THE BENTINCKS.—THE FOUNDER.
THE House of Bentinck occupies a position in English history which is in many respects unique. It is the only house founded by a foreigner since the days of the Plautagenets which has risen to the first rank, the only one built by a favourite which can look back to its origin with a glow of honest pride. Other men whose pedigree is not English are found in the Peerage, but the highest among them is only of secondary rank ; other houses have been founded by favourites, but their representatives anxiously veil the personal career of the founder. The Bentincks are proud of theirs, and with reason. In the long and splendid roll of English statesmen there is probably not a man who has accomplished more for English greatness than the bad-mannered Dutchman who loved money so dearly and Englishmen so little.
Hans William Bentinck, founder of the House which now rivals the Howards, the Percies, or the Seymours, was the third and youngest son of Hendrick Bentinck, Lord of Diepanham, in the Dutch province of Over-Yasel, where his family had flourished for ages as men of knightly, if not of noble rank. He was born in the year 1645, and appointed, while still a lad, page of honour to the young Prince of Orange, then first among Dutch nobles, and with admitted though somewhat indefinite claims to a civil primacy in Holland. He was then appointed gentleman of the bedchamber, and with the growing confidence of his Prince acquired a hold over his affections which continued through life, and placed the twoMen, who were in many respects strangely alike, on a footing, so to speak, of schoolboy inti- macy exceedingly rare in courts. An incident which occurred in 1675 deepened this intimacy into unbounded trust. The Prince had taken the small-pox in its most malignant form, and all his attendants fled. Bentinck alone remained by his side, doing what -thousands of women have often done, but what seemed to our hard ancestors so wonderful that Sir William Temple recorded it on the Stadtholder's own authority :—" I cannot forbear to give Monsieur Bentinck the character due to him of the best servant I have known in princes' or private families. He tended his master during the whole course of his disease, both night and day ; and the Yrince told me that whether he slept or no he could not tell ; but in sixteen days and nights he never called once that he was not answered by Monsieur Bentinck, as if he had been awake. The first time the Prince was well enough to have his head opened and combed, Monsieur Bentinck, as soon as it was done, begged of his master to give him leave to go home, for he was able to hold up no longer. He did so, and fell immediately sick of the same disease, and in great extremity ; but recovered just soon enough to attend the Prince into the field, where he was ever next his person." William never forgot this service, and through life Bentinck was the single human being whom he publicly acknowledged as a man favoured by his own heart. From this time forth, through life, he gave him but one employment. He never made him premier either in England or Holland, never used him as, what he was, a very competent soldier, never gave him defined or permanent high office. Only, whenever it seemed neces- sary that the Prince himself should do some work which it was impossible for him to do, he rayed out Bentinck from his side as alter ego. If there was a nearly hopeless mission to be performed, Bentinck was sent to do it, and though personally, like his master, a stern, cold man, with a gloomy manner, made endurable only by its grave dignity, and the sense of repressed force which it in- spired, he was in such missions uniformly successful. He had a knack, it would seem, like William, of persuading people that they had not a great many alternatives. Thus, in 1677, he was sent by the Prince to England to negotiate a marriage between himself and the Princess Mary, eldest daughter of the Duke of 'York, and heiress presumptive of the throne—a work of singular difficulty, and, as mat- ters turned out, of singular importance. William was a great man, but in 1688 had not the Tory squires been able to conceal the fact of an election to the throne under the fiction of James's abdication and Mary's consequent title, England would have run with blood. In 1677, however, the Duke of York was strongly opposed to the match, liking neither the Dutch Protestantism nor William's hostility to France ; but Charles wanted to please his people, and Bentinck managed his task so adroitly that he brought over the Duke to a favourable answer. The marriage was completed, but in 1683 all its good effect for England, as well as Europe, seemed to have passed away. The Rye House Plot had just exploded, and all Whigs were looked upon with acute disfavour. William was counted among them, and at this moment Austria was so menaced by Turkey that Holland might have been left alone to encounter the sleepless wrath of Louis XIV. Ben- tinck was, therefore, hurried over to assure Charles of his- master's detestation of the proceedings of the Whigs, and so to' conciliate him as to preserve intact the English alliance with Holland. He succeeded, but after the accession of James II. the new monarch made a demand for a proof of all this concern in the' shape of the surrender of the Duke of Monmouth, Lucy Walters' all- popular bastard. The States agreed to surrender the Duke, when. William despatched his confidant to warn him of the danger and offer him high command in the Hungarian war. Monmouth evaded the offer, reached the Texel and England, and endeavoured to lead the Whigs in arms. William, who, though a Whig, did not want to see Lucy Walters' boy mount a throne, to the prejudice' of his wife and his own collateral claim—people always forget that William, on the mother's side, was a Stuart—and who did want very much to command an English army, seized his opportunity, and through Bentinck offered his personal services to his father-in-law-, though without success. The offer, indeed, was scarcely sincere,. for NVifiiam was even then preparing for a descent on England, and Bentinck, soon after his return, was sent to acquaint the Elector of Brandenburg (afterwards first King of Prussia, a person of little ability but much magnificence) with the design, and obtain from him, who dreaded France nearly as much as his descendant, pro- mises of assistance. He received them, and then returning, took charge of the hardest detail in the design, the secret gathering of the transports, and finally, when all was complete, stepped on board by William's side.
The Revolution triumphed, and Bentinck, who had incidentally contended for William as against Mary, was one of the first to experience the Royal Stadtholder's gratitude. He was appointed Groom of the Stole and First Lord of the Bedchamber, an office which then resembled more nearly that of ltlinistre de la Mason de l'Ernpereur, with 5,000/. a year, and was created Baron Ciren- cester, Viscount Woodstock, and Earl of Portland, with some considerable English grants of land. In 1690 he sailed with William for Ireland, shared in the battle of the Boyne, and routed the Irish before Limerick. He received the general direction
of the military operations in Scotland, where he steadily supported General Mackay against the Scotch councillors, who were anxious to supersede him. Mere defeat never struck either Bentinck or his master as any proof of want of generalship. In 1693 he was despatched on an errand of singulardelicacy—to consult Sir William Temple, then residing at Moor Park, Farnham, on the wisdom of the opinion which the King had conceived that he ought to veto the Triennial Bill. Temple gave his opinion decidedly against the King's opinion, and despatched his humble secretary, Jonathan Swift, to explain to William more fully the grounds of the view which he took of the matter. It is said that he did this because he was afraid of trusting the matter to the report of Bentinck alone, as that statesman was so imperfectly acquainted with the history and nature of the English Constitution. Here, indeed, lay the great drawback to Bentinck's public career in Eng- land. He could not converse in the English language—he knew little of, and cared still less for English feelings, habits, and prejudices ; he regarded England only as an instrument in the advancement of his master's greatness in Europe, and was interested in her prosperity simply in so far as it was directly involved with the fortunes of William himself. He never could understand or appreciate the English, he never was understood or appreciated by them. All the dislike to foreign favourites which was instinctive in the English nation was exaggerated tenfold in his case by his unconcealed want of sympathy with the people from whose resources he was building up a gigantic fortune. For Bentinck was, as his advocates admit, fond of accumulating wealth, avaricious, indeed, and grasping in the pursuit of personal aggran- dizement, so far as the limits of honour permitted. Wherever pickings could be obtained from the public purse or the private bounty of the Sovereign without violating the rules of justice and honour, there Bentinck was always on the look-out, and generally a successful candidate. Large slices from the royal domain in many counties of England were carved out for the King's con- fidential friend, many more estates he purchased with the large sums of money which came to his hands either from the direct gift of the King, or as the salary or perquisites of his various offices and commissions. The English people, cognizant of this unseemly crav- ing for the loaves and fishes on the part of one who refused to be an Englishman in anything but name—he had been naturalized— suspected Bentinck of a hankering after dishonourable gain. They confounded that passion for acquisition, often found in men who are aware that they use acquisitions well, with ordinary greed, and accused him privately of taking bribes. Fortunately for his career they were splendidly undeceived. A Parliamentary inquiry, in 1695, into the distribution of secret-service money by the East India Company, for the purpose of unduly influencing persons in official or Parliamentary positions, disclosed the fact that not less than 50,000/. had been offered to Portland, and rejected ; and that the money had been held at his service for a whole year, in the hope that he might change his mind, until at length Portland told the Company that if they per:dated in thus " insulting " him by this offer, he would become their irrecon- cilable foe. It is still more characteristic of Bentinck that he resented as an affront the compliments which were paid him on all hands when these facts became known. Still the proud, reserved, money-loving, but honourable Dutchman never made himself tolerable to the English. High and low alike called him morose and boorish, and it became a fashion among the English nobility to speak of him as a mere heavy blockhead—"a Hogan Mogan"—only just fit to carry royal messages. The facts of history return a very different verdict, and show that his cool, clear, sagacious intellect was of incstimable service to the interests of his adopted as well as his native country. Nor do the French writers and statesmen of that time con- firm the English estimate of his morose and unmannerly de- meanour; on the contrary, they are loud in their praises of the chivalric courtesy and polished manners of M. Bentinck, as well as distinct and unanimous in their appreciation of his diplomatic ability. But Bentinck spoke French as fluently as if it were his native tongue, and (notwithstanding the political chasm between him and the countrymen of the Grand Monarque) evi- dently was much more en rapport with French manners than with English. It is curious that, at the same time that Bentinck was the object of a popular outcry in Eng- land as a Dutch favourite, the Burgomaster and Senate of Amsterdam were moving heaven and earth, appealing to the Constitution of the United Provinces, petitioning and protesting both to Holland and England, against the same individual taking his seat in the States Assembly of Holland and West Friesland. Bentinck had been enrolled as Baron of Rhoon in the body of the nobility of Holland as far back as 1676, but the deputies of Amsterdam declared that his right of sitting was forfeited because he had become a naturalized English subject and a member of the English Parliament, and might be supposed, therefore, to be entirely devoted to the interests of England. This was in the year 1690, and the King was greatly incensed at the proceeding, declaring that it arose out of the animosity of the city of Amster- dam to himself personally. The Dutch nobles also resented the inter- ference of the burghers in a matter affecting their own order, and Amsterdam, not being supported by the other town; had to give way. The same question, however, was, at a later period, raised with respect to Keppel, who was finally allowed to sit as one of the nobility of Holland, but with the special permission of the States ; and he was obliged to solicit their permission whenever he desired to go to England. Thus some in both countries seemed disposed to repudiate a man to whom both were so eminently indebted, and of whom, with all his faults, either of them might have been proud. In the campaign of 1693 Portland shared the danger of his master in the disastrous rout of Landen (July 29th). One musket-shot passed through his peruke, a second through the sleeve of his coat, and a third inflicted a small contusion in his side. He seems also, from a letter of Archbishop Tillotson's, to have received some injury in his hand. William, who had lost sight of him in the flight, and knew that Portland was in bad health, was full of anxiety for his safety, and on learning his escape wrote off a hasty note of joy and congratulation.
On his return from this campaign, William resolved to reward his unequalled services once for all, and ordered the Treasury to make out a warrant granting to Portland a magnificent estate in Wald, viz., the lordships of Denbigh, Bronfield, and Yale, said to be worth more than 100,0001., and the annual rent reserved to the Crown was only 6s. 8d. "With the property were inseparably connected exten- sive royalties, which the people of North Wales could not patiently see in the hands of any subject." A century before, when Elizabeth made the same grant to her favourite Leicester, the people of Denbighshire had risen in arms, and Leicester thought it expedient to relinquish the grant. The principal gentlemen of the district on the present occasion had recourse to the Lower House, who voted unanimously an address to the King begging him to stop the grant. Portland had the discretion, like Leicester, to beg his 'Majesty that he might not be the cause of a dispute between him and his Parliament. The King gave way, though with a bitter feeling of mortification, saying, "Gentlemen, I have a kindness for my Lord Portland, which he has deserved of me by long and faithful services, but I should not have given him these lands if I had imagined the House could have been concerned. I will, therefore, recall the grant, and find some other way of showing my favour to him." Accordingly, soon afterwards, William conferred on him a grant of the royal house of Theobalds, with the demesnes belonging to it in Hertfordshire and Middlesex, and also the office of ranger of the great and little forests at Windsor. It should be added that the remonstrance of the Commons took place before the disclosure of Bentinck's integrity in the East Indian question, and was argued ass constitutional question. In the Feb- ruary of the following year (1696), Portland had the opportunity of repaying William's indiscreet generosity on his behalf by saving his life. Hearing from two quarters that the assassination of the King was planned for a particular hunting-day, he hastened to the palace, and implored William not to leave the house on that day. The King positively refused to credit the story, or to alter his plans. Porand persisted, and at length threatened he would make the intelligence at once public if the King did not give way. William then gave way, and the disappointed conspirators ex- claimed, "The fox keeps his earth." On the 0th of February, 1697, William made him a Knight of the Garter, and in June of the same year, finding that there was little but a solemn farce going on between the negotiators at Ryswick, he resolved to avail himself of Portland's friendship with Bouffiers, and endeavour to cut matters short by a private interview between these two honour- able straightforward men. Portland accordingly requested half- an-hour's conversation with the French Marshal, and the latter, having sent off an express to Louis and obtained his sanction, complied with the suggestion. In the conferences which thereupon ensued between these two men, the leading points were settled which were afterwards embodied in the peace of Ryswick. In this private negotiation Bentinck displayed talent of the highest order, and it is probable that it was this service which induced William to perform the most indefensible action of his great career. Ile gave his able but greedy servant a second colossal grant. Nearly a third of Ireland had fallen to him by sequestrations, and Ile had promised Parliament to bestow these lands only with their consent. Bills were accordingly introduced into the House, but defeated, and William was persuaded to believe himself absolved from his pro- mise. Ile gave the whole to his personal following, one enormous estate going to Elizabeth Villiers, the only woman whom William ever trusted with State secrets, and who rivalled Mary in his somewhat cold affection. The jealousy of the Commons took fire. They would not remember that most of these men had, in saving England, forfeited. European careers, and saw only new inen and foreigners raised above the old nobility. They appointed a Commission, and the Com- missioners reported that the number of acres was 1,060,692, of the annual value of 211,623/., or present value of 2,685,138/. These estimates were said afterwards to have been greatly exaggerated for party purposes. Among the grants figured one to William Bentinck, Esq., Lord Woodstock (Bentinck's eldest son, who died before him), of 135,820 acres. In the ensuing session (1700) the Tory party brought in the famous Resumption Bill, founded on this report, by which the grants were all resumed and placed in the hands of Commissioners for the public service, one-third being reserved to the King to grant out for eminent public ser vices. To ensure its passing, the Bill was tacked on by the Commons to the Army and Navy Supply Bills. The Lords angrily resented this as an infringement of their rights, a money bill not being subject to amendment by them, and treating the Resumption Bill separately, sent it down amended. The Commons refused to recognize it in this form, and many angry discussions ensued between the two Houses. At first, William thought of fighting the battle in the Lords, and on the 5th of April he told Portland that if the Bill was not stopped in. the Upper House he should count all as lost, and the same day he declared that he was resolved not to assent to the Bill. But his Dutch prudence and his good sense got the better of the Stuart blood he derived from his mother, and he intimated privately to the Lords that he wished them to give way. The Bill was accordingly voted by them, Bentinck and Keppel both making a point of voting in the majority, and on the 11th of April William went down to the House and gave it the royal assent without another word. He then immediately prorogued Parliament without a speech from the throne.
This, however, is anticipating a little. A more serious danger awaited Bentinck than the loss of a grant, vast as it would have made his possessions. Bentinck loved his master dearly, but he regarded him with all the exacting affection of a lover, and could not endure the slightest approach to a rivalry in the place which he held in his confidence. He had tolerated Zulestein. and Anver- querque, for they were contented to be the honoured servants and respectful friends of the Zing, and left to Be-ntinek the position of bosom friend. But a younger man was now creeping into the affections of William. This was Arnold Joost Van Keppel, a young Dutch gentleman who had accompanied William in his expedition to England. "Keppel had a sweet and obliging temper, winning manners, and a quick, though not a profound understand- ing. Courage, loyalty, and secrecy were common between him and Portland. In other points they differed widely. Portland was naturally the very opposite of a flatterer, and having been the intimate friend of the Prince of Orange at a time when the interval between the House of Orange and the House of Bentinck was not so wide as it afterwards became, had acquired a habit of plain- speaking which he could not unlearn when the comrade of his youth had become the Sovereign of three kingdoms. He was a most trusty, but not a very respectful subject. There was nothing which he was not ready to do or suffer for William ; but in his intercourse with William he was blunt and sonletimes surly. Keppel, on the other hand, had a great desire to please, and looked up with unfeigned admiration to a master whom he had been accustomed, ever since he could remember, to consider as the first of living mien. Artn,. therefore, which were neglected by the elder courtier were assiduously practised by the younger. So early as the spring of 1691 shrewd observers were struck by the care with which Keppel observed every turn of his master's countenance. Gradually the younger courtier rose in favour ; he was made Earl of Albemarle and Master of the Robes," and Earls of Albemarle the half-forgotten Keppels still continue. This elevation, however, gave little offence, for the suave courtier was popular, liberal, and almost affectedly English, while his rival, as Keppel advanced, became at once more unbearably reserved and more avowedly Dutch. At last William, partly for peace, partly ,because Bentinck alone could carry out his designs, made Bentinck Ambassador to France. The "grudging Dutchman" accepted the post, and in five months spent in his master's honour eighty thousand pounds, say a quarter of a million of to-day. A day or two after his departure William wrote a most affec- tionate letter to Bentinck :—" The loss of your society," he writes, "has affected me more than you can imagine. I should be very glad if I could believe that you felt as much pain at quitting me as I feel at seeing you depart ; for then I might hope that you had ceased to doubt the truth of what I solemnly declared to you on my oath. Assure yourself that I never was more sincere. My feeling towards you is one which nothing but death can alter." Bentinck took the historian Rapin with him as tutor of his eon, Lend Woodstock, and Prior as the Secretary of Legation, and never was embassy conducted in more stately, dignified, and able manner. The French people worshipped the magnificence of his equipages and household. The French courtiers were astonished at the grave but courtly dignity of his bearing in the presenee of the great King. The French statesmen were deeply impressed with the calm, shrewd sagacity which characterized his diplomacy. In this atmosphere of respect Bentinck was himself again ; but on his return he found Keppel still higher in favour, and though he shared in the negotiations of Loo in 1699, he flung up all his posts; and retired to the noble seat—Bulstrode Park, in Buckinghamshire, which he had lately purchased of Lord Jeffreys' son-in-law, and which had once belonged to Bulstrode Whitelocke. Here, as in his other seats, he adorned the interiors, laid out the grounds, erected aviaries, and spent on all other matters as little as he possibly could. He was still consulted on State affairs, and in 1700 he and Lord Jersey were employed to sign the Partition Treaty which settled the respective claims of the Bourbon and Hapsburg Houses. It was a fair treaty for Europe, but the Spaniards, who were signed away without their own consent, resented the indignity, their imbecile King was made to sign a will in favour of the Bourbon claimant, which was endorsed by Louis, notwith- standing the treaty, and the Commons, in wrath at the aggrandize- ment of France, impeached Bentinck, who signed the treaty, his colleague escaping without a reprimand. They also im- peached Lords Somers, Halifax, and Orford; and, anticipating the result of the trial, prayed William to dismiss them all from his councils. This burst of party spite was, however, too much for the Lords, who first presented a counter-address, and then, quarrelling over points of form, threw out the articles. This was the Earl's last public appearance. He attended his master's death-bed on the 8th of March, 1702, and then for six years devoted himself to Holland. In 1708 he found his intellect failing, and he returnedto England, to die on the 23rd November, 1709, and be buried in Henry VIII.'s Chapel; in Westminster, by the side of the Prince whom he had so dearly loved and so faithfully served. Though a foreigner in feeling, both his wives were Englishwomen—the first a Villiers, sister of Earl Jersey; the second a Temple, sister of Henry Viscount Palmerston. His only surviving son. by his first marriage, Henry, succeeded him as the head of the English House of Bentinck ; his two sons by his second marriage, William and Charles John, succeeded him as nobles of the United Provinces. The Earl also left nine daughters, of whom seven married into high English families, and one died unmarried. The remaining daughter married one of the chief noblemen of Holland.
The character of Hans Bentinck, like that of every hero of a revolutionary period, has been variously represented-; but to those who understand 1688—and who that can read English does not ? —it is not hard to read. He was William III. in homespun— and that was the expression which he stanaped upon the family he had built. Whenever a Bentinck comes to the front it is as a great Dutchman that he succeeds; whether, like Lord George, he risks a fortune upon a horse without a quiver of the lip ; or, as Lord William, he earns the hate of every con- temporary Anglo-Indian by his ungenial manners, and the re- verence of every subsequent proconsul by his administration—so wise, benevolent, and farsighted. When Hans died he had accu- mulated lands worth half a million, and had surrendered as much more, and contemporaries murmured at the greed which stood so horribly in their way. Since his death, however, no historian has ever adjudged him overpaid, and no Bentinck is ashamed of the grants which men like Macaulay admit to have been so nobly earned.
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