*

Charles Talbot, the twelfth Earl of Shrewsbury, was born in 1660, and succeeded to the title at a very early age, his father having been killed in a duel with the Duke of Buckingham. The family was then, as at present, Roman Catholic; but the young Earl embraced the Protestant faith so early as 1679, and, by his steady adherence to it in very trying times, incurred the displeasure of King James. He was foremost in the secret schemes against that Prince; and one of the seven who, in June, 1688, signed the celebrated Association, inviting the Prince of Orange. He continued throughout one of the chief promoters of the Revolution; and, as such, was employed as Secretary of State, and raised to a Dukedom by the new sovereign. So polished, engaging, and conciliatory were his manners as to make him in a great measure loved and trusted by both parties, insomuch that William the Third used to call him "the King of Hearts." "I never," says another most acute observer, "knew a 66 man so formed to please, and to gain upon the affection "while challenging the esteem." He appears, moreover, to have combined considerable talents with upright intentions; but his temper was timid and shrinking; he was averse to business from his disposition, and unequal to it from his health. "If," as he says himself, " a man "cannot bear the air of London four days in a year, he must make a very scurvy figure in a Court as well as "in a Ministry." His delicate mind also, like his body, was not made for the wear and tear of politics, as is truly and beautifully expressed in a letter to himself from Lord Halifax: "I confess I always thought there was too "much fine silver in your Grace's temperament; had you been made of a coarser alloy, you had been better

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* See an account of this duel in Pepys's Diary, January 17. 1668. Lady Shrewsbury was the Duke of Buckingham's mistress, and is said to have held his horse in the dress of a page whilst he was fighting her husband.

+ Lord Bolingbroke to Lord Orrery, May 18. 1711. Marlborough compares his manner to Eugene's in one of his letters. "Prince "Eugene has in his conversation a great deal of my Lord Shrewsbury, "with the advantage of seeming franker." (To the Duchess, June 15. 1704.)

Letter to King William, December 10. 1698, printed in Coxe's Correspondence, p. 181.

1718.

THE DUKE OF SHREWSBURY.

301

"fitted for public life."* Accordingly, during the whole term of his administration under King William, we find him almost unceasingly applying to His Majesty for permission to resign. His value, however, as the only man who could soften and combine the fierce partisans of that mortifying period was so much felt by William, that no prince ever showed greater reluctance to dispense with the services of a subject, and that his importunity did not prevail till 1700, when he resigned all his offices; and, hoping to restore his health by quiet and a purer air, proceeded to Rome, and resided there five years. On his return, passing through Augsburg, he contracted or announced a marriage with the Marchesa Paleotti, his Italian mistress. Having reached England, he resided chiefly in the country, at his seat of Heythorp; but renewed his former intimacy and political union with the Whigs, leaving his proxy with the Duke of Marlborough, and declaring that thus placed he thought his vote more sure to be employed for the public good than were he present to give it. But this good understanding soon became disturbed. He was nettled at the coldness with which the Duchess of Marlborough, and other Whig ladies, treated his foreign wife ‡, and he was no less offended at failing to obtain from the Whig Ministers some object of personal ambition for himself; the Lord Lieutenancy of Ireland, according to one account pension, according to another. At this period of displeasure with his former friends, he became entangled in the subtle snares of Harley; he privately entered into all the cabals of that crafty statesman and of his bed-cham

a

* Letter without precise date, but written in 1705, and printed in the Correspondence, p. 655.

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† He observes in one of his letters at this time, "I own it is hard at first to choose one's friendships well, but when they are once fixed upon a merit like the Duke of Marlborough, and their worth ex"perienced, it is past my comprehending how that should ever be "lessened or shaken." (See Coxe's Marlborough, vol. v. p. 212.)

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The Duchess writes to Lady Cowper, Oct. 23. 1710: "Your description of the Duchess of Shrewsbury is very good. I have "heard much such an account of her, only with this addition: my "Lord Duke looking a little grave, she chucked him under the chin, bidding him look up, amongst all the company! She is a great "honour to a Court !"

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ber ally; and he had secret conferences with the Queen at Windsor, on subjects not confided to her Ministers. Still, however, with his characteristic doubt and timidity, he avoided committing himself, or making any decided movement, until perfectly assured of the ascendancy of Mrs. Masham. He then took his seat in the House of Lords, and boldly defended the cause of Sacheverell against the Ministry. Nor was this all. The Queen availed herself of an interval, when Parliament was prorogued, Marlborough commanding in Flanders, and Godolphin betting at Newmarket, to deprive the Marquis of Kent of the Chamberlain's staff, and intrust it to Shrewsbury. Complaint and remonstrance proved unavailing ; and this first step was followed up until the utter overthrow of the Whig administration, and the establishment of the Tories, with whom Shrewsbury then combined. Though retaining his office of Lord Chamberlain, he was appointed to that of ambassador at Paris, from whence, in the autumn of 1713, he was, as I have already had occasion to state, transferred to the Lord Lieutenancy of Ireland.

The year 1717 is remarkable as the last on which the Houses of Convocation ever sat. From the Restoration to the Revolution, that assembly had been very inefficient either for good or for evil; and Bishop Burnet sarcastically observes of it in 1689, that "ever since 1662, the "Convocation had continued to sit, but to do no busi

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ness; so that they were kept at no small charge to do "nothing, but only to meet and read a Latin litany." Since that period, however, and especially in the reign of Annet, they had at intervals displayed great activity and most violent wrangling, the two Houses being almost always on bad terms with one another. On the accession of George the First, the Convocation was permitted to hold its sittings as usual. But it was not long before the Lower House plunged eagerly into a contention with Dr. Hoadley, Bishop of Bangor, who, in a sermon on the spiritual kingdom of Christ, had used expressions tending, it was alleged, "to subvert all government and discipline in the Church;" and also "to impugn and * Hist. vol. ii. p. 33. fol. ed.

† Somerville's Queen Anne, p. 81. and 124.

1718.

BISHOP HOADLEY.

303

"impeach the Royal Supremacy in causes ecclesiastical." This debate, known by the name of the Bangorian Controversy, would supply materials enough for a volume, but hardly interest enough for a page; and it may be sufficient for most readers to state, that the Government, anxious to compose these dissensions, and prevent any appearance of a schism in the Church, arrested the proceedings by a sudden prorogation, since which the ConVocation has never met again for business. Several good and wise men have deplored the cessation; and it is certainly possible that the frequent holding of this assembly might have checked the progress of dissent, and more early provided sufficient space and means for religious worship. But it is at least equally probable that its disputes would sometimes have widened into schism, its zeal warmed into intolerance; that the trade of agitator might have grown profitable in the church as it is in the state; and that the enemies of all religion would often have been gratified with the unseemly sight of conflicting divines.

*

The British negotiations at Madrid continued, but did not advance. In vain did Colonel Stanhope and Nancré combine their efforts in vain did the latter receive new and more effectual instructions from the Regent; in vain did Lord Stanhope urge Alberoni in private letters - the Cardinal maintained the same haughty tone as if Spain still held in its hands the balance of European power." The project of peace he termed an unheard-of monster, a goat-stagt, and the peace of Utrecht a treaty made for the Devil; complaining that the King his master was treated as if he were a king of plaster, or like a German! "But "the Lord's hand," he added from Scripture, "is not "shortened!" It is easy to perceive that the Prime Minister had not yet wholly discarded the coarse buffooneries which had first fascinated Vendôme, and that his

* Antonio Perez used to say, "Francia y España las Balanzas de "Europa, Ynglaterra el Fiel." (Relaciones, Append. p. 25. ed. 1624.)

Un hirco-cerf! (St. Simon, Mém. vol. xvi. p. 180. ed. 1829.) Comme un Roi de plâtre ! (Ibid.) Traiter un Roi d'Espagne à l'Allemande! (P. 236.) La main de Dieu n'est pas raccourcie! (vol. xv. p. 106.) The Treaty of Utrecht a treaty made for the Devil! (Alberoni's Apology, Hist. Regist. 1722, p. 209.)

never

style had not risen with his station. He was above all indignant at the naval preparations in England, but only the more actively pursued his own. The Spanish armament comprised twenty-nine ships of war, with transports for 35,000 veteran soldiers, 100 pieces of battering cannon, 40 mortars, and a vast supply of provisions, stores, and ammunition of all kinds. Never, says a Spanish historian by no means favourable to Alberoni had an expedition so formidable been sent forth by any former sovereign of Spain, not even by the Emperor Charles or by Philip the Second.† The fleet was intrusted to Don Antonio Castañeta, a shipbuilder rather than a sailor in his original profession, and the troops were commanded by the Marquis de Lede, a Fleming in the Spanish service, of misshapen stature, but of great military experience. The first place of equipment for the expedition was Cadiz, and its precise destination entirely unknown. Except the ex-Jesuit Patiño, the Cardinal had not a single confidant to his schemes, and is perhaps the only instance in history of a very vain man (for such, undoubtedly, was Alberoni) who never once betrayed his

secrets.

On receiving information of this mighty armament, Stanhope and Sunderland did not hesitate to give Byng their last instructions; and the Admiral sailed for the Mediterranean on the 4th of June with twenty ships of the line. The news from Spain had also no small effect at Vienna in lowering the pretensions of the Emperor. Our agent at that Court was then General de St. Saphorin, a Swiss of the canton de Berne, who had lately

* See the enumeration of these ships in Campbell's Lives of the Admirals, vol. iv. p. 437. This is as the fleet was off the Faro. San Phelipe reckons twenty-two ships of the line, and three merchant vessels, armados en guerra; but this was on leaving the Spanish ports, and the others may have joined on the voyage.

† Nunca se vieron en España preparativos tan grandes; ni Ferdinando el Catolico que tantas espediciones ultramarinas hizo, ni Carlos V. ni Felipe II. que hizieron muchas han formado una mas adornada de circunstancias y de preparativos. (San Phelipe, vol. ii. p. 167.) The French ambassador says that Alberoni had an eye to every thing himself. "Il entre dans tous les détails, et paie jusqu'aux "souliers des nourrices!" Mém. de Louville, vol. ii. p. 220.