The Third George: (Georgian Series) (21 page)

‘Lord Bute feels that your services could be invaluable.’

‘And since Your Majesty is in agreement with him I offer them with all my heart.’

‘His Majesty and I agree that it is necessary to get these essential matters passed through the Commons and the Lords. At the moment there is great opposition. This must be wiped out. We must have a majority vote in favour of the peace.’

‘It is not an impossible achievement.’

‘We have powerful enemies.’

Mr Fox smiled what George thought of as the foxy smile.

‘We can secure their support in the time-honoured way.’

‘And, that?’

‘Bribes, Your Majesty. Bribes.’

‘Bribes! But this is something I cannot countenance.’

‘Then the measures will be defeated, and I can be of no use to you. But if Your Majesty and you, my lord, ask me to bring these measures safely through I tell you I can do it. And I give you the blunt remedy. Bribes!’

The King had turned away; Bute was watching him uneasily. Fox shrugged his shoulders.

‘Your Majesty and you, my lord, cannot consider bribes? Then I can only say that I can be of no use to you. You will understand that in coming to your side I shall be in opposition to my old friends.’

‘Unpopularity is the price we must all pay for parliamentary services,’ said Bute bitterly.

‘Not all, my lord. Consider Mr Pitt. He cannot move through the City without a crowd of worshippers following his coach. They are ready to kneel and kiss the hem of his garment.’

George frowned. He did not like blasphemy.

‘As for myself,’ went on Fox, ‘I am ready to face unpopularity if I can do His Majesty essential service.’

Bute said quickly: ‘His Majesty and I are eager to see this peace treaty carried through, no matter at what cost.’

He waited with great apprehension for the King to speak, but George said nothing.

The King was depressed and disillusioned. His head ached; he wanted to get rid of Mr Fox. He was certain that that odious man was laughing at him, jeering at him for having lost Sarah; he would go away and whisper about him to that wife of his, Sarah’s sister, who was a little like Sarah.

Bute was watching him anxiously, thinking: He has such strange moods nowadays. One can never be sure what he is thinking.

But Fox was preparing to take his leave and to throw himself into his new task as leader of the House of Commons who knew exactly how to administer those bribes which would get unpopular measures passed through Parliament.

*

Mr Fox was true to his word. He set about his new duties with alacrity. Bribes were offered in cash and in the form of titles; and places in the Government were given in order to form one which would be solidly behind Fox and obey his commands to vote as performing dogs at the crack of the whip.

The Dukes of Devonshire, Newcastle and Grafton were expelled from their offices to make way for complacent men; and by December Fox was ready to go into the attack. Crowds surrounded the Houses of Parliament knowing what issues were at stake. Pitt was still the hero of the piece; Bute the black-hearted villain.

In the Lords Bute had to defend Fox’s policy; and in the Commons Fox had to face Pitt, who had arrived, swathed in bandages, wrapped in flannel, suffering hideously from his old complaint of gout.

Pitt harangued the Government for three hours; he pointed out that their enemies had not yet been beaten; that if peace were made now they would recover and get to their feet again. Peace was a danger to England. Pitt’s eloquence was, as ever, spellbinding, but his gout got the better of him and before he had delivered the final summing up he was obliged to retire to his seat. Then Fox rose and with reasoning, cold against Pitt’s heat, logical against emotionalism, he defended the Government’s
policy for peace. France and Spain had agreed to great concessions, and England was suffering from acute taxation.

Listening, Pitt seemed to sense defeat; in any case he was in agony. While Fox was speaking he got up and hobbled from the House, thus leaving his supporters without a leader.

The motion was carried for the Government – 319 to 65.

A triumph for the Government, for Fox’s policy and for peace.

*

It was hardly to be expected that Pitt’s supporters would quietly accept this state of affairs. It was known how the Government majority had been achieved. Bribery! was whispered throughout the streets; and the mob marched carrying a jackboot and petticoat which they ceremoniously hung on a gibbet.

The feeling against Bute was rising. He was the arch enemy, the Scot who had dared to try to rule England, the lover of the Princess Dowager who with her ruled the King, and therefore ruled England.

Even the King came in for his share of criticism and his popularity waned alarmingly.

When he went to call on his mother, crowds following his carriage shouted. ‘Going to have your napkins changed, George?’ And: ‘When are you going to be weaned?’

George did not like it. It wounded him deeply; when he came back to his apartments he would weep and his headaches would begin; he felt that everyone was against him.

When he could escape to Richmond, to the quiet life with Charlotte, he felt better. But he could not be a King and live the quiet life of a country gentleman.

Bute was feeling ill; he had lost his swagger. It was an uncomfortable feeling, every time he went out, wondering whether the mob were going to set on him and murder him.

Power such as this had been his goal; now it was his it was very different from the dream.

And then John Wilkes went into the attack.

*

John Wilkes was the son of a malt distiller of Clerkenwell, who had started a paper, in conjunction with a friend named Charles Churchill, in which he determined to attack the anomalies of the day. He had a seat in Parliament and was an ardent supporter of Pitt. As a man who must be in the thick of any controversy,
the conflict between Pitt and the Government, under Fox’s leadership, was irresistible to him.

Wilkes was an extremely ugly man; his features were irregular and his squint diabolical; to counterbalance this he had developed a very keen wit and courtly manners, and with these he endeavoured to bring down what he called the unworthy mighty from their seats. The first of these was of course Lord Bute.

As a young man Wilkes had been sent on the Grand Tour; on his return his parents had wished him to marry Mary Mead the daughter of a London grocer – a very rich one – and he had obliged. The marriage was a failure. Poor Mary could not keep pace with her husband’s wit and brilliance. Wilkes came well out of the affair for he acquired not only a large slice of his wife’s fortune but the custody of his daughter, Mary, who was the one person in his life for whom he cared.

His great energy had had to find an outlet and he joined societies of ill repute such as the Hell Fire Club and Sir Francis Dashwood’s club, the latter known as the Order of St Francis. The motive of these clubs was profligacy and obscenity, all to be conducted in the most witty manner. The members of the Order of St Francis met in a ruined Cistercian Abbey at Medmenham and there indulged in practices with which they tried to shock each other, by mocking the Church, and they were said on one occasion to have given the sacrament to a monkey.

Membership of this society had brought Wilkes influential friends, among whom were Pitt’s supporters, Sir Francis Dashwood and Lord Sandwich, and through them Wilkes became the High Sheriff of Buckinghamshire; and after an unsuccessful attempt to enter Parliament for Berwick-on-Tweed he was elected for Aylesbury.

He was not a great success in Parliament, lacking the necessary eloquence; but his wit and humour secured him many friends; he was a most entertaining companion; he even made fun of his ugliness. He had never, he said, like Narcissus, hung over a stream and admired his countenance; one would not find him stealing sly glances at a mirror, a habit he had noticed among those to whom Nature had been a little more kind when dealing out good features. He made a cult of his ugliness. He was extremely virile; he had a deep need of sexual satisfaction; and in a short time he had gone through his fortune and his wife’s
and was looking for a means of making money.

He discovered a talent for journalism; it was an exciting profession. To express one’s views in print, to hear them quoted, to be a power in the land – that was exactly what Wilkes wanted.

If there was one man in the country whom Wilkes wished to send toppling from his pedestal, that man was Lord Bute. Bute was all that he was not – handsome, pompous and a lover to whom the Dowager Princess of Wales had been faithful for years; Wilkes was envious; he was cleverer than Bute, but Bute was a rich man and he a poor one. Bute had become head of the Government and he, brilliant Wilkes, was a failure in Parliament.

And now Bute was forcing his desires on the country and he had done it through bribes. Here was a subject for a journalist.

One of the papers,
The Monitor
, was criticizing the Government, but it was a scrappy little sheet, hardly worthy to be called a newspaper; and in retaliation Lord Bute had founded two papers,
The Briton
and
The Auditor,
and had set up the novelist Tobias Smollett as editor of the former. Under brilliant editorship
The Briton
was attracting some attention and was helping to put the case for Bute, who was becoming less unpopular as a result. This was something which Wilkes could not endure. He went to his crony Charles Churchill, a man who lived as disreputably as Wilkes himself, had separated from his wife as Wilkes had, and had made some reputation as a poet.

‘We should found a rival paper to
The Briton
,’ he suggested. ‘In it we could keep the country informed on Mr Bute.’

‘What could we tell them that they don’t already know?’

That made Wilkes laugh. ‘We’ll find plenty, never fear. Bribes! And what a gallant gentleman! I’ll swear the people would like to know how very well he performs in the Princess’
s
bed.’

‘Wilkes, you’re a devil,’ cried Churchill.

‘And doing you the honour of accepting you as the same, my friend. Now to business.’

In a very short time they were ready to bring out their paper.

‘What shall we call it?’ Churchill wanted to know.

Wilkes was thoughtful; then a lewd smile spread across his ugly face. ‘Why not
The
North
Briton
? After all it is going to
be dedicated to the destruction of a gentleman from across the Border. Yes, that is it.
The North Briton
.’

And so
The North Briton
came into existence.

From its first number it was a success. There was nothing the people liked better than to see the great ridiculed, and when it was done with wit and humour it appealed more than ever.

Wilkes saw that it was presented, and people were buying it in their thousands. Fox was represented as Bute’s faithful henchman. They had brought about their measures and how? Wilkes was hiding nothing. He had the information at his fingertips. He knew how the peace treaty had been brought safely through the Commons and Lords. Bribery! Bribery and Corruption was something which Wilkes and Churchill in
The North Briton
were going to expose to public view. Wilkes and Churchill were for Liberty. Freedom of action; freedom of speech. That was what they stood for; and they were no respecters of persons either. No one was going to be considered if he offended against the laws of decency laid down by Wilkes and Churchill. And Bribery was an offence which made them cry out Shame.

But the chief butt was the Scotsman. Very, very handsome, he was. He had a wife and numerous children. But he still had time and energy to serve the Princess Dowager. Did the people realize they had a boudoir genius in their midst?

Another method of attack was a more serious one. George III was likened to Edward III, the Dowager Princess of Wales to Queen Isabella. And Bute had to have a part in this drama so he was of course Roger Mortimer.

Together Wilkes and Churchill concocted a parody of Mount-fort’s
Fall of Mortimer
which they published with a dedication to that brilliant bedchamber performer, Lord Bute. The sales of
The North Briton
shot up; and Wilkes realized that this was the most amusing, the most exciting and the quickest way to change his financial position. It had been a stroke of genius to start the paper. All he had to remember was that they must stop at nothing; no one should be safe from their vitriolic pens. The simple fact was that the people loved scurrilous gossip; and the more shocking and the higher placed the people involved, the more the public liked it.

‘They shall have what they want,’ sang out Wilkes; and proceeded to give it to them.

*

Henry Fox, seeing the way trends were going – and by allying himself with Bute he was naturally catching some of the odium which was showered on that nobleman – saw no reason why he should continue in office.

Caroline was urging him to get out. He had promised, had he not, that as soon as he could do so, he would. He had told her that this last little fling was too important to be ignored. Well, he had done what was asked of him; he had shown them how to carry through the terms which Pitt had so violently rejected, so what further purpose could be served by remaining in office?

Walking in the grounds of Holland House, his arm through that of his wife, revelling in the signs of spring all around them, Henry Fox told her that she was right. He agreed with her.

Now that that odious man Wilkes had come out with his scandal sheet, no one was spared – certainly not those in high places. The Government was going to sway to the attack of ridicule.

If he were going to get out in that blaze of glory, then he should do so now, and the price of past services would be a title.

‘What do you think of Lord Holland, my dear?’ he asked, smiling complacently about the park.

‘I think it would be ideal,’ Caroline told him; ‘but only if you leave the Government and come into retirement so that we can spend more time together which would give me great pleasure and enable you to escape from the mudslinging of that hideous Wilkes, the general scorn with which the Government is beginning to be regarded, and the growing unpopularity of my Lord Bute.’