332 The negotiation was conducted by Count Virri (Duke?) Envoy in England, and by the Bailli de Solar, the Sardinian Minister at Paris, the intimate friend of the Duchess de Choiseul; and that convenience was probably a reason why Lord Bute yielded to the treaty being settled at Paris, though the King of France had offered to treat here vis-à-vis du Roi de la Grande Brétagne. [Vide notes in p. 157 and 160, supra, for more details respecting the part taken by these Sardinian Ministers in the negotiation.—E.]

333 These Memoirs were published in 1821, with a very able introduction by the late Lord Holland. A critic, who cannot be suspected of partiality (Quarterly Review, vol. xxv. p. 413), pronounces them “a model of this species of writing.” It is to be regretted that they embrace only four years, and those not the most interesting, of the reign of George II. Lord Waldegrave possessed sound sense and respectable abilities. He was highly esteemed by his contemporaries, and few men have passed through life, and, above all, public life, with a character so entirely unblemished.—A masterly critique of Lord Waldegrave’s Memoirs is given in the seventy-third number of the Edinburgh Review, from the pen of the late Mr. John Allen.—E.

334 George Grenville, next brother of Richard Earl Temple. He married Elizabeth, daughter of Sir William Windham, and sister of Charles Earl of Egremont, and of Percy Windham Obrien, Earl of Thomond.

335 Treasurer of the Navy.

336 Sir Charles Windham, Earl of Egremont, eldest son of the celebrated orator, Sir William Windham, Chancellor of the Exchequer in the four last years of Queen Anne, and of Lady Catherine Seymour, daughter of Charles Duke of Somerset, the proudest man of his age.

337 Had Lord Egremont been a liar of the “monstrous magnitude” stated in the text, he certainly would never have had the opportunity of refusing the offer of being Secretary of State from a man of such strict honour and integrity as Lord Waldegrave; an offer, be it observed, which Walpole notices in his Memoirs of George the Second without censure. It was to his refusal of that offer, and to his subsequent connection with Mr. Grenville, that Lord Egremont owed this severe imputation. He was proud, obstinate, and hot-tempered; but that he was not without talent is proved by his answer to the Spanish memorial, a State paper of acknowledged merit. Bishop Newton, who knew him well, says, “that if he had entered earlier into business, he might have made as considerable a figure as his father had. He had seldom occasion to speak in Parliament, but, when he did, it was with great clearness, force, and energy; and he was thought to resemble his father in manner as well as in good matter, having a little catch and impediment in his voice, as his father had.”—Newton’s Mem. p. 89.—E.

338 Many interesting anecdotes of Lord Halifax are given in the Memoirs of Mr. Cumberland, who had been his private secretary for many years. He describes him thus: “I am persuaded he was formed to be a good man, he might also have been a great one: his mind was large, his spirit active, his ambition honourable; he had a carriage noble and imposing; his first approach attracted notice; his consequent address ensured respect. If his talents were not quite so solid as some, nor altogether so deep as others, yet they were brilliant, popular, and made to glitter in the eyes of men: splendour was his passion; his good-fortune threw opportunities in his way to have supported it; his ill-fortune blasted all those energies which should have been reserved for the crisis of his public fame. The first offices of the State, the highest honours which his Sovereign could bestow, were showered upon him when the spring of his mind was broken; and his genius, like a vessel overloaded with treasure, but far gone in decay, was only precipitated to ruin by the very freight that, in its better days, would have crowned it with prosperity and riches.” Vol. i. p. 242. This is a generous portrait, considering that Cumberland had certainly been unkindly treated by Lord Halifax; and, had he always felt thus, he would not have furnished Sheridan with the model of Sir Fretful Plagiary.—E.

339 The figures 45 became the hieroglyphics of Wilkes’s party.

340 Queen Anne’s speech on the treaty of Utrecht told a similar lie; so exactly was the parallel maintained throughout. [It was consequently made one of the subjects of Lord Orford’s impeachment. Vide fifteenth Article, Journals, vol. xviii. p. 214.—E.]

341 The following passages are those to which the text refers: “This week has given the public the most abandoned instance of official effrontery ever attempted to be imposed on mankind. The minister’s speech last Tuesday is not to be paralleled in the annals of this country. I am in doubt whether the imposition is greater on the Sovereign or on the nation. Every friend of his country must lament that a Prince of so many great and amiable qualities, whom England truly reveres, can be brought to give the sanction of his name to the most odious measures, and to the most unjustifiable public doctrines, from a Throne ever renowned for truth, honour, and unsullied virtue. I am sure all foreigners, especially the King of Prussia, will hold the minister in contempt and abhorrence. He has made our Sovereign declare, ‘My expectations have been fully answered by the happy effects which the several allies of my crown have derived from the salutary measure of the definitive treaty. The powers at war with my good brother the King of Prussia have been induced to agree to such terms of accommodation as that great Prince has approved, and the success which has attended my negotiation has necessarily and immediately diffused the blessings of peace throughout Europe.’ The infamous fallacy of this whole sentence is apparent to all mankind; for it is known that the King of Prussia did not barely approve, but absolutely dictated as conqueror, every article of the terms of peace. No advantage of any kind has accrued to that magnanimous Prince from our negotiation; but he was basely deserted by the Scottish Prime Minister of England. He was known by every Court in Europe to be scarcely on better terms here than at Vienna, and he was betrayed by us in the treaty of peace. What a strain of insolence, therefore, is it in a minister to lay claim to what he is conscious his efforts tended to prevent, and meanly to arrogate to himself a share in the fame and glory of one of the greatest Princes the world has ever seen!”—E.

342 Robert Wood, author of the accounts of Balbec and Palmyra, and Under-Secretary of State. He had been so made by Lord Chatham, but had deserted him. [Mr. Wood was still, and for some time after, on most friendly terms with Lord Chatham. Vide his letters of the 3rd and 6th of September, 1763, in the second volume of the Chatham Correspondence, p. 246.—E.]

343 Philip Carteret Webbe, M.P. for Hazlemere, and Solicitor to the Treasury. The part he took in the proceedings against Wilkes savoured too much of the practice at the Old Bailey, and made him very unpopular. His character was otherwise unexceptionable. He published various tracts on law and antiquities, and was a great collector of books and medals. He died in 1770, aged 70.—E.

344 When Charles King of Naples, on the death of his brother King Ferdinand, succeeded to the crown of Spain, he set aside his eldest son as an idiot, made the second Prince of Asturias, and the third King of Naples.

345 He was appointed King’s Counsel in May, 1757, and Baron of the Exchequer in Hilary Term, 1762. He resigned in May, 1764. We cannot find anything more about him. His praise of the peace seems to have been on his first circuit; probably, while his surprise and gratitude were fresh. There are no Exchequer reports of that time. Except on the circuit, a Baron of the Exchequer was then, and long after, almost a sinecurist.—E.

346 Ralph Allen, of Prior Park, near Bath, Master of the Cross-posts.

347 Mr. Pitt had openly pronounced the peace inadequate, and it seemed to be personally levelled at him, that the address affected to call it adequate. [Bishop Warburton insists on Allen’s ignorance of Mr. Pitt having applied the term “inadequate” to the peace, and disclaims any concern in it himself; though he admits having drawn up, promoted, and advised a similar address from the clergy of Gloucester, whose interference, on this occasion, “had the fate,” Mr. Pitt observed, “not to be imitated by any other episcopal see in the kingdom.” Allen, who was now an old man, felt Mr. Pitt’s resentment acutely, and immediately withdrew from this corporation. He died on the 29th June of the following year, having bequeathed to Mr. Pitt a legacy of 1000l. Mr. Pitt’s letter of condolence to his widow shows, that whatever coolness the address might have produced in their intercourse was short-lived. The correspondence between Mr. Pitt and Allen is in the Annual Register for 1763, p. 208; and in the Chatham Correspondence, vol. ii. p. 256.—E.]

348 Captain Forbes, of Ogilby’s regiment, in the French service. He was of good family in Scotland, and of some merit in his profession, as may be inferred from his subsequently attaining the rank of General in Portugal, where, in common with other Scotch exiles, he was employed and trusted.—E.

349 Vide Memoirs of the year 1751, [vol. i. p. 15–181. He was at that time residing at Paris, under the name of Count Murray. In 1771, he was recalled by letter under the King’s privy seal, and he died shortly afterwards.—E.]

350 Thomas Osborne, fourth Duke of Leeds.

351 Thomas Villiers, Baron Hyde, brother of William Earl of Jersey. [He had been Minister at Berlin in the reign of George the Second, and received various honours from Frederick the Great, whose preference of him to such men as Mr. Legge and Mr. Fox, and even to Sir Andrew Mitchell, probably arose from the same reasons that induced Napoleon to bestow the warmest praise on such of his enemy’s generals as he most wished to have as opponents. Lord Hyde was an amiable nobleman, of very comely person, and graceful deportment; he married one of the coheiresses of Lord Clarendon, was elevated to that earldom in 1776, and died in 1786.—E.]

352 Mr. Grenville was deeply offended at this interference of the Duke of Bedford; and his friends, in consequence, took no pains to defend the Duke when the current of popular feeling afterwards turned so strongly against his Grace.—E.

353 Mr. Pitt’s villa at Hayes, near Bromley, in Kent.

354 Walpole is mistaken in this supposition; for the King himself proposed Lord Temple for the Treasury. (Lord Hardwicke’s letter to the Duke of Newcastle.) An impartial narrative of this transaction is given by Mr. Adolphus (vol. i. p. 127), with a reference to the contemporary authorities, of which the most important are Lord Hardwicke’s letter, and the letters in the Chatham Correspondence (vol. ii. p. 242). The “dexterity” and finesse ascribed in the text to Mr. Pitt hardly belong to his character, and certainly were not exhibited on this occasion. His private correspondence proves, as he told the King, that he felt throughout the impossibility of his making a ministry, unless it rested “on the great families who had supported the Revolution Government, and other great persons, of whose ability and integrity the country had had experience, and who had weight and credit in the nation.” This would necessarily have involved greater changes than the King then contemplated, though not greater than his Majesty subsequently found inevitable.—E.

355 Henry Arthur Herbert, Earl of Powis.

356 He had been succeeded as Treasurer of the Household by Lord Powis.

357 His Majesty did not give him up in less than two years on the next change.

358 Charles Watson Wentworth, Marquis of Rockingham.

359 Welbore Ellis, Esq.

360 George Keppel, third Earl of Albemarle.

361 Walpole is in error here. Wood informed Mr. Pitt of the report, that he had proscribed Lord Gower, Rigby, and others of the Bedford party; and Mr. Pitt’s reply, though it has not been preserved, may be inferred, from Wood’s acknowledgment of it, to have amounted to a positive denial of the charge. (Chatham Correspondence, vol. ii. p. 250.)—E.

362 Dr. Charles Lyttelton, brother of George Lord Lyttelton. They were sons of Christian, sister of Richard Lord Cobham, consequently first cousins of Lord Temple.

363 James Grenville, the third brother.

364 Richard Temple, Lord Cobham, had four sisters, Maria, Hester, Christian, and Penelope. Maria, widow of Sir John Langham, offended him by marrying Mr. West, a clergyman, on which he set her aside, and settled his estate, and obtained his peerage to be settled, on Hester, the second sister, and her issue, who, by Mr. Grenville, her husband, were Richard, George, James, Henry, Thomas, and Hester, the wife of Mr. Pitt. [Mr. West was the father of Gilbert West, one of the Clerks of the Council, and better known as the translator of Pindar, and author of the popular treatise “On the Resurrection.” He was a most amiable man, and the intimate friend of Pitt.—E.]

365 Henrietta Hobart, sister of the first Earl of Buckinghamshire, widow of the Earl of Suffolk, and afterwards of George Berkeley, brother of the Earl of Berkeley, Mistress of the Robes to Queen Caroline, and mistress of King George the Second. The author lived in great friendship with her the last years of her life; her house at Marble Hill, Twickenham, and his at Strawberry Hill, near the same village, were within a mile of each other, and he passed three or four evenings every week with her, when they were in the country. She died July 26, 1767, aged 79, and was remarkable for her strict and minute veracity and memory, which she retained to the last, as well as her eyesight, teeth, and the elegance of her person.

366 Leicester House, in Leicester Fields, the residence of the Sydneys, Earls of Leicester, was hired and inhabited by King George and Queen Caroline, when Prince and Princess of Wales, on their quarrel with George the First; as it was afterwards, on a similar occasion, by Frederick, Prince of Wales, whose widow, Augusta, also dwelled there till after the accession of her son to the Crown. George the Third, after his father’s death, lived at Saville House, the next door to her.

367 The names of four Scotchmen appear in the same Gazette to appointments, or as Governors in the American Colonies, Johnstone being one of them. He was the third son of Sir James Johnstone, of Westerhall; he was of a hot and most pugnacious temperament, as he showed some years later by his duel with Lord George Germaine. He died in 1787.—E.

368 Don Richard Wall, of Irish extraction, was Ambassador here from Spain in the reign of George the Second. He was a most artful, agreeable man, of much wit, and a great favourite at this Court. At his return to Madrid, he had been made Secretary of State in 1754, [upon the downfall of Enseñada. Sir Benjamin Keene, by his advice and influence, materially contributed to this event, which proved highly favourable to the British interests at Madrid. The intrigues in the Spanish Court, and the financial difficulties of the country, made Wall’s post a very irksome one. He discharged its duties at least as ably as either his predecessor or his successor. The King was unwilling to part with him, and made his retirement honourable by many marks of distinction. He passed the remaining years of his life chiefly at Soto de Roma, a royal castle, in the lovely valley of Grenada, where he maintained a splendid hospitality. Mr. Swinburne visited him there, and has given a very agreeable account of him. He died 1778.—E.]

369 Grimaldi was a Genoese. He had been educated for the church, and always retained the soft and insinuating manners of an Italian ecclesiastic. It was to his address, rather than to his talents, that he was indebted for high situations he filled. In negotiating the celebrated treaty of Paris, he appears to have been overmatched by Choiseul, and the loss of the Havannah, and the other misfortunes of the war, were the immediate fruits of his eagerness for a French alliance. His administration in Spain was neither popular nor successful. It ended with the failure of the expedition to Algiers. His chief merit lay in the encouragement he gave to literature, his patronage of the arts, his love of justice, and the mildness and generosity of his disposition. On his resignation, in 1777, he was created a Duke, and a Grandee of Spain. Having been allowed to nominate his successor, he was at his own request appointed Ambassador at Rome. Coxe’s Spain, vol. v. c. 63; and Memoirs of a Traveller now in Retirement, vol. iv. p. 109.—E.

370 He had particularly distinguished himself in the command of his regiment at Fontenoy, where his valour and good fortune are noticed by Voltaire:—

“Guerchy n’est pas blessé, la vertu peut te plaire.”—E.

371 See an account of him in the notes, infra.—E.

372 This Vergy was a French spy. In 1771, I heard Mr. Phelps, secretary to Lord Sandwich, relate that Vergy had offered him to act, too, as a spy on Guerchy, of which Mr. Phelps gave the ambassador warning. Vergy remained here several years, and wrote pamphlets and novels for a livelihood.

373 When they talked to D’Eon of a breach of the peace, he understood English so imperfectly, that he thought Lord Halifax threatened to break the peace between the two nations, of which he, D’Eon, had been the messenger, and that inflamed his madness.

374 Augustus the Third, a weak and unfortunate monarch, whose reign forms one of the most melancholy epochs in the annals of Saxony. His incapacity was more remarkable from his being opposed to Frederick the Great and Catherine the Second. He died in 1763, and with him ended the independence of Poland—his successor Stanislaus being merely the nominee of Russia.—E.

375 Count Bruhl.—[This worthless courtier, who exercised for many years an arbitrary sway over Saxony and Poland, and inflicted irreparable injuries on both countries, died in October, 1764.—E.]

376 Rezzonico, Pope by the name of Clement the Thirteenth, [filled the Papal Chair from 1758 to 1769, when he died, in his 76th year. His life was decent, and his intentions appear to have been honest, but his policy was unenlightened and vacillating, and is strikingly contrasted by that of his illustrious successor.—E.]

377 Sir Hugh Smithson, who assumed the name of Percy on marrying Lady Elizabeth Seymour, daughter of Algernon Duke of Somerset, and heiress of the house of Percy by her grandmother. They were created Earl and Countess of Northumberland.

378 Thomas Potter—see more of him in the preceding reign. [Memoirs of George II. vol. i. p. 61. He was the second son of Archbishop Potter, whose fortune he inherited, owing to his elder brother having disobliged his father by an imprudent marriage. In 1748 he had been appointed secretary to the Prince of Wales, then the patron of all the talent in the House opposed to the Government, and from that time he took an active part in the political contests of the day. He was a clever and impressive speaker, and, with application and steadiness of conduct, might have become one of the leaders of his party. Unfortunately, he had contracted, in early life, habits of dissipation, under which his constitution sunk, just as his ambitious hopes bade fair to be realized. He died Vice-Treasurer of Ireland, in June, 1759. Some interesting letters from him to Mr. Pitt are given in the Chatham Correspondence, vol. i.—E.]

379 James Douglas, Earl of March and Ruglen, Lord of the Bedchamber to the King, [afterwards the too well-known Duke of Queensberry—an appropriate patron of such a divine.—E.]

380 Lord Despencer said, he never heard the devil preach before. Yet Lord Sandwich had a precedent in a great Reformer of the Church: “Calvin eut par trahison les feuilles d’un ouvrage que Servet faisait imprimer secrètement. Il les envoya à Lyon avec les lettres qu’il avait reçues de lui: action qui servirait pour le deshonorer à jamais dans la Société. Calvin fit accuser Servet par un emissaire. Quel rôle pour un Apôtre!”—Voltaire, Essai sur l’Hist. Générale, chap. 113.

381 A broken wine-merchant, brother of Admiral Cotes, an intimate of Wilkes.

382 Only son of the Duke of Chandos. [He afterwards succeeded to the Dukedom, and died in 1789, when his titles became extinct. His only daughter married the late Duke of Buckingham.—E.]

383 Mr. Pitt’s speech had the very dubious merit of pleasing his opponents rather than his friends. Lord Barrington, in a letter to Sir Andrew Mitchell, says, that if fifty thousand pounds had been given for it, the sum would have been well expended. It secures us a quiet session. Chatham Correspondence, vol. ii. p. 262, and Walpole’s Letters, vol. iv. p. 313.—In fact Mr. Pitt’s interviews with the King had necessarily blunted the edge of his opposition, and he found it as difficult to give an intelligible defence of his proceedings, as all succeeding ministers, in the same predicament, have experienced since.—E.

384 The Lords on the same account put off the hearing of Wilkes’s defence on the Essay on Woman, to the 22nd; and then for a week longer.

385 Frederick, second son of George the Third.

386 Edward Duke of York, next brother to the King.

387 Frederick Lord North, eldest son of the Earl of Guilford.

388 Mr. Morton, or Moreton, M.P. for Abingdon, a barrister of eminence, who was appointed Chief Justice of Chester in 1763. His name will hereafter occur in the debates on the Regency. He must not be confounded with Sir William Moreton, of Moreton, in Cheshire, Recorder of London, who died in 1763.—E.

389 Mr. Forester had been originally recommended by Alderman Beckford to the Duke of Bedford (when the Alderman and his Grace acted together) for a seat in Parliament, “as a person in whom steadiness, honour, and elocution were not exceeded by any man in the country.” (Bedford Correspondence.)—E.

390 Mr. Wilbraham, M.P. for Newton, and Deputy Steward of the University of Oxford. He was an eminent lawyer, whose politics, like those of Mr. Fazakerly, prevented his attaining the honours of his profession.—(Walpole’s Correspondence, vol. iv. p. 319.)—E.

391 Benjamin Bathurst of Lydney, in Gloucestershire, brother of the first Lord Bathurst, and father of the late Bishop of Norwich.—E.

392 Sir John Griffin, an officer of some distinction. He had been severely wounded at the battle of Campen, when fighting near the hereditary Prince of Brunswick. In 1786 he succeeded to the ancient Barony of Howard de Walden; in 1796 he became a Field Marshal; and he died in 1797, having devised Audley-End and his other estates to his kinsman, Mr. Aldworth Neville, who at the same time succeeded to the Barony of Braybrooke, which had been limited over to him on the death of Lord Howard de Walden.—E.

393 See infra.

394 General Philip Honeywood, of Marks Hall, Essex, an officer of distinction. He died without issue in 1785.—E.

395 Sir John Rushout had taken an active part in the debates against Walpole’s Excise Bill in 1732. He was made a Lord of the Treasury in 1742, and in the following year Treasurer of the Navy. He was strongly attached to Pulteney, and had the sagacity to predict the consequences of that statesman’s refusal to take office on the resignation of Walpole. He lived to the great age of 91, and died on the 2nd of March, 1775. His son was created Lord Northwich.—E.

396 In Ireland.

397 Henly Earl of Northington.

398 Under Lord Chatham’s administration in the war.

399 Thomas Harley, a merchant, and brother of the Earl of Oxford.

400 The tax on cyder.

401 The Duke of Bedford.

402 Walpole’s Correspondence, vol. iv. p. 329.

403 Vide Wilkes v. Wood. State Trials, vol. xix. 1154.—E.

404 Vide Mr. Croker’s note in Walpole’s Correspondence, vol. iv. p. 322.

405 He was the second son of William de Grey, Esq., M.P., and younger brother of Thomas de Grey of Merton Hall, M.P. for Norfolk, whose estates he inherited, on the death of the latter without issue, in 1765.—E.

406 This was one of the most obstinate contests of the day, and cost Mr. Luther many thousand pounds. He had been the pupil, and was the intimate friend, of Dr. Watson, the Bishop of Landaff, to whom he bequeathed a considerable portion of his fortune. The Bishop describes him correctly as a man of most upright conduct and honourable principles. He died in 1786. Watson’s Anecdotes, vol. i. p. 235.—E.

407 Philip Yorke, Lord Royston, afterwards second Earl of Hardwicke.—See infra.

408 General A’Court, M.P. for Heytesbury, was Colonel of the 11th Dragoons. He did not long remain an object of compassion, for he recovered his rank and regiment, and afterwards inherited a large estate and the borough of Heytesbury, from his uncle, Mr. Ash. He died in 1781. The present Lord Heytesbury is his grandson and lineal representative.—E.

409 General Henry Seymour Conway, only brother of Francis Earl of Hertford.

410 Thomas Pitt of Boconnock, only son of Thomas Pitt, elder brother of the famous William Pitt, by the eldest sister of George Lord Lyttelton. [He inherited from his father the borough of Old Sarum, for which he brought himself into Parliament in 1761. In 1763 he was made a Lord of the Admiralty. In 1784 created Lord Camelford. He went abroad for his health in 1787, and died at Florence in 1793. The letters addressed to him when a student at Cambridge, by Lord Chatham, have attached an interest to his name beyond what belongs to his political career; and it is singular that he should, at the very outset of his public life, have abruptly separated from one whose opinions up to that time he seems to have entirely shared. Their connection was not afterwards resumed, though, as Lord Chatham’s relative, he returned thanks (rather coldly) to the House for the marks of distinction conferred on that great man’s memory. He is described by his son-in-law, Lord Grenville, “as combining a steadiness of principle and a correctness of judgment with an integrity of heart, which produced the affectionate attachment from those who knew him that has followed him beyond the grave.” Many of his letters during his residence abroad are printed in Nichols’s Illustrations of Literary History, vol. vi. p. 75; they show more amiability of disposition than power of mind, and were scarcely worth being preserved. On the death of his only son the title became extinct.—E.]

411 Charles Lenox, third Duke of Richmond, had married Lady Mary Bruce, daughter of the last Earl of Ailesbury by his third wife, Caroline Campbell, afterwards married to General Conway.

412 Elizabeth, only daughter of Sir William Windham, a lady highly respected for her virtues as a wife and mother; and whose death, not long after, her husband never recovered.—E.

413 Augusta, eldest daughter of Frederick Prince of Wales.

414 Anne, eldest daughter of King George the Second.

415 Mary, fourth daughter of George the Second, married to the Prince of Hesse; and Louisa, his fifth, married to the King of Denmark.

416 The Prince visited Mr. Pitt on the 22nd of January, and passed two hours with him. On the 14th, the Prince had addressed him a very complimentary letter. Chatham Correspondence, vol. ii. p. 272, and note.—E.

417 The Prince succeeded to the Dukedom on the death of his father in 1780, and for some years after resided at Brunswick, where the Princess, who was throughout life deservedly esteemed, made his Court very agreeable. In 1787 he commanded the Prussian forces which took possession of Amsterdam, and put down the republican party in Holland. His campaigns against the French republicans were less successful, and his well-known manifesto rendered his failure more glaring. He was mortally wounded at Auerstadt, and expired at Altona on the 10th of November, 1806, leaving behind him the reputation of a bold and enterprising, rather than of an able general. His Duchess took refuge in England, where she died at an advanced age. They were not happy in their family: of their two daughters, the eldest married the late King of Wirtemberg, and came to a miserable end in Russia; the younger was the unfortunate Queen Caroline. Their eldest son was of a weak understanding, and the younger, “Brunswick’s fated Chieftain,” a Prince of moderate abilities but signal courage, fell in middle life at Waterloo.—E.

418 A general officer.

419 Sir William Meredith was elected for Wigan in 1755, and for Liverpool in 1762. In 1765 he was appointed a Lord of the Admiralty, an office which he resigned on the dismissal of the Rockingham Administration. In 1774 he was sworn of the Privy Council, and made Comptroller of the Household. He died in 1790.—Cavendish’s Debates, (note,) vol. i. p. 52.—E.

420 This character of Sir George Saville is not less honourable to his memory than Mr. Burke’s well-known and brilliant panegyric at the Bristol election in 1780. Few public men received more respect from their cotemporaries—few, perhaps, have so well earned it. He devoted his time, his talents, and his purse almost exclusively to the public service. Neither the fashionable nor literary circles of London, nor the pursuits of the country, had any charm for him; he seldom resided at Rufford, the splendid seat of his ancestors: business was his passion, and whether in town or country, constituted his sole occupation; fortunately, he had abilities to perform it creditably, and his generosity, which was scarcely bounded by his great estate, had always usefulness for its object. The same discernment appears in his selection of the Parliamentary questions with which his name is identified, such as the Limitation of the Claims of the Crown on Landed Estates; the Relief of Roman Catholics as well as of Protestant Dissenters, and the Condemnation of General Warrants, and, lastly, the Improved Representation of the People: all these he advocated with an earnestness and singleness of purpose, and consistency of action, which extorted the admiration even of his opponents. Though not an impressive speaker, he was always sensible and very fluent, and he spared no pains to understand his subject. His speeches, indeed, partook of one of the characteristics of his mind, which was a simplicity approaching to austerity, and an exemption from party, or even popular prejudices. His life in all respects strictly corresponded with his principles, and was unstained by vice or even by weakness of any kind; his death was regarded as a public loss. He died in 1784, unmarried, aged 57, and with him ended the last line of the illustrious family of Saville. He was a collateral descendant of the Marquis of Halifax, to whose estates his father had succeeded.—E.