Grenville, in the mean time, vain and self-confident, had been buoyed up, almost to the last moment, by the delusion that his services were indispensable to his sovereign. The partiality or flattery of his friends and followers tended to confirm him in this conviction. Not a day passed, he tells us, but he received communications from "a great variety of persons," expressive of their indignation at the illtreatment which he had experienced.' The Lord Chancellor, he says, told him the "kingdom was lost" if he retired, while Lord Mansfield, he adds, expressed himself in similar terms. It was, indeed, a common pleasantry at the time that the King must necessarily continue Mr. Grenville as his first Minister, there being no other person in a tye-wig to preside at the Treasury Board. Unalarmed by the length of time which was suffered to elapse without his being resummoned to the royal closet, the delay was attributed by the sanguine Minister to a natural unwillingness on the part of the King to compromise his dignity, or rather, to use Grenville's own expression, to a natural" unwillingness to speak first." In the opinion of Grenville's colleague, Lord Egmont, a "gentle behaviour" towards their sovereign on the part of Ministers would set all to rights. Still no summons came from the King, and Grenville was probably beginning to feel somewhat uneasy, when the following peremptory communication was placed in his hands :''Grenville Papers,' vol. iii. p. 304. Ibid., vol. iii. p. 204.

VOL. I.

2

R

The Lord Chancellor to Mr. Grenville.

"DEAR SIR,

"Wednesday, July 10, 1765.

"I have this moment received his Majesty's commands to signify to you his pleasure, that you attend his Majesty at St. James's this day, at 12 o'clock, with the seal of your office.

"I am very unhappy at conveying so unpleasing commands, as I have the honour to be with great respect, &c.

"NORTHINGTON." 1

Of Grenville's farewell interview with his sovereign in the royal closet, he has himself bequeathed us some account. To his energetic request to be informed in what manner he had incurred his Majesty's displeasure, the King returned a curt and apparently haughty reply. Too much "constraint," he said, had been put upon him by his late Ministers, who, instead of consulting him, had expected him to 66 obey." Grenville, as he himself informs us, "started at that word." True it is that during the parting harangue delivered by the discarded Minister -an harangue, by-the-by, which seems to have been even more than commonly verbose and lengthy -the King listened to him with exemplary patience and marked civility; yet, neither in the royal closet, nor at the levee which followed, could Grenville 'Grenville Papers,' vol. iii. p. 71.

elicit from his sovereign a single farewell expression of approbation. At the levee, he says, the King asked him but "one cold question."

Although Mr. Grenville never again held an appointment under the crown, he continued, in his capacity of a member of the Commons, to afford to his country, to the close of his career, the valuable assistance of his official knowledge and experience, especially on constitutional and financial questions. One of the last acts of his public life was the introduction by him, in March, 1770, of a Bill for Regulating the Proceedings of the House of Commons on Controverted Elections; a bill described by Hatsell as "One of the noblest works for the honour of the House of Commons, and the security of the constitution, that was ever devised by any minister or statesman."

Attempts have more than once been made to shift from Mr. Grenville to others the odium of having been the author of the fatal American Stamp Act. Whether, however, the idea was suggested to him by others, or whether it originated in himself, seems to be a question of very secondary importance. Grenville unquestionably it was who first of all introduced the project to the consideration of Parliament; he it was who was the cause of its becoming a part of the law of the land; and, lastly, to the close of his existence, he persisted in defending it as a sagacious and salutary measure.

''Grenville Papers,' vol. iii. pp. 211-17.

Mr. Grenville, beneath an unprepossessing aspect and an unfortunate austerity of manner, is said to have possessed a kind, and even a tender heart. As with the public, so with his private purse, he was a strict and careful economist. In his other domestic relations, as husband, father, and friend, those who knew him best represented him as exemplary almost to blamelessness. He died on the 13th of November, 1770, in his fifty-ninth year.

Mr. Grenville's death appears to have much modified the aversion which George III. had conceived for him during his lifetime. For instance, we not only find the King, about a fortnight after the event, condoling with Lord Suffolk on the loss of his friend, "that great and good man, Mr. Grenville," but, nine years after, speaking of him in similar terms of eulogy at the council-table at Buckingham House.1 The fact is, that to Mr. Grenville's more sterling qualities-to his unwearying diligence and private and political integrity— the King, whatever grounds he may have had for complaining of him in other respects, had never at any time failed to do adequate justice.

'Almon's 'Biog. and Polit. Anecdotes,' vol. ii. pp. 101, 102.

FREDERICK CORNWALLIS,

ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY.

THE Hon. Frederick Cornwallis-apparently, with the exception of the late Archbishop Sumner, the only Etonian who has risen to be Primate of England -would seem to have been indebted for his elevation to that high dignity rather to the amiable qualities of his heart than to his head, and to his patrician birth rather than to either. He was a younger son of Charles, fourth Baron Cornwallis; a brother of Charles, first Earl Cornwallis; and uncle to Charles first Marquis Cornwallis. The Archbishop was born on the 22nd of February, 1713.

From Eton, Frederick Cornwallis was transferred to Christ's College, Cambridge, of which society he became in due time a fellow. In 1736 he took his degree of B.A., and in 1748 as D.D. His first preferments of any importance in the Church were as chaplain to George II., and as Canon of Windsor. On the 18th of February, 1750, he was consecrated Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry, and on the 28th of November, 1766, Dean of St. Paul's.