the death of Dr. Cornwallis.[1] He also requested the King as a personal favour to make Thomas Townshend a peer, who now accordingly became Lord Sydney.[2] For himself he asked nothing. Lord Grantham, Sir Joseph Yorke, and the Chancellor received pensions. Against these a great outcry was raised, but it is difficult to understand on what grounds, unless a general condemnation be pronounced upon all pensions. The Chancellor had held the seals since 1778. He was to receive a pension of £2800 a year. A far shorter term of service entitles Lord Chancellors to £5000 a year at the present day. Sir Joseph Yorke had been Ambassador at the Hague since 1752, and Lord Grantham, besides his brief tenure of the Foreign Office, had been Ambassador at Madrid for the eight years previous to 1782, and on the declaration of war refused any longer to accept the salary to which he was still legally entitled.[3] A far shorter term of service entitles a diplomatist of the present day to a pension of £1700;[4] and the amount to be received by Lord Grantham and Sir Joseph Yorke was £2000. To the arguments that these grants of money were contrary to Burke's Bill, which precluded the King from giving any pension larger than £300 a year, the answer was obvious. Burke's Bill had not yet come into operation, and when it did, pensions for diplomatic service were expressly exempted from its operation, while it
- ↑ The King considered Dr. Shipley's opinions to be tainted with Socinianism, and suspected Lord Shelburne's recommendation for preferment on the same ground. He also feared that Fox would make the same recommendation, and he determined at all hazards to beat both the outgoing and incoming Ministers over the appointment. How he succeeded in doing so and how Dr. Moore, Bishop of Bangor, got appointed is related in Wraxall, Memoirs, iii. 347. See also Ailesbury Papers. Hist. M.SS. Com. Reports, 15th Report, Appendix, pt. vii. p. 277.
- ↑ Shelburne to the King, February 1783. Walpole, Journals, ii. 593.
- ↑ See Pitt's speech. Parliamentary History, xxiii. 588-590.
- ↑ 22, 23 Vic. c. 43, s. 7. Walpole (Journals, ii. 595) states that Lord Grantham already enjoyed a pension of £3000. This however had not been granted to him, but to his father for two lives, many years before, and secured on the Irish establishment. Similarly Fox had inherited the Clerkship of the Pells in Ireland from his father, who in 1757 had received it for three lives. Being attacked on this subject during the debate, he defended this pension "as part of his fortune, no favour to him from the Crown, no boon from his present Majesty, or his Ministers, but a legacy left him by one of his relations." Parliamentary History, xxiii. 597. Lord Grantham could say exactly the same thing.
