[351] Thomas Villiers, Baron Hyde, brother of William Earl of Jersey. [He had been Minister at Berlin in the reign of George the Second, and received various honours from Frederick the Great, whose preference of him to such men as Mr. Legge and Mr. Fox, and even to Sir Andrew Mitchell, probably arose from the same reasons that induced Napoleon to bestow the warmest praise on such of his enemy’s generals as he most wished to have as opponents. Lord Hyde was an amiable nobleman, of very comely person, and graceful deportment; he married one of the coheiresses of Lord Clarendon, was elevated to that earldom in 1776, and died in 1786.--E.] [352] Mr. Grenville was deeply offended at this interference of the Duke of Bedford; and his friends, in consequence, took no pains to defend the Duke when the current of popular feeling afterwards turned so strongly against his Grace.--E. [353] Mr. Pitt’s villa at Hayes, near Bromley, in Kent. [354] Walpole is mistaken in this supposition; for the King himself proposed Lord Temple for the Treasury. (Lord Hardwicke’s letter to the Duke of Newcastle.) An impartial narrative of this transaction is given by Mr. Adolphus (vol. i. p. 127), with a reference to the contemporary authorities, of which the most important are Lord Hardwicke’s letter, and the letters in the Chatham Correspondence (vol. ii. p. 242). The “dexterity” and finesse ascribed in the text to Mr. Pitt hardly belong to his character, and certainly were not exhibited on this occasion. His private correspondence proves, as he told the King, that he felt throughout the impossibility of his making a ministry, unless it rested “on the great families who had supported the Revolution Government, and other great persons, of whose ability and integrity the country had had experience, and who had weight and credit in the nation.” This would necessarily have involved greater changes than the King then contemplated, though not greater than his Majesty subsequently found inevitable.--E. [355] Henry Arthur Herbert, Earl of Powis. [356] He had been succeeded as Treasurer of the Household by Lord Powis. [357] His Majesty did not give him up in less than two years on the next change. [358] Charles Watson Wentworth, Marquis of Rockingham. [359] Welbore Ellis, Esq. [360] George Keppel, third Earl of Albemarle. [361] Walpole is in error here. Wood informed Mr. Pitt of the report, that he had proscribed Lord Gower, Rigby, and others of the Bedford party; and Mr. Pitt’s reply, though it has not been preserved, may be inferred, from Wood’s acknowledgment of it, to have amounted to a positive denial of the charge. (Chatham Correspondence, vol. ii. p. 250.)--E. [362] Dr. Charles Lyttelton, brother of George Lord Lyttelton. They were sons of Christian, sister of Richard Lord Cobham, consequently first cousins of Lord Temple. [363] James Grenville, the third brother.