48 John third Duke of Roxburgh, born in 1740, succeeded his father in 1755. He was one of the handsomest men of his day, and not less remarkable for the grace and nobleness of his manners. In early life, during his travels he visited the small court of Mecklenburgh, where he is said to have gained the affections of the Princess Christiana, the Duke’s eldest daughter. Indeed, their marriage was believed to have been prevented only by the application of George the Third for the hand of her younger sister. This belief was strengthened by the Princess and the Duke remaining unmarried through life. Notwithstanding this incident, the Duke became a favourite companion of George the Third. His name is now best known as an eminent collector of books. He died in 1804, and was succeeded by his cousin, Lord Bellenden, on whose death the title was claimed by Sir James Innes, and, after a long process, the House of Lords pronounced him the fifth Duke of Roxburgh in 1812.—(Wood’s Peerage of Scotland, vol. ii. p. 456.)—E.

49 Mr. Burke’s speech may be found in the Parliamentary History, vol. xvi. p. 386, where it is stated to be the first of his speeches of which a report has been preserved. The opinions he entertained on the dearness of provisions are stated with more force and perspicuity in his celebrated “Thoughts on Scarcity.” (Works, vol, vii. p. 375.) A petition from the City was presented on the first day of the session, in which, after soliciting the continuance of the temporary acts passed in the preceding session, prohibiting the exportation of corn, and allowing its free importation, the petitioners ascribe the high price of meat in a great degree to the recent increase in the breeding of horses, owing partly to the growing practice of employing them instead of oxen in tillage, and partly to the exportations to the Continent; whereby the number of cattle for slaughter was necessarily diminished; secondly, to the unlimited consumption of ewe lambs and cow calves in all seasons of the year, merely to gratify the unreasonable appetites of the rich and luxurious. The consolidation of small farms was also deprecated in the strongest terms.—The Duke of Grafton was opposed to unlimited importation of corn, on the ground that it would encourage smuggling.—(Bedford MSS.)—E.

50 Dr. Loyd, Dean of Norwich, who had been tutor to Mr. Grenville’s sons.

51 He was couched during this negotiation, in which he took little or no part, though his name was often made use of. He recovered a small degree of sight, and went into public and played at cards, yet, as he said himself, saw very imperfectly.

52 Mr. Meynell was M.P. for Stafford, and the Duke’s intimate friend, as appears in his Grace’s Memoirs. He was a man of high fashion, in which service he spent a large portion of a noble estate on the turf and other expensive amusements and vices so popular with the aristocracy of that day. Captain Meynell, M.P. for Lisburn, is his grandson and lineal representative.—E.

53 I can find nothing among the Bedford papers to show how the negotiation of the Bedford party with the Government originated, or how it was conducted. The following are the last letters that passed between the Duke and Mr. Grenville previous to their political separation. Some unimportant matter only is omitted.

Duke of Bedford to Mr. Grenville.

Woburn Abbey, Nov. 5th, 1767.

“I should have been very glad to have had an opportunity of talking to you fully on the present state of political affairs, and of the steps it may be proper to take at the beginning of the ensuing session. If such a coalition as to unite in Opposition all those who are adverse to the present Administration could be obtained, it would at least have this one good effect—to render the Ministers incapable of carrying on the business of this session, though I fear a further coalition of what would be advisable to be done in future would be impracticable. You see I am readier to pull down than to set up; that is owing to the unfortunate crisis of the times. So far as to what relates to the general plan of politics.”

Mr. Grenville to the Duke of Bedford.

“Weston, November 6th, 1767.

“I shall always be happy in any opportunity of explaining to your Grace my ideas upon the public business, and of improving myself by learning your opinion, which nobody can more highly regard than I do. I purpose being in London on the Saturday before the meeting of Parliament, when my first care will be to wait upon your Grace, if you are then arrived. In the mean time, as you wish to know my thoughts on the present state of political affairs, I can only say that they continue to be the same that you have long known them. I think that public measures must be the great object of every honest man’s attention, and that from them we must derive our security, or shortly meet with our destruction. By public measures, I mean the maintaining the peace abroad with the utmost vigilance, by the firmest as well as the most temperate conduct, both of which I look on as equally necessary for that purpose;—I mean a settled, moderate, and frugal Government at home, to heal the grievous wounds which contrary principles have inflicted upon us;—I mean the availing ourselves of every resource to save, if possible, our sinking public credit, to restore our declining trade, and to strengthen us in time of peace against that day of danger which the first war we are engaged in must bring upon us;—I mean the asserting and establishing the lawful authority of the King and Parliament over every part of our dominions in every part of the world: these, my dear lord, I am sensible are general expressions, which few gentlemen in words will venture directly to contradict; but I, as well as your Grace, mean the reality and not the words, and can therefore only give an assent to a system of measures conformable to them. I shall readily support these principles, whoever shall propose them; and I never can support any Ministry which act in contradiction to them. The steps to be taken at the beginning of the ensuing session must necessarily depend on the plan to be opened by the Ministry, if any is formed, and on the dispositions of mankind. I am entirely ignorant of the former; but as to the latter, it appears to me that there is a general listlessness and supineness in all degrees of men, from which I fear nothing but the stroke of calamity will rouse them. The present Ministry may probably be overturned by many events, and from their own weakness and inability, if no other cause co-operates. But the difficulty in the present unhappy crisis, as your Grace truly observes, is how to set up what is right; and I must fairly own that I do not see any means of it, until the King’s mind shall be possessed with a serious conviction of the danger, or the people be brought to open their eyes on the brink of a precipice before they fall into it. My course, however, will be, at all events, to acquit myself of what I owe to them and to my friends, as well as to my own character and opinions; but I believe that our attendance will be very thin in the House of Commons, from a variety of circumstances.”

No meeting took place between the Duke of Bedford and Mr. Grenville subsequently to the date of these letters, though they remained at their country seats, within a few hours’ journey of each other, for the ensuing fortnight. The tone of the correspondence is ominous of the approaching rupture; and if the Duke had been seeking a fair pretext for dissolving his connection with an impracticable associate, it was certainly presented by Mr. Grenville’s letter. Nothing could be more plain than that Mr. Grenville would oppose any Administration that might succeed the Duke of Grafton’s, unless it submitted to his dictation,—or, in other words, the little that could be gained by overthrowing the Duke of Grafton’s Government would be the substitution of one weak Government for another. The Duke of Bedford had, upon principle, long considered that of all Governments a weak one was the worst. It was from this feeling alone that, when a member of Mr. Grenville’s Cabinet, he had eagerly courted the accession of Mr. Pitt, whose views in many respects differed much from his own, and this was the main ground of his opposition to the Duke of Grafton. His scruples being removed by the retirement of Conway, it was now in his power to give the Government the strength which it so much wanted. This consideration was no doubt strongly urged upon him by Mr. Rigby, Lord Weymouth, and other aspirants to office. It was his nature to love his friends—not wisely, but too well; and he perhaps more readily yielded to their wishes from the resolution he had taken to accept nothing for himself. On the 20th of November he came to London to prepare for the operation on his eyes, which was performed on the 5th of December by Baron Wenzel, the celebrated oculist, so that, as Walpole observes, it was impossible for him to have been concerned in the details of the negotiation.—E.

54 Lord Lisburne had been raised to an Irish Earldom in the preceding year, almost immediately on his succeeding his father. He was great-grandson of the celebrated Earl of Rochester, one of whose daughters, and eventually coheiresses, had married Mr. Vaughan, the grandfather of Lord Lisburne. He was a good scholar, and the editor has seen in the library he collected at Mamhead in Devonshire, the seat where he passed his latter years, many evidences of his attention to ancient and modern literature. He died at an advanced age in 1800. The present Lord Lisburne is his grandson.—E.

55 He was entirely in the Grenville interest.—E.

56 The Jockey Club was composed of noblemen and gentlemen frequenters of Newmarket.

57 See more of Lord Weymouth vol. ii. p. 176, note.—E.

58 Governor Walsh was an intimate friend of Lord Clive, through whom he probably was thus employed by Mr. Grenville, that nobleman’s political patron.—E.

59 Thomas Brand, Esq., of the Hoo in Hertfordshire, had married Lady Caroline Pierrepont, half-aunt of the Duchess of Bedford. He died before any creation of peers, which did not happen till ten years after this date. [Mr. Brand was M.P. for Shoreham, and died in 1770; his son married Gertrude Roper, sister and heir of Lord Dacre, on whose death she succeeded to that ancient barony, which descended to her son, Thomas Brand, the present Lord Dacre, in 1819.—E.]

60 See vol. i. p. 358, note.—E.

61 Afterwards Ambassador at Vienna, and at length Secretary of State.—E.

62 Frederic St. John, Lord Viscount Bolingbroke. [He was nephew and successor of the famous Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke, to whom he bore some resemblance, in personal graces and vivacity, as well as in laxity of morals. Several of his letters are given in “George Selwyn and his Cotemporaries,” and show a smattering of literature. His marriage with the accomplished Lady Diana Beauclerc was dissolved more from his fault than hers in 1768, and he died in 1787. The present Viscount is his grandson.—E.]

63 Robert Sawyer Herbert, uncle of the Earl of Pembroke. [He was Surveyor-General of the Crown Lands from 1760 to 1768, and died in 1769.—E.]

64 A clear and impartial statement of this great case is given by Mr. Adolphus, in his History, vol. i. p. 308.—E.

65 Edward Willes, second son of Sir John Willes, Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas in the reign of George the Second.

66 Attorney-General to King George the Second.

67 Second son of Lord Chancellor Hardwicke.

68 Dunning’s relations with Wilkes and with Lord Shelburne furnish abundant reasons for the undistinguished figure he made in the House during the short period that he remained Solicitor-General. He was of course distrusted and slighted by Lord North, who would have obtained his dismissal within a few months after his appointment, but for the intervention of Lord Camden.—(Duke of Grafton’s MS. Memoirs.) Few men could have succeeded under such circumstances. As soon as he was released from this constraint, his great powers obtained the full recognition of the House. Wraxall describes him (after the date of these Memoirs) as one of the leaders of the Opposition, the constant associate, and not unworthy fellow labourer of Burke, and says, “that so powerful was reason, flowing from his lips, that every murmur became hushed and every ear attentive. Though he neither delighted nor entertained his hearers, he subdued them by powers of argumentative ratiocination which have rarely been exceeded.”—(Historical Memoirs, vol. i. p. 42.) His success was more remarkable from the extreme meanness of his person, and the badness of his voice. At the bar he excited universal admiration. Hannah More, in a letter on the Duchess of Kingston’s trial, wrote of him,—“His manner is insufferably bad, coughing and spitting at every word, but his sense and expression pointed to the last degree. He made her Grace shed bitter tears.” A great authority (Lord Brougham) has recorded that the fame of his legal arguments still lives in Westminster Hall,—(Historical Sketches, &c., vol. iii. p. 158) and one of the most accomplished of his contemporaries has left a tribute to his memory, so beautifully worded that one cannot read it without pleasure. “His language was always pure, always elegant, and the best words dropped easily from his lips into the best places with a fluency at all times astonishing, and when he had perfect health really melodious. That faculty, however, in which no mortal ever surpassed him, and which all found irresistible, was his wit. This relieved the weary, calmed the resentful, and animated the drowsy; this drew smiles even from such as were the objects of it, and scattered flowers over a desert, and, like sun-beams sparkling on a lake, gave spirit and vivacity to the dullest and least interesting cause. Not that his accomplishments as an advocate consisted principally of volubility of speech, or liveliness of raillery. He was endued with an intellect sedate yet penetrating, clear yet profound, subtle yet strong. His knowledge, too, was equal to his imagination, and his memory to his knowledge.” (Sir William Jones’s Works, vol. iv. p. 577.)—E.

69 Lord Bottetort’s proposal was absolutely monstrous, being nothing less than a gross fraud on his creditors. In the present day it would not have been entertained for a moment. Neither the Attorney-General nor the Home Office, however, raised any objections, and it would seem from the Duke of Grafton’s Memoirs that the case was heard before the Commissioners of the Privy Seal, and the claim allowed; but on referring to the Records in the Privy Seal Office, I find that the patent did not pass.—E.

70 Sir Thomas Stapylton, Bart., of Rotherfield Greys, Oxon, married Mary, daughter of Mr. Fane of Wormsley, and niece of the Earl of Westmoreland. His eldest son became in 1788 Lord le Despencer, the abeyance of that ancient barony having been determined in his favour.—E.

71 The Honourable Robert Lee, uncle to the Earl of Lichfield, whom he succeeded in that title in 1772. He died without issue in 1770, and was the last of his family. The title became extinct and Ditchly has descended to Lord Dillon.—E.

72 The proceedings are reported in Parliamentary History, vol. xvi. p. 397. Mr. Adolphus says in a note to his History, vol. i. p. 337. “The whole matter was treated with great ridicule by writers of all parties,” a statement which may easily be believed if Mr. Grattan’s story be true, that the peccant aldermen completed their bargain with the Duke of Marlborough during their imprisonment in Newgate.—E.

73 When this was written, it alluded only to the opposition occasioned by Lord George in Ireland. He has since engrafted himself on Mr. Grenville’s persecution of America.

74 Sir Robert Rich, Bart., had been made Field Marshal in 1757. His Brigadier’s commission is dated as far back as 1727, so that he must have been very aged when he died. His name does not appear as having ever been employed on active service. He was succeeded in his baronetcy and estates by his eldest son, General Rich, who had lost an arm at Culloden; one of his daughters became the second wife of Lord Lyttelton.—E.

75 Chauncy Townshend was M.P. for Wigton in Scotland. He died in 1770. The Annual Register states that he was the first Englishman that represented a Scotch borough (vol. xiii. p. 114). His son became an Alderman for the City of London, and a politician of sufficient notoriety to be often noticed in this work.—E.

76 Thomas Fonnereau, of Christ-church Park, near Ipswich. He was out of humour with the Minister for having refused him the place of Receiver-General of Suffolk. It is said that he had the offer of being Joint Postmaster General, which did not suit or satisfy him. He had the reputation of being very acute and persevering in business; the Lizard Lighthouses were projected and erected by him, and he had a lease of the tolls, which must have been very productive; but his expenses at Aldborough and Sudbury, for which he also returned a member, kept him poor. He had made himself remarkable for his loyalty in the rebellion of 1745, when he made a speech to the grand jury of Suffolk, which was publicly distributed at their request. He was obstinate rather than peevish, and his manners were generally very agreeable. He died a bachelor in 1779, in the eightieth year of his age.—E.

77 Nullum tempus occurrit regi et ecclesiæ: an old absurd maxim of law.

78 Vide The Character of Wilkes as a Politician and a Writer, in Lord Brougham’s “Statesmen of the Time of George the Third,” vol. iii. p. 181.

79 “An Enquiry into the Doctrine lately propagated concerning Libels, Warrants, and the Seizure of Papers, with a view to some late proceedings, and the defence of them by the majority upon the principles of the Constitution, in a letter to Mr. Almon from the father of Candor.” In the later editions it is intituled “A Letter concerning Libels, &c.,” and both Almon and “the father of Candor” are removed from the title page. “Candor” is the signature of a very clever letter to the Public Advertiser published a short time before by Almon on the same subject, severely attacking the Government under the pretence of defending it. The humour is sustained through fifty-four pages with great skill and vivacity, and the points in controversy are very cleverly handled. It may still be read with interest. “The Enquiry” was one of the most popular tracts of its day. It went through five editions in a few months. It has the merit of propounding sound constitutional doctrines in a clear and familiar style; of boldly denouncing error, and disseminating truth. The reasoning is forcible, and the legal research and knowledge displayed throughout are very considerable, especially in the use made of the early decisions of the Courts of Law. It may fairly be said to have settled the question, for very little was urged on the other side afterwards. As a literary composition, it can claim but moderate praise. The style is loose and careless, and wants the easy flow, the perspicuous diction and classical taste which may be found in some other contemporary tracts—such, for instance, as Mr. Charles Yorke’s “Considerations on the Law of Forfeiture.” In parts it is rather dull, and the materials, valuable as they are, might have been arranged with more effect. They appear to have come from different and unequal hands; for if the acuteness, wit, and learning of Dunning may be traced through many pages, remarks occasionally occur which could hardly have proceeded from a practising lawyer. I can find no authority in support of the general belief of his being the author. I suspect he only revised it, and that Lord Chatham did the same. There are passages strongly partaking of the spirit and peculiar mode of expression of the latter.

Some interesting extracts might be made from this able tract. The following severe censure of Lord Mansfield must have been written by one who well knew the character he was describing. “I wish that when a Chief is found to be clandestinely meddling in matters of State in perversion of the law, he may be dragged into broad day-light, and his name and memory be branded for ever to the latest posterity. I cannot indeed figure to myself a meaner or more pernicious person than a chief justice, with a great income for life given him by the public, in order to render him independent, privately listening to every inclination of every ministry, and warping and wire-drawing the plain letter of the law in order to accommodate it to their inclinations, instead of pursuing the course of established precedents, inviolably, intrepidly, and openly, without regard to party or person. The chapter of expediency is the very worst source of adjudication, inasmuch as it tends to the setting afloat, by degrees, of the whole law of the realm.

“In our law the judges are bound by a sacred oath to determine according to the known laws and ancient customs of the realm, set down in judicial decisions and resolutions of learned, wise, and upright judges, upon a variety of particular facts and cases, which, when they have been thus in use, and practised time out of mind, are a part of the common law of the kingdom * * * ‘To allow of any man’s discretion,’ says Lord Coke, ‘that sits in the seat of justice, would bring forth a monstrous confusion.’ It is indeed wonderful that any man should have so servile a disposition; for let his abilities be what they will, he will always be regarded as a contemptible personage. This sort of profligate magistrate may be sure of being used by every ministry, but of being esteemed by none; seeing no set of men can depend upon him any longer than they remain in office and power, his only principle of action being an implicit obedience to the old tutelar Saint at St. James’s. He must be in truth—

and cowardice in a judge is but another name for corruption.” P. 85.—E.

80 They were not written by Dr. Franklin, but by John Dickenson, a citizen of Pennsylvania, and gained for their author the thanks of the Assembly of Massachusets. He warned his countrymen not to be deluded by the moderate rate of the new duties,—a circumstance which he characterized as artfully intended to prepare their reception of a collar, whose increasing weight would gradually bow them to the ground; and he encouraged them to hope that a deliverance from this evil would be obtained by a resumption of the same general and animated opposition which had procured the repeal of the Stamp Act. The arguments by which the author supported his doctrine of the illegality of internal taxes on America, are said to have converted Dr. Franklin. They had at least the merit of furnishing an excuse for his change of opinion.—(Grahame’s History of North America, vol. iv. p. 262.)—E.

81 See infra.

82 “Rodondo; or, the State Jugglers,” was published in 1763. The third canto soon followed the first and second; and a fourth was promised, but never appeared, probably owing to the author’s being rewarded with the post of Attorney-General of Grenada, where he died in 1774. He also wrote “Woodstock; a Poem,” reprinted in Pearch’s collection. His daughter married Dr. afterwards Sir John Elliot, the eminent physician.—(MS. note in the British Museum.)

With abundance of humour and no mean skill in versification, this poem might have ranked high among English satires, had the author bestowed more pains on its action; this is below criticism. A description of Mr. Pitt after the manner of Hudibras, with an invocation to the Muse, fills the first canto.—The second contains little beyond a shrewish lecture delivered by Lady Chatham to Mr. Pitt, and a long message from the latter to his footman. In the third is Mr. Pitt’s capitulation to the gout, and the distribution of his defects among his followers. The various characters are introduced awkwardly enough, as if to show the author’s proficiency in the art of vituperation; and in the last canto, where he descends to attack some of the City politicians, his coarseness becomes disgusting. This particularly applies to his invectives against Churchill. The shafts which he aims at Pitt are more worthy of their object.

The motto is ingenious and appropriate:

After fixing the date of his story:—

a portrait is given of the hero, of which these lines are a fair specimen.

The Common Destiny of Statesmen is lively and imaginative, but too long to be inserted here.

The following lines are also of more than common merit:—

83 This satire was published in 1703, in small 4to. (66 pages) with this title, “Patriotism; a mock heroic, in five cantos.”

Cumberland says of this poem that “it is one of the keenest and wittiest satires extant in our language. Lord Temple, Wilkes, and others of the party were attacked with unsparing asperity, and much critical acumen. Churchill, the Dryden of the age, and indisputably a man of first-rate genius, was too candid not to acknowledge the merit of the poem; and when he declined taking up the gauntlet so pointedly thrown down to him, it was not because he held his challenger in contempt.” (Memoirs, vol. i. p. 212.) True as this may partially be, the poem has great defects. The poverty and incompleteness of the allegory are alone fatal to its interest; Pride, Faction, Folly and Ambition are made to perambulate the town, to carouse together, and reciprocate declamatory speeches without any adequate result,—these speeches indeed being the only object for which they are introduced. The total absence of incident is sought to be redeemed by descriptions, some of which are lively enough. Abuse of popular licence and eulogies of the King and his Ministers form the staple of the poem. It opens with an account of the visit of Pride to the Mansion House, and the hospitality of Beckford is rather ungratefully returned by the following (among other) spirited lines on his followers.

The political libels on the King are thus sarcastically described:

This compliment on the King is pretty:

His gratitude to Lord Bute has flowered in a panegyric, which may interest the reader from being one of the very few poetical tributes obtained by that nobleman approaching mediocrity.

The success of this satire brought an accumulation of favours on the author, as, in addition to a commissionership of lotteries, and other small places, he received a pension for the lives of himself and his wife of 500l. per annum. He was the only son of the celebrated critic, and dabbled a little in criticism himself, though he was too careless to become eminent in it. He wrote several party poems in support of Lord Bute’s administration—all long since forgotten, as is his unsuccessful play of “The Wishes,” which his nephew Cumberland warmly praises for the brilliancy of its dialogue. “Philodamus,” another of his dramas, equally failed, but was honoured with an elaborate commentary by Gray; in return, perhaps, for the author’s beautiful designs to the 4to edition of that poet’s works. These designs, indeed, generally show considerable taste; and he was no doubt an eminently accomplished person. Unhappily, he was also eminently improvident, and notwithstanding a handsome patrimony which descended to him from his father, and the substantial bounty of Lord Bute, he fell into pecuniary difficulties, which harassed him to the end of his life. The editor has seen in the Island of Jersey a lonely house formerly belonging to Lord Granville, where he is described by Walpole as residing for some years with a large family of daughters. He died towards the close of the last century.—E.

84 Mr. Anstey died in 1805, being upwards of eighty years of age. His life had been easy and prosperous, and he cultivated literature only as an amusement. The criticism passed by Walpole on his works has been confirmed by posterity. Their inequality is not easily explained. He was a good classical scholar, as he has shown by his translations in Latin verse, which are very prettily turned.—E.

85 It may appear strange to us that a work of so little merit as Mrs. Macaulay’s History should be mentioned by Walpole almost in the same sentence with Robertson’s “Charles the Fifth,” but other writers of that day have bestowed on it equally elaborate and still more complimentary criticism. Indeed, it met, on its original publication, with a warmth of praise that presents a striking contrast to the discouraging reception of the early volumes of Hume. Madame Roland regarded it as hardly inferior to Tacitus. The adventitious events which produced this perversion of judgment in a large portion of the public have long ceased to operate, and the discredit which deservedly attaches to Mrs. Macaulay’s History has extended rather unjustly to her talents. She was a vain, self-opinionated, and prejudiced, but also a clever woman. Her works show occasionally considerable power of writing, especially in description; and carelessly as she consulted original authorities, and unfairly as she used them, she may in that respect bear no dishonourable comparison with Smollett, and others of her contemporaries. She is at least entitled to the praise of having been the first, in order, of our female historians. Mrs. Macaulay died in 1791, aged fifty-eight. An imprudent marriage, late in life, with a man much younger and in a much lower station than herself, alienated from her most of her friends, and hastened the downfal of a literary reputation, which had barely survived the wreck of the small section of politicians with whom she was connected.—E.

86 This is the case in her fourth volume; in the fifth, she takes the contrary extreme.

87 The letter was delivered at the Palace by Wilkes’s footman, and as unceremoniously returned. It is not disrespectfully worded. It is printed in Almon’s Life of Wilkes, vol. iii.—E.

88 Going to ask the vote of a petty shopkeeper in Wapping, the man desired Wilkes to wait a moment, went up stairs and brought him down a bank-note of £20. Wilkes said he wanted his vote, not his money. The man replied, he must accept both or neither.

89 Sir Robert Ladbrooke had filled the office of Lord Mayor in 1747, and so much to the satisfaction of the citizens that they elected him at the first vacancy, and he kept his seat till his death, at an advanced age, in 1773. (Note to Cavendish’s Parliamentary Debates, vol. i. p. 70.)—E.

90 Barlow Trecothick was an opulent merchant in the American trade, and not, as Dr. Johnson supposed, an American. He supported Wilkes with less warmth, but more judgment than Beckford, Mawbey, and Townshend, and Sawbridge, and the other prominent City patriots. Probably he had the penetration to see deeper into his character and views. Wilkes, in consequence, appears not to have lived on any intimate footing with him. He spoke well in Parliament. He was by far the ablest man of the party that ruled the City in that day. He died at Addington in Surrey, where he had a considerable estate, in 1775. His epitaph states, with more truth than elegance of expression, “that he was much esteemed by the merchants for his integrity and knowledge of commerce, truly beloved by his fellow-citizens, who chose him as their representative in Parliament, and sincerely lamented by his friends and relations, who looked up to and admired his virtues.”—E.

91 Sir Richard Glynn, an opulent banker in the City, and alderman. He had been Lord Mayor in 1758, and was created a baronet in 1759. He died in 1773: he was the founder of the great banking-house which still hears his name. He married twice, and left issue by both marriages. His eldest son by his second marriage was created a baronet in 1800.—E.

92 Son of the late Speaker. Colonel George Onslow was the son of the General, brother of the Speaker. (See infra.)

93 Cotes became a bankrupt in Feb. 1767.—E.

94 It was for the forty-fifth number of the North Briton that Wilkes had been prosecuted.

95 Sir William Beauchamp Proctor, of Langley Park, Norfolk, had represented the county from 1747 to 1768. He had been made a Knight of the Bath on the King’s accession. He made a fruitless application for Lord Chatham’s support in this contest; his Lordship’s answer being that he did not meddle with elections. Sir William Beauchamp Proctor died in 1778, aged fifty-one.—E.