Memoirs of the Reign of King George the Third, Volume 3 (of 4)Walpole, Horace
History
Memoirs of the Reign of King George the Third, Volume 3 (of 4)
Walpole, Horace
Great Britain -- History -- 1760-1789; Great Britain -- History -- George III, 1760-1820
[9] Mr. Townshend had not many months before entertained a very
different opinion of this great man, as appears from the following
passage in the Duke of Grafton’s MS. Memoirs. “On the night preceding
Lord Chatham’s first journey to Bath, Mr. Charles Townshend was for
the first time summoned to the Cabinet. The business was on a general
view and statement of the actual situation and interests of the various
powers in Europe. Lord Chatham had taken the lead in this consideration
in so masterly a manner, as to raise the admiration and desire of us
all to co-operate with him in forwarding his views. Mr. Townshend was
particularly astonished, and owned to me, as I was carrying him in my
carriage home, that Lord Chatham had just shown to us what inferior
animals we were, and that as much as he had seen of him before,
he did not conceive till that night his superiority to be so very
transcendent.”--E.
[10] The following more friendly account of this singular scene is
transcribed from Sir George Colebrooke’s Memoirs.
“Mr. Townshend loved good living, but had not a strong stomach. He
committed therefore frequent excesses, considering his constitution,
which would not have been intemperance in another. He was supposed,
for instance, to have made a speech in the heat of wine, when that
was really not the case. It was a speech in which he treated with
great levity, but with wonderful art, the characters of the Duke of
Grafton and Lord Shelburne, whom, though his colleagues in office,
he entertained a sovereign contempt for, and heartily wished to get
rid of. He had a black ribbon over one of his eyes that day, having
tumbled out of bed, probably in a fit of epilepsy, and this added to
the impression made on his auditors that he was tipsy, whereas it was a
speech he had meditated a great while upon, and it was only by accident
that it found utterance that day. I write with certainty, because Sir
George Yonge and I were the only persons who dined with him, and we
had but one bottle of champagne after dinner, General Conway having
repeatedly sent messengers to press his return to the House.”--E.
[11] Francis Bernard, Esq. He had been Governor of New Jersey from 1758
to 1760 when he was promoted to Massachusets. He is praised by the
writers unfavourable to the Americans for his zeal in maintaining the
authority of the mother country.--(Stedman’s History of the American
War, vol. i. p. 58.) Unhappily this zeal was not tempered by judgment.
He has been justly censured by Mr. Burke. He was made a Baronet in
1769, died in 1779. The late benevolent Sir John Bernard was his second
son.--E.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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