twenty on either, and all men most inconsiderable. This not only brought disgrace and ridicule on the Society, but fell more fatally on the credit of Wilkes than all his persecutions, all his follies, or all his vices, and was the destruction of his popularity itself, which became confined to the very dregs of the people. His old patron, Lord Temple, retaining his constancy to faction, though broken with all factions, immediately visited Alderman Oliver in the Tower.

The Lord Mayor went again to the House on the 27th at the head of a prodigious mob, who, meeting Lord North, attacked him with a rage that had all the appearance of being premeditated. They punched a constable’s staff in his face, and endeavoured to tear him out of his chariot, which they entirely demolished.173Sir William Meredith, a generous enemy, and Mr. La Roche, a friend, seeing his danger from the window of a coffee-house, wentdown and rescued him from the mob.174The two Foxes were as rudely handled, and escaped as narrowly. Vast numbers of constables were sent for, but it was late in the evening before the tumult subsided; nor would the Speaker suffer the business of the House to proceed till all was quiet. Wedderburne told the House it had been a riot headed by the magistrates. Lord North made a firm speech, and took notice of a report that he had resigned, and was to be succeeded by Earl Gower; but said he should be the meanest man living, if he quitted at that juncture; nor would he quit till his Majesty should dismiss, or the people tear him to pieces. Lord Hinchinbrook,175in answer to his uncle Seymour, who had spoken with violence, was so indecent as to betray a secret,—that Seymour, in Grenville’s Administration, had asked to be Vice-Chamberlain, and imputed his animosity to having been refused that office. Yet, in general, both parties behaved that day with moderation. The Ministers moved that the Lord Mayor should, on account of his bad health, be committed only to the custody of the Serjeant-at-arms; but he, rising up, scornfully declared he was as well as ever, and chose to be sent to the Tower with his brotherOliver. Temper could operate no farther, and at twelve at night he was committed to the Tower. The Ministers then proposed to elect, and did elect, by ballot, a committee to consider of the resistance given to the orders of the House, and of the means of redressing it. Rigby, who was named for one, refused to be of it; and he and his friends took pains to show they would not engage in the quarrel.

The Lord Mayor went for a few hours to the Mansion House. The mob meditated hanging Clementson, the Deputy Serjeant-at-arms, who conducted him, on a sign-post, and the poor man heard them debating on it; but the Lord Mayor with difficulty obtained his safety by representing that he was not a principal, but acting in quality of servant to the House. At four in the morning the Mayor went to the Tower, where the Common Council voted that tables should be kept for him and Alderman Oliver. Brass Crosby, the Lord Mayor, was originally a low attorney, and had married his master’s widow, and afterwards the widow of a carcass-butcher. With their fortunes he trafficked in seamen’s tickets,—a mean and disreputable kind of usury. Nor were his manners more creditable than his professions. When he entered the Tower he was half drunk, swore, and behaved with a jollity ill-becoming the gravity of his office or cause. Had his behaviour been solemn or dignified, the noveltyof the City’s chief magistrate imprisoned in defence of the City’s pretended franchises, might have made a very serious sensation.176Oliver, though decent, was a young fellow unknown; nor had any of their associates character or conduct sufficient to manage a machine so important, which soon split into squabbles, and fell to pieces without noise.

The House of Commons again ordered that Wilkes should attend them on the Monday seven-night after the holidays, not desiring he should attend, but as if they meant to leave a precedent which men of more spirit might follow hereafter. Yet did they not adjourn till the Thursday in Passion week, when they might have sent for him; but they ordered their new committee to sit during the recess.

On the 29th the King went to the House, was violently hissed, and had an apple thrown at him, which passed over his coach. Wedderburne wasseverely abused by Colonel Barré, and made a wretched defence, pleading that he had not deserted the Opposition but on the death of Grenville, to whom alone he had been attached; but having asserted that he knew taverns had been opened in Westminster for the mob, and that he could prove there had been men hired to make a riot, a committee was appointed to inquire into the late disturbances, of which Wedderburne was named chairman. T. Townshend, jun., observed, that while the Members were raging with such severity against printers, a crown-living of 800l.a-year was conferred on Scott, an abandoned priest attached to Lord Sandwich, and author of “Anti-Sejanus,” “Panurge,” “Cinna,” and many other most scurrilous libels.177

On the last day of the month Lord Rockingham, with a train of Lords and Commoners in sixteen coaches, went to the Tower to visit the Lord Mayor. They disapproved his conduct, they said, yet paid him that regard because he had been obstructed from making his defence; yet these ingenious persons wondered they had not more followers and devotees, while they took such pains to show how carefully they kept themselves out of difficulties, and how passively they left their friends in them!

Alderman Oliver, in answer to a compliment from the Common Council, wrote a very bold letter to them, in which he set forth the unhappiness of the King’s Government through the councils of an Administration,abject abroad and insolent at home.

April the 1st, a great mob went to Tower Hill with two carts, in which were figures representing the Princess Dowager and Lord Bute, attended by a hearse. The figures were beheaded by chimney sweepers, and then burnt. A like ceremony was performed a few days after with figures of Lord Halifax, Lord Barrington, Alderman Harley, Lord Sandwich, De Grey, member for Norfolk, Colonel Lutterell, and George Onslow; and their supposed dying speeches were cried about the streets.

The committee of Common Council, appointed to guard the interests of the Lord Mayor and Alderman Oliver, directed their solicitor to apply to Serjeant Glynn, Dunning, or Lee, and under their direction to move for thehabeas corpusof the prisoners, unlawfully (as the committee conceived) detained in the Tower. On this the two magistrates, the writ being obtained, were carried before the Lord Chief Justice De Grey, and then before Lord Mansfield, but were remanded to prison by both, each Chief Justice refusing to release them, as they had been committed by Parliament then sitting.

The grand jury did not pay an equal deference to the House, but found bills of indictment against their messenger for the assault and false imprisonment of Miller, the printer; and against Edward Twine Carpenter for a like assault on John Wheble, under pretence of the King’s proclamation.

Still the cause of the magistrates did not gain ground. The merchants were offended at a report spread by Wilkes’s faction that there was a run on the Bank. But an open quarrel between Wilkes and Horne contributed more than all the efforts of the Court to ruin their cause. The total breach happened at the Society of the Bill of Rights, which Horne moved to dissolve, but was overruled by 26 to 24. Horne, however, with Townshend, Sawbridge, and others, withdrew their names, because the other faction would not consent to rescind the vote of restricting the subscription to the payment of Wilkes’s debts. A motion, too, that was made in the company of City Artillery, for thanking the imprisoned magistrates for their behaviour, was rejected by a majority of three voices.

Still, had the Opposition had sense or union, the weakness of the Ministers would have opened a fair field to their attempts. They adjourned over the day appointed for Wilkes’s appearance. Their two committees came to nothing. Lord GeorgeGermaine, Lord John Cavendish, and Frederick Montagu, whom out of candour they had added to the quorum, would not attend it, nor even a sufficient number of their own friends; nor though Thurlow and the stauncher courtiers suggested bills of pains and penalties, and would have disabled the prisoners from holding any office, would Lord North give in to any violence. As he had been more severe before he was a principal, and as he gave other subsequent proofs of wanting resolution, his moderation was, with some justice, imputed to timidity.

On the 10th of April, when Lord North opened the budget, T. Townshend reflected on Lord Holland as author of the proscriptions at the beginning of the reign. Charles Fox said he did not believe his father had any hand in them; but if he had, it was right to break the power of the aristocracy that had governed in the name of the late King. Charles Fox asked me afterwards in private if the accusation against his father was just. I replied, I could not but say it was. In strict truth, heavy as the reproaches were that were cast on the Court, there was but too much foundation for them. Even the King’s virtues had a mischievous tendency. His piety was very equivocal, and calculated, in a great measure, to secure the influence of the clergy, and palliate his despotic views. His economy, suchas it was, for great sums he wasted childishly, was the forced result of the expense he was at to corrupt the Parliament, and maintain a very unwilling majority. He now laid aside his intention of building a small palace he had begun at Richmond; and deferred as long as he could an installation of Knights of the Garter, and the establishment of a household for the Prince of Wales. Every post, every office, that could be bestowed on the Scots without immediate clamour, was heaped on them; and great gratitude must at least be allowed to them. They steadfastly supported the parts assigned to them, and acted upon a regular plan. In the beginning of the reign, Lady Charlotte Edwin, a sort of favourite lady of the bedchamber to the Princess of Wales, dropped this memorable expression to me:—“Things are not yet ripe.” The swarms of Scots that crowded and were gladly received into the army and into the corps of marines, a body into which few English deigned to enlist, were no doubt placed there to bring things to a maturity, or protect them when brought to it.

The care of the Prince of Wales was a trust no less important. Two points only were looked to in his education. The first was, that he should not be trusted to anything but a ductile cypher; the other, that he should be brought up with due affection for regal power; in other words, he was to bethe slave of his father, and the tyrant of his people. Praise is due even to those who execute ably their own views, let those views be ever so bad. The governors selected for the Prince were chosen very suitably to the plan I have mentioned. The King pitched upon Lord Holderness to officiate as the solemn phantom or governor; Lord Mansfield recommended Dr. Markham, the master of Westminster School, a creature of his own, sprung out of the true prerogative seminary, at Christchurch, Oxford, a pert, arrogant man, to fill the post of preceptor;178and thus was the heir of the Crown not likely to degenerate. Lord North, the nominal First Minister, had the mortification of finding that he was rather a necessary than agreeable tool, for he knew nothing of these designations till they were ready to be notified to the public.

This arrangement had nothing in it but whatwas to be expected. That a man, the very reverse of all those who were in favour at Court, should have been admitted into this junto, was real matter of surprise; and can only be accounted for by the security of the King and his Cabal, in having blocked up the chief avenues to the Prince. One Jackson, an ingenious young man, recommended by Lady Charlotte Finch, governess of the royal children,179was named sub-preceptor;180but the person at whom I hinted, and who was appointed sub-governor, was Mr. Leonard Smelt, whose singular virtues and character deserve to be recorded independently of his office. He was younger son of a gentleman in Yorkshire, and had a commission in the Office of Ordnance, which he threw up, finding no attention paid by his superiors to his representation of many abuses there. He fell in love with the niece of General Guest in Scotland, but retired thence to avoid her, as he had not fortune sufficient to maintain her. Another young lady, heiress togreat wealth, conceived a passion for him, and obtained her father’s consent before she acquainted Mr. Smelt with her passion, which he had not suspected;—so far from it, he swooned away with surprise and concern, when the father offered him his daughter. Mr. Smelt confessed his former engagement, refused the lady, and again retired. Soon after this his father died, and disinheriting his elder son, who had disobliged him, bequeathed his whole fortune to Leonard. The first act of this excellent young man was to marry his beloved first mistress; the second to settle half his fortune on his brother’s children. His principles in public life were as generous as in private; a steady friend to the constitution of his country, he had signed the Yorkshire remonstrance to the King against the intrusion of Lutterell into the House of Commons. His next introduction to his Majesty was as sub-preceptor to his son: happy for the Prince had he had no other governor—at least, no other director of his morals and opinions of government! But Mr. Smelt had neither authority to instruct his pupil in matters of state, nor perhaps discernment enough to baffle the insidious lessons of his associates, for he was ignorant of the world as well as of its depravity.181Being a neighbour of LordHolderness, the latter introduced him, and he was received, notwithstanding his disqualification as a patriot. The principles of a subaltern were believed to be pliant. Lord Holderness himself owed his preferment to his insignificance and to his wife, a lady of the bedchamber to the Queen, as she did hers to her daughter’s governess, whom the Queen had seduced from her to the great vexation of Lady Holderness. The governess, a French Protestant,182ingratiated her late mistress with the Queen, and her mistress soon became a favourite next to the German women.

While this new seminary of favourites was arranging, those of the King were the objects of the Opposition’s reproaches. In a debate on the 11th, in which they were attacked, Sir Gilbert Elliot defending them, gave occasion to an admired speech of T. Townshend,183who, taking for his text that line ofPope:—

“As Selkirk,184if he lives, will love the Prince,”

drew a severe picture of the Scotch favourites under the character of Lord Selkirk, and applied to them a still more bitter story of Lockart, Cromwell’s Ambassador in France, who having acted in that province under the Parliament and Oliver, and being at last employed on a like commission by Charles the Second, Cardinal Mazarin taunting him with this versatility, and asking him from whom he came then, he replied he wasle serviteur des évènemens.185The King’s friends, said Townshend, should not wear that title, but ought to call themselves,les serviteurs des évènemens. Sir Gilbert Elliot took up the defence ofthe King’s friends, and said, though all parties abused them, all had courted them; and that Mr. Dowdeswell and his connection on coming into power, had pressed them to keep their places. Dowdeswell, with spirit not usual to him, denied the fact, and told this anecdote. When Lord Rockingham had meditated the plan of a free port, Elliot, Dyson, and the King’s friends declared against it. Still the Ministers had persisted, and Cooper, Secretary of the Treasury,was ordered to move it, but came in a fright, and said the friends would oppose it. Dowdeswell said he had snatched the bill from Cooper, and had added, he would be damned if they dared. He had moved it; they had not opened their lips for or against it, but had voted for it, and so they always would if the Ministers had courage; but Lord North, he saw, would not take enough upon him.

On the other side, Wilkes declared his intention of standing for Sheriff of Middlesex the following year, and applied to Alderman Oliver to join him in that pursuit. Oliver declined the offer, saying that his and Wilkes’s principles did not agree; and added that himself and his brother had contributed a tenth of the subscriptions for the payment of Wilkes’s debts, which he thought sufficient, and as the expense of the Shrievalty was a burthen in common between both Sheriffs, he would not subject himself to pay what Wilkes could not pay. This was a new blow on the latter, and not balanced by a gleam of applause paid to his imprisoned Lord Mayor. The Burgesses of Newcastle addressed him, and Bedford complimented him with the freedom of their town. Worcester, Stafford, Caermarthen, Pembroke, and Cardigan, addressed both him and Alderman Oliver. The Lord Mayor was carried byhabeas corpusto the Court of Common Pleas, but was remanded, theChief Justice, De Grey, declaring that the House of Commons had authority over their own members. Alderman Oliver was, at the end of the same month, carried in like manner before the Barons of the Exchequer, who remanded him for the same reason.

The reverse of fortune was falling on the Parliaments of France, where their resistance on one hand, and the bold despotism of the Chancellor Maupeou on the other, had brought things to extremities. Maréchal Richelieu in the King’s name dissolved the Cour des Aides; fiftymousquetaireshad been sent to the members of that court withlettres de cachet, ordering them to be assembled in their court by seven o’clock the next morning, with injunctions not to debate or protest, but to await in silence his Majesty’s commands. Ordinarily, the princes of the blood were charged with those commands; but forms were not observed when fundamentals were annihilated. Richelieu was selected, and arriving, would have placed himself in the seat of the First President, but the members opposed, and said none but princes of the blood had a right to that place. He insisted; they declared they would withdraw; he gave it up and took a lower seat. A counsellor who had accompanied the Maréchal then harangued on the King’s power, and on what did not appear quite so self-evident—on the King’s goodness; and then read an edict suppressingthat council, become useless, he said, by the new establishment of six superior councils. This was palliated by a declaration that the King did not propose to lay aside men of their merit; on the contrary, he invited them to enter into his new Parliament. The Advocate-General replied to this fine harangue, urging that none of his brethren could take a part in a Parliament that must always be illegal, as he proved by the laws and constitutions of the kingdom. The Maréchal, then rising, ordered the members to retire, which they refused to do; he threatened to force their obedience. They replied, it was not their profession to fight, that they must submit to force, and withdrew. Ten of them were banished ten leagues from Paris. The King then held a bed of justice at Versailles, to which were summoned the Princes of the Blood, the Dukes and Peers, and the Grand Council. The Princes disobeyed and would not attend,—all but the Comte de la Marche, only son of the Prince de Conti, who, being at variance with his father, adhered to the King. The Grand Council were reinstated and converted into a Parliament in the place of that dissolved. The King declared this was his will, and that he should never change it. Twelve Dukes, among whom were even Maréchal Richelieu’s own son, Fronsac, and the courtly Nivernois, protested against this proceeding. The Princesof the Blood were forbidden the Court for their disobedience; the twelve Dukes were only frowned upon.186I shall resume this subject again before the end of the year.

The Court of Spain now notified to us that they were satisfied of our pacific intentions, and should disarm. Orders were immediately given for our doing the same. Thus the distractions in France prevented a war for which the King of Spain was personally eager.

On the 23rd of April the bill for raising an East Indian regiment was, after many and long debates, rejected. Lord North had taken no part in it, but the officers had raised great objections to it, as preventive of their recruiting; and General Harvey, a favourite, had instilled those prejudices into the King, heightened a little, probably, by Harvey’s jealousy of Conway, who favoured the plan. Many good men approved it likewise, as a method of putting a stop to the infamous practice of kidnapping, which was much used by the East India Company.

Two days after this, Serjeant Glynn presented a petition to the House from Allen, the father of the young man killed in St. George’s Fields, praying aninquiry might be made into that murder. Burke and Dowdeswell supported the petition. Alderman Townshend reflected on Sir William Meredith for having interfered in behalf of the condemned chairmen, and called it false lenity to murderers. Meredith said, he hoped such lenity was allowable; that it was at least as excusable as going about to stir up murder on the score of party. Townshend said in answer, that neither did he decline challenges—alluding to Meredith’s not having answered a challenge from Captain Allen. Lord Barrington excused himself on the orders he had given to the soldiers; and Colonel Onslow said the petition was calculated to tell the people that they might mob the Parliament. The motion was so stale, and the charge of so ancient a date, that it was rejected by 158 to 32, though the House sat till eleven at night.

On the 28th Alderman Sawbridge proposed a bill for triennial Parliaments, but no attention was paid to it, nor answer made by the Ministers. It was rejected by 105 to 54, the Rockingham party not liking the measure. Mr. Cornwall moved for a prohibition of dispensing lottery-tickets to Members of Parliament (a list of the receivers of which was published); but this, as a decenter species of corruption, was maintained by 118 to 31.

On the last day of the month the ministerialcommittee that had been appointed to consider on the means of ascertaining the power of Parliament, at last made their report; it was long, foolish, and trifling, was universally ridiculed, particularly by Burke, and ended there. They had wished to drop it, but Sir Fletcher Norton, thinking it would inspire some awe for the House—at least, to his person—threatened to resign the Chair if at least some effort at an opinion was not made. The other committee, which Wedderburne had proposed and headed, and from which he had promised great discoveries, ended still more disgracefully in no report at all! Sir George Saville treated him with much scorn, saying, it was extraordinary that he who, two years ago, could discover so many grievances, could not at present produce one, though supported by all the authority of Parliament.

On the first of May Lord Chatham moved one of his tedious and obscure resolutions, tending to petition the King to dissolve the Parliament, in order to allay heats between the undefined rights of Parliament and the magistracy (of London). He said he saw the approaching destruction of liberty, and would sooner go to Switzerland, America, or to Constantinople, should it fall under the power of Russia. The Chancellor, even Bathurst, answered him with contempt—Lord Mansfield seriously—Lord Sandwich sarcastically wishing him a good journeyto Switzerland, and quoting the fate of an orator at Geneva, whose brains had lately been knocked out by a brickbat in a tumult there. The motion was rejected by 72 to 22.

The 6th had been appointed for the Lords’ hearing the appeal in the cause between Lord Chatham and the relations of Sir William Pynsent, which had been referred to the Judges. They came, prepared to deliver their opinions, five on the one side and three on the other. They were going to speak, when Lord Mansfield suddenly arrived, and told them a new idea had struck him, which he was sure would reconcile their sentiments. He gave it; they put up their papers, saying, they should all return on the morrow of one opinion, and retired. On the 8th they concurred in Lord Chatham’s favour, and the House decided accordingly.187

This proceeding was imputed to mean court or timidity in Mansfield. In truth, this session had been notoriously marked by partialities and personal considerations. Lord Pomfret had carried his cause by gross favour of the Court Lords.188Lord Mansfield, in compliment to Lord Lyttelton, whose daughter was married to the pretender to the title of Anglesey,189had gone great lengths to serve thelatter, though in vain; and Lord Lyttelton had as openly declined opposition to secure Lord Mansfield’s patronage. Lord Camden, though more connected with Lord Lyttelton, had carried himself with less bias. The borough of Shoreham had been unjustly punished by the House of Commons, who opened the right of voting there to all Sussex, because seventy members of what was called the Christian Club had set their votes to sale, while ninety innocent voters remained untainted. Lord North, trusting the Lords would not confirm the sentence, let it pass, but the Lords passed it too.190A bill prohibiting divorced women from remarrying, was thrown out by the credit of Lord Beauchamp and Charles Fox. A bill for promoting the navigation of Chester, and which had passed the Commons, was rejected by the Lords, solely because it would prejudice the Duke of Bridgwater’s navigation; and Adam, the Scotch architect,was supported by the King and the Scots with success against the City of London, on whose territory and rights he had encroached with his new buildings at Durham Yard, to which he and his brothers gave the affected name of the Adelphi.

The session was to rise on the 9th of May, but as the Lord Mayor and Alderman Oliver wouldipso factobe at liberty the moment the Parliament was no longer sitting, the King, for fear of the mob, who would be assembled to escort the suffering magistrates from the Tower, stole unexpectedly to the House of Lords, made a very soothing speech, and put an end to the session. The two prisoners were conducted in ceremony to their houses; and at night the City was much illuminated, but without any tumult.

It is difficult to say which made the more contemptible figure on this conclusion of the City’s resistance,—the King and the House of Commons on one side, or the Opposition and the City’s magistrates on the other. The latter by disunion rendered themselves ridiculous and insignificant; and yet neither the Crown nor House of Commons dared to take advantage of the neglect into which the two martyrs were fallen. If the King comforted himself with views of future aggrandizement by the humiliations of the Opposition, it must be owned that he bought those prospects with most disgracefulmortifications. Surely it had been more glorious to have purchased the love of his people by condescensions and reverence for the constitution. It was pitiful consolation, and beneath the majesty of ambition, to sit a tacit spectator of the persecution of Wilkes by his friends, when all the artillery of Government had been vainly employed to fulminate so worthless a man!

No sooner was the session at an end, than the paper war which had been carried on anonymously between Wilkes and parson Horne, broke out under their respective names with redoubled violence.191They told all they knew of each other, and yet proved nothing but little tricks, foolish vanities, and suspicions of each other. Men wondered they had nothing worse to say. Horne appeared to have scarce any parts, and Wilkes not much better. These peevish jarrings diverted them from exposing and making advantage of the weakness of the Court in its conduct towards the magistrates. All Wilkes, his Lord Mayor, or the remnant of the Bill of Rights attempted, and that without success, was a test in all boroughs where candidates should be sworn, totry to obtain shorter Parliaments, the removal of pensioners and placemen from the House of Commons, and a more equal representation.

Things being quiet, Lord Bute stole again into England; from a mixture of timidity and pride he had been wandering about Italy incognito, under his private name of Sir John Stuart.

At the beginning of June died three men in great offices. The first was Lord Strange, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster; a man of whom much has been said in these Memoirs.192He died suddenly at Bath, aged fifty-five. The second was George Montagu, Earl of Halifax, Lord Privy Seal. He was of the same age, but had outlived the reputation of parts, which in his youth he had been supposed to have, his fortune, and his constitution, the latter of which he had destroyed by drinking, and his fortune by waste and deliberate neglect. The third was Richard Trevor, Bishop of Durham, a dull proud man, neither respected nor censured.

The young Earl of Suffolk succeeded Lord Halifax as Secretary of State,—a post he had declined a few months before on the want of languages, which he certainly had not acquired in so short an interval. The late Prime Minister, the Duke of Grafton,193succeededSuffolk in the Privy Seal; but, with proud humility, desired not to be called to the Cabinet, where he would only have been subordinate. Lord Hyde was made Chancellor of the Duchy; Dr. Egerton, Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry, was removed to Durham, and was succeeded by Dr. North,194brother of the Minister.

On the 21st of April, the young Prince of Wales, and his brother, the Bishop of Osnabrugh, were allowed, under the conduct of their new governor, the Earl of Holderness, to go to Gravesend, and see the men-of-war and Indiamen lying there. There was nothing remarkable in this; but it was so that the King himself, the Sovereign of an island and of a maritime power, had never seen the sea, nor ever been thirty miles from London at the age of thirty-four; so great was his indolence, and the restraint in which his mother had kept him!

On the 24th, the poll began for sheriffs of Middlesex. Wilkes from the first had by far the greatest show of hands for him, and Alderman Oliver thefewest,—the consequence of his connection with Shelburne’s faction, whose opposition to Wilkes recoiled on themselves, and who were hissed and ill-treated by the mob. The Livery assembled on that occasion determined to make another remonstrance to the King, and the Lord Mayor offered to present it, which was accepted. One Bull, a devotee of Wilkes, joined him; but Kirkman, a ministerial alderman, gained ground on them, till the indiscretion of the courtiers, who laboured indefatigably to defeat Wilkes, overthrew their own purpose. An imprudent letter from Lord North’s secretary to a voter being made public, it enraged the Livery, and Wilkes and Bull were chosen. Little less offence was taken at a party novel,195written by the profligate hireling Smollett, to vindicate the Scots and cry down juries.

The remonstrance being ready, the Lord Chamberlain wrote to the Lord Mayor, that his Majesty would not receive more persons with the remonstrance than were allowed by law. This was resented, but complied with.

The Chevalier D’Eon, of whom I have given an account, occasioned at this period much and strange discourse. A notion had for some time prevailed that he was a woman in man’s habit. The Duc de Choiseul believed it from the report of a female English spy who pretended to be certain of it from having washed his linen; and as the report spread, it gained farther credit from assertions that he never dressed himself before any witness, nor could any of his comrades recollect an instance of his amours. His beard, though black, was inconsiderable; and though he was strong and an excellent fencer, his legs had a feminine turn. At first he pretended to resent the report, but afterwards spoke and wrote so dubiously on his sex, that the most judicious suspected him for author of the fable from interested views. Sometimes he disappeared and returned again, till by the usual discrepancy of opinions, very great sums were wagered on the question; and he, though he denied the charge in print, was taxed with encouraging those bets in order to share the spoil, according as he should pronounce on his own gender: but the question came to no issue, and was forgotten like other legends of the day.196

In August this year I again went to Paris, and was witness to the final overthrow of their constitution.Since the removal of the Duc de Choiseul, no Prime Minister had been named. Over the King’s mind Madame du Barry had almost unlimited ascendant, except that she could not prevail on him to place his confidence on the Duc d’Aiguillon, who certainly intrigued with her husband’s sister, a very sensible woman, and was suspected of having secured the mistress herself to his interest by the sameattention. Yet, whether it was owing to the King’s aversion to strangers, or that Choiseul had instilled lasting prejudices into his mind against D’Aiguillon, the latter could not entirely surmount them. He was a dark, violent, and vindictive man, with less parts than passions; but the rancour borne to him and the mortifications it had brought on him, had taught him to curb his temper; and he now affected universal benignity and condescension; proceeding even to obtain the arrears of the pension due to La Chalotais, the patriot magistrate of Bretagne, whom he had so cruelly oppressed. Yet would not this ostentatious benevolence have expunged the odium his persecutions had created, if another man had not presented himself as a still more offensive object to the indignation of the public. This was the Chancellor Maupeou, a man who had mounted by the regular steps of villany from flattery through treachery to tyranny. He had affected such loathsome idolatry of Choiseul that he had been heard to declarehe would on no consideration change his house, because, from the upper windows, he could survey at least the chimneys of the Hôtel de Choiseul. Yet while there was but a very dubious prospect of that Minister’s disgrace, Maupeou, then only Vice-Chancellor, had betrayed such symptoms of his ambition and hostile designs that the friends of the Duc de Choiseul earnestly exhorted him not to raise a secret enemy higher. Choiseul, with his usual rashness of confidence in himself, replied, “I know Maupeou is a rogue, but there is nobody so fit to be Chancellor;” and Chancellor he made him. Maupeou, who thought himself fitter to be Minister, did not pique himself on gratitude, and was a capital instrument in the Duke’s disgrace. I never saw character written in more legible features than in those of Maupeou. He was sallow and black, with eyes equally penetrating, acute, and suspicious. His complexion spoke determinate villany; his eyes seemed either roving in quest of prey for it, or glaring on snares that he apprehended. His parts were great and his courage adventurous. Power was his object, despotism his road, the clergy his instruments: but the hardness and cruelty of his nature showed that severity was as agreeable to his temper as to his views.197Not being qualified likeD’Aiguillon to shine in a voluptuous Court where a woman governed, and probably having noticed the tendency of the King’s gloomy mind to superstition, he reckoned, not injudiciously, on the triumph that bigotry would gain over love in a veteran Monarch; and accordingly insinuated himself into the confidence of the King’s Carmelite daughter, Madame Louise, the almost only engine that the Church of Rome had employed in the spirit of its ancient maxims during its late disgraces. At that Princess’s cell, the Chancellor obtained weekly audiences of his master: and though, during the suspense of power, Maupeou and D’Aiguillon acted in a kind of concert, it became notorious that the first founded his hopes on the King’s devotion and the other on his vices. More instances than one broke out of this contrast of piety and irreligion, not only in the King but in his own family. His daughters had all been bred by the Queen to habitual strictness. They were very weak women; but Madame Adelaide, the eldest, was something more—she was gallant.198One or two of her ladies had been punished many yearsbefore for furnishing her with indecent novels; and the King, whose palace was a brothel, in the very sight of his wife and daughters, had expressed great offence at that scandal. Madame Adelaide, though not corrected, yet become more wary, was suspected of covering her private history with the cloak of religion, or rather with that of the Bishop of Senlis, an ambitious prelate: and it was probably by his suggestions that she drew her sister, Madame Victoire, into a step very contradictory to their professions, for all the King’s daughters engaged warmly in hostilities against the new mistress. Soon after the Duc de Choiseul’s fall, Madame Victoire sent, on a feigned pretence, for the Bishop of Orleans, who had thefeuille de bénéfices. The Bishop, though possessed of the recommendation of proper churchmen, was a jolly, luxurious, dissolute priest, who kept an opera-dancer199publicly at a great expense, and lodged her in a convent. He had been a favourite of Choiseul, and remained attached to him. After the Princess had discoursed with the Bishop on her pretended business, she asked him negligently his opinion of the late revolution. He replied, it did not become him to meddle with affairs of state; but the Princess insisting, and he knowing her anenemy to Madame du Barry, ventured to open his heart to her. The consequences were, her betraying the conversation to her father, and the exile of the Bishop to an abbey: nor could the prayers of his aged mother, who begged to see him before her death, obtain a permission for him to visit her at the capital of his diocese,—a rigour of which the Chancellor gave many more and some similar instances in cases of banished presidents andavocatsof the Parliaments.

There was another man who, though not pretending to the first place, bore, during the King’s indecision, a large share of the public aversion both from the necessity of his office and the rigour and partialities with which he executed it. This was the Abbé du Terray, the new Comptroller-General, recommended by the Chancellor. It was a considerable addition to the Comptroller’s unpopularity that he was wholly governed by a corrupt and rapacious mistress,200—a woman so notorious for the sale of offices, that her protector was at last forced to dismiss her; while the old Duc de la Vrillière was suffered to indulge his concubine201in the same infamous venality.

Madame du Barry, as I have said, was the fountain or channel of all these disorders. The doting Monarch was enchanted with her indelicacy, vulgarism,and indecencies, the novelty of which seemed to him simplicity. Her mirth was childish romping; her sallies, buffoonish insults; her conversation, solecisms and ignorance. She pulled off the Chancellor’s wig, spat in the Duc de Laval’s face at her levee—he deserved it, for he let her repeat it; and the King, who deserved it still more, she called “fool!” and bade hold his tongue. Those who offended her, she threatened with her power; those who bowed to her, she treated little better. To none she was generous, for herself she was rapacious. She had two governesses of very different characters and understandings, but the congenial idiot had most weight with her. This was the Comtesse de Valentinois, wife of, but parted from, the brother of the Prince of Monaco, and herself sole heiress of the Duc de St. Simon. She was a handsome woman, finely made, but mischievous, impertinent, and too notorious for her promiscuous amours even to pass for gallant. The Maréchale Duchesse de Mirepoix had preceded Madame de Valentinois in the direction of the mistress. No head was better, no temper colder than the Maréchale’s. Of great pride, but capable of any meanness to supply her profusions at play, she had joined the mistress to supplant the Minister; but whether Madame du Barry’s want of generosity chilled the Maréchale’s importunities for money, or whether her alliancewith the House of Lorrain202made her incapable of digesting the low familiarities of the mistress, or whether a prospect of ingratiating herself with the young Dauphiness, governed by Madame Adelaide, and consequently an enemy to the mistress, swayed the Maréchale to swerve from her plan, it is certain she conceived and expressed both aversion and contempt for Madame du Barry, and even declined attending her to an audience of the Dauphiness, to which Madame de Valentinois, more compliant, introduced her. While I was now at Paris, having been long intimate with Madame de Mirepoix and her family, at Florence, in England, and at Paris, she told me many anecdotes of that silly and imperious favourite, most of which I heard attested by the general voice, or at least corroborated by similar incidents. One I will mention. At supper with the King she drank out of the punch-ladle, and returned it into the bowl. The King said, “Fy donc! vous donnez votre crachat à boire à tout le monde;” she replied “Eh bien! je veux que tout le monde boive mon crachat.” The same night my friend Madame du Deffand asking the Maréchale what would become of Madame du Barryshould the King die? she replied bitterly, “Elle iroit à la Salpêtrière, et elle est très faite pour y aller.” As Madame de Mirepoix was not in the odour of sincerity, I much suspected her of being concerned in an event of that time, which, however, she affected to assign as the cause of her resentment to the mistress,—I mean the disgrace of her brother, the Prince of Beauvau, which happened during this journey of mine to Paris; and of which I was in a situation of knowing many secret particulars, Madame du Deffand being the confidant both of the brother and sister, as she had been before their rupture, continuing loyal to both sides, and by both esteemed as a woman void of intrigue. As they supped alternately at her house several times in a week, and as her friendship for me induced her to insist on my being admitted to their most private conferences, I was privy to the effusions of both parties: and, indeed, they had so little reserve before me, that one evening the Prince and Princess of Beauvau were so explicit on their situation and enemies, that I felt uneasy, and thinking myself an improper auditor of such secrets, I begged permission to retire, but the Princess reproved me sensibly, saying, “Your thinking these things improper for you to hear, is telling us that they are improper for us to speak.” I have already given the character of that Princess, andmentioned how deeply she had been concerned in the disgrace of the Duc de Choiseul, in whose fall she involved herself and her husband, who was a man of honour, very confined in his understanding, and acquired accomplishments, which were restrained to a pedantic purity in his own language, and who was a mixture of bashfulness and frankness, with signal courage and unbounded pride. To introduce his story, I must revert to the situation of his friend, the late Minister.

The Duc de Choiseul had been ordered to restrain himself to his wife’s estate in Touraine, where he had built a magnificent castle. There, though overwhelmed with debts, he lived with an increase of profusion, retaining or affecting his constitutional spirits and levity. It was a new scene in France, a disgraced Minister still the object of veneration and love. It was as new to see the King unpopular, or, which in that country is synonymous, unfashionable. While Louis could scarcely assemble a Court round him and his mistress at Versailles, at Compiègne, the Princes of the Blood, at their several country seats, and the Duc de Choiseul at Chanteloup, were followed by throngs of company. The insult to the King was doubled by the disrespect paid to his intimations; for, as nobody was allowed to resort to Chanteloup without previously applying for hisMajesty’s permission, to which demand this oracular response was generally given, “Je ne le defends ni le permets,” and as that oracle was interpreted, or pretended to be interpreted, into consent, the want of respect for his inclination could but be deemed contempt by a Prince so accustomed to have his very looks obeyed. The mode of visiting the Duke spread, and, for a mode, lasted long, nor was confined to his former friends; several persons of both sexes, many ladies whom he had loved, and others who had never loved him, affronted the King rather than be unfashionable, and the Duke, with too much vanity and too much indifference for his friends, encouraged the concourse; but, as may well be supposed, this triumph did but advance his and their destruction, of which the Prince of Beauvau was the first example.

The resolution had been taken, by the Chancellor’s advice, of annihilating or new modelling all the Parliaments in France, which was now executed with rigour, or at great expense, wherever the Court could, by bribes and pensions, persuade the members to enlist in the new system. Bourdeaux, for a day or two, resisted, to the great terror of Maréchal Richelieu, their governor, who retreated precipitately and sent for troops. In Languedoc the Prince of Beauvau commanded.The King wrote to him with his own hand, telling him that, having an intention of dissolving the Parliament of Toulouse, and knowing the Prince’s sentiments to be contrary to that plan, he could not employ him any longer in that province. The rest of the letter was still more kind, but artful, demanding his frequent attendance on his person, as one of the four captains of the guard in whom he could most securely rely, and adding, that his Majesty had seen the time when it was not possible to get one of them to attend him. This sentence alluded to their absence at Chanteloup. I called even the first part of the epistle tender, for the dismission of the Prince from his government was a gentle method of preventing his disobedience by refusing to break the Parliament,—a resistance that must have drawn on his imprisonment. The Prince’s answer was very respectful, but firm. He gave copies of both letters to Madame du Deffand, permitting her to communicate them to me; and he added a comment on that of the King, which fully interpreted its meaning. He said the King was so afraid of assassination, that he dreaded not having his attendance on his person. “He knows,” said the Prince, “my zeal and assiduity so well, that, in the year 17—, when the Imperialists passed the Rhine, and I begged him to allow me to set out immediately forthe army, he was three days before he would give me an answer, and it was but by repeated importunities that I could wring from him the permission.”

The moment the Prince’s disgrace was known, the Duc d’Orleans repaired to him, sat all day with him and the Princess, and carried them, in the evening, into his own box at the opera. The next day that haughty woman sat at home, receiving the homage of half France. I went in the crowd. All day were files of coaches passing the whole length of the Rue St. Honoré, at the end of which she lived, and no fallen Minister in England, just commencing patriot, could behave with more insolence and affected satisfaction; but, though nothing could bow her spirit, her husband was reduced to take a humiliating step, and that without success. His paternal fortune had been little or none; all he had was from the King’s bounty. His debts were very great—his income, by the loss of his government, reduced to a trifle. He wrote to the King, representing his situation and begging assistance: it was coldly refused.

Against the Parliaments the sentence went forth. Next followed the punishment of individuals:—40,000l.a-year, the King’s pension to the Duc d’Orleans, were withdrawn; and soon afterwards the command of the Swiss Guards was taken fromChoiseul: it brought him in 5000l.a-year, and was for life; but the King demanded his resignation, and perpetual imprisonment would have attended the refusal. Yet that dauntless man dared to stipulate for terms with his master. He insisted on a promise of not being made a prisoner, and demanded an indemnification of what he had paid for the regiment, 300,000 livres. He was comforted with hopes of preserving his liberty; 200,000 livres were granted, and a pension of 50,000 livres a-year for the joint lives of him and the Duchess, to which 10,000 more were soon added,—a fall extremely mitigated by these indulgences, and gentle if compared with the insolence of his conduct.

To the city of Paris, and to the ruined counsellors of the Parliaments, the Duke remained still dear. They coupled his cause with their own, from the unity of the time. The Chancellor adopted the same idea to incense the King against both. The depopulation of Paris ensued. So many families were undone by the new edicts and stoppages of payments, and so many persons attached to the late Parliament had quitted the capital, that in less than twelve months one hundred thousand persons were computed to have retired into the provinces, and such as could escape into other countries. The King’s servants were unpaid; trade at a stand; distress and dissatisfaction in every countenance.Daggers threatened the King and Chancellor: the Comptroller-General threatened to plunder everybody else to prevent a national bankruptcy.

Still could not the King’s favour draw observance towards his mistress. Not above six women of rank would accept her protection or acquaintance. Almost all the Foreign Ministers shunned her, nor bad attended her levee—but this cloud was easily removed: Madame de Valentinois invited them to supper, where they found Madame du Barry. As they were not shy to her, she in her turn gave them a like invitation;203they hurried to it and to her levee, the Nuncio at their head. The Spanish Ambassador204alone was absent, and it passed for an accident, as he was not at Compiègne; but on his arrival there with the new Neapolitan Minister,205the Chancellor made a supper for the same company, and invited the two strangers. The Spaniard sent back the card, saying, he had not the honour ofvisiting the Chancellor;206the latter with great presence of mind said, “It is very true, and I ordered my servant to take care not to go to the Spanish Ambassador.” But thisfinessepalliated nothing, for neither the Spaniard nor Neapolitan would visit the mistress. I will conclude this long episode with a ridiculous fact. Mademoiselle L’Ange, the mistress, had been married to the Comte du Barry, because, by a most absurd ceremonial, it was necessary that the King’s mistress should be a married woman.

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