THE FITZROYS.
ripHE Fitzroys are the heirs of a bastard of Charles II. The 1 illegitimate children of that King were popularly believed to be legion, but he acknowledged only James Stuart, son of a young lady in Jersey, who took holy orders and died a Catholic priest ; James, Duke of Monmouth, son of Lucy Walters, executed for treason by his uncle's command; Mary, daughter of the same lady, married first to William Sarsfield, an Irish gentleman, and after- wards to William Fanshaw ; Charles Fitzroy, Duke of South- ampton, Henry Fitzroy, Duke of Grafton, George Fitzroy, Duke of Northumberland, and Anne, Countess of Sussex,—all children of Barbara Villiers, the fierce Duchess of Cleveland ; Charles Beauclerk, Duke of St. Alban's, and James Beauclerk, sons of Nell Gwynne ; Charles Lennox, Duke of Richmond, son of Louise Querouaille, Duchess of Portsmouth ; Mary Tudor, married to the heir of Lord Derwentwater, daughter of Mary Davis ; Charles Fitzcharles, and a girl who died young, children of Catherine Pegge; and Charlotte Boyle, alias Fitzroy, wife of Sir Robert Pas- ton, Bart., afterwards Earl of Yarmouth—daughter of Elizabeth, Viscountess Shannon. Three of these founded dukedoms which still exist,—Grafton, Richmond, and St. Albans,—and other families trace their rise to connection with the children of the last popular Stuart.
Barbara, Duchess of Cleveland, ancestress of the Fitzroys, was one of the remarkable family of Villiers, she being daughter and co- heiress of a half-brother of George Villiers, first Duke of Bucking- ham, of whom Felton rid England, cousin of Elizabeth Villiers, the mistress and counsellor of William of Orange, and niece of Sir Ed- ward Villiers, ancestor of the Earls of Jersey and Clarendon. Her father died of his wounds, received in the royal cause, at Edg in 1642, when she was only in the second year of her age. Her early connection with the eccentric Earl of Chesterfield has already been noticed. Just before the Restoration she married Mr. Roger Palmer—afterwards created Earl of Castlemaine —and on the King's return to England deserted Chesterfield for her royal lover. This connection lasted till about the year 1672, when she had a child, disavowed by the King, and generally attributed to Churchill. In 1670, she was created Baroness Nonsuch, in Surrey, Countess of Southampton, and Duchess of Cleveland, with re- mainder to Charles and George Fitzroy, her eldest and third sons. Her husband died in 1705, and she soon afterwards married an adventurer, who treated her with such brutality that she had to seek the protection of the law against him, and then discovered he had a previous wife still living. She died on the 9th of October, 1709, of dropsy. Burnet says of her : " She was a woman of great beauty, but most enormously vicious and ravenous ; foolish, but imperious; very uneasy to the King, and always carrying on intrigues with other men, while yet she pretended she was jealous of him. His passion for her, and her strange behaviour towards him, did so disorder him, that often he was not master of himself, nor capable of minding business."
Henry Fitzroy, the Duchess's second son by Charles II., born September 20th, 1663, a man of " more spirit," Burnet says, " than any of the King's sons," was bred to the profes- sion of a sailor, and distinguished himself in several expeditions. On the 16th August, 1672, he was created Baron Sudbury, Viscount Ipswich, and Earl of Euston, in the county of Suffolk, and on the 11th of September, 1675, Duke of Grafton in Northamptonshire, and was appointed hereditary "Receiver- General of the profits of the seals in the Courts of King's Bench, and Common Pleas, and of the Prises of Wines," This appointment was commuted in 1845 for a pension of 8431., and a more valuable pension of 9,0001., charged on the Post Office, was sold to the nation in 1856 for 193,177/. He received besides the ap- pointment of Hereditary Ranger of Whittlebury Forest—Wakefield Lodge in which became one of his principal seats—of Gamekeeper at Newmarket, acted as Lord High Constable of England at the coronation of James II., commanded the advance guard against his own half-brother Monmouth, who beat him at Philip's Norton, and seemed at first disposed to go all lengths with the Court. He played a creditable part in the expedition to Tunis, but he had fallen completely under the influence of Churchill, and on the landing of the Prince of Orange, instead of hastening as before to proffer his military services to the King, he joined in the petition of the Bishops and the Tory Protestants that James would call a Free Parliament. The King, when this address was presented to him, was greatly incensed with Grafton. " He was sure," James said, "he could not pretend to act upon principles of conscience ; for be had been so ill-bred, that as he knew little of religion, so he regarded it less." But Grafton, unabashed, replied that " though he had himself little conscience, yet he was of a party that had a great deal." He accompanied, however, the King and the Royal army as far as Salisbury, but then along with Churchill took the lead in setting the example of desertion which was so generally followed. Grafton had been displaced from the command of the Foot Guards, but William replaced him, and entrusted him with the defence of Tilbury Fort. He voted for the Regency scheme, but took the oaths to William and Mary, bore the orb at their coronation, and in 1690 commanded William's land forces at the siege of Cork. On the 28thSeptember, while leading his men to the assault, he received a shot which broke two of his ribs, and he died of the wound on the 9th of October following. He had been married by his father on the 1st of August, 1672, when he had barely com- pleted his ninth year, to the Lady Isabella Bennet, only daughter and eventually heir to Henry Bennet, the Earl of Arlington of the Cabal Ministry, then a very beautiful child of five years of age. From this marriage the Grafton family derive their estate and seat of Euston Hall in Suffolk, which gives them their second title. By her he had an only child, Charles, born at Arlington House, October 25, 1683, who became on his father's death second Duke of Grafton, and in right of his mother, who died in February, 1723, Earl of Arlington (Middlesex), Viscount Thetford, Norfolk—the patronage of which borough is chiefly in the Duke of Grafton— and Baron Arlington.
This second Duke of Grafton was a man of fair, but moderate abilities, who rose in 1720 to the Lord Lieuten- ancy of Ireland, which office he filled in an undistinguished, but decent manner. He was subsequently appointed a Lord Justice several times, and died in 1757, a worthy but only half- trusted man. He married in 1713 the Lady Henrietta Somer- set, granddaughter of the Duke of Beaufort, and by her had five sons and four daughters. Lady Hervey, writing in September, 1732, of a visit paid by her to the fair at Bury, a favourite festival then among the gentry of Suffolk, says : —" The only things that pleased me there were the Duke of Grafton's daughters. The two youngest are the best behaved children I ever saw ; but Lady Caroline is the best bred woman, the most agreeable dancer, the genteelest and the prettiest creature that ever lived. I envy the Duke that girl. You may guess what I think of any one's daughter whom I wish my own." This last- named young lady, " Lady Caroline Fitzroy, was afterwards too well known," says the editor of this correspondence, " as Lady Caroline Petersham and Lady Harrington. Contemporary writers are full of anecdotes of this lady's conduct and manners, which, if but half of them were true, would have made Lady Hervey repent the accomplishment of her wish." She was the wife of the second Earl of Harrington. The Duke of Grafton's three eldest sons died before him, the two eldest without leaving children, and he was succeeded by his grandson, Augustus Henry, eldest surviving son of Lord Augustus Fitzroy, third son of the second Duke. Lord Augustus had served with some distinction in the navy at the attack on Carthagena, and died at Jamaica in May, 1741. His younger son, Charles Fitzroy, was created, October 17, 1780, Baron Southampton, and was the grandfather of the present Lord Southampton, and of the late Right Hon. Henry Fitzroy, who was an active member of the Peel party, and died in 1859.
Augustus Henry, third Duke of Grafton, a man in whom the Stuart instincts dominated all others, was born in October, 1735, and in November, 1756, was appointed a Lord of the Bedchamber to George III., then Prince of Wales. In the same year he entered the House of Commons as member for. Bury St. Edmund's, for which place he sat till his grandfather's death. During the Bute Ministry he rendered himself so obnoxious to the ruling powers that in 1763 he was one of the noblemen whom Lord Bute removed from their Lord-Lieutenancies (Suffolk in Grafton's case). In the same year he showed his political feelings by visiting Wilkes
in prison. But on the 10th of July, 1765, he consented to take office under Lord Rockingham as one of the Secretaries of State. He held this post till May, 1766, when he resigned, alleging as his reason the impotency of the administration. He declared that he knew but of one man—meaning the first Pitt—who could give them proper strength. Under that person he should be willing to serve
in any capacity, not only as a general officer, but as a pioneer, and would take up a spade and mattock and dig in the trenches. On the 2nd of August following he had the opportunity he desired, being appointed First Lord of the Treasury in Pitt's second admi- nistration. But he soon found himself in a very different position from what he calculated on. To begin with, Pitt's acceptance of a peerage and removal from the Lower House was a great and un- expected blow to his colleagues, and his subsequent illness threw the whole burden of government on the Duke. Until towards the middle of March, 1767, Pitt had been effectually Prime Minister, but from that time Grafton really directed the course of events, with the disadvantage of having a censor of his actions who might revive at any time in the person of his seclialed chief. He was compelled to act as he best could under these circumstances, and strengthen himself with the Bedford party, Lord North, and any others of the Opposition or outsiders whom he could secure. When Chatham's powers began to revive, he expressed great jealousy and distaste at some of these appointments, and in October, 1768, he resigned his office of Privy Seal, which he had chosen as a cover to his intended Premiership, notwithstanding all Grafton's efforts to dissuade him. Thus Grafton was left to carry on the administration of public affairs alone. Lord Stanhope says of him, " He was upright and disinterested in his public con- duct, sincere and zealous in his friendships, and by no means wanting in powers, either of business or debate. Unhappily, however, as his career proceeded, experience showed that these excellent qualities were dashed and alloyed with others of an opposite tenor. He was wanting in application, and when pressed by difficulties in his office, instead of seeking to overcome them, would rather speak of resigning it. Field sports, and, above all, his favourite pack of hounds at Wakefield Lodge, too much employed his thoughts, or, at least, his time. New- market also had great charms for him ; nor could he resist a still more dangerous fascination. His frequent appearance in public with Nancy Parsons, a well-known courtezan, gave offence to the laxer age in which he lived. His contemporaries beheld with sur- prise that woman seated at the head of the ducal table, or handed from the Opera House by the First Lord of the Treasury in the presence of the Queen. Other circumstances, some owing to no fault whatever of his own, tended to lower the reputation and to limit the term of his official power. Still, however, in spite of every disadvantage and defect, he continued, through a long life, much respected by all who knew him for the uprightness and in- tegrity of his public motives, and for a considerable period he exercised no mean influence upon parties." In 1769, when the resistance took place in America to the import duties, Graf- ton, at a Cabinet Council, had the good sense to propose that at the commencement of the next session they should bring in a bill for the complete repeal of the obnoxious duties. Lord North op- posed the including tea in the duties to be repealed, and carried the rejection of Grafton's proposal by one vote. Had Lord Chat- ham continued in the Cabinet, Grafton considered that America would have been saved_ " But for that unhappy event," he says in his " Memoirs," " I must think that the separation from America might have been avoided. For in the following spring Lord Chat- ham was sufficiently recovered to have given his efficient support in the Cabinet to Lords Camden, Granby, and General Conway, who, with myself, were overruled in our best endeavours to include the article of tea with the other duties intended to be repealed." And he adds, that from this time he felt himself ill at ease in his high post. He had better for his reputation have quitted it before the proceedings against Wilkes, or, at any rate, have retired now, when outvoted on so important a question as America. But he remained, and suffered during this year from the violent in- vectives of " Junius," and at its close was threatened by the formidable opposition of Lord Chatham. A few weeks after the latter's resignation his mental condition began to mend, and his malady found relief, and passed off in a violent fit of gout. He appeared for the first time in public at the King's levee, in July, 1769, was most graciously received, and admitted to a private conference in the royal closet ; but he treated the Duke of Grafton at the levee with cold politeness. No sooner had the new session of Parliament commenced in January, 1770, than Chatham appeared as the opponent of Government, denouncing alike their Wilkes proceedings and the American policy. An explosion in the Cabinet followed. Lord Camden, the Chancellor, rose in his place, expressed his sorrow at having acquiesced silently in Measures he so much disapproved of, and denounced the measures of the Government as much as Chatham himself. Grafton de- fended himself stoutly, and when Camden did not resign, sent for the seals, and through the personal importunity of the King sue-
ceeded in persuading Charles Yorke to accept them, though he was pledged to the Rockingham party. The reproaches, however, with which Yorke was assailed by his former friends so preyed his sensitive mind, that he went home and destroyed himself: Grafton found it impossible to get any one to take the vacant post. Granby, the Commander-in-Chief, had resigned, the Solicitor-General intimated a similar purpose, and Grafton at last lost heart, and on the 28th of January retired from the Premiership. The Oppo- sition, however, did not profit by the victory, for the King, who had a singular power of personal persuasion, induced Lord North, much against his wish, to take the command of the Cabinet, and the nation, under his guidance, was induced to involve itself in the disastrous civil contest with the American Colonies. A violent scene took place between the Duke and Chatham in the House of Lords almost immediately after his resignation of office, Chatham denouncing the supposed secret influence of Bute (although the latter was resident abroad), and Grafton declaring that this supposition could only be " the effect of a distempered mind brooding over its own discontents." Unfortunately for his fame, Grafton, though declining to enter the North Cabinet, accepted under them the office of Lord Privy Seal, June 12, 1771. He retained this office till November, 1775. Then a petition for accommodation with the mother country from the Colonial Assembly having been re- jected by the English Government, Grafton protested against this course in a letter to Lord North, and receiving in return only a copy of the King's intended speech from the throne, he came up to London and resigned, freely debating the matter- with the King himself in the royal closet. At the beginning of 1779, the Ministry endeavoured to induce Grafton, Camden, Shel- burne, and the Rockingham Whigs to enter the Cabinet; but they declined, and this offer, the Duke says, had the effect of consoli- dating the Opposition, and paving the way for the second Rocking- ham Ministry. When this was formed, in 1782, Grafton resumed his office of Privy Seal, and continued in the Shelburne Ministry after Fox's secession, though in so discontented a manner that he• could hardly be said to support it. He opposed successfully, along, with the younger Pitt, the cession of Gibraltar to the Spaniards, proposed by Shelburne, and his resignation seemed imminent when Shelburne himself abandoned office. In December, 1783, when the younger Pitt was forming his Cabinet, Grafton was one of the first persons he applied to, and the offer was re- peated in the following year, but both times declined, the latter time after some considerable hesitation, his friend Cam- den having accepted the office of President of the Council. But the subsequent measures of the Pitt Ministry, and especially the war with France, alienated Grafton entirely from this connec- tion, and he fell back on his old Whig principles. He lived, how- ever, almost wholly in the retirement of country life, devoting him- self to farming and the care of a numerous family. In 1797 he made a rather striking speech in the House of Lords, seconding an address of the Duke of Bedford's condemnatory of the war. In this he also urged economy in the internal government, denouncing the financial and monetary plans of the Ministry, and pointing to the necessity of conciliating Ireland by granting Catholic- emancipation if they would avoid an immediate catastrophe. The whole speech was in a tone of solemn warning, and, delivered as it was in the Duke's naturally impressive voice, produced considerable effect. He was equally opposed to the renewal of the war with France after the peace of Amiens. His tastes, at any rate in his later years, were more creditable than those already alluded to. He was a warm patron of the poet Bloomfield, who came from the immediate neighbourhood of Euston. He made a large collection of rare books, and read as well as bought them. He took considerable interest in theological questions, publishing anonymously two pamphlets on the reformation of the Liturgy and relaxation of subscription to the Articles, and on public worship and prayer. He also when in town habitually attended the Unitarian Chapel in Essex Street, and it was by his encouragement and under his patronage that Griesbach published the second edition of his Greek New Testament, the Duke supply- ing the paper at his own expense, and sending it abroad to the editor. His manners are spoken of by some as agreeable, by others as somewhat reserved and haughty. His saturnine cast of countenance strongly resembled that of his royal ancestor. His dress was very peculiar. He wore a coat of the Quaker cut and colour, and a cocked hat. Having passed many years in this retirement, the Duke died March 14, 1811, at the age of seventy-six. On December 5, 1768, he had been elected Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, and September 20, 1769, a Knight of the Garter. He was also Governor of the Ports in Cornwall and Devon. He was divorced from his first wife, who re- married the Earl of Upper Ossory, the Duke himself marry- ing again, and having a large second family, the number of his children altogether being sixteen. His character was a good deal discussed in his lifetime, and has been much debated since ; but we conceive that Charles II., born Peer instead of King, forced into collision with equals and possessed of some ambition, would have acted precisely as Grafton did. He was a Stuart in a private capacity, the only one of whom we have any complete record. His eldest son and successor, George Henry, fourth Duke of Grafton, till his elevation to the Peerage represented the University of Cambridge in Parliament, for which he was returned in 1784, conjointly with Mr. Pitt, with whom he had formed a strong friend- ship, against Lord John Townshend, the former member. He con- tinned for some time to vote and act with Pitt, becoming a Lord of the Admiralty and Treasury in his administration ; but he became discontented with the war with France, and his father's influence assisting in the change, he gradually adopted Whig principles, and became an opponent of Government, though he never was a violent one. After his accession to the dukedom he continued in the same line of politics—Whig, of a rather Conservative and independent character—and the remainder of his long life presents no features requiring special remark. He died September 28, 1844, in his eighty-fifth year, and was succeeded by his son Henry, fifth Duke, whose politics were of the same moderate cast, and whose life was passed in country retirement. Ile was, however, rather a warm Churchman, inquiring, it is said, whether a man was a communi- cant before he admitted him as a tenant. He devoted great atten- tion to his estates, visiting the cottages personally, and distribut- ing blankets and other comforts where needed, and, we need hardly add, was greatly esteemed on his estates. He died March 26,1863, and was succeeded by his son William Henry, the sixth and present Duke of Grafton, who as Earl of Euston and representative of Thetford, pursued an independent Whig line of politics, not always, but generally to be counted on by Whig Ministries. The family, despite its origin, has been, on the whole, a useful one, and though the pension was a stock subject of declamation with financial reformers, it was not very great pay for a career like that of the third Duke. The members of the House have been markedly popular as landlords, and have been fairly free from that inherent faithlessness which we take to be the vice of the Stuart blood, and which suggests so strongly the truth of Darnley's assertion that they were the children of David Rizzio.
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