CHARLES TOWNSHEND By Sir Lewis Namier * ENGLAND IN THE AGE OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION THE STRUCTURE OF POLITICS AT THE ACCESSION OF GEORGE III CHARLES TOWNSHEND A mezzotint after a portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds National Portrait Gallery CHARLES TOWNSHEND by SIR LEWIS NAMIER and JOHN BROOKE Palgrave Macmillan 1964 ISBN 978-1-349-81803-7 ISBN 978-1-349-81801-3 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-81801-3 Copyright © Lady Namier 1964 Softcover reprint ofthe hardcover 1st edition 1964 978-0-333-00435-7 MACMILLAN AND COMPANY LIMITED St Martin's Street London WC:2 also Bombay Calcutta Madras Melbourne THE MACMILLAN COMPANY OF CANADA LIMITED Toronto ST MARTIN'S PRESS INC New York FOREWORD by LADY NAMIER EARLY in the 'fifties my husband began to talk of Charles Towns­ hend as a fascinating subject for a full-scale biography. We were motoring about England, Scotland and Wales - from one great muniments room to another - in search of materials and docu­ ments relevant to the lives and political activities of eighteenth­ century Members of Parliament. Here and there, often quite unexpectedly, he found tantalizing references to the brilliant, in­ dispensable, unreliable or exasperating Charles Townshend. In no time the allusions had rekindled his old interest in the man who had played so unfortunate a part in the prelude to the American Revolution. As work on The History of Parliament developed and gathered momentum, boxes of hitherto unpublished - sometimes even unsorted - documents were brought or sent by their generous owners to its offices for study by Lewis and his staff. Perusal of those from Raynham Hall and Dalkeith Palace made it clear that the biography Lewis had pondered, on our long drives, could be written. In the Raynham MSS. was a most important batch of letters from the young Charles to his father, and a smaller one to his mother; both revealed a family situation disastrously formative of Townshend the 'weather-cock' politician. As for the MSS. from Dalkeith, they made possible at last the disentangling of Charles Townshend's Parliamentary and political career. For The History of Parliament Lewis was to write a biography of Charles Townshend 7ooo-words long. Much of the new material obviously had to be left out; yet to waste it was unthinkable, and the time for the full-scale biography seemed ripe. When the Uni­ versity of Cambridge asked Lewis to deliver the Leslie Stephen lecture for 1959, he chose to speak on Townshend's character and certain aspects of his career - making, in fact, of this lecture a preliminary sketch to the large biography. So it came about that at his death in August 1960, there were VI FOREWORD three works on Townshend by Lewis's hand: the unfinished full­ length biography, the completed short biography (for The History of Parliament), and the Leslie Stephen lecture which had been published by the Cambridge University Press in the previous year. The full-length biography broke off at Townshend's appointment as Chancellor of the Exchequer, leaving the last chapter - planned to cover the most eventful year of his life - still to be written. Besides, some isolated events in Townshend's life and career were covered neither by the short biography, nor by the lecture; nor were they as yet incorporated in the large biography where none of the written text had been revised and much of the material was arranged in sequences of paragraphs headed by Roman numerals, each sequence starting with'1'. During his last years, devoted chiefly to The History of Parlia­ ment, Lewis had been closely associated with Mr. John Brooke, his principal assistant, who says: 'Throughout, while writing the biography, Sir Lewis had consulted me, and I had read each section after it had been written. He had also talked over with me how he proposed to write the final chapter; and when he died Lady Namier asked me to complete the work. I had finished my revision of the manuscript and was about to begin the final chapter, when a fresh batch of letters from Charles to his father was discovered among Lord Townshend's papers. This necessitatep the rewriting of the first two chapters; and it is no longer possible to state precisely which parts of the book are by Sir Lewis and which by me. In the section that I am almost wholly responsible for (Chapter VIII) I have followed the outline he discussed with me, and have incor­ porated phrases of his from the Leslie Stephen lecture.' There is in the book an even more subtle blending of two scholars' work, since Lewis in the last year of his life came in­ creasingly to rely upon Mr. Brooke's precision and agility of mind, and often modified his own views to suit the conclusions they had reached together. For my part, I was (in the matter of Charles Townshend as in much else) the repository of Lewis's surmises, doubts, and deliberations with himself in my hearing - a posi­ tion that makes me able to judge how inextricably the two writers' minds had to blend before this biography of Charles Townshend could be published. It has also enabled me to write the last para­ graphs of the book, those following the asterisk. They are based on our discussions in the last year of my husband's life. FOREWORD Vll But the book owes much to others, too, without whose ready help it could never have been written. In the first place thanks are due to the Marquess Townshend and the Duke of Bucc1euch, owners of the two most important collections of Charles Towns­ hend papers; Mr. T. S. Blakeney, who searched Lord Townshend's MSS. for material relating to Charles; Mr. Ian Gilmour, M.P., through whom access was obtained to the Duke of Bucc1euch's MSS.; and Dr. Lucy S. Sutherland, who kindly read the book in typescript. We extend our thanks also to all owners whose MSS. have been used in the book: The Duke of Bedford The Marquess of Bute The Duke of Devonshire Lord Egremont The Earl Fitzwilliam and the Trustees of the Wentworth Woodhouse estates The Duke of Grafton The Earl of Harrowby Mr. David Holland The Marquess of Lansdowne The Earl of Malmesbury Sir John Murray, K.C.M.G. Mr. Humphrey FitzRoy Newdegate The Marquess of Salisbury CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE CHARLES TOWNSHEND frontispiece FOREWORD BY LADY NAMIER v I EARLY YEARS (1725-1747) I II MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT (1747-1754) 20 III JUNIOR MINISTER (1754-1760) 37 IV TOWNSHEND IN THE NEW REIGN (1760-1763) 62 V AT THE BOARD OF TRADE (MARCH-SEPTEMBER, 1763) 90 VI IN OPPOSITION (1763-1765) 108 VII TOWNSHEND IN THE GRENVILLE AND ROCKINGHAM MINISTRIES (1765-1766) 124 VIII CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER AND CABINET MINISTER (1766-1767) 146 ApPENDICES A. LETTER FROM JOHN HUSKE TO CHARLES TOWNSHEND, 9 APRIL 1767 187 B. PRELIMINARY DRAFT OF THE TOWNSHEND DUTIES 189 C. LIST OF BOOKS BY SIR LEWIS NAMIER 192 INDEX 195 .