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96 The new Councillors sailed for India in April, 1774. Another ship which started on the same day carried out the Chief Justice, Sir Elijah Impey, and his three colleagues, Chambers, Hyde, and Lemaistre. The two ships kept near each other throughout the voyage. Several of the party took with them their wives and daughters. Of the three Councillors, Clavering, who was also appointed Commander-in-Chief, was an honest, hot-headed soldier, who had led the attack on Guadeloupe in 1759, and whose Parliamentary influence had raised him into favour with the King and Lord North. 'He brought,' says Hastings, 'strong prejudices with him, and he receives all his intelligence from men whose aim or interest it is to increase those prejudices.' The Hon. George Monson had fought in Indian campaigns on the Coasts and borne a prominent part in the conquest of Manilla in 1762. He appears to have been a man of small intellect, arrogant, rash, self-willed, but easily led by those who paid him the needful deference. Last of the triumvirate, but far the first for intellect, ability, culture, and force of character, comes Philip Francis, who had been for some years chief clerk in the War Office, and has now been identified by competent judges with the author of the once famous 'Letters of Junius.'

Macaulay, in his well-known description of that vitriolic satirist, has, according to Herman Merivale, the biographer of Francis, given us a perfect likeness of Francis himself. 'Junius was clearly a man not destitute of real patriotism and magnanimity,