out for voting against German connexions; that he had never approved inquiring into the King's prerogative on that head(I can name a person who can repeat volumes of what he has said on the subject), and that the King had as much right to dismiss military as civil officers, and then drew a ridiculous parallel betwixt the two, in which he seemed to give himself the rank of a civil lieutenant-general. This warmth was stopped by Augustus Hervey, who spoke to order, and called for the question; but young T. Townshend confirmed, that the term profligacy was applied by all mankind to the conduct on the warrants. It was not the most agreeable circumstance to Grenville, that Lord Granby closed the debate, by declaring how much he disapproved the dismission of officers for civil reasons, and the more, as he was persuaded it would not prevent officers from acting according to their consciences; and he spoke of your brother with many encomiums. Sir W. Meredith then notified his intention of taking up the affair of the warrants on Monday se'nnight. Mr. Pitt was not there, nor Lord Temple in the House of Lords; but the latter is ill. I should have told you that Lord Warkworth1 and Thomas Pitt, moved our addresses; as Lord Townshend and Lord Botetourt did those of the Lords. Lord Townshend said, though it was grown unpopular to praise the King, yet he should, and he was violent against libels; forgetting that the most ill-natured branch of them, caricaturas, his own invention, are left off. Nobody thought it worth while to answer him, at which he was much offended.

So much for the opening of the Parliament, which does not promise serenity. Your brother is likely to make a very great figure: they have given him the warmth he wanted, and may thank themselves for it. Had Mr. Grenville taken my advice, he had avoided an opponent that he will find a tough one, and must already repent having drawn upon him.

With regard to yourself, my dear lord, you may be sure I did not intend to ask you any impertinent question. You requested me to tell you whatever I heard said about you; you

Afterwards Duke of Northumberland.-E. 2 Afterwards Lord Camelford.-E.

was talked of for Ireland, and are still; and Lord Holland within this week told me, that you had solicited it warmly. Don't think yourself under any obligation to reply to me on these occasions. It is to comply with your desires that I repeat anything I hear of you, not to make use of them to draw any explanation from you, to which I have no title; nor have I, you know, any troublesome curiosity. I mentioned Ireland with the same indifference that I tell you that the town here has bestowed Lady Anne,' first on Lord March, and now on Stephen Fox-tattle not worth your answering.

You have lost another of your Lords Justices, Lord Shannon, of whose death an account came yesterday.

Lady Harrington's porter was executed yesterday, and went to Tyburn with a white cockade in his hat, as an emblem of his innocence.

All the rest of my news I exhausted in my letter to Lady Hertford three days ago. The King's Speech, as I told her it was to do, announced the contract between Princess Carolines and the Prince Royal of Denmark.

I don't think the tone the session has taken will expedite my visit to you; however, I shall be able to judge when a few of the great questions are over. The American affairs are expected to occasion much discussion; but as I understand them no more than Hebrew, they will throw no impediment in my way. Adieu! my dear lord; you will probably hear no more politics these ten days.

Yours ever,

HORACE WAlpole.

Friday.

The debate on the warrants is put off to the Tuesday; therefore, as it will probably be so long a day, I shall not be able to give you an account of it till this day fortnight.

1 See antè, p. 387.

2 Second son of the first Earl of Ilchester.-E.

3 The unhappy Queen of Denmark, who was afterwards divorced and exiled.-E.

TO THE EARL OF HERTFORD.

Sunday, Jan. 20, 1765.

Do you forgive me, if I write to you two or three days sooner than I said I would. Our important day on the warrants is put off for a week, in compliment to Mr. Pitt's gout can it resist such attention? I shall expect it in a prodigious quantity of black ribands. You have heard, to be sure, of the great fortune that is bequeathed to him by a Sir William Pynsent, an old man of near ninety, who quitted the world on the peace of Utrecht; and, luckily for Mr. Pitt, lived to be as angry with its pendant, the treaty of Paris. I did not send you the first report, which mounted it to an enormous sum: I think the medium account is two thousand pounds a-year, and thirty thousand pounds in money. This Sir William Pynsent, whose fame, like an aloe, did not blow till near an hundred, was a singularity. The scandalous chronicle of Somersetshire talks terribly of his morals1 * * *. Lady North was nearly related to Lady Pynsent, which encouraged Lord North to flatter himself that Sir William's extreme propensity to him would recommend even his wife's parentage for heirs; but the uncomeliness of Lady North, and a vote my lord gave against the Cider-bill, offended the old gentleman so much, that he burnt his would-be heir in effigy. How will all these strange histories sound at Paris!

This post, I suppose, will rain letters to my Lady Hertford, on her death and revival. I was dreadfully alarmed at it for a moment; my servant was so absurd as to wake me, and bid me not be frightened - an excellent precaution! Of all moments, that between sleeping and waking is the most subject to terror. I started up, and my first thought was to send for Dr. Hunter; but, in two minutes, I recollected that it was impossible to be true, as your porter had the very day before been with me to tell me a courier was arrived from you, and was to return that evening. Your poor son Henry,

'The original contains an imputation against Sir W. Pynsent, which, if true, would induce us to suspect him of a disordered mind.-C.

whom you will doat upon for it, was not tranquillized so soon. He instantly sent away a courier to your brother, who arrived in the middle of the night. Lady Milton,' Lady George Sackville, and I, agreed this evening to tell my Lady Hertford, that we ought to have believed the news, and to have imputed it to the gaming rakehelly life my lady leads at Paris, which scandalizes all us prudes, her old friends. In truth, I have not much right to rail at anybody for living in a hurricane. I found myself with a violent cold on Wednesday, and till then had not once reflected on all the hot and cold climates I had passed through the day before: I had been at the Duke of Cumberland's levee; then at Princess Amalie's drawing-room; from thence to a crowded House of Commons; to dinner at your brother's; to the Opera; to Madame Seillern's; to Arthur's; and to supper at Mrs. George Pitt's; it is scandalous; but, who does less? The Duke looked much better than I expected; is gone to Windsor, and mends daily.

4

It was Lady Harcourt's death that occasioned the confusion, and our dismay. She died at a Colonel Oughton's; such a small house, that Lord Harcourt has been forced to take their family into his own house. Poor Lady Digby is dead too, of a fever, and was with child. They were extremely happy, and her own family adored her. My sister has begged me to ask a favour, that will put you to a little trouble, though only for a moment. It is, if you will be so good to order one of your servants when you have done with the English newspapers, to put them in a cover, and send them to Mr. Churchill, au Château de Nubecourt, près de Clermont, en Argone; they cannot get a gazette that does not cost them six livres.

Lady Caroline Sackville, daughter of the Duke of Dorset, married, in 1742, to the first Lord Milton.-E.

2 Diana, second daughter of J. Sambrook, Esq.-E.

* Rebecca, daughter of Charles Le Bas, Esq., wife of the first Earl of Harcourt.-E.

Elizabeth Fielding, niece to the fourth Earl of Denbigh, and wife of Henry, first Lord Digby.-E.

Monday evening.

We have had a sort of day in the House of Commons. The proposition for accepting the six hundred and seventy thousand pounds for the French prisoners passed easily. Then came the Navy: Dowdeswell, in a long and very sensible speech, proposed to reduce the number of sailors to ten thousand. He was answered by-Charles Townshend — oh! yes! are you surprised? nobody here was: no, not even at his assertion, that he had always applauded the peace, though the whole House and the whole town knew that, on the Preliminaries, he came down prepared to speak against them; but that on Pitt's retiring, he plucked up courage, and spoke for them. Well, you want to know what place he is to have

so does he too. I don't want to know what place, but that he has some one; for I am sure he will always do most hurt to the side on which he professes to be; consequently, I wish him with the administration, and I wish so well to both sides, that I would have him more decried, if that be possible, than he is. Colonel Barré spoke against Dowdeswell's proposal, though not setting himself up at auction, like Charles, nor friendly to the ministry, but temperately and sensibly. There was no division. You know my opinion of Charles Townshend is neither new nor singular. When Charles Yorke left us,' I hoped for this event, and my wish then slid into this couplet:

TO THE ADMINISTRATION.

One Charles, who ne'er was ours, you 've got 'tis true:

To make the grace complete, take t'other too.

The favours I ask of them, are not difficult to grant. Adieu! my dear lord.

Yours ever, H. W.

Tuesday, 4 o'clock.

I had sealed my letter and given it to my sister, who sets out to-morrow, and will put it into the post at Calais; but

It is remarkable enough, that the epigram which Mr. Walpole thus introduces, admits that Charles Yorke had never joined them, and therefore could not be said to have left them.-C.