^{page 1 note 1} The Duke of Leeds was born Jan. 29, 1751, and was therefore at this time 23 years of age.

^{page 1 note 2} .Mr. Onslow was only son of the Right Honourable Arthur Onslow, Speaker of the House of Commons from 1727 to 1761. He was at this time Member for the county of Surrey and a Lord of the Treasury. He was created Baron Cranley, May 14, 1776, and succeeded to the title of Baron Onslow on October 9 in the same year. On June 19, 1801, he was created Viscount Cranley and Earl of Onslow.

^{page 1 note 3} Sir William Meredith, Baronet.—He was made Lord of the Admiralty in 1764 and resigned on the dismissal of the Eockingham Ministry. He was elected Member for Liverpool in 1768.

^{page 1 note 4} Thomas, fourth Duke of Leeds, born Nov. 6, 1713, was on Nov. 12, 1748, constituted Warden and Chief Justice in Eyre of all His Majesty's Forests, Chases, &c, south of Trent. On January 13, 1756, he resigned these offices and was appointed Cofferer of the Household; on April 14,1761, he resigned the office of Cofferer and was constituted Chief Justice in Eyre of all the Eoyal Forests north of Trent. Manwood, in his Treatise of the Forest Lawes, 1615, p. 230, says : “The office of the Lord Chiefe Justice of the Forest is a place both of great honour and of high authoritie, and the same place is to be executed by some greate Peere of the Realme that is alwais one of the King's most honourable Privie Councell. And then when any such noble person is made Lord Chiefe Justice in Eyre of the Forest by the King's especiall commission, hee hath by that as great authority as any other Justice in Eyre hath and more. For then hee may pnnish all trespassers of the forest according to the lawes of the Forests; and he may heare and determine all the claims of the liberties and franchises which lie within the Forest, as to have parks, warrens, and vivaries: and also of them which do claim to be quitt of assarts and purprestures, and of them which do claim leets, hundreds, felons' goods, waifes, and fugitives, and other liberties within the Forest : and likewise of them which do claim to kill hares and other beasts of the chase within the Forest. For by lawfull and good claimes men may justifie the doing of many things within the Forest which otherwise were unlawfull; but these claims must be such claims as have been allowed before the Chief Justice in Eyre within the time of prescription.” This post was now nothing more than a sinecure, and in 1789 became the subject of parliamentary investigation.

^{page 2 note 1} Thomas, afterwards first Earl of Chichester, was appointed Comptroller of His Majesty's Household, July 20, 1765; which post he resigned in 1774. He was appointed Keeper of His Majesty's Great Wardrobe, November 10, 1775.

^{page 2 note 2} The Duke of Leeds did not resign the chief justiceship, but Sir William Meredith received the price of his change of party.

^{page 2 note 3} This passed on March 25,1774.

^{page 3 note 1} The Marquis of Carmarthen spoke, on May 2, in favour of the Bill for regulating the government of Massachusetts Bay.

^{page 3 note 2} The King closed the Session on June 22; Parliament was prorogued to August 4. On Sept. 30 the Parliament was dissolved by proclamation, and a new one convened, which met on Nov. 29, 1774.

^{page 3 note 3} This was the first Duke of the new creation, Sir Hugh Smithers, who married the daughter of the Duke of Somerset, became Earl of Northumberland, and, in 1776, was created Duke. Lord Percy was his son, Hugh, born in 1742.

^{page 3 note 4} The Members, in 1774, were Lord Thomas Clinton, Earl Percy, Lord Petersham, and Lord Maiden.

^{page 3 note 5} This borough was represented by Sidney Godolphin in 1714, Francis Godolphin in 1741 to 1747, 1754, 1761. In 1774 Carmarthen and Owen received 24 votes each, Cust and Yorke 6 votes each. After this no Godolphin sat for Helston till 1799.

^{page 3 note 6} This was a Bill to give a strongly centralized government to Canada, including districts extending to the Mississippi, the Ohio, and the Hudson's Bay frontier. It was read a second time on May 26, 1774, after a vigorous protest by Townshend, Dunning, Barre, and Fox. It was considered in Committee, May 31, and June 2, June 6, June 8, and reported June 10, the report being carried by the sndden arrival of Members, who, as Burke said, “had not heard anything that had been said against the Bill, no, not even from its being first agitated in the House.” It was finally passed June 13.

^{page 4 note 1} This plan was discussed in Committee, Feb. 20, 1775, and was carried by 274 rotes to 88. Mr. Wellbore Ellis spoke against it because it did not provide sufficiently for the acknowledgment of British supremacy by America. Burke, Burning, and other Whigs opposed it as “insidious,” and contrary to previous declarations.

^{page 4 note 2} A distinguished lawyer : was chosen Speaker on the retirement of Sir John Cust in Jan. 1770, and held his post till the meeting of the new Parliament in October 1780, when he was succeeded by Mr. Cornwall, a nominee of the Court. Sir Fletcher Norton had offended the King by his words on the presentation of the Household Bill, May 7, 1777, when he said that the House had granted His Majesty a very great additional revenue; great beyond example, great beyond your Majesty's highest expense. These words were made capital of by the Whigs. Sir Fletcher was also suspected of faTonring the American colonies. He was afterwards created Lord Grantley, on the nomination of Lord Eockingham. He died Jan 1, 1789.

^{page 4 note 3} Member for Maidstone : he was born July 15, 1721, and so was six months younger than Lord Carmarthen.

^{page 5 note 1} Lord Carmarthen was called up to tie House of Peers, by writ, as Baron Osborne, of Kineton, May 14,1776.

^{page 5 note 2} The Prince of Wales was now nine years old. An account of the arrangement is given by Horace Walpole, in his Memoirs of the Reign of George III. p. 310. He calls Lord Holdernesse a “solemn phantom”: Dr. Markham (recommended by Lord Mansfield), “the master of Westminster School, a creatnre of his own, sprung ont of the true prerogative seminary at Christchureh, Oxford, a hard arrogant man.” Lord North was not consulted. Jackson he calls “an ingenious young man” -he was afterwards Dean of Christchurch. Lord Holdernesse, he says, owed his appointment “to his insignificance and his wife.” In his Last Journals, i. 129, Walpole calls Lady Charlotte Finch “a woman of remarkable sense and philosophy.” An account of the change of tutors is given by Horace Walpole, Last Journals, ii. 49, and is so graphic as to be worth quoting. May 28, 1776.-“It was suddenly declared that the King had dismissed Dr. Markham (Bishop of Chester) and Mr. Jackson from being preceptor and snb-preceptor to the Prince of Wales ; and that Lord Holderness and Mr. Smelt, his Royal Highnesses governor and sub-governor, had resigned their posts. No. reason was assigned for so great a revolution. All that got out at first was that Lord Holderness had been quarrelling with Jackson for three months, and had said that he could not serve with Mm. So inadequate a cause could not at all account for so general a change, nor satisfy the extreme curiosity of mankind on so large an event, which Lord Hertford said to me that night must have had weighty causes to surmount the King's disposition to conceal everything as much as he possibly could. The next day Lord Bruce was named governor, and Dr. Hurd (Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry) preceptor, both being told that they were not to choose their own substitutes ; the former was at the same time created Earl of Ailesbury. Bruce Brudenel, youngest brother of Lord Brudenel Montagu, Duke of Montagu, had been adopted by his uncle Thomas Bruce, Earl of Ailesbury, and he inherited his estate. This new lord was a formal, dull man, totally ignorant of and unversed in the world, and a Tory ; very unexceptionable in his character, suited to the mystery affected by the King, but totally unfit to educate the Prince of Wales. Bishop Hurd had acquired a good name by several works of slender merit, was a gentle, plausible man, affecting a singular demeanour that endeared him highly to devout old ladies. … Lord Holderness, who had a violent humour in his face, which struck in and had fallen on his hearing and his breath, had been to seek relief in the south of France, whence he had returned in the last autumn, a little mended in is health, but still very deaf. On his return he found great prejudices had been instilled into the mind of his friends the Prince of Wales and Prince Frederick, Bishop of Osnaburgh, against him, and it had grown so bad that from last November they had treated his authority with contempt and often ridiculed him to his face. This he imputed to Jackson. I asked if Prince Frederick, who was thought a great favourite, had behaved as ill as the Prince, who it was known had a high spirit, as I guessed two or three years before from Lord Holderness affecting to say how tractable he was. Lord Hertford said, ‘Oh ! Prince Frederick has gone the furthest, and has been the instrument to influence his brother.’ This was artful as more indirect. I said I heard everybody had observed the day before that the King was much fallen away and looked very ill. Both Lord and Lady Hertford cried out, ‘Nobody can tell what he has suffered for six weeks.’ Lord Hertford added, ‘Think what he must feel at finding already that his son is so headstrong that he has not the least authority over him.’ I said I heard the Prince was extremely in awe of the Queen. He replied, ‘Faith, I believe he is in awe of neither.’ He told me the Bishop of Chester was sorely suspected of being at the bottom of this plot, and was a very ambitious man; and that the King had nothing left but to get rid of him and Jackson. The Bishop of Chester had ambitioned the bishopric of Winchester, on the next vacancy, and had been more than once told that he was not to expect it. Jackson had been taken from Oxford with a marvellous character for parts and learning, but I believe his monarchic principles had been a great recommendation. Lord Holderness, though so good a courtier, had recommended Smelt, a thorough Revolution Whig; and had placed two other persons of the same principles about the Prince, one Bude, a pious Protestant, and Saigas, mentioned lower in the text. Jackson's pension was continued to him, and it was said that the Bishop was promised a better bishopric ; however, he was very open in his conversation against Lord Holderness, and represented him as most trifling and unfit for his late charge. Both Markham and Jackson had been the choice of Lord Mansfield, and I did not think it very prudent to choose Dr. Hurd, another professed creature of Mansfield ; but it was the maxim of the King to cajole all he parted with or disliked, and between hypocrisy and timidity he generally attempted to soothe those he discarded. To mark approbation of the Earl the King immediately made his son-in-law, the Marquis of Carmarthen, Lord of the Bedchamber, in room of Lord Bruce. He offered a pension too to Smelt, who with his usual incorruptible virtue declined it. ‘Why,’ said the King, ‘you have but a small fortune ?’ ‘Enough, Sir,’ said he, ‘to keep me independent,’ and he absolutely refused any premium-following his patron the Earl, who, it is justice to say, acted wisely and handsomely to the King in his retreat. Lord Hertford told me besides that Saigas, son of a French refugee, and one of the Prince's tutors, insisted on retiring too, from the ungovernable temper, of the Prince. All his servants, even to valets de ehambre, were changed.” Lord Bruce shortly afterwards retired from his post, and was succeeded by his brother, the Duke of Montagu.

^{page 7 note 1} Lord Delaware was appointed Vice-Chamberlain at the first formation of the Queen's Household in 1761; in 1766 he was appointed Master of the Horse to the Queen, which post he held till his death, in Audley Square, Nov. 22,1777.

^{page 8 note 1} Lord Carmarthen had married in Nov. 1773, Lady Amelia Darcy, only daughter and heir of Robert, last Earl of Holdernesse, and Baroness Conyers in her own right.

^{page 10 note 1} He had succeeded to the title in 1775, and was a great personal friend of the King's.

^{page 10 note 2} Henry, the second Earl, born 1743; appointed a Lord of the Bedchamber Feb. 1777; appointed Lord-Lieutenant of the North Riding of Yorkshire Feb. 1778.

^{page 10 note 3} He was the twelfth Earl of Suffolk and fifth Earl of Berkshire. He was born in May 1738, and, in 1771, became Keeper of the Privy Seal, and Secretary of State for the Northern Department. He died March 1789.

^{page 10 note 4} The avowed enemy of Richelieu and Mazarin at the Court of Louis XIII.

^{page 11 note 1} Their Majesties went to Portsmouth on May 2, and returned May 9. The great French fleet, under D'Estaing, had just sailed from Toulon. Keppel did not succeed in stopping it, and returned to Portsmouth. On July 10 he sailed out again. In July he had an unsuccessful engagement with the French off Ushant, and returned to Plymouth. His ill success was attributed to the insufficient support given him by Sir Hugh Palliser. In December 1778, owing to charges brought by Sir Hugh Palliser, Admiral Keppel was tried by court-martial. Keppel was very unpopular with the Court, and Palliser's conduct was stimulated by Lord Sandwich. Keppel was triumphantly acquitted, and the news was received with the greatest joy. London and Westminster were illuminated, and Keppel received the freedom of the City of London, and the thanks of the House of Commons.

^{page 11 note 2} In the parish of Isleworth, a house built by Lord Holdernesse, and afterwards inhabited by the Duke of Marlborough.

^{page 12 note 1} He was appointed 1776, and entered on his office Jan. 3, 1777. He was second Earl of Buckinghamshire, and died 1793. The offer to Lord Holdernesse is not mentioned in Walpole's Diary, Nov. 21,1776.

^{page 12 note 2} Ninth Viscount, succeeded in 1763, died June 27, 1778. He lived at Temple-Newsham, near Leeds.

^{page 12 note 3} Two miles from Halifax.

^{page 12 note 4} Amelia D'Arcy, Baroness Conyers in her own right, and Marchioness of Carmarthen, eloped with Captain John Byron, eldest son of Admiral Byron, and father of the poet. She was divorced in May 1779. Lady Conyers died Jan. 26, 1784, and, by Captain Byron, was the mother of the poet's sister, the Honourable Augusta Leigh.

^{page 12 note 5} Walpole, writing to Sir Horace Mann, on Feb. 11,1793, says, “Palliser escaped from Portsmouth this morning at five … We passed twice by his house in Pall Mall just now” (the letter is dated midnight), “and found a mob before it, but a strong guard of soldiers and constables.” He says, later on, that the mob entirely gutted Sir Hugh Palliser's house at three in the morning, but that the furniture had been removed.

^{page 12 note 6} This was the second Earl, who succeeded, in 1782, to Lord Bockingham's estates.

^{page 13 note 1} He was made Solicitor-General in Jan. 1771, Attorney-General in July 1778, and Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas in 1780, when he was created Lord Loughborough.

^{page 13 note 2} We learn from Walpole that the combined fleets numbered about sixty, and the ships under Sir Charles Hardy thirty-six.

^{page 13 note 3} The Bill for doubling the militia was rejected by the Lords June 30 1779.

^{page 14 note 1} An account of their progress is found in a letter of Mason to Horace Walpole, dated York, Nov. 12, 1779 (Walpole's Letters, vol. vii. p. 262): “My Lord Carmarthen called upon me the other day, on his return from the East Riding of this great county, where he had reviewed the whole coast, and found it so totally defenceless that he had given a ball at Beverley on the occasion; he had withal added twenty men to the militia, and by the addition of two captains had metamorphosed a petty battalion into a complete regiment—a very great military manoeuvre, and which I doubt not will be attended with the most salutary consequences to this part of the island, especially as the corps with which they are to be embodied is at Coxheath. Prom York he retired to Kiveton, where, if he pleases, he may make another ball, and invite Lady Conyers to it, who, I don't doubt, will be pleased with such a fête; for you must know, at Lady Holdernesse's request, I have lent her my parsonage to reside in, while W. Byron is raising“recruits at Sheffield and Rotherham.

^{page 16 note 1} This was Granville, second Earl, and first Marquis of Stafford. He was appointed President of the Privy Conncil, December 23,1767, and resigned Nov. 1779; was again appointed, December 19, 1783, and again resigned 1784, and was, in November of that year, appointed Privy Seal, which office he held till 1794. His eldest son was afterwards ambassador at Paris.

^{page 16 note 2} Afterwards first Marquis of Bath, had been Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, and Secretary of State for the Northern, and afterwards the Southern, Department. He resigned this post in 1770, was appointed to it again in 1775, and resigned it in 1779.

^{page 17 note 1} Nov. 25, 1779. The debate was largely concerned with the condition of Ireland. Lord Gowcr's speech is not reported in the Parliamentary History.

^{page 17 note 2} Lord Rockingham's amendment was to leave out the whole of the address bnt the title. The House divided at half-past one in the morning: Content, 41; Non-Content, 62, so the amendment was lost. The “many unfortunate truths” must have been in Lord Rockingham's speech, and not in the amendment itself.

^{page 17 note 3} The Duke of Richmond's motion for a reform of the Civil Service was made on Dec. 7,1779. The division was : Content, 36 ; Non-Content, 77.

^{page 17 note 4} Dec. 15, 1779. Burke gave notice of his plan for economical reforms the same day in the House of Commons.

^{page 17 note 5} An account of this meeting is given in a letter from Mason to Horace Walpole Dec. 31, 1779, in Cunningham's edition of Horace Walpole's Letters, vii. 298.

^{page 18 note 1} This was the first Duke, who was now Master of the Horse.

^{page 19 note 1} Lord Dartmouth was Keeper of the Privy Seal from 1775 to 1782.

^{page 19 note 2} Lord Carlisle had just been appointed a Lord of Trade, and was in 1780 made Lord-Lieutenant of the East Riding.

^{page 19 note 3} Lord Fauconberg was Lord-Lieutenant of the North Riding.

^{page 19 note 4} Lord Lewisham, son of the Earl of Dartmouth, was now M.P. for Plymouth.

^{page 19 note 5} Lord Grantham had just returned from Spain, where he had been Ambassador. He was afterwards Secretary for Foreign Affairs.

^{page 19 note 6} Lord Mulgrave was an Irish Peer who lived in Yorkshire, and in 1790 received an English peerage.

^{page 19 note 7} Lord Hillsborough was appointed Secretary of State in place of Lord Weymouth, Nov. 1779.

^{page 20 note 1} Walpole, writing to the Countess of Ossory, Jan. 29, 1780, says : “The weathercock Marquis has taken his part, or rather his leave, and resigned his key on Thursday.”

^{page 20 note 2} Lord Cranborne, who succeeded as Earl of Salisbury in 1780, was now Lord-Lieutenant of Hertfordshire.