Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 19.djvu/205

Fitzroy under the necessity of bringing forward the port duties upon glass, colours, paper, and tea.' Grafton became more anxious than ever for Chatham's advice in the cabinet's deliberations, and for his presence in parliament. An interview between them was at last arranged on 31 May 1767, but the only effect of their consultation was for the ministry to continue in its course, with Conway taking the lead in the commons. As Chatham's malady became worse, it was necessary for Grafton either to retire, which he often threatened, or to assume greater responsibility in business. He adopted the latter alternative, and from September 1767 the ministry was known by his name. Townshend died in that month and Lord North succeeded as chancellor of the exchequer, and Lord Gower with the members of the Bedford party was included in the government in the following December. The effect of these changes was to render the ministry more united in council but to weaken its liberal character. Wilkes was returned for Middlesex, and Grafton, though personally adverse to arbitrary acts of power, was at the head of affairs when an elected representative to parliament was first expelled the House of Commons, and then declared incapable of election. The cabinet decided that the port duties levied in the American colonies should be repealed, but were divided upon the question whether the duty upon tea should not be retained as an assertion of the right. Grafton was for the repeal of all, but, 'to his great surprise and mortification, it was carried against him by the casting vote of his friend Lord Rochford, whom he had himself lately introduced into the cabinet.' To make matters worse, he began to neglect business, and to outrage the lax morality of his day, thinking, to use the strong language of Horace Walpole, 'the world should be postponed to a whore and a horse race.' Junius thundered against him, accusing him, as hereditary ranger of Whittlebury and Salcey forests, of malversation in claiming and cutting some of the timber — an accusation which would appear from the official minutes in 'Notes and Queries,' 3rd ser. viii. 231-3, to have been unfounded — and denouncing him, both in his letters and in a poem called 'Harry and Nan,' an elegy in the manner of Tibullus, which was printed in 'Almon's Political Register,' ii. 431 (1768), for what could not be gainsaid, his connection with Nancy Parsons. This woman was the daughter of a tailor in Bond Street, and she first lived with Hoghton or Horton, a West India captive merchant, with whom she went to Jamaica, but from whom she fled to England. She is described as 'the Duke of Grafton's Mrs. Horton, the Duke of Dorset's Mrs. Horton, everybody's Mrs. Horton.' Her features are well known from Gainsborough's portrait, and she was endowed with rare powers of attraction, for which Grafton threw away 'his beautiful and most accomplished wife,' and Charles, second viscount Maynard, raised her to the peerage by marrying her 12 June 1776. It was in April 1768 that the prime minister appeared with her at the opera and thus afforded Junius an opportunity for some of his keenest invectives. Under the influence of these private distractions and public troubles over Wilkes and America, resignation of the premiership was often threatened by Grafton. In October 1768 Chatham resigned his place as lord privy seal, although several of his friends still adhered to their places. At the close of 1769 Chatham recovered the full possession of his faculties, and the effect upon the ministry of his reappearance in the political world was instantaneous. Lord Granby voted against them, and then resigned. Lord Camden was dismissed from his post of lord chancellor, and the seals were given to Charles Yorke. The death of the new chancellor followed immediately on his appointment, and Grafton, naturally timid and indolent, and with a set of discontented friends around him, seized the opportunity of resigning on 28 Jan. 1770. His temporary difference with Chatham was intensified by some words which passed between them in the following March, when Grafton was pronounced unequal 'to the government of a great nation.' After much persuasion from the king's friends he took office as privy seal in Lord North's administration (June 1771), but, 'with a kind of proud humility,' refused a seat in the cabinet. This step exposed him to varying comment. The king wrote, 'Nothing can be more handsome than his manner of accepting the privy seal,' but Horace Walpole sneeringly wrote, that it came 'of not being proud.' Grafton himself gave out in after years that he accepted this office in the hope of preventing the quarrel with America from being pushed to extremities, and his views probably always leant to the side of the colonists. In August 1775 he wrote to Lord North, warmly urging the desirability of a reconciliation, but the prime minister did not reply for seven weeks, when the substance of his answer was a draft of the king's speech. His resignation was daily expected, and on 3 Nov. the king thought that the seal of office should be sent for, but on 9 Nov. Grafton resigned, and at once took public action against his late colleagues. An attempt was made in February