Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 20.djvu/241

 raised in the House of Commons by Colonel Wardle on 27 Jan. 1809, and referred to a select committee, which took evidence on oath. The inquiries of this committee proved that York had shown most reprehensible carelessness in his dealings with Mrs. Clarke, but he could not be convicted of receiving money himself, and the House of Commons acquitted him of any corrupt practices by 278 votes to 196. Sir David Dundas, who succeeded the duke at the Horse Guards, continued his policy, and the action of the prince regent in replacing his brother at the head of the army in May 1811 was received with almost unanimous satisfaction. The House of Commons rejected Lord Milton's motion censuring the ministry for allowing the appointment by 296 votes to 47.

No other scandal marked the duke's career. He was twice thanked by the houses of parliament, in July 1814 and July 1815, after the battle of Waterloo, for the benefits he had bestowed on the army and his unremitting attention to his duties as commander-in-chief: and in 1818, on the death of Queen Charlotte, he was appointed guardian of the person of the king, with an allowance of 10,000l. a year. The death of George III made York heir to the throne, but he continued to hold his post at the Horse Guards. The real affection which George IV entertained for him made him an important personage, but he never interfered much with politics. He opposed catholic emancipation, and on 25 April 1825, in a speech in the House of Lords, declared his opinions in opposition to a speech which was held to embody the ideas of his royal brother. In July 1826 York was attacked with dropsy, and after a long illness, borne with exemplary fortitude, he died at the Duke of Rutland's house in Arlington Street on 5 Jan. 1827. His body lay in state in St. James's Palace, and on 19 Jan. 1827 he was buried in St. George's Chapel, Windsor, his brother, the Duke of Clarence, acting as chief mourner.

The conduct of York as commander-in-chief had the greatest influence on the history of the British army. He supported the efforts successfully to revive military spirit made by commanders in the field, and by his own subordinates, above all by his military secretary, Sir Henry Torrens. Without his strenuous support the regulations of Sir David Dundas [q. v.] could not have been successful, nor the quartermaster-general's department purified. He looked well after the soldiers and their comforts, but it was with the officers that he was most successful. He set apart every Tuesday as a levée day, in which any officer might have an audience. He sternly put down the influence of personal favouritism. The purchase system was in force during his tenure of office, but a certain amount of military service in every rank was required before an officer could purchase a step, and it was impossible for boys at school to hold rank as colonels. The duke did much to eradicate political jobbery in military appointments, and set his face against systematic corruption. Though he had himself failed on the field, he generously recognised the superior merits of Wellington and his subordinates.

York was good-tempered and affable; he was a sportsman, and kept a racing stable, which was superintended by Greville, the diarist, and he possessed the open, if unintellectual, features common to his brothers. His name is better commemorated by his foundation of the Duke of York's School for the sons of soldiers, Chelsea, London, than by the column which bears his name at the end of Waterloo Place, St. James's Park, London.

[Annual Register for 1827, pp. 436-67, contains the best contemporary memoir of the Duke of York, and embodies all the pith of the obituary notices in the various newspapers and magazines, as well as the biography written by Sir Walter Scott for the Edinburgh Weekly Journal; for his military career see Philippart's Royal Military Calendar and Sir F. W. Hamilton's Hist. of the Grenadier Guards; for the campaigns of 1793-5 see Jones's Hist. of the late War in Flanders (London, 1796); for the expedition of 1799, Sir H. Bunbury's Narrative of some Passages in the late War; and for his character see especially the Greville Memoirs, 1st series, and numerous allusions in Thomas Wright's Gillray the Caricaturist.]  FREDERICK LOUIS, (1707–1751), eldest son of George II and Queen Caroline, and father of George III, was born 6 Jan. 1707 at Hanover, of which his father was electoral prince. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, in 1716, speaks of the grace and charm of his behaviour (Works, ed. 1837, i. 316). In 1717 he was created Duke of Gloucester, the following year he was installed a knight of the Garter, and 11 June 1727 received the title of Duke of Edinburgh. In his infancy a marriage had been arranged by the mothers between him and his cousin, Sophia Dorothea Wilhelmina, princess royal of Prussia, afterwards margravine of Baireuth, it being also agreed that his sister, the Princess Amelia, should marry Prince Frederick of Prussia, afterwards Frederick the Great (see narrative of the 'Double Marriage Project' in Frederick, bks. v. vi. and vii.) The arrangement was in 1723 virtually sanctioned by George I, but