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- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
In "Memoirs of the Reign of King George the Third," Horace Walpole offers a meticulous chronicle of British politics and society during a tumultuous era marked by conflict and change. Spanning four volumes, this work intricately weaves together personal reflections, political commentary, and vivid accounts of historical events, revealing Walpole's acute observations and stylistic flair. Employing a blend of anecdotal narratives and scholarly analysis, he captures the complexities of the Georgian period, making it an essential text for understanding the intricacies of parliamentary maneuvers, international relations, and societal norms of the time. Horace Walpole, an influential figure in 18th-century British literature and politics, was deeply enmeshed in the very milieu he sought to document. As the son of the first prime minister, he had firsthand experience of the political landscape, which fueled his writing. Walpole's keen interest in art, literature, and antiquities also shaped his narrative approach, blending the artistic with the historical in a way that conferred both richness and authenticity to his memoirs. This comprehensive memoir not only serves as a vital historical resource but also as a captivating read for those interested in the interplay of politics and literary culture. Scholars, students, and general readers alike will find Walpole's insights both engaging and enlightening, making this work a cornerstone of 18th-century literature and history. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - A succinct Introduction situates the work's timeless appeal and themes. - The Synopsis outlines the central plot, highlighting key developments without spoiling critical twists. - A detailed Historical Context immerses you in the era's events and influences that shaped the writing. - An Author Biography reveals milestones in the author's life, illuminating the personal insights behind the text. - A thorough Analysis dissects symbols, motifs, and character arcs to unearth underlying meanings. - Reflection questions prompt you to engage personally with the work's messages, connecting them to modern life. - Hand‐picked Memorable Quotes shine a spotlight on moments of literary brilliance. - Interactive footnotes clarify unusual references, historical allusions, and archaic phrases for an effortless, more informed read.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023
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Memoirs of the Reign of King George the Third (Vol. 1-4)
Table of Contents
Introduction
A king ascends, factions circle, and a sharp-eyed observer turns the hum of court whispers and the thunder of Parliament into a lasting reckoning with power. Horace Walpole’s Memoirs of the Reign of King George the Third (Vol. 1–4) seizes on the upheavals and personalities of eighteenth-century Britain and reconfigures them as a drama of influence, character, and contingency. Written by a participant-observer steeped in the traditions and rivalries of the Whig establishment, the work captures the first, formative decade of a new reign and the evolving rules of constitutional monarchy, where motives are contested and public narratives are precariously made.
This book endures as a classic because it fuses eyewitness immediacy with literary poise, offering a portrait gallery of statesmen and a living anatomy of politics. Walpole brings to historical prose the stylistic finesse for which his correspondence is renowned, shaping a model for later political memoirs that balance character, anecdote, and analysis. Its influence rests not on grand theory but on texture: the feel of committees and cabinets, of salons and streets, of backstairs persuasion and public performance. By preserving the idiom and tempo of Georgian political life, the Memoirs helped define how later writers narrate modern power.
Horace Walpole, son of Britain’s first long-serving prime minister, composed these memoirs during and after the events they record, in the later eighteenth century. The four volumes were published posthumously in the nineteenth century, bringing to light his reserved chronicle of King George III’s early reign. The work surveys the years when ministries rose and fell with unusual speed, charting the tensions between crown, Parliament, and public opinion. It is a carefully shaped retrospective, neither a daybook nor an official history, but an insider’s narrative designed to capture the motion of events while they were still fresh in informed memory.
Walpole’s purpose is both archival and judgmental: to conserve the character of the age and to evaluate the conduct of its leaders for posterity. He writes as a witness who knows the costs of reputation, recording motives as well as outcomes while resisting the simplifications of triumph or failure. He aims to register the choreography of influence—how appointments were negotiated, coalitions assembled, and policies sold to a skeptical nation—without writing for immediate partisan advantage. By holding his account for later readers, he seeks to preserve candor, to correct superficial rumor, and to leave a measured testament of what he saw and heard.
Across its four volumes, the Memoirs trace the first phase of George III’s reign through the succession of ministries and the rivalries that shaped policy. Readers encounter the figures who defined the decade: royal favorites, reforming and cautious ministers, ambitious orators, and wary courtiers. The narrative follows cabinet formations and dissolutions, parliamentary contests, the influence of the crown, the pressures of public opinion, and the early rumblings of imperial strain. Without presuming omniscience, Walpole reconstructs scenes of consultation and conflict, showing how personal temperament and political structure met in decisions that would set patterns for the rest of the reign.
The book’s method is a distinctive blend of anecdote, character study, and institutional analysis. Walpole writes as a cultivated insider, attentive to tone, gesture, and rumor, yet alert to the mechanics of procedure and patronage. His portraits are crisp and often severe, but he complements them with observations on the ways information moves—through conversation, correspondence, and the press—and how opinion hardens into policy. The result is a narrative that proceeds less by official communique9s than by the circulation of influence, demonstrating how, in a constitutional monarchy, persuasion and perception are as consequential as laws or proclamations.
In literary history, the Memoirs sit at a crossroads between Enlightenment historiography and the more personal, character-driven narratives of the nineteenth century. They exemplify a mode of political life-writing that values proximity to events without relinquishing reflective distance. Historians and biographers have long mined the work for its vivid detail and its unfailingly specific sense of time and place, but its literary significance lies in the shaping intelligence that orders the material. Walpole’s practice suggests a template for later memoirists who treat politics as a theater where style, temperament, and circumstance contend for mastery.
Among its recurring themes are the uses and limits of royal influence, the volatility of coalition politics, and the uneasy balance between principle and expediency. Walpole scrutinizes patronage as both lubricant and solvent of governance, showing how friendships, rivalries, and family alliances steer public outcomes. He explores the rise of public opinion as a force that ministers must court and fear, and he registers the first signs of imperial friction as policy meets distance and difference. Throughout, the Memoirs consider how institutions channel ambition, how rhetoric frames reality, and how the pressures of office expose the character of those who hold it.
The book’s classic status also reflects its durable utility: it is a primary source that doubles as accomplished literature. Nineteenth- and twentieth-century scholars have returned to it for the life it breathes into cabinet lists and legislative records, while writers studying political character have found in its pages a pattern for depicting motives without dissolving them into abstraction. Its enduring readership arises from this dual authority. It enriches the archive with firsthand observation and illuminates that archive through narrative craft, reaffirming that the how of telling is inseparable from what historians and readers can come to know.
Walpole’s stance is frankly partisan, and the Memoirs invite, even require, a critical reader. He writes from a Whig vantage point trained to detect encroachments on liberty and to distrust managerial secrecy. Rather than diminish the work, this perspective clarifies its value by making its principles legible. The partiality is tempered by breadth of experience and a habit of cross-examining rumor against circumstance. The result is not neutrality but self-aware judgment, a resource that gains reliability when read alongside other accounts. The book thus teaches a method: to weigh evidence, test character, and recognize the contingencies within any political narrative.
For contemporary readers, the Memoirs offer an education in the textures of governance: the rhythms of sessions, the staging of debate, the strain of decision-making under public scrutiny. The pages open onto coffeehouses and drawing rooms as much as they do council chambers, reminding us that politics is a social art conducted through performances both intimate and grand. Walpole’s scene-making, his relish for character, and his sense of consequence give the work dramatic momentum without sacrificing analysis. It is a story of institutions and individuals in dialogue, illuminating how formal structures are constantly shaped by informal energies.
The lasting appeal of Memoirs of the Reign of King George the Third lies in its fusion of immediacy and reflection, its skepticism and its humanity. It engages perennial questions—how leaders are made and unmade, how legitimacy is maintained, how public narratives crystallize—while rendering a pivotal decade of British history with disciplined style. As a testament to the interplay of personality, principle, and power, it remains relevant to readers who navigate today’s debates about governance and media. Walpole’s classic continues to speak because it shows, with unsparing clarity, how politics works when people and institutions press upon one another.
Synopsis (Selection)
Horace Walpole’s Memoirs of the Reign of King George the Third (Volumes 1–4) is a contemporaneous chronicle of British politics from the King’s accession in 1760 to the early 1770s. Compiled from personal observation, correspondence, and parliamentary news, it arranges events year by year, focusing on court influence, ministerial changes, and public controversies. The narrative tracks how the new monarch’s household and advisers shaped policy, how Parliament responded, and how public opinion emerged as a political force. Across four volumes, the work assembles cabinet shifts, diplomatic developments, legal disputes, and metropolitan agitation, presenting a sequential record that emphasizes the mechanics of government rather than retrospective interpretation.
Volume One opens with the death of George II and the accession of George III, the formation of the young King’s court, and the rise of the Earl of Bute. It recounts the marriage to Queen Charlotte, the coronation, and the reorientation of patronage. Amid the closing campaigns of the Seven Years’ War, William Pitt resigns over policy toward Spain, and Bute consolidates control. Negotiations lead to the Treaty of Paris (1763), ending the war and redefining imperial holdings. The narrative details the dismissal of the Newcastle connection, the reshaping of the Treasury and great offices, and the first clear display of royal preference in ministerial arrangements.
After peace, the memoir records the difficulties of peacetime finance and the unpopularity of Bute’s measures, notably the cider tax, alongside intensifying pamphlet warfare. Bute resigns, and George Grenville becomes First Minister. The prosecution of John Wilkes for the North Briton No. 45 and the use of general warrants prompt legal challenges and public meetings. The account notes the roles of Lord Mansfield and other judicial figures as questions of privilege and liberty are tested. Court and cabinet negotiations continue as the King seeks steadier management, while the press and City of London assert themselves as organized participants in national politics.
The fourth year centers on imperial revenue and constitutional definitions. Grenville’s ministry advances the Stamp Act (1765) to raise colonial revenue, and reports of resistance in America arrive. Simultaneously, the Regency Bill controversy exposes tensions over influence at court. The King dismisses Grenville and turns to the Marquis of Rockingham to form a new administration. Debates in Parliament lead to the repeal of the Stamp Act, paired with the Declaratory Act affirming legislative supremacy. The volume follows attendant changes in patronage and office, recording how party groups, former Pelhamites, and independent interests reposition after the repeal and in anticipation of further measures.
With William Pitt elevated as Earl of Chatham, the memoir describes the attempt to construct a broad, non-party ministry. Chatham’s health falters, leaving the Duke of Grafton effectively to conduct business. Charles Townshend, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, introduces duties on certain imports to the American colonies, connecting imperial policy with domestic revenue needs. The record surveys concurrent questions about the East India Company’s finances and charters, and changes among law officers and the Admiralty. Foreign affairs are treated briefly while the work concentrates on cabinet cohesion, the King’s circle of personal supporters, and the procedures by which orders are framed and carried in Parliament.
Elections in 1768 bring civic issues to the fore. John Wilkes is returned for Middlesex, tried, and expelled, then repeatedly re-elected, while the House ultimately seats Colonel Luttrell. The narrative notes the associated assemblies, addresses, and processions in the City, and incidents of disorder in the metropolis. In America, resistance to the Townshend program develops, troops are sent to Boston, and seizures and non-importation agreements are reported. Abroad, the transfer of Corsica to France stirs debate over British maritime posture. The memoir presents these strands together, outlining how parliamentary privilege, municipal authority, and imperial governance converge in a sustained period of contest.
As the controversy persists, the Grafton ministry weakens. Resignations accumulate, including Lord Camden’s departure from the woolsack; changes in the law offices follow. Public letters, later associated with the name Junius, circulate. In early 1770, Grafton resigns and Lord North forms a new administration with the King’s confidence. The memoir then recounts the Falkland Islands crisis with Spain, describing mobilization, negotiation, and settlement without war. Domestically, motions on rights and grievances are debated in both Houses. The work continues to register the King’s consultations, the composition of the cabinet, and the alignment of peers and borough interests around the new ministry.
Under North, measures are taken to restore quiet while retaining the duty on tea after most Townshend duties are repealed. The memoir highlights a clash over printers reporting parliamentary debates. The Commons commit printers and confront the City when Lord Mayor Brass Crosby, Alderman Oliver, and others defend them. Proceedings, remands, and public petitions follow until prorogation brings release. The narrative also touches on ongoing American discontents and the government’s calculation to uphold authority without escalating controversy. By the end of this sequence, the administration is settled, the King’s party system appears effective, and disputes have shifted from violence toward managed institutional contention.
Taken together, the four volumes present a continuous account of the early reign, organized around ministerial transitions, legislative contests, and the interaction of court, Parliament, and public. The memoir preserves speeches, motions, and incidents to show the procedures and pressures that shaped decisions. Its sequence traces the path from war settlement to domestic agitation and imperial strain, ending before open conflict overseas. The central emphasis is on how influence is assembled and exercised: by the Crown’s advisers, by party groupings, and by increasingly mobilized constituencies. The work’s purpose is documentary, supplying a record through which the mechanics of governance in this period can be understood.
Historical Context
Horace Walpole’s Memoirs of the Reign of King George the Third are set principally in London and Westminster, the nerve centers of British power between 1760 and the early 1770s. The period begins with George III’s accession in October 1760 and spans ministries, court intrigues, and parliamentary contests that reshape imperial policy after the Seven Years’ War. Walpole writes from an insider’s vantage, as a long-serving MP and son of Sir Robert Walpole, inhabiting both the House of Commons and salons like Strawberry Hill at Twickenham. His narrative is steeped in the physical and institutional spaces of court, cabinet, clubs, and coffeehouses that manufactured British politics.
The time is marked by imperial overstretch, heightened fiscal demands, and the forging of mass political opinion through newspapers and pamphlets. Britain’s global reach after 1763 unfolds alongside metropolitan anxieties about debt, corruption, and the King’s personal influence. The social world is stratified yet porous: aristocratic patronage intersects with newly mobilized urban crowds. London guilds, livery companies, and Middlesex freeholders weigh upon politics, while provincial interests flare over excises like the cider tax. The memoirs move through these milieus, observing how the monarch’s household, ministries, and the so-called King’s Friends strive to manage Parliament amid a vibrant, litigious, and often unruly public sphere.
George III ascended the throne on 25 October 1760, declaring in his first speech that he gloried in the name of Briton. His youth, piety, and preference for personal influence promised a departure from decades of Whig oligarchy. The court sought to rebalance power away from entrenched magnates such as the Duke of Newcastle. Walpole locates the regime’s early tone in the King’s reliance on Lord Bute, his former tutor, and in the ceremonial consolidation of authority: marriage to Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz (1761) and the coronation that same year. The resulting reshuffles, dismissals, and promotions signaled a contest over who would control the war’s aftermath.
The Seven Years’ War concluded with the Treaty of Paris on 10 February 1763 and the Treaty of Hubertusburg on 15 February 1763. Britain gained Canada, Senegal posts, and Caribbean islands like Grenada, while Spain ceded Florida; France retained valuable sugar islands. The war doubled Britain’s national debt to roughly £137 million, compelling new revenue strategies. William Pitt resigned in October 1761 over disagreements about Spain, and peace was negotiated under Lord Bute. Walpole tracks the domestic divisions this peace intensified: navalists and imperial enthusiasts challenged economizers, while the city’s mercantile interests pressed for security of trade routes and indemnities after a costly global conflict.
Lord Bute’s brief premiership (1762–1763) embodied the politics of court influence. He displaced the Newcastle system, managed the peace, and aroused hostility through the 1763 cider excise, which provoked West Country protests and alarms about arbitrary searches. Patronage reoriented around a circle soon dubbed the King’s Friends. Bute’s perceived Scottish favoritism and secret counsel stoked satire and distrust, culminating in his resignation in April 1763. Walpole’s memoirs treat Bute as emblematic of the new monarchy’s intrusion into ministerial independence, charting how offices, pensions, and press management were deployed to secure votes, and how these tactics bred legitimacy crises that would haunt subsequent ministries.
George Grenville’s administration (1763–1765) repaired finances and tightened imperial administration. It prosecuted John Wilkes for seditious libel over North Briton, no. 45; issued general warrants to seize unnamed suspects; and advanced revenue measures, including colonial duties. The ministry passed the 1764 Sugar Act and pursued stricter customs enforcement. Walpole recounts Grenville’s legalistic temperament and rigid approach to authority, emphasizing how courtroom victories invited broader constitutional backlash. The use of general warrants, search of private papers, and harsh press prosecutions seemed to invert cherished Whig liberties. These policies, combined with new American taxation plans, set the stage for both colonial resistance and metropolitan radical agitation.
The Stamp Act of March 1765 imposed duties on printed materials in British America, requiring stamped paper for legal and commercial documents. Colonial assemblies denounced it as taxation without representation; mobs targeted stamp distributors; and delegates convened the Stamp Act Congress in New York in October 1765. Merchants organized nonimportation agreements. Walpole records how London financiers and manufacturers pressured for repeal as trade contracted. Under Lord Rockingham in March 1766, Parliament repealed the Act but passed the Declaratory Act, asserting full legislative authority over the colonies. The oscillation between concession and assertion foreshadowed future crises, and Walpole situates it in ministerial instability and competing imperial theories.
The Wilkes and general warrants crisis (1763–1769) crystallized conflicts over liberty, representation, and ministerial power. On 23 April 1763, John Wilkes’s North Briton, no. 45 attacked the King’s peace speech. Days later, Secretary Halifax issued a sweeping general warrant; Wilkes and dozens of printers were arrested. Wilkes claimed parliamentary privilege and secured release; he sued officials in Wilkes v. Wood (1763) and related actions that yielded damages. Landmark rulings followed, notably Entick v. Carrington (1765), declaring general warrants unlawful. Walpole depicts the episode as a proving ground for constitutional principles, exposing how executive expedients, once normalized, corroded the legal limits that underpinned Whig governance.
Exiled in France after expulsion in 1764, Wilkes returned in 1768 and stood for Middlesex, winning repeatedly. On 10 May 1768, troops fired on demonstrators at St George’s Fields while seeking his supporters, killing several; the incident became a rallying cry. The Commons then voided Wilkes’s elections and seated the government-backed Henry Lawes Luttrell in 1769. Public petitions swelled; the Society of the Supporters of the Bill of Rights (1769) coordinated fundraising and agitation. Walpole charts how civic bodies in the City of London and the Middlesex freeholders asserted themselves against parliamentary majorities, testing the boundary between electoral choice and legislative privilege.
The struggle extended to press freedom. In 1771, the House of Commons attempted to arrest printers reporting debates; London’s Lord Mayor Brass Crosby and Alderman Oliver resisted and were committed to the Tower. A public uproar forced retreat, and verbatim reporting took hold. Walpole’s account links these conflicts to the anatomy of influence: royal household pressure, ministerial patronage, and judicial instruments collided with a broadened public sphere. The Wilkes saga, in his telling, embodies the era’s pivot from elite-managed coalition politics to mass-participatory contention. It also frames later questions of legitimacy that shadowed Lord North’s tenure and Britain’s mounting colonial confrontation.
The Rockingham ministry (July 1765–July 1766) repealed the Stamp Act and curtailed general warrants, reinstating General Henry Seymour Conway, Walpole’s ally, who had been dismissed for opposing such measures. Rockingham’s cabinet, a revival of Old Corps Whigs, strove to stabilize finances and soothe colonial tensions while upholding supremacy via the Declaratory Act. Walpole emphasizes the limits of this reconciliation: the City’s credit, mercantile petitions, and a shifting press remained volatile. The King’s discomfort with Rockingham’s independence led to another reconfiguration, as William Pitt returned to office with unparalleled popularity but, as Earl of Chatham, entered the Lords, complicating command of the Commons.
Chatham’s administration (1766–1768) was fractured by his illness and by divergent policies. Charles Townshend, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, engineered the 1767 Townshend duties on glass, paper, paint, and tea, and created the American Board of Customs at Boston. Nonimportation boycotts spread; British troops were sent to Boston in 1768 amid customs clashes, including the seizure of John Hancock’s Liberty. Walpole maps how ministerial drift and the lack of a durable Commons leader ceded ground to the court and to factional maneuver. He observes the unintended link between fiscal experimentation and popular mobilization, as transatlantic protests fed back into metropolitan radicalism.
The Grafton ministry (1768–1770) navigated crisis at home and abroad. In Corsica, France displaced Genoese rule in 1768; Pasquale Paoli’s forces were defeated at Ponte Novu in 1769, and Paoli took refuge in Britain, becoming a cause célèbre among London patriots. At home, the Middlesex election dispute and urban disorders embarrassed the government. Walpole’s circle intersected with figures who championed Paoli as a republican hero, reading continental events through British constitutional anxieties. Meanwhile, court influence solidified behind the scenes. The ministry’s inability to settle Wilkes, to control the press, or to project firmness abroad prepared the ground for a decisive reassertion of royal strategy.
The Falklands Crisis (1770) brought Britain and Spain to the brink after Spanish forces expelled the British garrison from Port Egmont. Public indignation and a naval mobilization ensued. Diplomatic concessions restored the base and averted war by early 1771, but the episode toppled the Grafton ministry. On 28 January 1770, Lord North became First Lord of the Treasury and Prime Minister, inaugurating a long tenure under the King’s confidence. Walpole interprets the crisis as proof that foreign policy shocks could reorder domestic coalitions. The settlement coincided with a deliberate consolidation of the King’s Friends, underwriting North’s capacity to command Commons majorities.
Imperial finance and the East India Company’s power unsettled politics from 1769 onward. After acquiring Bengal’s diwani (1765), the Company’s revenue extraction coincided with the catastrophic Bengal famine of 1769–1770, which killed millions and destabilized trade. Dividend controversies, patronage, and tales of nabob wealth stirred demands for regulation and moral reform. Although the formal rescue and regulating statute would come in 1773, Walpole records earlier alarms in the City and Parliament: share price volatility, petitions, and pamphlets alleging misrule. He treats these as symptoms of a state-private nexus that blurred accountability, feeding metropolitan critiques of corruption and the insufficiency of unreformed parliamentary oversight.
Walpole’s memoirs serve as a political critique by unveiling the circuitry of influence: royal will, courtiers, and the King’s Friends manipulating placemen and boroughs to preempt independent ministries. He highlights how general warrants, selective prosecutions, and privilege claims threatened the constitutional settlement. The Middlesex elections, the printers’ struggle of 1771, and the refusal to heed mercantile petitions about American measures expose a Parliament vulnerable to executive management. By foregrounding Conway’s dismissal and reappointment, he indicts reprisals against conscientious dissent. The work thus dramatizes the erosion of Whig liberty principles by expediency, and the dangers of subordinating Commons legitimacy to courtly convenience.
As social critique, the memoirs indict class-bound patronage and the inequities of unreformed representation: rotten boroughs outvote populous counties, and moneyed nabobs eclipse civic virtue. Walpole records how excises like the cider tax and revenue seizures fell hardest on provincial and urban producers, while London crowds policed elites through boycotts and petitions. He charts the state’s militarization of civil order at St George’s Fields and its misreading of colonial constitutionalism, culminating in a cycle of repression and resentment. By anatomizing debt-driven policy, speculative finance, and ministerial musical chairs, the book exposes structural injustices that destabilized the polity it sought to preserve.
Author Biography
Horace Walpole (1717–1797) was an English writer, politician, collector, and tastemaker whose work helped shape both the Gothic novel and the Gothic Revival in architecture. A prominent voice of the Georgian era, he is best known for The Castle of Otranto, often cited as the first Gothic novel, and for an extraordinary body of letters that vividly document eighteenth-century society. A lifelong Whig with a sharp, ironic style, Walpole combined antiquarian curiosity with modern critical sensibilities. His villa at Strawberry Hill became a landmark of “Gothic” taste, and his coinage of the word serendipity registers his enduring influence on language as well as literature.
Educated at Eton and later at King’s College, Cambridge, Walpole absorbed classical training while cultivating a taste for the picturesque and the medieval. His social position, enhanced by being the son of a leading statesman, gave him privileged access to political life and elite cultural circles. Early travel on the Grand Tour reinforced his interest in art, architecture, and antiquities, shaping the connoisseurship that underpins much of his writing. Friendships with poets and scholars, coupled with exposure to European collections and conversations about style and history, oriented him toward a life of letters that blended erudition, sociability, and a keen eye for cultural change.
Walpole sat in the House of Commons for much of the mid-eighteenth century as a Whig, representing several constituencies over time. Although he never became a principal minister, he was an attentive observer of court and parliamentary maneuvering. His political writings circulated privately in his lifetime and more broadly after his death, notably his memoirs and journals of the reigns of George II and George III. These works, read alongside his correspondence, have long been valued for their nuanced, sometimes caustic, commentary on the personalities and practices of government, and for a constitutional sensibility wary of both arbitrary power and populist excess.
Walpole’s most visible monument is Strawberry Hill, the villa he transformed at Twickenham from the late 1740s into a fanciful Gothic residence. Working with trusted collaborators such as John Chute and Richard Bentley, he synthesized medieval motifs with modern comfort, turning the house into a showpiece of taste and a setting for his collections. He described the project in a published account of the villa and its curiosities. The site also housed his private Strawberry Hill Press, founded in the mid-1750s, which issued finely printed works by himself and others, including Odes by his friend Thomas Gray. Strawberry Hill helped popularize the Gothic Revival across Britain.
The Castle of Otranto (1764) marked Walpole’s bold experiment with fiction, melding medieval romance with contemporary narrative strategies, including the playful device of a purported found manuscript. Its atmospheric settings and supernatural shocks set patterns for later Gothic writing. He followed with The Mysterious Mother (1768), a daring verse tragedy, and with works of scholarship such as Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third (1768). As an art historian, his Anecdotes of Painting in England (1762–1771), drawn from George Vertue’s notes, and his Catalogue of Royal and Noble Authors (1758) advanced antiquarian study while reflecting his distinctive, conversational criticism.
Walpole’s letters form one of the era’s great prose achievements. Addressed to a wide circle, including the British envoy Horace Mann in Florence, they record everything from court gossip to art acquisitions, theatre, architecture, and the weather of opinion. Their wit, narrative verve, and eye for the telling detail make them indispensable to historians and a pleasure to literary readers. In a 1750s letter he introduced the term serendipity, encapsulating his belief in happy discoveries guided by alert curiosity. Posthumous collections secured his reputation as the keenest chronicler of Georgian culture, and they continue to shape interpretations of eighteenth-century politics, taste, and sociability.
In his later years, Walpole’s public role diminished as he focused on writing, collecting, and entertaining at Strawberry Hill. In the early 1790s he inherited the title of Earl of Orford, which brought him into the House of Lords, though age and health limited his activity. He died in the late 1790s. His legacy spans genres and disciplines: the Gothic novel traces its origins to Otranto; Gothic Revival architecture bears the imprint of Strawberry Hill; and his letters remain a cornerstone of eighteenth-century studies. Today he is read for innovation and insight, a bridge between antiquarian curiosity and modern literary self-consciousness.
Memoirs of the Reign of King George the Third (Vol. 1-4)
Volume 1
PREFACE.
The Memoirs of the Reign of King George the Third, by Horace Walpole (Earl of Orford), now for the first time submitted to the Public, are printed from a manuscript copy contained in the box of papers which came into the possession of the late Earl of Waldegrave, under the circumstances stated in the Preface to “The Memoires of the Last Twelve Years of the Reign of George the Second.” This manuscript was placed by Lord Waldegrave in the hands of the late Lord Holland at the same time with “the Memoires” last mentioned, and hopes were long entertained that it would have had the advantage of the editorial care which gave so much additional interest to that work; but from the date of Lord Holland’s return to office, in 1830, the little leisure he could find for literary pursuits was diverted from these volumes by engagements of a more pressing character; and it appeared at his death that he had never even commenced the task which he was of all persons eminently qualified to execute. Under these circumstances Lord Euston (now Duke of Grafton) on whom the property of the manuscript had devolved, as Lord Waldegrave’s executor, became very desirous that the publication should no longer be deferred; and happening to consult me on the subject, my interest was so much excited by a cursory perusal, that I acceded to the request made to me to prepare the Work for the press. In this I was further encouraged by the assurance I received of the zealous co-operation and assistance of the late Mr. John Allen, whose knowledge of the early years of George the Third’s reign was surpassed by none of his contemporaries (excepting, perhaps, Lord Holland), and whose participation in all the studies, and I might almost add identification with the literary pursuits of that nobleman, would have given me many of the advantages I should have derived from himself, had he been still living. I had several conversations with Mr. Allen on the plan to be pursued in editing the Work, and his hints on the characters of the individuals described in it were of essential service to me; but unhappily, before my labours had commenced in earnest, he was taken ill, and in a few days followed his friend and patron to the grave. Few of the associates of his latter days valued him more than myself, or more deeply regretted his loss; and in revising these pages, my mind has often recurred with melancholy yet grateful satisfaction to the many agreeable and most instructive hours I have passed in his and Lord Holland’s society at a house which has acquired an European celebrity as the great point of intellectual and moral reunion among the most distinguished political and literary men of the present century.
These Memoirs comprise the first twelve years of the reign of George the Third, and close the historical works of Horace Walpole. “On their merits,” to use the words of Lord Holland,1 “it would be improper to enlarge in this place. That they contain much curious and original information, will not be disputed.” In common with the Memoires of George the Second, “they treat of a part of our annals most imperfectly known to us,” with the decided advantage of the period being one marked by events of deeper interest and more congenial in their character and bearings with those which have since engaged, and still occupy our attention. The contests between Whigs and Jacobites may not be undeserving our curiosity; yet they sink into insignificance when compared with the origin and progress of the American discontents, in which may be traced the first indistinct rudiments of the great antagonistic principles and social revolutions of our own time. The Parliamentary struggles, too, in the case of General Warrants, are important, not less on account of the stores of constitutional knowledge they elicited, than from the spirit of free inquiry into the Prerogatives of the Crown on the one hand and the Privileges of the People on the other, which necessarily sprang out of them. Nor is it an uninstructive lesson to observe the efforts made by George the Third to break up the political parties which had embarrassed the reign of his predecessor. These topics are among the most prominent in the History of England during the Eighteenth Century, and they constitute the staple of the present Work. Some of the best debates on the Stamp Act, and on the proceedings against Mr. Wilkes, are here reported with a vivacity and apparent correctness which may be sought in vain elsewhere; and we meet throughout the Work the same abundance of anecdote, and the same graphic description of men and manners, that characterise the Memoires of George the Second. It gives even more copious details of the negotiations between political parties, especially those incidental to the fall of Lord Rockingham’s Administration; the gradual alienation of that nobleman and his friends from the Duke of Grafton; and the other divisions among the Whig party, which ended in the long enjoyment of power by their opponents. The records of these transactions do not, it is true, form the most dignified department of the historian, but political history is necessarily incomplete without them; and here Walpole is on his own ground. Unlike most of the writers who have minutely chronicled their times, he can neither be charged with obtaining mere imperfect or occasional glances into the councils of men in power, nor with suffering himself to be shackled by a sense of official restraint, not to say responsibility. He possessed entirely the secret of affairs, at least as long as Conway remained Minister; and so unreservedly discloses what he knew, that he might not untruly boast, as he does elsewhere, “that the failings of some of his nearest friends are as little concealed as those of other persons.”2
I have little to add concerning my own share in these Memoirs. They are printed exactly as the Author left them, except that it has been thought right to suppress a few passages of an indecent tendency; and following the example of Lord Holland, “two or three passages affecting the private characters of private persons, and in no ways connected with any political event, or illustrative of any great public character, have been omitted.”3
The notes that occur without any distinguishing mark were left by the Author. It will be perceived that they seldom extend beyond a brief statement of the rank or relationship of the individuals noticed in the text. All the other notes are mine.
In compliance with a wish generally expressed after the publication of the “Memoires of the Last Twelve Years of the Reign of George the Second,” for additional information respecting many of the characters described in that work, I have enlarged on the meagre notices left by Walpole, and endeavoured to correct his errors—taking, as my model, the annotations of Lord Dover and Mr. Wright on the Author’s correspondence. My references to those popular works will be found to have been frequent, and I can venture to add my testimony to their impartiality and correctness.4 I may have unconsciously borrowed from them, where we are treating of the same individuals; but I have endeavoured, as much as possible, to steer an independent course, and the subject is sufficiently wide to admit of it. I have also carefully consulted all the contemporary authorities within my reach, and, in more than one instance, have received valuable communications from persons who either lived near the times described by Walpole, or were actually acquainted with him. My sole object, however, has been to contribute to the information of readers hitherto little conversant with the events and characters of the period under our notice. More detailed criticism on particular transactions, and some biographical sketches, too long for insertion in the notes, will be given in the Appendix to the Fourth Volume; but I have no pretensions to encroach on the province of the historian—especially since the publication of the last volume of Lord Mahon’s History of George the Third, and the recent article on Lord Chatham in the Edinburgh Review, both of which have appeared since this Work went to the press.
It was at first expected that this Work would be comprised in three volumes, but a more careful examination of the manuscript having proved a fourth to be indispensable, it is thought best not to delay the publication of the two volumes already printed, and to reserve the two concluding volumes until early in the Spring.
I have to acknowledge much kindness from various friends in the prosecution of my inquiries. Sir Edward Colebrooke, in particular, has favoured me with the loan of the manuscript autobiography of his grandfather, Sir George Colebrooke, M.P., Chairman of the East India Company, an active politician, who lived on confidential terms with the Duke of Newcastle, Lord Rockingham, and Mr. Charles Townshend; and I am indebted to Sir George Larpent for the perusal of the papers of his father, when Secretary to Lord Hertford, during the embassy of the latter at Paris.
Denis Le Marchant.
7, Harley Street,December 4, 1844.
CHAPTER I.
Motives for writing these Memoirs.—Their assistance to History.—Causes of contradictory Opinions in the Writer.—Career of George II.—Auspicious circumstances under which George III. ascended the Throne.—Firmness of the Administration.—Our Glory and Fortune in War.—Precipitate Peace.—Communication to the Prince of Wales of the death of George II.—Mr. Pitt and the Princess Amalie.—Anecdotes of the Accession of the new King.—His conduct to the Duke of Cumberland.—The first Council.—George the Second’s Will.—Anecdotes.—The King’s Speech to his Council.—Mr. Pitt and Lord Bute.—Duke of Newcastle.—Duke of Devonshire.—The King’s Mother.—Earl of Bute.—Views of other Ministers.—Union of Pitt and Newcastle.—City Politics.—Inscription on Blackfriars Bridge.—Jacobites at St. James’s.
Whoever has taken the trouble of reading my Memoirs, which relate the transactions during the last ten years of King George the Second, will have seen, that I had taken a resolution of interfering no more in public affairs. It was no ambition, or spirit of faction, that engaged me in them again. Inconstancy, or weariness of retirement, were as little the motives of my return to action. I am going to set forth the true causes; and if I am obliged to make more frequent mention of myself than I should wish to do, it will be from the necessity I am under of unfolding the secret springs of many events in which I was unwillingly a considerable actor. It is to gratify no vanity that I relate them: my portion was not brilliant. And though my counsels might have been more serviceable to my country and to my friends, if they had been more followed, they were calculated to produce neither glory nor profit to myself, and were much oftener neglected than listened to. Nor should they be remembered here, if many miscarriages had not accrued from the neglect of them, as was felt and confessed by those to whom they had been suggested.
How far I have been in the right or in the wrong, I leave to the judgment of posterity, who shall be impartially informed; and who may draw some benefit from the knowledge of what I have seen; though few persons, I believe, profit much from history. Times seldom resemble one another enough to be very applicable; and if they do, the characters of the actors are very different. They, too, who read history most, are seldom performers in the political drama. Yet they who have performed any part in it, are at least able to give the best account of it, though still an imperfect one. No man is acquainted with the whole plot; as no man knows all the secret springs of the actions of others. His passions and prejudices warp his judgment, and cast a mist before the most penetrating sagacity. Yet, partial as the narratives of the actors must be, they will certainly approach nearer to truth than those of spectators, who, beholding nothing but events, pretend to account for them from causes which they can but suppose, and which frequently never existed. It is this assistance to history which I now offer, and by which I may explain some passages, which might otherwise never be cleared up.
I have a new reason for repeating here, what I have said in former pages, that these are memoirs, not history. The inequality, and perhaps even the contradictory opinions which may appear in them from being written at different periods, forbid this work to aim at the regular march of history. As I knew men more, I may have altered my sentiments of them;—they themselves may have changed. If I had any personal causes for changing my opinion, I have told them fairly, that the fault may be imputed to my passions, rather than to those I speak of. The actions of the persons must determine whether they altered, or I was prejudiced. But, though this dissonance may cast unequal colours on my work, I choose to leave it as I wrote it, having at each period spoken truth as it appeared to me. I might have made it more uniform by correction; but the natural colouring would have been lost; and I should rather have composed than written a history. As it stands an original sketch, it is at least a picture of my own mind and opinions. That sketch may be valuable to a few, who study human nature even in a single character.
But I will make no farther apology for a work which I am sensible has many faults; which I again declare I do not give as a history; and to which, if it has not merits sufficient to atone for its blemishes, I desire no quarter may be given. Remember, reader, I offer you no more than the memoirs of men who had many faults, written by a man who had many himself; and who writes to inform you, not to engross your admiration. Had he given you a perfect history, and a flattering picture of himself, his work would have been a romance, and he an impostor. He lived with a contempt of hypocrisy; and writes as he lived.
George the Second, contradicting the silly presages drawn from parallels, which had furnished opposition with names of unfortunate Princes, who were the second of their name, as Edward, Richard, Charles, and James, terminated his career with glory both to himself and his people. He died, crowned with years and honours, and respected from success; which with the multitude is the same as being beloved. He left a successor in the vigour of youth, ready to take the reins, and a ministry universally applauded, united, and unembarrassed by opponents.
No British monarch had ascended the throne with so many advantages as George the Third. Being the first of his line born in England, the prejudice against his family as foreigners ceased in his person—Hanover was no longer the native soil of our Princes; consequently, attachment to the Electorate was not likely to govern our councils, as it had done in the last two reigns. This circumstance, too, of his birth, shifted the unpopularity of foreign extraction from the House of Brunswick to the Stuarts. In the flower and bloom of youth, George had a handsome, open, and honest countenance; and with the favour that attends the outward accomplishments of his age, he had none of the vices that fall under the censure of those who are past enjoying them themselves.
The moment of his accession was fortunate beyond example. The extinction of parties had not waited for, but preceded the dawn of his reign. Thus it was not a race of factions running to offer themselves, as is common, to a new Prince, bidding for his favour, and ready each to be disgusted, if their antagonists were received with more grace; but a natural devolution of duty from all men to the uncontroverted heir of the Crown, who had no occasion to court the love of his subjects, nor could fear interrupting established harmony, but by making any change in a system so well compacted. The administration was firm, in good harmony with one another, and headed by the most successful genius that ever presided over our councils. Conquest had crowned our arms with wonderful circumstances of glory and fortune; and the young King seemed to have the option of extending our victories and acquisitions, or of giving peace to the world, by finding himself in a situation so favourable, that neither his ambition nor moderation could have been equitably reprehended. The designs and offences of France would have justified a fuller measure of revenge; moderation could want no excuse.
A passionate, domineering woman, and a Favourite, without talents, soon drew a cloud over this shining prospect.
Without anticipating events too hastily, let it suffice to say, that the measure of war was pushed, without even a desire that it should be successful; and that, although successful, it was unnaturally checked by a peace, too precipitate, too indigested, and too shameful, to merit the coldest eulogy of moderation.
The first moment of the new reign afforded a symptom of the Prince’s character; of that cool dissimulation in which he had been so well initiated by his mother, and which comprehended almost the whole of what she had taught him. Princess Amalie, as soon as she was certain of her father’s death, sent an account of it to the Prince of Wales; but he had already been apprised of it. He was riding, and received a note from a German valet-de-chambre, attendant on the late King, with a private mark agreed upon between them, which certified him of the event. Without surprise or emotion, without dropping a word that indicated what had happened, he said his horse was lame, and turned back to Kew. At dismounting he said to the groom, “I have said this horse is lame; I forbid you to say the contrary.”
Mr. Pitt was the first who arrived at Kensington, and went to Princess Amalie for her orders. She told him nobody could give him better counsel than his own. He asked if he ought not to go to the Prince? she replied, she could not advise him; but thought it would be right. He went. I mention these little circumstances, because they show from Mr. Pitt’s uncertainty, that he was possessed with none of the confidence and ardour of a man who thinks himself a favourite.
From Kew the new King went directly to Carleton House, which belonged to the Princess Dowager; ordering his servants and the Privy Council to wait for him at Saville House, then his own residence; and adjoining to Leicester House, where the Princess usually lived. The Duke of Cumberland went to Leicester House, and waited two hours; but was sent for, as soon as the King knew it, to Carleton House, where he determined to stay, and avoid the parade and acclamation of passing through the streets: at the same time dismissing the guards, and ordering them to attend the body of his grandfather.
To the Duke of Cumberland he marked great kindness, and told him it had not been common in their family to live well together; but he was determined to live well with all his family. And he carried this attention so far, as to take notice to the Duke after council, that his friend Mr. Fox looked in great health. And again, when the Privy Council had made their address to his Majesty by the mouth of the Archbishop, it not being thought decent that the compliment on the death of his father should be uttered by the Duke, the King remarked it, and expressed an apprehension that they had put a slight upon his uncle. Nor would he suffer the name of his brother, the Duke of York, to be mentioned in the public prayers, because it must have taken place of that of the Duke of Cumberland.
At that first council the King spoke to nobody in particular but his former governor, Lord Waldegrave. His speech to them he made with dignity and propriety. In whatever related to his predecessor, he behaved with singular attention and decency, refusing at first to give the word to the guard; and then only renewing what the late King had given. He sent to Princess Amalie to know where her father’s will was deposited. She said, one copy had been entrusted to her eight or nine years before; but thinking the King had forgotten it, she had lately put him in mind of it. He had replied, “Did not she know, that when a new will was made, it cancelled all preceding?” No curiosity, no eagerness, no haste was expressed by the new King on that head; nor the smallest impediment thrown in the way of his grandfather’s intentions. A Gentleman5 of the Bedchamber was immediately dismissed, who refused to sit up with the body, as is usual. Wilmot6 and Ranby,7 the late King’s physician and surgeon, acquainted the King with two requests of their master, which were punctually complied with. They were, that his body might be embalmed as soon as possible, and a double quantity of perfumes used; and that the side of the late Queen’s coffin, left loose on purpose, might be taken away, and his body laid close to hers.
In his first council the King named his brother the Duke of York, and Lord Bute,8 of the Cabinet. As no notice was taken of Lord Huntingdon, it indicated an uncertainty, whether he, who had been Master of the Horse to the King when Prince, or Lord Gower, who had held that office under the late King, should fill the post. To the Speaker of the House of Commons the King said, it should not be his fault if that assembly did not go upon business earlier in the day than they had done of late: a flattering speech to an old man attached to old forms.
The King’s speech to his council afforded matter of remark, and gave early specimen of who was to be the confidential minister, and what measures were to be pursued: for it was drawn by Lord Bute, and communicated to none of the King’s servants. It talked of a bloody and expensive war, and of obtaining an honourable and lasting peace. Thus was it delivered; but Mr. Pitt went to Lord Bute that evening, and after an altercation of three hours, prevailed that in the printed copy the words should be changed to an expensive but just and necessary war; and that after the words honourable peace should be inserted, in concert with our allies. Lord Mansfield and others counselled these palliatives too; but it was two o’clock of the following afternoon before the King would yield to the alteration. Whether, that the private Junto could not digest the correction, or whether to give an idea of his Majesty’s firmness, I know not: but great pains were taken to imprint an idea of the latter, as characteristic of the new reign; and it was sedulously whispered by the creatures of the Favourite and the mother, that it was the plan to retain all the late King’s ministers, but that his Majesty would not be governed by them, as his grandfather had been. In confirmation of part of this advertisement, the King told the Duke of Newcastle and Mr. Pitt, that he knew their attachment to the Crown, and should expect theirs, and the assistance of all honest men.
Mr. Pitt was too quicksighted not to perceive what would be the complexion of the new reign. His favourite war was already struck at. He himself had for some time been on the coldest terms with Lord Bute; for possession of power, and reversion of power, could not fail to make two natures so haughty, incompatible. It was said, and I believe with truth, that an outset so unpromising to his darling measures, made Mr. Pitt propose to the Duke of Newcastle a firm union against the Favourite; but the Duke loved intrigues and new allies too well to embrace it. And from that refusal has been dated Mr. Pitt’s animosity to Newcastle; though the part the latter took more openly and more hostilely against him afterwards was sufficient cause for that resentment. Whether these two men, so powerful in parliament and in the nation, could have balanced the headlong affection that attends every new young Prince, is uncertain,—I think they could. A war so triumphant had captivated the whole country. The Favourite was unknown, ungracious, and a Scot: his connexion with the Princess, an object of scandal. He had no declared party; and what he had, was insignificant. Nor would he probably have dared to stem such a body of force as would have appeared against him. At least the union of Pitt and Newcastle would have checked the torrent, which soon carried everything in favour of Prerogative. Newcastle’s time-serving undermined Mr. Pitt, was destructive to himself, threw away all the advantages of the war, and brought the country to the brink of ruin.
Yet this veteran, so busy, so selfish, and still so fond of power, for a few days acted the part he ought to have adopted in earnest. He waited on the King, pleaded his age, and begged to be excused from entering on a new reign. The King told him he could not part with him. Fortified with this gracious and comfortable command, he next consulted his friends. It was not their interest to point out to him the ridicule of thinking to rule in the Cabinet of a third George, almost a boy. Four days more determined the Duke to take a new court-lease of folly.9
The Duke of Devonshire,10 though greatly younger, might not have been without difficulties too, if he had pleased to remember them. He had been ill-treated in the late reign by the Prince and the Princess Dowager, hated the Favourite, and had declared he would quit, whenever the new reign should commence; but he thought better of it.
The Princess, whose ambition yielded to none, was desirous to figure in the new era, and demanded to be declared Princess-Mother. Precedents were searched for in vain; and she missed even this shadow of compensation for the loss of the appellation of Queen—a loss which she showed a little afterwards she could not digest.
The Earl of Bute seemed to act with more moderation. His credit was manifest; but he allotted himself no ministerial office, contenting himself for the present with the post of Groom of the Stole, which he had filled under the Prince, and for which room was prepared, by removing the Earl of Rochford11 with a large pension. Lord Bute’s agents gave out, that he would upon no account interfere or break with Mr. Pitt. The latter, however, did not trust to these vague assurances, but endeavoured to maintain the preceding system: talked to the King of the Duke of Newcastle as first minister, and as wishing him to continue so; and said he had never chosen any other channel for his addresses or demands to the late King—an intimation that he would make none through Lord Bute. For himself, he had meddled with nothing but the war, and he wished his Majesty to give some mark that he approved the measures of the late reign.
The other ministers were not less attentive to their own views. The Duke of Bedford12 insisted on returning to the Government of Ireland, and that Lord Gower13 should remain Master of the Horse; but the latter point was accommodated by the removal of Sir Thomas Robinson (with a pension) from the Great Wardrobe, which was bestowed on Lord Gower; and Lord Huntingdon continued in the post he had enjoyed under the Prince. Mr. Mackenzie, the Favourite’s brother, was destined to be Master of the Robes, but was forced to give way to the Duke of Newcastle, who obtained it for Mr. Brudenel;14 for though bent on making his court, his Grace as often marred his own policy as promoted it.
Yet this seeming union of Pitt and Newcastle, on which the influence of the former in some measure depended, disgusted the City. They said, that Mr. Pitt had temporized with Newcastle before from necessity, but now it was matter of election. Yet by the intervention of Mr. Pitt’s agents, the City of London recommended to the King to be advised by his grandfather’s ministers; and they even hinted at the loss the King of Prussia would suffer by the death of his uncle. Their attachment to their idol did not stop there. The first stone of the new bridge at Blackfriars was laid by the Lord Mayor a few days after the King’s accession, and on it was engraved so bombast an inscription in honour of Mr. Pitt, and drawn up in such bad Latin, that it furnished ample matter of ridicule to his enemies.
The Favourite, though traversed in his views by the power of these two predominant men, had not patience to be wholly a cypher, but gave many lesser and indirect marks of his designs. A separate standard was to be erected. Lord George Sackville had leave to pay his duty to the King, and was well received; which gave such offence to Mr. Pitt, that Lord George was privately instructed to discontinue his attendance. Lady Mary Stuart,15 daughter of the Favourite, and Lady Susan Stuart,16 daughter of the Earl of Galloway, a notorious and intemperate Jacobite, were named of the Bedchamber to the Lady Augusta, the King’s eldest sister; and Sir Henry Erskine17 was restored to his rank, and gratified with an old regiment. The Earl of Litchfield, Sir Walter Bagot, and the principal Jacobites, went to Court, which George Selwyn, a celebrated wit, accounted for, from the number of Stuarts that were now at St. James’s.
CHAPTER II.
Countenance shown to Tories.—Effect of Tory Politics on the Nation.—Plan to carry the Prerogative to an unusual height.—Unpopularity and Seclusion of the Princess of Wales.—Difficulty of access to the King.—Manœuvres of his Mother.—Character of Lord Bute, and his Schemes to conciliate the King.—Archbishop Secker.—Character of George III.—Intended Duel between the Earl of Albemarle and General Townshend.—Cause of the Quarrel.—The King’s Speech.—Pitt and Beckford.—Increase of the Court Establishment.—The Dukes of Richmond and Grafton.—Interview between Lord Bute and the Duke of Richmond.—Advice to the latter by the Duke of Cumberland.—The King’s Revenue.—The Princess Dowager’s Passion for Money.—The Earl of Lichfield.—Viscount Middleton.—Partiality to the Tories.—Inconsistency of the Duke of Newcastle.—Irish Disputes.—The King of Prussia’s Victory over Marshal Daun.—Mauduit’s Pamphlet on the German War.—Ways and Means for the ensuing Year.
