This attack from two officers was artfully relieved by Lord Egmont, who had stickled so vehemently against the innovations, that one after another they were given up, or much softened one year after another, though not till many disagreeable instances had been publicly produced of his Royal Highness’s arbitrary control, and though they had been defended in a masterly manner by Mr. Fox, Lord George Sackville, and Colonel Henry “Seymour” Conway;[49] the latter a young officer, who having set out upon a plan of fashionable[50] virtue, had provoked the King and Duke by voting against the Army at the beginning of the war. He was soon after, by the interest of a near relation of his, placed in the Duke’s family, where he grew a chief favourite, not only by a steady defence of military measures on all occasions, but by most distinguished bravery in the battles of Fontenoy and Laffelt (in the latter of which he was taken prisoner), by a very superior understanding, and by being one of the most agreeable and solid speakers in Parliament, to which the beauty of his person, and the harmony of his voice, did remarkably contribute. This year a new field was opened, during the discussion of the Mutiny Bill, by Sir Henry Erskine, another young officer, lately brought into Parliament by the Duke of Argyle. This man, with a face as sanguine as the disposition of the Commander-in-Chief, had a gentle plausibility in his manner, that was not entirely surprising in a Scotchman, and an inclination to poetry, which he had cultivated with little success either in his odes, or from the patrons to whom they were dedicated; one had been addressed to the Duke, and another to an old gentlewoman at Hanover, mother of my Lady Yarmouth. Of late he had turned his talent to rhetoric, and studied public speaking under the baker at the Oratorical Club[51] in Essex-street, from whence he brought so fluent, so theatrical, so specious, so declamatory a style and manner, as might have transported an age and audience not accustomed to the real eloquence and graces of Mr. Pitt.