"THE KING'S FRIENDS"

"Mr. Pitt," wrote the King on July 7, 1766, "your very dutiful and handsome conduct the last summer makes me desirous of having your thoughts how an able and dignified ministry may be formed. I desire, therefore, you will come for this salutary purpose, to town." "Penetrated with the deepest sense of your Majesty's goodness to me, and with a heart overflowing with duty and zeal for the honour and happiness of the most gracious and benign sovereign," Pitt replied, "I shall hasten to London as fast as I possibly can; wishing that I could change infirmity into wings of expedition, the sooner to be permitted the high honour to lay at your Majesty's feet the poor but sincere offering of my little services."

Close on the heels of his letter, Pitt came to London, arriving on July 11, and seeing the King at Richmond on the following day, when he undertook to form a cabinet. The relations between Pitt and Lord Temple were not so friendly as before, for Pitt was angry with his brother-in-law for having opposed the repeal of the Stamp Act, and the Earl was displeased that Pitt had not thrown in his lot with the family league formed at Stowe. Notwithstanding, Pitt offered the Treasury to Temple, who was not satisfied by this proposal, which he regarded as inadequate, and suggested an equal division of power and the right to nominate half the cabinet, on which terms he was willing to abandon his brother, George Grenville. Pitt, of course, declined to consider such a proposal, and thereupon Temple declined, as he wrote to Lady Chatham, "to be stuck into a ministry as a great cypher at the head of the Treasury, surrounded with other cyphers by Mr. Pitt."[57] This refusal was the end of the political career of Earl Temple, who did not realise that it was only as an adherent of William Pitt he was of importance in the State.

Pitt found it was no easy task at this time to form a ministry, for, as Lord Northington said, "There are four parties, Butes, Bedfords, Rockinghams, Chathams, and we (the last) are the weakest of the four."[58] In these circumstances, Pitt was desirous to retain as many of the members of the last administration as could be induced to shift their allegiance; and in this matter he was assisted by Lord Rockingham, who behaved very well under great provocation. "Indignant as Lord Rockingham naturally felt at the treatment he has received at Lord Chatham's hands ... as Lord Chatham professed to be actuated by the same political principles as the late Government, Lord Rockingham desired such of his followers as the new Premier did not remove to remain at their posts."[59] Accordingly, the Duke of Portland continued Lord Chamberlain, and Sir Charles Saunders remained at the Board of Admiralty. Conway, who retained his Secretaryship of State, had, however, anticipated the pronouncement of his late chief, for when the King told him he had sent for Pitt, "Sir," said he, "I am glad of it. I always thought it the best thing your Majesty could do. I wish it may answer." No wonder the Duke of Richmond wrote bitterly to Lord Rockingham: "If Mr. Conway's sentiments get among our friends, it will be a race among them who shall go first to Mr. Pitt."[60] Lord Camden succeeded Lord Northington as Lord Chancellor, and the latter was solaced with the office of President of the Council, and the reversion for two lives of a lucrative sinecure situation. The Duke of Grafton became First Lord of the Treasury, the Earl of Shelbourne a Secretary of State, Charles Townshend, Chancellor of the Exchequer; while Pitt, whose ill-health prevented him from undertaking departmental duties, contented himself with the easy post of Lord Privy Seal, and went to the Upper House. Such was the "Mosaic Ministry," which Burke, in a speech on American taxation, described as "a chequered and speckled administration; a piece of joinery, so crossly indented and whimsically dove-tailed; a cabinet so variously inlaid; here a bit of black stone, and there a bit of white; patriots and courtiers; King's friends and republicans; Whigs and Tories; treacherous friends and open enemies;—that it was indeed a very curious show, but utterly unsafe to touch and unsure to stand on."

As soon as it became known that the King had sent for Pitt there was immense enthusiasm, and when it was announced that the Great Commoner had consented to undertake the government there was great joy, especially in the City, where Pitt's popularity was boundless. The Corporation at once arranged to present him with an Address and to invite him as the guest of honour to a banquet at the Guildhall, and orders were given for a general illumination. The lamps were actually affixed to the Monument, when the news came that the Great Commoner had, on July 30, accepted an earldom, and the orders for the Address, banquet, and illumination were hastily countermanded. There was, of course, no reason why Pitt should not go to the House of Lords if he desired, for he had earned a peerage, if ever a man had; but it was rumoured—and, such is the fickleness of the people, everywhere believed—that the Court had bought him with this honour, and, as Walpole said, "that fatal title blasted all the affection which his country had borne to him, and which he had deserved so well."[61] "The City have brought in their verdict of felo de se against William, Earl of Chatham," wrote Sir Robert Wilmot;[62] and certainly, while the name of Pitt had been one to conjure with, the name of Chatham was found to have no charm.

It is an ill wind that blows nobody any good, and the decline in public favour of Chatham, the weakness of the "Mosaic Ministry" and the failure of all attempts to strengthen it,[63] was the King's opportunity. "I know the Earl of Chatham will zealously give his aid towards destroying all party distinctions, and restoring that subordination to government which alone can preserve that inestimable blessing, Liberty, from degenerating into licentiousness," so George III wrote to the new Prime Minister. It is clear that the King was pursuing his plan to be himself the real ruler of the country, and he had certainly succeeded already to a considerable degree. By his machinations, he had taken the government out of the hands of the great Whig family, and had divided that party into several hostile sections. This made more practicable his desire to extinguish party, but he was confronted with the difficulty that, even in an age that was not distinguished for public honesty, public men did not transfer their allegiance from one leader to another as readily as the sovereign desired.

A king, however, has no difficulty in securing adherents, and George collected such as could be induced to rally round his standard into a body that called itself the King's Friends. "Ministers are no longer the public servants of the state, but the private domestics of the sovereign," Junius thundered. "One particular class of men are permitted to call themselves the King's Friends, as if the body of the people were the King's enemies: or as if his Majesty looked for a resource or consolation in the attachment of a few favourites against the general contempt and detestation of his subjects. Edward and Richard the Second made the same distinction between the collective body of the people and a contemptible party who surrounded the throne." Unfortunately for George, all reputable parliamentarians belonged to some party already existing, and, as Sir George Trevelyan has put it admirably, "The only recruiting ground that was left open to his Majesty's operations lay among the waifs and strays of politics; among the disappointed, the discontented and the discredited; among those whom Chatham would not stoop to notice, and Newcastle had not cared to buy; and out of such material as this was gradually organized a band of camp-followers promoted in the ranks, at the head of which no decent leader would have been seen marching through the lobby."[64]

The immediate entourage of the Court was, as we have seen, composed of quiet, respectable persons; and the King, who realized that the majority of those politicians who placed themselves at his disposal did so entirely for the sake of the emoluments and honours that majesty could bestow, had little or no personal intercourse with his adherents. Indeed, because of this want of personal relation Lord Carlisle declined the post of Lord of the Bedchamber. "I have no reason to expect, however long I may continue, that either by assiduity, attention and respect, I can ever succeed to any kind of confidence with my master," he wrote. "That familiarity which subsists between other princes, and those of their servants whose attachment they are convinced of, being excluded from our Court by the King's living so much in private, damps all views of ambition which might arise from that quarter." Lord Winchelsea, indeed, did accept such a post, but reluctantly and in a manner that irritated the King, who wrote to Lord North. "I cannot say I am quite edified at Lord Winchelsea's not in reality liking his appointment, though out of duty he accepts of it. I remember the time when an ambassador would have thought that honour a reward for ability and diligence during a long foreign mission. However, it will teach me one lesson, never again to offer it, but to wait for applications."[65]

The majority, however, were content with the loaves and fishes, and probably had no desire to be on intimate terms with the monarch, except for such benefit as might accrue from such friendship. This was particularly fortunate, for while the King was highly respectable and moral, the high officials of his Court included some of the most desperate rouÉs of the day and might have furnished examples for a preacher whose text was, "The wicked flourish like a green bay tree." The Earl of March,[66] Wordsworth's "Degenerate Douglas," and an avowed profligate, was a Lord of the Bedchamber for twenty-eight years under eleven successive Prime Ministers; another Lord was, after a time, according to Trevelyan, judged too bad to remain even in the Bedchamber, and was accordingly packed off to Virginia as its Governor; and the Keeper of the Great Wardrobe was Lord le Despencer, one of the notorious Medmenham monks. More respectable morally, however, were the King's spokesmen in the House of Lords and the House of Commons, Lord Eglington,[67] and "Mungo" Dyson.[68] The latter, however, was a political "Vicar of Bray" and had lost the regard of all reputable statesmen by the facility with which he changed his opinions whenever it was to his advantage to do so. When he entered Parliament he was supposed to hold anti-monarchical views, but he was at the time in the pay of Bute; later he posed as a supporter of Grenville, but deserted him for the King. It was shortly after this desertion that he assumed a bag-wig instead of a tye-wig, whereupon Lord Gower cleverly remarked that the change was doubtless made "because no tie would hold him."[69] Such was the material with which a King, who prided himself upon his honesty and morality, chose to work.

For some time before he resumed office Lord Chatham had been far from well, and he was in no condition to conduct the delicate negotiations incidental to the formation of a ministry: the conferences in which he had to take part, he told his wife, heated his blood and accelerated his pulse. Soon after his administration came into power, ill-health drove him into seclusion at Bath. "Lord Chatham is here with more equipage, household and retinue, than most of the old patriarchs used to travel with in ancient days," Gilly Williams wrote to George Selwyn. "He comes nowhere but to the Pump Room. There he makes a short essay and retires." The King was much disturbed at this unexpected defection of his principal supporter, and great was the discomfiture of the ministers at being deprived of their leader. It came as a great relief to sovereign and colleagues alike when, after a considerable interval the news came that the Earl had fixed a day for his arrival in London.

The joy was premature, however, for though Lord Chatham duly left Bath, when he reached Marlborough he shut himself up in his rooms at the Castle Inn, and remained there for some weeks, declining to see even the Duke of Grafton, who had offered to visit him. "It is by no means practicable for me to enter into the discussion of business," he wrote to the Duke on February 22, 1767.[71] When at length he did arrive in the metropolis, matters were in nowise improved, for he still refused to receive any one. It was a curious position: "the nation had for some years beheld, or thought it descried, a real minister behind the curtain, who interposed his credit without holding an office. Here was the reverse—a minister in whose name all business was transacted, but who would exercise no part of his function."[72]

In vain the King offered to visit him at North End, when, he declared, he "would not talk of business, but only wanted to have the world know that he had attended him";[73] and equally fruitless were the Duke of Grafton's renewed appeals for an interview. The Earl had not even the energy to use a pen, and the replies were written by his wife. "Your duty and affection for my person, your own honour, call on you to make an effort," the King persisted in a letter on May 30. "Five minutes' conversation with you would raise the Duke of Grafton's spirits, for his heart is good. Mine, I thank God, wants no rousing. My love to my country, as well as what I owe to my family, prompt me not to yield to faction. Though none of my ministers stand by me, I cannot truckle."[74] On receipt of this, Lord Chatham yielded, and consented to see the Duke on the following day, and the meeting had the result of averting the threatened resignation of the latter, who, however, found it impossible to discuss business with the Prime Minister, whose nerves and spirits were too affected to permit of a lengthy discussion. "So childish and agitated was his whole frame," Walpole has stated, "that if a word of business was mentioned to him, tears and tremblings immediately succeeded to cheerful, indifferent conversation."[75] He was indeed entirely incapacitated, and his recovery was very slow. "Lord Chatham's state of health (I was told authentically yesterday) is certainly the lowest dejection and debility that mind or body can be in," Whately wrote on June 30. "He sits all day leaning on his hands, which he supports on the table; does not permit any person to remain in the room; knocks when he wants anything, and, having made his wants known, gives a signal without speaking to the person who answered his call to return."[76]

Though the Prime Minister was willing to resign, George III implored him to retain at least the semblance of power. "Your name has been sufficient to enable my administration to proceed," he wrote;[77] for he was fearful lest he should be compelled to receive Grenville again. "The King owned," says Walpole, "that he was inclined to keep Lord Chatham, if capable of remaining in place, having seen how much his government had been weakened by frequent changes. He wished that things might remain as they were, at least till the end of the session, when he might have time to make any necessary alterations. At his levÉe, his Majesty asked James Grenville aloud, how Lord Chatham did? He replied 'Better.' The King said,'If he has lost his fever, I desire to be his physician, and that he would not admit Dr. Addington any more into his house. He shall go into the country for four months; not so far as Bath, but to Tunbridge.' He repeated the same words publicly to Lord Bristol, everybody understanding that his Majesty's wish was to retain Lord Chatham."[78]

So long as Lord Chatham was ill, the King enjoyed the support, such as it was, of his name, but soon after his recovery, on October 12, 1768, the Earl tendered his resignation, and although George begged him to withdraw it, he declined to do so. He was, indeed, very angry, for the measures carried by the administration that bore his name were in direct opposition to the principles of which he was the champion. Even so early as January 2, 1768, in a private letter to the Earl, "Junius" had informed him of this. "During your absence from administration, it is well known that not one of the ministers has either adhered to you with firmness, or supported, with any degree of steadiness those principles on which you engaged in the King's service. From being their idol at first, their veneration for you has gradually diminished, until at last they have absolutely set you at defiance." When this arrived Lord Chatham was still too ill to take up the matter; but when, some months later, the Duke of Grafton informed him that the ministry had carried through Parliament a Bill for a tax on American imports, we may well believe with Jesse that the "astonishment of Rip Van Winkle when he awoke from his long sleep in the Katskill mountains, or of Abou Hassan when he found himself in the couch of the Caliph Haroun Abraschid could scarcely have exceeded that of Lord Chatham."[79] Even then he was not well enough to take any action, but as soon as his health was restored he promptly severed all connexion with those who had betrayed him.

From a portrait by Battoni

AUGUSTUS HENRY, DUKE OF GRAFTON