The King to the Right Hon. Henry Seymour

Conway.

'QUEEN'S HOUSE, Dec. 6, 1766, § pt 7 a. M. "LIEUTENANT-GENERAL CONWAY:-The debate of yesterday has ended very advantageously for administration. The division on the motion for adjournment will undoubtedly show Mr. Grenville that he is not of the consequence he figures to himself. I am so sanguine, with regard to the affair of the East India Company,' that I trust Tuesday will convince the world that, whilst administration has no object but the procuring what may be of solid advantage to my people, it is not in the power of any men to prevent it. Indeed, my great reliance on its success in the House of Commons is in your abilities and character; and I am certain I can rely on your zeal at all times to carry on my affairs, as I have no one desire but what tends to the happiness of my people.

"GEORGE R."

In the summer of this year the king and queen gratified Horace Walpole by paying a visit to his

'On Tuesday, the 9th, Alderman Beckford, at the instigation of Lord Chatham, made a motion in the House of Commons for the production by the East India Company of certain papers connected with the government and revenue of Bengal. It was met by George Grenville with a counter-motion for an adjournment, which, as he himself informs us, was defeated by 164 votes against 54.

celebrated villa, Strawberry Hill. "The king and queen," he writes to Sir Horace Mann, on the 9th of June, "have been here this week to see my castle, and stayed two hours. I was gone to London but a quarter of an hour before. They were exceedingly pleased with it, and the queen so much, that she said she would come again." Nearly thirty years afterward—when Walpole was in his seventy-ninth year—the queen was as good as her word. To General Conway, Walpole playfully writes on the 7th of July, 1795: "The queen was uncommonly condescending and gracious, and deigned to drink my health when I presented her with the last glass, and to thank me for all my attentions. Indeed my memory de la vieille cour was but once in default. As I had been assured that her Majesty would be attended by her chamberlain, yet was not, I had no glove ready when I received her at the step of her coach; yet she honoured me with her hand to lead her upstairs; nor did I recollect my omission when I led her down again. Still, though gloveless, I did not squeeze the royal hand, as Vice-Chamberlain Smith did to Queen Mary."

'Walpole evidently alludes to a well-known question, said to have been put by Queen Mary II. to one of the ladies of her court, what a squeeze of the hand denoted? Being told that it meant "love," "Then," she said, "my vice-chamberlain must be violently in love with me, for he always squeezes my hand."

CHAPTER IV.

Lord Chatham's Haughtiness Offensive to His Colleagues Changes in the Ministry - Decline of Chatham's Influence Weakness of the Government - Anxiety of the King - Prostration of Chatham's Health - Charles Townshend, Chancellor of the Exchequer - His Proposal to Reimpose Taxes on the Colonies - Carried in Both Houses - Death of Mr. Townshend - Death of the King's Brother, Prince Frederick-Career and Death of the Duke of York- Return of John Wilkes as Member for Middlesex - Wilkes Committed to the King's Bench Prison-Attempt of the Populace to Force the Prison-Riot and Loss of Life-Wilkes at the Bar of the House of Commons - Elected a Second, Third, and Fourth Time for Middlesex- Not Allowed to Take His Seat Popular Tumults-Lord Bute Retires to the Conti

nent.

AMONG the personal defects which throw a shade over the otherwise exalted character of Lord Chatham, were an imperiousness of manner and an almost insolent assumption of superiority in his political communications with others, which could scarcely fail to give offence to his party, and consequently tend to weaken his administration. Such haughty, such despotic language as he used, said Conway, had never been heard west of Constantinople. Thus, his arrogance had already given great offence to his colleagues, and especially to such of them as had served under Lord Rocking

ham, when the arbitrary dismissal of Lord Edgecombe from the treasurership of the household completed their disgust. It was in vain that the usually pliant Conway, in a letter very creditable to his feelings, as well as in an angry interview with his chief, remonstrated with him on the "repeated injuries which he had inflicted upon his supporters. The great earl remained intractable. The result was, that the Duke of Portland haughtily resigned the appointment of lord chamberlain; the Earl of Besborough that of postmaster-general, and the Earl of Scarborough that of cofferer of the household. Sir Charles Saunders quitted his post of first lord of the admiralty, and, at the same time, Sir William Meredith and Admiral Keppel resigned their seats as his subordinate lords. "Your friend, yellow Saunders," writes Gilly Williams to George Selwyn, "gave up yesterday. He gave for the only reason that, at his time of life, he could not think of living without the Keppels." Lord Chatham, in his difficulty, proposed to fill up the vacancies in his motley administration from the ranks of the powerful Bedford party, with which object he caused several tempting overtures to be made to the Duke of Bedford, two of which were to create his son, Lord Tavistock, a peer, and to confer on Lord Gower the appointment of master of the horse. So exorbitant, however, were the demands of the "Bloomsbury Gang" for garters, peerages,

and places, that the king with good reason declared their terms to be too extravagant, and the negotiation was in consequence broken off. Accordingly Lord Chatham was left to patch up his ministry as best he might. Sir Edward Hawke was appointed first lord of the admiralty; the Earl of Hillsborough and Lord Le Despencer joint postmastergenerals, and the Duke of Ancaster, master of the horse in the room of the Earl of Hertford, who was appointed lord chamberlain.

The present epoch was a humiliating one in the career of the illustrious Chatham. From having been the most popular, he had become one of the most unpopular ministers of his age. The haughty dictator of former days had not only sunk into an ordinary bolsterer-up of a sickly administration, but of an administration as incompetent as any that had formerly trembled at his denunciations, or deprecated his contempt. The aristocracy hated him for his insolence. The people imag

ined he had sold them for a coronet. The king alone remained his friend, his stanch, fearless, and ever encouraging friend. As might have been expected, the many difficulties by which he was beset his sense of altered greatness, his estrangement from Lord Temple, as well as the constant and harassing attacks of a formidable opposition

produced their worst effects upon a body which had been long diseased, and upon a mind which appears to have been constitutionally hypochon