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- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
In 'The History of King George the Third,' Horace Walpole meticulously chronicles the tumultuous reign of one of Britain's most iconic monarchs, offering an intricate blend of historical narrative and personal insight. Employing an elegant and accessible prose style reminiscent of 18th-century epistolary literature, Walpole navigates the political landscapes of his time while incorporating vivid character portraits and anecdotal evidence. This work engages with themes of power, governance, and national identity, casting light upon the sociopolitical upheavals'—including the American Revolution'—that marked George III's time on the throne. Horace Walpole, an esteemed statesman, and writer, inherited a legacy of intellectual inquiry as the son of Britain's first Prime Minister. His experiences within the political arena and his connections to influential contemporaries informed his nuanced understanding of monarchy and statecraft, thereby enriching his interpretations in this historical account. Walpole's position in society provided him with a privileged vantage point, blending personal observation with a broader commentary on the complexities of leadership during a time of change. For readers interested in the intersections of literature and history, Walpole's work offers a compelling lens through which to view the intricacies of the British monarchy. 'The History of King George the Third' is not only a historical text but also a reflection of the author's own experiences and acute observations, making it indispensable for those seeking to understand the human dimensions of historical events. 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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The History of King George the Third
Table of Contents
Introduction
A young king steps onto a crowded stage where ambition speaks louder than crowns. In Horace Walpole’s The History of King George the Third, the spectacle of power is rendered through sharp observation and an ear attuned to the whispers of court and Parliament. The book traces the opening movements of a long reign, dwelling on the exchanges, rivalries, and calculated gestures that shaped British politics in the late eighteenth century. Walpole’s lens is intimate yet expansive, attentive to character as much as to circumstance. The result is a portrait of governance as lived experience, not abstract theory, vibrant with incident and implication.
This work endures as a classic because it marries literary finesse to historical immediacy. Walpole’s prose animates political life with a novelist’s sense of scene and a historian’s appetite for causation, demonstrating how personalities and institutions intertwine. The book’s lasting influence lies in its hybrid method: a history rooted in eyewitness testimony that nonetheless reads with the rhythm of narrative art. Subsequent writers of political biography and narrative history have drawn from its example of intimate, character-driven analysis. Its themes—authority, legitimacy, faction, and the performance of leadership—remain foundational to how later literature imagines public life and the pressures that form it.
Horace Walpole, an English writer and statesman born in 1717, composed this account from notes and reflections gathered during and after the events it describes. The History of King George the Third focuses on the early phase of George III’s reign, which began in 1760, offering a guided tour of courtly dynamics, parliamentary maneuvering, and ministerial change. Though completed with publication in mind beyond his own lifetime, Walpole’s purpose was to preserve a candid record for posterity. He aims to capture how decisions were made, why actors acted, and what atmospheres prevailed—without reducing politics to mere chronology or doctrine.
Walpole writes from within the corridors he depicts. As a member of Parliament and the son of a former prime minister, he observed high politics at close range and drew upon a wide network of correspondence and conversation. This vantage allows him to chart the interplay between formal authority and informal influence—the salons, private interviews, and shifting alliances that give power its texture. He is keen on the moods of the moment: who hesitated, who pressed forward, who yielded. The book’s authority stems not from distance but from proximity, a sense that the writer watched the curtain rise and fall in real time.
The narrative is shaped by Walpole’s talent for character and scene. Ministers, courtiers, and royal confidants are sketched with economical precision, each detail set to illuminate a habit of mind or method of influence. Episodes unfold like dramatic tableaux: a contested appointment, a speech with unexpected ramifications, a misjudged gesture that tilts a balance. Without sacrificing clarity, Walpole preserves complexity, allowing contradictions to stand and motives to remain layered. His prose moves crisply between incident and analysis, inviting readers to infer connections and weigh alternatives rather than accept a single explanatory thread as sufficient.
No account of such immediacy is neutral, and Walpole is frank in his preferences and reservations. A Whig sensibility informs his judgments, yet his candor also exposes the assumptions of the age, rendering bias both a lens and a historical artifact. Readers learn to read with and against him, recognizing where sympathy sharpens insight and where antipathy narrows it. The book’s value thus lies in double measure: as testimony from a participant observer and as a study in the rhetoric of political description. It teaches how narratives about power are made, circulated, contested, and remembered.
Over time, the work has become a touchstone for scholars and general readers seeking an intimate map of the early Georgian political landscape. Historians mine its pages for detail, cross-checking episodes with other sources; writers of political life appreciate its brisk portraits and orchestrated scenes. Its influence is evident in later narrative histories that foreground personality and atmosphere alongside policy. The book exemplifies how to convert archival immediacy into storytelling without sacrificing scrutiny. Its legacy is not a single school or doctrine, but a practice: to let the voices of an age sound and to weigh them with disciplined attention.
Although written close to the events, the book reached the public long after Walpole’s death, a delayed unveiling that preserved its frankness. Posthumous publication in the nineteenth century framed it both as a primary source and a literary artifact, with editors presenting material shaped from notes, memoranda, and retrospective organization. That layered genesis explains its distinctive balance of freshness and reflection. The temporal gap also affects reception: readers encounter a document saturated with the immediacy of its moment, yet filtered through careful arrangement, reminding us that history often arrives mediated by time, intention, and the hands that prepare it.
At its core, the book anatomizes the relationship between character and system. It tracks how temperament, conviction, and calculation can accelerate or impede institutional aims, and how the aura of monarchy interacts with the demands of parliamentary government. Themes of reputation, patronage, and public opinion weave through the narrative. Walpole shows that political life is never solely enacted in chambers or councils; it also unfolds in letters, rumor, and ceremony. The recurrent tension between continuity and change sets the pulse of the story, as traditions and innovations confront one another in the everyday work of rule.
For contemporary readers, the book’s relevance lies in its vision of politics as performance under scrutiny. The pressures Walpole records—managing allies, interpreting signals, speaking to multiple audiences—resonate in any era of contested authority and watchful observers. It offers a study in leadership without resorting to abstraction: decisions emerge from crowded rooms, competing briefs, and shifting moods. The text encourages readers to think critically about sources, motives, and the stories power tells about itself. In doing so, it models how to regard the spectacle of governance with curiosity, skepticism, and attention to human particularity.
The reading experience is both brisk and layered. Scenes come alive with precise touches, then widen into appraisal, producing a rhythm that alternates action and reflection. Walpole’s sentences carry the cadence of conversation shaped by exacting memory, while his structure favors clusters of episodes that cumulatively outline larger patterns. The prose is clear yet nuanced, alert to irony without sacrificing fairness. Readers will find neither a dry digest nor a romanticized chronicle, but a measured unfolding of events that invites inference. The book rewards slow attention, yielding insight on the second glance, as motives and consequences reveal their subtle contours.
In sum, The History of King George the Third stands as a classic for its union of witness and art, its steady gaze on character within system, and its ability to make politics intelligible without stripping it of complexity. It captures the feel of a reign’s beginning while suggesting the enduring structures that guide and constrain power. Its themes—authority, accountability, faction, and the shaping force of perception—remain alive for modern readers. By combining proximity to events with crafted narrative, Walpole offers a lasting guide to how history is lived, recorded, and read, and why it continues to matter.
Synopsis (Selection)
The History of King George the Third by Horace Walpole presents a contemporaneous chronicle of the early reign, compiled from the author’s notes, letters, and parliamentary observations. Covering roughly 1760 to 1771, it records court intrigues, ministerial changes, and public controversies as they occurred, with attention to how royal influence shaped policy. Walpole arranges events year by year, identifying principal actors and tracing the consequences of their decisions. The narrative emphasizes cabinet realignments, debates in both Houses, and reactions in the press and the City. Intended as materials for future historians, it proceeds as a documentary account rather than a retrospective argument.
Opening with the accession of George III in 1760, the work outlines the altered character of the court under a young monarch determined to assert independence from Hanoverian precedents. Walpole notes the rise of John Stuart, Earl of Bute, and the influence of the Princess Dowager of Wales, which unsettled the established Whig connection. Amid the closing stages of the Seven Years’ War, ministers weigh peace or continued prosecution. William Pitt’s resignation signals a shift in direction. Early chapters survey appointments, royal households, and the consolidation of a new administration, setting the stage for negotiations that would culminate in a general peace.
With Bute at the helm, the narrative follows the pursuit of peace with France and Spain, leading to the Treaty of Paris in 1763. Domestic measures, notably the cider excise, spark resistance in the country and the press. The case of John Wilkes and his periodical raises the issue of general warrants, testing the limits of executive authority and legal protections. Mounting unpopularity and factional strains prompt Bute’s resignation. Walpole records the transfer of power and the balancing of court confidence with parliamentary arithmetic, marking the first in a series of rapid ministerial turnovers that define the reign’s opening decade.
George Grenville’s administration is depicted as orderly but contentious, dealing with revenue, press freedoms, and the management of the House of Commons. The Wilkes prosecutions and debates on general warrants continue, pushing questions of privilege and the jurisdiction of courts. Financial measures include the American Stamp Act, framed as a means to share imperial costs after the war. The Regency Bill exposes tensions around succession and the role of the Princess Dowager. Walpole charts the fracturing relations between Grenville and the King, parliamentary maneuvering, and the circumstances that enable a change of ministry despite Grenville’s command of the Commons.
The Rockingham ministry, brief yet consequential, aims at conciliation and constitutional regularity. It secures the repeal of the Stamp Act while affirming parliamentary sovereignty through a Declaratory Act, seeking to calm transatlantic unrest without ceding legislative principle. Administrative reforms, patronage questions, and the rehabilitation of figures sidelined in earlier disputes occupy attention. Walpole catalogs speeches, divisions, and petitions that accompany the repeal. Persistent court reservations, however, limit Rockingham’s stability. As alignments shift, the return of William Pitt—now ennobled as Earl of Chatham—ushers in a coalition experiment intended to rise above party and consolidate a durable majority for the Crown.
Chatham’s broad-based administration assembles diverse talents but soon suffers from his ill health and absences. Authority gravitates toward the Duke of Grafton, while Charles Townshend advances new American duties, altering the posture of imperial taxation. The narrative details cabinet disagreements, by-elections, and the growing assertiveness of public opinion. Foreign and commercial questions, including trade balances and the East India Company’s condition, occupy ministers amid domestic agitation. Chatham’s intermittent interventions fail to arrest the ministry’s drift. Walpole notes the gradual reconfiguration of offices, the emergence of new parliamentary groups, and the steady erosion of coherence that precedes another change at the top.
Under Grafton’s leadership the government confronts an energized opposition. The 1768 elections bring John Wilkes back into national focus; his imprisonment and re-elections in Middlesex culminate in the controversial seating of Henry Luttrell, igniting constitutional protests. The Letters of Junius and civic addresses amplify criticism of ministerial influence and electoral management. Foreign policy anxieties, including the French advance in Corsica, add pressure. Resignations and reshuffles accelerate, with key legal and treasury posts in flux. Walpole narrates the unraveling of support and the circumstances of Grafton’s resignation in early 1770, paving the way for a new, more cohesive administration under Lord North.
Lord North’s early tenure emphasizes steadier management and the restoration of parliamentary command. The Falkland Islands crisis with Spain is resolved without war, while domestic controversies continue over the rights of printers and reporting of parliamentary debates, culminating in confrontations with the City of London in 1771. Fiscal housekeeping addresses civil list debts and commercial strains; in America, partial retrenchment of duties signals tactical adjustment rather than a reversal of principle. Walpole records the consolidation of court influence through reliable offices and votes, the tempering of acute instability, and the persistence of unresolved constitutional questions at home and across the Atlantic.
Closing its period with North in place, the book’s central message is a precise record of how personal influence, party structure, and public opinion interacted to shape policy in the first decade of George III’s reign. By arranging events chronologically and identifying the actors’ motives as contemporaries understood them, Walpole supplies materials for judging the balance between prerogative and parliamentary authority. Major turning points—peace in 1763, the Wilkes controversies, the Stamp Act’s repeal, the Townshend program, the Middlesex election crisis, and the Falklands dispute—form the spine of the account. The result is a sustained documentary narrative rather than a retrospective verdict.
Historical Context
The book is set in Britain during the early reign of King George III, a period beginning with his accession on 25 October 1760 and stretching through the crises of the 1760s and the global war of the late 1770s. Its geographic focus is London—St James’s Palace, Westminster, and the coffeehouses and clubs that channeled political gossip—yet the narrative radiates across the empire, from Boston and Philadelphia to Calcutta, Gibraltar, and the Caribbean. The era’s political stage was dominated by a mixed constitution balancing Crown, Lords, and Commons, but in practice driven by factional Whig groups, court influence, and an expanding, vocal public sphere shaped by newspapers and pamphlets.
Horace Walpole writes from the vantage of a well-connected opposition Whig, experienced as a Member of Parliament for King’s Lynn and as an intimate of ministerial figures such as General Henry Seymour Conway and the Marquess of Rockingham. Living at Strawberry Hill, Twickenham, Walpole observed court and cabinet maneuvering at close quarters, recording it in journals and memoirs composed soon after events. Portions of this material appeared posthumously as Memoirs of the Reign of King George III (1845, ed. Sir Denis Le Marchant) and The Last Journals of Horace Walpole during the Reign of George III (1858–59, ed. Dr. Doran), shaping the book’s time-and-place portrait of metropolitan politics and imperial strain.
George III’s accession in 1760 promised a moral, domestically rooted monarchy—he told Parliament, “born and educated in this country, I glory in the name of Briton.” The king’s determination to free himself from Whig oligarchic dominance elevated John Stuart, 3rd Earl of Bute, from royal favorite to prime minister (1762–63), signaling a new court-centered style. The early reign saw efforts to cultivate a cadre of “King’s Friends” in the Commons. In Walpole’s account, the change of tone and personnel after 1760 inaugurates the central political contest of the age: whether royal influence or party-based accountability would set the terms of government and policy.
The Treaty of Paris (10 February 1763) ended the Seven Years’ War, leaving Britain with vast gains in North America and India but also staggering debt. Bute’s peace was criticized as insufficiently exacting toward France and Spain, while his 1763 Cider Act—extending excise collection into homes—sparked West Country protests. Administrative consolidation and revenue extraction became leitmotifs. Walpole presents the peace settlement and cider controversy as early tests of the king’s chosen ministers: public unease with Bute’s policies, and his swift resignation in April 1763, foreshadow the ministerial instability that his narrative tracks throughout the reign.
The Wilkes affair (1763–1769) crystallized disputes over general warrants, parliamentary privilege, and popular representation. After John Wilkes attacked Bute in The North Briton No. 45 (April 1763), his arrest under a general warrant provoked legal challenges; Entick v. Carrington (1765) condemned such warrants, and Lord Chief Justice Pratt (later Camden) bolstered civil liberties. Wilkes’s repeated elections for Middlesex (1768–69) and expulsions incited mass cries of “Wilkes and Liberty.” Walpole records the legal milestones and the street politics, noting how the episode exposed the gap between government practice and constitutional principle—an enduring theme in his depiction of George III’s Britain.
The Stamp Act of 22 March 1765 sought to tax legal papers and printed matter in the American colonies; riots and non-importation followed. The Rockingham ministry repealed it on 18 March 1766, pairing repeal with the Declaratory Act asserting parliamentary sovereignty. Grenville’s fiscal logic collided with the colonists’ “no taxation without representation.” Walpole’s history emphasizes the interplay of personalities and policy: he applauds General Conway’s role in repeal and portrays Rockingham’s conciliatory approach as prudent statecraft. The episode, in his telling, foreshadows how misjudged revenue measures could reconfigure imperial loyalty into constitutional resistance.
Charles Townshend’s duties of 1767 on glass, lead, paint, paper, and tea rekindled colonial opposition. Customs commissioners established in Boston (1767) seized John Hancock’s sloop Liberty in 1768, prompting turmoil and the stationing of British troops. Tensions culminated in the Boston Massacre (5 March 1770). Lord North’s government repealed most duties that year, retaining only tea to symbolize authority. Walpole links the sequence to administrative hubris and ill-timed firmness: his pages trace how fragmentary concessions—paired with military presence—hardened American opinion, while at Westminster incoherent leadership sapped parliamentary capacity to craft a comprehensive imperial policy.
The battle over reporting parliamentary debates marked a shift in the political nation’s breadth. In 1771, Lord Mayor Brass Crosby and Alderman Oliver resisted Commons attempts to suppress printers, resulting in a celebrated confrontation and the practical establishment of regular reporting. Concurrently, the anonymous “Junius” letters (1769–1772) assailed ministries and the Crown’s influence. Walpole’s book registers this mediascape transformation, both by citing circulating pamphlets and by modeling a contemporaneous chronicle. He underscores how the widening public sphere constrained ministerial maneuver, making reputational politics—and the king’s efforts to shape it through patronage—central to outcomes.
The Falklands Crisis (1770–1771) tested Britain’s post-war naval readiness and diplomatic nerve. Spain expelled the British from Port Egmont in June 1770; war preparations in London, combined with French minister Choiseul’s fall, produced a convention restoring the British settlement in January 1771. Though the outpost was evacuated in 1774, British claims remained. Walpole uses the episode to juxtapose martial posturing with fiscal realities after the Seven Years’ War. His narrative argues that spectacle and prestige mattered in cabinet councils, but that the inability to sustain coherent defense and fiscal strategies foreshadowed later strains when war expanded again after 1778.
The East India Company’s Bengal revenue system, strained by the 1770 famine and the 1772 credit crisis, precipitated parliamentary intervention. The Regulating Act of 1773 created a Governor-General of Bengal (Warren Hastings) and a Supreme Court at Fort William, inaugurating imperial oversight of company rule. The Tea Act (1773), designed to aid the Company, allowed direct export to America and culminated in the Boston Tea Party (16 December 1773). Walpole charts the nexus of commerce and politics: he depicts how metropolitan attempts to stabilize imperial finance produced authoritarian gestures abroad and symbolic flashpoints that energized colonial protest.
Parliament’s Coercive Acts of 1774—Boston Port Act, Massachusetts Government Act, Administration of Justice Act, and Quartering Act—aimed to punish Boston, while the Quebec Act (1774) revised Canadian governance and religious policy. The First Continental Congress met at Philadelphia in September–October 1774, endorsing non-importation and petitioning the Crown. Walpole portrays the London debates in which firmness eclipsed conciliation, highlighting the influence of the king and “friends” within the Commons. He records conversations among Rockingham Whigs and moderates who feared that punitive policy would nationalize American resistance and entangle Britain in a protracted constitutional and military struggle.
The American Revolutionary War reshaped the reign. Fighting began at Lexington and Concord (19 April 1775), followed by Bunker Hill (17 June 1775), where heavy British losses signaled a costly conflict. George Washington took command of the Continental Army; Parliament’s Prohibitory Act (1775) effectively declared the colonies in rebellion. The Declaration of Independence (4 July 1776) followed campaigns around New York and New Jersey, as General Howe captured New York City but failed to destroy Washington’s army. In 1777, General Burgoyne’s southward thrust from Canada ended in surrender at Saratoga (17 October), convincing France to conclude treaties of amity and alliance (February 1778). With France’s entry, the war globalized; Spain (1779) and the Dutch Republic (1780) soon joined. British strategy shifted to the South: Sir Henry Clinton took Charleston (1780), but Cornwallis’s operations culminated in encirclement at Yorktown and capitulation (19 October 1781), after French naval superiority at the Chesapeake. Domestic politics cracked under defeat; Lord North resigned in March 1782. Walpole’s narrative weaves battlefield reverses with Westminster votes, emphasizing how ministerial indecision, royal insistence, and factionalism impeded adaptation. He connects America’s transformation from tax dispute to revolutionary polity with London’s failure to reconcile authority and consent, arguing that the Crown’s influence in choosing and sustaining ministries was integral to the outcome recounted across his pages.
The global naval war compounded pressures. The indecisive Battle of Ushant (27 July 1778) fractured the officer corps and public opinion; Admiral Keppel’s quarrel with Palliser dramatized politicized command. Gibraltar’s Great Siege (1779–1783) strained resources until Howe’s relief (1782) and the failure of the floating batteries (13 September 1782). In the Caribbean, Rodney’s victory at the Saintes (12 April 1782) checked French ambitions, while the League of Armed Neutrality (1780) complicated maritime trade. Walpole registers how naval outcomes stirred Parliament, feeding calls for inquiry and reform, and he links these debates to his broader critique of ministerial patronage and mismanagement.
The Gordon Riots of June 1780 exposed combustible intersections of religion, class, and politics. Provoked by the Catholic Relief Act (1778), Lord George Gordon’s Protestant Association demonstrations spiraled into days of urban violence, with attacks on prisons like Newgate and widespread arson before troops restored order. Hundreds were killed or wounded. Walpole’s account underscores the fragility of metropolitan authority when propaganda and grievance fused, and he notes cabinet hesitancy at critical moments. He situates the riots within a matrix of wartime scarcity and political agitation, using them to illustrate how state legitimacy could falter when coercion outpaced consensus.
After Yorktown, Lord North resigned (20 March 1782). The Marquess of Rockingham returned, recognizing American independence in principle and advancing economical reform, but died on 1 July 1782. Lord Shelburne succeeded, negotiating preliminary peace (30 November 1782) and the Treaty of Paris (3 September 1783). Meanwhile, domestic reform surged: Christopher Wyvill’s Yorkshire Association (from 1779) pressed for economical and parliamentary reform, and John Dunning’s motion (6 April 1780) declared the Crown’s influence “has increased, is increasing, and ought to be diminished.” The Fox–North Coalition formed in April 1783; its East India Bill was defeated in December after the king’s intervention. Walpole chronicles these turns to demonstrate the resilience of royal prerogative amid ostensible reform.
Walpole’s book operates as a sustained political critique, indicting the architecture of royal influence and its corrosive effects on ministerial stability and policy coherence. He maps patterns of patronage, place, and pensions that detached parliamentary majorities from public opinion, culminating in Dunning’s 1780 censure of Crown influence. By juxtaposing cabinet intrigue with street mobilization, he exposes how governance by favorites, “King’s Friends,” and clandestine counseling undermined trust. In tracing the passage from Stamp Act to peace with the United States, he portrays a polity that mistook coercion for authority, and he invites readers to see constitutional balance as contingent upon restraint in the use of prerogative.
As social critique, the work highlights the costs of inequity and exclusion: anti-Catholic agitation, the vulnerability of urban poor to riot and repression, and colonial subjects’ marginalization in imperial decision-making. Walpole underscores the uneven franchise, pocket boroughs, and venal elections that insulated Parliament from accountability while empowering court managers. He treats press freedom and the curbing of general warrants as fragile gains, continually threatened by expedience. The narrative voices skepticism toward imperial overreach and the human toll of war debt, impressment, and taxation. Through concrete episodes, he frames the reign as a cautionary case in how class divides and official impunity deform public policy.
Author Biography
Horace Walpole (1717–1797) was an English writer, collector, and parliamentarian whose work helped define two enduring currents of British culture: the Gothic novel and the Gothic Revival in art and architecture. Best known for The Castle of Otranto, often called the first Gothic novel, he also produced a vast correspondence and influential works of antiquarian scholarship. From his villa at Strawberry Hill he cultivated taste, printing, and sociability that shaped 18th-century literary networks. Writing as a witty observer of politics and manners, he bridged Augustan and Romantic sensibilities, pairing a fascination with the medieval past with an Enlightenment commitment to curiosity, documentation, and satire.
Born into a prominent political household—his father served as Britain’s first de facto prime minister—Walpole was educated at Eton College and King’s College, Cambridge. At Eton he formed lasting friendships, notably with Thomas Gray, whose poetic ideals and learned classicism influenced Walpole’s sense of taste and literary judgment. In the late 1730s he undertook a Continental tour that deepened his interest in art, antiquities, and architectural history. Although he did not take a degree, his education and travels established the intellectual habits that governed his collecting and criticism: a relish for archival detail, a fondness for the picturesque, and a skeptical independence of mind.
In the 1740s and 1750s Walpole served in the House of Commons for several pocket boroughs, aligning with the Whig establishment while cultivating a critical, often satirical voice in private letters. He became a central figure in London’s world of connoisseurship, salons, and clubs, publishing works that mapped elite literary culture, including A Catalogue of Royal and Noble Authors. His correspondence, addressed to diplomats, scholars, and friends, grew into a chronicle of the age—mixing gossip, politics, and art with keen descriptive flair. Even before his most celebrated fiction, he was recognized as a tastemaker whose judgments could animate or deflate fashionable reputations.
The Castle of Otranto appeared in the mid-1760s, first masquerading as a translated medieval tale before Walpole acknowledged authorship. Its blend of haunted architecture, dynastic anxiety, and supernatural machinery shocked neoclassical taste yet captivated readers, establishing many conventions of the Gothic: looming castles, ancestral curses, and heightened sensation. He pursued related themes in drama with The Mysterious Mother, a grave, controversial tragedy circulated privately. Though critics were divided, the new mode proved durable, inspiring later novelists to expand Gothic atmospheres into psychological and social exploration. Walpole’s experiment thus became a turning point in English fiction, reopening medieval romance to modern narrative.
Walpole’s antiquarian studies were equally influential. Anecdotes of Painting in England, based on the notebooks of the engraver and chronicler George Vertue, offered biographical and documentary accounts of British artists and collectors, helping to establish a national art history. In Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third he rehearsed evidence against received narratives, exemplifying Enlightenment skepticism applied to Tudor historiography. These projects blended erudition with readable prose, appealing to both scholars and the polite public. They also reflected his conviction that careful cataloguing and criticism could rescue the English past from myth, partisanship, and neglect.
At Strawberry Hill, his villa near the Thames, Walpole experimented with an ornamental Gothic style that helped popularize the Gothic Revival. The house, assembled room by room with tracery, battlements, and pointed arches, became a celebrated showplace and a model of picturesque eclecticism. There he established the Strawberry Hill Press, a private printing venture that issued select works, notably Thomas Gray’s Odes, and carefully produced catalogues and descriptions of his collections. By uniting architecture, collecting, and printing under one roof, he fashioned a coherent aesthetic of curiosity and display, encouraging British readers to value rarity, provenance, and the pleasures of designed experience.
In later years Walpole continued to write letters of exceptional liveliness and range, reflecting on politics, theater, and taste while chronicling daily life. In the early 1790s he succeeded to the title Earl of Orford. Posthumous editions of his correspondence cemented his reputation as one of English literature’s great letter writers, and scholars still mine his pages for insight into 18th-century culture. He also introduced the word “serendipity” in a mid-century letter, a coinage that captures his delight in lucky discoveries. Walpole’s legacy endures in two spheres: the evolution of the Gothic imagination and the art of social, epistolary history.
The History of King George the Third
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.
