INTRODUCTION BORN on 14 March 1767, Charles Arbuthnot was the third son of John Arbuth- not, of Rockfleet, County Mayo, by his third wife Anne, daughter of Richard Stone, a well-known London banker. His mother's wealthy relations took charge of his education and launched him in a career. At the age of six his great-uncle, Andrew Stone, the politician and tutor of George III, left him a legacy of £3,000, and, subsequently, his great-aunt bequeathed him £20,000.x In 1774 he was sent to a private school at Richmond, and five years later he went on to Westminster. Proceeding to Christ Church, Oxford, in 1784, he passed four years ' in idleness and amusements '. 'I lived there ', he after- wards wrote, ' with a most agreeable set, but unfortunately it was not the turn of those with whom I associated, to read and study.' In 1788 he spent several months on the Continent' in the best society ', and a year later he went with Lord North's youngest son Frederick, to Denmark, Sweden, and Poland. It was intended that he should be a lawyer, but ' the severe labour of the law' was too distasteful to him, and he idled away his time in fashionable London society until 1793, when, through the influence of a friend John King, Lord Grenville's under-secretary of state, he was offered the post of prdcis- writer in the foreign office at a salary of £300 a year. Two years later he entered the house of commons as member for East Looe, but successive diplo- matic appointments interfered with a parliamentary career, and he was not again in parliament until April 1809. Within a few weeks of his election he was sent to Stockholm as secretary of legation. He returned home at the beginning of 1797, and in 1798 he went to Stuttgart to congratulate Frederick of Wiirttemberg, George Ill's son-in-law, on his succession to the duchy. In the course of this year John King again brought Arbuthnot's claims to foreign employment before Lord Grenville, with the result that he was offered the consulship at Lisbon, which, he was assured, was equal in rank and superior in value to the situation of minister plenipotentiary.2 He had recently fallen in love with Miss Clapcott-Lisle, daughter of William Clapcott-Lisle and of Mrs. Lisle, the Princess of Wales's lady-in-waiting, and sister of the first marquess of Cholmondeley.3 Lord Cholmondeley gave him to understand that 1 The account of Charles Arbuthnot in the D.N.B. occupies no more than a column, and fails to give any impression of his political importance. 1 Dropmore papers, iv. 425-6, 430-2. a This was not his first attachment. There are hints of an earlier attachment in Bagot, Canning and his friends, i. 6-7 ; and he would probably have married another lady but for her untimely death. vii Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.202.226, on 02 Oct 2021 at 21:31:37, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S2042171000005100 viii INTRODUCTION he would stand a much better chance of success in his suit if he ' could obtain such an income as would meet with the family's approbation'. These, then, were the circumstances which made it ' particularly an object' to Arbuthnot to be nominated to some diplomatic mission. He told Lord Grenville that he had felt bound to desist from pressing his suit so long as his financial position remained uncertain, and added:1 Whether it be owing to that or to any other cause, I am obliged to own that such inform- ation has very recently been given to me on the subject of my wishes as makes me apprehend that the appearances which really were most extremely in my favour are now considerably altered. But yet from what did happen, from the observations which I was enabled to make myself, and from those also which my friends made, I can't help flattering myself that I may still succeed ; though at the same time I ought not to conceal that, as there might be difficulty and even danger to my hopes in bringing this point to issue, I fear such a delay in filling up the vacancy could not be allowed by your Lordship as would permit me to take the necessary measures for obtaining the wished-for information. If, however, a delay of a few weeks could be granted to me, I trust I need not say that I would not encroach on your Lordship's goodness. Early in 1799, therefore, Arbuthnot accepted with gratitude Lord Gren- ville's generous offer, and his marriage quickly followed (23 February). From June to December 1800 he was consul and charge1 d'affaires at Lisbon. Gren- ville said that there were difficulties in the way of his succession to Robert Walpole as minister at Lisbon, and on Hookham Frere's appointment to that situation in 1800 Arbuthnot returned home.2 For a year (1802-3) he was at Stockholm as envoy extraordinary, and from November 1803 until the follow- ing June he was at the foreign office as under-secretary of state. In the summer of 1804 he was nominated ambassador to Turkey and sworn of the privy council. When diplomatic relations with the Porte were broken off in 1807, Arbuthnot had to leave Constantinople on board a British warship. In the meantime (24 May 1806), ' after seven years of the most perfect happiness', he had had the misfortune to lose his wife in childbed. Forty years later he declared that time had never reconciled him to the loss of her. ' A more perfect creature never breathed.' He now abandoned the diplomatic service and devoted himself to home politics. In April 1809 he re-entered the house of commons after he had been appointed to succeed his friend Henry Wellesley as joint secretary of the treasury, Huskisson being his colleague until December of that year, when loyalty to Canning caused him to resign (36). There is plenty of evidence to show that the two secretaries at this time still shared to some extent the financial and parliamentary duties of the office, but a distinction was never- theless being evolved. In 1823, for example, Lord Harrowby commented on the difficulty of appointing ' a new Secretary to the Treasury with the depart- ment of the House of Commons'; 8 and at the same time Herries told his cousin that he was to succeed Arbuthnot, but was to take ' the other branch of business at the Treasury '.* Arbuthnot, serving successively under Perceval and Lord Liverpool, natur- 1 Dropmore papers, iv. 431. a Ibid., vi. 294. » Bathurst papers, p. 538. « Herries MSS. Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.202.226, on 02 Oct 2021 at 21:31:37, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S2042171000005100 INTRODUCTION ix ally attached himself to the less progressive wing of the tory party, an allegiance which the periodical estrangement of Canning, the leading representative of the liberal tories, from the main tory connection left free from disturbing influences. Castlereagh, indeed, became a warm friend, but more typical were Arbuthnot's political and personal friendships with Liverpool, Wellington, Bathurst, and Peel. Unlike Peel, his politics became less rather than more liberal. In March 1813 he was still in favour of catholic emancipation,1 but he never again voted in favour of the catholic claims until the question was surrendered in 1829. He had been on cordial terms with Canning until 1809,2 but Canning's intrigues for the premiership, his duel with Castlereagh, and his quarrel with that section of the tory party led by Perceval, produced a change, and the old cordiality was never altogether restored, even when, after 1816, Canning was again in the cabinet. Within a few days of Canning's resignation in 1812, he was accusing Arbuthnot of writing against him in the government newspapers, and Canning would not accept his assurances that the treasury had no responsi- bility for the violent articles which the Courier had been publishing.3 Arbuthnot now made himself almost indispensable to Lord Liverpool, who became head of the treasury in 1812 after the assassination of Perceval.4 Trusted and confided in by all the leading members of the government, privy to all their secrets, acting as a liaison between the party leaders and the rank- and-file in the house of commons, managing the government press, and smoothing away, difficulties and removing differences arising between members of the government, Arbuthnot played a considerable part in politics behind the scenes, so long as the tories remained in power. ' No individual', said Wellington in 1823, ' ever rendered any Government such services as he has to this for a period of now little less than fifteen years.' B Arbuthnot's papers, together with those of Lord Liverpool, reveal that Arbuthnot was the real, as well as the nominal, patronage secretary.6 There was hardly any patronage bestowed during the premiership of Lord Liverpool on the disposal of which Arbuthnot was not consulted.7 1 Parker's Peel, i. 79. 8 Dorothy Marshall, Rise of George Canning, pp. 153-4. Canning described him in 1794 as ' pleasant, quick, gentlemanly, and universally a favourite '. "Br.Mus. Add. MS. 38737 (Huskisson Papers), fit. 385, 411. 4' I believe,' said Arbuthnot, ' that there was scarcely anything of a public and, I might add, of a private nature, that he did not communicate to me ' (Parker's Peel, iii.