Duke of Connaught

“ It will be time to decide on the offer when it is made, if indeed prejudices, from which even Liberal Ministry are not free, do not stand in the way. At present I want to know, within a foot or two—no one can say I'm unreasonable—how far off the fighting the Duke of Connaught stood, and Campbell-Bannerman will have to answer the question. ”

“ Sir Edward Conway, writing to his father, thus simply, and as a true soldier, remarks, that “the sorrow of the Duke, and the 45honours he doth in his burial, are sufficient encouragements to dying.” “There was some difference” he adds, “between Burgh and the Duke, through some inconsiderate words, on the part of former, which were by the Duke so freely forgiven,”forgiven,” and through these Conway thought “an honest man and the Duke could not be enemies.” By Buckingham’s orders the old general’s remains were sent home, to be interred in Westminster Abbey. ”

“ I have said that General Conway,409 under pretence of bringing home the troops, had been kept abroad till the peace was voted, the ministers apprehending that they should not be able to influence him to approve an event so ruinous and shameful to his country. At his return, no man being less factious, he had entered into no cabals, had attached himself to no party. His chief friendships were with the Duke of Devonshire, with his own brother the Earl of Hertford, and with me. ”

“ In an age wherein honesty could boast few genuine martyrs, Conway was certainly the most distinguished. He never ceased to attest his attachment to virtue, at the risk of a most precarious fortune; and he had one merit that added to the beauty of his character, and in which he was singular, that he never mixed party or faction with his line of conduct.65 The Duke of Richmond, Sir George Saville, and Lord John Cavendish, were, undoubtedly, of as unblemished virtue as Conway ”

“ And Grey would have gone to Ireland.’
‘You are in as great peril now as you were in 1830,’ said Coningsby.
‘No, no, no,’ said Lord Monmouth; ‘the Tory party is organised now; they will not catch us napping again: these Conservative Associations have done the business.’
‘But what are they organised for?’ said Coningsby. ‘At the best to turn out the Whigs. And when you have turned out the Whigs, what then? You may get your ducal coronet, sir. But a duke now is not so great a man as a baron was but a century back. We cannot struggle against the irresistible stream of circumstances. ”

“ The little castellans would do homage to the barons, they to the viscounts, they to the counts, they to the dukes, and they to the supreme suzerain, His Grace Philip Augustus, at Paris. Actually, of course, nothing of the kind occurs. Not merely do many fief holders have several suzerains (as does Conon) and serve some of them very poorly, but there is no real gradation of feudal titles. Conon, a baron, feels himself equal to many counts and superior to most viscounts. The mighty Count of Champagne holds his head arrogantly as the equal of the Duke of Burgundy. ”

“ But the increasing illness of his royal master delayed the Duke’s journey from day to day; and James was not permitted to witness the conclusion of the long-cherished hopes of the union of his son with a Princess of birth equal to his own. “All human things,” wrote Conway, “have something of earth and defect.” Nothing, he added in his letter to Lord Carlisle, [151] could exceed the contentment of the “excellent Prince and gracious Duke,” at the sure progress of the treaty, "and there was now no speech but of the speed of the Duke’s going;" ”

“ Whatever additional arguments he may have advanced, it is impossible to decide; suffice it that the Duke yielded, the quarrel was terminated, and Concini established in the coveted apartments; at which his gratification was so unmeasured that he pledged himself to M. de Soissons to induce the ministers to consent to the union of the Comte d'Enghien with the heiress of Montpensier, as well as to exert himself in preventing the marriage of the Duc de Guise and the Duchess her mother. ”

“ No man in England believed{553} any more in the duke or his undertakings, and it was only with the utmost difficulty that he could get his officers to carry out his orders. “I find nothing,” he wrote to Conway, “of more difficulty and uncertainty than the preparations for the service of Rochelle. Every man says he has all things ready, and yet all remain as it were at a stand.”
On August 17 Buckingham went down to Portsmouth to consult the King concerning certain proposals to bring about peace between England and France which he had just received from the Venetian Ambassador, Contarini. ”

“ I said, not with much ardour, that I hoped they would now accept alone; and I asked what was to become of Conway? The Duke replied, They had told him he must go on. “Well, my lord,” said I, “but then you cannot continue to oppose.” “No,” replied the Duke, “if the King should offer us full power, he might be sure now that we could not make use of it against his friends; yet I do not know whether we should undertake. I think we must at least allow our friends to take on with the Court.” I commended this noble behaviour, and approved the admission of their friends ”

“ Conan IV secured the ducal crown by Norman-English aid, and gave his daughter Constance in marriage to Geoffrey Plantagenet, son of Henry II of England. Geoffrey was crowned Duke of Brittany in 1171, but after his death his son Arthur met with a dreadful fate at the hands of his uncle, John of England. Constance, his mother, the real heiress to the duchy, married again, her choice falling upon Guy de Thouars, and their daughter was wed to Pierre de Dreux, who became Duke, and who defeated John Lackland, the slayer of his wife’s half-brother, under the walls of Nantes in 1214. ”

“ Conway had opened the proposal to the Duke, the first difficulty that started was on Lord Camden. The Duke said, they would64 not put a negative on him, but he would be the King’s man. I asked if they expected that every man should depend on King Rockingham, and nobody on King George? “But,” said the Duke, “he will be Lord Bute’s man, as Lord Northington had been.” I said, “If Lord Bute desires to make another breach, will he ever want a tool?” “Oh! but they must have a permanency.” ”

“ Why his honour had been so highly rated, I can less account; except that he had advertised it, and that obstinate young men are apt to have high notions before they have practised the world and essayed their own virtue.
Mr. Conway telling the Duke that Lord Rockingham desired to treat with his Grace, he commissioned Conway to bring them together. In the mean time Lord Gower reproaching the Duke with negotiating at once with the Bedfords and Rockinghams, as Conway had foreseen, the Duke denied even to Conway the having authorized him to settle a meeting. ”

“ Concini, as we have already shown, had long nourished the most bitter resentment against one whom he considered as a formidable rival in the good graces of the Queen, and he was consequently induced without difficulty to join in the conspiracy; his vanity suffering bitterly from the contempt with which he was ostentatiously treated by the Duke, who was, as the Italian asserted, a mere gentleman of fortune like himself, until raised to his present rank by the favour of Henri III, a favour as ill-gained as it was unbecomingly exhibited. ”

“ The Duke was wroth, said he had drawn it himself, and had not slept for thinking of it. He had, he owned, communicated it to Dyson—and then foolishly produced a letter which showed that he had sent his plan to Dyson, who had rejected it, and given him the other. Conway would not bend, but said, as long as he came to Council he would speak his opinion freely; and the Chancellor justified his conduct.
The Commons determined to be firm in their answer to the lords; to deny that they meant to charge the two lords as guilty of subornation of perjury, for then they must have accused them directly ”

“ There appeared every prospect of a long siege, unless reinforcements from England should arrive 33to strengthen the Duke’s efficiency. Whilst the fort held out, the citizens of La Rochelle knew not which side to take. The Duke, every writer from St. Martin’s agreed, behaved in the most admirable manner, shewing qualities which no one suspected him of possessing. “His care is infinite, his courage undauntable, his patience and continual labours beyond what could have been expected.” Such was the language of one of Secretary Conway’s correspondents. ”

“ Though at their outset, both as soldiers and parliamentary speakers, the world had marked them as rivals, there never was any open enmity between them; nor were they ever intimate: the spotless virtue of Conway, his disinterestedness, and total alienation from all political intrigues, could not assimilate with a man so different.
[89] The sister of the Duchess of Bedford had married Lord John Sackville, and had quarrelled with Lord George.
[90] The Duke of Dorset had enjoyed many great employments both in the Court and State: the Duchess had been Mistress of the Robes to the late Queen. ”

“ He must have known that if danger of assassination threatened him from any quarter it was most to be feared from those whose influence with the Queen was almost such as to give them a control over her—the Concinis and their unavowed but obvious ally the Duke of Epernon. If he were dead, and the Queen so left that she could be made absolute regent during the Dauphin’s minority, it was those adventurers who would become through her the true rulers of France, and so enrich themselves and gratify to the full their covetous ambitions. ”

“ The Duke broke out, said he was determined to resign immediately, for—he was betrayed. “There is no man, Mr. Conway,” continued he, “on whom I can66 depend but you.” Conway was amazed. “No,” continued the Duke, “there is no dependence on connections. I am betrayed by my own confidential secretary, Bradshaw. I will go to Lord North, and press him to accept directly.” Farther, he would not open himself. From the Duke, Conway went to Stonhewer. ”

“ I know that they cannot yet bring the King to any determination, and they are yet firmly resolved to adhere to their decision of resisting the nomination of Lord Conyngham, and of strengthening their Government. You must give them credit for doing the thing eventually, but they are obliged to judge the best manner. He will resist to the last moment, but I am fully persuaded he will and must ultimately give way. You have no right to feel indignant as long as you are not exclusively neglected; and my own opinion is, that Canning will not be recommended without you and your friends. ”

“ Well might the Duchess, nevertheless, mourn at the departure of her husband. The plague was raging in the fort 29of La Rochelle with as much fury as in England.
At length, on the 27th of June, the Duke sailed from Portsmouth. If we could accept as sincere the good wishes which attended his departure, no man ever left England with greater assurances of devotion. “Secretary Conway was ready,” he declared, “to carry his hand all the world cries for the Duke’s service.” “The Duke’s good works,” he said, “came forth with a better grace than he ever observed in the acts of any other man. ”

“ The Dolphin that Coryat saw came to the throne, at nine years of age, in 1610, as Louis XIII. For a time the regent, Marie de' Medici, was content to suffer the great Sully to hold office, but soon favouritism and the greed of princes, to the ill-hap of France, drove him in the prime of life from Paris into the retirement of his château of Villebon, and a feeble and venal Florentine, Concini, who came to Paris in the time of Marie, took his place. The Prince of Condé, now a Catholic, the Duke of Mayenne, and a pack of nobles fell upon the royal treasury like hounds on their quarry. ”

“ They proposed the Duke of Portland, which the King refused; and after a great deal of idle negotiation, in which it was evident there was no power left with our friends, the measure of to-day was determined on. Lord John Cavendish goes out with Charles, Keppel follows; but, to his shame, in my opinion, the Duke of Richmond, I believe, will remain. Mr. Pitt joins Shelburne, and will be either Chancellor of the Exchequer or Secretary of State. For the rest, it is not known whether they will make up out of the old set, or take all new. Conway also will stay. But still, those who go are right ”

“ Let him fight and he shall overcome; shame be to the man who shall fail him!'
"Then the Duke called for the standard which the Pope had sent him, and, he who bore it having unfolded it, the Duke took it and called to Raoul de Conches. 'Bear my standard,' said he, 'for I would not but do you right; by right and by ancestry your line are standard-bearers of Normandy, and very good knights have they all been.' But Raoul said that he would serve the Duke that day in other guise, and would fight the English with his hand as long as life should last. ”

“ The Duke of Kent appointed his widow sole guardian of their child, with his friends General Wetherall and Sir John Conroy as executors of his will. Conroy thenceforth acted as major-domo for the duchess, and lived under the same roof until the accession of the princess, by whom he was always cordially disliked. The duchess was obnoxious to her husband's brothers, especially to the new king, to the Duke of Clarence, and to their younger brother, the Duke of Cumberland, the next heir to the throne after her daughter. ”