[383] Mr. Pitt’s speech had the very dubious merit of pleasing his opponents rather than his friends. Lord Barrington, in a letter to Sir Andrew Mitchell, says, that if fifty thousand pounds had been given for it, the sum would have been well expended. It secures us a quiet session. Chatham Correspondence, vol. ii. p. 262, and Walpole’s Letters, vol. iv. p. 313.--In fact Mr. Pitt’s interviews with the King had necessarily blunted the edge of his opposition, and he found it as difficult to give an intelligible defence of his proceedings, as all succeeding ministers, in the same predicament, have experienced since.--E. [384] The Lords on the same account put off the hearing of Wilkes’s defence on the Essay on Woman, to the 22nd; and then for a week longer. [385] Frederick, second son of George the Third. [386] Edward Duke of York, next brother to the King. [387] Frederick Lord North, eldest son of the Earl of Guilford. [388] Mr. Morton, or Moreton, M.P. for Abingdon, a barrister of eminence, who was appointed Chief Justice of Chester in 1763. His name will hereafter occur in the debates on the Regency. He must not be confounded with Sir William Moreton, of Moreton, in Cheshire, Recorder of London, who died in 1763.--E. [389] Mr. Forester had been originally recommended by Alderman Beckford to the Duke of Bedford (when the Alderman and his Grace acted together) for a seat in Parliament, “as a person in whom steadiness, honour, and elocution were not exceeded by any man in the country.” (Bedford Correspondence.)--E. [390] Mr. Wilbraham, M.P. for Newton, and Deputy Steward of the University of Oxford. He was an eminent lawyer, whose politics, like those of Mr. Fazakerly, prevented his attaining the honours of his profession.--(Walpole’s Correspondence, vol. iv. p. 319.)--E. [391] Benjamin Bathurst of Lydney, in Gloucestershire, brother of the first Lord Bathurst, and father of the late Bishop of Norwich.--E. [392] Sir John Griffin, an officer of some distinction. He had been severely wounded at the battle of Campen, when fighting near the hereditary Prince of Brunswick. In 1786 he succeeded to the ancient Barony of Howard de Walden; in 1796 he became a Field Marshal; and he died in 1797, having devised Audley-End and his other estates to his kinsman, Mr. Aldworth Neville, who at the same time succeeded to the Barony of Braybrooke, which had been limited over to him on the death of Lord Howard de Walden.--E. [393] See _infra_. [394] General Philip Honeywood, of Marks Hall, Essex, an officer of distinction. He died without issue in 1785.--E.