Britain Against Napoleon

by Roger Knight

  Pitt as prime minister was subject to illness through stress, which might have induced his loss of judgement and bitterness which led to his bloodless duel with George Tierney in May 1798.16 In the case of Henry Dundas, it was beyond the capacity of most mortals to take on the work that he set himself, in spite of the summer breaks that he took in Scotland. He also had some periods of breakdown in the mid 1790s, and was laid low by a throat infection in 1797, when Sylvester Douglas noted ‘his most alarming symptom is want of sleep and a nervous affliction in his head’.17 By 1800 he noticed ‘a peculiar noise in his chest which corresponded to the beat of his pulse’.18 He had had enough. He tried to resign as secretary of state for war, and did resign as treasurer of the navy in June 1800, persuaded to do so by his wife, who saw him for just ten minutes a day before bedtime.19 Dundas only stayed on in government because of his loyalty to Pitt. He still had responsibilities as chairman of the India Board of Control, and remained at his comfortable quarters, for, as Pitt informed Windham, he did not intend to remove Dundas ‘from the House in Somerset Place … it is proposed that in future it should be considered as annexed to the office of the First Commissioner for India, instead of that of Treasurer of the Navy.’20

  The right of appointment, or patronage, was the most important means of control and carefully cherished by the heads of the departments. Lord Spencer at the Admiralty dispensed patronage as many a Whig grandee did before him. His policy was described by Rear-Admiral Young: ‘Lord Spencer’s general wish is to employ as far he can distinguish, those Officers who are the most deserving of appointment, though the weight of influence will at times outweigh his good intentions.’21 It did not, indeed, go unnoticed that relatives of Spencer’s wife Lavinia made very good progress up the service; one rose from midshipman to captain in twenty months.22 There were far too many applicants for any single post. Early in the war it was apparent that the navy had an excess of officers, for prize-money success and the increasing social status of the navy attracted many, and the mobilizations of 1790 and 1791 had brought a large number of commissioned lieutenants into the service in a short time. In 1794 Spencer brought in a centralizing scheme whereby young gentlemen midshipmen were appointed by the Admiralty as ‘Boy First Class Volunteer’,23 and, although it was not immediately effective, it did eventually help the Admiralty to assume some of the authority that had previously resided with individual captains. The waiting room at the Admiralty was famed as a place where naval officers could spend a very long time waiting to see the first lord.*

  Much was determined by the character of the minister within each department. Lord Spencer was popular, the administrative burden softened by his genial personality and the social charms of his wife. Marsden wrote: ‘To-day we all dine with his Lordship; our Board is like one family. Business may, in former times, have been conducted as well in the Admiralty department, but certainly never so pleasantly or so smoothly.’24 It was, perhaps, too comfortable, for Spencer’s administration rested upon the hard work of the years of peace before the war: few ships were built, and for additional frigates the navy relied upon French prizes: both maintenance and the lead over the French fell behind.25

  But Spencer did ensure that administrative reform in the navy in Whitehall was implemented in the rapidly growing naval departments.* In 1796, on the basis of the recommendations of the Commission on Fees in the 1780s, the Navy Board was split into three committees: the Secretary’s, Accounts and Stores, with the clerks reorganized to match the new structure. This changed the age-old practice of sitting as one Board, with every commissioner taking responsibility for all decisions, and resulted in greater transparency and efficiency. The first lord also established three important specialist units responsible to the Board of Admiralty. In 1795 the Hydrographic Office was founded, which improved the coordination of chart information, although the knowledgeable but difficult Alexander Dalrymple as the first hydrographer was not ideal. In the following year the inspector-general of naval works and the inspector of telegraphs were appointed, together with their support staff.26

  The arrival of Lord St Vincent at the Admiralty in 1801, first lord in Addington’s government, came as a rude shock. The admiral’s curt manner, never far from the point of bullying, had terrified his captains at sea, and in Whitehall it caused deep divisions and long-lasting trouble.† He operated with a brusqueness more fitting to the quarterdeck than to Whitehall and its political niceties. The Times reported that the new first lord’s hours of audience ‘do not suit the generality of visitors. They are from 5 to 7 in the morning. After that he will receive no visitor.’27

  Army business was conducted very differently. The duke of York was a natural bureaucrat, initiating a long period of reform and improvement, helped by his active appreciation of what was wrong with the army from his time in command of the army in Flanders.* As a member of the royal family, he was well beyond the ordinary reach of party politics. The real power and initiative, however, lay in the hands of the secretary of state for war, Henry Dundas. Yet a systemic failure was inherent within this department. Instructions would flow from the secretary of state’s office in such detail that the commander in the field was deprived of initiative. There was little taking of professional advice in both the army and navy commands, and no general staff organization to bring information together to inform decisions. The duke of York, for instance, when he commanded the field army in Flanders in 1793 to 1795, and again in Holland in 1799, had little say in planning operations beforehand when in London.28 How much a minister should listen to expert advice has always been a finely judged problem: Dundas himself should have listened more carefully to the military early in the war when he swept aside all difficulties, sending abroad late and costly expeditions.

  As commander-in-chief, the duke of York was extremely active, applying himself to the defence of the country against invasion, which was anticipated following the return of the army from Flanders. During the summer of 1795 he was hardly in his office in the Horse Guards, completing a countrywide inspection from Plymouth to Sunderland, and conversing with the officers commanding the military districts and reviewing their troops.29 He also started to introduce reform to the army; in Calvert’s words:

  We want a total stop put to that most pernicious mode of bestowing rank on officers without even the form of recommendation, merely for raising (by means of crimps) a certain number of men … to relieve deserving officers from the intolerable grievance of seeing men without merit, without family, or the smallest pretension to any military ability, pass over their heads … solely through the medium of a rascally crimp.30

  Whitehall was, therefore, the sum of the social, political and professional networks that threaded their way through parliament, the inns and the private houses around the centre of London, connecting military and naval men with politicians and administrators. Constantly shifting information and opinion about the war moved at times very fast through formal contact in parliament and the offices, but also through informal social occasions such as dinner parties, breakfast meetings and country-house visits. The complexity of George Canning’s network sometimes bemused even him. He wrote: ‘One loses sight of people so completely in this great town sometimes, that one hardly knows what becomes of one’s most intimate acquaintances for days together.’31 Many dining tables around Whitehall were the setting for the release of information and political negotiation. Some dinners were ad hoc affairs, occasioned by a debate ending early, and Dundas was an especially generous host with his apartments at Somerset House. After Canning had seconded the Address at the end of 1794, he supped alone with Dundas, and dined there several times in the years covered by his journal.32 Some dinners reached across political groupings. Canning dined with the duke of Portland in February 1795, by then a coalition partner. The dinner was ‘a mixture of all parties … [James] Hare being a Jacobin Oppositionist, [John] Crewe a moderate one, T[homas] Pelham an alarmist, out of place, the D[uke] an alarmist in place, and your humble se
rvant a ministerialist. The dinner was exceedingly pleasant.’33 A few months later Canning regretted that Pitt was neglecting his entertaining:

  By the way it is very bad style – that into which Mr Pitt has fallen this year – of not giving dinners. This is the second time since my coming to town that I have dined with him, and I can hear of nobody else that has done so oftener. It is very great remissness on his part, especially as his dinners are always good, and now and then pleasant.34

  In order to further their careers, ambitious young politicians had to attract enough attention to be appointed as an undersecretary in an efficient department. They were the workhorses of government, part politician, part administrator. Some did not have independent incomes and needed a post to survive, while the better off could afford to choose. In 1795, the irascible William Huskisson viewed the prospect of being appointed to a new post, ‘a kind of Under-secretary of the India Department’, with dismay. His inherited capital had now increased to over £16,000 with the prospect of more. ‘Would it,’ he asked his superior in the Home Office, Evan Nepean, to whom he was close at this time, ‘be wise in me to throw away the best years of my life in the migratory and contemptible occupation of a Chief Clerk?’35 A subtle distinction between those destined for higher office and the more junior secretaries was recalled by Canning at a dinner at Lord Grenville’s, attended by Pitt and very senior politicians, at which Charles Goddard, Grenville’s private secretary, ‘in a proper, secretary-like manner, sat at the bottom of the table and helped the soup and the fish’.36 But politicians at all levels, as well as the administrators, mixed socially at the receptions and balls given by politically influential hostesses, such as Lady Liverpool or the duchess of Devonshire.37 The assiduous second secretary of the Admiralty, William Marsden could be tempted away from the office, even if he was not able to keep up with the fashion of the day. In July 1800 he confessed that he

  idled three or four hours at a breakfast given by the Duchess of Devonshire at Chiswick. It was by much the prettyist thing of this kind I have ever seen. I left Lady Georgiana Gordon, and many other smart ladies, dancing on the sod, at about six o’clock … Windham and I were the only two who sported cocked hats. Lord Spencer said the admiration of the company was divided between these and the turban of Abu Talib, the Persian [diplomat].38

  Marsden was careful to get back to the Admiralty to catch the evening post.*

  It is difficult to assess the effectiveness of the ‘placemen’ who, in addition to their role as politician, accumulated sinecures to gain an income. George Rose was perhaps the most successful, a man of limited talent, except for hard work. He rose from Treasury clerk in the late 1760s to Pitt’s right-hand man in the 1780s, and through his career occupied many government posts around the Treasury, ending in 1807 as treasurer of the navy, in which post he died in 1818. Concurrently he accumulated a rich assortment of sinecures, including agent for Dominica, verderer of the New Forest and surveyor of the Green Wax Monies.39 His obituary in the Gentleman’s Magazine recounted that he was ‘up early and late, and, with a total disregard of amusement, was always and totally in his business’. He was never far from the centre of power for thirty years, even though he was passed over by Pitt for those posts that Rose really wanted, when they were given to more talented men. He was MP for either Christchurch or Lymington continuously for thirty-four years and became very rich – with the result that he never escaped the taunt of ‘placeman’ from his parliamentary opponents. When he died, a fellow MP expressed regret that ‘a man of such limited views should have so great influence’.40 But administration needs hard workers, as well as brilliant men; and Rose had a conscience and worked hard not only for himself but for the underdog, as we shall see.

  William Boscawen of the Victualling Board, on the other hand, never became rich. He had been to Eton and Oxford, was a practising barrister and classical scholar, but suffered from asthma all his life, which eventually killed him in 1811. In 1785 Boscawen, by his own account, was appointed by Pitt to the Victualling Board, but ‘my acquaintance with Mr Pitt gradually drop’d and the interest of my family declined’.41 However, he did become a commissioner of the Salt Tax from 1792 to 1798.42 Judging by his obituaries, Boscawen was a popular man, and there is every reason to think that he was a conscientious member of the Board for his 26-year-period of office.43

  By contrast, Mark Singleton was Irish and lucky. An army officer, he started his administrative career by the seemingly ill-advised move of eloping with the daughter of Lord Cornwallis, but was forgiven within a month, and was soon mixing in fashionable society and with the prince of Wales. He was, however, without an income, a problem solved in 1795, when his father-in-law became master-general of the Ordnance. Four months later the death of the principal storekeeper enabled Cornwallis to appoint his son-in-law to the post, while in 1796 the master-general set Singleton up as the member for Eye in Suffolk, controlled by the Cornwallis family, for which constituency Singleton sat, with some gaps, until 1820. He remained as principal storekeeper (bar the period of the Ministry of the Talents between 1806 and 1807) until 1829.44

  Perhaps the least attractive of these examples was Edward Bouverie, the unprovided-for son of a well-connected aristocrat, the earl of Radnor. Bouverie was an MP from 1796 to 1803, and a groom of the bedchamber to the prince of Wales from 1787 until 1795. In 1794 he was wounded in a duel, brought about by the undue attention he had paid to the daughter of Lord Tankerville. For three years from 1803 he was a commissioner on the Transport Board, but then he served as a member of the Navy Board, a position that he kept to his death in 1824. He combined his work at the Navy Office with a place in fashionable society, acting in 1813 as escort to the handsome Lady Ellenborough, of which one observer remarked contemptuously, ‘I could wish that she would select a less objectionable protector in public, as he has through life purported to play the part of Lothario, and is a very empty coxcomb.’45

  Those who had served as secretaries to these boards were sometimes promoted, and they became senior rank politicians or commissioners on their board, allowing continuity of experience. Charles Long, for instance, second secretary to the Treasury Board, was appointed a commissioner in 1804 when Pitt returned to power. Philip Stephens had been secretary to the Board of Admiralty for thirty-two years before retiring in 1795, when Lord Spencer promoted him to the Board with a baronetcy. His experience made him invulnerable to political change, for he served under six first lords during his time on the Board. He even won the grudging respect of St Vincent, for naval tradition was one thing that this difficult admiral did honour. He wrote of Stephens: ‘For though he has a cold Heart, and never went out of his way to serve any Man, except perhaps Sir Hugh Palliser, old habits with him and near Connexion with Lord Anson prompt me to be attentive to him.’46 The king pressed for Stephens to continue in office when Lord Melville took over in 1804, though he finally retired in 1806, when he was just short of his eighty-third birthday, by which time one cabinet minister found him ‘very far from infallible … on points of Admiralty Law’.47 Stephens served the navy for sixty-seven years.

  Others became worn out at an early age. Nepean took his rheumatism to Tunbridge Wells for a cure during his brief spell as undersecretary for war between July 1794 and March 1795, leaving William Huskisson to run the office for him. He was to suffer from overwork and strain throughout these years. George Rose, when secretary of the Treasury, was ill for long periods in the 1790s, and Charles Long substituted for him. William Huskisson had a liver complaint in 1798 that took him to Cheltenham.48 Spencer was convalescing at Bath during the summer of 1799 during a particularly difficult and busy period.49 There is no doubting the long hours that were put in at crisis times in Whitehall. Marsden recalled that in September 1800:

  I sat in the board-room with Lord S, after his return from Wimbledon, till eleven o’clock. Admiral Young dropped in, and I remarked that it was the only public board whose members were so employed at that hour. Our armed associ
ations, however, have the merit of more active service. They have been up for some nights.

  On another occasion, Marsden became gloomy about the pressures of administration: ‘I am sure that my continuance here will shorten my life.’50 If the senior officials were kept long at the office, it can be certain that the clerks too had to follow suit.* At the Home Office Evan Nepean, when undersecretary, kept his clerks copying letters not only late into the day but also into the night.51

  The subordinate naval boards of Whitehall were no less important to the war effort, and their hours were just as long as those worked by the major boards.52 The Transport Board and Office were set up in 1794 (responsible to the Treasury) to charter merchant ships: these acted as transports for the amphibious expeditions, carried supplies to overseas garrisons and victualled naval warships on blockade or on foreign stations. This measure eliminated competition in the market between the navy, Ordnance and army, which had bedevilled transport operations in the American Revolutionary War. Reform had been pressed by Middleton at the start of the war and was adopted early in 1794, as Chatham informed him: ‘I have seen my Brother, who approves much of the plan suggested for the separate management of the Transport Service, and seems inclined to its immediate adoption … The greatest difficulty will be, I fear, to find a Sea Officer to be at the head of it, possess’d of all the qualifications you so justly describe as necessary.’53 He was wrong. Captain Hugh Christian was appointed as chairman for a year, but relinquished the post when he achieved his flag and went to sea. He was followed by an Irishman, Captain Rupert George. His duties included, he noted in 1807, ‘attending the Treasury, Admiralty, Secretaries of State and Secretary at War, for their respective directions’.54 Responsible to the Treasury, George received most of his orders from the secretary of state for war for expeditions, while the Admiralty ordered transports for supplying warships.* Before any transports sailed, his office had also to liaise with the Victualling, Ordnance and Navy boards. With so many masters to please, George proved to be shrewd and sure-footed. His tenure lasted from 1795 to 1817 and in 1809 he was created a baronet.