When Rodney became a rear-admiral he had already been in Parliament for eight years. No word good or bad need be said of his career as a member in the House, for it had necessarily been, and was to continue to be, insignificant. The truth is that he valued his seat for social and professional reasons. It has always been a pleasant thing for a gentleman to be a member of the House, and at that time the best club in England was particularly agreeable. The work demanded was as much as you chose to do, and the privileges were many. For a naval or military officer a seat was especially valuable. When Rodney was on his way from the relief of Gibraltar to his third command in the West Indies in 1779, he wrote to his second wife a letter, in which he said that no man could hope to hold a satisfactory position in the navy unless he had a seat in Parliament. His meaning is easy to understand. A naval officer who was also a member had in the first place a much better chance of obtaining a command than another, and in the second, was much more likely to be well backed up when he was in it. The possession of a vote which might be used to support or annoy a minister would give him an independent position, or at least a claim. Moreover, his mouth could not be shut. The calculation was a convincing one, and therefore His Majesty’s sea officers went into the House as much as they could. Indeed, the number of admirals and captains who were members of Parliament in the early and middle eighteenth century was large. The Treasury and Admiralty made a similar calculation for their part. If it was convenient for a naval officer to have a seat, it was equally useful to ministers that many members should belong to a body of gentlemen who might be soothed by the prospect of command, or kept in order by fear of the loss of place. Naval officers were therefore commonly chosen as Treasury candidates (i.e. nominees) for dockyard seats, or for the pocket boroughs in the west. So there was between ministers and naval officers not a little of that mutually advantageous give-and-take by which His Majesty’s Government was so largely carried on in the last century.

Rodney, with the sagacity of a practical man, had early seen the advantage of obtaining a seat in Parliament, to say nothing of the fact that as a gentleman of good connections he would naturally wish to be in the House if possible. For one who, like himself, could not cultivate popularity there were three ways in which his useful seat might be obtained. An officer might belong to a great family with plenty of “influence” of its own. This—the best—was Boscawen’s position. “Old Dreadnaught,” as the sailors called him, had largely to thank the fact that he was Lord Falmouth’s brother and M.P. for Truro for the commands which enabled him to destroy M. de la Clue at Lagos, and to help in the taking of Louisburg. Another way was to inherit or make money enough to “cultivate an interest,” as the process was politely called, in some properly constituted borough. The third way was to attach yourself to a patron and follow him. It was the tamer eighteenth-century equivalent of the alliance recorded in the Fair Maid of Perth which bound the stout Laird of Wamphray to ride with the redoubted Lord of Johnstone, who again was banded with the doughty Earl of Douglas. In the meantime the Devil’s Deck of Hellgarth was employed in looking after the borough.

Not having family influence or private fortune enough, or of the right kind in the right place, and being withal resolute to get on in this world by all means permissible to a gentleman, Rodney had nothing for it but to attach himself to a patron. With what Carlyle would doubtless have praised as showing a certain veracity of intellect, he recognised the conditions of the game and played it resolutely. He sat for Saltash in Cornwall as nominee of John Clevland, the Clerk of the Admiralty. Clevland, a Cornishman of Scotch descent, owned Saltash by inheritance, and used it with judgment to push his own fortunes in the world. To give the seat to a naval officer was for him an obviously convenient way of making it serve that end. In 1751 it was Rodney who was selected, while he was in command of the Rainbow on the Newfoundland station. Doubtless, Mr. Clevland’s protection helped to make him a more acceptable suitor for the hand of Miss Jane Compton, and beyond all question it helped him to his successive commands of the Kent, the Fougueux, the Prince George, and the Monarch.

Before 1759 Rodney, however, had secured a greater and more powerful patron than Clevland. I have already quoted the passage of one of his letters in which he thanked the Duke of Newcastle for all his preferment in the service. It was to the Duke that he owed his seat at Okehampton in this year. There does not appear to have been any quarrel with Clevland, but no doubt reasons judged sufficient by all the gentlemen concerned made it desirable to give Saltash to somebody else. For the rest, Newcastle was distinctly a patron worth having. He would, in this alliance, play doughty Earl of Douglas to Clevland’s Lord of Johnstone and Rodney’s Laird of Wamphray. It was promotion for the Laird to deal directly with the Earl. Between 1751 and 1759 there is evidence to show that Rodney was employed as negotiator in confidential transactions between Newcastle and the Earl of Northampton. He did not come empty-handed to the alliance. Rodney had his own “plump of spears,” in the form of some Parliamentary interest in Hampshire, acquired probably by his first marriage, which was at the minister’s disposal in return for the proper consideration. Still there can be no sort of doubt as to the relations between the men. They are indicated in a letter dated “Spithead, December 2nd, 1759,” which lies written in Rodney’s large, flowing, but slightly gouty handwriting in the Newcastle correspondence.

“My Lord,” he begins, “I beg Your Grace will permit me to return you my most sincere thanks for the Honour you have bestowed on me in chusing me a Member of Parliament for Okehampton. A steady adherence to Your Grace’s commands shall ever distinguish me while I have a seat in the House.” Then after a few words of congratulation on Hawke’s recent magnificent victory off Quiberon, he ends, “I have the Honour to be with the utmost Respect and Gratitude Your Grace’s most Devoted and most obedient humble Servant, G. B. Rodney.” The style of the time allowed a gentleman to write in this submissive way, but it was a gentleman who was protected writing to his protector. That this was the footing on which the Admiral stood to the Duke he never attempts to conceal, nor is there the slightest reason to suppose that he saw aught undignified in it. There is something respectable in the honesty with which he tells the naked truth as to his election for Okehampton.

The Parliament he joined in this year did not last long. It was dissolved by the death of George the Second in 1760, and a general election was made necessary. At once Rodney hastened to put his Parliamentary influence in Hampshire at the minister’s command. He did not again sit for Okehampton, but for Penryn. It appears, from a very piteous letter of Rodney’s to West of the Admiralty, written in February, 1761, that Okehampton was wanted for a Mr. Wenman Coke who was to be elected “on the interest” of Mr. Thomas Pitt. Rodney asks West in anguish to tell him, “for God’s sake,” what he has done “to gain His Grace’s displeasure,” which is the harder to bear because he came in only to serve His Grace, and wishes to “continue on no other foundation.” West stood his friend, and the Admiral was sent down to contest Penryn, where Clive was spending his Indian booty in “making himself an interest.” Rodney, though his reputation was as yet small, not only in comparison with what it was destined to be, but with that of several of his contemporaries, was a distinguished naval officer, and Cornwall liked naval officers. He could, moreover, pay part at least of his expenses. It may be, too, that the death of Admiral Boscawen in the January of this year opened the way for Rodney by removing the natural candidate of the important Falmouth family. However that may be, Rodney went down supported by the Boscawens and the Edgcumbes, and recommended by His Grace. The contest is the subject of a letter of his to his patron, which is so characteristic of the man and the time that I shall quote it bodily.

Thus did they consult the voice of the people in 1761. Whether Charles Robbins was dismissed, and Captain Peard had post, I do not know, and it does not greatly matter. Probably they were respectively punished and preferred, for Rodney was duly elected and returned to Parliament once more as one of the trusty band of gentlemen who enabled the “noodle of Newcastle” first to impose himself on the great Pitt and then to trip up his heels.

It is to be wished that some more heroic tale had to be told of Rodney as a Parliament man, but even from a biographer a decent measure of respect for fact is required, and the honest truth is that Rodney was one of the “items” which made up the sum of political strength in the hand of His Grace of Newcastle. There was in his case no shadow of that comely pretence of a regard for the principles of a party which was exacted from the nominee to a pocket borough in the last years of the old system. He did not profess to take a seat in order to fight for his principles. He struggled for one in order to push his fortunes, and in order to get the seat he made himself the humble servant to command of the silliest and basest of the politicians of the eighteenth century. Whatever amount of stain this may be supposed to inflict on his character must, it is to be feared, remain there.

On the other hand, there is something to be said about the extent and nature of that stain. A man is to be judged by the morality of his time, and beyond all doubt that morality permitted Rodney to do what he did. To attach yourself to the Duke of Newcastle or any other patron was not thought to be an act deserving praise, but it was permissible without too much loss of character. It was only one of the many compromises which are necessary in life. If his patron had been other than Newcastle, who could not be served except by those who were prepared to subordinate in things Parliamentary all principle and patriotism to the interest of their patron, there would to a humane judge be no stain on his character at all. As it was, he followed many others to do a thing made disgraceful by the character of his leader, and I greatly fear that he never woke up to the real nature of his course, but remained to the end of his life convinced that a gentleman might, without loss of character, profess himself the “man” of such a one as His Grace of Newcastle in order to earn place by that act of homage. Here, again, a consideration on the other side suggests itself. It is this, that Rodney’s conduct differed rather in certain superficial matters of form, than in kind, from that of gentlemen of mark in the political world of to-day. There are many who would now make to a caucus that promise of unconditional obedience which he made to Newcastle, and would never be called contemptuous names for so doing except in the criticism of the other side, which is a matter of course, and, by the way, did not spare the led captains of the electioneering duke. Which of the two forms of slavery is the more ignoble is a question to be settled rather by the taste than the reason. There are who would think it more shameful to be horsewhipped by a gentleman single-handed than to be dragged through a horse-pond by a mob. To the fastidious either experience is unpleasant. For the rest it was true in 1761, as it had been before and has been since, that “The rising unto Place is laborious; and by Pains men come to greater Pains; and it is sometimes base; and by Indignities men come to Dignities.” A man, too, ranks rather by what he does with his dignity when it has been won, than by what he does to win it. Now, it cannot be denied that if Rodney stooped somewhat to pick up command, he exercised it for the good of his country and the confusion of her enemies.

His electioneering adventures have been allowed to slightly overlap his services at sea. Between his election for Okehampton and his return—as Clive’s fellow-member, by the way—for Penryn he did a good stroke of service in the Channel. The French were busy in 1759 in preparing a great invasion of England. Flat-bottomed boats, such as were afterwards to reappear on a much more imposing scale in the Napoleonic wars, were being built all along the Channel. A powerful fleet was getting ready at Brest, and a smaller force at Rochefort. On our side Sir Edward Hawke had been told off to watch Brest, and Commodore Duff to pen in the Rochefort squadron. Rodney, now Rear-Admiral of the Blue, was despatched with one sixty-gun ship, the Achilles, and half a score of fifty-gun ships, frigates, and sloops, aided by six-bomb ketches, to answer for the flat-bottomed boats in the Channel ports. The work was smartly and thoroughly done in the month of July. Some of the flat-bottomed boats which, under convoy of a galley, endeavoured to escape from the Seine, and creep along the coast to Brest, were cut off at Cape Bassin and driven on shore. Havre was bombarded with success, and numbers of flat-bottomed boats were destroyed, together with great quantities of the stores collected for the proposed invasion. The destruction can hardly have been complete, and was probably not even so extensive as the English supposed. It was enough, however, to deal the French a shrewd blow. When Rodney returned to port he had greatly relieved the fears of his countrymen, and had raised his own reputation considerably. Before the close of the year Hawke’s victory over Conflans near Quiberon had broken the back of any possible scheme of invasion as effectually as Trafalgar was to do half a century or so later. It is not without interest to note that during these operations Rodney had under his command Captain Samuel Hood of the Vestal frigate, who was to be his second in the battle off Dominica. When he wished to direct the inshore operations in shallower water than could be safely navigated by the Achilles, Rodney hoisted his flag in the Vestal. The two men now began a friendship which, if it was not quite proof against the strain of rivalry in the future—in the heart of one if not of both—was never openly broken. Rodney must have learned the undoubted capacity of Hood.

The remainder of 1759, the whole of 1760, and the early part of 1761 were passed either in watch and ward in the Channel, or in circumventing the “adversary” at Penryn. In the last-named year Rodney sailed with a considerable squadron as Admiral on the Barbadoes and Leeward station. Here he remained until the Peace of Fontainebleau in 1763. His services in these two years were divided between co-operating with General Moncton in the conquest of the French Caribbean Islands, and preparing the way for the great expedition of Pocock and Albemarle to the Havannah. Neither part of this service need be repeated here at any length. The French were in these wars so completely beaten from the sea that an English admiral engaged on such work as Rodney’s had little more to do than to superintend the transport of troops, to see them safely landed, and to organise naval brigades to co-operate with them when on shore. The work was thoroughly done. Navy and army helped one another in the proper way, and Martinique, which had repelled an attack in 1759, soon fell. Other islands followed, and the French were driven from all their possessions in the West Indies except Hayti. That they were able to use them against us in the American War which lay ahead was not the fault of the fighting men, naval or military. The islands were restored by the diplomatists as a set-off for Canada, which we retained, thereby removing that fear of French aggression which had hitherto been the main ingredient in the loyalty of the plantations to the mother-country.

During the conquest of the French islands Rodney regularly reported progress to his patron of Newcastle, and did it, too, with details which show that he had measured His Grace’s foot to a hairbreadth. Writing for instance to Newcastle from Fort Royal Bay in Martinique to give the good news of the conquest, and point out how advantageous it will be for His Majesty’s service, he does not fail to insist how useful it may also be to Thomas Pelham. “I have likewise,” he says, “great satisfaction when I consider that the conquest puts it into Your Grace’s power to oblige many of your Friends by the Posts and Employments in Your Grace’s gift, and which are very lucrative in this Island, particularly those relative to the customs and Secretary of the Island. This I thought my duty to represent to Your Grace that you might not be deceived in their values, which are computed at four thousand pounds a year each. If I have the good fortune to continue in Your Grace’s esteem, and that my conduct in this expedition meets with Your Grace’s approbation, I shall be extremely happy, as among Your Grace’s many friends none is more truly so than him who has the honour to be with the most profound respect and gratitude, etc. etc.”

Rodney was not a man to do things by halves, whether it was fighting the French or cultivating his interest with the Duke of Newcastle. Also he was clearly a man of the eighteenth century when the need, not to say the imperative social duty, of obliging one’s friends was much borne in on governing persons. So, having beaten the French in a workmanlike style, he hastens to call His Grace’s attention to these two important facts—first, that there are places of dignity and emolument to give away, and second, that here is George Brydges Rodney, His Grace’s humble and grateful servant. Then he leaves him to perpend.

If Rodney cherished any hope of good things to be obtained by the help of Newcastle in the West Indies he was to be disappointed. In more ways than one his command in these wars was less good than he might reasonably have expected. A grant of land in one of the conquered islands turned out to be mere fairy gold. It had not been confirmed in time, and with the retrocession of our conquests any chance of making it good disappeared. Rodney had to complain, too, that General Moncton and the military gentlemen, particularly those of them who belonged to the North American plantations, had secured an undue share of the prize-money. He accused them of underhand dealings with the enemy, and not without good grounds. Owing to these dubious transactions of theirs, the naval officers, he complained, did not get their fair share. All this business of prize-money, and the division of it, plays a very important part in the history of the navy for as long as there were wars in which booty was to be earned. The desire to obtain it was a great motive with both officers and men. Lord Dundonald has left it on record that a captain who had a reputation for luck never had any difficulty in finding volunteers to man his ship, even when the most severe use had to be made of the press to complete the complement of other ships. In so far the acts for the encouragement of seamen, which recognised and satisfied this natural human love of occasional lumps of extra money, served the purpose for which they were designed. But their influence was by no means wholly for good. Our fathers were much of Cassio’s mind. They took it for granted that the lieutenant was to be enriched before the fore-mast hand, the captain before the lieutenant, and the admiral before the captain. When the man got a few pounds, just enough to keep him drunk for a fortnight, the lieutenant gained a few score, the captain a few hundreds, the admiral gained thousands, for he shared in all the prizes taken on his station, whether he had been present at the capture or not. It is therefore easy to see what an important matter prize-money was to a flag-officer. To get a rich station, and to keep it free from the intrusion of a superior, was the ideal of luck. Unless an admiral was a very magnanimous man indeed, or the pressure of the time was so great as to silence the voice of interest, he was sorely tempted to allow the cause of his pocket to interfere with public service. He was certain to be very angry if a brother-admiral of senior rank turned up to share the booty, and never failed to take advantage of every technical excuse which could be found for disputing the claims of a colleague. How intensely these old heroes resented the diminution of their “loot,” with what honest natural rancour they would fight over it, let a long series of quarrels and lawsuits, conducted with all the pertinacity of Dandie Dinmont, say. In the heart of such as fight on blue water there has always lingered a something of the pirate—they have a smack, they do somewhat grow to, as we shall see when this story has gone a little farther.

The meaning of this same word prize-money must be kept in mind in order to appreciate the full bitterness of the disappointment which fell upon Rodney in 1762. Spain had openly avowed the Family Compact, and had joined her fortunes with France. The avowal would have been made sooner if Charles the Third had not waited till the treasure-ships were home from America. By not allowing Pitt to force on a war in time, we gave the Spaniard a chance, which he lost by declaring war himself when France was too broken to afford him any help. At once the news was forwarded to Rodney from Europe, and better he could not have wished for. A war with Spain, as Nelson said, was a rich war; and for nobody was it more lucrative than for the officers in command in the West Indies. They had Cuba and the Spanish main under the lee. There was nothing to be done but to run down before the unfailing Easterly Trades, and there lay the Spanish colonies from which the strong man armed had but to ask with spirit, and to have. Another not unpleasant service was to cruise to windward of the passages through the Caribbean Islands, and there snap up the register ships as they passed. When, then, the news of the Spanish War reached Rodney, he set to work with all the energy of a commander for whom pleasure and duty were combined in an eminent degree. The French were so completely subdued that the English squadron could safely be spared from the Leeward Islands. Rodney decided to strengthen the Jamaica station, which was distinct from his own; and not only so, but to go there himself in order to assist in the defence of the island, in case a combined attack was made on it by the Spaniards and the French, who had recently contrived to smuggle a few ships through the Caribbean Islands to Hayti. In a despatch to the Admiralty he expressed the hope that their lordships would approve of his decision to take this course without waiting for orders. Having wound up his formal duties on the Leeward station, Rodney prepared to run down to Jamaica, and no doubt every man on board his flagship was looking forward to a slap at the Spaniards and a share of the booty with a natural, and withal honourable, feeling of satisfaction. But at the very last moment there came upon all these tender leaves of hope a frost—a killing frost. On March 26th Captain Elphinstone of the Richmond frigate turned up with orders from home. By the despatches brought him Rodney learnt that a great expedition was preparing in England for an attack on Havannah. It was to be commanded by Sir George Pocock. As for him, he was to remain on his station in order that he might render all possible assistance to the expedition as it passed. Rodney obeyed orders punctually. Ten sail of his squadron were sent to Jamaica, and he remained at Antigua collecting stores, water, and information for the use of Sir George Pocock. After delays which might have proved fatal, the great expedition arrived. It was carried by Pocock through the dangerous and then little-known Bahama Channel—a feat which was quoted as a masterpiece of seamanship—and after desperate fighting did take Havannah. The loss of the expedition by disease was heavy; but Pocock and Albemarle, the admiral and general in command, made a handsome fortune each out of the prize-money. Rodney’s share in the enterprise was to see his squadron depleted to strengthen Pocock; to have a great deal of work thrown on him; to be left behind at Antigua with the mere carcass of his command, and nothing but routine to attend to; to be, moreover, prostrated by a smart attack of bilious fever. Pocock had taken his best ships and officers, but had left him behind, having no desire that another flag-officer should come with him to divide the expected plunder.

On this, as on all other occasions, Rodney obeyed orders exactly, and without futile complaint. He was too able—too much a man of the world—to suppose that he could gain anything by showing himself unmanageable; too honourable a man to revenge a private disappointment by neglecting the service; and, above all, too proud a man to make an outcry where he had no quotable grievance. None the less he was disappointed, and did not scruple to say so when a fitting occasion presented itself. He did not do so now because there really was no ground for protest. It was a matter of course that a great expedition should be commanded by an officer of proportionate rank. Pocock was his senior both in rank and length of service. He had lately commanded with fair success in three battles in the East Indies against a superior French force. Rodney could not complain when such a man—whose reputation was then higher than his own—was put over his head. It was for Pocock and the Ministry to decide whether the expedition to Havannah required the presence of the Admiral on the Leeward station. They did not think it did, and so Rodney had to remain at his unremunerative command. Still, to Rodney, who neither was nor pretended to be indifferent to money, it was a disappointment to lose so splendid a chance. Some years afterwards he made it an excuse for a claim to be allowed to retain the governorship of Greenwich Hospital along with an active command at sea. He then plainly told Sandwich that he thought the Government owed him this, which had been granted in the noontide of jobbery to former admirals, as a compensation for what he had lost in the West Indies in 1762. If this did not sound heroic, it was honest and human. Moreover, it was only what was to be expected. If a government holds out the chance of earning money as an incentive to its officers and men, it must expect that its officers and men will think of money. Rodney did not cant on the subject. He liked money and wished to earn it as easily as possible. His code of honour consisted of two articles. The first was that he was to do his duty; the second was that he was entitled to all the places, pensions, allowances, prize-money, and praise which law, or public opinion, or the customs of society entitled him to get, down to the last farthing. Whoever stood in his way must take the risk of whatever George Brydges Rodney could do to break his neck—always in the way of fair fighting. It was not the code of a saint, or of an unselfish hero; but it was a good working code of honour for a plain man of the world.