CHATHAM 145 urging the arrest of the war with America. There seems Httle doubt but that, in 1778, he would, in spite of the unwillingness of George III, have become Prime Minister to endeavour to carry out some such course, without, however, any surrender of the British Sovereignty. To oppose such a surrender (which had been suggested), he, though greatly out of health, made his last speech, 7 Apr. 1778, when he fell back, in a fit,() and being carried a few days later to his own residence at Hayes, Kent, he d. there, 11 May, and was bur. 9 June 1778 in Westm. Abbey, in his 70th year-C') He w., 15 Nov. 1754, on his 46th birthday, Hester,(') sister of Richard, Earl Temple, only da. of Richard Grenville, of Wootton, by Hester, stio jure Viscountess Cobham. She was cr. Baroness Chatham, 4 Dec. 1761, as abovementioned. He d., as afsd., 11 May 1778. (^) Will pr. Aug. 1778. His widow d. as afsd., 2 Apr. 1803. (^) Copley's well-known picture, generally but erroneously called "the death of Chatham," represents this striking scene in the House of Lords. (•>) A funeral at the public expense, a vote of ^^20,000 to discharge his debts, and a pension of jr4,ooo a year annexed for ever to the Earldom of Chatham, were voted by Pari. (For a list of the peers who protested against this vote see vol. ii, p. 30, note "d," sub Bathurst). "The most noble and puissant Lord, William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, fe'c, C5c., was bur. from the Painted Chamber, at the expense of Pari., in the centre of the north cross of the Abbey." See Chester's IVestm. Abbey Registers, and .also Fun. Certif. at Coll. of Arms. (') " She seems to have possessed grace, virtue, and good sense in abundance, and the marriage proved to be one of unalloyed happiness and mutual affection." Horace Walpole calls her "A blameless woman strongly attached to her husband." " No man ever had a nobler or more devoted wife ... At Orwell there is a picture of her by Gainsborough, painted in 1747, with a pleasant rather than a beautiful face. There is another portrait at Chevening, painted in 1750, with auburn hair, long upper lip, and a nose slightly turned up; comely and intelligent, but no more." (Lord Rosebery's Chatham, 1910, p. 353). V.G. {^) " The head w.-is small, and the countenance thin, the nose was aquiline and long, the eye that of a hawk." When Pitt rose to power tlie great Frederick realised that a new planet had "swum into his ken," and said of England, " Enfin elle est accouch^e d'un homme." "I admired him," says Sir Philip Francis, "as a great, illustrious, faulty human being, whose character, like all the noblest works of human composition, should be determined by its excellencies, not its defects." Carlyle says of him, "Pitt, though nobly eloquent, is a man of action, not of speech: an authentically Royal kind of man," and coupling him with his contemporary, Frederick the Great, adds, " Two radiant kings, very shining men of action both." He was the greatest War Minister that England has seen or is likely to see. He founded the Ernpire, established the colonial system and realised that Ernpire's de- pendence on ssa-power. "The fleet," he finely said, "is our standing army." In these respects it is no flattery of him nor dispraise of them, to say that Disraeli, Chamber- lain and Mahan are but his pupils. If he was arrogant and boastful, greedy of power, and turgid in speech, such failings are more than offset by his burning patriotism, his scorn of" money, his chaste and temperate life. He w.as in all essentials a great man. Throughout his career he stood for England, and those who can feel pride in the deeds of their forebears and the ascendancy of our race, should venerate the name of Chatham. His Eariy Life and Connections, by Lord Rosebery, was pub. in 1910. V.G. »9
