Earl of Sandwich

“ During the war with the Dutch in 1664–1665 Sandwich commanded a squadron under the duke of York and distinguished himself in the battle off Lowestoft on the 3rd of June 1665. When the duke retired later in the same year he became commander-in chief, and he directed an unsuccessful attack on some Dutch merchant ships which were sheltering in the Norwegian port of Bergen ”

“ If his relationship to the king made his life too valuable to be risked, he ought never to have gone to sea at all. He was succeeded in the command of the fleet by the Earl of Sandwich, who was to have been associated with Prince Rupert, but the prince was reluctant to share authority, and the sole command was left in the hands of the earl. ”

“ If the Earl of Sandwich was the champion roué, rake, and profligate of a vicious age, certainly Wilkes almost bore away the distinction from him; as we may judge from the result of the election amongst the Medmenham revellers as to who should be chosen to take a place among the round dozen who played a leading part in their midnight orgies. ”

“ The death of the Earl of Sandwich, who lost his life in the naval engagement of Southwold Bay with De Ruyter, May 28, 1672, may have hastened this conclusion, and the need of economy, especially manifest in this year, 1672, may have been a further influence. Whatever the causes, as early as the summer of 1672 the decision was reached, undoubtedly through the advice of Lord Ashley, now the Earl of Shaftesbury, to reconstitute the Council, and to issue a new patent which should cover trade as well as foreign plantations. ”

“ The management is worthy of Lord Sandwich, and like him. It may sound odd for me, with my principles, to admire Lord Sandwich; but besides that he has in several instances been very obliging to me, there is a good humour and an industry about him that are very uncommon. I do not admire politicians; but when they are excellent in their way, one cannot help allowing them their due. Nobody but he could have struck a stroke like this.
Yesterday we sat till eight on the address, which yet passed without a negative - we had two very long speeches from Mr. Pitt and Mr. Grenville ”

“ The knight, who was renowned for, his hospitality, had the honour of entertaining King James at Hinchinbroke, but, getting into pecuniary difficulties, was obliged to sell his estates, which were conveyed, July 28th, 1627, to Sir Sidney Montagu of Barnwell, father of the first Earl of Sandwich, in whose descendant they are still vested. ”

“ What made this necessary was, that the Earl of Sandwich did not marry her by proxy, as usual, before she came away. How this happened, the duke knows not, nor did the chancellor know of this private marriage. The queen would not be bedded, till pronounced man and wife by Sheldon, bishop of London."—Extract 2, from King James II.'s Journal.—Macpherson's State Papers, vol. i. In the same collection is a curious letter from the King to Lord Clarendon, giving his opinion of the queen after having seen her. ”

“ Soon after this came in Earl Tosty from beyond sea into the Isle of Wight, with as large a fleet as he could get; and he was there supplied with money and provisions. Thence he proceeded, and committed outrages everywhere by the sea-coast where he could land, until he came to Sandwich. When it was told King Harold, who was in London, that his brother Tosty was come to Sandwich, he gathered so large a force, naval and military, as no king before collected in this land; for it was credibly reported that Earl William from Normandy, King Edward's cousin, would come hither and gain this land ”

“ I understand, about this bastard. He says, also, that some great man will be aimed at when Parliament comes to sit again; I understand, the Chancellor: and that there is a bill will be brought in, that none that have been in armes for the Parliament shall be capable of office. And that the Court are weary of my Lord Albemarle and Chamberlin. [Edward Earl of Manchester.] He wishes that my Lord Sandwich had some good occasion to be abroad this summer which is coming on, and that my Lord Hinchingbroke were well married, and Sydney [Lord Sandwich's second son.] ”

“ I wish you had this Duke again, lest you should have trouble with him from hence: he seems a genius of the wrong sort. His behaviour on the visit to Woburn was very wrong-headed, though their treatment of him was not more right. Lord Sandwich flung him down in one of their horse-plays, and almost put his shoulder out. He said the next day there, at dinner, that for the rest of his life he should fear nothing so much as a lettre de cachet from a French secretary of state, or a coup d'`epaule from an English one. After this he had a pique with the Duchess, with whom he had been playing at whisk. ”

“ It is extremely rare. The public life of Sandwich is to be traced in the history, and especially the naval history, of his time; in Parliamentary History, more especially 1770–82; Coxe's Memoirs of the Pelham Administration; Walpole's Letters and Memoirs of George III; Correspondence of John, fourth Duke of Bedford; Correspondence of the Earl of Chatham; Barrow's Life of Anson; Keppel's Life of Keppel ”

“ The children of the first Earl and Countess of Sandwich were: Edward, who succeeded as second Earl; Sydney, who married the daughter and heiress of Sir Francis Wortley, of Wortley, County York, which patronymic he assumed, and was father-in-law to the famous Lady Mary Wortley Montagu; Oliver, who died unmarried, aged 38; John, in [49] Holy Orders, died unmarried, aged 73; Charles married first, Elizabeth, daughter of Francis Forster, and secondly, Sarah, daughter of —— Rogers, of Newcastle-on-Tyne, Esq., by both of whom he left issue. ”

“ It was then noted that it was an unheard-of innovation that the great seal should be in lay hands (Wykes, sub an.; Foss, iii. 150) . On the death of the bishop of London in 1273, Sandwich received the custody of the temporalities of the see. In 1274 he and his wife were summoned to attend the coronation of Edward I (Madox, History of the Exchequer, i. 71) . He received the custody of the castle of Arundel in 1277, the Lord Richard being a minor, and from that year until 1282 was escheator south of the Trent with the title of ‘senescallus regis’ (Abbrev. Rot. Orig. i. 21) . ”

“ Lady Sandwich went to Paris not very long after her marriage, and St. Evremond, whose admiration she appears to have shared with the Duchesse de Mazarin and Ninon de l’Enclos, thus speaks of her in a letter (without date) to the latter: “Le Docteur Morelli, mon ami particulier, accompagne Madame la Comtesse de Sandwich qui va en France pour sa santé. Feu Monsieur le Comte de Rochester, Père de Madame Sandwich, avoit plus d’esprit qu’homme en Angleterre. Madame de Sandwich en a plus que n’avoit Monsieur son père; aussi généreuse que spirituelle, aussi aimable que spirituelle et généreuse. ”

“ But the revelation that he, a man of over sixty, had a mistress permanently residing in his house led to an outburst of indignation on the part of the public who hated him. On the fall of the North administration in March 1782 Sandwich retired in great measure from public life, and though he accepted the office of ranger of St. James's and Hyde Parks under the coalition, it was but for a few months. During the following years he resided for the most part at Hinchinbroke, and died in London on 30 April 1792.
No public man of the last century was the mark of such bitter, such violent invective. ”

“ Lord Sandwich might serve as a model for a man of business. He rose early, and till a late dinner dedicated his whole time to business; he was very methodical; slow, not wearisome; cautious, not suspicious; rather a man of sense than a man of talent; he had much real good nature; his promises might be relied on. His manners partook of the old Court, and he possessed in a singular degree the art of attaching persons of every rank to him. Few houses were more agreeable or instructive than his Lordship’s ”

“ The effects of Lord Sandwich’s conduct began already to be felt. He having, to thwart the Duke of Cumberland, who espoused Mr. Luther, taken the opposite side on the election for the county of Essex,406 the Court lost the election by dint of Sandwich’s unpopularity. He himself, foreseeing the approaching death of Lord Hardwicke, presented himself as candidate for the High Stewardship of Cambridge. Nothing could occasion greater ridicule than a character so flagitious offered to a religious and learned society. ”

“ I do not think any stranger has ever been known to find his way through Sandwich without making one or two false turns, for its streets are winding and deceptive. The houses of the middle ages are not represented in them at all, and it is a sixteenth and seventeenth-century Sandwich you see, not the mediæval port. It is, in general, a Dutch effect, as if those settlers under Elizabeth had imported their views upon domestic architecture and had successfully imposed them upon the town. ”

“ After dinner he and I alone awhile and did joy ourselves in my Lord Sandwich's being out of the way all this time. He concurs that we are in a way of ruin by thus being forced to keep only small squadrons out, but do tell me that it was not choice, but only force, that we could not keep out the whole fleete. He tells me that the King is very kind to my Lord Sandwich, and did himself observe to him (Sir G. Carteret) , how those very people, meaning the Prince and Duke of Albemarle, are punished in the same kind as they did seek to abuse my Lord Sandwich. ”

“ In any case it was probably considered unadvisable to employ him again afloat at that time, and of any civil employment he may have had we have no information. In the next war, 1672, when Sandwich again hoisted his flag, Cuttance was no longer with him; but whether by reason of death, sickness, or his holding some office on shore, does not appear. ”

“ There still exists a gate named after Lord Sandwich. “When at Lisbon my Lord sent over presents of mellons and rare grapes to his Countess in London; the grapes so fine that Mistress Pepys packed some up in a basket to send to the King’s Majesty.” Lady Sandwich also received a civet cat, parrot, apes, and many other eccentric proofs of her Lord’s remembrance, which she showed to Mr. Pepys when he dined with her at the Wardrobe. ”

“ You must be poor; come in and be paid.”
LORD SANDWICH.
Lord Sandwich, a member of that administration which carried on the American war, though a dignified looking nobleman in dress, was so ungainly a walker on the street, that, on a gentleman of his acquaintance expressing a doubt whether an individual at a distance was his lordship or not, another is said to have remarked, “Oh, yes, I am sure it is Lord Sandwich, for, if you observe, he is walking down both sides of the street at once.” ”

“ Again:—"I did not know his lordship in early life; but this I can attest, and call any contemporary to ratify who might have been present, that we never heard an oath, or the least profligate conversation at his lordship's table in our lives. Miss Ray's behaviour was particularly circumspect. Dr. Green, Bishop of Lincoln, always said, 'I never knew so cautious a man as Lord Sandwich.' The Bishop came too soon once to an oratorio ”

“ His manner was impetuous, of which he was so little sensible, that being told Lord Halifax was to succeed him, he said, “He is too warm and overbearing; the King will never endure him.” If the Duke of Bedford could have thought less well of himself, the world would probably have thought better of him.
His friend Lord Sandwich [162] was of a very different [187] character; in nothing more than in the inflexibility of his honesty. The Duke of Bedford loved money, to use it sensibly and with kindness to others; Lord Sandwich was rapacious, but extravagant when it was to promote his own designs. ”

“ He promoted and supported the policy which enabled the colony to survive the disasters of its early days, and he continued to be a leading influence in the Company till his death. Sir Edwin Sandys sat in the later parliaments of James I. as member for Sandwich in 1621, and for Kent in 1624. His tendencies were towards opposition, and he was suspected of hostility to the court; but he disarmed the anger of the king by professions of obedience. He was member for Penrhyn in the first parliament of Charles I. in 1625. He died in October 1629. ”

“ The Admiralty, in which he had formerly presided with credit, was the favourite object of Lord Sandwich’s ambition; and his passion for maritime affairs, his activity, industry, and flowing complaisance, endeared him to the profession, re-established the marine, and effaced great part of his unpopularity. No man in the Administration was so much master of business, so quick or so shrewd, and no man had so many public enemies who had so few private ”

“ Pepys, who met him 5 and 8 Feb. 1668, calls him a ‘very pretty and able person, a man of very fine parts,’ and says that Sandwich had sent over the highest commendations of his abilities and trustworthiness (this has been erroneously applied to Sidney, lord Godolphin) . In the spring of 1669 he returned to Spain as envoy extraordinary, Lord Sunderland being ‘ambassador extraordinary,’ and in 1671 he became ambassador. Immediately afterwards he applied, during a dangerous illness, for admission to the Roman catholic church. ”

“ The absence of this deference, when combined with the direct opposition which Lord Sandwich, another cabinet minister, lending himself, perhaps unawares, to the revenge of the Lunar party, is found to offer to the King's views, leaves a field open for the arguments of philosophical politicians, with whom we are unequal to interfere. ”