Charles Philip Yorke, Fourth Earl of Hardwicke, Vice-Admiral R.N., A Memoir | Page 5

did not venture to push him on,
and gave in to the idea he himself started, of advising to put the Great
Seal in commission, by which time would be gained. He went from me
to the Duke of Grafton, repeated his declining answer, and proposed a
commission for the present, for which precedents of various times were
not wanting. The Duke of Grafton expressed a more earnest desire that
my brother should accept than he did at the first interview, and pressed

his seeing the King before he took a final resolution. I saw him again in
Montague House garden, on Monday the 15th, and he then seemed
determined to decline, said a particular friend of his in the law, Mr. W.
had rather discouraged him, and that nothing affected him with concern
but the uneasiness which it might give to Mrs. Yorke.
'On Tuesday forenoon the 16th, he called upon me in great agitation
and talked of accepting. He changed his mind again by the evening
when he saw the King at the Queen's Palace, and finally declined. He
told me just after the audience that the King had not pressed him so
strongly as he had expected, that he had not held forth much prospect
of stability in administration, and that he had not talked so well to him
as he did when he accepted the office of Attorney-General in 1765; his
Majesty however ended the conversation very humanely and prettily,
that "after what he had said to excuse himself, it would be cruelty to
press his acceptance." I must here solemnly declare that my brother was
all along in such agitation of mind that he never told me all the
particulars which passed in the different conversations, and many
material things may have been said to him which I am ignorant of. He
left me soon after to call on Mr. Anson and Lord Rockingham,
authorising me to acquaint everybody that he had absolutely declined,
adding discontentedly that "It was the confusion of the times which
occasioned his having taken that resolution." He appeared to me very
much ruffled and disturbed, but I made myself easy on being informed
that he would be quiet next day and take physic. He wanted both that
and bleeding, for his spirits were in a fever.'
Up to this point Mrs. Yorke's account, written apparently to explain and
vindicate her own share in the transaction, tallies with that of her
brother-in-law, except that she states that Lord Hardwicke had been
much more favourable to the idea of Charles Yorke's acceptance than
the above narrative leads one to suppose; according to her the family
felt 'it was too great a thing to refuse.' Lord Hardwicke's wife, the
Marchioness Grey, indeed, had called upon Mrs. Yorke to urge it,
saying among other things that 'the great office to which Mr. Yorke
was invited was in the line of his profession, that though it was
intimately connected with state affairs, yet it had not that absolute and

servile dependance on the Court which the other ministerial offices had;
that Mr. Yorke had already seen how vain it was to depend on the
friendship of Lord Rockingham and his party; that the part he had acted
had always been separate and uninfluenced, and therefore she thought
he was quite at liberty to make choice for himself, and by taking the
seals he would perhaps have it in his power to reconcile the different
views of people and form an administration which might be permanent
and lasting; that if he now refused the seals they would probably never
be offered a second time ... and that these were Lord Hardwicke's
sentiments as well as her own.'
Lord Mansfield's advice had been more emphatic still. 'He had no doubt
of the propriety of his accepting the Great Seal, indeed was so positive
that Mr. Yorke told me he would hear no reason against it.' Mrs. Yorke
herself was at first opposed to the idea; but influenced by such opinions
and by her husband's extreme dejection after refusing the offer, she
ended by strongly urging him to accept, and was afterwards blamed for
having encouraged his fatal ambition. Lord Rockingham alone, who
had been greatly dependent upon the advice and assistance of Mr.
Yorke, 'to whom,' as Mrs. Yorke remarks, 'he could apply every
moment,' and 'without whom he would have made no figure at all in his
administration,' put the strongest pressure on him to decline, for selfish
reasons as appears from Mrs. Yorke's story. It was therefore against the
advice of his own family and 'the generality of his friends,' including
Lord Chief Justice Wilmot, that Charles Yorke, in obedience to his own
high sense of political honour, at first refused the dazzling promotion,
and this fact