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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 December 2009
Many thanks for your very kind letter of the 24th which I received on my return from the music meeting. I am very glad to find that our tour has answered to you as well as it has to me, and I am almost tempted to pay you the same compliment I did to Cholmely to whom I observed on our return from the Highlands, how glad I was that he went, as had he not been able to have gone, I could not have got any other companion. But however a real travelling companion is by no means easily found, and many are the pieces of live lumber who will fill one side of a chaise or curricle without the least pretensions to that appellation.
page 29 note 1 Cholmeley had been Palmerston's companion on his Highland tour of 1803; Sulívan (not William Temple, as stated by Guedalla, p. 47) had just returned with Palmerston from a tour of Wales.
page 29 note 2 Lady Palmerston was dying of cancer, but her son had been told only that she was ill and encouraged to take his holiday in Wales (Minto to Lady Minto, 13 June 1804, Minto Papers IE/15).
page 29 note 3 Elizabeth Billington (1768–1818) was ‘the greatest singer England has ever produced’, according to the D.N.B., and a great rival of the German Mara who nearly twenty years earlier had been hired to sing at the celebration of Palmerston's first birthday (The Countess of Minto, ed., Lift and Letters of Sir Gilbert Elliot, First Earl of Minto, 1874, i. 98).Google Scholar
page 29 note 4 Lord Bruce was the son of the Earl of Ailesbury; Count Simon Woronzow (1744–1832) was Russian Ambassador in London from 1785 to 1806; and the widowed Mrs Robinson was the sister of the 1st Earl of Malmesbury and aunt of Palmerston's future colleague, Frederick Robinson, afterwards Viscount Goderich and Earl of Ripon.
page 30 note 5 The wife of Professor Dugald Stewart.
page 30 note 6 On 11 Aug. Francis II had assumed the title of hereditary Emperor of Austria. page 30 note 7 There is a sketch-book of Palmerston's in B.P.W. (no. 1946) apparently dating from a tour he made in the following summer.
page 31 note 1 ‘On the Policy of Opening the East Indian Trade’, read to the Fusty on 31 Oct. 1804.
page 31 note 2 Observations on the reports of the Directors of the East India Company respecting the Trade between India and Europe, by Thomas Henchman, 1801.
page 31 note 3 According to Pryme, pp. 117–18, meetings of the Union were afterwards held in a former dissenters' chapel in Green St.
page 31 note 4 The Sulivans' house at Waltham Cross, bought by Laurence Sulivan in 1761 (Namier & Brooke, iii. 509).
page 31 note 5 Sulivan had written on the 27th (B.P., G.C./SU no. 4) that the ‘beau monde’ had been driven from a music festival and ball at Hertford by ‘an inundation of townfolk … who …. thought that the price of admission was a sufficient title to be present’.
page 32 note 6 Of 7 Sept., breaking off relations with France.
page 32 note 7 Presumably Gen. Louis Henri Loison (1771–1816).
page 32 note 8 The Times of 29 Sept. had reprinted extracts from some private correspondence captured at sea earlier that year and published by the French Government.
page 33 note 1 John Mackie (1748–1831), physician.
page 33 note 2 Cave had been butler to the 2nd Viscount.
page 33 note 3 Thomas, 2nd Earl of Clonmell, seems to have celebrated his marriage twice, in Oct. 1804 and again on 9 Feb. 1805.
page 33 note 4 Perhaps Thomas William Robbins (ob. 1864), who is recorded as having been admitted to Trinity and then to Lincoln's Inn in 1802.
page 34 note 5 Sulivan had written on 14 Oct.: ‘What do you think of your friend Lord Melville's fire-works? He is polite in the extreme to provide amusement for the French, in their confinement. I am afraid his crackers cost more than Addington's large stones.’ (B.P., G.C./SU no. 5.)
page 34 note 6 Palmerston had addressed his last letter to Essex but Ponsborne was in Hertfordshire.
page 34 note 7 James Parke, afterwards Baron Wensleydale (1782–1868), a Cambridge contemporary, came from the vicinity of Liverpool.
page 34 note 1 George Rich, Sir Charles's second son, had probably been visiting his uncle, Dr Humphrey Sumner, the Provost of King's.
page 35 note 2 The Rev. Henry Campbell (c. 1774–1846) was the natural son of the 2nd Viscount Palmerston. After graduating from Christ Church he had obtained the living of St John's, Antigua, but had returned to collect an inheritance of £10,000 after his father's death in 1802. He obtained the promise of a curacy at Bicton in Shropshire early in 1805 and on the strength of it married in May of that year Anne, daughter of Thomas Rose of Chipping Wycombe. In spite of Palmerston's support he received only very modest preferment thereafter. He was subsequently curate at Nailsworth in Gloucestershire and, from 1839, at Cowley in Surrey.
page 35 note 3 Sir Francis Whitworth died 16 Jan. 1805. Whitworth, his elder brother Lord Whitworth and their sisters were close friends of Palmerston's parents.
page 36 note 4 ‘All the big-wigs who happen to be liked by the students, are generally honoured with some familiar appellation, such as …. Jemmy Wood.’(Wright, i. 52.)
page 36 note 5 Palmerston was always placed among the first class in the college examinations at St John's. But in Dec. 1805 he was ranked only tenth out of thirteen in that class. Palmerston attributed his relative failure to the disproportionate time he had given to converting his Fustian ‘essay’ on the East India Company into the declamation in Latin that every undergraduate was required to give in Chapel. He spent nearly a week translating it and learning it by heart and twenty minutes instead of the usual ten on the actual performance. (Palmerston to his mother, 23 Nov., 28 Nov. and 16 Dec. 1804, B.P.W.)
page 36 note 6 Addington.
page 37 note 1 Lavender House was the place near Henley-on-Thames of William Culverden, the brother-in-law and former partner of Andreas Grote. Culverden had married Lady Palmerston's elder sister, Sarah, on 14 May 1767.
page 38 note 2 In his letter of 20 Feb. Sulivan had announced the imminent accession of ‘Douglas’ to the Fusty (S.P.).
page 38 note 1 Virgil, Georgics, 3, 513.
page 39 note 2 Sydney Smith gave his first course of lectures on Moral Philosophy at the Royal Institution from Nov. 1804 to May 1805.
page 40 note 1 John Millar (1735–1801), Professor of Law and historian. For the other names see above, pp. 10–11.
page 40 note 2 Sir Henry Smyth, 6th and last Bart of Berechurch (1784–1852), a fellow-commoner of Trinity, took his M.A. that same year; he was subsequently M.P. for Colchester. Henry Bright (1784–1869) was a pensioner at Peterhouse; he took his M.A. in 1810 and was subsequently M.P. for Bristol. Thomas Charles Gascoigne (1786–1809) was a fellow-commoner of Trinity; he did not return to Cambridge but was killed while hunting. Edward Grose (1783–1815), a pensioner of St John's, took his B.A. in 1806 and was killed at Quatre Bras. John Beverley was senior Esquire Bedell.
page 41 note 3 Probably Frederick Gwynne (ob. 1816) who had migrated from Christ's to St John's in Oct. 1804 and was to move again to Jesus in 1806.
page 41 note 4 William Wood (ob. 1821), a fellow of St John's until 1806, had been deprived of the senior bursarship on account of financial irregularities as long ago as 1797.
page 41 note 1 In Berkeley Square.
page 41 note 2 See Seymour, Lady, ed., The ‘Pope’ of Holland House, 1906, pp. 333–40.Google Scholar
page 41 note 3 Lord Malmesbury's place near Henley-on-Thames.
page 42 note 4 The French fleet had eluded Nelson and attacked the British West Indies. Alexander Cray Grant (1782–1854), a former fellow-commoner at St John's and afterwards 8th Bart, was a prominent spokesman for the West Indian interest.
page 42 note 5 Cf. Horace, Ars Poetica, 1. 185.
page 42 note 6 Sadlers Wells had advertised in The Times of 1 July an ‘Aquatic Theatre’ programme concluding with ‘a grand Caledonian Melo-Dramatic Romance’ by Charles Dibdin and entitled ‘An Bratach, or The Water Spectre’.
page 42 note 7 Wright, a Trinity man, wrote (i. 42): ‘The Johnians, who are sometimes called Pigs, sometimes Hogs (the Trinity are named Bull-dogs, mind ye) have, from time immemorial, been famed for bad puns.’ There were several Haggits in Cambridge about this time, but neither the Haggit mentioned here nor Miss Tenant can be specifically identified.
page 43 note 1 William Roscoe's Life and Pontificate of Leo the Tenth was first published in 1805.
page 44 note 1 Then the home in Chertsey of Edmund Boehm (ob. 28 Aug. 1822).
page 45 note 2 Ashburton had married Mrs Stewart's niece, Anne Cunninghame, on 17 Sept. He had announced his intention to her mother only on the day of the marriage and to the Stewarts less than a week before. He stated to Palmerston that, though he had proposed in 1805, he had resolved upon the marriage as early as May 1803 (Ashburton to Palmerston, 12 and 24 Sept. 1805, B.P.W.). But in Nov. 1803 he was making up to Fanny Temple (Lilly Temple to Palmerston, 27 Nov. 1803, S.P.). It was presumably this latter courtship that inspired the famous passage of words between John Ward (Dudley) and Lady Glenbervie about Mary, Lady Palmerston: ‘“I detested that woman. She was so fawning and mean. There was no sort of bassesse she was not guilty of in order to get that monster Ashburton to marry her ugly daughter.” “Upon my word,” said Lady Glenbervie, “you have a very long and a very sharp scythe. You have just mown down three at one stroke.”’ (Glenbervie Diaries, ii. 93.)Google Scholar
page 45 note 3 Probably Francis Palmer (ob. 1842), a fellow-commoner of Trinity Hall, who became Rector of Combepyne, Devon, in 1805.
page 46 note 1 They debated the Revolution of 1688 on 6 Nov.
page 46 note 2 Amelia Elizabeth Godfrey had been brought up virtually as a member of the family by Palmerston's mother. She was the sister of Peter and Thomas Godfrey of Old Hall in East Bergholt, and the daughter of William Godfrey (formerly Mackenzie) of Woodford. William Godfrey had evidently been a childhood friend of Mary Mee and her brother Ben. After the death of his wife, Godfrey had wished to make Mary his children's stepmother, but she had refused him. As Lady Palmerston, however, she or her sister eventually took in Emma Godfrey. After his mother's death, Palmerston made Emma Godfrey a substantial allowance until her death, unmarried, on 18 April 1840. (B.P.W.)
page 46 note 3 ‘You have no idea’, Palmerston wrote to Fanny Temple on 7 Nov., ‘how melancholy it is to look up to the windows of Sulivan, Shee and Percy.’ (B.P.W.)
page 46 note 4 From what follows (and from no. 27) the Houndsfoot (a scoundrel, O.E.D.) would appear to have been private tutor to the two eldest sons of the Earl of Bandon who had been admitted at St John's on 4 June 1804. Viscount Bernard eventually married a niece of the 4th Viscount Midleton, but this was not until 1809 and ‘Middleton’ was almost certainly William Fowle Middleton (ob. 1860), afterwards 2nd Bart, a fellow-commoner of St John's. ‘Little P.’ was the Hon. Hugh Percy (1784–1856), who had recently gone down.
page 47 note 5 ‘The Young Bear’ has not been identified. Edward Swinburne (1788–1855), eldest son of Sir John Swinburne, 6th Bart, and uncle of the poet, was admitted from Harrow as a fellow-commoner at St John's on 31 May 1805 and Richard Willis (1787–1858) was admitted fellow-commoner on 10 May 1805. But Michael Bruce was a pensioner. The mother of Henry Gally Knight (1786–1846) was an aunt of Sir Henry Fitzherbert, 3rd Bart of Tissington (1783–1858). Fitzherbert had been admitted a fellow-commoner at St John's in 1801 and was already one of Sulivan's ‘set’.
page 47 note 6 Pollock did win the contest, issuing senior wrangler and first Smith's prizeman from the Senate House examinations of 1806. Henry Walter (1785–1859), a pensioner at St John's, was second wrangler and junior prizeman.
page 47 note 7 Edward Christian (ob. 1823) was Downing Professor of Law at Cambridge.
page 47 note 8 Thomas Panton (1731–1808), a wealthy sportsman, had recently married Mary, second daughter of Joseph Gubbins of Kilrush.
page 47 note 9 Matthew Holworthy (1783–1836) was admitted a fellow-commoner at Caius on 23 Sept. 1805.
page 47 note 1 The Queen's Birthday was celebrated on 18 Jan. 1806.
page 48 note 2 Not identified.
page 48 note 3 The court martial of Vice-Adm. Sir Robert Calder had opened on 23 Dec.
page 49 note 1 After Napoleon's victory at Austerlitz both Austria and Prussia had come to terms with France.
page 49 note 1 Pitt had died at 4.30 a.m. on 23 Jan., and Palmerston, who had been at a ball in London till 4, left that same day to test the ground in Cambridge. He knew that Petty and Althorp, who were both Trinity men, intended to stand and had heard that Royston, a Johnian, might do so too. (Palmerston to Frances Temple, 23 Jan. 1806, B.P.W.) Wood became ‘manager’ of Palmerston's canvass in Cambridge (Althorp to Spencer, 4 Feb., Spencer Papers).
page 49 note 2 The candidates had to be M.A.s of the University.
page 49 note 3 Malmesbury's son and heir.
page 49 note 1 Presumably Jeremiah Jackson (1775–1857), a former fellow of St John's.
page 50 note 2 Fearing that Palmerston would suffer by any unnecessary delay Sulivan, with Shee's help, had already opened a canvass for him in London, in particular among the Inns of Court. Lord Dalmeny (afterwards 4th Earl of Rosebery) and his brother Francis Ward Primrose had both been at Pembroke. Dalmeny was now an M.P. and his brother was reading for the bar. On 28 Jan. Sulivan reported that Frank Primrose supported Petty (B.P., G.C./SU no. 9).
page 50 note 3 Fitzherbert was also studying for the bar; his uncle was a distinguished diplomat and courtier.
page 50 note 1 John Christian, a Johnian who was at Lincoln's Inn with Sulivan, had suggested that a University regulation requiring graduates who had allowed their voting rights to lapse to undergo a further month's residence before resuming them would be quite unenforceable (Sulivan to Palmerston, 24 Jan. 1806, B.P., G.C./SU no. 8).
page 50 note 2 Lord Hardwicke was Lord Lieutenant in Ireland and Royston was with him. Since he feared that there might be rather severe competition to be High Steward of the University, he rather regretted that in his absence his wife had committed him to the contest. His half brother, Charles Yorke, was M.P. for Cambridgeshire, but there was some suggestion that he might come forward as the Johnian candidate for the University seat. Herbert Marsh (1757–1839) was then a fellow of St John's and a particular opponent of the evangelicals led by Charles Simeon (1759–1836).
page 51 note 3 Sulivan had suggested an arrangement with one of Palmerston's opponents.
page 51 note 4 According to Petty a handful of Pittites at Trinity had decided to run one of their fellow-students, the 2nd Baron Headley (1784–1840), against Althorp and himself (Petty to Creevey, Jan. 1806, Creevey Papers, i. 76).Google Scholar
page 51 note 5 Edward Daniel Clarke (1769–1822), a fellow of Jesus, was promised to Petty (Shee to Palmerston, 27 Jan. 1806, B.P., G.C./SH no. 72).
page 51 note 6 Lord Lovaine and Hugh Percy both supported Palmerston, but the Duke of Northumberland and his son supported Petty (Petty to Creevey, 28 Jan. 1806, Creevey Papers, i. 76).Google Scholar
page 51 note 1 Lacking.
page 51 note 2 William Cust (1787–1845) was a younger son of the 1st Baron Brownlow; his elder brothers Henry Cockayne and John (afterwards 1st Earl of Brownlow) were also Cambridge graduates.
page 51 note 3 Robert Hodgson (ob. 1844), formerly of Peterhouse.
page 52 note 1 Sulivan to Palmerston, n.d., B.P., G.C./SU no. 7.
page 52 note 2 Malmesbury to Palmerston, n.d., B.P.W.
page 53 note 1 It was established at Gray's Inn Coffee House (Sulivan to Palmerston, n.d., B.P., G.C./SU no. 10).
page 53 note 2 Thomas Tatham was a contemporary at St John's; his elder brother Ralph was a fellow. Robert Remmet was also a fellow of St John's and a member of the Inner Temple.
page 53 note 3 The travelling arrangements were made for Palmerston by Shee in London and Wood in Cambridge. The bills for horses and carriages etc., from Mr Mills of the Sun Inn in Trumpington Street, Cambridge, and from James Warner of the Falcon Inn in Waltham Cross, totalled £341. 5s. 9d. (B.P.W.; see also Shee to Palmerston, n.d., B.P., G.C./SH no. 76.) Althorp complained to his father that Wood ‘began by complaining of both of us [Petty and Althorp] separately to each other for stopping up the road and then was the first to take all the carriages himself’. (4 Feb., Spencer Papers.)
page 53 note 4 Spencer, who had joined Fox with the Grenvilles and was destined for the Home Office, had refused to allow his son to make any arrangement with Petty for the weaker candidate to withdraw and instead made a similar but unsuccessful approach through Malmesbury to Palmerston (Malmesbury to Palmerston, 29 Jan. and n.d. 1806, B.P.W.).
page 54 note 1 Not identified.
page 54 note 2 Palmerston had sent Malmesbury a paragraph for the London papers that included a reference to Petty ‘depending upon the friends of Mr Fox’. Malmesbury had deleted it as being ‘neither quite fair nor sound policy’. (Malmesbury to Palmerston, 29 Jan., B.P.W.) But the accusation had nonetheless got about Cambridge. Petty wrote to Creevey on 1 Feb.: ‘What with reports circulated by enemies & the indiscretions of some friends, I am afraid an impression has gone abroad, that I am standing on mere party grounds & some of Pitt's friends, who had given me hopes, are gone off upon the idea that they might have given their vote personally to me, but to Mr Fox's candidate no.’ (Microfilm of Creevey Papers in the D. M. Watson Library, University College London.) Meanwhile the rumour had been spread, probably by Brougham, that Palmerston was unsound on the slavery question.
page 54 note 3 Palmerston's solicitor in London.
page 55 note 1 James Inman (1776–1859), astronomer and fellow of St John's.
page 55 note 2 Charles Hyde Wollaston (1772–1850).
page 55 note 3 Samuel Blackall (ob. 1842) was a fellow of Emanuel.
page 55 note 4 Isaac Milner was wavering on account of the rumours about Palmerston and the slave trade; but he finally came round.
page 55 note 5 Joseph Procter was Master of St Catherine's.
page 55 note 6 Ralph Worsley (1764–1848) had found his name removed from the boards at Trinity and suspected it was a trick (Malmesbury to Palmerston, 3 Feb., B.P.W.). George Frederick Tavel was a tutor at Trinity and a supporter of Petty.
page 56 note 1 Petty would have had to seek re-election if his appointment as Chancellor of the Exchequer had been deemed to be of a subsequent date. Malmesbury thought it ‘a nice legal question’, but in any case was inclined to think Palmerston would gain no credit if he made a contest out of any new election. The poll, which gave Petty an easy victory, did not take place until 7 Feb.; but a new election was avoided on the rather controversial grounds that although the poll had been completed before his patent of office was sealed, that patent had already been signed and Petty had kissed hands. (Malmesbury to Palmerston, 6, 7 and 8 Feb. 1806, B.P.W.; Croker to Peel, 19 Mar. 1828, Peel Papers, Add. MS. 40320.)
page 56 note 1 There was usually a ball following Commencement Sunday.
page 56 note 2 Sulivan seems to have been disappointed in a courtship, perhaps of Elizabeth Temple.
page 56 note 3 Ambrose Mickey (1750–1826).
page 57 note 4 Palmerston and Petty both regarded Commencement as a time to canvass for future parliamentary elections.
page 57 note 1 Thomas Waldron Hornbuckle (1775–1848), a fellow of St John's, figures as ‘Horny’ in Wright's list of popular ‘big-wigs’. Wright also mentions (i. 52) that he was ‘famous for a habit he had acquired of pulling up his inexpressibles’. Hornbuckle was Bruce's tutor.
page 57 note 2 Sulivan's letter is not in the Broadlands Papers and its contents are therefore unknown.
page 58 note 3 Temple Grove, the Palmerstons' old family mansion in Sheen, had been let since the 2nd Viscount's death and had brought in hardly more than £300 a year in rent. But, fortunately for Palmerston, the 1806 sale seems to have fallen through. For two years later William Temple reported that it had been sold by Peter Coxe, the auctioneer, for no less than £12,065 (to Elizabeth Temple, 23 July 1808, B.P.W.). It subsequently became a preparatory boarding school and was pulled down after the school moved from Sheen.
page 58 note 4 Minto had just been appointed Governor General of India.
page 58 note 5 Palmerston had loaned Broadlands to Fitzharris for his honeymoon. Heron Court was another house of the Malmesburys near Christchurch, Hampshire.
page 59 note 6 Thomas Starkie (1782–1849) was a student at St John's; Robert William Henry Maude (1784–1861) of Trinity. There were three Baines's from Christ's, but this was probably James Johnson Baines (1778–1854). Sir Lumley Skeffington (1771–1850) was a well-known playwright and fop.
page 59 note 7 Noblemen traditionally took their degrees on the Monday of Commencement Week, one of them being elected by the ladies to be steward of the ball that evening. Admission was by invitation only, but the men paid only one guinea each and the ladies nothing at all. Consequently the steward ‘generally found himself out of pocket’. (Gunning, Henry, Reminiscences of the University, Town, and County of Cambridge, from the year 1780, 2 vols., 1854, i. 26–8.Google Scholar) There survives in B.P.W. a bundle of bills for the expenses Palmerston incurred as steward. It includes large amounts for fruit—including fifty-eight plates of strawberries and fifty-nine of cherries.
page 59 note 8 Sir Henry Mildmay had proposed on 11 July a vote of thanks to the Volunteers (1 Hansard, vii. 1105–6).Google Scholar
page 59 note 9 Henry Raikes had spent the greater part of 1805–6 travelling in south-east Europe and the Mediterranean area, part of the time with Aberdeen.
page 60 note 1 Gilbert Elliot, afterwards 2nd Earl of Minto, married Mary Brydone in Sept. 1806.
page 60 note 2 Marianne Elliot (1730–1811) was Lord Minto's maiden aunt. Mount Teviot was the home of her brother, Adm. John Elliot (ob. 1809).
page 61 note 3 Dugald Stewart accompanied Lauderdale on his abortive peace mission to Paris.
page 63 note 1 Sulivan had written on 11 Aug. to say that there was some thought of his being put forward as a parliamentary candidate and asking for details of Palmerston's negotiations. Malmesbury had been looking out for a pocket borough in case Palmerston's informal canvass in Cambridge seemed unpromising.
page 63 note 2 Perhaps a reference to Sir William Young (1749–1815), who had deserted Pitt for Grenville in 1801.
page 66 note 3 Lord Percy had been returned for Buckingham on 1 Aug.
page 66 note 4 The duel between Tom Moore and Francis Jeffrey had been prevented by the police. The story of the pellets is corrected in Lord John Russell, ed., Memoirs, Journal, and Correspondence of Thomas Moore, 1853–6, i. 208.Google Scholar
page 66 note 5 Henry Brougham accompanied Lords Rosslyn and St Vincent on their special mission to Lisbon.
page 66 note 6 Cranley (afterwards 2nd Earl of Onslow) was a buffoon and a reprobate, with a passion for driving.
page 67 note 7 The response to 7 is lacking.
page 67 note 1 The Malmesburys had a house in Spring Gardens, Whitehall.
page 67 note 1 Fox had died on 13 Sept.; Parliament was dissolved on 24 Oct.
page 68 note 2 Grafton's death would translate Petty's Cambridge colleague, Lord Euston, to the Lords and so force a by-election.
page 68 note 1 As soon as Malmesbury had confirmation that there was to be an imminent dissolution he wrote to Lord Pembroke, who was acting for Lady Irwin, to complete a bargain for her two seats at Horsham. Palmerston and Fitzharris were each to pay £4,000 (or, if necessary, 4,000 guineas) ‘on condition you & James are brought in with all re-elections gratis on all vacancies in the ensuing parliament during Lady Irwin's life’. The particular object, so far as Palmerston was concerned, was to allow him to vacate Horsham if another opportunity occurred to stand at a by-election in Cambridge with a guarantee of a free re-election in Horsham if he failed in the University. But so far as the General Election was concerned, Malmesbury was convinced Palmerston had no chance in Cambridge. (Malmesbury to Palmerston, 17 Oct. 1806, B.P.W.)
page 68 note 2 Malmesbury had advised such a precaution. Palmerston's draft is B.P.W. no. 398. The particular danger they had in mind was Lord Percy's coming forward. When Sheridan offered himself to the electors of Westminster the Duke of Northumberland withdrew his son from that unequal contest and sent him westwards on another search. But Percy stopped en route in Cambridge, with a view to the General Election according to his father, but with an eye to the seat Lord Euston would one day vacate, Palmerston rather feared. Percy arrived in Cambridge on 24 Oct., just as Palmerston was leaving. There followed some sort of public ‘scene’ between them and an apparently inconclusive promise from Percy to consult his father again. (Northumberland to Col. McMahon, 24 Oct., P.O.W., v. 501–2; F. Homer to J. A. Murray, 15 Nov. 1806, Horner Papers, British Library of Political and Economic Science.) So after Percy had left for the west, Palmerston took the precaution of sending a long letter to Alnwick to await his return:
London. 30 Oct. 1806.
My dear Percy,
As you did not appear when last I saw you to have come to any final determination respecting your future plan of conduct relative to Cambridge I avail myself of the privilege given me by the habits of intimacy in which we have hitherto lived to submit to you certain considerations, to which in the decision you are about to make, I should wish now to direct your attention.
In the first place then I am anxious to have it clearly understood that from the connexion I have already formed with the University it is impossible for me to retire in favor of any other candidate. The support which I received at the last election, and that which was promised me at the present had not motives of delicacy prevented me from availing myself of it, was of a nature so respectable in itself and so flattering to me, that I should consider myself as in some degree deserting my friends, and certainly doing an injustice to myself, were I to omit seizing the first fair opportunity of again urging my claims to the representation of the University. If then you should determine to stand there must be a contest between us; an event which I can assure you independently of all interested motives, I should from the regard I feel for you most sincerely lament. But let us consider what the probable result would be. No man can entertain any rational hopes of success at Cambridge unless he be heartily supported by his own College, and consequently unless you should have the majority of the Johnians to form the basis of your strength you could never expect a successful combat with a Trinity candidate. But the ground upon which you must begin to open your trenches, I have already preoccupied, and from the number of actual promises which I have received from our common friends at St John's, I am convinced that the majority of the College would be against you. Moreover, not to mention that it is an unpleasant thing for a candidate to be opposed by the members of his own College, I do not conceive that you would be able to make up the deficiency by your success in the smaller colleges in which I apprehend that I have perhaps more the start of you than in St John's. Should you therefore find the resolve to attack me, it may in my opinion safely be predicted, that although you might so far undermine me as to prevent my success, you would not be able to preserve yourself from a complete overthrow, and your only consolation would be, that although a third candidate carried off the prize, you had involved me in your fall. —Such being the state of the case it remains for you to consider, whether as the son of the Duke of Northumberland commanding many borough seats, & able if willing to sit for either of the two great counties of Middlesex and Northumberland, you would chuse to expose yourself to the certainty of a defeat in such a voluntary contest. With respect then to the mere arithmetic of the case, you see the balance is against you, and the rules of common policy should induce you to decline. So far I have argued upon the plain and broad basis of facts, upon a comparison of physical strength, in which there can be no deception, since the refutation is easy & simple. But there is another consideration of a nature less substantial though not less important, and the decision of which must lie chiefly within your own breast. I mean the point of delicacy between us. This is a subject upon which I feel the most extreme reluctance to enter, and where I am very diffident of expressing an opinion. I am aware that from the circumstances of my situation my feelings are too liable to the imputation of being influenced by my interests to allow me to deduce from them a rule of conduct for the guidance of others. But I most earnestly entreat that before you finally make up your mind upon the subject under consideration, you would upon this point consult some of your friends who have your real interests at heart. Might not the world if they saw you attack a friend with whom you are known to have lived at college in the habits of the closest intimacy, and who had by priority of occupancy established a sort of claim upon the University, might they not I say indulge their propensity to view men's actions in their worst light, and attribute to you motives and sentiments which I am persuaded it is the furthest from your nature and character to entertain. I am sure that your candor will lead you to understand what I have here said in the sense in which it is meant, and to believe me when I assure you that nothing but the regard I feel for you would have induced me this strongly to call your attention to a point, in the decision of which I am convinced your interests no less than mine are closely involved.
Ever yrs affly
Palmerston
[The draft is endorsed:]
This letter never was answered but at the General Election which took place upon the change of administration in the following spring Ld Percy turned Ld Howick out for Northumberland having assured Sulivan as soon as the dissolution took place that he did not mean to oppose me at Cambridge. (B.P.W.)
page.70 note 3 Sulivan's parliamentary ambitions presumably evaporated.
page 70 note 1 Palmerston and Fitzharris had received only a minority of the votes for Horsham on 3 Nov., but when they challenged the result the returning officers declared all four candidates elected and left it to the House of Commons to decide between them (Albery, W., A Parliamentary History of the Ancient Borough of Horsham, 1927, pp. 197–229).Google Scholar
page 71 note 2 Palmerston seems to have been a little too complacent about the financial consequences of the Horsham affair, though they remain obscure. Malmesbury assured him again and again that he and Fitzharris had no liability beyond the £4,000 since their bargain with Lord William Gordon (Lady Irwin's son-in-law), he wrote, specifically stated that ‘should the Duke of N[orfolk] create any trouble at the Election of course no payment will be expected until they are securely seated’. They would have to guarantee the legal expenses of the hearing before the House of Commons Committee, but that was merely ‘a matter of form’ and made them ‘liable to nothing’. But Lady Irwin's agent, William Troward, did demand some money in advance. Malmesbury was deeply suspicious of Troward but, relying on Lord William's honour, expected any money to be returned or deducted from the purchase price. Many years later, however, Palmerston related in his ‘Autobiography’ that he and Fitzharris ‘paid about £1,500 each’. He may have exaggerated the figure, as he did that of the price of the seats themselves, but it is unlikely that his memory would have been so much at fault as to overlook being repaid all his expenses. (Malmesbury to Palmerson, 11 and 28 Dec. 1806, B.P.W.; Malmesbury to Fitzharris, 8, 9 and 11 Jan. 1807, Malmesbury Papers; Bulwer & Ashley, i. 368–9.)
page 71 note 3 There had been a furious contest for Hampshire, as Palmerston explained in his journal. Both the old members, Sir William Heathcote and William John Chute, were followers of Pitt, but neither had taken much part in Parliament. In the previous session, however, Chute had voted against the Government occasionally, while Heathcote had not attended the House at all. So Temple, the son of the Marquess of Buckingham who had estates in Hampshire, went to Heathcote and told him that while the Grenvilles and their friends were determined to oust Chute, they would not set up an opposition to Heathcote if he would declare himself in favour of the Government. This Heathcote indignantly refused to do; Palmerston thought he ought to have ordered his servants to show Temple to the door. Instead, when he found there were two government candidates—William Herbert, a younger son of Lord Carnarvon, and Thomas Thistlethwayte, a local squire—Heathcote took fright and withdrew. His place was taken by Sir Henry St John-Mildmay, but only after such hesitation as to give the Government plenty of time to organise the dockyard vote. (Bulwer & Ashley, i. 56–8.) Mildmay consequently came last and felt obliged to concoct an apology, a printed copy of which he sent Palmerston (18 Nov., B.P.W.). Palmerston had been advised by Malmesbury that since he had contracted to lay out £4,000 on his own seat, he should not feel obliged to make any financial contribution in Hampshire (19 Oct., B.P.W.). But Palmerston campaigned very actively for Mildmay and Chute: there is in B.P.W. ‘A New Song called the Modern Whigs in place addressed to the Loyal & Independent Freeholders of Hampshire’, copied in Palmerston's hand and marked that it was printed in Lymington.
page 72 note 4 Gen. Craufurd's expedition had at last set sail for South America on 12 Nov.
page 73 note J ohn Lens (1756–1825) and Robert Dallas (1756–1824).
page 74 note 2 Peter Robert Burrell, afterwards 2nd Baron Gwydyr, a former fellow-commoner at St John's.
page 74 note 3 Dugald Stewart's son.
page 76 note 1 The State of the Negotiation; with details of its progress and causes of its termination in the recall of the Earl of Lauderdale, 1806, was, however, by Charles James Fox.
page 76 note 2 Baron Nicolay was secretary of the Russian Embassy.
page 77 note 1 The committee had reported on 20 Jan. in favour of the Duke of Norfolk's candidates; Thomas Plumer (1753–1824) had presented their case.
page 77 note 2 Having failed both in Horsham and in Cambridge, Palmerston was unwilling to rush into a third attempt About the end of the month he made provisional arrangements to contest one of the seats at Great Yarmouth in the event that a petition should unseat the members returned at the General Election. He therefore began with a merely informal canvass and insisted on keeping his candidacy ‘as secret as possible’. (Palmerston to Frances Temple, ‘Saturday ½ past 5’ [28 Feb.], B.P.W.) There is no reference to it in his correspondence with Sulivan. The petition eventually failed and Palmerston was again left without a seat.
page 77 note 3 Sulivan had admitted to being a pessimist.
page 77 note 4 Petty had presented his financial proposals on 29 Jan. (1 Hansard, viii. 564–97).Google Scholar
page 79 note 1 The Duke of Portland had formed his government at the end of Mar. and Palmerston had accepted office as a junior Lord of the Admiralty at the beginning of April. The news that there was going to be a dissolution was communicated to ‘the independent friends of Government’ on the evening of 25 April. (Malmesbury Diaries, iv. 389 and 393.)Google Scholar
page 79 note 2 Spencer Perceval, a Trinity man, had already assured Malmesbury that he would support Palmerston at Cambridge whether or not he was a candidate there himself. Sir Vicary Gibbs (1751–1820) was Attorney-General in the new government.
page 79 note 3 The committee in London seems to have included Fitzherbert and Shee, as well as Sulivan, and was based at the Crown and Anchor in the Strand. That in Cambridge, again with Wood at the head, consisted of Ralph Tatham, Jackson, Blackall, Clarke, Thomas Sowerby of Queen's and William Cooke of King's.
page 79 note 4 Sulivan suggested in reply that Palmerston strengthen his circular by adding a reference to his attachment to the ‘excellent constitution in Church and State’ ([27 April], S.P.).
page 80 note 1 William Pearce, William Lort Mansel, Philip Douglas, John Barker and Joseph Turner were the Masters respectively of Jesus, Trinity, Corpus Christi, Christ's and Pembroke. The Master of Emanuel was Robert Towerson Cory. Richard Ramsden was a fellow of Trinity and Thomas Mortlock a fellow of St John's.
page 80 note 2 The allusion is not known.
page 80 note 3 William Smyth, Regius Professor of Modern History, was chairman of Petty's committee. Tavel was Euston's chairman; he married Euston's half sister in 1811.
page 81 note 1 Yet Sir Busick Harwood, Professor of Medicine at Cambridge, wrote to Hardwicke on 4 May that his first vote would go to Petty and his second to Euston (Hardwicke Papers, Add. MS. 35658ff. 118–19).
page 81 note 2 Probably those following the end of this letter.
page 82 note 3 Malmesbury expected Hardwicke's uncle to vote against Palmerston in 1807 as he had in 1806 (Malmesbury to Palmerston, 1 May 1807, B.P.W.).
page 82 note 4 Dr Gaskin was an Oxford man, but Parker married his daughter in 1807.
page 82 note 1 The festival of the college's patron saint (S. Johannes ante Portam Latinam) was on 6 May. (I am grateful to the Librarian and Sub-Librarian of St John's for this explanation.)
page 83 note 2 Sir Thomas Liddell, 6th Bart, was the grandson of Thomas Steele, a former Paymaster-General.
page 83 note 1 Henry Dampier (1758–1816), afterwards a King's Bench judge, was a King's Scholar and a member of the Middle Temple.
page 84 note 2 No. 44.
page 84 note 1 But see no. 46, n. 3.
page 85 note 1 Malmesbury, however, had already taken the precaution of securing a pocket borough for him at Newport, Isle of Wight. It cost £4,000. (Malmesbury to Palmerston, 2, 4 and 9 May, B.P.W.)
page 85 note 2 This is confirmed by Pryme, p. 79, and by Petty to Lady Holland, [8 May 1807] Holland House Papers, Add. MS. 51689.
page 85 note 3 In no. 45 Palmerston had reported that Gibbs had received 313 votes (instead of the correct figure of 312) and, presumably, that he had therefore been defeated by three, not four as Bulwer prints. It is further characteristic of Bulwer's editing that, either not having seen or not having noticed the correction Palmerston made in no. 46, he should have amended the margin of defeat Palmerston recorded in his Autobiographical Sketch to ‘four votes’ although the manuscript (B.P./D no. 26) clearly reads ‘two’. Bulwer was no doubt further induced to do this because of the affair of the four would-be ‘plumpers’. Calculating that neither could beat Euston, Palmerston and Gibbs had agreed the night before the poll to exchange their supporter's second votes in order that one of them should at least secure the second seat from Petty. Four of Palmerston's supporters still wanted to plump for him, but were at last persuaded to cast their second votes for Gibbs. However, according to his Sketch, Palmerston afterwards found that he had ended up with twelve plumpers to Gibbs's seven (Bulwer –70). Remmet, on the other hand, was not among them. Lady Malmes-bury attributed Palmerston's defeat to Lord Camden's canvassing for Euston and Gibbs ‘against all pressure and reason’. Camden was ‘a block’, she said, and completely under the influence of Hawkesbury and Castlereagh, who were jealous of Canning and anxious, presumably, to damage anyone connected with him, as Palmerston might have been considered to be through Malmesbury. (Journal of Lady Malmesbury, 12 May 1807, Lowry Cole Papers, P.R.O. 30/43/37.)
page 88 note 1 Gen. Whitelock had made a humiliating withdrawal from the campaign in the River Plate during the summer.
page 89 note 2 The Spanish commander had offered to release his British prisoners if Whitelock agreed to withdraw British forces altogether from the River Plate, at the same time indicating that he might otherwise not be able to protect them from the anger of the inhabitants of Buenos Aires.
page 89 note 3 Robert Plumer Ward was one of Palmerston's colleagues at the Admiralty. Three commissioners always had to be on hand to sign the Board's orders.
page 90 note 1 Sulivan had reported a visit to a Mrs Wheler where Mrs Bromley (the wife of Palmerston's housemaster at Harrow, perhaps) had talked so glowingly of Palmerston that Sulivan banteringly suggested that if unfortunately widowed she would accept his friend's proposal (4 Nov., S.P.).
page 90 note 2 The reference is to Vice-Adm. Sir George Berkeley, whose order had led directly to the Chesapeake affair.
page 92 note 3 John Fiott (afterwards Lee: 1783–1866) had been a pensioner at St John's.
page 92 note 4 Mrs Cranstoun, the widowed mother of Mrs Dugald Stewart, had died on 27 Oct.
page 93 note 6 Shee had written to Palmerston as long ago as 30 Aug. 1806 (B.P., G.C./SH no. 77) that he could not carry out his plan to marry because his father would not give him a big enough allowance. But he persisted in his hopes. In some undated letters written about this time (Shee Papers) his father ‘again’ complained about his inflated projects and pretensions. In one letter he spoke of an epistle Shee had sent his mother, ‘the style of some parts of which appears to me to be self sufficient & presumptuous & the sentiments to have been picked up from the novels of a circulating library’. In another he made what must have been a reference to Palmerston: ‘I thought you of a different turn of mind or I should never have made the melancholy mistake I did in placing you in a situation to contract intimacies with young men of great fortune & high pretensions.’ Shee, on the contrary, had no chance of his father's finding him an office and no prospect of a fortune. The largest allowance he could expect was £300 a year, and at his father's death £1,000 Irish per annum. Nor were there any better prospects from the family of his intended bride. For Jane Young was the eldest often children and her father, William Young of Hexton House in Hertfordshire, merely a former Puisne Judge in India. But the elder Shee evidently miscalculated his son's future prospects from the marriage (see no. 168).
page 96 note 1 Shee married Jane Young on 4 Jan. 1808.
page 96 note 2 The references are obscure, but see no. 48.
page 97 note 1 Of 18 Dec., replying to Russia's breaking off of relations.
page 98 note 2 Count Woronzow's only daughter, Catherine, became the second wife of the 11th Earl of Pembroke on 25 Jan. 1808. Their only son was Sidney Herbert.
page 98 note 3 It is not known to what these remarks refer.
page 99 note 1 His own house in Hanover Square had been let as it was expensive to run and larger than his family needed. When he was on his own in London Palmerston lived in hotels, the Albany or the Admiralty. But something more suitable had to be found when the rest of the family came up for the season. In 1811 he finally settled on Stanhope St (now Stanhope Gate), taking a lease first of no. 12 and two years later of no. 9.
page 99 note 2 Sulivan had been on circuit.
page 100 note 3 The debate on Lord Folkestone's condemnation of the Marquess Wellesley's policy towards Oude had several times been adjourned, for the last time on 10 Mar. at the suggestion of William Smith. The debate resumed on 15 Mar., when another attempt at adjournment and the resolutions attacking Wellesley were heavily defeated. Lord Archibald Hamilton attempted to reopen the debate on 31 Mar. (1 Hansard, x. 1042, 1146–8 and 1290–3.)
page 101 note 4 Robert Pemberton Milnes was married on 22 Aug. 1808 and became the father of the 1st Baron Houghton. Lord Henry Petty was married on 30 Mar. 1808.
page 101 note 5 Sulivan's last letter had been written on a Sunday.
page 101 note 1 Palmerston was still nursing his Cambridge interest for the next election.
page 101 note 2 Probably George Caldwell, a fellow of Jesus.
page 101 note 3 Lord John Townshend (1757–1833) was the first Marquess Townshend's younger son and a former member for the University. The nest year, however, Palmerston found Petty at the Commencement Ball (Palmerston to Malmesbury, 6 July 1809, Malmesbury Papers).
page 101 note 4 In fact he did not arrive in London until the Thursday, having slept en route at Ware. The next day he reported to his sister: ‘Our ball was pretty good. The display of female beauty was certainly not great; but there were many masters of arts. We had a gay but very cold gala on Tuesday evening at Dr Clarke's. The house being very small, the majority of the company was sent into the gardens where there was dancing, fireworks & supper…. I dined with a party of my committee afterwards.’ (B.P.W.)
page 103 note 1 From Frances Temple's diary (B.P.W.) it would seem that Palmerston and William Temple left London on 25 Aug. and arrived back at Broadlands on 4 Oct.
page 104 note 1 Lady Airlie's version, though slightly inaccurate, is more complete and more reliable than Bulwer's. Lady Airlie's p. 34, line 25 should read ‘assist’ not ‘adjust’, p. 35, line 26 ‘Here’, not ‘When’, p. 35, line 28 ‘us’, not ‘me’, and p. 36, line 1 ‘intermission’, not ‘interruption’. Coching was Palmerston's butler in London until about 1823. Thomas Hold had been butler or valet to the 2nd Viscount and his sister Anne was housekeeper for the 3rd at Broadlands. Anne Hold wrote on 24 July 1818, her seventy-ninth birthday, to say she thought it time she retired; but she stayed on until Oct. 1824 and died on 26 Mar. 1835. (B.P.W.)
page 104 note 2 Lorton's elder brother had succeeded as 3rd Earl of Kingston in 1799, though Palmerston persists in calling him by his former courtesy title of Viscount Kingsborough.
page 104 note 3 31 Aug., B.P.W.
page 104 note 4 The sub-agent, Chambers, who was also an Anglican minister, died in Dec. 1810 and was replaced by James Walker. His superior in Dublin was Henry Stewart, the son of the man the 2nd Viscount had appointed as his agent in 1788. In 1805 Stewart had taken an Irish barrister, Graves Swan, as his partner, but when Swan died in 1829 he formed a new partnership with an employee, Joseph Kincaid. The firm of Stewart & Kincaid continued to act for Palmerston for the rest of his life. (Connell, , pp. 356–7Google Scholar, and B.P.W.)
page 105 note 1 Sulivan had studied under Henry Dampier.
page 105 note 2 Thomas Lane was Steward of Lincoln's Inn.
page 105 note 3 Probably Joseph Garrow (1789–1857), a Johnian but an illegitimate child of the secretary to the C.-in-C. in Madras by a native woman.
page 106 note 1 Sulivan had been admitted to the bar in July and had evidently indicated earlier that he intended leaving Dampier's chambers. But he wrote again on 23 Dec. to say that he would probably stay after all and that there would then be no room for William Temple (S.P.).
page 107 note 1 George Rose (1744–1818), Vice-President of the Board of Trade and Treasurer of the Navy from 1807–12, was a Hampshire landowner and closely acquainted with Palmerston through Malmesbury.
page 109 note 1 Cobbett's Political Register, xv. 516–24, reported a meeting of the aldermen and liverymen of the City of London on 1 April supporting Wardle's attack on the Duke of York, and pp. 564–6 a similar meeting of the Middlesex freeholders in Hackney on 11 April.
page 109 note 1 Palmerston had known the Lambs since childhood. But quite when he made an adult friendship, apparently first with William Lamb and then with his sister Lady Cowper, is uncertain. It was certainly before this stay at Brocket or the visit he made at the same time with a party of Lambs and Cowpers to the latter's newly rebuilt house at Panshanger.
page 110 note 2 Francis Cholmeley had been married on 22 Aug. His maternal uncle, Sir Henry Charles Englefield (1754–1822), was a notable antiquary and a close friend of Palmerston's parents.
page 112 note 3 The Duke of Portland resigned shortly before his death in Oct.
page 113 note 1 It was not finally settled that Palmerston should be Secretary at War until 26 Oct. His predecessor Lord Granville Leveson Gower (afterwards 1st Earl Granville) introduced him to the office the same day and Palmerston entered on his duties the following morning (Granville to Palmerston, 26 Oct., B.P./GMC no. 15). But he spoke to Sulivan about becoming his private secretary as early as 24 Oct. and Sulivan had replied the following day that it would be ‘peculiarly agreeable to me at all accounts’ (B.P./GMC no. 16).
page 113 note 2 William Merry (c. 1762–1855) had entered government service in 1778 and become private secretary to Sir George Yonge in 1782. He had stayed on in the War Office, becoming Chief Examiner of Accounts in 1801. (Merry to Pulteney, Nov. 1808, enclosure no. 10A in W.O. to Treasury, 28 July 1809, P.R.O., W.O. 4/429.) He was Palmerston's Deputy Secretary from Dec. 1809 until his retirement in 1826. His second son, also named William, became a War Office clerk in 1810 and was Palmerston's last private secretary in the office. The junior clerk who acted as private secretary to Sir James Murray-Pulteney and Leveson Gower was Robert Wilkinson.
page 113 note 3 Francis Moore (ob. 1854), who was Sir John Moore's youngest brother, decided to retire in December, after only a few weeks under Palmerston. Politics may have had something to do with it, but his family was reputedly rich (J. Greig, ed., The Farington Diary, 1922–5, v. 201). He retired on a pension of £1,800 per annum, £800 of which was in respect of previous service as a Foreign Office clerk. Ten years later he voluntarily gave up the £800, saying that he did not need so much in Italy where he lived. The fact was widely advertised by the Government in the hope of encouraging others. In 1843 Moore wrote to complain about income tax being deducted. He was admitted to have a good case; but it proved impossible to waive the deduction and special arrangements had to be made to repay the tax to him regularly. (W.O. to Moore, 28 Sept. 1829, and to Treasury, 7 Oct. 1831, P.R.O., W.O. 4/724; P.R.O., W.O. 43/525.)
page 115 note 4 The usual emolument was £300, but it was supposed to be reduced to £100 if the private secretary was also a salaried clerk. Sometimes, however, the Minister had authorised the payment of both emoluments in full.
page 115 note 1 The year is uncertain, though the watermark of the letter is 1808. The ‘new arrangements’ mentioned in the text most probably concerned the review of the clerical establishment that had been left uncompleted by Palmerston's immediate predecessors.
page 115 note 2 Richard Baily was a clerk in the Accounts Department of the War Office.
page 116 note 1 The system of appointing chaplains and the determination of their duties were both overhauled in Dec. 1809.
page 116 note 1 The Sloanes were neighbours of Palmerston's in Hampshire. Hans Sloane (1739–1827) had been one of his father's closest friends. He had inherited Paulton's from a cousin and later changed his name to Sloane Stanley. His younger son Stephen, who had married as early as Nov. 1800, was still a struggling undergraduate at Trinity when Palmerston went up to Cambridge. He finally graduated in 1805, but died in 1812. His elder brother William (1781–1860) had married the youngest daughter of the Earl of Carlisle in 1806.
page 117 note 1 Francis Freeling (1764–1836) was secretary to the G.P.O.
page 117 note 2 Not identified.
page 117 note 1 Palmerston's term for Lady Malmesbury and her two, as yet unmarried, daughters.
page 117 note 1 According to the Courier of 23 Aug., the Duke of York had been at Windsor on the 22nd for the Duke of Clarence's birthday celebrations.
page 118 note 2 Henry Torrens was Military Secretary at the Horse Guards. Henry Penruddocke Wyndham (1736–1819) was member for Wiltshire; his second son, Thomas Norton Wyndham (1774–1839), had been taken prisoner in July (Wyndham, H. A., A Family History 1688–1837, 1950, p. 288).Google Scholar
page 118 note 1 Mrs Culverden had died on 26 Sept.
page 119 note 1 Morse, whoever he was, seems to have changed his mind again, for Park Place was not sold until 1816. Webb was Malmesbury's agent.
page 119 note 1 Palmerston had leased Lord Kinnaird's house in Lower Grosvenor St in Dec. 1809 and when suddenly he had to leave it in Jan. 1811 he took refuge with Mrs Robinson in Privy Gardens in Whitehall until he could find the house he wanted in Stanhope St.
page 120 note 1 The death of the Duke of Grafton on 14 Mar. and the translation of Lord Euston to the upper House had brought on a by-election in Cambridge. Petty had also been translated to the Lords as Marquess of Lansdowne. So Palmerston's opponent in a straight fight was John Henry Smyth (1780–1822) of Heath Hall, York, a Browne medallist from Trinity and a nephew of Euston's.
page 120 note 2 John Blackman was a graduate from Queen's. Dr Samuel Ryde Weston (1747–1821), a Johnian and a Canon of St Paul's, was at first inclined to support Palmerston but was persuaded by Hardwicke not to do so (Weston to Hardwicke, 21 and 23 Mar., Hardwicke Papers, Add. MS. 35658).
page 120 note 3 Palmerston defeated Smyth by 451 votes to 345, but Smyth secured the other seat on Gibbs's appointment to the Bench in 1812 and held it until his death.
page 120 note 4 Rutland was a candidate for the Chancellorship, now also vacant by Grafton's death.
page 120 note 5 Burghersh was also a Cambridge graduate.
page 121 note 6 T. G. Street was editor and joint proprietor of the Courier. An appropriate comment appeared in the Courier the following day.
page 121 note 7 The Rev. Richard Cockburn was a former fellow of St John's.
page 121 note 1 Culverden had died on 7 April.
page 121 note 2 Probably John Stratton (ob. 1819), a former fellow-commoner of St John's.
page 122 note 1 Col. (later Gen. Sir) James Willoughby Gordon (1773–1851) was Commissary-in-Chief and involved about this time in a dispute with the War Office over the possible transfer of some accounts to his department. Henry Bankes (W. J. Bankes's father) was chairman of the Committee on Public Expenditure, whose tenth report he laid before the Commons on 24 June. The Committee took evidence from Gordon and reported, among other things, that the accounts in question ‘should be transferred forthwith’. At the same time Bankes drew the attention of the House more especially to ‘the tardy examination of military and regimental accounts’. (Parliamentary Papers, 1810–1811, iii. 1001–54Google Scholar; 1 Hansard, xx. 758.) But Palmerston may also have been aware that Gordon was a candidate for his own position in the event that the Whigs displaced the Government during the Regency crisis of 1810–11. Gordon had the impression that the Prince looked to him not only to make the War Office more efficient but also to make the Secretary ‘submit to the controul of a Commander-in-Chief’. Certainly Gordon was consulted by the Prince about the growing quarrel between Palmerston and Sir David Dundas, the Commander-in-Chief during the Duke of York's brief disgrace. (P.O. W., vii. 47 and 186–8Google Scholar; see also in the Grey Papers, Gordon to Grey, 5 Mar. 1810, enclosing a ‘Confidential Memorandum upon the Military offices’ in which he advocated the consolidation of the various departments into a ‘Board of War’.)
page 123 note 1 Sulivan had proposed to Elizabeth Temple, possibly not for the first time.
page 123 note 1 Michael Foveaux and John Stewart were two of the three Superintendents of Military Accounts Palmerston had appointed in Dec. 1809 in order to catch up on the vast arrears of business. The third had retired in Jan. 1811 and Palmerston had appointed Sulivan in his place. Encouraged by his friend, Palmerston had begun during the summer to reorganise their work. The enclosure is lacking.
page 123 note 2 The Rev. Henry Campbell and his wife.
page 123 note 3 Perhaps a nickname for Coching.
page 123 note 1 Word unknown.
page 124 note 2 Lord Clive's younger brother, Robert (1789–1854).
page 124 note 3 James Nibbs was a Hampshire acquaintance.
page 124 note 1 There had been a misunderstanding or difference of opinion about Elizabeth Temple's marriage settlement as drawn up by Palmerston's solicitor, Forster (Malmesbury to Palmerston, 14 Oct., B.P., G.C./MA no. 162).
page 124 note 2 Probably a reference to the junior ministers among the Alfred set.
page 125 note 1 Sir Nathaniel Dance Holland, the painter, had died on 15 Oct. 1811. He lived at Cranbury House, near Winchester, and was evidently known socially to Palmerston. He had also painted his uncle, Benjamin Mee.
page 125 note 2 First observed at Viviers by Flaugergues on 25 Mar.
page 125 note 1 Palmerston was returned unopposed.
page 126 note 1 Soon after becoming Lord Lieutenant of Hampshire in Aug. 1807 Malmesbury had Palmerston made one of his deputies. In that capacity Palmerston was given the command of a new regiment of local militia in Jan. 1809 and gazetted its paid Lieutenant Colonel commanding the following Mar. On 16 Jan. Malmesbury wrote to his sister, Mrs Robinson: ‘I have been delivered of my local militia—twins—your old friend Waller nurses one & Palmerston the other. They are fine children but not at their full growth. I have given Palmerston a dry Scotch nurse to assist him.’ (Malmesbury Papers, Merton College, Oxford, Box F33b.) Palmerston commanded the South West Hampshire Regiment; Lt Col. John Abel Waller the South East. Palmerston's ‘dry Scotch nurse’ was Lt Col. E. P. Buckley. Among the other officers to be found at one time or another in the South West Regiment were William Temple, George Rich and two of his brothers, Shee and Sulivan. The regiment had been assembled for volunteering on 21 Feb. 1814. It never assembled again, being reduced in April 1816. (Col. Llovd-Verney, Records of the Infantry Militia Battalions of the County of Southampton from A.D. 1757 to 1894, 1894, pp. 291–6.)Google Scholar
page 126 note 2 Henry Holmes was a Hampshire lawyer as well as lieutenant quartermaster in Palmerston's regiment. He was also Palmerston's agent in Romsey from 1823 until 1842 when he was discovered to have been using his client's money as his own and at no profit to either of them.
page 126 note 3 James Needham was Captain and Adjutant from 1813.
page 127 note 1 Frederick Robinson was in Europe with Castlereagh in 1813–14.
page 127 note 1 Airlie gives the date as ‘September 1821’, but Guedalla, p. 468, gives it correctly. This was Palmerston's first visit to the mainland of Europe since 1794. The account given in the published version of Palmerston's Journals, pp. 7–37Google Scholar, is very full, but some entries have been been wrongly dated or run together by the editor.
page 127 note 2 Glenbervie Diaries, ii. 134–5.
page 129 note 1 Lady Fitzharris had died on 4 Sept.
page 129 note 2 The review of the Russian Army at Vertus not Vestres as in Palmerston's Journals, pp. 20–1.Google Scholar
page 130 note 3 Probably Michael Woronzow, the Russian commander and brother of the former Russian ambassador in England, rather than Michael Bruce, though Palmerston also encountered Bruce in Paris.
page 130 note 4 See Palmerston's Journals, pp. 25–6.Google Scholar
page 130 note 1 Sulivan's mother had just died.
page 131 note 1 The Sulivans were at Broadlands.
page 131 note 2 The 4th Earl of Buckinghamshire died on 4 Feb.
page 131 note 3 Dugald Stewart's son, Matthew Stewart, had gone to India in 1807 as aide de camp to Lord Minto and had pursued his military career there subsequently.
page 132 note 4 Lord Mount Edgecumbe's elder daughter did not marry until 1828; Clive married Lady Lucy Graham in 1818.
page 132 note 5 Palmerston was selling some land in Dublin to the Board of Ordnance and was having checked the mortgages he had given for loans received from his brother and sisters in order to ensure that they did not concern the land in question (Palmerston to Board of Ordnance, copy, 11 Jan., B.P.W.).
page 132 note 1 Palmerston had intended to meet Lady Malmesbury, who was in Paris with her daughter and Palmerston's sister Frances, but was delayed in starting off from England by a fierce debate in Parliament. Since he was anxious to catch up with Lady Cowper, who had gone off to Switzerland in pursuit of her errant sister-in-law, Mrs George Lamb, he had decided to cut Paris and to push on to Geneva. (Lady Malmesbury to Anna Maria, Lady Minto, 31 Aug., Minto Papers; see also Palmerston's ‘Journal of Tour in France, Italy & Switzerland in 1816’, B.P.W.)
page 133 note 2 Henry Hinxman (ob. 1854) had entered Harrow the same year as Palmerston, in 1795, and first performed in the speeches there in 1800. He was Head of the School in 1802.
page 134 note 1 George Cornewall, afterwards 3rd Bart (1774–1835), was the nephew of Lady Malmesbury and the Dowager Lady Minto.
page 134 note 1 Palmerston had probably changed his plan about going direct from Lyons to Geneva because he expected Lady Cowper to have left Switzerland by this time. But she had waited in Geneva, possibly because of alarming tales of robbers in the Italian passes. By the time Palmerston reached Geneva, Lady Malmesbury and Frances Temple, having missed him all along, had given up and returned to Paris. He also tried to avoid the Dowager Lady Minto who lived nearby in retirement; but she ran into him in Geneva, arm in arm with Lady Cowper. (Lady Malmesbury to Lady Frances Cole, 12 Oct., Lowry Cole Papers, P.R.O. 30/43.)
page 135 note 2 Folliott Herbert Walker Cornewall (1754–1831), a relative of Clive's, was Bishop of Worcester.
page 135 note 3 John Hailstone (1759–1847) was the Woodwardian Professor of Geology at Cambridge; Arthur Judd Gosli, afterwards Carrigan (ob. 1845), was a fellow of St John's.
page 136 note 1 Frances Harris had married Lt Gen. Sir Galbraith Lowry Cole in June 1815, three days before Waterloo.
page 136 note 1 The Morning Chronicle of 27 Nov. had commented adversely on Sulivan's promotion over the heads of his seniors in the War Office and suggested it was due to his connection by marriage with Palmerston rather than to his talents.
page 137 note 2 Sulivan had sent Palmerston a draft retort to the editor of the Chronicle. However nothing further seems to have been printed on the matter in either the Chronicle or the Courier.
page 137 note 3 Palmerston had written to William Temple on 5 Dec.: ‘I am at length free from Estimates & go down to Broadlands on Monday & shall remain there until Parliament meets, with the episode of my usual excursion to Cambridge at Christmas, which is more than ever necessary this year, as the dissolution cannot be far off … Old Sulivan means to go down to Cambridge with me & looks forward with great delight to the whist, the punch and the turkey pie of the Combination Room.’ (B.P., G.C./TE no. 151.) Parliament was dissolved in June 1818 and Palmerston was again returned unopposed.
page 138 note 1 Palmerston had been shot at by a deranged ex-officer as he arrived at the War Office about 1 p.m. He was badly bruised, though not wounded, and a subordinate had sent for Cooper who lived nearby.
page 139 note 1 Possibly James Heywood Markland (1788–1864), a London solicitor.
page 139 note 1 It had been decided in 1798 that regimental paymasters should not be serving officers. In this way the influence over them of their regimental colonels was deliberately diminished and, consequently, the role of the Secretary at War in matters of pay enhanced at the expense of the Horse Guards. Inevitably, therefore, it became an issue in the grand dispute between the Minister and the C.-in-C. The Duke, however, was unsuccessful.
page 140 note 1 Lord Stawell had inherited Michelmersh, near Romsey, from his grandfather.
page 140 note 1 The rate of commission to be deducted by regimental agents involved another perennial dispute between Secretary at War and C.-in-C. The War Office, with economy in mind, sought to reduce it; the Horse Guards with the interest of the colonels in mind, to keep it at its existing level.
page 140 note 2 By the allied armies of occupation prior to their evacuation of France in Nov.
page 141 note 1 Sir William Fraser of Ledeclune (1787–1827) had a younger brother who had been on the staff at Waterloo and succeeded him as 3rd Bart. John Francis Davis (1795–1890) had been a writer in the factory at Canton since 1813.
page 141 note 2 Shee accompanied Palmerston on this journey to France.
page 141 note 1 Not identified.
page 141 note 2 Lowry Cole commanded a division of the British Army of Occupation. Lady Catherine Harris, the Malmesburys’ elder daughter, married Gen. Sir John Bell in June 1821.
page 144 note 1 William Temple was secretary of Legation in Frankfurt.
page 146 note 1 Not identified.
page 146 note 1 He reached Calais on 9 Nov. and Dover at 3p.m. the following day.
page 146 note 1 The chestnut intended for Elizabeth had cost Palmerston £115. 10s. 0d.; the pony intended for Fanny just ten guineas.
page 147 note 1 So the name appears to be. But the only person of such a name traced in the London directories of the period is a Joseph Fozard of 140 Edgware Rd, a dealer in spruce and ginger beer.
page 147 note 1 Possibly a horse belonging to one of the Sulivans, who had recently been staying at Broadlands.
page 147 note 2 The assembly in York, which had met on 14 Oct. to demand an inquiry into the ‘Peterloo Massacre’, had been called and conducted by members of the local aristocracy. Earl Fitzwilliam was dismissed from his Lord Lieutenancy of the West Riding for his part in the affair.
page 147 note 1 The Courier on 22 Oct. published a list of the signatories of a counterpetition against the holding of a public meeting in Hampshire to protest against the ‘Peterloo Massacre’. The list was headed by Malmesbury and Wellington and included Palmerston. There were also several paragraphs of approving editorial comment.
page 148 note 1 Mrs Sulivan's second daughter, Mary Catherine Henriette, was born 8 Feb. 1820.
page 148 note 2 The sitting M.P.s for Hampshire, Chute and Sir Thomas Freeman-Heathcote, 4th Bart, both declined to stand at the 1820 General Election. Palmerston approached Sir John Pollen, 2nd Bart (1784–1863), and Henry Combe Compton (1789–1866), but John Willis Fleming (ob. 1844) and George Purefoy Jervoise (1770–1847) were returned unopposed. (Palmerston to Pollen, 19 Feb., and to Compton, 22 Feb. 1820, B.P.W.)
page 149 note 1 This probably refers to the recurrent illnesses of Stephen Henry Sulivan.
page 149 note 2 Palmerston and Smyth were re-elected unopposed at the General Election following the death of George III.
page 149 note 3 James Wood was Master of St John's from 1815 to 1839. Palmerston had written to his brother on 19 June 1818:
Wood of St John's has not been very well of late; he is an instance of the vanity of human wishes for I really believe he has not been so comfortable since he has been Master as he was before; at least since the first novelty of the promotion has passed away. He lives of course a great deal more by himself & misses the daily society of the Hall dinner & wine party afterwards which came unsought and had a tendency to keep up his spirits, ‘in a wife that controversy which lasts for life’. (B.P., G.C./TE no. 159.)
page 150 note 1 Stephen Sulivan, Laurence's father, had died on 9 June.
page 150 note 1 Palmerston was paying a rare visit to the only estate he had in England outside Hampshire, at Fairburn in Yorkshire. He was making considerable improvements and investments there about this time, especially in a lime works. But when he ran into financial difficulties a few years later Fairburn was the property he was most inclined to sell.
page 150 note 2 His plans were changed when he received a sudden invitation, at the instance of Lady Gertrude Sloane Stanley, to her father's place at Castle Howard. ‘He was very agreeable & pleasant’, reported Lady Georgiana Morpeth to her brother (17 Nov., Chatsworth Papers, 6th Duke/561).
page 153 note 1 Probably Robert John Wilmot, afterwards 3rd Bart (1784–1841), the undersecretary at the Colonial Office. He assumed the surname of Horton in 1823.
page 153 note 2 The 2nd Earl of Normanton was Pembroke's son-in-law.
page 153 note 1 Smyth had died in Oct. and there was a fierce contest in the by-election that followed. Three candidates eventually appeared, William John Bankes, the Trinity student who had once spied on a meeting of the Fusty, Lord Hervey, who was the Earl of Bristol's son and Liverpool's nephew, and James Scarlett, afterwards 1st Baron Abinger. Bankes won by a wide margin as a ‘Protestant’ Tory, and the consequent opinion was that the other, ‘Catholic’, member for Cambridge would not last much longer: ‘The common talk of London since the election is that Lord P. must look out for some other seat in one of the two Houses of Parliament at the period of the next general election.’ (Lord Colchester to Charles Yorke, 30 Nov., Hardwicke Papers, Add. MS. 45037.)
page 154 note 1 Peel was the tenant of Lulworth Castle in Dorset.
page 154 note 2 James Daly (1782–1847) was M.P. for Co. Galway and afterwards Baron Dunsandle; Henry Baring (1777–1848) was a younger brother of Alexander Baring, afterwards Baron Ashburton.
page 155 note 3 On 14 Dec. there had been a demonstration at the visit of Lord Wellesley to the theatre in Dublin and a number of missiles were thrown in his direction (Annual Register, 1822, Chronicle, p. 231).Google Scholar
page 155 note 1 Robert Grant had canvassed support in the recent by-election, but withdrew shortly before the poll.
page 155 note 2 Lady Jersey's place near Bicester.
page 155 note 1 A local M.F.H.
page 155 note 2 John Fleming's place was Stoneham Park, near Southampton.
page 155 note 3 The 2nd Earl; Palmerston's old guardian had died in 1820.
page 155 note 4 Lord Francis Conyngham had been appointed Canning's undersecretary at the Foreign Office. The appointment served to conciliate the King, but not everyone approved.
page 156 note 5 Fred Robinson succeeded Vansittart as Chancellor of the Exchequer on 31 Jan.
page 156 note 1 A new round of conflict between C.-in-C. and Secretary at War had opened in Jan. when Palmerston issued a direct order to commanders on foreign stations to dispense with a number of superfluous clerks although by a compromise agreement of 1812 he was supposed to clear such orders first with the Horse Guards. The Duke of York immediately retaliated by ordering all commanders to ignore any communications from the Secretary that were not sent through the Horse Guards. Palmerston complained to the Prime Minister on 6 Feb., the Duke countered with his ‘long rigmarole’ on 8 Feb. and Palmerston wrote again on 10 Feb. (Liverpool Papers, Add. MSS. 38194 and 38292.)
page 156 note 2 Herbert Taylor was Military Secretary at the Horse Guards.
page 156 note 1 Charles Long, afterwards Baron Farnborough, was Paymaster-General. See his memo., 12 Feb., Liverpool Papers, Add. MS. 38370.
page 157 note 2 Palmerston to Liverpool, 12 Feb., P.R.O., W.O. 18/10.
page 157 note 1 Cf. Liverpool's draft ‘opinion’, 13 Feb., Liverpool Papers, Add. MS. 38370.
page 158 note 2 In two coincidental disputes, the C.-in-C. had reprimanded a regimental commander for submitting a claim for travelling expenses direct to the War Office and clashed with the Secretary at War over the appointment of a regimental paymaster.
page 158 note 3 Palmerston to Liverpool, 13 Feb., P.R.O., W.O. 18/14, and Liverpool to Palmerston, 14 Feb., P.R.O., W.O. 18/15.
page 158 note 1 Probably copies of the letters he had exchanged with Liverpool on 13 and 14 Feb. Palmerston half took the Prime Minister's hint not to pursue the matter, merely leaving his case on record in a further memo, of 17 Feb. (Liverpool Papers, Add. MS. 38370.)
page 159 note 1 Taylor to Palmerston, 20 Feb., and Palmerston to Taylor, 21 Feb., copies in Liverpool Papers, Add. MS. 38292.
page 159 note 2 The new Chancellor had presented his first budget on 21 Feb.
page 159 note 3 Ashburton had died on 15 Feb.
page 160 note 1 Blackburn's Cambridge friends were inquiring on his behalf about the Chief Justiceship in Mauritius.
page 160 note 2 The Attorney-General was Sir Robert Gifford (afterwards Baron Gifford); James Parke (afterwards Baron Wensleydale) was an old Cambridge acquaintance.
page 160 note 1 The enclosures were Colonial Office responses about the expenses of the passage and of living in Mauritius.
page 160 note 1 Unusually, there is no surviving journal of the trip Palmerston made to the Netherlands and Belgium. The Sulivans did not accompany him.
page 161 note 2 William Temple had accepted the Secretaryship of Legation in Berlin, but as Fred Lamb, his chief in Frankfurt, was on leave he could not take it up until the autumn.
page 162 note 1 Adm. Sir Edward Hamilton (1772–1851) had married in 1804 Frances, daughter of John Macnamara of Llangoed Castle, Co. Brecon. Palmerston had stayed at Secheron, on the northern outskirts of Geneva, with his parents in 1792 (Connell, p. 267).
page 162 note 2 See no. 225.
page 163 note 1 Scheveningen, two miles north-west of The Hague. The House in the Wood (Huis ten Bosch) is a royal residence between The Hague and Scheveningen.
page 164 note 2 Broek in Waterland, a few miles north-east of Amsterdam.
page 165 note 3 Hurn Mead, near Christchurch, Hampshire.
page 166 note 1 Charlotte, the widow of Frederick I of Würtemberg, and her unmarried sister Augusta Sophia, were children of George III; the Duchess of Cambridge was their sister-in-law.
page 167 note 2 Henry Elliot (1789–1848) was the grandson of Samuel Glasse (1735–1812), a chaplain to the Dukes of Cumberland and Cambridge and friend and collaborator of Palmerston's maternal relatives, Robert Raikes and William Man Godschall. His father, the Rev. George Henry Glasse, was a scholar but a spendthrift. George Glasse's name was mentioned in the Mrs Clarke-Duke of York affair in 1809 and, though he was said to be innocent, he hanged himself shortly afterwards. Henry Glasse subsequently assumed the name of a family benefactor and succeeded Sulivan as Palmerston's private secretary at the War Office.
page 167 note 1 Harrison was housekeeper or butler in Stanhope St in 1823–4.
page 167 note 2 Thomas Weld (1773–1837), Peel's landlord at Lulworth Castle and the son of the founder of Stonyhurst, had taken holy orders in 1821 after the death of his first wife. He became a Roman Catholic bishop in 1826 and a cardinal in 1830. According to the D.N.B. he had already transferred Lulworth to his younger brother Joseph.
page 168 note 3 Frances Temple had married Capt. (afterwards Adm. of the Fleet Sir) William Bowles on 9 Aug. 1820.
page 168 note 4 It is not known to what this refers.
page 168 note 1 This letter seems to be referring to Philip Codd, who had been a Senior Clerk in the Correspondence Department, rather than to Harrison G. Codd, a Junior Clerk. Philip Codd had been compulsorily retired after twenty-eight year's service early in 1822 as part of Palmerston's economies. If the letter is correctly dated, therefore, it would seem to be referring to the internal redistribution of work following his retirement. Richard Brown was the Principal Clerk, that is the no. three in the office, and according to Foveaux, who had been pensioned off at the same time as Codd, a particular favourite of Palmerston's. Brown took general charge of the arrears of accounts and succeeded Sulivan as Chief Examiner in 1826. Robert Lukin, the First Clerk, or no. two in the Correspondence Department, was one of several close relatives William Windham had placed in the office; another relative, James W. Lukin, had married a daughter of Merry's.
page 168 note 1 George Doyle was the head messenger at the War Office.
page 169 note 1 Catton Hall was Wilmot Morton's place near Burton-on-Trent.
page 169 note 2 Cf. Lady Granville to Devonshire, 24–25 Nov., F. Leveson Gower, ed., Letters of Harriet Countess Granville 1810–1845, 1894, i. 232–5. Edward John Littleton (afterwards Baron Hatherton) was apparently already a friend of Palmerston's. Robert William Hay (1786–1851) was Melville's private secretary at the Admiralty, 1812–25, and undersecretary at the Colonial Office, 1825–35.
page 169 note 3 According to Palmerston to William Temple, 29 Oct. 1823 (B.P., G.C./TE no. 170), the Sulivans had already moved out of Hill St on account of the constant illness among them. When his father had threatened to sell Ponsborne House in 1809, Sulivan had told Palmerston that he did not care since it had been in the family only sixty or seventy years and in any case he could not ‘endure the country’ (28 July 1809, B.P., G.C./SU no. 17). Ponsborne was not sold until 1818. In the summer of 1823 Sulivan bought Broom House in Fulham, no doubt as a compromise between the unhealthiness of the West End and the boredom of the country. Palmerston reported that same year to his brother that the move ‘had not served’, but he subsequently reported differently (Bulwer & Ashley, i. 158), and Broom House remained the Sulivan's home.
page 169 note 1 Not identified.
page 170 note 2 William Ponsonby was probably the friend who later became 1st Baron de Mauley. James Archibald Stuart-Wortley-Mackenzie, afterwards 1st Baron Wharncliffe, was married to a daughter of Earl Erne. Sir Joseph Copley (1769–1839), 3rd Bart, later became father-in-law to the 3rd Earl Grey. Miss Stewart was Granville's natural daughter by Lady Bessborough; in 1824 she married George Godolphin Osborne, afterwards 8th Duke of Leeds. There was also a George Stewart who acted as private secretary to his father.
page 170 note 1 With the appointment of the three Superintendents of Military Accounts in 1809, the office of Chief Examiner had become superfluous and on the retirement of George Collings in 1817 it had been left unfilled. But Palmerston subsequently decided to meet the demands of economy by eliminating the offices of Superintendent instead. In 1824 the last of the Superintendents was eliminated by reviving the office of Chief Examiner and giving it to Sulivan.
page 171 note 2 Thomas Spring Rice (afterwards 1st Baron Monteagle) was married to a daughter of the 1st Earl of Limerick. A Mr Waller O'Grady had apparently insulted Lord Limerick and a duel with Spring Rice was supposed to follow. But the intervention of the police gave time for an accommodation to be made (The Times, 14 Feb.).
page 171 note 1 The MS. is endorsed Mar. 1824; the sale to which it refers was to take place on 30 Mar.
page 171 note 2 The sale was of a major part of the classical marbles and family pictures collected at Moor Park, in Farnham, Surrey, by Sir William Temple (1628–99). John Seguier was a notable London expert. In B.P.W. there are a copy of Christie's catalogue and a fuller list obtained some time earlier from the owner, Mr Kenrick Bacon, whose ancestor, Nicholas Bacon, had married a grandaughter of Sir William. Palmerston's accompanying notes and correspondence show that he got most of what he wanted either at the sale or subsequently, together with some portraits not included in the sale direct from Mr Bacon, for a total expenditure, according to his separate accounts, of £278. 15s. Od. These included: from the sale, the Lely of Sir William for £21, a child by Netscher for £10. 10s. 0d. (Lot 29) and two further Netschers, one of which was another portrait of Sir William, for £81. 18s. Od. (Lot 65); and direct from Mr Bacon, further portraits by Lely, Dahl and Cornelius Jansen of Sir William's parents and brother, who were direct ancestors of Palmerston's.
page 172 note 1 Presumably a statement of the progress made in winding up the last remnants of arrears in the War Office accounts.
page 172 note 2 In Romsey.
page 172 note 3 Charles Manners-Sutton (1780–1845), Speaker of the House of Commons, 1817–35, and afterwards 1st Viscount Canterbury, had contemplated contesting the other university seat in Nov. 1822. As a ‘Protestant’ Tory and a Trinity man, as the son of the Archbishop of Canterbury and cousin of the Duke of Rutland, he had considerable advantages. But he squandered them by running off with Mrs Purves, the notorious sister of the notorious Lady Blessington. Manners-Sutton was a widower; but Mr Purves did not die until 1827. The delinquents were married the following year.
page 173 note 1 According to the Courier of 17 Jan. there was a large party at Broadlands, including on 15 Jan. the Duke of York, Peel and Huskisson as well as William Temple and the Bowleses. Shortly afterwards several of them, including Palmerston, were at a similar shooting party at Stratfield Saye (Arbuthnot Journal, i. 371).Google Scholar
page 173 note 2 Sir Andrew Halliday (1789–1839) was a physician with military connections.
page 173 note 1 Sulivan evidently joined Palmerston in his unfortunate Stock Market speculations of 1825. The call was for a second instalment on their shares in the Cornwall and Devon Mining Co. (Palmerston to William Temple, 5 Aug., Bulwer & Ashley, i. 157).
page 173 note 2 The Sulivans were at the Flemings’ near Southampton (ibid., i. 158).
page 173 note 3 See Palmerston to William Temple, 8 Aug., ibid., i. 159–60.
page 173 note 1 Probably Holyhead.
page 174 note 1 The Welsh Iron and Coal Co. was another speculative investment of Palmerston and Sulivan.
page 174 note 1 The principal village on Palmerston's Sligo estates.
page 175 note 2 Palmerston had made at least two visits to Ireland since 1808, in 1813 and 1824, and though little is known about them he evidently on each occasion set some improvements in train on his estates, including the construction of a pier and harbour at Mullaghmore. On his 1824 visit he seems to have engaged Alexander Nimmo (1783–1832) to survey his uncultivated bog lands. Nimmo recommended that Palmerston build a short line of railway from Mullaghmore to the peat bogs in order to carry sand to the bogs and peat for export from the harbour. But though he favoured it at first, Palmerston seems in the end to have preferred to go on building and improving roads. He built houses, inns and schools, brought hundreds of acres of bog under cultivation and tried to encourage the local fishing and manufacturing industries. He spent very large sums of money but the work seemed endless. Mullaghmore harbour in particular defied all of Palmerston's expenditure and optimism and all the efforts of Nimmo and his successor, Robert Stevenson.
page 175 note 3 Edward Synge Cooper of Markree Castle was M.P. for Sligo until his death in 1830.
page 175 note 4 Samuel Barrett Moulton Barrett was M.P. for Richmond and chairman of the Welsh Slate Co. John Wilks (ob. 1846), another M.P., was solicitor for the Welsh Slate Co., the Welsh Iron and Coal Co, and the Cornwall and Devon Mining Co. Palmerston was a major shareholder and a director of all three. His doubts about Wilks's honesty were all too well founded. The Slate Co.'s quarries were at Tan y Bwlch, near Portmadoc.
page 175 note 1 Charles Chamier Raper was the clerk in charge of the arrears of foreign soldiers formerly in British service. As the work on the British arrears had been going so well a number of clerks had been transferred to accelerate the work on the foreign arrears. Shortly afterwards the whole of Richard Brown's section was transferred. Raper evidently felt it all reflected in some way on his competence and resented in particular Brown's taking over as the more senior in rank. There is a copy of Palmerston's ‘complimentary’ letter of 20 Oct. to Raper in the Palmerston Papers, Add. MS. 48420.
page 177 note 1 Palmerston's ‘Analysis of Expenditure from 1818 downwards’ (B.P.W.) shows that he contributed £50 towards the provision of technical drawings for Col. Trench's Thames Embankment scheme.
page 177 note 1 But he wrote to George Canning on 22 Dec.: ‘I have met with the greatest success among the resident members at Cambridge and among the London voters, but the number of these bears so small a proportion to the 1,600 who have their names on the boards that it is impossible for me not to feel much uneasiness as to the possible result of the contest, until I have been able to ascertain the sentiments of the outvoters. A great majority of the non-residents are country clergymen and it remains to be seen to what extent the anti-Catholic feeling can be excited among them.’ (George Canning Papers, Leeds Public Library.)
page 177 note 1 Stephen Rumbold Lushington (1776–1868) was Joint Secretary of the Treasury, 1824–7.
page 178 note 2 Having become only too well aware that several members of the Government were very far from giving him their support in Cambridge, Palmerston had written some rather pointed letters to those he most distrusted. The first he seems to have picked upon was the Chancellor, perhaps because Eldon was not only a notorious anti-Catholic but also a close relation of Bankes by marriage. Palmerston's ‘bit of fun’ went in part: ‘Your first wishes must of course be for my colleague Bankes; but I trust that I am not mistaken in hoping that your Oxford predisposition towards sitting members and your official feeling towards a member of the Government who has so long been in possession of his seat, may give me upon this occasion the second place in your good wishes.’ Eldon's ‘hypocritical humbug’ of a reply, undated and delayed by gout, began ‘The report was so current that we were to have you in the House of Lords that your letter rather surprised me’, and after having pleaded the conflicting claims of the candidates upon him and the lack of any influence at Cambridge, admitted to a ‘natural wish’ for Bankes's success while disclaiming any ‘actual active influence’. ‘I think I must be passive’, Eldon concluded; ‘I am not aware that I would do you any good, be assured I have no inclination to do anything adverse.’ (Palmerston to Eldon, 26 Dec. 1825, and Eldon to Palmerston, n.d., B.P., G.C./EL no. 1.)
Palmerston must have sent a similarly ingenuous inquiry in the direction of another anti-Catholic, the Colonial Secretary, Lord Bathurst. For Bathurst wrote on 10 Jan. 1826 that while he felt the University owed it to Palmerston's long service to return him, his own ‘little interest’ must go to Goulburn with whom he had had a long official connection in the Colonial Office (B.P.W.). For some reason this response rather than Eldon's seems to have annoyed Palmerston who sent a very sharp reply on 12 Jan. (H.M.C., Report on the Manuscripts of Earl Bathurst, 1923, p. 598). But he sent both his colleagues’ letters with a long complaint to Liverpool on 20 Jan. (Palmerston took great pains with this letter. There are a much amended draft and a fair copy, both dated 19 Jan., in B.P.W. The copy has been printed in A. Aspinall and E. A. Smith, eds., English Historical Documents 1783–1832, 1959, xi. 105–8. But the letter sent, now in the Perkins Library, Duke University, is dated 20 Jan.)
To Palmerston's complaint that at the very least the Government's neutrality on the Catholic question was being breached, the Prime Minister replied on 23 Jan. that though himself a ‘Protestant’ he had in 1822 personally supported a ‘Catholic’ relation (Hervey) against a more distant anti-Catholic one (Bankes) and that in the present case, as both Bankes and Goulburn were relatives—very distant ones in fact—the most the sitting members could expect was ‘an explicit declaration that I was of opinion that they ought not to be disturbed & that I should take no active part in soliciting votes for anyone’. Moreover, he went on, ‘the elections for the University have always been considered as standing on distinct grounds from any other elections. They are contests for personal distinction … [and] it is not unnatural that the Universities should feel a particular interest in the Roman Catholic Question … I admit that there is a great difference between electing a member for the first time & declining to reeled him:— but for this you must blame the principle upon which the University of Cambridge think proper to act, which I have always considered as rendering a seat for that University one of the least desirable seats in the Kingdom.’ (B.P.W.)
page 179 note 3 The Duke of York was taking a very active part against Palmerston and for Copley. Palmerston knew that the other Joint Secretary of the Treasury, J. C. Herries, had got the Foreign Office to frank some of Copley's canvassing letters. What he probably did not know was that it was also Herries who had prompted the Duke. (Canning to Palmerston, 21 Dec., B.P., G.C./CA no. 79; Peel to Goulburn, 24 Nov., Peel Papers, Add. MS. 40331.)
page 178 note 1 Both Shee and Sulivan, as well as Palmerston, had put pressure on Fitzherbert and, probably, Cludde. These twoold ‘Protestant’ Johnians compromised by supporting Palmerston and the anti-Catholic Bankes. (Palmerston to Fitzherbert, 21 Dec., Cludde to Fitzherbert, 27 Dec. 1825, Shee to Fitzherbert, 3 Jan., and Sulivan to Fitzherbert, 7 June 1826, Fitzherbert Papers.) Hans Sanders Mortimer (ob. 1846) was a former fellow-commoner at St John's. Christopher Swainson (1775–1854) was the dives' former family tutor. William Clive (1795–1883) was a cousin of Palmerston's friend.
page 180 note 1 Sulivan, as usual, managed Palmerston's committee in London, with William Bowles acting for him when he was obliged to go to Cambridge. In London they also had the assistance of Henry Elliot and Michael Bruce. (Mrs Sulivan to William Temple, 16 June 1826, B.P.W.) Possibly it was Bruce to whom Sulivan objected; more probably it was the Whigs in Cambridge. In Cambridge Wood probably still assisted Palmerston, but he was growing lukewarm on account of the Catholic question and the most active organiser would seem, from Palmerston's accounts and expenses, to have been the Bursar of St John's, Charles Blick. Palmerston was also in active communication with such notable Cambridge Whigs as Professors William Whewell and J. S. Henslow. It is not clear, however, if there was a joint committee. But some of the Cambridge Whigs, too, found their new alliance rather strange (Professor Sedgwick to W. Ainger, 29 Dec. 1825, Sedgwick, i. 268).Google Scholar
page 180 note 1 ‘Where’, Palmerston explained to Copley on 29 Jan., ‘I have taken refuge for a few days from the labours of canvassing.’ (B.P.W.)
page 180 note 2 Lacking.
page 180 note 3 Copley had written to say that, having heard from a supporter canvassed for Palmerston by a Mr Dean that Sulivan had suggested the Attorney-General had come forward against Palmerston, he wished to remind Palmerston that in 1822 he had intended to contest the seat subsequently gained by Bankes, that it was therefore Bankes he was now opposing, and that he had ‘not in the slightest degree interfered with the interests or expressed an opinion or a wish in favour of either of the other candidates’. (B.P.W.) Palmerston had therefore sent the reply whose essence is quoted by T. Martin, A Life of Lord Lyndhurst, 1884, p. 207, n. 1.Google Scholar
page 181 note 4 John Thoroton was a former pensioner of Trinity and a connection of Rutland's,
page 181 note 1 The Welsh Iron and Coal Co. had also run into trouble.
page 181 note 1 See Sedgwuk, i. 276–7.Google Scholar
page 181 note 2 This seems to identify the John James Douglas in Alumni Cantab. as Sir James Scott-Douglas, 3rd Bart of Springwood Park, Roxburghshire (1792–1836). Immanuel Halton was a clergyman from Derbyshire.
page 182 note 3 The correspondence relating to the 1806 and 1807 elections (see nos. 23, 39, 41) shows that Teignmouth, i. 303, is wrong in saying that Bankes had in 1822 ‘introduced the payment of voter's travelling expenses’. Probably Bankes, who was rich, had refused to agree to the sort of limitation arranged between the committees in 1807. The account given in Sedgwick, i. 277–8Google Scholar, therefore seems more likely, that while the candidates had for some years past paid the expenses of non-resident voters, Bankes had spent ‘a vast sum’ in 1822 and, inevitably, caused all the candidates to be swindled. Since matters threatened to be even worse in 1826, an attempt was made to get the committees to compromise, but Bankes refused even to discuss it. Palmerston's ‘Analysis of Expenditure from 1818 downwards’ (B.P.W.) shows his expenditure as follows:
page 182 note 1 The first of what were intended to be three days of polling.
page 183 note 2 According to Sedgwick, i. 278, since Bankes had refused to discuss payment of voter's expenses, Henslow and the Master of Corpus Christi, John Lamb, had drawn up a ‘recommendation’ against it and this was signed by 102 members of the Senate, seven heads of colleges and ten professors including Sedgwick himself. Evidently encouraged by this, two other members of the Senate insisted that the bribery oath should be administered to each elector as he came to the Vice-Chancellor's table. These two were evidently former students of Trinity, John Brand and, probably, Thomas Paynter, a barrister and an expert on election practices. Samuel Grove Price (1793–1839) was afterwards M.P. for Sandwich. At Bankes's insistence the poll was kept open for a further day, but the result, on 16 June, was: Copley, 772; Palmerston, 631; Bankes, 508; Goulburn, 437.
page 183 note 1 Lord William Powlett (afterwards 3rd Duke of Cleveland), whose family owned the land the Cornwall and Devon Co. had been formed to exploit and who was himself a shareholder and director in that company, wrote to Brougham on 2 Feb. 1827 (Brougham Papers) that J. H. Fisher (of Fisher and Rhodes of Davies St), who was Palmerston's ‘private solicitor’, had taken over as company solicitor when it was found that Wilks had been ‘acting improperly’.
page 184 note 1 Dunmore was the Shee's family place in Co. Galway. Probably it was entailed and came directly to Shee upon his father's death in Dec. 1825. But the English property, including Lockleys, a place near Welwyn that his father had bought in 1814, had passed to his mother. Shee endeavoured to persuade the Dowager Lady Shee that his father would have altered his will had he lived a little longer and that she had discretion in any case to pass Lockleys to him. But upon her death in 1838 it passed to his sister and her husband, Robert Dering. Mudeford Hall was a place near Christchurch, Hampshire, that Shee had rented in 1813, in order to get his wife away from her parents, he said. When his father objected on the ground of expense, he was told Mudeford would cost only 160 guineas a year; what Shee neglected to say, according to Palmerston, was that his father-in-law was paying for it. Evidently the elder Shee had misunderstood his daughter-in-law's prospects and, though she may have been one of ten children, they were all girls it would seem and she the eldest of them. (George Shee to Sir George Shee, 25 and 26 Jan. 1813, and George Shee to his mother, 13 Dec. 1825, Shee Papers; Palmerston to William Temple, 5 Aug. 1817, B.P., G.C./TE no. 141.)
page 184 note 1 The 1st Earl of Minto's youngest daughter had married on 14 Nov. 1825 John Peter Boileau, afterwards 1st Bart.
page 186 note 1 M. Strachan was a messenger at the War Office.
page 186 note 1 Both the date and the substance of the letter are obscure. ‘Old Pan’ was a name Palmerston sometimes applied to his old Harrow housemaster, Dr Thomas Bromley (1749–1827). Possibly Sulivan had written about a journey he was to make, but leaving Palmerston uncertain whether he meant to ‘Pan’ or to ‘Penn’.
page 187 note 1 On 14 April Canning had promised Palmerston either the Exchequer or the Home Office. The other seat in Cambridge was made vacant by Copley's translation to the Lords as Lord Lyndhurst and Lord Chancellor. Palmerston left two, rather different, accounts of his arrangement with Canning, that in his ‘Autobiographical Sketch’ (Bulwer & Ashley, i. 374–5), and another in the form of a memo, on the back of the summons from Canning of 14 April (printed, with minor inaccuracies, in Lorne, pp. 40–3, from B.P., G.C./CA no. 80). In the first Palmerston relates how, after ‘a great dinner …. at the Foreign Office just before the recess’, Canning urged him to take the Exchequer immediately but Croker ‘artfully suggested’ the postponement. Croker may have made the suggestion, though it hardly seems fair to call it ‘artful’. Palmerston presumably really meant to say after the recess, since Parliament had risen for Easter on 12 April and the dinner followed on the 18th. The second, but probably earlier written, account stresses the convenience of the whole arrangement to Palmerston him self and makes no mention of Croker. Nor does a letter Palmerston wrote to William Temple, also on 19 April (Bulwer & Ashley, i. 188).
page 187 note 2 They did. See, for example, A. Aspinall, ed., The Diary of Henry Hobhouse, 1947, p. 129.Google Scholar
page 187 note 3 Goulburn retired the day before the poll and Bankes was again beaten, this time by the Solicitor General, Sir Nicholas Tindal. Immediately afterwards Bankes and Lord Jermyn (the Lord Hervey of 1822) both announced that they intended to try again at the earliest opportunity. (Sedgwick, i. 279Google Scholar; Henry Gunning to Palmerston, 23 May, B.P.W.) But since Canning afterwards withdrew his offer of a new office for Palmerston, he did not have to seek re-election until the next dissolution.
page 188 note 1 The subject of this letter was so persistent a problem that the letter is difficult to date. It is possible that it concerned some question that Sulivan had put even after Palmerston had resigned from the War Office. But from a letter Wellington addressed to Palmerston on 30 April 1827 (S.P.) it seems very likely that Palmerston's letter was written earlier that same month. Wellington's letter concerned the conviction of a half pay officer as a felon and his sentence to transportation.
page 189 note 2 Sir James McGrigor, Director-General of the Army Medical Department.
page 189 note 1 As Secretary at War Palmerston became acting C.-in-C. between the death of the Duke of York and Wellington's appointment in Jan. 1827, and again from Wellington's resignation on 5 May until his reappointment on 27 Aug. 1827.
page 190 note 1 Canning died shortly before 4 a.m. the following day.
page 190 note 2 Cf. Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel, i, lines 156–8.
page 190 note 1 Bourne was to be Chancellor of the Exchequer, according to Goderich (Ripon, ii. 331Google Scholar). In any case, despite what Palmerston relates in his ‘Autobiographical Sketch’, Goderich had clearly not ‘immediately requested’ Palmerston to be his Chancellor (Bulwer & Ashley, i. 377). There are many other inaccuracies in Palmerston's account, which is strongly refuted by Herries, i. 154 and 193Google Scholar, n. 7.
page 191 note 2 The King's Memorandum, 8 Aug., George IV, iii. 275–6.Google Scholar
page 191 note 3 Evidently to receive a paper, for transmission to Goderich, outlining the King's views about the new Government. It included the suggestion that Herries should have the Exchequer since the King understood Bourne was unwilling to take it and the hope that Bourne would therefore remain at the Home Office. (Ripon, ii. 331–2Google Scholar; the King to Goderich, 10 Aug., George IV, iii. 279–80.)Google Scholar
page 192 note 1 Goderich to the King, 9 Aug., and the King to Goderich, 10 Aug., George IV, iii. 276–8.Google Scholar
page 192 note 2 Lyndhurst had apparently communicated the King's suggestion to the Cabinet at the meeting of the previous night (Herries, i. 154Google Scholar). Bourne did not write to the King to refuse the Exchequer until 11 Aug. (George IV, iii. 282–3).Google Scholar
page 192 note 1 Yet the King had already made unmistakeably clear to Goderich that he would not have Holland in the Cabinet (Ripon, ii. 332).Google Scholar
page 192 note 1 Goderich's letter to the King is, however, dated 15 Aug. (George IV, iii. 286Google Scholar; see also Ripon, ii. 332Google Scholar, and Merries, i. 156–7).Google Scholar
page 193 note 1 ‘Lord Palmerston made no difficulties’ (Ripon, ii. 333).Google Scholar
page 193 note 2 Canning's funeral procession moved off from the old Foreign Office about 1 p.m. on 16 Aug. This letter therefore seems (like Ripon, ii. 333Google Scholar) to confirm the version in Palmerston's ‘Autobiographical Sketch’ (Bulwer & Ashley, i. 377), that Goderich spoke to him as they were assembling beforehand. The dating of the Council on 12 rather than 17 Aug. is clearly a slip.
page 193 note 1 This and the following letter confirm that while there were two Council meetings, on 17 and 21 Aug., the crucial decision to wait for Huskisson's return from France was taken at the first. In attributing it to the second, Aspinall, A., ‘The Coalition Ministries of 1827. Part II. The Goderich Ministry’, English Historical Review, xlii, 1927, p. 539Google Scholar, has misinterpreted a reference in Planta's report to Huskisson about ‘a second interview’ between Goderich and the King.
page 194 note 2 Carlisle's undated ‘Notes of Interview with the King. George IV's Formation of Ministry’ have survived among the C.H.P., but are filed out of place in series 2/154.
page 194 note 3 This letter confirms the further strictures on Palmerston's ‘Autobiographical Sketch’ in Herries, i. 162Google Scholar, n. 5. It also suggests that he is right to be sceptical (i. 197) about the private interview Palmerson recalled having had that day with the King. Probably Palmerston was confusing this visit to Windsor with the similar occurrences of 4 Sept. (see no. 192).
page 196 note 1 Wellington returned to the Horse Guards on Monday, 27 Aug., with Fitzroy Somerset as his Military Secretary. Sir Herbert Taylor had been conducting affairs at the Horse Guards as a special Deputy Secretary of the War Office while Palmerston was acting C.-in-C. Palmerston wrote to Wellington on 25 Aug.: ‘I have swept your table up clear to the day, and I trust you will find that …. I have done no mischief.’(B.P./WO no. 56.)
page 197 note 1 Evidently, then, the idea was canvassed before Lansdowne wrote to Huskisson on the evening of 28 Aug. (Goderich, p. 164Google Scholar). Perhaps Palmerston had suggested it to Lansdowne at their meeting on 23 Aug. The Duke of Devonshire also mentioned it in a letter to Lady Granville of 21–24 Aug. (Chatsworth Papers).
page 198 note 2 Sir Alexander Cray Grant, 8th Bart, was chairman of committees.
page 198 note 1 Edward Marshall was one of the senior clerks in the War Office.
page 199 note 2 Brougham had written of the King's determination to have Herries on 26 Aug. (B.P., G.C./BR no. 64) that ‘to be sure, everything that we can possibly & without loss of character & publick confidence submit to, must positively be swallowed’. So far as the rumours about Herries and the Rothschilds were concerned, he also suggested that the question be put directly to Herries: ‘Have you on your honour ever in your life, since being in a place of trust, directly or indirectly, benefited by stock in any manner of way?’ He then went on to commiserate with Palmerston, saying that since it was always necessary to take more from Kings than from others it was necessary ‘to bridle your temper & calm your sense of private honour in such emergencies. For my part I look to your power a year hence as incalculably greater for every good purpose.’
page 199 note 1 Sir James Macdonald, James Abercromby and Maurice FitzGerald were all junior members of the Government.
page 199 note 2 Huskisson, who was unwilling to take the Exchequer, had raised the possibility of falling back again on Bourne as a temporary expedient.
page 200 note 1 Bourne had been persuaded after all to accept the Exchequer on 30 Aug.; then Herries took umbrage and refused an alternative office. By the time Herries had been placated, Bourne had again, and finally, changed his mind. Palmerston wrote to Bourne that evening pleading with him to take the Exchequer in order to save Canning's Government (B.P./GMC no. 17).
page 202 note 1 George Rich was Chamberlain of the Vice-Regal Court in Ireland. Palmerston had provided for his younger brother, William Osborne Rich, by making him a clerk in the War Office. Sir Hercules Pakenham was Longford's younger brother.
page 202 note 1 The 11th Earl of Pembroke had died on 26 Oct. His heir, Lord Herbert, who was Lady Pembroke's step-son, had given a good deal of trouble on account of his clandestine marriage with the Princess Buttera.
page 203 note 2 Palmerston had required in his schools that ‘those scholars who have learnt to read should by the daily perusal of a part of the Testament acquire that moral instruction which that volume is so well calculated to convey’. But this had led to unexpected trouble with the Catholic schoolmaster who, when told by Palmerston that he must obey orders or go, had decided he could not resist his priest (McHugh). This had left the schoolmaster's Protestant colleague, Miss Plunket, alone and frightened among an overwhelming majority of Catholic children. Consequently, while he looked for a new master, Palmerston made a formal agreement with the Roman Catholic Bishop of Elphin. Written in his own hand, it reads:
Lord Palmerton will select for the boys school at Cliffony a Catholic schoolmaster. Miss Plunket who was appointed last year to the girls school, will continue to have charge of it, under the following regulations, which are to apply both to the boys school and to the girls school:—
No books of any kind shall be introduced into, or used in the school, until one copy of such book shall have been signed in the inner cover as approved by Ld Palmerston & Ld P. engages not to approve or sign any book without previously submitting it for the inspection of Dr Burke or Mr McKue [sic], & also engages not to introduce any book to which they shall have any objection upon religious grounds.
A stated time shall be set apart in one day in each week, during which the Roman Catholic children of each sex shall be instructed in the Catechism of their Church as published by Dr Butler.
No attempts shall be made directly or indirectly to influence the religious opinions & feelings of the children either Catholic or Protestant with the view of changing their religion, and Ld Palmerston will immediately take such steps as the occasion may require if any such attempts shall be made & reported to him.
P.6 Novr 1827
[continues, in another hand:]
Convinced of the fair and liberal views of the Rt Honble Viscount Palmerston, I feel pleasure in acceding to his wishes, and arrangement as set forth in this sheet, in his Lordship's hand-writing.
6th Novr 1827
Patrick Burke R C
Bishop of Elphin
(B.P.W.)
page 204 note 1 R. Hardinge Stewart was Sulivan's private secretary at the War Office.
page 204 note 2 Goderich had written to the King on 11 Dec. saying that he would have to resign if both Wellesley and Holland were not admitted to the Government. The King had chosen to treat this as a definite offer of resignation and had asked Harrowby to be Prime Minister. Meanwhile, Goderich retreated to the country. Palmerston, like most of the Cabinet, was kept in ignorance of all this for about ten days. Apparently he gave Huskisson the impression that he was hurt by this lack of confidence. (Goderich to Palmerston, 17 Dec., B.P., G.C./GO no. 20.)
page 204 note 1 Palmerston had hardly written this than Huskisson and Herries plunged the Government into a new and fatal crisis. This time Palmerston was let into the secret much earlier because Huskisson had been at Broadlands for Christmas.
page 204 note 1 Dom Miguel arrived in London on 30 Dec. Bulwer & Ashley omitted (i. 210) from a letter to William Temple a comment Palmerston made about Miguel at this time. ‘He will do very well in Portugal.’ (B.P., G.C./TE no. 193 of 8 Jan. 1828.)
page 205 note 1 Cf. the list from Palmerston's Journal (Bulwer & Ashley, i. 278) and Aspinall, A., ‘The Canningite Party’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 4th Ser., xvii, 1934, pp. 224–6Google Scholar. There is a third list of Palmerston's in a letter to William Temple of 8 June (B.P., G.C./TE no. 200). In all these Palmerston makes the apparent error of ‘Lord Spencer Chichester’ for Arthur Chichester; that of ‘John Worsley’ for John Wortley in the Journal is an error of transcription by Bulwer. Similarly the qualification ‘Pub.’ against some of the names in Bulwer's list is an error for ‘Prob.’. The list in Palmerston's letter to his brother differs from that to Sulivan in that it does not include Robert Grant and does not qualify Lennard as a ‘probable’. In addition it includes Carlisle, Harrowby and Wharncliffe among the Lords, and Morpeth and Normanby among the ‘well-disposed’ in the Commons.
page 206 note 1 Fred Lamb had complained that Lord Beresford's Portuguese correspondence had conveyed notions of the Government's policy which were at odds with that he was attempting to convey as British Minister in Lisbon. Wellington wrote on 18 June asking Beresford to be more cautious (W.N.D., iv. 491–2). Reference was also made to this matter in the Commons on 9 June and Beresford replied in the Lords on 12 June (2 Hansard, xix, 1203 and 1315–17).Google Scholar
page 206 note 2 See ibid., xix, 1161–2.
page 206 note 1 In Palmerston's ‘Analysis of Expenditure from 1818 downwards’ (B.P.W.) there is an entry of 1828 for ten guineas for ‘Cambridge Collection of Birds’.
page 207 note 2 Lady Cowper wrote to her brother Fred Lamb on 14 June that this was ‘a thing that he [Wellington] was quite furious in the Cabinet with Ld P. for proposing a month ago—as it was a thing that he never would consent to’. (Panshanger Papers, County Record Office, Hertford.)
page 208 note 1 Dr George Renny was McGrigor's counterpart in Ireland, Director-General of Hospitals and Chief of the Army Medical Department.
page 211 note 1 With the aid of his inheritance from his father and of Palmerston's friendship and support, Shee had been thinking of a parliamentary seat for a year or two. In Mar. 1828 he had turned down an opportunity of government support at Ennis, under the mistaken impression that he could not have continued as Sheriff of Galway—a position he had accepted only the previous month. He had therefore resumed his search in April, telling Palmerston that he would be willing to pay some £1,200 or £1,500. Palmerston's resignation did not deter him. When the prospect loomed up of a vacant seat in Galway, by the elevation of James Daly to the peerage, Shee, though professing to be ‘a staunch Protestant and a King's Man’, accepted the support of the Catholic Association and pledged himself to oppose the Wellington Government. With the example of the Clare election before them, however, the Government decided another vacancy had better be avoided in Galway. Daly's patent had already been signed by the Lord Lieutenant; but he had to wait till 1845 to receive the peerage. (Shee to Palmerston, 28 Mar., 13 April and 7 Aug. 1828, B.P., G.C./SH nos. 93, 94 and 95; Sulivan to Palmerston, 26 Aug., B.P., G.C./SU no. 18; Peel to Wellington, 26 Aug., and Wellington to Peel, 27 Aug., W.N.D., iv. 670 and 673.)
page 212 note 1 Princess Lieven's fourth son.
page 212 note 1 B.P., G.C./SU no. 18 of 26 Aug.
page 213 note 2 See Bulwer & Ashley, i. 290–5.
page 213 note 1 The place, outside Doncaster, of the Hon. Robert Edward Petre, a younger son of the 9th Baron Petre.
page 214 note 2 Grantham's place near Ripon.
page 214 note 3 There was a rumour that Camden was to succeed Ellenborough as Privy Seal.
page 215 note 1 The 12th Duke of Norfolk's eldest son was married to the Marquess of Stafford's elder daughter.
page 216 note 1 William Sloane Stanley and Lady Gertrude.
page 216 note 1 See no. 90.
page 216 note 2 Cholmeley's sister was married to Jarrard Edward Strickland (1784–1844).
page 219 note 1 Lacking.
page 219 note 1 His confidence, however, proved unfounded; the harbour continued throughout his life to require major repairs and improvements.
page 219 note 2 George Villiers, afterwards 4th Earl of Clarendon, had been sent, as Commissioner of Customs, to arrange the amalgamation of the English and Irish Boards of Excise.
page 221 note 1 Law Clerk in the War Office.
page 221 note 2 Sir John Beckett, 2nd Bart (1775–1847), was Judge Advocate General.
page 221 note 3 Wellington had not produced any serious objection, ‘save that it would appear to be made in deference to the marked sentiment of the times’. Beckett had conceded that the old phrase gave ammunition to the ‘anti-punishment gang’, but wanted to preserve it as an alternative against the day when flogging might have to be abolished. They therefore compromised on the substitution of ‘corporal punishment’. (Beckett to Palmerston, 19 Mar., and Wellington to Palmerston, 20 Mar. 1827, B.P., G.C./BE no. 572 and WE no. 33.)
page 223 note 1 The widow of Count Edmond Bourke, formerly Danish minister in Madrid, London and Paris.
page 223 note 2 See C. Nicoullaud, ed., Memoirs of the Comtesse de Boigne (1781–1814), 1907, p. 303.
page 224 note 3 Lord Stuart de Rothesay was Ambassador in Paris, 1814, 1815–24 and 1828–31. Lord Granville was his predecessor in 1824–8 as weil as his successor in 1831.
page 226 note 1 See ‘Sketch of a Fragment of the History of the Nineteenth Century by J. M.’, The Keepsake for MDCCCXXIX, pp. 242–3.Google Scholar
page 227 note 2 Palmerston himself was elected a member the following year (Airlie, i. 167).
page 227 note 3 Palmerston perhaps still nursed his Cambridge grudge against Northumberland,but his poor opinion of Northumberland personally and of the appointment, which the Duke accepted, was widely shared. In society Northumberland was still probably what he had appeared to be in 1810—‘a chattering, good-humoured civil young man’ (Mrs Warrenne Blake, An Irish Beauty of the Regency Compiled from ‘Mes Souvenirs’,—the Unpublished Journals of the Hon. Mrs Calvert 1789–1822, 1911, p. 163Google Scholar). But in 1829 opinions as wide apart politically as Charles Greville's and Lady Holland's condemned him as a nonentity. Greville said he was ‘an absolute nullity, a bore beyond all bores’; Lady Holland that he was ‘a poor creature, vain, ostentatious & null’. (Greville Memoirs, i. 312Google Scholar; the Earl of Ilchester, ed., Elizabeth, Lady Holland to her Son 1821–1845, 1946, p. 94.)Google Scholar
page 228 note 1 Baron Henry Fagel (1765–1838), who had been appointed Secretary of the States General in 1787, continued to be known by that title though he was Netherlands ambassador in London 1813–24, in order to distinguish him from his brothers and especially from Baron Robert Fagel (1771–1856), who was Minister in Paris 1814–54.
page 229 note 1 He reached Stanhope St at 5 a.m. on Tuesday, 3 Feb. (B.P./D no. 5). Hobhouse crossed from Calais with him the day before (Broughton, iii. 300).Google Scholar
page 230 note 1 Thomas Flower Ellis, a barrister and former fellow of Trinity College, had written that day to warn Sulivan that an attempt was to be made at Cambridge the following day to carry an anti-Catholic petition (S.P.).
page 230 note 1 Henry Venn Elliott (1792–1865) and Edward Bishop Elliott (1793–1875) were both Trinity men, members of the Clapham Sect and evangelicals. Henry was first chaplain of St Mary's, the chapel his father had built in Brighton. In Brighton, until 1832, he also took in pupils, among them the 2nd Marquess of Abercorn and his brother Lord Claud Hamilton, and the sons of Thomas Fowell Buxton, Lord Aberdeen and Henry Goulburn. (Bateson, Josiah, The Life of the Rev. Venn Elliott, 3rd ed., 1872, pp. 98–9.Google Scholar) The Rev. Robert Anderson (ob. 1843) was perpetual curate of Trinity Chapel, Brighton; George Peacock (1791–1850) was then tutor at Trinity; and the 3rd Baron Calthorpe was both Harrovian and Johnian.
page 231 note 2 Gordon, Guilleminot and Muffling, the British, French and Prussian representatives in Constantinople, had urged moderation on the Russian commander in the Balkans. The Treaty of Adrianople was signed on 14 Sept.
page 231 note 1 Palmerston was visiting Lady Elizabeth Vernon at St Clare.
page 231 note 1 Viscount Anson's place in Staffordshire.
page 232 note 2 Sir Richard Vyvyan, 8th Bart. In a letter of 13 Mar. 1832 to Littleton, Palmerston called him ‘that strange coconut’ (Hatherton Papers).
page 234 note 3 Canning had offered Jamaica to Palmerston in 1827.
page 236 note 4 Palmerston had previously sent a detailed account of this conversation to Lady Cowper on 3 Oct., but it is incomplete. In a second letter of 10 Oct., reporting on his country house visits just before he embarked from Liverpool for Dublin, he commented briefly on his conversation with Vyvyan: ‘I was determined to say nothing to him that should check the flow of confidential communications with which he was honouring me, but what a notion that a man should leave a set of clever gentleman-like men with whom he finds himself acting, in order to join the noodles of Boodles, and become leader of the lame and the blind.’ (B.P.W.; see also B. T. Bradfield, ‘Sir Richard Vyvyan and the Fall of Wellington's Government’, University of Birmingham Historical Journal, xi, 1968, pp. 141–56.)Google Scholar
page 236 note 1 Palmerston had returned from Ireland on 10 Nov. and embarked at Dover for Calais on 27 Nov.
page 236 note 2 See Bulwer & Ashley, i. 347–53.
page 237 note 1 Not identified.
page 237 note 2 Samways had succeeded Harrison as butler in Stanhope St in 1824.
page 239 note 1 Not identified.
page 240 note 1 James Abercromby had written to Carlisle on 4 June 1830: ‘I have heard of an opposition at Cambridge. Palmerston I suppose would be the person run at, but that does not much diminish the evil of a struggle.’ (C.H.P. 2/13.) The other sitting member was a Whig, William Cavendish (afterwards 7th Duke of Devonshire), who had gained the seat at a by-election in June 1829 following Tindal's appointment as Chief Justice of Common Pleas.
page 240 note 2 Robert Grant's motion to settle the regency question was supported by only 93 votes with 247 against.
page 240 note 1 ‘Sinner Browning’ in Lady Airlie's version (i. 173, line 5) should read ‘Sinner Brown's’. There were at the time among the fellows of Trinity both a John Brown and a George Adam Browne. According to Wright, i. 56, they were distinguished by the nicknames ‘Saint’ and ‘Sinner’. Presumably the ‘Sinner’ was George Adam Browne, a political ally of Palmerston's at the time of this letter.
page 241 note 1 Lacking.
page 241 note 2 William Bowles's brother, a distinguished soldier.
page 241 note 3 Count André Joseph Matuscevitz (ob. 1842) was attached to the Russian Embassy in London, 1829–35. Charles Baring Wall (1795–1853) was a grandson of Sir Francis Baring, 1st Bart, and another Hampshire neighbour. Binstead Lodge was another place of the Flemings', at Ryde.
page 241 note 4 William Sturges Bourne's seat was Testwood House, near Southampton. Nothing,unfortunately, is known about what was said or agreed at this meeting, though Anglesey,who met the Canningites at Cowes, reported them ‘all ripe for mischief & full of fight’. A letter Huskisson addressed to Palmerston immediately afterwards discussed in detail the results of the General Elections and made plans for them to meet at Stapleton after Huskisson's ill-fated visit to Liverpool. (Anglesey to Littleton, 1 Sept., Hatherton Papers; Huskisson to Palmerston, 3 Sept., B.P., G.C./HU no. 119.)
page 242 note 1 Palmerston had come up to London to see Clive on 6 Oct. about an approach to join Wellington's Government. They met again on the morning of Sunday, 10 Oct., but Palmerston did not, as he afterwards stated in his ‘Autobiographical Sketch’ (Bulwer & Ashley, i. 382), ‘to cut the matter short … set off immediately for Paris’. Rather, he returned toBroadlands for a couple of days and before setting off for Paris gave full details of his travel plans to Clive so that the Duke could make further contact or even recall him. (Clive to Wellington, 10 Oct.; I am grateful to the late Earl of Powis for providing this information.)
page 243 note 1 Destutt de Tracy was attempting to ensure that Polignac and the other former ministers of Charles X were not executed.
page 246 note 1 Stephen Henry Sulivan had been admitted pensioner at St John's in Jan. 1830 and Duckett Scholar in Nov. (Alumni Cantab.)
page 247 note 2 ‘When one is plucked away, another shall not be wanting’ (Virgil).
page 248 note 1 This appears to be the only indication that Howick was at one time destined by his father for the War Office at the formation of the Government. The following day Grey suggested Robert Grant for that office, but though both Palmerston and Charles Grant were in favour of his taking it Robert Grant preferred to be Judge Advocate General. Finally, on 25 Nov., Grey wrote: ‘This business of the secretary at war, which has plagued me more than any part of the arrangements with which I have been charged, is at last settled. Charles Wynn is to have it.’ (Palmerston to Grey, ‘7 o'clock’ [19 Nov.], and C. Grant to Grey, 19 Nov., Grey Papers; Grey to Sandon, 25 Nov., A. Aspinall, ‘The Last of the Canningites’, E.H.R., 1, 1935, p. 663Google Scholar, n. 2.)
page 249 note 1 There were three Tatham brothers who had been students of St John's: Ralph, who had been Stephen Sulivan's tutor and was now president of the college; Thomas; and William, another fellow. In 1826 all three had voted for Palmerston. But in 1831 Ralph and Thomas both voted for his opponents. William, on the other hand, had plumped for Palmerston in 1826 and seems to have compromised in 1831 by not voting at all. Probably, therefore, he was the Tatham who appears among the members of Palmerston's 1831 election committee. The list (preserved in B.P.W.) is long and impressive. The other Johnians were Professor Henslow (as chairman), Dr John Haviland (Regius Professor of Medicine) and John Birkett. In addition there were Martin Davy (the Master) and William Henry Hanson from Caius, George Leapingwell and John Tinkler from Corpus, Marmaduke Ramsay and William Hustler from Jesus, John Croft and Edward John Ash from Christ's, Richard Dawes from Downing, John Lodge from Magdalene, Professor William Smyth from Peterhouse, and Professor Adam Sedgwick, James Alexander Barnes, G. A. Browne, William Ralph Payne, Joseph Romilly and Richard Wellesley Rothman from Trinity. Palmerston was right about Wood, who did not vote at all, but Blick compromised by giving one vote to Palmerston and one to William Yates Peel. Palmerston also incurred considerable expenditure. From his accounts it would appear that Henry Elliot, who presumably took care of things in London, received £706. 3s. 0d. in cash, while another £40. 0s. 10d. went to someone called Talbot for messengers. In Cambridge Professor Henslow received £400, of which £10. 17s. 3d. was unspent. In spite of all these efforts the sitting members were decisively defeated by Peel and Henry Goulburn, Palmerston coming last of all.
page 250 note 1 Hobhouse had taken over the War Office at the beginning of Feb. determined, not only to mitigate corporal punishment in the Army, but also to carry out numerous economies. Encouraged by Althorp's cooperation, he thought he was pressing for reductions already agreed by the Cabinet. But Lord Hill, the C.-in-C., did all he could to frustrate Hobhouse's plans and Goderich, too, had complained that his authority as Secretary of State was also being ignored. (Brougkton, iv. 183–6.)Google Scholar
page 250 note 1 Sulivan had written, probably on 19 July 1832 though it appears to read 1831 (B.P., G.C./SU no. 21), to say that his son looked to diplomacy as a career and that he might as well gain experience as finish his academic career. ‘His indifferent success in mathematics’, Sulivan explained in passing, ‘is no proof of idleness; his other attainments shew a fair capacity.’ John Backhouse (1784–1845) was permanent undersecretary at the Foreign Office.
page 251 note 1 Hobhouse had decided that if he made no progress with his reductions and reforms, then he would either have to force a drastic reform of army administration or resign. Eventually, in Jan. 1833, he agreed with the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Althorp, on a plan to subordinate the C.-in-C. to the Secretary at War. When Palmerston had seen it he wrote to Althorp: ‘I most entirely concur in the expediency of the arrangement proposed to be established by your minute; it is the only way of putting the government & management of our military affairs upon their proper footing.’ Althorp had given Hobhouse the impression that his proposals were ‘to be finally determined on by Palmerston’. But when Grey heard of it he quickly disabused the Secretary at War. It was an ‘opinion’ he had wanted from Palmerston, he said, and not his ‘assent’. Subsequently Grey asked Hobhouse to consult together with John Russell and the Duke of Richmond and on 20 Mar. they produced a scheme for the C.-in-C. to take over the purely military functions of the Master General of the Ordnance and for a new Financial Board, headed by a Cabinet minister, to take over all the civil functions of the War Office, Ordnance, Pay Office etc. Their report was submitted to the King the same day but any action on it was deferred, partly because of the opposition of the Master General and partly because of other political crises which resulted before the end of Mar. in Hobhouse leaving the War Office for the Irish Secretaryship.
Hobhouse was succeeded at the War Office by Edward Ellice. Grey was doubly glad about the change. One of its advantages, he told Sir Herbert Taylor, was that he could avoid any change regarding corporal punishment in the Mutiny Bill. Another was that he would be able ‘to postpone all changes … connected with the administration of the Army till they can be maturely & carefully considered’. Taylor reported the King in turn to be well pleased since he considered Hobhouse ‘to have been hampered by former … pledges … and to have yielded too much to the influence & advice of subordinates, whose feelings & proceedings have been jealous of & hostile to the military branches of the service’. A further letter from Grey led Taylor to write the following day: ‘I am glad also that you have put Ellice on his guard against Mr Sulivan, who, though a kind-hearted man, an amiable member of society and an excellent father and husband, has unfortunately imbibed a feeling of hostility & jealousy towards the military departments and authorities which is greatly to be lamented as being injurious to the public service.’ (Broughton, iv. 262–95; Hobhouse's Journal, 4 and 7 Jan. 1833, Broughton Papers, Add. MS. 56557; Palmerston to Althorp, 13 Feb. 1833, Ellice Papers; Richmond to Althorp, 11 Nov. 1833, Goodwood Papers; Grey to Taylor, 28 and 29 Mar., and Taylor to Grey, 29 and 30 Mar. 1833, Grey Papers, RA.)
However distasteful Sulivan may have been to the Horse Guards, he was in the matter of the consolidation of Army Departments sometimes misrepresented. His printed pamphlet, marked simply no. 2 and dated Oct. 1832 (Add. MSS. 59782–3), indeed argued that the Horse Guards should be confined to ‘purely military’ matters and not interfere in financial affairs, while the Secretary at War, having ‘at present … either too much or too little’ responsibility, should be either abolished or raised to the position of Secretary of State. However, he was wholly opposed to the creation of any sort of military board. In addition, when called upon to give his evidence before a subsequent Royal Commission in 1834, he agreed with all the leading military men in condemning extensive consolidation as being too much for any departmental head to supervise and the notion of a board as being too loose and inefficient (Parliamentary Papers, 1837, xxxiv, Pt I, ‘Report from Commissioners appointed to inquire into the Practicability and Expediency of Consolidating the different Departments connected with the Civil Administration of the Army’, pp. 177–8).
page 252 note 1 Following his defeat at Cambridge Palmerston had been found another seat by the Treasury at Bletchingley. But either through a misunderstanding or, as he thought, a trick, Palmerston had discovered in Mar. 1832 that Bletchingley was a much more expensive seat than he could afford. Having paid £800 for it in 1831, he refused to pay a similar sum the following year and compromised on £500 to cover the period up to the General Election following the passage of the Reform Act. In any case Bletchingley was disfranchised by that Act and so Palmerston searched actively during the summer of 1832 for an alternative parliamentary seat. At first he had hoped to revive his attempt upon Cambridge University. But a visit in Commencement Week and correspondence with James Wood had convinced him by the middle of Aug. that it was hopeless. Fortunately he had already had other approaches, including Cambridge Town, South Hampshire, Tower Hamlets, Lambeth and Falmouth and Penryn; later Southwark and Windsor were also mentioned. Of these Falmouth and Penryn was his favourite, probably because it was so far away that he believed he would not be bothered so much by the constituents. But a preliminary canvass by his brother (who was on leave from Naples) revealed that he could rely only on a minority of votes and that, Reform Act or no, the electors of Penryn expected £5 each for theirs and the electors of Falmouth the restoration by the Government of their iniquitous packet privileges.
Consequently, while he kept the pot boiling in the West Country, he also entertained an alternative approach from Lambeth, adding for exploratory canvasses there a sum of £205 to the £452. 14s. 11d. he had spent on Falmouth and Penryn. Other offers were turned away with the reply that he was already ‘pledged’; but these pledges, apparently, were conditional upon a satisfactory preliminary canvass and a limited financial commitment on his part. This was still the situation when, in Sept., a group of South Hampshire ‘reformers’ also approached him to stand, together with Sir George Staunton, against his old friend and neighbour, John Willis Fleming. About the same time Sloane Stanley approached him with a view to his standing as a sort of ‘conservative’ candidate with Fleming and against Staunton. This second approach was clearly out of the question, but since neither Lambeth nor Penryn in the end quite met his conditions, Palmerston evidently agreed to stand for South Hampshire. He did not do so, however, until after he had received a firm undertaking that he would not be called upon to pay more than £1,000 in expenses and a favourable report of a preliminary canvass of the whole constituency. He also insisted that he should not be asked to canvass in person, since he was so busy in the Foreign Office, but appear only on polling day. On 3 Oct. he was told that a canvas had secured him promises from just over 1,000 out of the 2,500–3,000 who were expected to register. This did not satisfy him. But on 24 Oct. he was told that out of 3,200 registered voters nearly half (1,455) were promised to him, and that although this was less than Fleming's (1,753), it was more than Staunton's (1,437) and likely to be increased by 119 who would transfer from Fleming to Palmerston and assure him of election. So on 10 Nov. he formally accepted. (Palmerston's accounts and election papers in B.P.W.; Grey to Palmerston and Palmerston to Grey, 1 Nov. 1832, Grey Papers.)
page 254 note 1 The result of the poll, on 18 and 19 Dec., was: Palmerston, 1,628; Staunton, 1,532; Fleming, 1,279. In addition to his £1,000, Palmerston incurred a mere £6. 19s. 6d. on hotel expenses in Southampton and gave £100 to the poor in lieu of a chairing.
page 255 note 1 Palmerston, with about half the Cabinet, was spending three days shooting with the Duke of Bedford (Palmerston to William Temple, 3 Dec., Bulwer & Ashley, ii. 176–7).
page 255 note 2 Sulivan's specific complaint is not known, but see no. 301.
page 255 note 3 In spite of Ellice's taking over the War Office, Richmond had persisted with his plan for army consolidation and on 11 Nov. had re-presented his project, with the modification of keeping one place on the proposed Board for an officer in place of the Master-General. The Cabinet had recommended on 23 Nov. and the King accepted on 25 Nov. a Royal Commission of Inquiry consisting of those named by Palmerston and Maj.-Gen. Sir Robert L. Dundas.
page 255 note 1 Presumably Richmond's revised plan of 11 Nov.
page 256 note 1 Sulivan was on holiday abroad when Graham, Richmond, Ripon and Stanley resigned from the Government.
page 257 note 2 Charles Tennyson D'Eyncourt (1784–1861).
page 257 note 1 Edward Ellice had indicated to Melbourne that he was determined to vacate the War Office. Since Ellice had taken a very different line both about Army consolidation and corporal punishment after Grey had ceased to be his chief, Melbourne wrote on 11 Oct.: ‘You have been the instrument of getting us into the difficulty about the Army, & you ought to see us through it.’ But Ellice had replied on 17 Oct. refusing to reconsider and adding: ‘But pray don't appoint a gentleman equally qualified for this situation with Sir Geo Shee for the management of your diplomatic relations with the North of Europe.’ (Ellice Papers.) Shee had just been nominated by Palmerston as minister in Berlin, and this was generally considered a ‘job’ and an outrage. Robert Gordon (1786–1864), though not destined for the Cabinet like his predecessor, was defended by Melbourne as ‘a good man of business, very firm, efficient in the House of Commons & popular with the House’ (Melbourne to Brougham, 6 and 7 Nov. 1834, Brougham Papers). Macaulay, who had served with Gordon on the Board of Control, had called him in 1832 ‘a fat, ugly, spiteful, snarling, sneering, old rascal of a slave-driver’ (Pinney, T., ed., The Letters of Thomas Babington Macaulay, ii, 1974, p. 139Google Scholar). Sulivan was saved from having Gordon as his chief by the dismissal of Melbourne's Government on 14 Nov.
page 257 note 1 Stephen Sulivan had been appointed Palmerston's precis-writer at the Foreign Office on 16 Nov. 1832 and promoted to private secretary on 3 May 1833.
page 258 note 2 On 24 July 1835 Palmerston wrote to Shee, who had asked for the Brussels legation: ‘The quantity of English scamps who infest Brussels render it far from an agreeable post for the English minister.’ Lord William Russell, he explained the next day, had already turned it down on account of the number of British half-pay officers who ‘haunted’ that capital and would therefore have made it an expensive burden on the British Minister's hospitality. (Shee Papers.) What may have been of still more importance for young Sulivan was that the then charge in Brussels was reputedly a pederast (Bulwer to Durham, 2 Mar. 1836, Lambton Papers; cf. Blakiston, Georgiana, Lord William Russell and his Wife, 1972, pp. 333 and 454).Google Scholar
page 258 note 1 The Rev. William Windsor Berry had been family tutor with the Sulivans. Palmerston subsequently obtained further preferment for him.
page 258 note 1 John Edward Blackburn, the eldest son of Palmerston's Johnian contemporary, was born in 1818. He was appointed Foreign Office clerk, on 17 Nov. 1834 and was subsequently, in 1836–7, attached to the legation in Naples. He was apparently celebrated in the office for his wit, but suffered from ill-health and was often absent (SirWolff, Henry D., Rambling Recollections, 1908, i. 63Google Scholar). He retired on pension on 18 Nov. 1851 and died in Paris on 27 Jan. 1855.
page 258 note 1 ‘I have appointed Stephen paid attaché at the Hague; & sent Mr Berry chaplain to Leghorn; I have appointed Blackburn's son clerk in Foreign Office & got Maria Stewart [Dugald Stewart's daughter] a civil list pension of £200 a year’, Palmerston wrote to William Temple on 25 Nov. ‘So I have wound up my affairs well …’ (B.P., G.C./TE no. 231.)
page 259 note 1 Wellington had cancelled Shee's appointment to Berlin on taking office. Burghersh was a crony of the Duke's and, at this period, on rather bad terms with both Palmerston and Shee about their failure to provide him with what he thought was adequate compensation for expenses he claimed to have incurred during his own diplomatic service (Westmoreland Papers 7. xi, Northampton County Record Office).
page 259 note 2 Although Palmerston expected the new Peel Government to dissolve Parliament and had accordingly formed a committee to canvass his constituency, he felt so sure of success that he dallied overlong in London. But early in Dec. he heard that he and Staunton would this time be faced by two conservatives, Fleming and Compton. Compton, Palmerston knew, was ‘a formidable opponent’, and so he hurried off to Hampshire on 2 Dec. for a long and arduous canvass (Lady Holland to Carlisle, ‘Fri’ [5 Dec.1834], C.H.P. 2/17).
page 260 note 3 Thomas Thistlethwayte of Southwick Park (1779–1850).
page 260 note 4 William Edward Nightingale, Florence's father and another Hampshire neighbour, had been foremost among those who pressed Palmerston to stand for South Hampshire in 1832. He was defeated in his single attempt to gain a seat for himself at Andover.
page 260 note 1 The figures at the close of the poll on Saturday, 17 Jan., were: Fleming, 1,765; Compton, 1,683; Palmerston, 1,515; Staunton, 1,474. It probably did not please Palmerston, either, that he had to pay more for his defeat in 1835 than for his victory in 1832. The combined statement for 1832 and 1835 he and Staunton subsequently received from a John W. Drew listed the expenses incurred as:
Since each candidate had advanced £1,000 on each occasion, and Palmerston had made an extra donation of £100 in 1832, he received a request in June 1835 for a further £396 against Staunton's £496. (B.P.W.)
page 260 note 2 He reckoned there were 114 such ‘defaulters’ (Palmerston to Russell, 22 Jan., Russell, R., ed., Early Correspondence of Lord John Russell, 1913, ii. 71).Google Scholar
page 260 note 3 Henry Woodcock (ob. 1840) was Rector of Michelmersh in Hampshire.
page 261 note 4 After the election in 1832, Fleming had in his ‘parting address’ attributed his defeat to ‘the very unfair & unhandsome coalition of his opponents, backed by the unconstitutional influence of government’. The dockyard vote, however, was very small—Pal-merston estimated it in 1834 at only 125—and it had also split. Even without his share,apparently, the agricultural vote would have been enough to ensure victory for Palmerston. However, the old charges were renewed in the 1834–5 election. (Press clippings of Dec. 1832 and Nov. 1834–Jan. 1835 in Staunton's journal, Perkins Library, Duke University; correspondence between Palmerston and Compton, Feb. 1835, B.P.W.) Sir George Rowley had been only narrowly defeated for the second seat at Portsmouth.
page 261 note 5 The Duke of Leuchtenberg was on his way to marry the young Queen of Portugal.He died soon after, on 28 Mar.
page 262 note 1 Henry Sulivan had had a complete nervous breakdown following an unsuccessful attempt to gain a fellowship at Christ Church (Palmerston to William Temple, 1 Aug. 1835, B.P., G.C./TE no. 238).
page 262 note 1 Attempts to remove Palmerston from the Foreign Office and to transfer him to another department of State (almost certainly the Colonial Office) had been wrecked, first by the refusal of Grey to take the Foreign Office and secondly by Palmerston's refusal in an interview with Melbourne on 14 April to take another office if anyone hut Grey were appointed in his old one. Melbourne, who had not particularly wanted to form a government and did not believe he could succeed if Palmerston were not a member of it, had subsequently written to Palmerston on 15 April plainly indicating that Palmerston would probably be offered the Foreign Office after all. (Sir Charles Webster, The Foreign Policy of Palmerston 1830–1841, 2 vols., 1951, i. 419–21 and ii. 838–41.)Google Scholar
page 263 note 2 The possibility of John Russell succeeding Palmerston had been rumoured for some time and it seemed certain that Melbourne did suggest it to him (Howick's Diary, 10 April, Grey Papers). But according to John Allen, it was known at Holland House by 14 April that Russell preferred the Home Office (Allen's Diary, Add. MS. 522051).
page 263 note.1 There are several letters in the S. P. from John Curtis (1791–1862), the entomologist.
page 264 note 1 Charles Augustus Ellis, 6th Lord Howard de Walden (1799–1868), was British Minister in Lisbon. Stephen Sulivan, who had been transferred there in 1835, had fallen victim to smallpox (Palmerston to Shee, 25 Mar. 1836, Shee Papers).
page 264 note 1 Palmerston's old flame, Mrs Blackburn, had died at St Helena on her way back from Mauritius (Palmerston to William Temple, 1 June, B.P., G.C./TE no. 246).
page 264 note 2 Not identified.
page 264 note 1 The Enclosure Act of 1836 contained the first recognition that it might be desirable, on the grounds of public good, to prevent some enclosures and, specifically, any within ten miles of London and other towns. Charles Anderson Worsley Pelham (1809–62) was M.P. for North Lincolnshire; William Blamire (1790–1862) was M.P. for East Cumberland; Henry Aglionby Aglionby (1790–1854) was M.P. for Cockermouth.
page 265 note 1 R. L. Sheil had spoken the previous night on the Lords' amendments to the Irish Tithes Bill (3 Hansard, xxxv. 828–38).Google Scholar
page 266 note 1 Richmond's project, like Hobhouse's previously, had run into considerable difficulties in 1833–4, for Grey still hesitated to offend Windsor and, Richmond suspected, was unwilling for Ellice to lose his place through any sort of army consolidation. Althorp, at the Exchequer (Richmond to Stanley, 19 Dec. 1833, Goodwood Papers). for the head of his Financial Board of the Army and that Ellice should replace him, Althorp, at the Exchequer (Richard to Stanley, 19 Dec. 1833, Goodwood Papers). But nothing had been settled and Richmond's work was first ‘suspended’ by his resignation from the Government and then ‘terminated’ by Melbourne's dismissal (Melbourne to the King, 17 Nov. 1835, Melbourne Papers, RA). In Dec. 1835 a new Commission was appointed, consisting of Howick, Palmerston, Russell, Spring-Rice, Hobhouse and Strafford. This Commission's report, on 21 Feb. 1837, abandoned Richmond's scheme for a Board and recommended instead that the Secretary at War take over virtually all the civil and financial administration of the Army and that he should consequently always be a member of the Cabinet. (Parliamentary Papers. 1837, xxxiv, Pt I.) But Melbourne, too, would not grasp the nettle and no major change occurred until alter Palmerston had become Prime Minister.
page 266 note 1 According to his mother, Stephen Sulivan, as well as being ill there, very much disliked Lisbon (Mrs Sulivan to William Temple, 9 Dec. 1835, B.P.W.). But Palmerston was reluctant to move him again so soon. Instead he promoted him Secretary of Legation in 1836. ‘It is a jump’, he wrote; ‘but as the vacancy happens while he is there, & he has been doing the duty for more than a year, and it is well to make hay while the sun shines, & not to leave one's own kin to the tender mercies of Tory successors I did the deed.’ (Palmerston to William Temple, 1 Nov. 1836, B.P., G.C./TE no. 252.) However, when Stephen eventually came home on leave, Palmerston agreed to move him (Palmerston to William Temple, 4 Aug. 1837, B.P., G.C./TE no. 262). George Sulyarde Stafford-Jerningham was appointed to Lisbon and Sulivan to Turin, 1 Nov. 1837.
page 267 note 1 Mrs Sulivan had died suddenly early in the morning of 13 Nov.
page 267 note 1 John James Larpent (1783–1860), 7th Baron de Hochepied of the Kingdom of Hun gary, however, retired on a pension on 1 Oct. 1839. He was succeeded in Antwerp by a relative of Palmerston's mother, Godschall Johnson.
page 267 note 2 Samuel Locke had been chaplain in Antwerp since 1823.
page 267 note 3 Palmerston had secured a seat in Tiverton in the summer of 1835 and been reelected at the General Election of 1837. The next General Election was in the summer of 1841; but Palmerston was expected to attend as steward at the races every year.
page 268 note 1 The Times of 11 Sept. had printed a letter on the opium trade, addressed to John Horsley Palmer by ‘One Long Resident in China’.
page 269 note 1 This probably referred to a plan to write off some claims against Portugal in return for the cession of Goa.
page 269 note 2 George Murray was Bishop of Rochester and Dean of Worcester; William Bathurst,afterwards 5th Earl Bathurst, was Clerk of the House of Commons. Henry Sulivan appears not to have become a deacon until 1841 and a priest the following year. In 1841 he appears in the Clergy List as Thomas Garnier's curate at Bishopstoke, Southampton.
page 270 note 1 Palmerston's elder sister, Mrs Bowles, had died on 13 Nov. 1838.
page 270 note 2 Palmerston and the Dowager Lady Cowper were married at St George's, Hanover Square, on 16 Dec. Palmerston had written to his brother on 11 Sept.: ‘The wedding will be as simple & unostentatious as possible, & will be unattended with the numerous presents and other things which do very well for two young persons but are unsuitable for people of a certain time of life.’ (B.P., G.C./TE no. 275.) But Lady Cowper's children were embarrassed by the marriage and wished not even to attend the ceremony.
page 270 note 1 R. W. Lumley, a member of the firm of Oddie, Forster & Lumley, now handled Palmerston's legal affairs in London.
page 272 note 1 Stephen Sulivan had been moved from Turin to Munich in May 1839. Presumably his health was still suffering and his uncle had determined to move him again as soon as he could. In the meantime, instead of giving him leave, Palmerston seized on a dispute with the Two Sicilies to send him to Naples as a special commissioner, jointly with Sir Woodbine Parish, to liquidate claims arising out of the sulphur monopoly. Palmerston wrote to his brother in 1841 asking how Stephen was and whether he could ‘walk with tolerable ease’, and suggesting that he take ‘Indian baths’ during the summer. The appointment lasted from 17 Nov. 1840 till 29 Dec. 1841, by which time Palmerston was out of office. He would have liked to promote Stephen before he went, Palmerston wrote, but had no chance of doing so. So Stephen returned to Munich. (Palmerston to Shee, 17 Aug. 1840, Shee Papers, and to William Temple, 25 May and 17 Aug. 1841, B.P., G.C./TE nos. 292 and 293.)
page 273 note 1 The Palmerstons had rented Lord Caledon's house, no. 5 Carlton House Terrace,as more suitable than that in Stanhope St for Lady Palmerston's renewed career as political hostess. Subsequently they moved, first to no. 3 in the same terrace, then to no. 4 Carlton Gardens, and finally, in 1855, to no. 94 Piccadilly.
page 273 note 2 In a year of rapidly declining fortunes Melbourne's Cabinet had been deeply divided whether to resign or to dissolve. Melbourne was opposed to either course; Palmerston strongly in favour of a dissolution.
page 273 note 3 On the sugar duties.
page 272 note 1 This was Palmerston's first visit to Ireland since 1829, though Bowles had made an inspection for him in 1835.
page 273 note 2 Goderich's elder brother had assumed the style of Earl de Grey in 1833. He had become Lord Lieutenant of Ireland in Sept. 1841. His elder daughter was married to Lady Palmerston's eldest son, the 6th Earl Cowper.
page 274 note 3 Edward William Smythe-Owen of Condover (1793–1863) was married to a sister of Mrs Blackburn; Frederick Hamilton Cornewall of Delbury (1791–1845) was the son of the late Bishop of Worcester and a distant connection of Powis's; Lady Caroline was Powis's elder daughter.
page 274 note 1 Palmerston had reported to William Temple on 12 Aug. that Henry Sulivan was ‘going on well but his progress is slow, & attended with many alternations of relapse’ (B.P., G.C./TE no. 302).
page 276 note 1 The Rev. George Augustus Montgomery, Rector of Bishopstone, South Wiltshire,had been killed on 1 Dec. by falling masonry when inspecting the progress of a new church being built near the Pembrokes' home at Wilton House (Hampshire Advertiser & Saturday Guardian, 10 12 1842Google Scholar). Presumably, he was an illegitimate connection of the Pembrokes (Lever, T., The Herberts of Wilton, 1967, pp. 169s–72).Google Scholar
page 276 note 2 The eldest daughter of Adm. Sir George Elliot, the 2nd Earl of Minto's younger brother, married in Feb. 1843 the 8th Earl of Northesk.
page 277 note 1 William Johnson Fox (1786–1864), journalist, unitarian preacher and subsequently M.P. for Oldham.
page 278 note 1 The Foreign Secretary had given Stephen Sulivan official leave of absence in April 1842 and renewed it in July and Dec., saying on the last occasion that there was no need for him to hurry back to Munich (Aberdeen to Laurence Sulivan, 7 April, 22 July and 12 Dec. 1842, S.P.). The Minister in Munich, Lord Erskine, had left his post to attend his dying wife. Richard Charles Mellish was the senior clerk in the F.O. in charge of German affairs. Sulivan had returned to his post by 17 June 1843 when he took over as charge d'affaires from Erskine.
page 278 note 1 The first wife of William Cowper, Lady Palmerston's second son, had died on 28 Aug., little more than two months after her marriage. The wife of Charles Howard, a younger son of the 6th Earl of Carlisle, had died on 26 Aug., little more than a year after her marriage.
page 278 note 1 Sulivan's letter of the 5th is lacking, but from that he wrote on 9 Oct. (B.P., G.C./SU no. 27) it is clear that he had complained again to Palmerston about his chief, Sir Henry Hardinge, afterwards 1st Viscount Hardinge of Lahore. As long ago as 10 Nov. 1828, less than six months after Hardinge had succeeded Palmerston in the War Office, Sulivan had written to his brother-in-law to complain of the ‘daily disagreements’ arising from the habits of his new chief (B.P., G.C./SU no. 19). Hardinge, he suspected, thought the office was top heavy and had taken to dealing directly with Sulivan's juniors, especially Brown and Lukin but even lower down. ‘I need not tell you’, Sulivan wrote, ‘that I have been very long obnoxious to Lukin's branch of the office.’ In any case, he went on, to be treated as a ‘non-entity’ made him ‘heartily sick’ and very willing to quit. But he was not prepared to leave the War Office under any sort of cloud and he was still there when Hardinge left in July 1830. Hardinge's parting tribute to his Deputy's ‘very able superintendence’ of the office and the ‘implicit confidence’ it had earned him was, perhaps, an invitation to Sulivan also to leave without loss of honour (Hardinge to [?Treasury], 16 July 1830, P.R.O., W.O. 4/724). Sulivan probably expected to fare better with his friends back in office and whatever his experience may have been during the brief tenure of Sir Henry Parnell, he certainly seems to have got on very well with Hobhouse. But with Edward Ellice Sulivan's position in the office again deteriorated and in less than a year under his new chief he was again complaining about some slur upon his status. Quite what it was about is far from clear, but the bête noire among his colleagues he named to Palmerston in a letter of 28 Feb. 1834 (B.P., G.C./SU no. 22) was now not Lukin, who was ill and near his end, but the Chief Examiner, Edward Marshall. Edward Marshall, who died at the age of ninety about 1869, had been one of those clerks with whom Hardinge liked to do business direct, and Hardinge had taken care as he left the office in 1830 to have him succeed Brown as Chief Examiner. According to his ‘Account’ of Jan. 1851, Sulivan had also incurred Marshall's animosity by checking a large increase of clerks in the Chief Examiner's department. Whatever Palmerston may have advised—and it does not seem to have been entirely uncritical of his friend—Sulivan stayed on under Ellice and under the still more difficult Howick. But as the second Melbourne Government drew towards its close, and Sulivan no doubt realised Hardinge might soon be back, he wrote again to Palmerston to say that he would long ago have resigned but for his duty to his children and that if the Government cared ‘to buy me out with something requiring little trouble’ before the new Minister was installed, he was to be had ‘very cheap’ (4 Aug. 1841, B.P., G.C./SU no. 26). But evidently not cheap enough, for Oct. 1843 found him still in the War Office and once again the slighted victim of Hardinge's preference for Marshall.
page 280 note 1 Boyd, M., Reminiscences of Fifty Years, 1871, pp. 42–4Google Scholar, relates, from Marshall's side, a clash that supposedly occurred with Palmerston in the War Office which had left behind an undying sense of grievance.
page 281 note 2 Backhouse had retired from the Foreign Office on account of ill-health in April 1842.
page 282 note 3 O'Connell had planned to hold a ‘monster meeting’ in Clontarf on 8 Oct. to agitate for the repeal of the Union, but the meeting was banned the day before and the ground occupied by the military.
page 282 note 1 James Pattison (1786–1849), who had lost his City of London seat in the General Election of 1841, had regained it in a by-election against Thomas Baring, second son of Sir Thomas Baring, 2nd Bart.
page 283 note 1 Henry Sulivan's condition had become so bad that he was placed under restraint in a house specially rented for the purpose. Palmerston feared there was little hope of recovery and in May Laurence Sulivan reported that his son had had to give up his curacy. (Palmerston to William Temple, 5 April, B.P., G.C./TE no. 308; Laurence Sulivan to Fitzherbert, 10 May, Fitzherbert Papers.)
page 283 note 2 John Ralph Milbanke (1800–68), 8th Bart and Lady Palmerston's cousin, had been appointed as Erskine's successor in Munich. Erskine left Munich on 20 Oct. 1843 and between then and Milbanke's arrival on 24 Dec. Stephen Sulivan acted again as charge d'affaires. Palmerston reported to William Temple on 4 Oct. (B.P., G.C./TE no. 307) that Sulivan was ‘able to go through his duties’ and from the following letter (no. 306) it is clear that what was worrying everyone now was Stephen's declared intention of marrying his mistress.
page 284 note 1 The new session of Parliament opened on Thursday, 1 Feb. Both John Russell and Roebuck spoke but neither proposed any amendments.
page 284 note 1 This was Palmerston's first visit to the Continent since 1830. He kept a detailed diary extending from 13 Aug. to 4 Nov. and this survives in B.P.W. no. 1988. Some short extracts are published in Bulwer & Ashley, iii. 150–6, but the dates are confused.
page 285 note 1 Probably Joseph Phillimore (1775–1855), Regius Professor of Civil Law in Oxford.
page 286 note 2 Georgiana, widow of George Augustus Craven, younger brother of the 2nd Earl of Craven, married in Oct. 1844 Edmond, afterwards Duc de la Force.
page 287 note 1 Lt Gen. (afterwards Field Marshal) Sir Alexander Woodford (1782–1870).
page 287 note 2 Palmerston had found a new diplomatic appointment for Shee as soon as he could after returning to the Foreign Office in 1835. Shee's first wife had died childless in 1832—she had drowned after falling from a boat—and in 1841 Shee declared in Stuttgart that he had remarried and simultaneously produced a daughter already a few years of age. This, of course, caused grave offence in Stuttgart and gave ammunition to Shee's political opponents at home, and in Oct. 1844 he was recalled by Aberdeen. Shee was never employed again and in part blamed Palmerston for neglecting to champion his cause. He claimed in particular that his ‘domestic position’ was ‘perfectly well known’ in London at the time of his 1835 appointment. This his patron strongly denied. Palmerston, by the 1840s, had evidently lost patience with Shee and his troubles. When Shee's first wife was drowned in 1832, Palmerston wrote to Lady Cowper: ‘The manner of the thing was shocking, but the thing itself is no loss to him.’ When he heard of Shee's new marriage in 1841 Palmerston wrote to his brother that he ought rather ‘to have pensioned off the Mama, when he brought out and acknowledged the young lady’. When Shee sent him a long ‘statement’ of complaint in 1846, Palmerston bluntly refuted it and on the same lines as his letter to Sulivan of 1844. Shee, to his credit, accepted Palmerston's rebuke very meekly and, as he said, ‘with unshaken attachment’. (Palmerston to Lady Cowper, 5 Oct. 1832, B.P.W.; Palmerston to William Temple, 26–28 Nov. 1841, B.P., G.C./TE no. 294; Shee to Palmerston, 17 and 19 Nov., and Palmerston to Shee, 18 Nov. 1846, Shee Papers.)
page 288 note 1 See no. 321.
page 291 note 1 Probably James Bradshaw, M.P. for Coventry. He had married Charles Kean's sister-in-law, Anna Maria Tree.
page 293 note 1 They had arrived in Dover at 6 a.m. the day before and moved on after a mere two hours' rest before breakfast. Palmerston recorded in his diary that his trip had cost in all a little over £500.
page 293 note 1 Noel to Palmerston, 4 Oct., B.P.W.
page 294 note 2 In 1842 Palmerston had brought in a new gardener called Herenan on trial from Brocket and Panshanger, but he was not a success either in his gardening or in his manner and after sending what Palmerston called ‘a controversial letter’ of complaint he had been given notice in Mar. 1844 (B.P.W.).
page 294 note 2 The first edition of the Diaries and Correspondence of James Harris, 1st Earl of Malmesbury, 4 vols., edited by his grandson, had just appeared.
page 294 note 4 Count Joseph von Beroldingen was Würtemberg Minister of Foreign Affairs, 1823–48.
page 295 note 1 Mrs Fleming's second son, Thomas James Fleming (1819–90), was married in Nov.
page 295 note 2 Lady Palmerston's youngest son had inherited Sandringham and a fortune from his father's friend, John Motteux, in 1843.
page 296 note 1 Mrs Orme and Lyndhurst's second wife were the daughters of Lewis Goldsmith, a notorious propagandist and spy in both London and Paris. The bargain appears to have been prospective, for it was not completed until 1851–2. Henry Sulivan was now curate at Sonning near Reading and he remained there until he obtained the living of Yoxall from the Lord Chancellor in 1851. Frederick Doveton Orme was promoted Secretary of Legation at Copenhagen in Dec. 1852.
page 296 note 1 The 2nd Earl of Powis died on 17 Jan., having been accidentally shot by one of his sons while pheasant shooting.
page 296 note 1 This letter is endorsed ‘inclosed to Mr Maule 14 Sept. 1848’, but I have not been able to trace this enclosure in the Panmure Papers in the Scottish Record Office.
page 297 note 1 John Ayrton Paris (1785–1856) was President of the Royal College of Physicians.
page 298 note 1 Truro, as Lord Chancellor, was arranging for Henry Sulivan to have the living of Yoxall.
page 300 note 1 Russell had called a meeting for 11 Mar. to discuss the new Opposition's tactics in Parliament.
page 301 note 2 The Hampshire Advertiser of 6 Mar. 1852 reported the proceedings of a trial for a Romsey murder in which all the principals, including victim, assailants and witnesses,appear to have been drunk.
page 301 note 3 Noel had been succeeded as Vicar of Romsey in 1851 by the Rev. Canon William Carus but his widow still occupied Abbey House and Carus presumably planned to build a new vicarage (F. H. Suckling, Around Old Romsey (reprints from the Romsey Register, 1910–16), pp. 59–60).Google Scholar
page 301 note 1 Henry Rich (1803–69) and Russell had both spoken in the Commons on 23 April against the Government's Militia Bill (3 Hansard, cxx. 1042–51 and 1089–1101).Google Scholar
page 301 note 1 Lissadell was the Sligo place of Sir Robert Gore-Booth, 4th Bart (1805–76).
page 301 note 2 This perhaps refers to a tour of Wales that Palmerston had made with Sulivan in 1803.
page 302 note 3 Edward Joshua Cooper of Markree Castle (1798–1863), who had married the daughter of Owen Wynne of Hazlewood, was M.P. for Co. Sligo in 1830–41 and 1857–9.
page 303 note 1 Peter Mere Latham (1789–1875).
page 304 note 1 See Walpole, S., The Life of Lord John Russell, 2 vols., 1889, ii. 158, n. 1.Google Scholar
page 305 note 1 On p. 153, line 16, for ‘one’ read ‘men’.
page 306 note 1 Palmerston had heard that Laurence Sulivan was very ill.
page 306 note 1 Probably William Fergusson (1808–77), Professor of Surgery at King's College, London.
page 306 note 1 Emily's brother Frederick, who had succeeded as 3rd and last Viscount Melbourne in 1848, had died on 29 Jan.
page 307 note 1 Mrs Hippisley had given birth the day before to her first child, Emily, who afterwards married the 12th Earl of Carnwath.
page 307 note 1 Palmerston actually wrote ‘impudent untruth’ when reverting in his last paragraph to The Times's accusation.
page 308 note 1 Sir William Temple was home on leave; John Reynolds Beddome was a doctor in Romsey.
page 308 note 2 Count Colloredo was the Austrian Ambassador in London.
page 308 note 1 The Shaftesburys' London house was at no. 24.
page 308 note 2 Lady Palmerston's son-in-law, Viscount Jocelyn, had died suddenly of cholera on 12 Aug.
page 309 note 1 Lady Anna Maria Donkin, the eldest daughter of the 1st Earl of Minto and a close childhood friend of Palmerston's, had died on 18 Oct.
page 310 note 1 William Deedes (1796–1862) was M.P. for East Kent.
page 313 note 1 Frederick J. Nicholl and R. F. Burnett of 18 Carey St.
page 313 note 1 William Temple had left his shares in the now very profitable Welsh Slate Co. jointly to the Sulivan girls.
page 314 note 1 The despatch, dated 12 Aug. and marked ‘separate’ from John Barton, the Vice-Consul in Lima, a copy of which is in Add. MSS. 59782–3, reported that Stephen Sulivan's wound would probably be fatal.
page 314 note 1 Capt. Charles Barker, H.M.S. Retribution, Callao, 12 Aug., and Adm. H. W. Bruce, H.M.S. Monarch, Payta, 15 Aug., enclosed in Admiralty to F.O., 14 Sept. 1857, F.O. 61/178, copies of which are also in Add. MSS. 59782–3.
page 314 note 1 This letter is endorsed: ‘This covered the very interesting letter of Mr Fernandez of Lima to Lord Palmerston.’ But no such letter has been found either in Add. MSS. 59782–3 or in the F.O. files.
page 315 note 1 John Barton (acting Consul-General, Lima), no. 17, to Malmesbury, 8 April 1858, F.O. 61/180, of which there is a copy in Add. MSS. 59782–3.
page 314 note 1 Palmerston had just returned with Clarendon from a visit to Napoleon III at Compiègne
page 316 note 2 The 1st Earl Cowley was Ambassador in Paris; Lord Alfred Paget (1816–88) was his half-brother. William George Craven (1835–1906), a grandson of the 2nd Earl of Craven, had married a daughter of the 4th Earl of Hardwicke.
page 316 note 3 William Fowle-Middleton's place in Suffolk.
page 317 note 1 The Post of 28 Dec. 1859 had printed a full account of this affair, which had taken place in Portsmouth Harbour where Bowles was Admiral Superintendent.
page 318 note 1 The Shaftesburys' second daughter Mary had died on 3 Sept.
page 318 note 2 Palmerston had become Warden of the Cinque Ports on 27 Mar.
page 319 note 1 Palmerston's Secretary for War, Sir George Cornewall Lewis, had died on 13 April.
page 320 note 2 ‘Peggy’ had presumably been a servant of Dugald Stewart's at the time Sulivan and Palmerston were students in Edinburgh.