Charles Philip Yorke, Fourth Earl of Hardwicke, Vice Admiral R.N. by Lady Biddulph of Ledbury

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CHARLES PHILIP YORKE

FOURTH EARL OF HARDWICKE

VICE-ADMIRAL R.N.

A MEMOIR

BY HIS DAUGHTER

THE LADY BIDDULPH OF LEDBURY

WITH PORTRAITS

DEDICATED

TO HIS GRANDCHILDREN

PREFACE

It is with great diffidence that I lay this memoir before the public; it
is my first experience in such work, but my reasons for so doing appear
to me unanswerable. It was to my care and judgment that my father, by
his will, committed his letters and journals, and my heart confirms the
judgment of my mind, that his active and interesting life, so varied in
the many different positions he was called upon to fill, and the
considerable part he played in the affairs of his time, deserve a fuller
record than the accounts to be found in biographical works of reference.

It has been a labour of love to me to supply these omissions in the
following pages, and to present in outline the life of a capable,
energetic Englishman, for whom I can at least claim that he was a loyal
and devoted servant of his Sovereign and his country.

In fulfilling what I hold to be a filial obligation I have made no
attempt to give literary form to a work which, so far as possible, is
based upon my father's own words. Primarily it is addressed to his
grandchildren and great-grandchildren, to whom, I trust, it may serve as
an inspiration; but I have also some hope that a story which touches the
national life at so many points may prove of interest to the general
public. I am greatly indebted to my son, Mr. Adeane, and to my son-in-
law, Mr. Bernard Mallet, for the help and encouragement they have given
me; and I have also to acknowledge the assistance of Mr. W. B. Boulton
in editing and preparing these papers for publication.

ELIZABETH PHILIPPA BIDDULPH.

LEDBURY: January 1910.

CONTENTS

I. THE YORKE FAMILY

II. ALGIERS. 1815-1816

III. THE NORTH AMERICAN STATION. 1817-1822

IV. GREEK PIRACY. 1823-1826

V. A HOLIDAY IN NORTHERN REGIONS. 1828

VI. GREEK INDEPENDENCE. 1829-1831

VII. COURT DUTIES AND POLITICS. 1831-1847

VIII. GENOA. 1849

IX. POLITICS AND LAST YEARS. 1850-1873

INDEX

LIST OF PORTRAITS

CHARLES PHILIP, FOURTH EARL OF HARDWICKE
From a painting by E. U. Eddis

THE HONBLE. CHARLES YORKE
SOLICITOR-GENERAL
From a painting by Allan Ramsay (?)

SIR JOSEPH SYDNEY YORKE
As A MIDSHIPMAN, R.N.
From a painting by George Romney

SIR JOSEPH SYDNEY YORKE
As A LIEUTENANT, R.N.
from a painting by George Romney

CHARLES PHILIP, FOURTH EARL OF
HARDWICKE
From a chalk drawing by E. U. Eddis

SUSAN, COUNTESS OF HARDWICKE
From a chalk drawing by E. U. Eddis

CHARLES PHILIP YORKE

FOURTH EARL OF HARDWICKE

CHAPTER I

THE YORKE FAMILY

The family of Yorke first came into prominence with the great
Chancellor Philip Yorke, first Earl of Hardwicke. This remarkable man,
who was the son of an attorney at Dover, descended, it is claimed, from
the Yorkes of Hannington in North Wiltshire, a family of some
consequence in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, was born in that
town in the year 1690, and rose from a comparatively humble station to
the commanding position he held so long in English public life.

My object in this chapter is to recall some of the incidents of his
career and of those of his immediate successors and descendants.

Philip Yorke was called to the bar in 1715, became Solicitor-General
only five years later, and was promoted to be Attorney-General in 1723.
In 1733 he was appointed Lord Chief Justice of England, and received the
Great Seal as Lord Chancellor in 1737, and when his life closed his
political career had extended over a period of fifty years.

Lord Campbell, the author of the 'Lives of the Chancellors,' 'that
extraordinary work which was held to have added a new terror to death,
and a fear of which was said to have kept at least one Lord Chancellor
alive,' claimed to lay bare the shortcomings of the subjects of his
memoirs with the same impartiality with which he pointed out their
excellences. He mentions only two failings of Lord Chancellor Hardwicke:
one, that he was fond of acquiring wealth, the other, that he was of an
overweening pride to those whom he considered beneath him. Neither of
these is a very serious charge, and as both are insufficiently
corroborated, one may let them pass. He acquired immense wealth in the
course of his professional career, but in an age of corruption he was
remarked for his integrity, and was never suspected or accused of
prostituting his public position for private ends. In his capacity of
Attorney-General Lord Campbell remarks of him:

'This situation he held above thirteen years, exhibiting a model of
perfection to other law officers of the Crown. He was punctual and
conscientious in the discharge of his public duty, never neglecting it
that he might undertake private causes, although fees were supposed to
be particularly sweet to him.'

But it was as a judge that he won imperishable fame, and one of his
biographers observes: [Footnote: See Dictionary of National Biography.]
'It is hardly too much to say that during his prolonged tenure of the
Great Seal (from 1737 to 1755) he transformed equity from a chaos of
precedents into a scientific system.' Lord Campbell states that
'his decisions have been, and ever will continue to be, appealed to as
fixing the limits and establishing the principles of that great
juridical system called Equity, which now, not only in this country and
in our colonies, but over the whole extent of the United States of
America, regulates property and personal rights more than ancient Common
Law.'

He had a 'passion to do justice, and displayed the strictest
impartiality; and his chancellorship' is 'looked back upon as the golden
age of equity.' The Chancellor is said to have been one of the
handsomest men of his day, and 'his personal advantages, which included
a musical voice, enhanced the effect of his eloquence, which by its
stately character was peculiarly adapted to the House of Lords.'
[Footnote: Ibid.]

This is not the place for an estimate of Lord Hardwicke's political
career, which extended over the whole period from the reign of Queen
Anne to that of George III, and brought him into intimate association
with all the statesmen of his age. It was more especially as the
supporter of the Pelham interest and the confidant and mentor of the
Duke of Newcastle that he exercised for many years a predominant
influence on the course of national affairs both at home and abroad.
During the absence of George II from the realm in 1740 and subsequently
he was a member, and by no means the least important member, of the
Council of Regency. 'He was,' writes Campbell, 'mainly instrumental in
keeping the reigning dynasty of the Brunswicks on the throne'; he was
the adviser of the measures for suppressing the Jacobite rebellion in
1745, he presided as Lord High Steward with judicial impartiality at the
famous trial of the rebel Lords, and was chiefly responsible for the
means taken in the pacification of Scotland, the most questionable of
which was the suppression of the tartan! Good fortune, as is usually the
case when a man rises to great eminence, played its part in his career.
He had friends who early recognised his ability and gave him the
opportunities of which he was quick to avail himself. He took the tide
at its flood and was led on to fortune; but, as Campbell justly
observes, 'along with that good luck such results required lofty
aspirations, great ability, consummate prudence, rigid self-denial, and
unwearied industry.' His rise in his profession had undoubtedly been
facilitated by his marriage to Margaret Cocks, a favourite niece of Lord
Chancellor Somers, himself one of the greatest of England's lawyer-
statesmen. There is a story that when asked by Lord Somers what
settlement he could make on his wife, he answered proudly, 'Nothing but
the foot of ground I stand on in Westminster Hall.' Never was the self-
confidence of genius more signally justified than in his case. Not only
was his own rise to fame and fortune unprecedently rapid, but he became
the founder of a family many of whose members have since played a
distinguished part in the public and social life of the country. By
Margaret Cocks he had, with two daughters, five sons, the eldest of whom
enhanced the fortunes of the family by his marriage with Jemima,
daughter of the Earl of Breadalbane, heiress of Wrest and the other
possessions of the extinct Dukedom of Kent, and afterwards Marchioness
Grey and Baroness Lucas of Grudwell in her own right. Of his next son
Charles, the second Chancellor, something will presently be said.
Another son, Joseph, was a soldier and diplomatist. He was aide-de-camp
to the Duke of Cumberland at Fontenoy; and afterwards, as Sir Joseph
Yorke, Ambassador at the Hague. He died Lord Dover. A fourth son, John,
married Miss Elizabeth Lygon, of Madresfield. The fifth son, James,
entered the Church, became Bishop of Ely, and was the ancestor of the
Yorkes of Forthampton. I had the luck many years ago to have a talk with
an old verger in Ely Cathedral who remembered Bishop Yorke, and who told
me that he used to draw such congregations by the power of his oratory
and the breadth of his teaching, that when he preached, all the
dissenting chapels in the neighbourhood were closed!

It was in 1770, only six years after Lord Hardwicke's death which
occurred in London on March 6, 1764, that his second son Charles (born
in 1722) was sworn in as Lord Chancellor. His brilliant career ended in
a tragedy which makes it one of the most pathetic in our political
history. Although unlike his father in person he was intellectually his
equal, and might have rivalled his renown had he possessed his firmness
and resolution of character. He was educated at Cambridge, and before
the age of twenty had given evidence of his precocity as the principal
author (after his brother Philip) of the 'Athenian Letters,' a supposed
correspondence between Cleander, an agent of the King of Persia resident
in Athens, and his brother and friends in Persia. Destined to the law
from his childhood, Charles Yorke was called to the bar in 1743, and
rapidly advanced in his profession. Entering the House of Commons as
member for Reigate in 1747, he later succeeded his brother as member for
Cambridge, and one of his best speeches in the House was made in defence
of his father against an onslaught by Henry Fox. But in spite of his
brilliant prospects and great reputation he always envied those who were
able to lead a quiet life, and he thus wrote to his friend Warburton,
afterwards Bishop of Gloucester:

'I endeavour to convince myself it is dangerous to converse with you,
for you show me so much more happiness in the quiet pursuits of
knowledge and enjoyments of friendship than is to be found in lucre or
ambition, that I go back into the world with regret, where few things
are to be obtained without more agitation both of reason and the
passions, than either moderate parts or a benevolent mind can support.'

Charles Yorke was an intimate friend of Montesquieu, the famous author
of the 'Esprit des Lois' and the most far-seeing of those whose writings
preceded and presaged the French Revolution, who wrote, '_Mes
sentiments pour vous sont graves dans mon cour et dans mon esprit d'une
maniere a ne s'effacer jamais_.'

On the formation of a government by the Duke of Devonshire in 1756,
Charles Yorke was sworn in, at the early age of thirty-three, as
Solicitor-General, and retained that office through the elder Pitt's
glorious administration. In 1762 he accepted from Lord Bute the
Attorney-Generalship, in which position he had to deal with the
difficult questions of constitutional law raised by the publication of
John Wilkes's _North Briton_. In November of that year, however, he
resigned office in consequence of the strong pressure put upon him by
Pitt, and took leave of the King in tears. Pitt failed in his object of
enlisting Yorke's services on behalf of Wilkes in the coming
parliamentary campaign, and the crisis ended in an estrangement between
the two, which drove Yorke into a loose alliance with the Rockingham
Whigs, a group of statesmen who were determined to free English politics
from the trammels of court influence and the baser traditions of the
party system. When, however, this party came into power in 1765, Yorke
was disappointed of the anticipated offer of the Great Seal, and only
reluctantly accepted the Attorney-Generalship. The ministry fell in the
following year, partly in consequence of Pitt's reappearance in the
House of Commons and his disastrous refusal of Rockingham's invitation
to join his Government, though they were agreed on most of the important
questions of the day, including that of American taxation and the repeal
of the Stamp Act; and Pitt, who then (August 1766) became Lord Chatham,
was commissioned to form a new government in which, to Yorke's
mortification, he offered the Lord Chancellorship to Camden. Yorke
thereupon resigned the Attorney-Generalship, and during the devious
course of the ill-starred combination under Chatham's nominal
leadership--for during the next two years Chatham was absolutely
incapacitated from all attention to business, his policy was reversed by
his colleagues, and America taxed by Charles Townshend--he maintained an
'attitude of saturnine reserve,' amusing himself with landscape
gardening at his villa at Highgate, doing its honours to Warburton,
Hurd, Garrick and other friends, and corresponding among others with
Stanislas Augustus, King of Poland, to whom he had been introduced by
his brother Sir Joseph. Gradually, however, Chatham made a recovery from
the mental disease under which he had been labouring, and in January
1770 he returned to the political arena with two vigorous speeches in
the House of Lords. His first speech spread consternation among the
members of the Government and the King's party, led by the Duke of
Grafton, who had assumed the duties of Prime Minister; and one of the
first effects of his intervention was the resignation of Lord Camden,
who had adhered to Chatham, and openly denounced the Duke of Grafton's
arbitrary measures. This event placed the Court party in the utmost
difficulty, and no lawyer of sufficient eminence was available for the
post but Charles Yorke, who thus suddenly found within his reach the
high office which had been the ambition of his life. The crisis was his
undoing, and the whole story is of such interest from a family point of
view, that, although it is well known from the brilliant pages of Sir
George Trevelyan's 'Life of Fox,' I may be excused for telling it again,
mainly in the words of two important memoranda preserved at the British
Museum.

One of these was written by Charles Yorke's brother, the second Lord
Hardwicke, and dated nearly a year later, December 30, 1770; the other,
dated October 20, 1772, by his widow Agneta Yorke; and the effect of
them, to my mind, is not only to discredit the widely believed story of
Charles Yorke's suicide, which is not even alluded to, but also to place
his action from a public and political point of view in a more
favourable light than that in which it is sometimes presented.

Both the 'Memorials' to which I have alluded give a most vivid and
painful account of the struggle between ambition and political
consistency which followed upon the offer of the Chancellorship by the
Duke of Grafton to one who was pledged by his previous action to the
Rockingham party. Lord Hardwicke wrote:

'I shall set down on this paper the extraordinary and melancholy
circumstances which attended the offer of the Great Seal to my brother
in January last. On the 12th of that month he received on his return
from Tittenhanger a note from the Duke of Grafton desiring to see him.
He sent it immediately to me and I went to Bloomsbury Square where I met
my brother John and we had a long consultation with Mr. Yorke. He saw
the Duke of Grafton by appointment in the evening and his grace made him
in form and without personal cordiality an offer of the Great Seal,
complaining heavily of Lord Camden's conduct, particularly his hostile
speech in the House of Lords the first day of the Session. My brother
desired a little time to consider of so momentous an affair and stated
to the Duke the difficulties it laid him under, his grace gave him till
Sunday in the forenoon. He, Mr. Y., called on me that morning, the 14th,
and seemed in great perplexity and agitation. I asked him if he saw his
way through the clamorous and difficult points upon which it would be
immediately expected he should give his opinion, viz. the Middlesex
Election, America and the state of Ireland, where the parliament had
just been prorogued on a popular point. He seriously declared that he
did not, and that he might be called upon to advise measures of a higher
and more dangerous nature than he should choose to be responsible for.
He was clearly of opinion that he was not sent for at the present
juncture from predilection, but necessity, and how much soever the Great
Seal had been justly the object of his ambition, he was now afraid of
accepting it.

'Seeing him in so low and fluttered a state of spirits and knowing how
much the times called for a higher, I did not venture to push him on,
and gave in to the idea he himself started, of advising to put the Great
Seal in commission, by which time would be gained. He went from me to
the Duke of Grafton, repeated his declining answer, and proposed a
commission for the present, for which precedents of various times were
not wanting. The Duke of Grafton expressed a more earnest desire that my
brother should accept than he did at the first interview, and pressed
his seeing the King before he took a final resolution. I saw him again
in Montague House garden, on Monday the 15th, and he then seemed
determined to decline, said a particular friend of his in the law, Mr.
W. had rather discouraged him, and that nothing affected him with
concern but the uneasiness which it might give to Mrs. Yorke.

'On Tuesday forenoon the 16th, he called upon me in great agitation and
talked of accepting. He changed his mind again by the evening when he
saw the King at the Queen's Palace, and finally declined. He told me
just after the audience that the King had not pressed him so strongly as
he had expected, that he had not held forth much prospect of stability
in administration, and that he had not talked so well to him as he did
when he accepted the office of Attorney-General in 1765; his Majesty
however ended the conversation very humanely and prettily, that "after
what he had said to excuse himself, it would be cruelty to press his
acceptance." I must here solemnly declare that my brother was all along
in such agitation of mind that he never told me all the particulars
which passed in the different conversations, and many material things
may have been said to him which I am ignorant of. He left me soon after
to call on Mr. Anson and Lord Rockingham, authorising me to acquaint
everybody that he had absolutely declined, adding discontentedly that
"It was the confusion of the times which occasioned his having taken
that resolution." He appeared to me very much ruffled and disturbed, but
I made myself easy on being informed that he would be quiet next day and
take physic. He wanted both that and bleeding, for his spirits were in a
fever.'

Up to this point Mrs. Yorke's account, written apparently to explain and
vindicate her own share in the transaction, tallies with that of her
brother-in-law, except that she states that Lord Hardwicke had been much
more favourable to the idea of Charles Yorke's acceptance than the above
narrative leads one to suppose; according to her the family felt 'it was
too great a thing to refuse.' Lord Hardwicke's wife, the Marchioness
Grey, indeed, had called upon Mrs. Yorke to urge it, saying among other
things that 'the great office to which Mr. Yorke was invited was in the
line of his profession, that though it was intimately connected with
state affairs, yet it had not that absolute and servile dependance on
the Court which the other ministerial offices had; that Mr. Yorke had
already seen how vain it was to depend on the friendship of Lord
Rockingham and his party; that the part he had acted had always been
separate and uninfluenced, and therefore she thought he was quite at
liberty to make choice for himself, and by taking the seals he would
perhaps have it in his power to reconcile the different views of people
and form an administration which might be permanent and lasting; that if
he now refused the seals they would probably never be offered a second
time ... and that these were Lord Hardwicke's sentiments as well as her
own.'

Lord Mansfield's advice had been more emphatic still. 'He had no doubt
of the propriety of his accepting the Great Seal, indeed was so positive
that Mr. Yorke told me he would hear no reason against it.' Mrs. Yorke
herself was at first opposed to the idea; but influenced by such
opinions and by her husband's extreme dejection after refusing the
offer, she ended by strongly urging him to accept, and was afterwards
blamed for having encouraged his fatal ambition. Lord Rockingham alone,
who had been greatly dependent upon the advice and assistance of Mr.
Yorke, 'to whom,' as Mrs. Yorke remarks, 'he could apply every moment,'
and 'without whom he would have made no figure at all in his
administration,' put the strongest pressure on him to decline, for
selfish reasons as appears from Mrs. Yorke's story. It was therefore
against the advice of his own family and 'the generality of his
friends,' including Lord Chief Justice Wilmot, that Charles Yorke, in
obedience to his own high sense of political honour, at first refused
the dazzling promotion, and this fact must be recorded to his credit.

The decision, however, brought no peace to his mind, and ambition
immediately began to resume its sway. He passed a restless night, and
said in the morning to his wife 'that he would not think of it, for he
found whenever he was inclined to consent he could get no rest, and want
of rest would kill him.' But after another day, Tuesday, spent in
conference 'I believe with Lords Rockingham and Hardwicke,' he was
persuaded, by what means does not appear, to go again to Court. Lord
Hardwicke, who, as Sir George Trevelyan observes, played a true
brother's part throughout the wretched business, thus continues:

'Instead of taking his physic, he left it on the table after a broken
night's rest, and went to the _levee_, was called into the closet,
and in a manner compelled by the King to accept the Great Seal with
expressions like these: "My sleep has been disturbed by your declining;
do you mean to declare yourself unfit for it?" and still stronger
afterwards, "If you will not comply, it must make an eternal break
betwixt us." At his return from Court about three o'clock, he broke in
unexpectedly on me, who was talking with Lord Rockingham, and gave us
this account.

We were both astounded, to use an obsolete but strong word, at so sudden
an event, and I was particularly shocked at his being so overborne in a
manner I had never heard of, nor could imagine possible between Prince
and subject. I was hurt personally at the figure I had been making for a
day before, telling everybody by his authority that he was determined to
decline, and I was vexed at his taking no notice of me or the rest of
the family when he accepted. All these considerations working on my mind
at this distracting moment induced me, Lord Rockingham joining in it, to
press him to return forthwith to the King, and entreat his Majesty
either to allow him time till next morning to recollect himself, or to
put the Great Seal in commission, as had been resolved upon. We could
not prevail; he said he could not in honour do it, he had given his
word, had been wished joy, &c. Mr. John Yorke came in during this
conversation, and did not take much part in it, but seemed quite
astounded. After a long altercating conversation, Mr. Yorke, unhappily
then Lord Chancellor, departed, and I went to dinner.

'In the evening, about eight o'clock, he called on me again, and
acquainted me with his having been sworn in at the Queen's house, and
that he had then the Great Seal in the coach. He talked to me of the
title he intended to take, that of Morden, which is part of the Wimple
estate, asked my forgiveness if he had acted improperly. We kissed and
parted friends. A warm word did not escape either of us. When he took
leave he seemed more composed, but unhappy. Had I been quite cool when
he entered my room so abruptly at three o'clock I should have said
little--wished him joy, and reserved expostulation for a calmer moment.'

Mrs. Yorke's account of these 'altercating conversations' between the
brothers, at the second of which, on the evening of the 17th, she was
herself present, is naturally much more highly coloured. Charles Yorke
was evidently terribly discomposed by it, speaking of Lord Hardwicke's
language as 'exceeding all bounds of temper, reason, and even common
civility.' 'I hope,' he said to his wife, 'he will in cooler moments
think better of it, and my brother John also, for if I lose the support
of my family, I shall be undone.'

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