ment, and more especially the House of Commons, had generally made its voice heard with authority and effect. He denied that his motion had been vaguely and obscurely worded, it was intended to put an end to 'offensive war,' and of this the Government had given no assurance, so their hands must be tied. He attempted to oblige Dundas and Rigby to vote with him, reminding them of their late declarations respecting the war. If he might borrow an allusion from the sacred text he should say that they, as well as many other members of the House, had received the gift of tongues. Cloven tongues had alighted upon them. Not, indeed, tongues of sincerity and truth, but double tongues, one for Parliament, the other for private society.

Lord North made a long and able reply and, referring to Conway's reproach of the cloven tongues,' declared, 'I do not wish for the support of any such double-tongued senators. I desire to stand this night on the merits of my cause.' He expressed his willingness to resign should the House have withdrawn its confidence from him, thanking God that 'mere disgrace, in the ministerial sense of the term,' constituted no crime. Soon after one o'clock in the morning, after an all-night debate, 234 voted for Conway, 215 adhered to Lord North, and Conway, now completely master of the deliberations of the House on the subject of America,' proposed and carried two addresses to the king, one to stop the prosecution of the war, another to declare all who advised or prosecuted the continuance of the war, enemies of the throne. The king was enraged with Conway, whom earlier in the year he had intended making Commander-in-chief. Selwyn wrote to Lord Carlisle,1 on the 13th of March: Conway was at the Levee yesterday, and scarce noticed; the king talked

1 Selwyn's correspondence is among the MSS. of the Earl of Carlisle (Hist. MSS. Com. Rep. xv., App. vi.).

S

and laughed a great deal with both Rigby and the Advocate, who were on each side of Conway.'

On the 20th of March, Lord North, much to the king's chagrin, unexpectedly resigned; 'The old ministry is at an end,' wrote Selwyn, and of what materials the new one will be composed, the Lord knows.' But Walpole was happy; 'I can only say, with a change in a Scripture phrase, This is not the Lord's doing, but the Commons', and it is marvellous in our eyes!' Seven days later, the new ministry formed by a combination of the parties of Rockingham and Shelborne came into office, Conway having been made Commander-in-chief, with a seat in the Cabinet. All went smoothly until Rockingham died on the 1st of July. George was delivered from the Whigs, and Shelborne was made Prime Minister. Fox, Burke, and Lord John Cavendish resigned, refusing to serve under him, and went into Opposition. Both Conway and the Duke of Richmond laboured to prevent disunion, imploring harmony till the peace with America should be established, but in vain. Ten days later Fox was attacking Conway in the House, calling him an innocent who knew nothing, thought nothing of men, but looked to measures, and had wrought great good and great evil.' Conway avowed it was time he looked to measures not men, and summed up his own political creeds under four headings; the reduction of the power of the Crown; public economy; the independence of America, and the independence of Ireland. By these tests he desired to be tried, and if he abandoned them, to be condemned.

He managed to keep his uneasy seat in the Cabinet until February 1783, when the ministry resigned. In the December following, Pitt accepted office as first Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer. Fox was in opposition, and Conway supported Fox, taunting Pitt in January 1784, and stating that the Government was corrupt.

Finally, in the following March, Parliament was dissolved as a result of Fox's motion for an address to the Crown for Pitt's dismissal. Conway's political life was finished, he resigned his military command and retired to Park Place, keeping only his governorship of Jersey.

Meanwhile, Lord Hertford, one of the "ancient, most domestic ornaments" of the court, who had held the white wand of Chamberlain during more than fifteen years, and whose presence in the circle seemed, from long habit, almost essential to its very existence,' 1 had of course disappeared from court under the changed administration of March 1782. Lord Hertford is delivered up at discretion,' wrote Selwyn to Lord Carlisle, either he or his son, Isaac [Lord Beauchamp], must be sacrificed. But his lordship has not been thought the father of the faithful, or so himself. Their trimming has released his M[ajesty] from any obligations to protect them.' Already Hertford and his wife had attempted to make friends with the Opposition. Thus Selwyn wrote in the beginning of March, Poor Lady H[ertfor]d['s] civilities in inviting so many of the Opposition to her Ball afford a great deal of mirth. Charles [Fox] did not go . . . although invited in so distinguishing a manner.'

Within eight months Lady Hertford was dead. She had been nursing her grandson, Lord Beauchamp's son,2 at Ditton, and caught a violent cold. On Wednesday, the 6th of November, she came to London on his account, and not her own,' was not considered dangerously ill as late as Friday night, but on Saturday she was in extreme danger, and on Sunday, the 10th of November, she died between 5 and 6 o'clock in the evening. Her life,' wrote George Selwyn, has been sacrificed to her affection for that child.' There was no one,' he continues, more ready to do a kind

1 Wraxall, Memoirs, ii. 275.

6

Afterwards third Marquess of Hertford. (See infra.)

office, and no one ever showed me more civility than she did. I have had no particulars of the manner in which Lord Hertford supports this misfortune, but I should imagine with great difficulty, for to him it must be irreparable. Lord Dartmouth has indeed been assisted so much by his religion [as I hear] that, under the loss of a favourite son, he has been resigned. I do not doubt of the cause nor of the effect. I am only afraid that, in a similar case, I should want that and much more to make it tolerable to me.' 'His [Lord Hertford's] loss is beyond measure,' wrote Horace Walpole. 'She was not only the most affectionate wife, but the most useful one, and almost the only person I ever saw that never neglected or put off or forgot anything that was to be done. She was always proper, either in the highest life or in the most domestic. Her good humour made both sit easy; to herself only she gave disquiet by a temper so excessively affectionate.' Already, before the blow had actually fallen, Hertford had written to Walpole, With a dagger in my heart, which nothing in the world now can extract, I am determined to exert all my feeble power to tell you, who loved my dearest and beloved Lady Hertford, that I am upon the point of losing her, the best woman, the best friend, and best wife that ever existed. Do not make me any answer, or pity me. I am not able to bear even the condolence of a friend.'

In the new Parliament of the spring of 1784, whereas General Conway retired from office, his brother, Lord Hertford, was 'tricked out of his seat,' and in this 'a royal finger. . . too evidently tampered, as well as singularly and revengefully.' Lord Hertford had five sons in that Parliament, yet he himself could not in his old age put off his courtier ways, and in June 1784 he seems to have been hankering after his old office of Lord Chamberlain. Walpole wrote to General Conway, with a vast fortune Lord

Hertford might certainly do what he would, and if, at his age, he can wish for more than that fortune will obtain, I may pity his taste or temper; but I shall think that you and I are much happier who can find enjoyments in an humbler sphere, nor envy those who have no time for trifling.' Nine years later Hertford was still looking for titles, ribands, offices of no business which anybody can fill.' Thus, in June 1798, Walpole again wrote to Conway, 'How can love of money, or the still vainer of all vanities, ambition of wearing a high, but most insignificant office [that of Lord Chamberlain] . . . tempt a very old man who loves his ease and his own way, to stoop to wait like a footman behind a chair, for hours, and in a court whence he had "been cast ignominiously "'? In July the patience of the old courtier was rewarded by his creation as Earl of Yarmouth and Marquess of Hertford. He enjoyed his title for nearly a year, dying, at the age of seventy-six, on the 14th of June 1794, at the house of his daughter, the Countess of Lincoln, at Putney, as the result of a mortification following on a slight hurt he received while riding.1 A year later his brother, who had been created Field-Marshal Conway in October 1793,2 died suddenly at Park Place between four and five o'clock on the morning of the 9th of June 1795. He was seventyfive years of age. The cause of his death was cramp in the stomach caused by his imprudence in exposing himself to cold and damp. Walpole, who outlived both brothers, passes by their deaths unnoticed in his letters.

Thus the tale of their lives is ended, and there is left only the task of considering the truth of the statements made hypothetically before the tale was told. In Lord Hertford there is, it seems, little that we can admire, even though

1 Gentleman's Magazine, 1794.

2 Walpole, Letters, xv. 259-60. 'Conway must needs go and kiss hands for his idle truncheon.'