LIVES OF
THE FOUNDERS
OF THE
BRITISH MUSEUM;
WITH
NOTICES OF ITS CHIEF AUGMENTORS
AND OTHER BENEFACTORS.
1570–1870.

‘If we were to take away from the Museum Collection [of Books] the King’s Library, and the collection which George the Third gave before that, and then the magnificent collection of Mr. Cracherode, as well as those of Sir William Musgrave, Sir Joseph Banks, Sir Richard Colt Hoare, and many others,—and also all the books received under the Copyright Act,—if we were to take away all the books so given, I am satisfied not one half of the books [in 1836], nor one third of the value of the Library, has been procured with money voted by the Nation. The Nation has done almost nothing for the Library....

‘Considering the British Museum to be a National Library for research, its utility increases in proportion with the very rare and costly books, in preference to modern books.... I think that scholars have a right to look, for these expensive works, to the Government of the Country....

‘I want a poor student to have the same means of indulging his learned curiosity,—of following his rational pursuits,—of consulting the same authorities,—of fathoming the most intricate inquiry,—as the richest man in the kingdom, as far as books go. And I contend that Government is bound to give him the most liberal and unlimited assistance in this respect. I want the Library of the British Museum to have books of both descriptions....

‘When you have given a hundred thousand pounds,—in ten or twelve years,—you will begin to have a library worthy of the British Nation.’—

Notices of some early Donors of Books.—The Life and Collections of Clayton Mordaunt Cracherode.—William Petty, first Marquess of Lansdowne, and his Library of Manuscripts.—The Literary Life and Collections of Dr. Charles Burney.—Francis Hargrave and his Manuscripts.—The Life and Testamentary Foundations of Francis Henry Egerton, Ninth Earl of Bridgewater.

The Reader has now seen that, within some twelve or fifteen years, a Collection of Antiquities, comparatively small and insignificant, was so enriched as to gain the aspect of a National Museum of which all English-speaking men might be proud, and mere fragments of which enlightened Foreign Sovereigns were under sore temptation to covet. He has seen, also, that the praise of so striking a change was due, in the main, to the public spirit and the liberal endeavours of a small group of antiquarians and scholars. They were, most of them, men of high birth, and of generous education. They were, in fact, precisely such men as, in the jargon of our present day, it is too much the mode to speak of as the antitheses of ‘the People,’ although in earlier days men of that strain were thought to be part of the very core and kernel of a nation.

But if it be undeniably true that the chief and primary merit of so good a piece of public service was due to the Hamiltons, Towneleys, Elgins, and Knights of the last generation, it is also true that the Public, through their representatives, did, at length, join fairly in the work by bearing their part of the cost, though they could share neither the enterprise, the self-denial, nor the wearing toils, which the work had exacted.

Now that the story turns to another department of the National Museum, we find that the same primary and salient characteristic—private liberality of individuals, as distinguished from public support by the Kingdom—still holds good. But we have to wait a very long time indeed, before we perceive public effort at length falling into rank with private, in the shape of parliamentary grants for the purchase of books, calculated even upon a rough approximation towards equality.

As Cotton, Sloane, Harley, and Arthur Edwards, were the first founders of the Library, so Birch, Musgrave, Tyrwhitt, Cracherode, Banks, and Hoare, were its chief augmentors, until almost ninety years had elapsed since the Act of Organization. Of the Collections of those ten benefactors, eight came by absolute gift. For the other two, much less than one half of their value was returned to the representatives of the founders. And that, it has been shown, was provided, not by a parliamentary grant, but out of the profits of a lottery.

The first important addition to the Library, subsequent to those gifts which have been mentioned in a preceding chapter as nearly contemporaneous with the creation of the Museum, was made by the Will of Dr. Thomas Birch, |Bequest of Dr. Thomas Birch, January, 1766.| one of the original Trustees. It comprised a valuable series of manuscripts, rich in collections on the history, and especially the biographical history, of the realm, and a considerable number of printed books of a like character.

Dr. Birch was born in 1705, and died on the ninth of January, 1766. He was one of the many friends of Sir Hans Sloane, in the later years of Sir Hans’ life. When the Museum was in course of organization, Birch acted not only as a zealous Trustee, but he occasionally supplied the place of Dr. Morton as Secretary. His literary productions have real and enduring value, though their value would probably have been greater had their number been less. His activity is sufficiently evidenced by the works which he printed, but can only be measured when the large manuscript collections which he bequeathed are taken into the account. Very few scholars will now be inclined to echo Horace Walpole’s inquiry—made when he saw the Catalogue of the Birch MSS.—‘Who cares for the correspondence of Dr. Birch?’

Soon after the receipt of the Birch Collection, a choice assemblage of English plays was bequeathed to the Museum by David Garrick. Its formation had been one of the favourite relaxations of the great actor. And the study of the plays gathered by Garrick had a large share in moulding the tastes and the literary career of Charles Lamb. Thence he drew the materials of the volume of Specimens which has made the rich stores of the early drama known to thousands of readers who but for it, and for the Collection which enabled him to compile it, could have formed no fair or adequate idea of an important epoch in our literature.

Sir William Musgrave was another early Trustee whose gifts to the Public illustrated the wisdom of Sloane’s plan for the government of his Museum and of its parliamentary adoption. Musgrave shared the predilection of Dr. Birch for the study of British biography and archæology, and he had larger means for amassing its materials. He was descended from a branch of the Musgraves of Edenhall, and was the second son of Sir Richard Musgrave of Hayton Castle, to whom he eventually succeeded. He made large and very curious manuscript collections for the history of portrait-painting in England (now Additional MSS. 6391–6393), and also on many points of the administrative and political history of the country. He was a zealous Trustee of the British Museum, and in his lifetime made several additions to its stores. On his death, in 1799, all his manuscripts were bequeathed to the Museum, together with a Library of printed British Biography—more complete than anything of its kind theretofore collected.

This last-named Collection extended (if we include a partial and previous gift made in 1790) to nearly two thousand volumes, and it probably embraced much more than twice that number of separate works. For it was rich in those biographical ephemera which are so precious to the historical inquirer, and often so difficult of obtainment, when needed. Nearly at the same period (1786) a valuable Collection of classical authors, in about nine hundred volumes, was bequeathed by another worthy Trustee, Mr. Thomas Tyrwhitt, distinguished both as a scholar and as the Editor of Chaucer.

But all the early gifts to the Museum, made after its parliamentary organization, were eclipsed, at the close of the century, by the bequest of the Cracherode Collections. |The Bequest of the Cracherode Collection.| That bequest comprised a very choice library of printed books; a cabinet of coins, medals, and gems; and a series of original drawings by the great masters, chosen, like the books and the coins, with exquisite taste, and, as the auctioneers say, quite regardless of expense. |1799.| It also included a small but precious cabinet of minerals.

The collector of these rarities was wont to speak of them with great modesty. They are, he would say, mere ‘specimen collections.’ But to amass them had been the chief pursuit of a quiet and blameless life.

Clayton Mordaunt Cracherode was born in London about the year 1730. And he was ‘a Londoner’ in a sense and degree to which, in this railway generation, it would be hard to find a parallel. Among the rich possessions which he inherited from Colonel Cracherode, his father—whose fortune had been gathered, or increased, during an active career in remote parts of the world—was an estate in Hertfordshire, on which there grew a certain famous chestnut-tree, the cynosure of all the country-side for its size and antiquity. This tree was never seen by its new owner, save as he saw the poplars of Lombardy, or the cedars of Lebanon—in an etching. In the course of a long life he never reached a greater distance from the metropolis than Oxford. He never mounted a horse. The ordinary extent of his travels, during the prime years of a long life, was from Queen Square, in Westminster, to Clapham. For almost forty years it was his daily practice to walk from his house to the shop of Elmsly, a bookseller in the Strand, and thence to the still more noted shop of Tom Payne, by ‘the Mews-Gate.’ Once a week, he varied the daily walk by calling on Mudge, a chronometer-maker, to get his watch regulated. His excursions had, indeed, one other and not infrequent variety—dictated by the calls of Christian benevolence—but of these he took care to have no note taken.

Early in life, and probably to meet his father’s wish, he received holy orders, but he never accepted any preferment in the Church. He took the restraints of the clerical profession, without any of its emoluments. His classical attainments were considerable, but the sole publication of a long life of leisure was a university prize poem, printed in the Carmina Quadragesimalia of 1748. The only early tribulation of a life of idyllic peacefulness was a dread that he might possibly be called upon, at a coronation, to appear in public as the King’s cupbearer—his manor of Great Wymondley being held by a tenure of grand-serjeantry in that onerous employment. Its one later tinge of bitterness lay in the dread of a French invasion. These may seem small sorrows, to men who have had a full share in the stress and anguish of the battle of life. But the weight of a burden is no measure of the pain it may inflict. Mr. Cracherode looked to his possible cupbearership, with apprehension just as acute as that with which Cowper contemplated the awful task of reading in public the Journals of the House of Lords. And the sleepless nights which long afterwards were brought to Cracherode by the horrors of the French revolutionary war were caused less by personal fears than by the dread of public calamities, more terrible than death. During one year of the devastations on the other side of the Channel, chronicled by our daily papers, Mr. Cracherode was thought by his friends to have ‘aged’ full ten years in his aspect.

The one active and incessant pursuit of this noiseless career was the gathering together of the most choice books, the finest coins and gems, the most exquisite drawings and prints, which money could buy, without the toils of travel. Our Collector’s liberality of purse enabled him to profit, at his ease, by the truth expressed in one of the wise maxims of John Selden:—‘The giving a dealer his price hath this advantage;—he that will do so shall have the refusal of whatsoever comes to the dealer’s hand, and so by that means get many things which otherwise he never should have seen.’ The enjoyment—almost a century ago—of six hundred pounds a year in land, and of nearly one hundred thousand pounds invested in the ‘sweet simplicity’ of the three per cents., enabled Mr. Cracherode to outbid a good many competitors. His natural wish that what he had so eagerly gathered should not be scattered to the four winds on the instant he was carried to his grave, and also the public spirit which dictated the choice of a national repository as the permanent abode of his Collections, has already made that long course of daily visits to the London dealers in books, coins, and drawings, fruitful of good to hundreds of poorer students and toilers, during more than two generations. From stores such as Mr. Cracherode’s—when so preserved—many a useful labourer gets part of his best equipment for the tasks of his life. He, too, would enjoy a visit to the ‘Paynes’ and the ‘Elmslys’ of the day as keenly as any book-lover that ever lived, but is too often, perhaps, obliged to content himself with an outside glance at the windows. Public libraries put him practically on a level with the wealthiest connoisseur. When, as in this case—and in a hundred more—such libraries derive much of their best possessions from private liberality, a life like Mordaunt Cracherode’s has its ample vindication, and the sting is taken out of all such sarcasms as that which was levelled—in the shape of the query, ‘In all that big library is there a single book written by the Collector himself?’—by some snarling epistolary critic, when commenting on a notice that appeared in The Times on the occasion of Mr. Cracherode’s death.

On another point our Collector was exposed to the shafts of sarcastic comment. He loved a good book to be printed on the very choicest material, and clothed in the richest fashion. The treasure within would not incline him to tolerate blemishes without.—

In Cracherode’s eyes, external charms such as these were scarcely less essential than the intrinsic worth of the author. ‘Large paper’ and broad pure margins are fancies which it needs not much culture or much wit to banter. But now and then, they are ridiculed by those who have just as little capacity to judge the pith and substance of books, as of taste to appreciate beauty in their outward form.^[1]

The solidity of those three per cents., and the plodding perseverance of their owner, were in time rewarded by the collection (1) of a library containing only four thousand five hundred volumes, but of which probably every volume—on an average of the whole—was worth, in mercantile eyes, some three pounds; (2) of seven portfolios of drawings, still more choice; (3) of a hundred portfolios of prints, many of which were almost priceless; and (4) of coins and gems—such as the cameo of a lion on sardonyx, and the intaglio of the Discobolos—worthy of an imperial cabinet.

The ruling passion kept its strength to the last. An agent was buying prints, for addition to the store, when the Collector was dying. About four days before his death, Mr. Cracherode mustered strength to pay a farewell visit to the old shop at the Mews-Gate. He put a finely printed Terence (from the press of Foulis) into one pocket, and a large paper Cebes into another; and then,—with a longing look at a certain choice Homer, in the course of which he mentally, and somewhat doubtingly, balanced its charms with those of its twin brother in Queen Square,—parted finally from the daily haunt of forty peripatetic and studious years.

Clayton Mordaunt Cracherode died towards the close of 1799. He bequeathed the whole of his collections to the Nation, with the exception of two volumes of books. A polyglot Bible was given to Shute Barrington, Bishop of Durham; a princeps Homer to Cyril Jackson, Dean of Christ Church. Those justly venerated men were his two dearest friends.

The next conspicuous donor to the Library of the British Museum was a contemporary of the learned recluse of Queen Square, but one whose life was passed in the thick of that worldly turmoil and conflict of which Mr. Cracherode had so mortal a dread. |The Collector of the Lansdowne Manuscripts.| To the Collector of the ‘Lansdowne Manuscripts,’ political excitement was the congenial air in which it was indeed life to live. But he, also, was a man beloved by all who had the privilege of his intimate friendship.

William Petty-Fitzmaurice, third Earl of Shelburne, and first Marquess of Lansdowne, was born in Dublin, in May, 1737. He was the son of John, Earl of Shelburne in the peerage of Ireland, and afterwards Baron Wycombe in the peerage of Great Britain. The Marquess’s father united the possessions of the family founded by Sir William Petty with those which the Irish wars had left to the ancient line of Fitzmaurice.

William, Earl of Shelburne, was educated by private tutors, and then sent to Christ Church, Oxford. He left the University early, to take (in or about the year 1756) a commission in the Guards. He was present in the battles of Campen and of Minden. At Minden, in particular, he evinced distinguished bravery. In May, 1760, and again in April, 1761, he was elected by the burgesses of High Wycombe to represent them in the House of Commons. But the death of Earl John, in the middle of 1761, called his son to take his seat in the House of Lords. He soon evinced the possession of powers eminently fitted to shine in Parliament. The impetuosity he had shown on the field of Minden did not desert him in the strife of politics. Those who had listened to the early speeches of Pitt might well think that the army had again sent them a ‘terrible cornet of horse.’ So good a judge of political oratory as was Lord Camden thought Shelburne to be second only to Chatham himself.

Lord Shelburne’s first speech in Parliament—the first, at least, that attracted general notice—was made in support of the Court and the Ministry (November 3, 1762). Within less than six months after its delivery he was called to the Privy Council, and placed at the head of the Board of Trade and Plantations. This appointment was made on the 23rd of April, 1763. Just before it he had taken part in that delicate negotiation between Lord Bute and Henry Fox (afterwards Lord Holland) which has been kept well in memory by a jest of the man who thought himself the loser in it. This early incident is in some sort a key to many later incidents in Lord Shelburne’s life.

For, in all the acts and offices of a political career, save only one, Lord Shelburne was characteristically a lover of soft words. In debate, he could speak scathingly. In conversation, he was always under temptation to flatter his interlocutor. In this conversation of 1763 with Fox, Shelburne’s innate love of smoothing asperities co-operated with his belief that it was really for the common interest that Bute and Fox should come to an agreement, to make him put the premier’s offer into the most pleasing light. When Fox found he was to get less than he thought to have, he fiercely assailed the negotiator. Lord Shelburne’s friends dwelt on his love of peace and good fellowship. At worst, said they, it was but a ‘pious fraud.’ ‘I can see the fraud plainly enough,’ rejoined Fox, ‘but where is the piety?’

The office accepted in April was resigned in September, when the coalition with ‘the Bedford party’ was made. Lord Shelburne’s loss was felt in the House of Lords. But it was in the Commons that the Ministry were now feeblest. ‘I don’t see how they can meet Parliament,’ said Chesterfield. ‘In the Commons they have not a man with ability and words enough to call a coach.’

In February, 1765, Shelburne married Lady Sophia Carteret, one of the daughters of the Earl of Granville. The marriage was a very happy one. Not long after it, he began to form his library. |Formation of Lord Shelburne’s Library.| Political manuscripts, state papers of every kind, and all such documents as tend to throw light on the arcana of history, were, more especially, the objects which he sought. And the quest, as will be seen presently, was very successful. For during his early researches he had but few competitors.

On the organization of the Duke of Grafton’s Ministry in 1766 (July 30) Lord Shelburne was made Secretary of State for the Southern Department, to which at that time the Colonial business was attached. |1766–1768.| His colleague, in the Northern, was Conway, who now led the House of Commons. As Secretary, Lord Shelburne’s most conspicuous and influential act was his approval of that rejection of certain members of the Council of Massachusetts by Governor Bernard, which had so important a bearing on colonial events to come.

Shelburne, however, was one of a class of statesmen of whom, very happily, this country has had many. He was able to render more efficient service in opposition than in office. Of the Board of Trade he had had the headship but a few months. As Secretary of State, under the Grafton Administration, he served little more than two years. His opponents were wont to call him an ‘impracticable’ man. But if he shared some of Chatham’s weaknesses, he also shared much of his greatness. And on the capital question of the American dispute, they were at one. They both thought that the Colonies had been atrociously misgoverned. They were willing to make large concessions to regain the loyalty of the Colonists. They were utterly averse to admit of a severance.

Under circumstances familiar to all readers, and by the personal urgency of the King, Lord Shelburne was dismissed from his first Secretaryship in October, 1768. His dismissal led to Chatham’s resignation. Shelburne became a prominent and powerful leader of the Opposition, an object of special dislike to a large force of political adversaries, and of warm attachment to a small number of political friends. His personal friends were, at all times, many.

The nickname under which his opponents were wont to satirize him has been kept in memory by one of the many infelicities of speech which did such cruel injustice to the fine parts and the generous heart of Goldsmith. The story has been many times told, but will bear to be told once again. The author of the Vicar of Wakefield was an occasional supporter of the Opposition in the newspapers. One day, in the autumn of 1773, he wrote an article in praise of Lord Shelburne’s ardent friend in the City, the Lord Mayor Townshend. Sitting, in company with Topham Beauclerc, at Drury Lane Theatre, just after the appearance of the article, Goldsmith found himself close beside Lord Shelburne. His companion told the statesman that his City friend’s eulogy came from Goldsmith’s pen. |1773. November.| ‘I hope,’ said his Lordship—addressing the poet—‘you put nothing in it about Malagrida?’ |Hardy, Life of Lord Charlemont, vol. i, p. 177.| ‘Do you know,’ rejoined poor Goldsmith, ‘I could never conceive the reason why they call you “Malagrida,”—for Malagrida was a very good sort of man.’ This small misplacement of an emphasis was of course quoted in the clubs against the unlucky speaker. ‘Ah!’ said Horace Walpole, with his wonted charity, ‘that’s a picture of the man’s whole life.’

Lord Shelburne’s library profited by his long releasement from the cares of office. He bestowed much of his leisure upon its enrichment, and especially upon the acquisition of manuscript political literature. In 1770, he was fortunate enough to obtain a considerable portion of the large and curious Collection of State Papers which Sir Julius Cæsar had begun to amass almost two centuries before. Two years later, he acquired no inconsiderable portion of that far more important series which had been gathered by Burghley.

Whilst Lord Shelburne was serving with the army in Germany, the ‘Cæsar Papers’ had been dispersed by auction. There were then—1757—a hundred and eighty-seven of them. About sixty volumes were purchased by Philip Cartaret Webb, a lawyer and juridical writer, as well as antiquary, of some distinction. On Mr. Webb’s death, in 1770, these were purchased by Shelburne from his executors. On examining his acquisition, the new possessor found that about twenty volumes related to various matters of British history and antiquities; thirty-one volumes to the business of the British Admiralty and its Courts; ten volumes to that of the Treasury, Star Chamber, and other public departments; two volumes contained treaties; and one volume, papers on the affairs of Ireland.

The ‘Burghley papers,’ acquired in 1772, had passed from Sir Michael Hickes, one of that statesman’s secretaries, to a descendant, Sir William Hickes, by whom they were sold to Chiswell, a bookseller, and by him to Strype, the historian. These (as has been mentioned in a former chapter) were looked upon with somewhat covetous eyes by Humphrey Wanley, who hoped to have seen them become part of the treasures of the Harleian Library. On Strype’s death they passed into the hands of James West, and from his executors into the Library at Shelburne House. They comprised a hundred and twenty-one volumes of the collections and correspondence of Lord Burghley, together with his private note-book and journal.

Another valuable acquisition, made after Lord Shelburne’s retirement in 1768 from political office, consisted of the vast historical Collections of Bishop White Kennett, extending to a hundred and seven volumes, of which a large proportion are in the Bishop’s own untiring hand. Twenty-two of these volumes contain important materials for English Church History. Eleven volumes contain biographical collections, ranging between the years 1500 and 1717. All that have been enumerated are now national property.

Other choice manuscript collections were added from time to time. Among them may be cited the papers of Sir Paul Rycaut—which include information both on Irish and on Continental affairs towards the close of the seventeenth century; the correspondence of Dr. John Pell, and that of the Jacobite Earl of Melfort.

These varied accessions—with many others of minor importance—raised the Shelburne Library into the first rank among private repositories of historical lore. To amass and to study them was to prove to its owner the solace of deep personal affliction, as well as the relief of public toils. At the close of 1770, he lost a beloved wife, after a union of less than six years. He remained a widower until 1779.

Another source of solace was found in labours that have an inexhaustible charm, for those who are so happy as to have means as well as taste for them. |Lord Shelburne as a Landscape Gardener.| Lord Shelburne lived much at Loakes—now called Wycombe Abbey—a delightful seat, just above the little town of High Wycombe. Its striking framework of beech-woods, its fine plane-trees and ash-trees, and its broad piece of water, make up a lovely picture, much of the attraction of which is due to the skill and judgment with which its then owner elicited and heightened the natural beauties of the place.^[2] But those of Bowood exceeded them in Lord Shelburne’s eyes. There, too, he did very much to enhance what nature had already done, and he had the able assistance of Mr. Hamilton of Pains-Hill. In consequence of their joint labours, almost every species of oak may be seen at Bowood, with great variety of exotic trees of all sorts. Both wood and water combine to make, from some points of view, a resemblance between Wycombe and Bowood. And both differ from many much bepraised country seats in the wise preference of natural beauty—selected and heightened—to artificial beauty. Lord Shelburne himself was wont to say: ‘Mere workmanship should never be introduced where the beauty and variety of the scenery are, in themselves, sufficient to excite admiration.’

But, in their true place, few men better loved the productions of artistic genius. He collected pictures and sculpture, as well as trees and books. He was the first of his name who made Lansdowne House in London, as well as Loakes and Bowood in the country, centres of the best society in the intellectual as well as in the fashionable world.

Years passed on. The course of public events—and especially the death of Lord Chatham and the issues of the American war—together with many conspicuous proofs of his powers in debate, tended more and more to bring Lord Shelburne to the front. Between him and Lord Rockingham, as far as regards real personal ability—whether parliamentary or administrative—there could, in truth, be little ground for comparison. But in party connection and following, the claims of the inferior man were incontestible. Lord Shelburne, towards the close of 1779, signified his readiness to waive his pretensions to take the lead—in the event of the overthrow of the existing Government—and his willingness to serve under Lord Rockingham; so little truth was there in the assertion, |H. Walpole to Mann; 1780. March 21.| made by Horace Walpole to his correspondent at Florence, that Shelburne ‘will stick at nothing to gratify his ambition.’

But that very charge is, in fact, a tribute. Walpole’s indignation had been excited just at that moment by the zealous assistance which Shelburne had given, in the House of Lords, to the efforts of Burke in the lower House in favour of economical reforms. He had brought forward a motion on that subject on the same night on which Burke had given notice for the introduction of his famous Bill (December, 1779). He continued his efforts, and presently had to encounter a more active and pertinacious opponent of retrenchment than Horace Walpole.

In the course of a vigorous speech on reform in the administration of the army, Lord Shelburne had censured a transaction in which Mr. Fullerton, a Member of the House of Commons, was intimately concerned. |Lord Shelburne’s Duel with Fullerton.| Fullerton made a violent attack, in his place in the House, upon his censor. But his speech was so disorderly that he was forced to break off. In his anger he sent Lord Shelburne a minute, not only of what he had actually spoken, but of what he had intended to say, in addition, had the rules of Parliament permitted. And he had the effrontery to wind up his obliging communication with these words:—‘You correspond, as I have heard abroad, with the enemies of your country.’ His letter was presented to Lord Shelburne by a messenger.

The receiver, when he had read it, said to the bearer: ‘The best answer I can give Mr. Fullerton is to desire him to meet me in Hyde Park, at five, to-morrow morning.’ They fought, and Shelburne was wounded. On being asked how he felt himself, he looked at the wound, and said: ‘I do not think that Lady Shelburne will be the worse for this.’ But it was severe enough to interrupt, for a while, his political labours.

On the formation in March, 1782, of the Rockingham Administration, he accepted the Secretaryship of State, and took with him four of his adherents into the Cabinet. But the most curious feature in the transaction was that Lord Shelburne carried on, personally, all the intercourse in the royal closet that necessarily preceded the formation of the Ministry, although he was not to be its head. George the Third would not admit Lord Rockingham to an audience until his Cabinet was completely formed. The man whose exclusion from the Grafton Ministry the King had so warmly urged a few years before, was now not less warmly urged by him to throw over his party, and to head a cabinet of his own. He resisted all blandishment, and virtually told the King that the triumph of the Opposition must be its triumph as an unbroken whole; though he doubtless felt, within himself, that the cohesion was of singularly frail tenacity.

On the 24th of March, Shelburne had the satisfaction of conveying to Lord Rockingham the royal concession of his constitutional demands—obtained after a wearisome negotiation, and only by the piling up of argument on argument in successive conversations at the ‘Queen’s House,’ lasting sometimes for three mortal hours. |Death of Lord Rockingham, 1782, 1 July.| Three months afterwards, the new Premier was dead. And with him departed the cohesion of the Whigs.