In April 1784, George Nevill, 17th Baron Abergavenny, was approached to ask whether he would accept promotion to an earldom. In the wake of Pitt the Younger’s success in the general election, it was time for debts to be repaid and right at the front of the queue was John Robinson. Robinson had formerly worked for Lord North as a political agent but had chosen to switch his allegiance to Pitt and put all of his energy into securing Pitt a handsome victory. Robinson’s daughter was married to Abergavenny’s heir, Henry, so the new peerage would ensure that Robinson would ultimately be grandfather to an earl.

Abergavenny had also made a political journey. Married back in the 1750s to a member of the Pelham clan, he had naturally found himself within the orbit of the Old Corps Whigs and then of the Rockinghams. A consistent opponent of North and his handling of the American crisis, he had distanced himself from the former Rockinghamites who had entered the coalition with North and ultimately helped to bring the Fox-North administration down. So, the earldom was a double reward.

It might all have been very different, as exactly 37 years previously, while a student at Christ Church, Oxford, Abergavenny had narrowly avoided being tried for murder.

The story, as told in the press and in private correspondence, was that one of the Christ Church scouts (servants) named John or William Franklin (the papers could not agree which) had been found early in the morning of 4 April 1747 in one of the college quadrangles, badly bruised and with a fractured skull. His hair had been shaved and his eyebrows burnt off. There were also tell-tale indications of him having been very drunk.

What appeared to have happened was that a group of students, one of them Claudius Amyand, had been holding one of their regular shared suppers in their rooms, but had decided to entertain themselves by making Franklin, who seemed to have had a reputation as being somewhat eccentric, extremely drunk. The regular attendees had taken the prank (as they viewed it) so far, but things had become more extreme when they were joined by others, who had not been part of the original group. The newcomers were Abergavenny, Lord Charles Scott, a younger son of the duke of Buccleuch, Francis Blake Delaval and Sackville Spencer Bale (later a clergyman and domestic chaplain to the 2nd duke of Dorset). They appear to have handled Franklin very roughly – making fun of him by shaving his head – and to have left him so drunk that he was utterly incapable. According to Frederick Campbell, Abergavenny and Scott retreated to their own rooms at this point, leaving it to the remainder of the party to drag Franklin ‘out to snore upon the stair-case’. [Hothams, 42]

It was unclear what happened next, but it was assumed that after being abandoned on the stairs, Franklin had fallen down, fracturing his skull. On being discovered in the morning, Abergavenny’s valet took Franklin home, where he was examined by a surgeon, but nothing could be done for him. That there may have been a more sinister explanation for his injuries was, however, indicated early on by the news that most of those believed to have taken part in the drinking session had fled, and it was gossiped that the two most responsible for his injuries had been Abergavenny and Scott. [Ward, 169]

Certainly, the coroner’s jury considered that there had been foul play and brought in a verdict of ‘wilful murder by persons unknown’. Some observers took a different view. Frederick Campbell reckoned that it had been a joke that had been carried too far and he was certain that none of those in the frame would ever be convicted. He also added that ‘there was not three of the jury but was drunk’. [Hothams, 42] Horace Walpole’s sympathies, unsurprisingly, were also with the students, commenting: ‘One pities the poor boys, who undoubtedly did not foresee the melancholy event of their sport’. He had nothing to say about the unfortunate Franklin, who had lost his life. [Walpole Corresp, xix. 387] The only one of the group who seemed to have played no role in what had happened to Franklin was Amyand, who had quit the supper party early.

Had Abergavenny been charged with murder, he would have been able to apply to the House of Lords to be tried before them, in the same way that had happened to Lord Mohun in the 1690s and was to happen again soon afterwards to Lord Ferrers and Lord Byron.

In the event, there was no need for Abergavenny to face the prospect of a trial in Westminster Hall. While the coroner’s jury had concluded that Franklin’s death had been murder, the grand jury that sat on the case during the summer assizes refused to bring in the bill triggering a trial. The grand jury was said to have been made up of some of the principal gentlemen of the county and to have deliberated for several hours before reaching their decision. No doubt they were reluctant to agree to a trial of students from gentry (or noble) backgrounds, but they may also have been swayed by the convenient death of Lord Charles Scott just a few weeks before the assizes, which left the proceedings lacking a key witness (or a likely defendant).

Whatever his role had been, Abergavenny walked away unscathed. In 1761 he applied to be recognized as Chief Larderer at the coronation of George III and Queen Charlotte, and in 1784 he had his status enhanced with promotion to the earldom. Blake Delaval was also able to cast off whatever opprobrium had attached to him, and just two years after Franklin’s death stood for Parliament for the first time (unsuccessfully). He later represented Hindon and Andover and in 1761 was made a knight of the Bath. What happened, truly, on that night in April 1747 was never discovered and justice for Franklin – or at least a full explanation of what had happened to him – was never achieved.

RDEE

Further reading:

The Hothams: being the chronicles of the Hothams of Scorborough and South Dalton…, ed. A.M.W. Stirling (2 vols, 1918)

Horace Walpole’s Correspondence (Yale edition)

W.R. Ward, Georgian Oxford: University Politics in the Eighteenth Century (Oxford, 1958)

General Advertiser

Whitehall Evening Post

In July 1739, the General Evening Post reported the death of a Mr Kent at his house near Seven Dials. According to the paper, Kent occupied the post of chimney sweeper of the king’s palaces ‘a place of considerable profit’. Replacing him was one Mr Fatt and both men were described as ‘Blackmoors’ [an outdated term indicating Black heritage]. The role would have involved ensuring the upkeep of the chimneys at royal residences in London, such as St James’s Palace. Intriguingly, Treasury accounts from 1714 suggest that the holder of the post at that time was Anne Fatt, suggesting that the family had held the role before, under Queen Anne, and had now regained it, under George II.

Eighteenth and nineteenth-century commentators were often snide about chimney sweeps. The nature of their profession meant that they were frequently derided for being ‘unclean’, and this sometimes led to them being described as black, or depicted in prints with black skin. Consequently, some caution needs to be used when identifying a sweep’s heritage. However, the fact that the paper used the specific term ‘Blackmoor’ seems indicative of the fact that this was not a case of people being dealt with slightingly because of perceived uncleanliness.

One of the weekly essays in the Scots Magazine for February 1740 noted the ‘Promotion of Mr Fat [sic] the Chimney-Sweeper’, and also employed terminology describing his heritage directly, which appears to confirm the identification. Making reference to a vacancy in one of the Cornish boroughs, the author suggested that he hoped to see Fatt promoted to Parliament, before remarking that the presence of a Black Member of the Commons might give rise to racist abuse. [Scots Magazine, ii. 56] A later essay, in the Oxford Magazine for 1770, also referred to Fatt as the only ‘Black-a-moor’ ever to have held a place at Court. [The Oxford Magazine or Universal Museum, v. 59]

The commentary surrounding Fatt’s appointment offers valuable insights into attitudes to the Black population of Britain in the period. It is interesting that a potentially lucrative contract was held in succession by Black British businessmen; also, that Fatt’s good fortune was the subject of comment in major periodicals. The reports help to add layers to our understanding of the composition of London society at the time. They show that members of the Black population were able to develop affluent careers, but also that their success was remarked upon, and not always favourably.

Fatt’s striking, if not wholly unusual, surname has also led to the likely identification of new voters. A decade after Fatt took over as sweep to the royal palaces, a by-election was held in Westminster after one of the constituency’s Members, Granville Leveson Gower, Viscount Trentham (later marquess of Stafford) accepted a place in government. Under the rules of the day, he was obliged to seek re-election, on this occasion triggering a contest after Sir George Vandeput, bt. chose to challenge for the seat. The initial result saw Trentham returned with 4,811 votes to Vandeput’s 4,654. Following a scrutiny, the numbers were revised down but Trentham still emerged with 4,103 votes, comfortably ahead of Vandeput, who was left with 3,933 votes.

According to the poll book, one of those voting for Trentham was William Fatt, who was identified as a ‘chimneysweeper’ from Pye Street in the parish of St Margaret and St John. As such, he was one of five men involved in the trade (one of them noted as a Chimney Doctor, rather than sweep), voting in the election. Although more work is needed to confirm the finding without doubt, it seems highly credible that this was the same man who, ten years earlier, had taken on the role of sweeper of the royal palaces. Assuming this to be the case, he thus joined John London as a second Black voter participating in the election.

Fatt’s name is not unique and unravelling the details of the family is complex. Two individuals, both named William Fatt, wrote wills in the 1770s, which were proved within three years of each other. It seems most likely that the first William Fatt, by then described as being of Castle Street, in St Giles in the Fields, whose will was proved in 1773 [TNA, PROB 11/984], was the man appointed to sweep the royal palaces in 1739 and who voted in the 1749 poll, even though the document makes no mention of a trade. This William Fatt referred to a daughter, Mary Knotgrass, which calls to mind the appearance in legal records from 1760 of William (a soot merchant from Swallow Street) and George Fatt (a victualler from Great Earl Street, Seven Dials), who stood bail of £40 each for Peter and Mary Nodgrass [sic]: possibly they were her brothers as William’s will mentioned four sons: William, George, Henry and Thomas.

The second William, almost certainly son of the elder William, died on 9 April 1776. He was buried in St Martin in the Fields, where a memorial was erected to him, his wife (Martha) and to sons-in-law, Thomas Angell (d. 1780) and another named Freeman. His will gave his trade as a chimney sweep, indicating a continuation of the family business. [TNA, PROB 11/1022] It referred to a house in Hampton, Middlesex, which he left to his daughter Mary, along with property at Sharrett (Sarratt) in Hertfordshire, which he left to another daughter, Anne. Both places also featured in the will of William the elder. Execution of the will was deputed jointly to Mary and to a carpenter from Piccadilly, named James Filewood, who received £10 for his trouble. By coincidence, Filewood also featured in the 1749 Westminster poll book.

The Hertfordshire property seems to have offered both William (the younger) and George Fatt further opportunities to vote. Both names appear in the 1774 poll book for the county. William, noted again as resident of Swallow Street, but also a householder in Sarratt, voted for William Plumer and Viscount Grimston. George Fatt, noted of London, but claiming rights as a householder at Great Gaddesden, also voted for Grimston but, unlike William, gave his other vote to Thomas Halsey. George Fatt then featured in the subsequent poll for the county in 1790. This time, he plumped for William Hale, who failed to be returned.

That the family business endured beyond the lives of the two Williams is indicated by the existence of a trade card from 1780 describing George Fatt as son of William and continuing the sweeping business from Sweeper’s Alley, Castle Street, Long Acre. It also noted that he had retained the role as sweeper to the king. George Fatt’s success in doing so appears to have been in spite of the efforts of ‘a great officer’, who had attempted to install his own porter in the role on William’s death. According to the press, ‘P.D.’ complained of the appointment of the man, who had been chosen in spite of knowing nothing of the business of chimney sweeping. [Morning Chronicle, 19 Apr. 1776]

This brief snapshot into the successful establishment of a family business, by people of Black heritage, is just a minor glimpse into the lives of Londoners in the eighteenth century. More work needs to be done to determine beyond doubt the family’s story. However, the findings suggest that there were many more people like them (and John London): successful business operators, who took the trouble to lodge their votes in eighteenth-century parliamentary elections.

RDEE

Further Reading:

Benita Cullingford, British Chimney Sweeps: Five Centuries of Chimney Sweeping (2001)

https://www.londonlives.org

ECPPEC

Following the prorogation of Parliament at the end of Mary 1775, the situation changed for the worse, as news of the armed confrontation at Lexington and Concord in April reached Britain. Following that, reports of Britain’s bloody pyrrhic victory in June at Bunker Hill (Charlestown) arrived in London on 25 July. Almost immediately the government of Lord North decided on sterner measures against the unruly colonists. The principal minister co-ordinating the deployment of troops was North’s step-brother, William Legge, 2nd earl of Dartmouth, secretary of state for America. The office had only existed since 1768 and Dartmouth, who came from a family that had long contributed officials, had held it since August 1772.

Dartmouth’s papers suggest that he was efficient in preparing for an increased military presence in America. As someone who had always sought conciliation, more troublesome to him were plans for a Royal Proclamation declaring the American colonies ‘in rebellion’ and thus that a state of war existed between Britain and America. On 1 February 1775, he had refused ‘to pronounce any certain opinion’ regarding the earl of Chatham’s conciliation bill, and even admitted he ‘had no objection to the bill being received’. [Almon, Parl. Reg., ii. 23] Similarly, in August, Dartmouth had feared that a formal declaration of war would jeopardize negotiations. He held off on agreeing to the Proclamation for as long as he could on the news that the Continental Congress was sending new proposals for a settlement: the so-called ‘Olive Branch Petition’. By late summer, however, the government was in belligerent mood, and on 23 August the Proclamation of Rebellion was promulgated.

Thus, when Parliament resumed on 26 October, Britain and the colonies were formally at war. Even Lord North ‘had changed his pacific language and was now for vigorous measures’. [H. Walpole, Last Journals, i. 490] One result was a ministerial reshuffle over 9-10 November. This gave the government a radically new complexion, and Dartmouth was moved from the American office, apparently unwillingly.

To soften the blow, the king offered Dartmouth his choice of being appointed groom of the stole, secretary of state for the southern department, or taking a pension. Dartmouth turned them all down and instead insisted on taking over as lord privy seal. The king had intended the place for Thomas Thynne, 3rd Viscount Weymouth, but made him secretary of state for the southern province instead. Dartmouth, George III complained, was not ‘in the least accommodating’ by ‘carrying obstinacy greatly too far’. [Fortescue, iii. 282-88]

The man who Replaced Dartmouth as secretary of state for America was Lord George Germain, a younger son of the duke of Dorset. Horace Walpole described him as ‘of very sound parts, of distinguished bravery, and of an honourable eloquence, but hot, haughty, ambitious, obstinate’. [Walpole, Mems. of George II (Yale), i. 190]

In 1758 Germain (at that point known as Sackville) had been sent to Germany as second-in-command of the British forces and was later promoted commander-in-chief. At the battle of Minden on 1 August 1759, though, he failed to obey orders given by his superior, Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick, commander-in-chief of the Allied army, to lead the British cavalry against the shattered French forces. The prince charged him with disobedience, while Sackville held that he had received conflicting orders, often delivered in German, and had been stationed on difficult terrain. He was castigated as a coward, even a traitor, by the enemies he had gained by his high-handed behaviour. Ever self-confident, Sackville insisted on convening a court martial so he could justify himself. According to Walpole, ‘Nothing was timid, nothing humble, in his behaviour’ [Mems. of George II, iii. 101-105], but the court declared him ‘unfit to serve… in any military capacity whatsoever’.

The shame of Minden always hung over Sackville, and for the next decade and a half he worked to rehabilitate his reputation. His chances were improved by the death of George II, who had developed a violent personal dislike of him. Sackville looked forward to better treatment from George III, but even he was unwilling to take a disgraced soldier back into favour immediately. Sackville relied for his slow recovery on his service in the Commons, where he advocated a firm line against the colonists, arguing at one point that ‘The ministers… must perceive how ill they are requited for that extraordinary lenity and indulgence with which they treated… these undutiful children’.[HMC Stopford-Sackville, i. 119]

In 1769 Sackville took the surname Germain, after inheriting property from Lady Elizabeth Germain. He continued speaking against the colonists throughout the first half of the 1770s and on 7 February 1775 he was the Commons’ messenger to the Lords requesting a conference on the address declaring Massachusetts in rebellion. He seemed, thus, an obvious choice as North looked for a new direction in the morass of the American crisis. Walpole summarized the effect that the change had on the war and the ultimate loss in America: ‘Till Lord George came into place, there had been no spirit or sense in the conduct of the war… [He was] indefatigable in laying plans for raising and hiring troops’. [Walpole, Last Journals i. 511, ii. 49]  Some contemporaries went so far as to suggest that Germain’s belligerence towards the Americans was an attempt to put to rest the shame of Minden. As Edward Gibbon put it, Germain hoped to ‘reconquer Germany in America’.

CGDL

Further reading:

P.D.G. Thomas, Tea Party to Independence: The Third Phase of the American Revolution, 1773-1776 (Oxford, 1991)

Andrew O’Shaughnessy, The Men who Lost America (Yale, 2013), esp. ch. 5

Alan Valentine, Lord George Germain (Oxford, 1962)

HMC Dartmouth

HMC Stopford Sackville, vols. I and II

The structure of mid-eighteenth-century politics was often defined as much by social custom as by constitutional form. What Leslie Mitchell has called the ‘circle of acquaintances’ of the ruling, largely Whig, elite revolved around familiar settings: the Court, the clubs of St James’s, the country house, grand residences of Piccadilly and, not least, the racecourse. (Mitchell, 23) In these arenas powerbrokers met, exchanged intelligence, and frequently determined the fate of ministries.

Horse racing in particular lay at the heart of the intersection between politics and courtly society. One of the clearest examples came with the formation of the 2nd marquess of Rockingham’s first ministry in July 1765, an unlikely coalition negotiated not in the council chamber, but at Newmarket in May and at Ascot in June. Horace Walpole remarked drily that ‘the new ministry was formed at the races’. (Albemarle, i. 199)

By the spring of 1765, George III was determined to be rid of his overbearing minister, George Grenville, who had been in office since April 1763. The task of taking the pulse of the political nation, fell to the king’s uncle, William Augustus, duke of Cumberland. (Brooke, 88–89)

The choice of alternatives was limited. William Pitt the Elder, still sulking in opposition, twice refused to serve. The veteran duke of Newcastle, nearing 72, was unpalatable to most. A younger generation of Whigs: Henry Bilson Legge, Philip Yorke, earl of Hardwicke, and William Cavendish, 4th duke of Devonshire, had all died in the preceding two years.

Cumberland had toured the great country houses in the summer of 1764, including Chatsworth, Wentworth Woodhouse and Woburn, discovering that the Whigs remained unenthusiastic about a return to power without Pitt. The stalemate seemed unbreakable. Yet the solution would not be found in the names listed in the London Gazette, but in the pages of the Newmarket Calendar.

By the 1750s and 1760s horse racing had become a central ritual of aristocratic and political life. Already favoured by Charles II in the seventeenth century, by the 1740s Newmarket was the undisputed capital of the turf. The Racing Calendar, first published in 1727 by John Cheny, recorded results and pedigrees, turning the turf into a semi-official world of statistics and reputations. Ascot, founded in 1711 by Queen Anne, had by the 1760s become a highlight of the London season, attracting large crowds and royal patronage. (Morton, 56–61) Both courses were more than sporting venues: they were theatres of status, where political alliances were cultivated over wagers, where a minister could be sounded out between heats, and where a successful stable enhanced a nobleman’s standing. As one contemporary put it, ‘the turf is the true parliament of our nobility’. (Lowerson, 14)

By 1765, Rockingham was already a figure of considerable weight within the Whig aristocracy, though not yet tested as a statesman. Born into immense wealth and heir to Wentworth Woodhouse in Yorkshire, he inherited his title in December 1750. In politics he aligned with the ‘Old Corps’ Whigs grouped around Newcastle, and from 1752 served as a gentleman of the Bedchamber to George II and George III, before resigning in 1762 in protest over Newcastle’s dismissal. Contemporaries described him as reserved, upright, and cautious: ‘[his] talents were not brilliant, but his integrity and firmness of purpose were unimpeachable’. (Albemarle, i. 73) Though ‘naturally diffident, he never failed in the discharge of what he considered a public duty’. (i. 74)

Rockingham’s early military service during the 1745 rebellion had brought him into contact with Cumberland, though he was too young to serve at Culloden. Nevertheless, the brief experience fostered a respect for Cumberland which endured. Their connexion was renewed in later years on the turf. Like Cumberland, Rockingham was a passionate breeder and owner of racehorses, and he became known as ‘the Racing Marquess’. (Albemarle, i. 165)

Cumberland was equally at home on the turf, and in June 1765 he held court at Ascot, where the outlines of a new administration were hammered out. As well as Rockingham, the new ministry was to include Augustus Henry Fitzroy, 3rd duke of Grafton, a great-grandson of Charles II. Not yet 30, Grafton brought youth and royal blood; Rockingham brought wealth, influence, and respectability. Their conversations at Ascot and Newmarket were, as Albemarle noted, ‘held not in the closet, but at the races’. (i. 199)

After the private conversations at Ascot and Newmarket, the decisive moment came at Claremont, Newcastle’s Surrey residence, on 10 June 1765. Gathered there were the ‘Old Corps’, Newcastle, Rockingham, Grafton, and leading allies from the Hardwicke and Devonshire factions to decide whether to enter office and, if so, on what terms. Crucially, Cumberland presided over the discussions. As Albemarle recorded, Cumberland ‘placed before them the situation of the King and pressed upon the leading Whigs the necessity of union if they were to serve with credit and effect’. ( i. 197)

The meeting was animated but uncertain. Pitt’s refusal to serve left the field open, yet no single candidate commanded unanimous enthusiasm. It was Cumberland who resolved the impasse. Having already sounded out Grafton and secured his willingness to serve under Rockingham, he now urged the party to unite behind the young marquess. Newcastle, initially hesitant, yielded when Cumberland assured him that George III would accept Rockingham as a conciliatory figure around whom the Whigs could rally.

The following day, Cumberland carried Rockingham’s name to the king, who accepted Cumberland’s counsel. With royal assent secured, the outlines of the ministry began to take shape.

Rockingham later admitted to Newcastle that he accepted office only reluctantly, ‘from a sense of duty to the King and to the cause’. (Albemarle, i. 207) His modesty stood in contrast to Pitt’s hauteur and Newcastle’s scheming. Pamphleteers and satirists delighted in the horse racing connexion: ‘From Jockeys to Ministers’, they jibed, suggesting the Newmarket Calendar was a better guide to government than the London Gazette.

The Rockingham ministry of 1765 was born out of weakness as much as strength. It was a government of compromise, stitched together by Cumberland’s personal authority and the trust he could command in the convivial world of the turf. Rockingham himself, inexperienced and cautious, owed his elevation less to dazzling ability than to the combination of fortune, birth, and connexions that made him acceptable when others were impossible. Yet the path by which he entered office reminds us how profoundly mid-eighteenth-century politics was embedded in aristocratic sociability. Walpole dismissed him as ‘a very insignificant young man’ (Albemarle, i. 218), while Edward Gibbon sneered that ‘the nation was governed by the jockey club’ (i. 220). In the eyes of many contemporaries, he remained ‘the Racing Marquess’, proof that what happened on the turf could have consequences far beyond the paddock. After Rockingham’s resignation in 1766, the independent Member, Velters Cornewall, quipped that he was ‘a jockey, but a good and high-bred racer, indeed.’

ICdeF

Further Reading
Albemarle, Memoirs of the Marquis of Rockingham and his Contemporaries (1852)
John Brooke, King George III (1972)
John Lowerson, Sport and the English Middle Classes (1993)
L.G. Mitchell, The Whig World (2005)
Charles Morton, History of Horse Racing (2004)

Every 30 January, the rhythm of the parliamentary session in the 17th and 18th centuries was adjusted to make way for the annual commemoration sermon, marking the death of Charles I in 1649. It usually fell to the most junior of the bishops to preach to the Lords in Westminster Abbey, while a senior member of the clergy would perform the same service for the Commons in St Margaret’s. Themed as they were around the subject of expiation for the sins of the nation, the sermons became steadily less well attended as the years went by and by the second half of the 18th century some, like John Wilkes, thought that they should be scrapped and replaced with a day of national rejoicing. Wilkes always made a point of staying away from the chamber on 30 January.

In a similar (though more celebratory) way, the date of the current monarch’s accession was also the occasion for the Members decamping from their chambers and heading across the way to listen to a sermon. For those living under George I, this took place on 1 August and the very first anniversary of his accession in 1715 was marked with an address by the newly minted bishop of Oxford, John Potter (1673/4-1747).

Potter’s background was unusual, though not entirely unique, for an 18th-century bishop. His father had been a linen draper in Wakefield and, more to the point, had been a nonconformist. Potter had been raised as such and educated at the local grammar school (now one of the constituent parts of the Wakefield Grammar School Foundation). From there he proceeded to Oxford, where he transformed himself into a high church Anglican, much to his father’s disgust. Although high church, and with a particular interest in patristics (the study of the early church), Potter remained a confirmed Whig and quickly attracted patronage from some extremely influential people.

From University College, where he had been an undergraduate, Potter proceeded to Lincoln College as a fellow and in 1699, the year of his ordination to the priesthood, he was appointed one of the chaplains to Bishop Hough of Lichfield and Coventry. In 1704, he traded up becoming one of Archbishop Tenison’s chaplains and was thought so closely tied to Tenison that he was known as his ‘darling scribbler’. Two years later, he achieved the key promotion to royal chaplain.

As a clergyman at Court and with close connexions to Oxford, it is perhaps not surprising that he came to the notice of the duke and duchess of Marlborough, and when the regius professorship of divinity became vacant at Oxford, he was their candidate for the place. In his way was the rival claim of George Smalridge, backed by Robert Harley and others, but in the end the Marlboroughs won out (as was so often the case) and in 1708 Potter became Professor Potter.

For the next few years, Potter focused his attentions on his role at the university, never apparently being considered seriously for any of the vacant bishoprics that came up. Indeed, in 1714 it was Smalridge who was promoted first, taking on the poverty-stricken bishopric of Bristol. However, soon after the accession of George I another opportunity arose following the death of Gilbert Burnet, bishop of Salisbury. Thus, when Bishop Talbot of Oxford was translated to Burnet’s vacant see, Potter was appointed to replace him at Oxford.

Potter’s 1 August sermon was his first major opportunity to make his mark in his new role. Unsurprisingly, he attracted criticism from Jacobite Tory opponents like Thomas Hearne, at that point still in post as one of the librarians at the Bodleian, but soon to be forced out as he was unwilling to take the oaths to George I. Recording the sermon a few weeks later, Hearne noted that it had been preached by ‘our present sneaking, poor-spirited, cringing, whiggish bishop’. The content, he thought, was ‘vile, silly, injudicious, illiterate, & roguish stuff, sufficiently showing what the author is’. [Hearne, v. 122] Hearne never lost an opportunity of deriding Potter using terms like ‘snivelling’ or ‘white-livered’ to describe him. [Hearne, vi. 123; ix. 360]

Potter’s chosen text was Psalm 20, verse 5: ‘We will rejoice in thy salvation, and in the name of our God we will set up our banners’. His theme, obviously enough, was the blessings the nation had received by the peaceful succession of the House of Hanover, and how narrowly they had avoided the prospect of civil war. Not only was the nation peaceful, he urged but he may also have had half a mind on his own significant progress when he argued:

Neither can there be any just complaint, that arts and industry, virtue and public services want suitable encouragement; where the way lies open for ever man to advance himself to the highest honours and preferments and after he hath enjoyed the fruits of all his labour in his own person, there is as great certainty… that he shall transmit them entire to his posterity…

As well as lauding the prospect before them under the house of Hanover, Potter also allowed himself some predictable venting against the horrors of life under a Catholic sovereign. Even other religions, he suggested, might be ‘kind and merciful’. He also trotted out the familiar theme of the importance of divine providence in settling King George among them.

Over the next few years, Potter developed his role in the Church, becoming a close associate of William Wake, archbishop of Canterbury, and co-operating with him closely in opposing two pieces of government-backed legislation. He attracted attention for wading into the ‘Bangorian controversy’, criticizing the apparent Arianism of Benjamin Hoadly, bishop of Bangor. Even Hearne had to acknowledge that he did so ‘very deservedly’. [Hearne, vii. 82] He also became close to the Princess of Wales, the future Queen Caroline.

When George I died it was widely rumoured that Potter would be promoted to Bath and Wells. Although that proved not to be the case (he seems to have turned the promotion down) he was the person selected to preach the new king and queen’s coronation sermon in October 1727. Controversially, for a Whig, he used high church terminology to justify George’s claim to the throne by hereditary right. [Smith, 37] More controversially, for a Whig, he also emphasized the need for the new king’s subjects to give their ‘entire submission to his authority’.

It was to be another decade before Potter was finally rewarded with a richer diocese. On Wake’s death in 1737, it was Potter who became Archbishop of Canterbury, rather than Bishop Hare of Chichester, backed by Sir Robert Walpole. The translation was widely attributed to the queen’s personal intervention and came just a few months before her death later that year.

Potter may not be the best-remembered of 18th-century bishops, or indeed a particularly memorable Archbishop of Canterbury. Much more attention is paid to his younger son, Thomas, a Member of Parliament, associate of the so-called Hellfire Club and a generally archetypal Georgian rake. But Potter was important in showing that the Church of England was able to adapt in the period, adopt language used by the Jacobites to justify the Hanoverian monarchy and was open to advancing the son of a Yorkshire linen draper, and a nonconformist one at that, to the highest place in the Church.

RDEE

Further reading:
J.C.D. Clark, English Society 1688-1832
Remarks and Collections of Thomas Hearne, ed. C.E. Doble
Hannah Smith, Georgian Monarchy: Politics and Culture, 1714-1760
The Theological Works of the most reverend Dr John Potter, late Archbishop of Canterbury

Bloomsbury Square, and its immediate surroundings, have long been associated with prominent political figures. In 1706, several peers had residences in the square, notably the (2nd) duke of Bedford and the earls of Northampton and Chesterfield. Close neighbours residing in Great Russell Street, were the duke of Montagu (whose house later became the British Museum), the earl of Thanet and Lord Haversham, and John Hough, at that point bishop of Lichfield and Coventry. By 1727, things had changed somewhat. Montagu was still living in Great Russell Street, now joined by William Baker, bishop of Bangor, shortly after translated to Norwich. But Northampton’s heir had left Bloomsbury Square for Grosvenor Street, though another house had been taken by the earl of Nottingham. [Jones, ‘London Topography’]

Jump forward half a century, and Bloomsbury Square remained a place closely associated with the aristocracy. It was still home to the (5th) duke of Bedford and he had been joined by one of the foremost legal minds of the time: William Murray, earl of Mansfield, who had moved there from Lincoln’s Inn Fields a few years previously. According to Mansfield’s biographer, the square ‘conveyed a delightful atmosphere of leisure and repose, where often the only sounds came from the twittering and chirping of birds’. [Poser, 167] In June 1780, this ‘delightful’ haven was to be turned on its head and Mansfield’s residence was to become one of the principal targets of the Gordon rioters, who flocked to the square on the night of 6/7 June determined to torch the place.

Much has been written about the Gordon riots, which brought London (and other cities) to a virtual standstill for several days in June 1780. The immediate cause was the Protestant Association’s petition calling for the repeal of the 1778 Catholic Relief Act. Having gathered in St George’s Fields on Friday 2 June, members of the Association, led by their president, Lord George Gordon, processed to Parliament to present the petition. While things had begun calmly enough, in the course of the day more unruly elements flocked to Westminster and MPs and members of the Lords found themselves besieged within their chambers.

Thus, what began as a relatively focused cause was soon taken over by general lawlessness, and as Bob Shoemaker and Tim Hitchcock have argued persuasively, many of those involved in the later stages of the rioting had as their target the criminal justice system itself and were far less driven by concerns about religion. [Hitchcock and Shoemaker, 346, 349-50] Consequently, several prisons were attacked and the inmates released; lawyers in and around the inns of court went in fear of assault (or worse) and prominent judges, like Mansfield, became very obvious targets. The fact that Mansfield had also been vocal in his support of the Catholic Relief Act made him doubly susceptible.

Mansfield had been singled out for special treatment even on that first day. Arriving at Westminster, his carriage had been attacked and he had had to be rescued by the archbishop of York. After the day’s proceedings were adjourned, Mansfield was forced to make his way out of the Lords via a back door and travelled home by river as his coach had since been torn to pieces.

Over the next few days rioting gripped London. By Tuesday 6 June Mansfield’s nephew (and eventual heir) David, 7th Viscount Stormont, felt the need to advise the officer commanding the guards in London that he had received ‘reliable information’ that several houses were in need of additional protection, among them those of the marquess of Rockingham and Mansfield. [TNA, SP37/20/54, ff. 76-6] Despite Stormont’s efforts, Mansfield himself decided that too visible a military presence might only infuriate the crowd, so he requested the guards remain at a distance. It was a fatal mistake. When a band of rioters arrived outside Mansfield’s house on the night of 6/7 June, they found it undefended and set to work pulling down the railings before breaking into the house itself. There, they gave vent to all their destructive power, burning his library and gutting the building. Mansfield and Lady Mansfield only narrowly escaped, by using the back door onto Southampton Row.

Mansfield’s losses were significant. Consigned to the flames were his own legal notebooks, along with his library and pretty much the entire contents of the house. Efforts to save the building were stymied because when firefighters arrived on the scene, they refused to get involved until the soldiers (who had by then made themselves known) withdrew, in case they got caught in the middle of fighting between the crowd and the troops.

According to one paper, Mansfield’s losses amounted to £30,000, the library constituting a third of the total. [Morning Chronicle, 9 June 1780] Another paper attributed the destruction to Mansfield’s own ‘ill-judged lenity’, after he had ‘humanely requested [the troops] not fire upon the deluded wretches’. The same paper detailed some of the irreplaceable items that had been destroyed, including a portrait of Viscount Bolingbroke by the poet, Alexander Pope, ‘which, though not having the merit of a professed artist, was always esteemed a great likeness’. [Whitehall Evening Post, 10-13 June 1780]

The tragedy of the Gordon Riots and its impact on Bloomsbury Square did not end on 7 June. Precisely how many people were killed and injured in the rioting remains unclear, but among the rioters well over 300 were killed. Some troops were also among the dead, one of them a cavalrymen posted in Bloomsbury Square, who came off his horse and was finished off by the crowd. [Whitehall Evening Post, 8-10 June 1780] Retribution for some of those involved came quickly and within days there were numerous arrests. By the end of the month the first trials were underway.

As was so often the case, it was the very recognizable among the most marginalized who ended up being handed in. One such was John Gray, whose case has been written about extensively. A native of Taunton in Somerset, who had made his way to London, Gray was one of many on the fringes of society, eking out a living by feeding horses for hackney carriages. [London Courant, 24 July 1780] Although described as ‘a stout made man’, he appears to have had a clubfoot and to have needed a crutch to walk. He seems also to have had mental health issues. He stood out in the crowd taking part in pulling apart one of Mansfield’s outhouses and a few days later was arrested after being spotted trying to pick someone’s pocket.

Gray was convicted at the Old Bailey (https://www.oldbaileyonline.org/) and, in spite of a petition for mercy subscribed by several prominent Taunton residents, one of them the chaplain to Lord Bathurst, [TNA, [SP37/21/132, f. 250] and other recommendations that his case was one worthy of the king’s consideration, [TNA, SP37/21/91] the appeals for clemency were rejected. On Saturday 22 July, he was conveyed back to Bloomsbury Square with two others and hanged on a gallows positioned so that their last view was the remains of Mansfield’s burnt-out former residence.

RDEE

Further reading:
Clyve Jones, ‘The London Topography of the Parliamentary Elite: addresses for peers and bishops for 1706 and 1727-8’, London Topographical Record, xxix (2006)
Norman S. Poser, Lord Mansfield: Justice in the Age of Reason (2013)
Tim Hitchcock and Bob Shoemaker, London Lives: poverty, crime and the making of a modern city 1690-1800 (2015)

For a young man seeking political independence and prestige but having little by way of financial stability to obtain it otherwise, Pitt’s strategy for targeting Cambridge made sense. But even with his failure at the 1780 election and his rapid turn of fortune, Pitt held onto his conviction. Once the opportunity arose in March 1784, Pitt opted to contest the University again, against the backdrop of his dramatic ascent to power. Standing alongside him was George FitzRoy, Earl of Euston, son of the University’s Chancellor. Opposing them were the two sitting members, James Mansfield and John Townshend, who represented Foxite interests.

While Pitt’s success in the University election seems inevitable in retrospect, this was not the case at the time of the dissolution of Parliament. From the outset, the contest was projected to be very fierce. Writing to his friend the Duke of Rutland, Pitt admitted that Cambridge was ‘unexplored ground’, though he was ‘sanguine in [his] expectations’. Owing to its position as a respectable and pious institution, the electoral culture and processes of the University significantly differed from the disorder often associated with Hanoverian elections. Hustings, dinners, and speeches were prohibited and its erudite electorate was expected to make independent choices which benefitted the nation at large.

Nevertheless, voters still expected to be courted, and with the official canvassing period being only nine days, all candidates had much to keep them occupied. Written correspondence was a key part of the canvassing process. Generic letters from candidates ‘taking the liberty’ to request ‘the honour’ of the recipient’s support were sent to all voters. But more important were the ‘personal application’ letters, used to solicit votes directly. James Talbot, Regius Professor of Hebrew, advised a prospective candidate for the 1700 election that electoral success at the University ‘must be gained by personal application, and the solicitation of private friends, letters from patrons, relations’. [Cook, Representative History, 228-9]. This was an established practice, and Pitt and his agents managed an extensive operation of sending these applications throughout the short and intense canvassing period. Some were sent directly to voters, but they often went to a ‘middle-man’ (sometimes middle-woman) – a friend of Pitt and/or the administration who could make applications to the voter(s) on their behalf.

The relationship between the ‘middle-man’ and the voter varied from patronage and friendship to kinship. In a letter between Pitt’s friends and election agents, John Charles Villiers and Thomas Pretyman-Tomline, an extensive list of ‘connexions’ which ‘sh[oul]d be immediately attended to’ was attached. Unfortunately, the list was quite rudimentary, consisting mostly of pairs of names connected by a single line, for instance: ‘[Thomas] Lund [of St John’s] – L[ad]y Irwine’. A few items contained clues regarding particular connections, such as: ‘L[or]d Aylesford c[oul]d perhaps get us even a single vote from Rev[erend] Mr Barnard of St John’s to which he has just been given a living’. [TNA, PRO 30/8/315]

Pitt and his agents had at their disposal an expansive network of contacts which covered a broad geographical, ideological and institutional range, from the reformers of the Association Movement in Yorkshire to the friends of the King such as William Hayward Roberts, Provost of Eton. The applications were not always successful, but not for reasons one might expect. Mistakes, such as targeting disenfranchised voters, were extremely common. Pre-existing personal obligations or attachments to other candidates also prevented voters from committing to Pitt. Carrington Garrick of St John’s, for example, could not vote for Pitt, having already made promises to Mansfield and Townshend, but was happy for Pitt to instruct him on the vote he also possessed for the Cambridgeshire county election [TNA, PRO 30/8/315]. Rather than political partisanship, it was often the influences and obligations associated with personal relationships which swayed the voters towards particular candidates.

Besides the letters, candidates themselves were expected to be involved on the ground, and their every move was reported in the national press. Letters exchanged between Pitt’s agents emphasised the importance of Pitt being physically present at the University, as he was expected to pay in-person visits to certain key University figures, such as the heads of the colleges. Richard Watson, bishop of Llandaff and Regius Professor of Divinity, recalled in his memoir that during Pitt’s visit, he set out some policy expectations for the Prime Minister-to-be. [Watson, Anecdotes, 211-15]

Throughout the nine days, the contest remained unpredictable. Townshend was projected to top the poll, but Pitt soon took the lead. Mansfield, whose odds were poor from the beginning, reportedly planned to oust Pitt by transferring his votes to Townshend on election day. Euston’s prospects were uncertain, but his affiliation with Pitt would save him from his father’s poor reputation. By election day, set for 3 April, most of the English boroughs had already made their returns, making the University one of the last constituencies to go to the polls before the county elections began.

The University’s election took place, as it always had, in the Senate House, accompanied by the ‘notable Bustle’ from its learned population. The University enjoyed relative control over its electoral process: unlike other constituencies in this period, votes were cast in ‘secret’. Each voter would inscribe his own and his chosen candidates’ names onto a ballot paper (in Latin) before depositing it at a designated table. Each ballot was then read aloud, and subsequently recorded in the poll book. Voting took place throughout the day, with an adjournment in the early afternoon, at which point the number of votes was read out. Once voting resumed, it lasted until the end of the day, and the final count was announced. [Ceremonies Observed in the Senate-House, Wall ed. Gunning, 230-33].

According to the accounts of William Ewin and John Robinson, Pitt was ‘secure’ quite early on in the count, at two o’clock in the afternoon, and there were ‘sanguine hopes’ for Euston. For Ewin, however, Euston’s success was little more than the results of ‘the little Electioneering Tricks of making over Votes & people breaking their words & promises’. Never one to shy away from gossip, Ewin suggested that this was the result of the ‘art’ and machinations used by ‘a Certain great man’. It is unclear whom this comment targeted – Pitt certainly seemed a prime suspect, but it is not unreasonable to assume that it could be the King, who was certainly pleased with the Ministry’s sweeping victory at the University.

Pitt would faithfully represent the University until his death in 1806. Though history has been kind to him, it has been less kind to the University as a political institution. Much like other features of Hanoverian politics, it was lambasted by the Victorians as corrupt and anachronistic. By examining some of its unique characteristics, however, we can begin to recalibrate our understanding not only of Pitt or Cambridge but also of the inner workings of political life in this period.

NSJ

Further Reading
John Cannon, The Fox-North Coalition: Crisis of the Constitution, 1782-4 (Cambridge, 1969)

David Cook, The Representative History of the County, Town, and University of Cambridge, 1689-1832 (University of London PhD thesis, 1935)

John Gascoigne, Cambridge in the Age of the Enlightenment: Science and Politics from the Restoration to the French Revolution (Cambridge, 1989)

Joseph S. Meisel, Knowledge and Power: The Parliamentary Representation of Universities in Britain and the Empire (Parliamentary History: Texts & Studies, 4, 2011)

Peter Searby, A History of the University of Cambridge, Vol. 3 (Cambridge, 1997)

‘William Pitt and Pembroke’, Pembroke Annual Gazette (Pembroke College Society, Vol. 8, 1934), held in Pembroke College Archive, Cambridge

One of the seminal moments of Pulteney’s career occurred at the end of the parliamentary session on 31 May 1725 when he was dismissed from his post as cofferer of the household, on account of his opposition earlier in the session, most notably over the Civil List bill. There followed a period of opposition which ended only with the resignation of Sir Robert Walpole from the Treasury on 3 February 1742. Pulteney then entered the Cabinet, but consistent with his oft-repeated pledge not to take office, he did not take an administrative post. On 14 July, the penultimate day of the 1741-2 session, he was raised to the earldom of Bath, taking his seat in the Lords on the following day.

Pulteney lost a lot of popularity when entering the House of Lords, and he failed twice to attain major office in the years following: he was overlooked in favour of Henry Pelham, as first lord of the Treasury, upon the death of the earl of Wilmington in July 1743 and failed to construct a ministry when the Pelhams and most of their colleagues resigned in February 1746. From then on, his political career is deemed to have been over and he spent his time in ‘retirement’.

However, there was another side to Pulteney, related to the accumulation of power and influence. On the very day he took his seat in the Lords, a bill to prevent the marriage of lunatics received the royal assent. This was managed through the Commons by Pulteney’s long-term associate Phillips Gybbon and served to offer some protection to Pulteney’s investment in the reversion of the estates of the Newport, earls of Bradford.

The heir to the estates of Pulteney’s friend, Henry Newport, 3rd earl of Bradford (1683-1734) was Bradford’s illegitimate son, John Newport, whose mother Ann Smyth was on her deathbed. The reversion of Bradford’s estates had been granted to Pulteney (in return for paying for Newport’s maintenance and the debts of the third earl). Now Newport could not be married off by unscrupulous operators for the estates. Similarly, the third earl’s brother, Thomas Newport, who succeeded to the title as 4th earl of Bradford, was a certified lunatic.

The Bradford estates were destined for Pulteney’s son, William, Viscount Pulteney, who pre-deceased his father in June 1763. Sir Lewis Namier detailed the battle waged by Bath to become lord lieutenant of Shropshire following the accession of George III. Bath used his connexions with the new king and John Stuart, 3rd earl of Bute, to overcome the claims of his rival, Henry Arthur Herbert, created Baron Herbert of Chirbury in 1743 and promoted earl of Powys in 1748. In 1736 when Ann Smyth had petitioned for a bill to allow her son (at the time known as John Harrison) to be adopt the surname Newport, the first two-names on the drafting committee were Herbert and Pulteney, with Herbert managing the bill through the House.

The death of Viscount Pulteney did not end Bath’s interest in the Bradford estates. On 21 March 1764 a bill received the royal assent allowing the guardians of John Newport to make leases of his estates during his lunacy. It was managed through the Lords by Pulteney’s ally, Samuel Sandys, Baron Sandys, and through the Commons by John Rushout, the future Baron Northwick (son of Pulteney’s friend, Sir John Rushout, 4th bt.).

Bath turned 80 on 22 March, but continued to exhibit considerable vigour, sitting on eight of the 18 days remaining in the session, including on 2 April despite being begged by Lady Elizabeth Montagu ‘not to lose all this lovely morning in the House of Lords’ [https://emco.swansea.ac.uk/emco/letter-view/1297/]. Following the end of the session, Bath travelled to Shropshire, where he reviewed the militia at the end of May. Upon his return to London, he fell asleep in a garden, caught a fever and died on 7 July 1764.

The dynastic implications of Bath’s actions become clear if we look beyond the contemporary criticism levelled at him for leaving his estate to his elderly brother, General Harry Pulteney. In fact, the descent of the estates followed the intentions laid down by Henry Guy in his will of 1711 (which provided the basis of Bath’s wealth). Guy’s list of remainders ended with the male heirs of Daniel Pulteney, Bath’s cousin.

The ultimate beneficiary in 1767 was Frances Pulteney, daughter of Daniel and the wife of William Johnstone, who took the name Pulteney after Frances succeeded to the Pulteney estates. This William Pulteney succeeded his brother (Sir James Johnstone) as 5th baronet in 1794 and spent over 30 years as MP for Shrewsbury. His daughter and heir, Henrietta, was created successively Baroness Bath (1792) and countess of Bath (1803). Upon her marriage to Sir James Murray, 7th bt. in 1794 he also took the name Pulteney.

SNH

Burns first published his Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect, in Kilmarnock in 1786 and, encouraged by his local supporters, arrived in Edinburgh in January 1787 to arrange a second edition. He quickly found a patron there in James Cunningham, 14th earl of Glencairn making an introduction through common Ayrshire connections. Both the earl and his mother, the dowager countess, strove to ensure that his poems would appear in a new edition from an Edinburgh publisher, with Glencairn putting Burns in touch with bookseller William Creech, Glencairn’s tutor during his Grand Tour, who agreed to produce it.

Glencairn encouraged Burns to dedicate the new volume to the Royal Caledonian Hunt, an elite social and sporting club. At a meeting on 10 January Glencairn persuaded the members of the Hunt to pledge to purchase 100 copies, bringing Burns £25 in advance. Glencairn also sent blank subscription forms to James Graham, marquess of Graham, in order to have them filled up by the ‘first Scottish names about Court’. He also enlisted William Henry Cavendish Bentinck, 3rd duke of Portland, to solicit subscriptions from other peers in London [Letters, i. 73]. Few English subscribers signed up, apart from the duchess of Devonshire and countess of Derby. When Burns’s revised Poems appeared in April, it was dedicated to the Caledonian Hunt, which headed the list of subscribers. Between them Glencairn and his mother pledged to purchase 24 copies, the countess dowager alone subscribing for sixteen.

Glencairn had succeeded to his peerage in 1775, and three years later was commissioned a captain of the Western Fencible Regiment, a temporary outfit raised to defend the Scottish west coast. Like many Scots, he was angered by Westminster’s unwillingness to trust the Scots with a more established domestic military force, on the lines of the English militia.

Elected one of the 16 representative peers in 1780, Glencairn quickly joined the patriot movement for an independent Scottish militia. In spring 1782 he witnessed the unsuccessful attempts of Lord Graham to promote a Scottish militia bill in the Commons. Glencairn took up the cause himself and was its main driver from the summer. He was in Westminster in June 1783 when Graham once again brought the Scots’ desire for their own militia before the Commons. However, the session was prorogued a month later without the militia bill having been introduced.

Glencairn supported the Fox-North coalition and voted for its East India Company bill in December 1783. He failed to be included on the Court’s list of representative peers for the general election, and was heavily defeated when standing as an independent. For the rest of his life he opposed William Pitt and his Scottish manager Henry Dundas. On 6 Dec. 1785 he was named to an Ayrshire committee tasked with countering Dundas’s planned diminution of the number of judges on the Court of Session. [Public Advertiser, 26 Dec. 1785] He was also a member of the Independent Friends, a society of Scottish Whigs. As he had done in 1784, Glencairn threw his interest behind the Opposition candidate in Ayrshire elections in 1789 and 1790, but without success.

Thus, when Glencairn met Burns in late 1786 he already had extensive credentials as a Scottish patriot and quickly became an enthusiastic supporter of Burns’s wish to project a genuine Scottish voice. Burns was solicitous of Glencairn’s opinion on his poems, especially those with political content. He submitted his piece on the American war, When Guilford Good, for Glencairn’s approval, worried that ‘my political tenets… may be rather heretical in the opinion of some of my best friends’ [Letters, i. 77]. Glencairn countenanced its inclusion in the Edinburgh edition, and would have agreed with Burns’s positive view of the Americans’ cause.

Burns and Glencairn also found common cause on the issue of the Scottish militia. Burns’s 1784 poem The Author’s Earnest Cry and Prayer urged the 45 Scottish MPs to fight back against an Act that had increased the excise on whisky. He felt that if the measure were allowed to continue, Scotland, already on edge because ‘Her lost Militia fir’d her bluid’ [blood], would be ready to resort to violence.

Burns did not have many years to enjoy his friendship with Glencairn and the earl’s death on 30 Jan. 1791 while returning from a trip abroad distressed Burns greatly. He composed a Lament, which concluded: ‘The mother may forget the child / That smiles sae sweetly on her knee;/ But I’ll remember thee Glencairn / And a’ that thou hast done for me!’. In 1794, Burns even named his newborn son James Glencairn Burns.

Another Ayrshire native and peer who encouraged Burns’s poetry in 1787 was Archibald Montgomerie, 11th earl of Eglinton, a fiercely proud Highlander. He had commanded a regiment in America during the Seven Years War and served as a representative peer for 20 years. James Boswell described him to Dr. Johnson as ‘a person who was as violent a Scotsman as he [Johnson] was an Englishman’ [Life of Johnson, iii. 170, 503]. In January 1787 Eglinton provided Burns with an unsolicited donation of 10 guineas [Letters i. 79, 84], and subscribed to 42 copies of his Poems, one of the largest individual subscriptions.

In 1796 all these connections were abruptly severed, beginning with Burns’s own death on 21 July, aged just thirty-seven. On 24 September Glencairn’s younger brother, John, the 15th earl, died childless, and the title became extinct. Eglinton died without a male heir on 31 October, and his distant cousin Hugh Montgomerie of Coilsfield (mentioned in The Author’s Earnest Cry and Prayer) succeeded him in the peerage.

CGDL

Further reading:
Ian McIntyre, Robert Burns: A Life (1995)
The Letters of Robert Burns, Vol. 1: 1780-89, ed. G. Ross Roy (1985)
J. Robertson, The Scottish Enlightenment and the Militia Issue (1985)
Boswell’s Life of Johnson, ed. G. B. Hill (6 vols., 1934-1950)

As the Prince of Wales was 26 years old, it was assumed that he would be made regent during his father’s incapacity. Although Prime Minister William Pitt agreed that the Prince was the obvious choice for a regency, he was wary of taking this step because of the younger George’s well-known friendships with Opposition politicians. The Opposition, led by Charles James Fox, clamoured for their ‘friend’ to be made regent on the assumption that George III would not recover. Meanwhile, Pitt and the government stalled, insisting that a full regency was unnecessary, as the king would recover in short order. Instead, the government suggested a restricted regency, which would limit the prince’s powers and place some responsibility in the hands of the queen: Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. This approach was immediately viewed by the Opposition and their supporters as unconstitutional, and as an attempt by Pitt to control the country through Queen Charlotte.

Although Queen Charlotte had never shown any interest in influencing British politics before, she suddenly found herself saddled with a reputation for political meddling. Such was the belief that the queen was colluding with Pitt that her second son, the duke of York, confronted her and warned her that if she sided with Pitt, it would cause a falling out with the Prince of Wales.

Although the Prince was often described within the family as the queen’s favourite child, their relationship certainly cooled in the winter of 1788-89. Courtiers were shocked by the way the two eldest princes treated their mother at this time. William Grenville remarked to his brother, the marquess of Buckingham, ‘I could tell you some particulars of the Prince of Wales’s behaviour towards her [the queen] within these last few days that would make your blood run cold.’ [Buckingham and Chandos, 68] Charlotte Papendiek, whose family were in service to the royal family for decades, recalled that the Prince of Wales was ‘very heartless’ as he ‘assumed to himself a power that had not yet been legally given to him, without any consideration or regard for his mother’s feelings.’ [Papendiek, 15] Meanwhile, Queen Charlotte was deeply affected by the king’s erratic behaviour and the seriousness of his illness; one of her attendants, the author Frances Burney, witnessed her pacing in her rooms and crying ‘What will become of me?’ [Burney, 293]

In the press, the queen’s reputation was dragged through the mud by newspapers and satirical prints produced by supporters of the Prince of Wales and the Opposition. One satirical print portrayed the queen looking on with satisfaction as her son was attacked by British and foreign politicians.

Another showed her stepping on the Prince of Wales’s emblem as she left the Treasury with Prime Minister Pitt. The Morning Chronicle cast aspersions on her devotion to her husband, claiming that she was motivated by a desire to take possession of diamonds worth thousands of pounds, not by any wish to help the king.

When it was suggested that the queen would take charge of the royal household and privy purse in a restricted regency, The Times published a comment made by Opposition MP Edmund Burke in Parliament that he ‘by no means thought her [the queen] the most proper person to be entrusted with the giving away of such an immense sum of money.’ In January 1789, as plans for a regency became more urgent, Earl Harcourt recorded a remark made by Burke during a debate: ‘The question is now come to this. Is it to be the House of Hanover, or the House of Strelitz that is to govern the country?’ [Harcourt, 167] For all its hyperbole, Burke’s question had explicitly marked Queen Charlotte, previously a queen of excellent reputation, as a threat to the established order.

Charlotte wasn’t the only woman whose reputation was tarnished by accusations of political meddling in Georgian Britain. Her mother-in-law, Augusta, Princess of Wales, was accused of influencing her son, George III, for decades. There were also long-term rumours of a supposed affair with the former Prime Minister, the earl of Bute. Horace Walpole recorded that during the princess’s funeral procession to Westminster Abbey, Londoners ‘treated her memory with much disrespect.’ [Walpole, 17] Anxiety over the influence of women in politics was expressed in the contemporary phrase ‘petticoat government’, which suggested that male political leaders were being unduly influenced by women, be they mothers, wives, or lovers.

Most critiques of Queen Charlotte portrayed her as a willing follower of Pitt’s schemes, rather than an active agent in her own right, but the queen was not afraid to stand up for herself and the king when necessary. In January 1789, a further scandal of the Regency Crisis unfolded after the queen insisted that a more positive note be included in the king’s daily health bulletin. The bulletins rarely varied, but in early January, Charlotte was informed by one of the royal physicians that the king seemed slightly better. One of her attendants, Lady Harcourt, recorded that when the head physician argued that he saw no improvement, the queen overrode him and insisted that the phrase ‘His Majesty is in a more comfortable state’ be added [Harcourt, 125-8]. When the Opposition heard of this, they insisted on a government inquiry into the credentials of the king’s physicians: their ambition for power through the Prince of Wales depended on George III’s illness being permanent and any suggestion to the contrary was unwelcome.

Fortunately for Queen Charlotte, just as the government was beginning to put in place a restricted regency in February 1789, George III began to show signs of sustained improvement. By March, he was sufficiently well to make a formal speech in Parliament announcing his recovery. Queen Charlotte led the nation in celebrating his recovery, organising Thanksgiving services and ordering official commemorative gifts for loyal attendants. Despite this happy ending and the ensuing national celebrations of the king and his loyal consort, the spectre of the Regency Crisis would taint Queen Charlotte’s public reputation for the rest of her life.

NG

Further Reading
Duke of Buckingham and Chandos, Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, vol.2 (Hurst & Blackett, 1853).
Charlotte Papendiek, Court and Private Life in the Time of Queen Charlotte: Being the Journals of Mrs Papendiek, Assistant Keeper of the Wardrobe and Reader to Her Majesty, Edited by Her Granddaughter Mrs Vernon Delves Broughton, vol.2 (R.Bentley & Son, 1887).
Frances Burney, Diary and Letters of Madame d’Arblay, Author of Evelina, Cecilia etc, ed. Charlotte Barrett, vol.4 (H. Colburn, 1842-6).
[Anon.] The Restricted Regency (1789).
Morning Herald, 5 January 1789.
The Times, 7 February 1789.
The Harcourt Papers, ed. Edward William Harcourt, vol.4 (Oxford: J. Parker & Co., 1880).
Horace Walpole, Journal of the Reign of King George the Third, from the year 1771-1783, ed. John Doran (1859).
Report from the Committee Appointed to Examine the Physicians Who Have Attended His Majesty During His Illness, Touching the Present State of His Majesty’s Health, 13 January 1789 (John Stockdale, 1789).