moment, but the Whigs, at the instigation of the Pelhams, signed a round-robin against him, and the King did not choose to try the experiments which his Grandson is about, nor was that time by any means ripe, I believe, for them, though Lord Granville thought otherwise. Lord Granville stood high both in the eyes of the King and the Publick, and could not have been passed by. He was the opposite of Sir Robert Walpole. He had been bred a Tory, was a great scholar, brilliant, witty, despised the House of Commons, loved society when he shone, could not stoop to cultivate. He was ambitious, but with a mixture of love of ease and of letters. He looked to the crown, and to the brilliancy of his own actions for support.[1] He had served in foreign embassies,[2] when very young, was the favourite of the favourite, Lord Sunderland. He conceived he had slept in the bosom of the King (his own phrase). But he was fundamentally mistaken. The King had not courage or activity or sufficient knowledge of the country or perhaps of mankind to take such a line. Lord Hervey offered to support Lord Granville, with Sir Robert Walpole's friends; Mr. Wilmington the same; but the discordant temper of Lord Bath interfered, whose meanness and revenge always equalled with his irresolution. Lord Granville always said Lord Bath ruined everything; and it was true, for all Sir Robert Walpole's friends hated the Pelhams, and would have supported Lord Granville; but he would not quit Lord Bath, whose head went perpetually wrong.[3] The King also was dismayed by the general combination which took place among his servants against Lord Granville. They all went and resigned. Lord Granville followed them into the closet, and finding from the King's first sentence that he was
- ↑ "Lord Granville's maxim was 'Give any man the Crown on his side and he can defy everything.'" H. Walpole to Sir Horace Mann, November 26th, 1744. Correspondence, i. 330.
- ↑ Sunderland sent him as Ambassador to Sweden in 1719.
- ↑ See Sir Charles Hanbury's verses. (Note by Lord Shelburne.)
October, owing to the death of his mother, a Peeress in her own right. In November he had to resign the Secretaryship of State through the intrigues of the Pelhams. In 1746, during the Rebellion, when the so-called "Short-lived Administration" was formed, and in 1757, when another attempt was made to get rid of the Newcastle connection, Lord Granville seemed again near to obtaining the leading position in the State.
