THE GRENVILLES.—(THEIR DECLINE.)
IN November, 1756, Lord Temple took office under Pitt, as First Lord of the Admiralty ; but not being (through illness) con- sulted as to an alteration in the Address in answer to the Speech from the Throne, he was so offended that he came down to the House of Lords, "at the hazard of his life," as he declared, and delivered an invective against the passage which had not received his sanction, and then strode out of the House, "with a thorough conviction," says Lord Waldegrave, "that such weighty reasons must be quite unanswerable; " but on his departure the Address was voted unanimously. Pitt was also absent from his duties through gout, so this caused no breach between the brothers, and on the 5th of April in the following year Temple was dismissed by the King, and immediately afterwards Pitt also. In the following June, however, Pitt forced his way into office again, and carried with him Temple, who accepted the post of Lord Privy Seal, He thus .became a prominent member of Pitt's great Administration, and his friends claim for him that during the frequent illnesses of Pitt Temple really governed, and is entitled to much of the praise bestowed on the Great Commoner. But though Temple might ably second and sustain Pitt's policy, there is no doubt that the inspiration of its leading principles came from no other than Pitt himself. In 1759 the Cabinet was disturbed by Temple's exorbitant pretensions to a vacant Garter, for which the Duke of Newcastle very properly preferred the claims of Prince Ferdinand and the Marquis of Rockingham. Temple, how- ever, made Pitt insist, with the greatest vehemence and arrogance of language, and at last Temple actually resigned his office; but after a private negotiation with the King, conducted through the Duke of Devonshire, resumed it in three days, and in February of the following year was gratified with the coveted Order, some fresh
vacancies having taken place. Temple pleaded as his justification for pressing this claim that the King had exhibited openly such dis-
like to him that he wished for some public mark of his favour! Temple remained in office till Pitt quitted it in October, 1761, when he also resigned. His younger brother, George Grenville, however, remained in the Ministry, and an estrangement took place between the brothers.
George Grenville was born October 14th, 1712, and was also educated at Eton, and afterwards at Christchurch, Oxford. He chose the law as his profession, but relinquished it after a time for politics at the request of his uncle, Lord Cobham. He represented Buckingham from 1741 till his death. As early as December, 1744, he was made a Lord of the Admiralty, and, after holding many offices, on the resignation of Bute in April, 1763, he became the head of a new Government as First Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer. "Mr. George Grenville," says Lord Stanhope, "was (to sum up his character in three words) an excellent Speaker spoilt." For this office he had been mentioned with general approbation in 1761, but he was in- duced on the resignation of Pitt to prefer a poet in the Administra- tion. Burke, drawing an elaborate character of him in a debate on American taxation in 1774, after his death, says much the same thing. "I do believe he had a very serious desire to benefit the public. But with no small study of the detail, he did not seem to have his view at least equally carried to the total circuit of our affairs. He generally considered his objects in lights that were too detached. . . With a masculine understanding, and a stout and resolute heart, he had an application undissipated and unwearied. He took public business not as a duty he was to fulfil, but as a pleasure he was to enjoy. If he was ambitious, I will say this for him, his ambition was of a noble and generous strain. It was to raise himself not by the low pimping policies of a court, but to win his way to power by the laborious gra- dations of public service, and to secure himself a well-earned rank in Parliament by a thorough knowledge of the Constitution and a perfect practice in all its business. . . . Pitt said of him, in 1754, that he was "universally able in the whole business of the House, and, after Mr. Murray and Mr. Fox, certainly one of the very best Parliament men in the [louse ;" and Horace Walpole, confirming this, says that though not popular in the House, he "was of great authority there, from his spirit, knowledge, and gravity of character." Pitt, after their quarrel, in a debate on tax- ation in 1763, succeeded in fixing a sarcastic nickname on him which lasted some years. "If the right honourable gentleman," said Grenville, "objected to this particular tax, he was bound to tell them where else he would have taxes laid. Let him tell me where," he repeated, "I say, Sir, let him tell me where !" Just then Pitt, sitting opposite to him, repeated, in a tone of voice mimicking that of Grenville," Gentle Shepherd, tell me where 1" And then rising, added some sentences of bitter ridicule. Mr. Knox, who was well acquainted with Grenville, says that "under a manner rather austere and forbidding he covered a heart as feeling and tender as man ever possessed." No doubt this austere manner and his natural gawkiness added point to Pitt's epithet. In private life his conduct was most irreproachable. He had but a
small patrimony, but he made it his rule to live on his private fortune and save his public income for his family. He was a heavy speaker, chiefly from his excessive pains in elaborat- ing the subject and exhausting every possible argument. The most useful thing he did was, perhaps, the Act which he car- ried for regulating controverted elections, by which the first step was taken towards doing away with the disgraceful system of party divisions on election petitions by referring them to select committees bound by oath. But the matter by which he will be remembered by posterity is the American Stamp Act, which he brought forward and always strenuously defended, though it is said he was not the actual author of it. Like his brother, Lord Temple, he had a strong idea of prerogative and established law, and no conception of the force of public opinion. Even Burke acquits him of anything but the most patriotic and praiseworthy intentions in proposing this mischievous and fatal measure, in which, it may be observed, Lord Temple always heartily concurred. This pro- bably paved the way for a reconciliation between the brothers.
In 1765, the old Duke of Cumberland was commissioned by the King to arrange a new Ministry which should include Pitt, and Temple was again summoned from Stowe, and requested to take the same office, he not only declined, but succeeded in dissuading Pitt himself from accepting office. He was about
to become reconciled, it seems, with George Grenville, and wished to form a Ministry independent alike of the Whig Houses and of Lord Bute, of which "the three brothers," as they were called, should be the heads. George Grenville and the Duke of Belford, resuming their places, now attempted to dictate terms to the King which would remove all the adherents of Bute from the Ministry. The King, indignant, again had resort to Pitt, and again Temple was named for the Treasury. Pitt was willing to accept, but Temple peremptorily refused, saying " he had a delicacy which must always remain a secret." Pitt would not accept office without him, and the negotiation again ended in nothing, Pitt bit- terly lamenting this desertion of Temple's, which he called an " am- putation." The King fell back on the Whig Houses. The Rocking- ham Ministry was formed in July, 1765, and George Grenville quitted office, as it turned out, for ever. He continued to defend stoutly the American taxes against Pitt, and at length the whole nation; had the good or ill fortune to be praised by "Junius," who was cer- tainly connected with the Grenvilles, and opposed the expulsion of Wilkes on the sensible ground that he would do less harm in the House than out of it. His health was rapidly declining when, in March, 1770, he brought forward his Elections' Bill, and the loss of his wife, in December, 1769, hastened his death, which took place on the 13th November, 1770. He married a daughter of Sir William Wyndham, and sister to the Earl of Egremont, and by her had a numerous family. His three sons—George, who became the second Earl Temple, Thomas, and William Wyndham formed the second generation of statesmen of the Grenville family.
Earl Temple, meanwhile, pursued his haughty and mischievous line of conduct. When, after the fall of the Rockingham Ministry, Pitt was again summoned, he entreated Temple to take the Treasury; but the Earl, who never could see that even gratitude does not override patriotism, refused unless he had an equal share in the distribution of offices and equal influence in the Cabinet, unless Pitt, in fact, abdicated in hie favour. This Pitt refused, determining, as Lord Camden advised, "to save the nation with- out the Grenvilles," and a pamphlet war broke out, conducted by both parties with unusual virulence, Temple using private letters, and Pitt's agents declaring that but for him Temple might have died without " credit, except of having added an unit to the bills of mortality." They were, however, reconciled in 1763, when Lord and Lady Chatham visited Stowe in state, and Temple published to the world that their union was "eternal," and, indeed, it lasted till the death of Pitt. During the latter part of his life Temple retired, to a great extent, from politics, occupying himself principally with the improvement of Stowe, a place which has been ever since a sort of mania with the family, living chiefly among his relations, to whom he was uniformly liberal, and charming all who came near him with the animation and brilliance of his con- versation. He was thrown, in 1779, from a pony carriage, frac- tured his skull, and remained unconscious till he died on 1 1 th September. His abilities were concealed by his preposterous pride, but he was a man of some real power and great kindliness of nature, with a princely liberality excessively rare among English aristocrats.
His nephew and _successor George, second Earl Temple, was the uncle over again with all his foibles intensified, more especially his thirst for family aggrandizement. He was a member of the second Rockingham Administration till it was broken up by the Marquis's death, when he adhered to Shelburne, accepted the Lord-Lieutenancy of Ireland, and when his chief fell warned the King of the meaning and toope of Fox's India Bill. Aided by the "King's friends" and a letter from the sovereign openly disap- proving the measure, he turned out Fox, and on 19th December accepted the seals of Secretary of State, to resign them on the 21st. The cause of this resignation has been often discussed, but the true reason seems to be the one given by Lord Stanhope. Temple was determined to be made a duke, and the King, who thought he had dukes enough, refused, and Temple setting out in a bitter mood for Stowe, retired for some years into private life. He was partly appeased, however, on 4th December, 1784, by his elevation to the rank of Marquis of Buckingham, becoming thus the single Marquis without a dukedom, and he accepted the Lord-Lieu. tenancy of Ireland. He remained there till 1789, when the Irish Parliament, moved by Grattan, voted that the Prince of Wales should be called to the Regency with full Royal power. Bucking- ham refused to transmit the address to England, and on the King's sudden recovery claimed the dukedom as his reward. This time Pitt supported him, but the King was firm, and Temple in violent displeasure resigned his Lord-Lieutenancy. Pitt, however, suc- ceeded in appeasing him, but for the rest of his life his influence was only indirect. He retained a Telkuship of the Exchequer, an office of immense profit; but his hospitality was unbounded, and he entertained the exiled Royal family of France at Stowe in a style which seriously affected his revenues. He died February 11th, 1813, leaving behind him the reputation of a man faithful to his principles and his party, but besotted with the idea of the claims of the House of Grenville. He had married, in 1775, Mary, eldest daughter and heir of Robert, Earl Nugent (of Ireland), of Gosfield Hall, Essex, and on the death of his father-in-law succeeded to the Earldom of Nugent, his wife being created in 1800 Baroness Nugent, with remainder to her second son, the late George, Lord Nugent, the biographer of Hampden. On his marriage the Marquis took the additional name of Temple-Nugent.
Thomas Grenville, the next brother of the Marquis, may be dis- missed in a few words, though he rose to be a Cabinet Minister. He was only an accomplished man ; but the youngest brother, William Wyndham Grenville, who was that and much more, was born October 24, 1759, was educated like his father at Eton and Oxford, entered the House of Commons in 1782, and was appointed Chief Secretary to his brother when Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland. In Pitts ministry he had the office of Paymaster-General and Vice-President of the Board of Trade, and in January, 1789, was chosen Speaker of the House of Commons. This office he accepted only con- ditionally that "it should not prejudice his other views," and as a stop-gap during the King's Musa% Accordingly, in June following he quitted it for the post of Secretary of State for the Home Department. On the 25th November, 1790, Pitt desiring to have a leader in the House of Lords in whom he could place confi- dence, obtained from the King the elevation of William Grenville by the title of Baron Grenville of Wotton-under-Bournewood, Bucks. In May, 1791, Lord Grenville changed from the Home to the Foreign Secretaryship, which he continued to hold till the close of Mr. Pitt's administration in February, 1801. He also received a year or two afterwards the rich office of Auditor of the Exchequer. He displayed, however, at all times a superiority to mere personal considerations which distinguishes him broadly from his eldest brother. He was a most ardent advocate of war with revolutionary France, holding firmly the opinion that she was a. Power dangerous to the very existence of England. He differed from Pitt on the subject of free trade, being an ardent and uncompromising supporter of that doctrine. On Catholic emanci- pation and the slave trade their opinions were in unison, and Lord Grenville had subsequently the satisfaction of carrying through the first measure which struck at the "domestic institution." He was an excellent man of business, minute and exact in detail like his father, but with that greater compass of mind the want of which Burke deplored in that statesman. No despatches convey an idea of greater mastery and grasp of the subject than Lord Grenville's, and this accuracy of mind and breadth of treatment in combination gave his speeches a weight and authority with the House of Lords to which as pieces of mere eloquence they could not lay claim. However we may differ from his principles of foreign policy it is impossible to deny to him a considerable eleva- tion of spirit in the conduct of his department, and an acute, perhaps overstrained, jealousy of the national honour. Indeed, he watched as jealously over this as his elder brother did over the family honour of the Grenvilles. He resigned with Pitt in 1801 because the King would not concede Catholic emancipation, and went into strong antagonism to the Addington Ministry and the Peace of Amiens. When Pitt resumed office in 1804, without in- sisting on Fox being admitted to the Cabinet, Lord Grenville held aloof and declined to act with him. This drew him and Fox together, and on the death of Pitt, in 1806, Lord Grenville became First Lord of the Treasury in the Cabinet of which Fox was Foreign Secretary. This Cabinet did not long survive Fox's death. The old difficulty with the King recurred, and in 1807 it was dissolved. In 1809 Lord Grenville was chosen Chancellor of the University of Oxford, and from that year to 1815 he generally acted with Lord Grey. Their negotiations with George IV. as Regent are well known. Lord Grenville, however, differed from both Pitt and Grey in being an opponent of Parliamentary reform. He was a general supporter of Canning's administration and policy, but spent the latter years of his life in the retirement of his seat Dropmore Lodge, in Bucks, which he had himself purchased, and to the embellishment of which he devoted great pains. He was an accomplished man in general acquirements, and a thorough classical scholar. He died January 12, 1834, having just lived to see Par- liamentary reform an accomplished fact, but too soon to witness the triumph of his free-trade principles.
The succeeding generations of Peers of the Mame of Grenville we may dismiss with a few words. The second Marquis of Buckingham, Richard Temple-Nugent-Grenville, who was born in 1776, and died January,. 1839, was a man of fair but not re- markable talents, rather active in early life as a politician, and in general following the principles of his father. He opposed, how-
ever, the abolition of the slave trade when first proposed by his uncle, though he acquiesced in it afterwards. Catholic emancipation he supported till it was an accomplished fact, but towards the close of his life he expressed himself greatly disappointed at its results. lle was first a supporter of Mr. Pitt, then of his uncle, Lord Grenville, and afterwards held a somewhat ambiguous position between parties, being essentially a sort of counsellor-extraordinary to George IV., and feeling and expressing in his letters very naively the Grenville self-complacency on such occasions. There was a decided family resemblance to his father, the same pretentions perhaps a little subdued. They were more successful, however, for on the 4th of February, 1822, as a special mark of Royal favour, he was r.dsed to the Dukedom of Buckingham and Chandos, he having married in 1798 Lady Anne-Eliza Brydges, daughter and heiress of the Duke of Chandos. Through this marriage the Grenvilles in- corporated a descent from, and became the representatives of, Mary Duchess of Suffolk, Henry VIE f.'s younger sister, and assumed the name in addition to their own of Brydges-Chandos. At the same time with the elevation of the Marquis to the long coveted Dukedom the descent of the Earldom of Temple of Stowe was extended, in default of male heirs, to his granddaughter, Lady Anne-Eliza (now the wife of W. Gore-Langton, Esq.) and her male issue. The Duke was Vice-President of the Board of Trade, and Joint Paymaster-General in his uncle's administration, and on the 28th May, 1830, was appointed Lord Steward ; but he resigned office with the Wellington Cabinet in November of that year, having gradually receded into moderate 'Toryism. His tastes, like those of his father, were expensive, and he was obliged for a time to shut up Stowe and live abroad. It may be doubted, however, whether much saving was effected by this proceeding, as the Duke sailed and travelled in a style more like a Prince Royal than a private nobleman. He spent large sums of money on rare collections, particularly of prints, including a most curious series of scarce portraits illustrative of Granger's" Biographical History" of England. Besides this he left collections of natural history, which with the foregoing disappeared under the hammer of the auc- tioneer at different periods in the life of his successor. He was suc- ceeded by his son, Richard Plantagenet-Temple -Nugent-B rydges- Chandos-Grenville, second Duke of Buckingham and Chandos. This nobleman will be chiefly recollected as the mover of the celebrated "Chandos (tenant-at-will) Clause" in the Reform Bill, which transferred the representation of the counties from the Whigs to the Tories. He was an ardent Tory and anti-free trader, and a man of some ability, but of in- different private character. The mad family pride of the race broke out in him in a new form. He tried to become a great weight in the State by enormous purchases of land, and as he bought at prices which gave him 2 per cent. and paid with money raised at 4, he completed the family ruin which the lavish expendi- ture of the two preceding generations had paved the way for The catastrophe which ensued and the great sale at Stowe are matters of recent memory. The Duke married a sister of the late Marquis of Breadalbaue; but she obtained a divorce from him. He died in July, 1861, and was succeeded by his son Richard Plantagenet-Campbell- Temple-Nugent-Brydges-Chandos-Grenville, the present and third Duke, a man of far higher moral character, and an excellent man of business, though probably not much more than this. The family fortunes have begun to revive under his auspices. Stowe has been again tenanted by the family, and the acquisition of the Breadal- bane money will probably give them a new start, and enable them to regain some portion at least of the influence which has been exercised for so many years by the House of Grenville—a house which has few and moderate merits, but which has, on the whole, stood up proudly against the Crown, and by force of its character as well as of its errors has connected itself inseparably with the his- tory of England.
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