Private Letters of Edward Gibbon (1753-1794) Volume 1 (of 2)

Footnote_91_91

Theophilus Bolton, who was making the tour with Mr. Holroyd and Major Ridley, died of consumption at Genoa.

Footnote_92_92

Son of Sir Matthew Ridley, Bart., Major in the Welsh Fusiliers. He had served in Germany during the Seven Years' War, and was at this time Mr. Holroyd's travelling companion.

Footnote_93_93

M. Deyverdun had known Gibbon at Lausanne, and from 1766-69 was a frequent guest at Beriton. With his assistance Gibbon published the Mémoires Littéraires de la Grande Bretagne pour l'an 1767 (Londres: Chez T. Becket and P. A. de Hondt dans le Strand, 1767), which were discontinued in 1768, when Deyverdun, on his friend's recommendation, left England as tutor to the son of Sir T. Worsley, afterwards the Right Hon. Sir Richard Worsley. In 1783 Gibbon took up his abode with Deyverdun at the latter's house at Lausanne. Deyverdun died in July, 1789, leaving his house and land by will to Gibbon for his life.

Footnote_94_94

Lady Diana Spencer married in 1757 Frederick St. John, Lord Bolingbroke, the "Bully" who figures in George Selwyn's correspondence, from whom she was divorced, March 10, 1768. Two days later she married Topham Beauclerk, grandson of the first Duke of St. Albans, the friend of Dr. Johnson, and the collector of a magnificent library. During his long illness she nursed him, as Johnson, no friendly witness, admits, "with very great assiduity." He died in 1780. Lady Diana, whose skill as an artist is frequently alluded to by Walpole, died in 1808.

Footnote_95_95

Hugh, Lord Warkworth, eldest son of Sir Hugh Smithson, Bart., of Stanwick, who was created Duke of Northumberland in 1766, married July 2, 1764, Lady Anne Stuart, third daughter of the Earl of Bute. They were divorced in 1779. As Earl Percy he served in the American War at the battle of Lexington and elsewhere.

Footnote_96_96

See note to Letter 126.

Footnote_97_97

Sir James Lowther, Bart., first Earl of Lonsdale, married (1761) Lady Mary Stewart, eldest daughter of the Earl of Bute, and sister of Lady Warkworth.

Footnote_98_98

Dr. William Heberden (1710-1801), one of the most famous physicians of the century, and a distinguished scholar. He was called by Dr. Johnson "Ultimus Romanorum" (a title which might be as justly applied to Sir H. Halford), as being "the last of our learned physicians." He is hailed by Cowper as "virtuous and faithful," perhaps because, as Dr. G. B. Hill suggests, he bought and destroyed an unpublished manuscript by Dr. Middleton on The Inefficacy of Prayer.

Footnote_99_99

Up Park, near Stansted in Sussex, the seat of Sir Matthew Featherstonhaugh, F.R.S., formerly M.P. for Morpeth, at this time M.P. for Portsmouth; Port Eliot, St. Germans, Cornwall, that of Gibbon's cousin, Mr. Edward Eliot, M.P. for Liskeard, afterwards for Cornwall, created in 1784 Baron Eliot of St. Germans; and Hartley Manduit that of Sir Simeon Stuart, M.P. for the county of Southampton.

Footnote_100_100

Under Lord Bute, the Ministerial Club, as it was at first called, used to meet at the Cocoa Tree Tavern, in St. James's Street. In 1745 it had been the great resort of the Jacobites. Gibbon describes a supper at the club in his Journal for November, 1762. [Memoirs of My Life and Writings – Miscellaneous Works, vol. i. p. 154 (second edition, 1814).] By the "School of Vice" it is more than probable Gibbon meant White's Club, formed in 1736, at this time the great Tory gaming club. It contained within its walls an Old and a Young Club, the Old being recruited from among the members of the Young. Hence, perhaps, arose its name of the "School of Vice."

Footnote_101_101

The Stamp Act, charging stamp duties on all legal documents executed in the Colonies, received the royal assent March 22, 1765, and came into operation November 1, 1765. When Parliament reassembled on January 14, 1766, Pitt attacked the policy of the Act. General Conway, one of the Secretaries of State, who replied to him, said that the sentiments which he had expressed were substantially those of the ministers, and that, for his own part, he would gladly resign his office if Pitt would take it. Grenville, who followed, defended the Act, and it was in reply to him, on the same evening, that Pitt delivered one of the most eloquent and famous of his speeches. Ireland took a keen interest in the question, and the debate happens to be fully reported by two Irish gentlemen, Sir Robert Dean and Lord Charlemont; otherwise, like many others of the time, it might have passed without record. In the same session, February 24 to March 17, two resolutions were carried in both Houses, one declaring the right of Great Britain to tax the Colonies, the other repealing the Stamp Act. Two Acts of Parliament expressed these resolutions in legislative form.

Footnote_102_102

The name was so spelt in the newspapers. John Baker Holroyd married in 1767 Miss Abigail Way, only daughter of Lewis Way, of Richmond, Surrey.

Footnote_103_103

The motto of the regiment of light dragoons, called Royal Foresters, in which Mr. Holroyd had been captain, and which was disbanded in 1763.

Footnote_104_104

A nickname for Mr. Guise.

Footnote_105_105

At Southampton Gibbon attended every spring the monthly exercise of the militia, of which, by the resignation of his father and the death of Sir T. Worsley (1768), he eventually became lieutenant-colonel commandant.

Footnote_106_106

Parliament was dissolved March 11, 1768, and the elections took place in March. Gibbon seems to have assisted the Worsleys in the Isle of Wight against the Castle interest and that of the Holmes family. In 1586, when the Crown sought to create a parliamentary party in the House of Commons, six members were returned to Parliament by the three boroughs of Newport, Newtown, and Yarmouth, because in the Isle of Wight, through its military captain and governor, the influence of the Crown was paramount. Gradually the leading families of the island acquired control over the three boroughs, and at this period they were disputed by the Worsley, Barrington, and Holmes families, the latter being descended from Sir Robert Holmes, who took New York from the Dutch, and "first bewitched our eyes with Guinea gold." At the election of 1768 the following members were elected for the respective boroughs: – Newport: Hans Sloane, Esq., and John Eames, Esq., one of the Masters in Chancery. Newtown: Sir J. Barrington, Bart., and Harcourt Powell, Esq. (re-elected). Yarmouth: Jervoise Clarke, Esq., and William Strode, Esq.

Footnote_107_107

A convivial club, meeting once a week, established by Gibbon and other travellers.

Footnote_108_108

Gibbon was a member of Boodle's Club, known as the Savoir vivre.

Footnote_109_109

Ranelagh Gardens, now part of Chelsea Hospital Gardens, stood on the site of a villa belonging to Lord Ranelagh, the Jones of Grammont's Memoirs. The Rotunda, an amphitheatre, with an orchestra in the centre, surrounded by "balconies full of little alehouses," was opened to the public May 24, 1742. The last entertainment given there was the installation ball of the Knights of the Bath in 1802. The gardens were closed in 1803. A staple, fixed in one of the trees of the avenue, preserved, till a few years ago, the traditions of the glories of Ranelagh when the gardens were lighted by a thousand lamps.

Footnote_110_110

The Earl of Abingdon married, on June 7, 1768, the daughter of Admiral Sir Peter Warren.

Footnote_111_111

Serjeant Glynn, well known as the advocate of Wilkes, was afterwards elected as second member for Middlesex at a by-election. He married a daughter of Sir J. Oglander, of Nunwell, in the Isle of Wight, and had been an unsuccessful candidate for one of the Isle of Wight constituencies at the general election of 1768.

Footnote_112_112

John Dunning, afterwards Lord Ashburton.

Footnote_113_113

Sir Peter Leycester and Sir Frank Standish were found, November 29, 1768, not duly elected.

Footnote_114_114

The return for Yarmouth, I.W., was amended by order of the House of Commons, dated January 19th, 1769, by erasing the names of Jervoise Clarke and William Strode, and substituting those of George Lane Parker and Thomas Lee Dummer.

Footnote_115_115

On February 14, 1769, Sir George Osborne was found not duly elected, and Thomas Howe was declared duly elected. The return of Sir George Rodney was held to be valid. A note by Sir Denis le Marchant, appended to Lord Orford's Memoirs, states that the expenses of the contest and petition cost Lord Spencer £70,000.

Footnote_116_116

John Wilkes was expelled from the House of Commons in January, 1764, and outlawed in the following August. He returned to England in February, 1768, and was at the bottom of the poll for the City (March 23). He headed the poll for Middlesex, March 28, 1768. His outlawry was reversed as technically illegal by the Court of King's Bench in the same year; but his two convictions for republishing No. 45 of the North Briton, and the Essay on Woman, were affirmed, and he was sentenced to two years' imprisonment. He was expelled the House February 3, 1769; re-elected February 16 and expelled February 27; re-elected March 16 and expelled March 17. At the election on April 13 he polled 1147 votes to the 296 of Colonel Luttrell; but the House resolved (April 15) that the election of Wilkes was void, and Luttrell duly elected. He was discharged from his imprisonment in 1770.

Footnote_117_117

Lord Baltimore was charged with decoying to his house a young milliner named Sarah Woodcock, and with rape. On February 12, 1768, he was committed for trial at the spring assizes at Kingston, and acquitted in the following March.

Footnote_118_118

"Il y a," writes Madame du Deffand to Walpole, speaking of La Princesse de Babylon (April 3, 1768), "quelques traits plaisants, mais c'est un mauvais ouvrage, et, contre son ordinaire, fort ennuyeux."

Footnote_119_119

During Gibbon's stay at Lausanne in 1763, the duke, brother of the reigning duke, occupied a villa called La Chablière, a short distance from the town.

Footnote_120_120

Sir Simeon Stuart, Bart., M.P. for the county of Southampton, died in November, 1779.

Footnote_121_121

The bulk of the letters for the years 1768 and 1769 relate to the pecuniary affairs of the Gibbon family. Mr. Gibbon was the owner of estates at Maple Durham, in the parish of Beriton near Petersfield, at Lenborough in Buckinghamshire, and a house, garden, and lands at Putney. He had also inherited shares in the New River Company, and other investments. But he had for years lived beyond his income, and it was only to the wreck of this fortune that the historian succeeded in 1770.

Footnote_122_122

On January 2, 1769, Wilkes was chosen alderman of the ward of Faringdon-Without against Bromwich, a paper-maker on Ludgate Hill.

Footnote_123_123

The Baron de Wentzel was the most famous oculist of the day, and the discoverer of operations for cataract. He died in London in 1790.

Footnote_124_124

In 1769 John Baker Holroyd purchased from Lord de la Warr the estate of Sheffield Place in Sussex.

Footnote_125_125

Richard Cambridge (1717-1802) married in 1741 Miss Trenchard, and in 1751 settled at Twickenham in a villa which became the resort of many of the most distinguished men of the day. In 1751 he published the Scribleriad, a poem in six books, and from 1753 to 1756 wrote essays for the World. He was an intimate friend and old schoolfellow of Dr. Cooke, the father of Mrs. Way, sister-in-law to Mrs. Holroyd. Gibbon, accepting one of Mr. Cambridge's invitations to Twickenham, speaks of the Thames as an "amiable creature." On his way he was upset into the water, and obliged to return home. The ducking was, said Cambridge to Miss Burney, "God's revenge against conceit" (Madame d'Arblay, Diary and Letters, ii. 278).

Footnote_126_126

On October 2, 1769, the Annual Register notes that "part of the Russian fleet cast anchor at the mouth of the Humber. The whole fleet, consisting of twenty ships of the line, is to rendezvous at Spithead, where one or two straggling ships are already arrived. This fleet was separated in a storm, but has received no considerable damage."

Footnote_127_127

The letters signed "Junius" began to appear in the Public Advertiser on January 21, 1769: the last was published on January 21, 1772. The letter to which Gibbon alludes is that dated December 19, 1769, addressed to the king. "The prætorian bands, enervated and debauched as they were, had still strength enough to awe the Roman populace; but when the distant legions took the alarm, they marched to Rome and gave away the empire." The point of the allusion is the case of Major-General Gansel (September 21, 1769), who, after being arrested for debt, was rescued by a sergeant and file of musqueteers, acting under command of an officer of the Guards.

Footnote_128_128

Gibbon and Sir Richard Worsley were endeavouring to obtain for M. Deyverdun a tutorship. He eventually went abroad with the young Stanhope, afterwards Lord Chesterfield.

Footnote_129_129

Probably Mr. Jolliffe, M.P. for Petersfield, and a country neighbour of Gibbon. He married, in November, 1769, the only daughter and heiress of Sir R. Hylton, Bart., of Hylton Castle, Durham.

Footnote_130_130

On the 9th of January, 1770, the Earl of Chatham returned to public life, from which he had retired in October, 1768. His reappearance, and his attacks upon the Government, determined the Duke of Grafton, who had succeeded him as Prime Minister, to resign office. On January 28, Lord North, who was already Chancellor of the Exchequer, accepted the post of First Lord of the Treasury, which he held for eleven years.

Footnote_131_131

On March 14 the Lord Mayor (Beckford) presented to the King at St. James's "an Address, Remonstrance, and Petition of the Lord Mayor, aldermen, and livery of the city of London," praying for the dissolution of Parliament as not representing the people, and for the removal of "evil ministers." On March 15 a motion was carried by 271 to 108 for a copy of the Remonstrance to be laid on the table of the House. On March 19 it was resolved by 284 to 127 that the Remonstrance tended to disturb the peace of the kingdom. Beckford died June 21, 1770.

Footnote_132_132

The Spring Gardens at Vauxhall (properly Fulke's Hall, the manor of Fulke de Breauté) were formed in the reign of Charles II. From 1732 onwards, under the management of Jonathan Tyers, the music, vocal and instrumental, and the masquerades, or Ridottos al fresco, attracted the fashionable world of London. The gardens were closed in 1859. The name of their enterprising manager is preserved in Tyers Street.

Footnote_133_133

Arabella Mallet, a daughter of David Mallet's second wife, married Captain Williams, of the royal engineers. The second Mrs. Mallet was Lucy, daughter of Lewis Elstob, steward to the Earl of Carlisle.

Footnote_134_134

Anthony Addington (1713-1790), father of the Prime Minister, was originally a physician at Reading. In London he became Chatham's doctor, and was in 1788, after his retirement from practice, consulted on the condition of George III., whose early recovery he alone predicted.

Footnote_135_135

Madame Celesia's play of Almida, acted at Drury Lane.

Footnote_136_136

The Ridotto al fresco was introduced at Vauxhall in 1732. The word is said to be derived from the Latin reductus, and to mean "music reduced to a full score." It came to mean an entertainment of music and dancing, and was used as a synonym for masquerades. Bramston, in The Man of Taste, speaks of the way in which the use of a foreign word sanctioned things which in plain English would have seemed objectionable —

"In Lent, if masquerades displease the town,Call 'em ridottos, and they still go down."

The word survived in the Redoutensaal of Vienna and the Redoutentänze of famous composers. Other authorities derive the use of the word from the sense in which it is employed by Dante, i. e. a "shelter," or "place of refuge." Hence it came to mean a "place of convivial meeting." In Udino's Italian-French-German Dictionary (Frankfurt, 1674) the German equivalent is given as Spielhaus. The transition from this to "ball-room" is not difficult. Byron in Beppo correctly defines the popular meanings of the word —

"They went to the Ridotto – 'tis a hallWhere people dance and sup, and dance again;Its proper name, perhaps, were a masked ball,But that's of no importance to my strain."

Footnote_137_137

Ralph Verney, Viscount Fermanagh, and second Earl Verney in the Peerage of Ireland, formerly M.P. for Carmarthen, was at this time M.P. for Buckinghamshire. At his death, in 1791, the title became extinct.

Footnote_138_138

On March 14, 1771, the House of Commons ordered that the printer of the London Evening Post be taken into the custody of the sergeant-at-arms. He was arrested by the messenger of the House under the Speaker's warrant; but was discharged from custody, and the messenger committed, by the city magistrates. For this breach of privilege Alderman Richard Oliver, M.P. for the City, was committed to the Tower by order of the House of Commons, March 25, 1771. Thu Lord Mayor, Brass Crosby, was committed on March 27.

Footnote_139_139

The Soho masquerades were given at Carlisle House by Mrs. Theresa Cornelys, whom Walpole calls "the Heidegger of the age." It was here that, the year before, the Duke of Gloucester appeared as Edward IV. with Lady Waldegrave as Elizabeth Woodville.

Footnote_140_140

Sir John Dalrymple published in 1771 the two first volumes of his Memoirs of Great Britain and Ireland. His style was parodied by Dr. Johnson, who said, "Nothing can be poorer than his mode of writing; it is the mere bouncing of a schoolboy!"

Footnote_141_141

Mr. Holroyd owned property in Ireland, and at Greave Hall, near Ferrybridge, in Yorkshire.

Footnote_142_142

William Robertson (1721-1793) published in 1758 his History of Scotland during the Reigns of Queen Mary and James VI., and in 1769 his History of the Reign of the Emperor Charles the Fifth.

Footnote_143_143

Lieutenant-Colonel Nugent, of the 1st Foot Guards, son to Viscount Clare, and groom of the bedchamber to the king, died at Bath, April 26, 1771. The Eliots were connected with Lord Clare through the Craggs family.

Footnote_144_144

The Hon. John Damer, eldest son of Lord Milton, afterwards created Earl of Dorchester. His mother was Lady Caroline Sackville, daughter of the first Duke of Dorset, and sister of the then existing Duke; married, in 1742, to Joseph Damer, Lord Milton.

Footnote_145_145

Denham, Bucks, built in 1667 by Sir Roger Hill, came to Lewis Way through his marriage with Abigail Locke, Sir Roger's granddaughter. Lewis Way, who died January 24, 1771, left by his first wife one son, Benjamin, who succeeded to Denham, and one daughter, Abigail, wife of J. B. Holroyd. By his second wife he left another son, Gregory Lewis Way, the translator of Fabliaux; or, Tales abridged from French Manuscripts of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries (edited by George Ellis, and published in two volumes in 1796-1800), who is more than once mentioned in these letters. Denham Place was the "pastoral retreat" of Sir Humphrey Davy.

Footnote_146_146

Lord Henley, M.P. for the county of Southampton, succeeded his father as second and last Earl of Northington in January, 1772. At the election to fill this vacancy Sir Henry Paulet St. John was elected.

Footnote_147_147

Caroline Matilda, posthumous child of Frederick, Prince of Wales, was born in July, 1751. She married in October, 1766, Christian VII., King of Denmark. Before her departure from England, her portrait was painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds, who complained that she was so constantly in tears that he could do justice neither to her nor to himself. The marriage proved unhappy. Her husband appears to have been a low brute, whose excesses impaired whatever mind he originally possessed. The queen, on her side, was guilty, at the least, of imprudences which were used against her by her enemies. During his travels, the king had made a favourite of a young physician named Struensee, who practically became Prime Minister, and, with his friend Brandt, governed Denmark. The Queen Dowager, Juliana Maria, stepmother of the king, placed herself, with her son Frederick, at the head of the malcontents. In January, 1772, Struensee and Brandt were arrested, and, after a protracted inquiry, executed in the following April. The queen was imprisoned at the Castle of Cronenbourg. From this prison she was released by the intervention of her brother, George III., and passed the few remaining years of her life at Zell, in Hanover, where her great-grandmother, Sophia Dorothea, had died in captivity. There she died in 1775, at the age of twenty-four.

Footnote_148_148

The Princess Dowager (1719-1772), youngest daughter of Frederick II., Duke of Saxe Gotha, widow of Frederick, Prince of Wales, mother of George III. and the Queen Caroline of Denmark, died at Carlton House on February 8, 1772.

Footnote_149_149

Either Joseph Cradock's adaptation of Voltaire's play Les Scythes, acted at Covent Garden under the title of Zobeïde, with a prologue by Goldsmith, or Cumberland's Fashionable Lover, as acted at Drury Lane. Both plays were published early in 1772.

Footnote_150_150

The History of the Famous Preacher, Friar Gerund de Campazas, otherwise Gerund Zotes. London, 1772. 2 vols., 8vo.

Footnote_151_151

George Wilbraham, of Delamere Lodge, Cheshire.

Footnote_152_152

Godfrey Bagnal Clarke, M.P. for Derbyshire, who had made the tour of Italy at the same time as Gibbon.

Footnote_153_153

The name by which Mr. Holroyd's son called himself.

Footnote_154_154

Colonel Isaac Barré (1726-1802), succeeded Lord Fitzmaurice as M.P. for Chipping Wycombe in 1761. He afterwards sat for Calne. He had served under Wolfe at Quebec, and appears in West's famous picture of the death of Wolfe. At the battle he lost his left eye, and in his picture by Sir Joshua Reynolds the right side of his face is turned towards the spectator. He was a prominent opponent of Lord North, and held office under the first Pitt, and subsequently in the Rockingham and Shelburne administrations.

Footnote_155_155

The Duke of Cumberland married, in October, 1771, Mrs. Horton, a daughter of Simon Luttrell, Lord Irnham (afterwards Earl of Carhampton), "a young widow of twenty-four, with the most amorous eyes in the world, and eyelashes a yard long." The Duke of Gloucester, a few months later, avowed his clandestine marriage with Maria, an illegitimate daughter of Sir Edward Walpole, and widow of the second Earl of Waldegrave. The Royal Marriage Bill was brought in, in consequence of these marriages, on February 20, 1772, and became law in the following March.