that is, of attaining the long-desired peerage, by dancing attendance at Leicester-house.

On the sudden change which took place in 1755, he was restored to his old post, the treasurership of the navy, which, however, he lost the following year. At last the accession of George III. and the elevation of Lord Bute threw open a path to the peerage for him; and in 1761 his ambition was gratified by the title of Lord Melcombe. He did not long enjoy his baronial honours. He died on the 28th of July, 1762. He was married, but had no children. The bulk of his fortune went to a Mr Wyndham of Hammersmith.

Dodington was a contemptible fellow. He had indeed wit, eloquence, fortune, interest, but he had neither elevation of character, consistency of principle, nor steadiness of conduct. He broke with all parties, he was trusted by none, and he finally dwindled into the insignificance and contempt which he so well merited, and from which even his peerage could not save him. "In an age eminently selfish, and occupied exclusively with grovelling objects of ambition, Dodington shone conspicuous as the most intriguing, versatile, and shameless politician of his time." Pope frequently amused the town at Dodington's expense; and Sir Charles Hanbury Williams satirized him in a famous ballad, entitled, 'A Grub upon Bubb.' His house, however, was the resort of literary men of all parties; and he was on intimate terms with Fielding, Glover, Whitehead, Bentley, Voltaire, and Chesterfield. Yet his taste was outrageously bad. His state bed-chamber at Eastbury was hung with rich red velvet; his crest, an eagle supporting a hunting horn, cut out of gilt leather, was pasted on all the panels; and the bedside carpet was a splendid patchwork of his old embroidered pocketflaps and cuffs. The turf in front of his mansion at Hammersmith, subsequently called Brandenburgh-house, was ornamented with his crest in pebbles; he had a fire-place decorated with mock icicles; a purple and orange bed crowned by a dome of peacock's feathers; and a large obelisk, in the approach to his house, surmounted by an urn of bronze, containing the heart of his wife!

His 'Diary,' which was edited by Mr Wyndham, and given to the public in 1784, is a well-known work; he was the author of several other pieces, chiefly of a political nature, and some verses of a licentious character.

George, Lord Anson.

BORN A. D. 1697.-DIED A. D. 1762.

GEORGE ANSON was born in 1697, at Shrugborough manor, Staffordshire. He was the second son of William Anson, Esq. of Shrugborough. He entered early into the navy. In 1716 he served as second lieutenant under Sir John Norris, in the Baltic; and, in 1717 and 1718, under Sir George Byng, against the Spaniards. In his 27th year he was raised to the rank of post-captain, and was for a long time on the South Caroline station. When, in 1739, the ministry considered a rupture with Spain unavoidable, he was appointed to the command

of a fleet in the South seas, directed against the trade and the colonies of that nation.

The expedition consisted of five men-of-war and three smaller vessels, which carried 1400 men. With this squadron Anson left England on the 18th of September, 1740. He encountered, on leaving the straits of Le Maire, terrible storms, which prevented him doubling Cape Horn for three months. Separated from the rest of his squadron, he reached the island of Juan Fernandez, where three of his vessels rejoined him in a very miserable condition. After his men had rested, he proceeded to the coast of Peru, without waiting for the missing ships. Here he made several prizes, and captured and burnt the city of Paita. After a fruitless attempt to intercept the annual Manilla galleon, he found himself obliged to burn not only a great part of his booty, but all except one of his vessels, in order to equip that one, the Centurion, with which he made his retreat to Tinian, one of the Ladrones. Here the Centurion was blown out to sea, while the commander was on shore. The return of his ship, after nineteen days' absence, relieved him from his constrained inactivity; after some weeks spent in refitting, he sailed for Macao, where he formed a bold plan for taking the galleon of Acapulco. For this purpose, he spread the report of his having returned to Europe, but, in fact, directed his course to the Philippines, and cruised near the promontory Spiritu Santo. On the 20th of June one of the wished-for ships was descried. She was called the Nostra Senhora de Cabadonga, mounting forty guns. The treasure in silver specie and ingots, with the other effects on board, amounted to £315,000. The Centurion, though she mounted sixty guns, had but 227 men on board; and the Spaniard was full manned. An engagement ensued, in which the bravery and skill of the English prevailed against the superiority of numbers; after having sixty-seven men killed, the commander of the galleon struck his colours, and surrendered himself into Commodore Anson's hands, who lost only two men, and had only one lieutenant and sixteen private seamen wounded. He returned with his rich prize to Canton, where he put the treasure on board the Centurion, sold the Spanish hulk, and set sail for England. On his arrival at Spithead, in June, 1744, after near four years' absence, he found that the hand of Providence seemed still to protect him in a remarkable manner, having sailed in a fog through the midst of a French fleet then cruising in the channel. In short, throughout the whole of this remarkable voyage, he experienced the truth of the saying, which he afterwards chose for his motto, Nil est desperandum.'

Soon after his return he was appointed rear-admiral of the blue, and one of the lords of the admiralty. In April, 1745, he was made rearadmiral of the white; and, in July, 1746, vice-admiral of the blue. He was also chosen member of parliament for Heydon in Yorkshire. In the winter of that year he commanded the channel squadron; and had not the duke D'Anville's fleet, returning with disgrace from North America, been accidentally apprized of his station, his long and tempestuous cruise would probably have been attended with his usual success. However, in the ensuing summer he was once more crowned with wealth and conquest. Being on board the Prince George, in company with Rear-admiral Warren, and twelve ships more, off Cape Finisterre, on the 3d of May, 1747, they intercepted a powerful fleet

bound from France to the East and West Indies; and, after a sharp engagement, in which the French behaved with uncommon bravery, but were obliged to yield to superiority of numbers, took the whole fleet, consisting of six men-of-war and four East Indiamen. The speech of the French admiral, M. de la Jonquiere, on presenting his sword to the conqueror, deserves to be recorded: "Monsieur, vous avez vaincu l'Invincible, et la Gloire vous suit," pointing to the two ships named.

For these repeated services the king rewarded him with a peerage, on the 13th of June, by the title of Lord Anson, Baron of Soberton in Hants. On the 15th of July, in the same year, he was appointed viceadmiral of the red; and, on the death of Sir John Norris, he was made vice-admiral of England.

In April, 1748, his lordship married the honourable Miss Yorke, eldest daughter of the earl of Hardwicke. In May, the same year, he was appointed admiral of the blue; in which year he commanded the squadron that convoyed the king to and from Holland, and from this time constantly attended his majesty on his going abroad and on his return to England. In June, 1751, his lordship was appointed first lord of the admiralty; in which post he continued, with a very short intermission, till his death. In 1752 he was appointed one of the lords justices, during the absence of the king, and again in 1754. On the rupture with France, so active and spirited were his measures, that a fleet, superior to the enemy, was equipped and manned with amazing expedition. In 1758, being then admiral of the white, and having hoisted his flag on board the Royal George, he sailed from Spithead on the 1st of June with a formidable fleet, Sir Edward Hawke commanding under him; and, by cruising continually before Brest, he covered the descents that were made that summer at St Maloes, Cherbourg, &c. After this he was appointed admiral and commander-in-chief of his majesty's fleets.

The last service his lordship performed at sea was the convoying to England the queen of George III.; for which purpose he sailed from Harwich in the Charlotte yacht, on the 7th of August, 1761; and that day month, after a long and tempestuous voyage, landed the princess at the same place.

At length, having been some time in a languishing state of health, he was advised to try the Bath waters, from which he was thought to have received great benefit on former occasions. He remained at Bath during the winter of 1761, and part of the spring of 1762; but finding himself greatly exhausted, and unable to bear the fatigue of company, he retired to his seat at Moor Park, where he died in 1762.

James, Earl Waldegrave.

BORN A. D. 1715.-DIED A. D. 1763.

JAMES, second earl of Waldegrave, was the great-grandson of James II., by Arabella Churchill, sister of the great duke of Marlborough. His grandfather followed his royal master into exile, and died at Paris in 1689. His father, having returned to England, and embraced Protestantism in 1722, was employed in various foreign embassies, and

H

successively created Viscount Chewton, Earl of Waldegrave, and a knight of the Garter. The subject of this article succeeded to the family title in 1741; and, in 1743, notwithstanding his Jacobite connexions, was appointed lord of the bed-chamber by the personal favour of George II. "Such offices were then held in high estimation; they often led to favour and greatness. It was in the spirit of those times to be more greedy of imaginary honours than obsequious to real power. Noblemen of the first rank sought with avidity employments which their descendants regard with indifference, or reject with disdain, as badges of dependence rather than marks of distinction or importance.” Such is the observation of the editor of the noble lord's 'Memoirs,'' on the subject of Waldegrave's acceptance of a household-post in the service of George II. It is certain that such places, at that period, gave access to the king's presence, and opportunities of influence which they may not now present, but there are still aspirants for bed-chamber honours to be found within the circle of royalty.

On the death of Frederick, Prince of Wales, preceptors and governors for the young prince, afterwards George III., were chosen by the king, or rather by his ministers; but, says Waldegrave, "they had only the shadow of authority; and the two principal, the earl of Harcourt and the bishop of Norwich, were soon disgraced, because they attempted to form an interest independent of the mother, and presumed on some occasions to have an opinion of their own." It is not easy to decide which of the parties were in the wrong in this case. We are not distinctly informed what sort of independent interest the governor and preceptor attempted to form; we have no evidence that it was attempted to inspire the prince with any improper feelings towards his mother as far as the strict line of maternal authority, in such a case, could be supposed to extend. It was quite natural that the mother should dislike any interference whatever betwixt her and her son; but it is by no means so clear that such interference might not have become absolutely necessary. It would seem, from the whole tenor of the princess-dowager's conduct, that she did not rest satisfied with having the affections of her son, her great object was to obtain the government of him; and with this view she appears to have resorted to many very ungracious expedients. In Orford's Memoirs it is stated that she allowed Cresset, her confidant, "to deal out very ungracious epithets both on the governor and preceptor.' She went so far as to call Lord Harcourt a groom, and to apply the epithets bastard and atheist to the bishop, in the presence of a court-chaplain. On the other hand, it is proved that Harcourt was totally unqualified for the situation of governor to the young prince, and that the bishop of Norwich was equally unfit to be his preceptor. Melcombe, too, says that the princess always professed to him her total ignorance of the motives which induced the governor and preceptor to resign their charges; and it is to be borne in mind that they gave in their resignations without giving the princess any notice of their intentions, or of the charges which they meant to lay before the king. The heaviest of these charges was, that the subgovernor and sub-preceptor were secret Jacobites, and had endeavoured to instil their unconstitutional doctrines into the minds of their pupil. • Vol. i. p. 253.

"3

'London, 1821, 4to.

Memoirs, p. 36.

Certain it is that a book, in vindication of the arbitrary and illegal acts of the Stuarts, found its way into the young prince's hands without the knowledge of his preceptor. The king, however, was unmoved by their representations, and at once accepted their resignations.

On the removal of Lord Harcourt, Lord Waldegrave was appointed governor of the prince. He was favourably received by the princessdowager, and all went pretty smoothly on for three years. "I found," says he, "his royal highness uncommonly full of princely prejudices, contracted in the nursery, and improved by the society of bed-chamber women and pages of the backstairs." "As a right system of education,” his lordship continues, "seemed quite impracticable, the best that could be hoped for was to give him true notions of common things,-to instruct him by conversation rather than by books,-and sometimes, under the disguise of amusement, to entice him to the pursuit of more serious studies. The next point I laboured was, to preserve harmony and union in the royal family; and, having free access to the closet, I had frequent opportunities of doing good offices,-was a very useful apologist whenever his majesty was displeased with his grandson's shyness or want of attention; and never failed to notify even the most minute circumstance of the prince's behaviour which was likely to give satisfaction."

On the departure of the king for Hanover, in 1755, the princessdowager's dissatisfaction broke out. She was displeased because her husband's debts had not been paid by the nation; because his servants had not been brought into office; because she was not sufficiently consulted by ministers; because the duke of Cumberland, whom she always detested, was left in effect at the head of the regency; and, above all, because a project was formed by the king, while abroad, of marrying her son to a daughter of the duchess of Brunswick-Wolfenbuttel. In this state of feeling she made overtures, through Lord Bute, to Pitt and his friends, who engaged to support the princess and her son, and oppose the duke. His majesty, on his return, finding his grandson prejudiced against the marriage which he had projected for hiin, at once gave it up; but the princess pursued her factious hostility to the existing ministry, and began to fret at the presence of Lord Waldegrave in her household, suspecting him of giving intelligence of the proceedings and feelings at Leicester-house to Mr Fox, the avowed opponent of that party. "However," says Lord Waldegrave, "they could not find even the slightest pretence for showing any public marks of their displeasure; and, though some hard things were said to me in private, I always kept my temper, giving the severest answers in the most respectful language, and letting them civilly understand that I feared their anger no more than I deserved it; and, though it might be in their power to fret me, I was determined not to be in the wrong." It was the object of the mother to disgust Lord Waldegrave, or provoke him into some imprudent action, so as to oblige him to resign his office, and make way for her favourite, Lord Bute. She succeeded so far, as that Lord Waldegrave determined to solicit permission to retire "I had found little satisfaction," says he, " in my most honourable employment; and my spirits and patience were at length so totally exhausted, that I could have quitted her royal highness, and have given up all future hopes of court-preferment without the least uneasiness.