The Duke of Cumberland, on these harsh proceedings, said to Lord Waldegrave, “Fox has deceived me grossly--not, as you think, by giving me up; he might be as angry with me for talking to Newcastle and Pitt--but he has deceived me, for I thought him good-natured; but in all these transactions he has shown the bitterest revenge and inhumanity.”
When the Houses met after Christmas, the Court was so thoroughly the master, that scarce an attempt was made at opposition. Yet Wilkes and Churchill wrote with as much intemperance as if the nation had been overspread with the flame of faction. The latter now published his “Prophecy of Famine,” one of the severest and least irregular of his works. Their poems and libels seemed to have little effect, but the seeds sown by them took deep root. Nor did the Court trouble itself to deny what was charged on it. The measures of the House of Stuart were so thoroughly copied, that even the rankest friends of that family were adopted at St. James’s. Sir John Philipps himself was made a privy councillor.
It happened that Lord Strange,[292] moving a common adjournment to the following Monday, the Speaker said the House must adjourn till Tuesday, for Monday would be the 30th of January. Lord Strange laughed at such a Saint’s day, and divided the House, but found only thirty-six persons of his opinion; one hundred and three were for observing the ridiculous fast. Fox was of the majority, who, very few years before, had been for putting an end to that Jacobite holiday--a clear indication of the principles of the new Court. Lord Strange causing that part of the act of Parliament, which ordains observance of the day, to be read, and affirming that the words _Neither Parliament nor People can judge the King_, were contrary to the constitution; Fox denied it, and maintained that the constitution had always held that language. Rose Fuller and Lord Strange moved another day, to abolish the observation of the pretended martyrdom, but it was overruled by the House: however, it produced a very bold and extraordinary speech from Calvert; he drew a picture of a fictitious family in Surrey, whom he called _the Steadys_, describing two old Steadys and a young one; with a very particular account of young Steady’s mother, and of her improper intimacy with a Scotch gardener--he hoped the true friends of young _Steady_ would advise him to recall his old friends, and turn away the Scotch gardener. No reply was made, for none could be made, without carrying the application too home.