Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 04.djvu/290

 recovering just soon enough to attend his master into the field, where he was ever next his person ('s Works, fol. 1750, i. 401). In June 1677, when the peace conferences were already open at Nymwegen and a defensive alliance had been offered by England to the United Provinces, William sent Bentinck on a confidential mission to Charles II's court, with a view to negotiating a marriage with the Princess Mary, the elder daughter of the Duke of York. The wedding was actually celebrated in November, and the peace was concluded in the next year. In 1683 Bentinck was again in England, to offer congratulations on the collapse of the Rye House plot; but he was less warmly received when early in the next reign, in 1685, he was once more sent across to offer the prince's assistance against the invasion of the Duke of Monmouth, of which Amsterdam had been the starting-point. Soon he was actively engaged in the operations preceding another invasion, which was to have a very different result. Among the precautionary measures taken by William of Orange in 1688 before finally resolving upon his English expedition, none were more skilfully and successfully accomplished than his negotiations with several of the princes of northern Germany, and more especially those with the heir presumptive of the possessions of the house of Orange, the young elector Frederick III of Brandenburg. Immediately on his accession, April 1688, the elector, having resolved upon continuing the policy of his great father, received Bentinck at Berlin and arrived at an understanding with him. In July Bentinck returned to Berlin, having previously paid visits with a similar purpose at Cassel, at Hanover (here in vain), and at Celle; and in interviews with the Brandenburg minister, Fuchs, and others, arrangements were made for effectively covering the lower and the middle Rhine when the time should come (the fullest details in, vol. iv. part i. 29 seqq.). As it drew nearer and the anxiety of the prince increased, he freely communicated his cares to Bentinck in letters, and a great share of the preparations of the last two months fell to the faithful friend, the serious illness of whose wife at the Hague furnished him, as Burnet says, with a very just excuse for his constant attendance there in the absence of the prince. Of course, when the expedition at last sailed, Bentinck was by his master's side; his wife (who is passed over by Collins) died shortly after he had quitted Holland (Clarendon's Diary, 4 Dec. 1688). It was Bentinck who at Burnet's request informed the prince, when at Windsor, of the untoward capture of King James, and advised him to give the necessary orders for insuring the personal safety of the prisoner. In conversation with Clarendon Bentinck declared it the most wicked insinuation to assert that the prince was hankering after the crown; but when Halifax had proposed that William should be king and Mary queen consort only, it seemed to Burnet, who himself strongly objected to the scheme, that the suggestion was at heart approved by the prince's most intimate counsellor

A few days before the coronation of William and Mary well-earned rewards were bestowed with no sparing hand upon Bentinck, who was created Baron Cirencester, Viscount Woodstock, and Earl of Portland. About the same time he was appointed groom of the stole, first gentleman of the bedchamber, and a privy councillor. With these offices he seems afterwards to have united that of superintendent of the king's gardens (, iv. 514). Rather later in the year, in August, Luttrell (i. 568) records that Portland and Halifax, with three others, composed the king's cabinet council; but of course the term is here employed at the most in a half-technical sense. Portland soon obtained a regiment of horse, which did good service at the Boyne and elsewhere in Ireland, and in Flanders ( and ); he afterwards obtained the command of a regiment of Dutch guards, which he did not resign till 1700 (, iv. 686); and he appears to have held the rank of lieutenant-general in the English army. But, though always ready to serve in the field, he was mostly, when not in attendance upon the king's person (he had a lodging in the palace at Kensington), engaged in the diplomatic business, for which he seems both by training and by character to have been pre-eminently fitted. William III was always loth to confide the secrets of his foreign policy to English hands, and to the end of his life Portland was in such matters his most trusted agent. Burnet says that the king's favour at first lay between Bentinck and Henry Sidney (afterwards Earl of Romney), but the latter lacked the application which distinguished the former. In the greatest achievement, however, of William's foreign policy, in the year 1689, the conclusion of the grand alliance treaty, not even Portland had a share. After he had in August inspected at Chester the army making ready for Ireland (, i. 567), he was, in December, sent to Holland to take part in the conferences of the ministers of the allies. It was on this visit that when he presented himself to take his seat as a noble 