The Subsequent Career of Duellist Colonel Charles Lennox
The Duke of York’s duelling adversary in 1789 was in fact the greatgrandson of King Charles II because the two dukedoms of Richmond and Lennox were created for Charles Lennox (b. 1672), the illegitimate son of Charles II and his French mistress, Louise, Duchess of Portsmouth, from whose family Lennox later inherited in addition the dukedom of Aubigny in France. Both he and his son, the second duke, were enthusiastic players of cricket, which they helped to establish as a popular game in England. The third duke (whose sister Lady Sarah Lennox the young George III had considered marrying) was a soldier and politician who served as Master-General of the Ordnance from 1782 to 1795 and in retirement established a racecourse at Goodwood, his house in Sussex. He had no legitimate children, so his heir was his nephew Charles (b. 1764), who, as we have seen, was given a commission in the Coldstream Guards and famously fought a duel with his commanding officer, the Duke of York, in May 1789. After this, Lennox’s brother officers passed a resolution that he had ‘behaved with courage, but from the peculiarity of the circumstances, not with judgement’, and he left the Guards for the 35th regiment of foot in Edinburgh. Before arriving, however, he fought another duel, in July 1789, with the writer Theophilus Swift, who had published a critical account of Lennox’s role in the York duel. This time, Lennox’s aim was better and Swift was hit in the body, although not fatally.
As a very able cricketer, in the family tradition, Lennox played the game with his men in Edinburgh and was very popular with them. Later in 1789 he married Lady Charlotte Gordon, a daughter of the fourth Duke of Gordon, with whom he had seven sons and seven daughters. She, by all accounts, was very snobbish, being ‘excessively proud and disdainful of persons of inferior rank’. She is also said to have ‘ruined her husband by gambling’. In 1790 he became MP for Sussex but subsequently went out with his regiment to the West Indies, where in 1794 he survived an outbreak of yellow fever which took a heavy toll on both officers and men. He succeeded his uncle as Duke of Richmond, Duke of Lennox and Duke of Aubigny in 1806, and he was Lord Lieutenant of Ireland from 1807 to 1813. In 1815, with the rank of full general, he was in command of a reserve force charged with defending Brussels from possible French attack, and it was in his rented house in Brussels that he and his wife gave the famous ball on the eve of the battles at Ligny and Quatre Bras. In 1818 Richmond was appointed Governor-in-Chief of British North America and embarked on an extensive tour of Canada. The following year he was bitten by a pet fox, eventually died in agony from rabies in August and was buried in the Anglican cathedral in Quebec. Richmond County in Nova Scotia is named after him, as is the town of Richmond, Ontario.1
The Duke of York’s Alleged Illegitimate Children
The best known of the Duke of York’s alleged illegitimate children is Captain Charles Hesse (c. 1791–1832), who appears in the text as the young officer who had a serious affair with Princess Charlotte of Wales. The person who let this particular cat out of the bag was Captain Charles Gronow (1794–1865), Old Etonian, Guards officer and popular dandy, who wrote some reminiscences which give colourful insights into high society life at the time. Of Hesse he wrote:
One of my most intimate friends was the late Captain Hesse, generally believed to be a son of the Duke of York, by a German lady of rank…. Hesse, in early youth, lived with the Duke and Duchess of York; he was treated in such a manner by them as to indicate an interest in him by their Royal Highnesses which could scarcely be attributed to ordinary regard, and was gazetted a cornet in the 18th Hussars at seventeen years of age. Shortly afterwards, he went to Spain, and was present in all the battles in which his regiment was engaged, receiving a severe wound in the wrist at the battle of Vitoria. When this became known in England, a royal lady [Princess Charlotte] wrote to Lord Wellington, requesting that he might be carefully attended to, and, at the same time, a watch, with her portrait, was forwarded, which was delivered to the wounded Hussar by Lord Wellington himself. When he had sufficiently recovered, Hesse returned to England, and passed much of his time at Oatlands, the residence of the Duchess of York; he was also honoured with the confidence of the Princess Charlotte and her mother, Queen Caroline.
Gronow then describes how the prince regent asked him to return Princess Charlotte’s watch and letters, and concludes:
Hesse’s life was full of singular incidents. He was a great friend of the Queen of Naples, grandmother of the ex-sovereign of the Two Sicilies; in fact, so notorious was that liaison, that Hesse was eventually expelled from Naples under an escort of gendarmes. He was engaged in several affairs of honour, in which he always displayed the utmost courage; and his romantic career terminated by his being killed in a duel by Count L[eon], natural son of the first Napoleon. He died, as he had lived, beloved by his friends, and leaving behind him little but his name and the kind thoughts of those who survived him.2
The letters of Lady Blessington give us a few more details. It seems that Hesse went to Naples in the first instance as equerry to the Princess of Wales, that he fought and was wounded at Waterloo, and that he married Mary Elizabeth Chambre in 1825. His death in 1832 came as a result of a duel with Count Leon after a dispute over a card game.
The most authoritative investigator into the illegitimate offspring of royal personages is Antony J. Camp, an experienced professional genealogist, who in 2007 privately published a 446-page book entitled Royal Mistresses and Bastards: Fact and Fiction 1714–1936. He carefully considers the evidence for all those who have been mentioned as mistresses or illegitimate children of the Duke of York and comes to the conclusion that there is no certain evidence to prove that Hesse was Frederick’s son. He seems to have been the protégé of a Prussian nobleman, the Margrave of Anspach, and his wife – both of whom were well known to Frederica – and his father may have been a Prussian merchant.
However, Camp is prepared to authenticate the claim that Frederick had two children by Ann Hart, or Vandiest, with whom he had a liaison between 1799 and 1802. The children were called Frederick George Vandiest (1800–1848) and Louisa Ann Vandiest (1802–1890). It seems that they were both adopted by Ann Hart’s partner George Vandiest, and that Frederick married Sophie Cheesewright in 1824. They lived in Stockwell, Surrey, and Frederick was appointed ‘one of the Gentlemen of His Majesty’s Most Honourable Privy Chamber in Ordinary’ in January 1833, according to the Court Journal, which would suggest that William IV was aware of the connection between Vandiest and his late brother. Louisa Vandiest married a Scotsman, Charles Crokat, in 1820, by whom she had three girls (one named Frederica) and a son, named Charles Frederick.
Antony Camp considers many others who have been claimed as illegitimate children of the duke, but he regards none of them as beyond doubt. In the ‘uncertain’ category he places Frederic James Lamb (b. 1781), the son of Lady Melbourne, as well as John Molloy (b. 1789), John Stilwell (b. 1790s) and Richard Lifford (1793–1794) and their unknown mothers. In the ‘fiction’ category come the claims of Agnes Gibbes and her son George Nathaniel Gibbes (1786–1787); George Clarke, the son of the famous Mary Anne Clarke; Ellen, her daughter, who married into the du Maurier family; and Eleanor White, the daughter of Mrs Mary White (b. 1817). Altogether, Camp investigates twenty-two women whose names have been ‘linked’ with the Duke of York, a number which seems quite modest compared with the seventy-five women associated with his elder brother.3
Portraits of the Duke and Duchess of York
Unfortunately it has not been possible to include a large number of illustrations in this book, but many of the portraits of the duke can be viewed online at various websites. The most accessible is on Google under ‘Images for Frederick Duke of York’, but the online catalogues of the Royal Collection and the National Portrait Gallery can also be consulted, as well as others. One of the earliest and most splendid portraits is the full-length image painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds in 1788, soon after Frederick returned from Germany, which is in the Royal Collection at Buckingham Palace. He is portrayed as a fine young man of about twenty-five, wearing the robes of the Order of the Garter and looking every inch a prince, though certainly not a bishop. Another portrait, of similar date, is one by the American painter Mather Brown of the duke in uniform, currently hanging in the National Trust Collection at Waddesdon Manor, Bucks.
A miniature by William Grimaldi, painted a year or two later than the Reynolds portrait, makes Frederick look, if anything, rather younger and a touch effeminate, which cannot be true to life. Again the duke is in Garter robes and it is possible that Grimaldi used Reynolds’ big picture as a template. Born near London in 1751 to an Italian father and English mother, Grimaldi trained as a miniaturist and came to the notice of Reynolds, who recommended him to the Prince of Wales and to Frederick. For the prince Grimaldi painted a miniature of Maria Fitzherbert, and for the duke he painted this miniature, which Frederick obviously liked because he gave it to Frederica on their marriage in 1791. Grimaldi was appointed enamel painter to Frederick in 1790, to Frederica in 1791 and to the Prince of Wales in 1804.
Shortly after their marriage Frederick commissioned portraits of himself and Frederica from the well-known society painter John Hoppner and some authorities regard these as among the best paintings Hoppner ever produced. Frederick is portrayed in military uniform, standing in front of a rearing horse which is being restrained by a trooper. The portrait of Frederica sets her in a garden, in the company of three young ladies and – most important of all – with a little white pet dog, which looks at her adoringly. These portraits were probably done in 1791 and Hoppner produced a second portrait of Frederick in 1794 based very much on the 1791 image, but portraying him this time as commander of the British forces in the Netherlands. All these paintings are in private collections, but on public view in the Holburne Museum in Bath is a miniature by John Bogle, painted around 1793, which presents probably a very accurate image of Frederick, in uniform and with the Garter ribbon across his chest, looking dignified and very much aware of the military responsibilities he bore at that time.
The next important full-length portrait was painted by Sir William Beechey in 1807 and it shows the duke, by then aged forty-four, in a relaxed pose in uniform as commander-in-chief. According to Alfred Burne, it was painted for the duke’s recently founded Asylum in Chelsea and it now hangs in pride of place at the Duke of York’s Royal Military School in Dover. After the victory at Waterloo Sir Thomas Lawrence painted a full-length formal portrait in 1816 with the duke in contemporary uniform and dramatically cloaked in his dark blue Garter robes. This is part of the Royal Collection and hangs in the Waterloo Chamber in Windsor Castle. As has been noted in the text, at the coronation of George IV in 1821 the duke wore robes which were reminiscent of the Tudor style, appearing in a silken doublet and knee breeches, and he was painted in this magnificent get-up in 1823 by Thomas Phillips. The portrait went initially to Liverpool’s Town Hall and is now in the City’s Walker Art Gallery. As has been suggested in the text, Thomas Campbell probably based his two statues of the duke on this picture.
In 1822 Sir Thomas Lawrence produced a more informal head-and-shoulders portrait of the duke in civilian dress. One version of this was auctioned in London at Sotheby’s in 2004 and another at Christie’s in 2007. Several other artists subsequently copied or engraved what was evidently a popular image (see dust jacket). In 1826 Andrew Geddes produced a full-length portrait for the Duke and Duchess of Rutland, which hangs in Belvoir Castle, and one of the last images was a portrait completed by James Lonsdale in 1827 showing the duke in Masonic regalia, which hangs in Mark Masons’ Hall near St James’s Palace in London. There are many other likenesses of the duke and a few more of the duchess, but these are arguably the most important and the best.
Gillray and Rowlandson Caricatures of the Duke
A number of factors combined to make the reign of George III a perfect environment for the flourishing of political caricatures. Perhaps most important was the re-emergence of two political parties, which meant that there was generally an active and vociferous opposition to the individuals in power. Then the American and French Revolutions encouraged anti-monarchical sentiment, while the constitutional nature of the king’s role made it difficult for him to suppress critical publications. Other individuals lampooned by the newspapers could resort to the law courts but this was an expensive business and many instead attempted to bribe journalists to keep quiet. Advances in the technology of printing made good-quality caricatures viable and print-shops and publishing firms sprang up in London and elsewhere to distribute them, while the ‘coffee-house’ culture of the time meant that there was a suitable arena for people to have a good laugh over the latest productions. Two artists in particular, James Gillray and Thomas Rowlandson, made the best of these opportunities and became the leading caricaturists of their day.
James Gillray (1756–1815) was born in London, the son of a Scottish soldier who became a Chelsea pensioner. He began as a letter-engraver and then studied at the Royal Academy, where he paid the fees by selling caricatures, almost all etched, some with aquatint. He was responsible for at least a thousand caricatures, and probably many more, and his attitude was generally anti-French while politically he favoured neither Whigs nor Tories but regarded both as fair game. For most of his life he lived with Hannah Humphrey, a publisher and print-seller in Mayfair, and he began to show signs of madness in 1811, dying four years later.
Thomas Rowlandson (1756–1827) was the son of a bankrupt textile merchant and began drawing talented sketches in the margins of his school books in London when he was ten years old. At sixteen he studied at a drawing academy in Paris before enlisting as a student at the Royal Academy in London, where he remained for six years. Then he inherited the considerable sum of £7,000 from an aunt, but seems to have blown it all on dissipation and the gaming table. So he had to draw caricatures for a living and teamed up with the art publisher Rudolph Ackerman. His drawings were done with a pen in outline and then gently washed with colour, after which they were etched on copper and then aquatinted. In general he was less concerned with politics than Gillray and tended to concentrate on social life and fashion. He died unmarried in his London lodgings in 1827, a few weeks after the Duke of York.
The National Portrait Gallery holds many caricatures featuring the duke and they can be easily viewed on their online catalogue. One of Gillray’s first depictions of Frederick, published on 15 May 1789, was deeply scandalous because it showed him, in a night-shirt, getting into bed with Sarah, Countess of Tyrconnell, while her husband quietly leaves the room, saying ‘A good night to your Royal Highness … I’ll be back to breakfast …’. A few days later Frederick fought his famous duel with Colonel Lennox, and Gillray produced two further drawings, both flattering to York and portraying him as, basically, a brave lad. The first depicts him as ‘Brunswick Triumphant’, a manly prizefighter, stripped to the waist, and in the second the duel is described as a contest between ‘a prince and a poltro[o]n’.
Gillray welcomed the marriage between Frederick and Frederica, producing a cartoon that showed ‘the soldier’s return, or rare news for old England’, and another in which Frederick presents his new wife, who carries an abundance of gold coins about her person, to the king and queen, who are delighted – more about the money, by implication, than the wife. Gillray was probably not aware that the match did not come with great riches. He also produced a number of other drawings reflecting the positive reaction to the wedding in London society and made fun of the duchess’s little feet in a cartoon that placed her husband’s big feet together on a bed between his wife’s open legs and dainty shoes.
After Frederick had left to take up his command in the Netherlands, Gillray produced an irreverent drawing of the ‘Fatigues of the campaign in Flanders’, which, of course, shows the duke, with a portly girl on his knee, carousing at a table next to William V of Orange, who is shown to be ugly and fat, and belching. In February 1794 Gillray compared York’s return to London with Rabelais’ ‘Gargantua and Pantagruel’, showing York, whose campaign had gone quite well so far, offering his father the keys to Paris, which of course was premature, to say the least.
The Mary Anne Clarke scandal provided plenty of scope for the caricaturists, and the Royal Collection holds several of Thomas Rowlandson’s prints about it. There is one of ‘Samson asleep on the lap of Delilah’, another of the duke on his knees before a whale which had been sensationally caught off Gravesend, imploring it to divert popular interest away from the Clarke trial, another celebrating the vote which technically acquitted him of blame, and another, entitled, ‘The resignation, or John Bull overwhelmed with grief’. Here the duke says to John Bull, who is in tears, ‘Goodbye Johnny – I am going to resign – but don’t take it so much to heart, perhaps I may very soon come back again,’ to which John Bull replies, ‘O Dunna, dunna go, it will break my heart to part with you – you be such a desperate moral character!!’
A more hard-hitting scenario, entitled ‘The York Auctioneer and his Clark, or a new way to pay old debts’, has the duke auctioning a captain’s commission for 700 guineas and a bishopric for 1,000, while a black servant in the audience thanks his master for making him a captain. Meanwhile, Mary Anne, brandishing a quill pen, writes down all the successful bids. The inference that the duke was selling commissions via his mistress in order to pay off his debts (which were well known to be considerable) no doubt accurately reflected the beliefs of those who doubted York’s honesty.4
However, compared with the sometimes scathing attacks on his elder brother and many politicians, the duke escaped comparatively lightly at the hands of both Gillray and Rowlandson. As the war against Napoleonic France became more of a national threat, the caricaturists in any case became more patriotic, and with military success in the Peninsula and finally at Waterloo, York moved out of reach of the critics. As emphasized in the text, there seem to be no contemporary caricatures which refer to a ‘Grand Old Duke of York’ and this is powerful evidence that this epithet might well have become attached to the duke some considerable time after his death.
Subsequent History of the Duke’s Country Homes
As we have seen, Frederick’s house and estate at Allerton Mauleverer were sold to Colonel Thomas Thornton in 1791. In 1805 they were sold again, to Charles, the seventeenth Baron Stourton, who ran a Roman Catholic mission there and built a chapel in 1807. This was enlarged by his son in 1837 and again when his grandson pulled down most of the house built for the duke and created a gothic revival mock-castle between 1848 and 1854 to designs by the architect Charles Martin. During the Second World War the castle was the headquarters of No. 6 Group of the Royal Canadian Air Force and upon the death in 1965 of the twenty-second Baron Stourton (who also held many other ancient baronies) a three-day sale disposed of most of the contents. The castle was then rented to religious organizations until 1983, when, as it was in a very poor state of repair, the twenty-fourth Lord Stourton sold it to an American businessman, Dr Gerard Arthur Rolph, who was interested in preserving it as part of English and world heritage. He set up a charitable foundation for this purpose in 1986, which has succeeded in restoring the castle and its 43.5 hectares of garden and parkland to their former Victorian glory. It is currently open to the general public as a ‘stately home’ and venue for weddings and other functions.5
The Oatlands estate, finally purchased by Edward Hughes Ball in 1827 after years of legal disputes, remained in his ownership only until 1846 because he was a gambler on a heroic scale, allegedly losing £45,000 in one night, and he was forced gradually to sell parts of the estate. In 1846 what remained was divided into many lots and it took four sales to dispose of them. The mansion itself and several other lots were purchased by James Peppercorne, who lived there with his family for some time. By about 1856 he had set up the South Western Hotel Company and he employed Thomas Henry Wyatt to remodel the house, with a new entrance front, and it opened as a high-class hotel in 1858, patronized by Emile Zola, Anthony Trollope and Edward Lear, among many other celebrities. In 1916 the hotel was requisitioned by the war office and most of the furniture was sold. Early in 1917 wounded soldiers were moved there from the New Zealand Military Hospital in Walton, but the hotel reopened after the war, when it was bought by North Hotels. Since then various additions have been made under a number of owners and in 2011 Oatlands Investments Limited inaugurated a thorough refurbishment. Today Oatlands Park is an impressive hotel in a spectacular setting, but there is little or no trace of the house inhabited by the Duke and Duchess of York. Even Frederica’s pets’ cemetery has been built over, although some of the headstones were rescued and have been laid out on the front lawn.6
The Duke of York’s Royal Military School
After the duke’s death in 1827 his asylum in Chelsea went through a number of significant changes. Although at the height of the Napoleonic War it had as many as 1,500 pupils, the number fell drastically in peacetime, down to a total of 357 in 1836. Between 1816 and 1840 the asylum also had a branch in Southampton, which provided schooling for about 400 children of both sexes until 1823, when the boys were transferred to Chelsea. The girls stayed on at Southampton until falling numbers brought about closure in 1840. After that date the number of girls in Chelsea was wound down, so that by 1846 the asylum was an all-male institution.
In that year, as a result of changing times and changing needs, the decision was taken to set up at the asylum a training school for military schoolmasters, who were professional teachers seconded to regiments to educate soldiers and also their children. This was a scheme intended to tackle one of Victorian Britain’s most pressing problems – poor educational provision for the masses. Ironically, the teacher-training school followed the French model of the ‘Normal School’ and involved the replacement of military personnel at the asylum with civilians. There was also a ‘Modern School’ at the asylum which continued to provide general education for boys from a military background.
In 1892 the asylum was renamed the Duke of York’s Royal Military School, and after various plans to demolish the building and move it to a more spacious location, a fine 150-acre campus was eventually provided on the Kentish cliffs close to Dover Castle, and the school moved there in 1909 as a boys’ boarding school with strong army associations. On this site a newly built central structure with a lofty clock tower was flanked by a crescent of boarding houses and an impressive chapel, all set in extensive grounds suitable for parades and military manoeuvres. Meanwhile the original building in Chelsea became the Duke of York’s Barracks until 2003, when it was sold to the Cadogan estate. The surrounding area was developed as the ‘Duke of York’s Square’, with the Saatchi Modern Art Gallery housed in the main building, encircled by an extensive complex of shops and restaurants.
During the First World War the boys at Dover were moved to accommodation in Hutton, near Brentwood in Essex, while their school became a transit camp for troops crossing to the western front. When the Republic of Ireland was established in 1922, the Royal Hibernian Military School was moved from Dublin to Shorncliffe Barracks near Folkestone, and in 1924 its boys merged with the Duke of York’s pupils. During the Second World War the school once again became a transit camp and the boys and staff were evacuated to a hotel in Braunton, North Devon. After the war the school developed its academic side more strongly, with civilian teachers outnumbering the military, although the boys still wore uniform and were subject to firm discipline. In 1994 girls were admitted, and in 1999 a civilian headmaster succeeded many military predecessors.
In September 2010 the school made the important transition from being an independent school funded by the ministry of defence to an academy. Public funding of £25 million was provided to increase the number of pupils from about 400 to 700 or more, and some redundant buildings were demolished and new facilities constructed in an ambitious modernization scheme. The Duke of York’s Royal Military School now describes itself as an ‘Academy with Military Traditions’ and with its splendid, renovated site and excellent facilities it seems well set to meet the needs of pupils who would benefit from a boarding education. Moreover, it continues to perpetuate and honour the name and memory of its founder. Pupils at the school have been known as ‘Dukies’ for generations and once a year the school parades for ‘Grand Day’, which has its origins in ceremonial inspections held at the school in Chelsea by the Duke of York.7
Places and Titles
There are a number of foreign locations, mostly in Canada, which have been named in honour of Prince Frederick. In 1784 New Brunswick in Canada became a separate province from Nova Scotia and in 1785 its capital was named Fredericton and the surrounding area was known as York County. In 1792 another York County was named after Frederick in Ontario and in 1793 a new ‘Fort York’ was established there on the site of the former French ‘Fort Toronto’. Renamed ‘York’, it became the capital of Upper Canada in 1796, and it was designated a city and renamed Toronto in 1834, becoming the capital of Ontario in 1867. The boundaries of the Ontario York County changed over the years, becoming the York Regional Municipality in 1971. In 1799 ‘Fort Frederick’ was constructed near what became Port Elizabeth in South Africa to defend the harbour from possible French attack, and it survives as a small but well-preserved historical relic. ‘Duke of York Bay’ in northern Canada was named after Frederick by the explorer, Admiral Sir William Parry, who sailed into the bay on 16 August 1821, the duke’s birthday, while on his second voyage in search of a northwest passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific.
Because Frederick had no legitimate children, his titles became extinct on his death. The tradition of bestowing the dukedom of York on second sons was maintained and in two cases during the twentieth century the second son succeeded to the throne. In 1892 Queen Victoria granted the dukedom of York (although not Albany) to the Prince of Wales’s son, Prince George, who became King George V in 1910. He created Prince Albert, his second son, Duke of York in 1920 and he succeeded as George VI in 1936 after the abdication of his elder brother. His daughter Queen Elizabeth II gave the title to her second son, Prince Andrew, in 1986.
As for the Albany dukedom, this was bestowed by Queen Victoria on her fourth son, Prince Leopold, in 1881. He suffered from haemophilia and died at the age of thirty, just before the birth of his only son, Charles Edward, who succeeded him as Duke of Albany. In 1900 he reluctantly inherited the sovereign German dukedom of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha and had little choice but to side with Germany in 1914. After the fall of the Kaiser in 1918, a revolution deposed Charles Edward as sovereign of Saxe-Coburg and Saxe subsequently joined Thuringia while Coburg became part of Bavaria. In 1919, because he had opposed Britain in wartime, he was also stripped of the dukedom of Albany and his other British peerages by Order in Council. In the 1930s Charles Edward supported Hitler and the Nazi Party and his three sons fought for the German army in the Second World War. He died in 1954 and has been succeeded as head of the family by his son Prince Friedrich Josias and his grandson Prince Andreas.
Charles Greville and the Yorks
Charles Cavendish Fulke Greville (1794–1865) was an aristocrat whose mother was the eldest daughter of the third Duke of Portland, Whig prime minister from 1807 to 1809, while his father was a cousin of the Earl of Warwick. He was a page of honour to George III and went to school at Eton before moving on to Oxford. He left the university when he was nineteen, before taking his degree, in order to become private secretary to Earl Bathurst, the secretary for war and the colonies. At the age of twenty he began to note down scraps in a journal, and in 1818 he began to write in greater detail. Among his first major entries is a lengthy one for 15 August 1818 which describes the regular house parties given by the Yorks at Oatlands over weekends in the summer, especially during the Egham races. Greville was barely twenty-four at the time and one wonders why he had become a favoured member of the Yorks’ circle. The duke may have known him as a page to the king or as secretary to Bathurst and perhaps above all as a keen racegoer. Perhaps it was the duchess, whom Greville describes as ‘clever and well-informed’, who enjoyed his company, because it was she who sent out the invitations.
The circle of house guests was usually much the same and included the dashing regency beau Lord Alvanley, the Culling-Smiths, Lord Lauderdale, the Marquess of Worcester and his wife, Lord Erskine, and others. As soon as dinner was over the duke would sit down to play whist, for high or low stakes as his opponent preferred, and he would carry on until everyone had had enough. The duchess was not in the best of health, suffered from insomnia, rested on a couch fully dressed rather than going to bed and asked people to read to her when she could not sleep. Greville had a high regard for her and wrote at her death ‘She is deeply regretted by her husband, her friends and her servants. Probably no person in such a situation was more really liked’. (14.7.1820)
In 1821 Greville was appointed clerk of the council in ordinary, which gave him a central role in the administration of the privy council for nearly forty years. In his journal he often wrote very critically about George IV and William IV, revealing a remarkable contempt for them and considering them not a little mad. York, however, he definitely liked. Conceding that he was no intellectual and was perhaps too easily amused by bawdy jokes, he nevertheless thought that York was loved and respected because ‘he has a justness of understanding, which enables him to avoid the errors into which most of his brothers have fallen…. He is the only one of the princes who has the feelings of an English gentleman, his amiable disposition and excellent temper have conciliated for him the esteem and respect of all parties, and he has endeared himself to his friends by the warmth and steadiness of his attachments and from the implicit confidence they have in his truth, straightforwardness and sincerity’. (15.8.1818)
Also in 1821 York asked Greville to take over the management of his racing stud, which Greville was thrilled to do, and it was under his supervision that the duke’s horse ‘Moses’ won the Derby in 1822. York clearly liked and trusted Greville, and he would often gabble away confidences as they rode to the races – about Lennox and the duel, about squabbles with his elder brother and also about the Duke of Wellington. According to Greville, York did not ‘deny his military talents, but he thinks he is false and ungrateful, that he never gave sufficient credit to his officers, and that he was unwilling to put forward men of talent who might be in a situation to claim some share of the credit …’ As for Waterloo, York ‘attributes in great measure the success of that day to Lord Anglesea, who, he says, was hardly mentioned, and that in the coldest terms, in the duke’s dispatch’. (24.6.1821) Greville was in the London house when York died and wrote ‘I have been the minister and associate of his pleasures and amusements for some years. I have lived in his intimacy and experienced his kindness, and am glad that I was present on this last sad occasion …’ (5.1.1827)
Greville himself died in 1865, by which time his memoirs had grown to a great length. He entrusted them to his friend Henry Reeve who edited them and in 1874 published the first three volumes, covering the years 1817 to 1837. Queen Victoria was outraged by the disrespectful tone of many passages, and copies had to be recalled and expurgated. Two further volumes appeared in 1885 and the last two in 1887. In recent times the diaries have been digitalized by Project Gutenberg and they can be very easily accessed and read online by searching, for instance, ‘Greville Memoirs, Gutenberg’. It should be mentioned that nowhere in his journal does Greville make even the slightest reference to a ‘Grand Old Duke’, ten thousand men, or a hill, which lends weight to the argument that the nursery rhyme was not current during York’s lifetime and probably evolved towards the end of the century.