Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 61.djvu/350

 plantations of Scotch firs and cedars (, History of Windsor Great Park), and he began the formation of Virginia Water. He was an ardent supporter of horse racing, and ultimately he had the largest and best stud in the kingdom. Eclipse and Herod were bred in his stables. He made the course and founded the meeting at Ascot (Quarterly Review, xlix. 409). At the same time he was zealous in the discharge of his duties as captain-general. He founded a hospital for invalid soldiers near Buckingham House, and he procured the passing of a bill to protect pensioners from usurers. He ‘plucked a very useful feather out of the cap of the ministry by forbidding any application for posts in the army to be made to anybody but himself’ (, Letters, ii. 55); and he did his best to root out abuses and to secure discipline and efficiency.

But his efforts in this direction added to his unpopularity. He was said to be treating the soldiers ‘rather like Germans than Englishmen.’ The changes made at his instance in the Mutiny Act were strongly opposed in parliament. The ‘Remembrancer,’ edited by James Ralph [q. v.], and inspired by the Prince of Wales's coterie at Leicester House, attacked his military reforms and himself, and pointed to precedents of ambitious younger sons. The writer of ‘Constitutional Queries,’ which appeared at the beginning of 1751, and was burnt by the hangman, definitely asked ‘whether it might not be prudent to reflect on the fatal instances of John of Lancaster and Crook-backed Richard’ (, George II, i. 495).

On 20 March 1751 the Prince of Wales died, and the question of regency, in case the king should die before his grandson came of age, was raised. The king wished the duke to be regent, but the ministers demurred on account of his unpopularity. An act was passed providing that the Princess-dowager of Wales should be regent, but should be advised by a council on which the duke was to have a seat. He was deeply mortified. There was already a coolness between him and Newcastle, which had originated in differences between the latter and Sandwich during the Aix-la-Chapelle negotiations (, ii. 110), and from this time forward he was hostile to the Pelhams. His political friends were the Duke of Bedford, Sandwich, and especially Henry Fox. The king thanked the latter for taking the duke's part in the debate on the regency bill, and said, ‘The English are so changeable; I do not know why they dislike him. It is brought about by the Scotch, the Jacobites, and the English that do not love discipline.’ In November, when the duke had a fall in hunting and his life was for some days in danger, the king was in great distress, and told Fox ‘he has a head to guide, to rule, and to direct’ (, George II, i. 137, 184). He was elected chancellor of the university of Dublin, in succession to his brother, on 18 May.

When the king went to Hanover in the spring of 1755, the duke was appointed one of the lords justices (28 April) on account of the critical state of affairs and the possibility of a French invasion. He was for declaring war at once and striking the first blow; but, though hostilities were carried on, the declaration was deferred till news came of the French descent on Minorca in May 1756.

Since the death of the Prince of Wales the jealousy of the duke had become more intense on the part of his widow and her circle. Pitt acted with them, and in the debate on the regency bill he had gone so far as to suggest that, if the duke were to become sole regent, his ambition ‘might excite him to think less of protecting than of wearing the crown’ (, iv. 13). But the duke took Pitt's measure sufficiently to advise Fox, at the end of 1754, not to place himself in opposition to him by accepting a seat in the cabinet. ‘I don't know him, but by what you tell me Pitt is, what is scarce, he is a man’ (, George II, i. 363).

In November 1756 Pitt became secretary of state. He was bent on pushing the war in America, and in January 1757 two highland regiments were raised for service there, one of them by Simon Fraser, master of Lovat, who had fought in the rebel ranks at Culloden. Pitt has been highly praised for having ‘devised that lofty and generous scheme for removing the disaffection of the highlanders’ (, iii. 18, iv. 89). But the duke had some share in it, for the proposal was contained, with others, in ‘a plan for carrying on the war’ which was submitted to him in May 1756, and which he sent by Lord Albemarle to Pitt in December. The fact is, troops were badly needed in America, and could be ill spared from home, and, as the author of this plan remarked, ‘No men in this island are better qualified for the American war than the Scots highlanders’ (, Anecdotes of the Earl of Chatham, i. 261). In the ‘Cumberland Papers’ there is a list of officers for Fraser's regiment endorsed by the duke: ‘These papers delivered to me by the Duke of Argyle on the 2nd January 1757, and ap-