THE DUKE OF GRAFTON

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The Duke of Grafton, like Lord Rockingham, was a man of pleasure, happier with his dogs and his books than in political life; and he would rather have abandoned politics than his mistress, to whom his attachment was notorious, although, according to "Junius," she was at this time, faded beauty," and according to Walpole, of the commonest creatures in London." seems that she had influence over him, and he was certainly proud of the connexion. "He brings everybody to dine with him," Lady Temple has recorded. "His female friend sits at the upper end of his table; some do like it, and some do not. She is very pious, a constant Churchwoman, and reproves his Grace for swearing and being angry, which he owns is very wrong, and, with great submission, begs her pardon for being so ill-bred before her." He appeared with her at Ascot, and even at the Opera when the King and Queen were present, a piece of bad taste that gave "Junius Junius" an opening, of which he was not slow to avail himself. "If vice could be excused, there is yet a certain display of it, a certain outrage

1 "The account of the Cabinet Council being put off-first for a match at Newmarket, and secondly because the Duke of Grafton had company in his house-exhibits a lively picture of the present administration."-George Grenville to Whately, October 20, 1767.

to decency, a violation of public decorum which, for the benefit of society, should never be forgiven," wrote the great satirist. "It is not that he kept a mistress at home, but that he constantly attended her abroad. It is not the private indulgence, but the public insult of which I complain. The name of Miss Parsons would scarcely have been known, if the First Lord of the Treasury had not led her in triumph through the Opera House, even in the presence of the Queen. When we see a man act in this manner we may admit the shameless depravity of his heart, but what are we to think of his understanding?" 1

The Duke undoubtedly intended to pursue the policy of Lord Chatham, but, falling under the influence of the King-who was willing enough to forgive, for his political ends, such a flagrant insult to his consort as that narrated above-it so happened that whenever the ministry moved it was in the opposite direction to that which the Earl would have desired.

1 Letter signed "Philo-Junius," June 22, 1769.

CHAPTER XVI

THE KING'S RULE

THE Duke of Grafton as a matter of course now became Prime Minister, but there were not wanting signs that the administration would not long endure, and when Lord Chatham reappeared in the political arena it was obvious its days were numbered. The famous statesman's return was most unexpected, for he was still supposed to be in the country, incapable of ever again transacting business.1 "He himself," wrote Walpole on July 7, 1769, “ in propria personâ, and not in a straightwaistcoast, walked into the King's levée this morning, and was in the closet twenty minutes after the levée." At his interview Chatham told George that he disapproved of the policy of the ministry, especially as regarded Wilkes and America —a statement calculated to alarm the King, who

1 " At length the clouds which had gathered over his mind broke and passed away. His gout returned, and freed him from a more cruel malady. His nerves were newly braced. His spirits became buoyant. He woke as from a sickly dream. It was a strange recovery. Men had been in the habit of talking of him as of one dead, and, when he first showed himself at the King's levée, started as if they had seen a ghost. It was more than two years and a half since he had appeared in public."-Macaulay: The Earl of Chatham.

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approved of the action taken. "For my part," said the Earl, "I am grown old, and unable to fill any office of business; but this I am resolved on, that I will not even sit at Council but to meet Lord Rockingham. He, and he alone, has a knot of spotless friends, such as ought to govern this kingdom." As he emerged from the Royal Closet, Chatham encountered Grafton, and, embittered especially by the remembrance of the dismissal of his personal friend, Sir Jeffrey Amherst, from the post of Governor of Virginia, greeted him with the utmost coldness. It was to be war to the death, and Chatham was too great a man to veil his enmity under the cloak of friendship.

The battle began after the reassembling of Parliament on January 9, 1770, when the King in his speech referred to a distemper which had recently appeared among the horned cattle. This was seized upon by the caricaturists, and denounced by "Junius": "While the whole kingdom was agitated with anxious expectation upon one great point, you meanly evaded the question, and instead of the explicit firmness and decision of a king, gave us nothing but the misery of a ruined grazier and the whining piety of a Methodist." It has not been made clear whether this was inserted by the King, who in his capacity of farmer was much perturbed by the ravages made

THE KING'S UNPOPULARITY

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by the disease, or whether it was an attempt to attract the attention of Parliament to this rather than to more serious issues.

Serious issues enough there were at the end of 1769 to occupy the attention of all thoughtful men. The English were undeniably angry, the Wilkes affair was dividing parties and sowing dissension between statesmen, and America was threateningly restless. The King's treatment of the City's remonstrance 1 had aroused to a fine frenzy habitually calm folk, and discontent was so rife that rebellion itself was in the minds of

many Englishmen.” "The tumults of London, in March, 1769, which menaced with insult or attack even the palace of the sovereign, bore no feeble resemblance to the riotous disorders that preceded the Civil Wars, under Charles the First," Wraxall wrote. "A Hearse, followed by the mob, was drawn into the Court-yard at St. James's, decorated with insignia of the most humiliating and indecent description. I have always understood that the late Lord Mountmorris, then a very young man, was the person who on that occasion personated the executioner, holding an axe in his hands, and his face covered with a crape. The King's firmness did not, however, desert him, in the midst of these trying ebullitions of 1 See ante vol. I, pp. 266-7.