Of all the resigners, the Duke of Grafton had treated his master with the greatest decency: he had retired to hunt, according to his custom, on the first scent of a storm; and it was with the greatest reluctance that he was forced to declare himself for any Ministry that was in a disputable situation: nothing could have forced him to it but the inequality of the dispute. When he went into the closet, he told the King, as if laughing at those he sided with, “Sir, I am come to direct you who shall be your Minister.”
The Duke of Grafton[156] was a very extraordinary man; with very good common sense and knowledge of mankind, he contrived to be generally thought a fool, and by being thought so, contrived to be always well at Court, and to have it not remarked that he was so: yet he would sometimes boast of having been a short time in Opposition, and of having early resolved never to be so again. He had a lofty person, with great dignity; great slowness in his delivery, which he managed with humour. He had the greatest penetration in finding out the foibles of men that ever I knew, and wit in teazing them. He was insensible to misfortunes of his own[157] or of his friends: understood the Court perfectly, and looking upon himself as of the Blood Royal, he thought nothing ought to affect him, but what touched them: as he had no opportunity of forsaking them for a family to which he was more nearly related, one must not say he would have forsaken them: betraying was never his talent; he was content to be ungrateful, when his benefactors were grown unhappy. He was careless of his fortune, and provided against nothing but a storm that might remove him from his station. An instance once broke out of his having ambition to something more than barely adorning the Court. On the Queen’s death, whom he always hated, teazed, yet praised to the King, he was imprudent enough in a private conversation with Sir Robert Walpole and the Duke of Newcastle, to dispute with the latter, whose the power should be, both silently agreeing, fools as they were, in his very presence, that it was no longer to be Sir Robert’s. Grafton thinking to honour him enough by letting him act under him, said at last in a great passion to t’other Duke, “My Lord, sole Minister I am not capable of being; first Minister, by G--, I will be.” The foundation of either’s hopes lay in their credit with Princess Emily, who was suspected of having been as kind to Grafton’s love, as she would have been unkind in yielding to Newcastle’s, who made exceeding bustle about her, but was always bad at executing all business. The Queen had in reality a thorough aversion to the Duke of Grafton for the liberties he took with one of her great blood; and if she had not been prevented by Sir Robert Walpole, would one night have complained to the King, when the Princess and the Duke, who hunted two or three times a week together, had staid out unusually late, lost their attendants, and gone together to a private house in Windsor Forest. The Queen hated him too for letting her see he knew her. He always teazed her, and insisted that she loved nobody. He had got a story of some Prince in Germany,[158] that she had been in love with before her marriage: “G--, madam,” he used to say, “I wish I could have seen that man that you _could_ love!” “Why,” replied she, “do you think I don’t love the King?” “G--, I wish I was King of France, and I would be sure whether you do or not!”