When Richard Howe became a junior Lord of the Admiralty under Prime Minister George Grenville in 1763, his first “land job” in more than twenty years, it was a natural move for him. Richard was an MP and a landed gentleman; as head of a growing family, he was needed at home to support and strengthen the position of the Howe dynasty. But the move did raise some eyebrows, for Grenville, once a friend and ally of William Pitt, had become permanently estranged from Richard’s mentor. Caroline, always vigilant to protect her brother’s image, betrayed some defensiveness on the subject when she wrote to Lady Spencer in April 1763: “I had a line from Lady Howe, to say I should be surprised to hear that my Brother was that day to kiss hands for the Admiralty, that his motives &c must be kept, till we meet, but that she believed we should when we learnt them, see, that his acceptance was unavoidable.”36
Caroline, however, did not need to fear that her brother would become isolated from his political friends by accepting a place in the Grenville administration. William Pitt, always a rather enigmatic figure, proved to be strangely unwilling to assume leadership at this tumultuous time. The opposition was in disarray, incoherent, barely led by an aging Duke of Newcastle. Within the immediate social circles of the Howes, John Manners, Marquess of Granby, whose hunt Caroline regularly joined, would also take up office under Grenville in 1763.37 Richard’s political associates could not have been all that astonished to see him accept a place under the man who, as it transpired, would two years later introduce the Stamp Act and set the American colonies ablaze.
Richard’s other close political ally was the Duke of Grafton. Augustus Henry FitzRoy, 3rd Duke of Grafton, was a lifelong admirer of Pitt. Almost a generation younger than Richard and Caroline Howe—born in 1735—Grafton loved country pursuits, hunting, husbandry, and the racetrack, dividing his time between Euston Hall in Suffolk and his Northamptonshire seat of Wakefield Lodge. Caroline and John Howe formed a regular part of the duke’s circle. In a letter written near the end of the Seven Years’ War, Caroline captured the casual footing of her stay at Wakefield in just a few lines to Lady Spencer: “The Duke of Grafton went yesterday to Newmarket [races], Mr Howe had a very pretty fox chase with him on Friday with Mr Selby’s Hounds, they two fight at Chess the Wakefield evenings, the rest at Loo [a card game] don’t be frightened my dearest Ly. Spencer, I am not gone mad; it is only [betting] 5 half crowns.”38
Outside of his personal coterie, however, the duke had a reputation for being unapproachable and a self-indulgent aristocrat who—as Walpole put it in his usual unsparing terms—thought “the world should be postponed to a whore and a horse race.”39 This is undoubtedly too harsh, but the fact is that until Anthony Eden became prime minister in 1955, Grafton had the distinction of being the only British prime minister ever to be divorced at all, and, until Boris Johnson’s arrival in Downing Street in 2019, he was the only PM to be divorced while in office. This made him the focus of intense criticism, as there was a growing public perception that divorce and immorality were on the rise within the ranks of the aristocracy, with supposedly grave implications for public morality. The press played a role, zealously reporting scandals such as the Grafton divorce and trumpeting the modern notion that the public had a right to know about those in positions of public trust. Those who deplored both the immoral actions themselves and the publicity they garnered believed that the social order was under threat.40 The Grafton divorce looked particularly bad because it involved a lord who occupied a high office; it was not finalized until 1769, a year after Grafton became prime minister. The marriage, however, had broken down several years earlier. And Caroline’s inside knowledge of the events leading to the split reveals that she was on an intimate footing with the Graftons, far closer to them, in fact, than her less sociable brother Richard.
In 1756, the Duke of Grafton had married heiress Anne Liddell, the only child of Sir Henry Liddell, an old friend of Caroline’s husband and a fellow founding member of the Society of Dilettanti. Sir Henry, the wealthy owner of northern coal mines, became Baron Ravensworth in 1747.41 His daughter’s marriage to a duke united new money with blue blood, but Anne Liddell always declared that it was a love match.
And therein, perhaps, lay the problem. The notion that marriage was for love or companionship, and not solely for the advancement of the family, was on the rise during the century.42 Expectations were changing. But Georgian society had by no means accepted the principle that a wife could kick against the married state merely because she disliked her spouse. By the standards of the day, Anne seems to have had very high expectations for her marriage that were unfulfilled, for the acrimony between the duke and his duchess was obvious after five years of marriage and three children. To preserve a shred of privacy, they argued in French in front of their servants, but everyone knew that she resented his nights out on the town, and he disapproved of her noisy card parties, too often still in full swing when he arrived home from his club. In 1761, the ducal couple took an extended trip to the Continent, partly, so whispered gossip Horace Walpole, in hopes of a reconciliation.43
It was on their return the next year that Caroline formed an intimate relationship with the Duchess of Grafton. Lady Spencer was abroad; no doubt Anne FitzRoy filled a gap. Caroline toured Oxford with the duchess in the summer of 1763 while the duke was in London. The two ladies were “escorted by a Soldier & a Sailor two very good sort of men, I believe you know neither of them,” a coy reference to her brothers, Richard and William. The autumn of that year found Caroline constantly at Wakefield Lodge. When she spent Christmas at Euston Hall, Lady Spencer was jealous, writing from Naples: “[W]hen did you ever pass so much time in one year with me, as you have this last year with the Dss of Grafton,” her tone reproachful. “I think her clever & sensible enough, to make you find me Monstrously insipid when I come back. . . .” She can’t have been reassured to hear that Caroline had been presented with a ring set with the duchess’s own hair.44
As Caroline’s friendship with the duchess blossomed, the rift between the ducal couple only deepened, for not long after they returned from the Continent, the duke met Nancy Parsons, a notorious high-class prostitute who had once performed at the opera. She had a long list of former lovers and boasted that she once earned “100 guineas in a single week, charging clients a guinea a time.”45 None of this seemed to deter the unhappy Grafton from falling in love with her. Miss Parsons could be both cultured and charming. Clearly he felt that his wife did not understand him and he longed for sympathy.
In the summer of 1764, when the duchess was heavily pregnant with their fourth child, she received an anonymous letter informing her of the duke’s affair. This was hardly necessary, for even before the baby arrived in July, Grafton was seen openly with Nancy Parsons at the Ascot races.46 There could be no keeping it a secret at that rate, and he did not try to, scandalizing a world in which outward appearances mattered by showing himself frequently in public with his mistress on his arm. The duke spent handsomely on Nancy Parsons; the duchess decamped to London with the children.47
Caroline tried to protect her friend, glossing over the break-up in a letter to Lady Spencer with a story that Anne FitzRoy was visiting family. “With regard to the report you mention,” she wrote, “be it with or without foundation it is a most disagreeable one,” but it was groundless. The duke was at Wakefield Lodge as usual, and the duchess had gone on a visit to her parents. They write to one another constantly, she assured Lady Spencer, and she was confident that the ugly rumor of a split would die of its own accord once the duchess returned to Wakefield Lodge.48 Caroline was being disingenuous. Although she knew the real reason the pair had separated, she was attempting to limit the damage in order to smooth the way for a reconciliation.
But a permanent break between the Graftons was inevitable. In 1764, they agreed to a legal separation. The duchess maintained her own residence in London on an allowance of £3,000 per annum.49 Caroline was sympathetic, visiting the duchess before the separation, and she
wrote to Lady Spencer, “She seems the most miserable of human beings; indeed I do not wonder at that.”50
It was not until the duchess began an illicit affair with John Fitzpatrick, 2nd Earl of Upper Ossory, in late 1767 that the Duke of Grafton saw an opportunity to obtain a divorce. It was the scandal of the decade, if not the century, because by this time Grafton was prime minister. The fact that Grafton was cohabiting with Nancy Parsons was public knowledge, and both he and his errant wife were tarred as dissolute in the eyes of the nation. They obtained their divorce, and she married Lord Ossory weeks later, in March 1769; the duke discarded Miss Parsons with a pension and married a new duchess in June. Anne, now Countess of Upper Ossory—a step down from a duchess in rank—lived chiefly in the country and was parted from her children by the duke, although she was to have others in her second marriage.51 Some years later, the enterprising Nancy Parsons married Charles Maynard, 2nd Viscount Maynard, and finally became a titled lady.52
Caroline duly befriended the new Duchess of Grafton, but the close intimacy she had had with the first duchess was not replicated the second time around. Elizabeth Wrottesley was ten years younger than the duke, and at twenty-four was half Caroline’s age. Perhaps the duke was relieved, because Caroline Howe was almost certainly one of the ladies who had kept his first wife playing cards well into the night.
If Caroline was an accomplice as Anne FitzRoy flouted her husband’s injunctions against late-night parties, she nevertheless was no more a feminist than she was a political reformer. She did not seek to extend women’s rights. She behaved and spoke throughout her life as one who felt herself to be empowered because a combination of circumstances—her personality, the dynamics of her family, and her rank in society—meant that she was, in essence, in control of her own happiness. She did not speak out against the blatant double standard that prevailed during the eighteenth century, under which men were allowed or even rewarded for sexual adventures, and women were ruined by them. Nevertheless, a sense of equity and fair play ran through her reactions to the marital problems of the women she knew. When her friend Lady Cork was brought to court by her husband on a trumped-up charge of adultery, Caroline was indignant—“quite wild,” she exclaimed, in wanting to see Lord Cork punished. She appeared in court on her friend’s behalf. Lord Cork dropped the charges and paid the costs.53 When her sister Mary’s brother-in-law, George Pitt (later to become Baron Rivers of Strathfieldsaye), abused his wife until she left him, Caroline sympathized with the wife, Penelope Pitt, and maintained a correspondence with the beleaguered lady when she moved to Europe, tactfully representing her perambulations around Europe as necessary for the sake of her health.54 By Caroline’s code of behavior, Mrs. Pitt was to be pitied and supported in her navigation through an impossible marriage.
It is unsurprising, then, that after the Graftons separated in 1764, Caroline remained a friend to the duchess, only dropping her acquaintance (at least to all appearances) after Anne began the affair with Lord Ossory.55 We may even speculate that Caroline did in fact keep in touch with the former Duchess of Grafton, for she had many opportunities to do so discreetly. Lord Ossory played cards in Caroline’s London set, and called at Battlesden, where Aunt Page supported his successful candidacy as MP for Bedfordshire in 1767.56 And Caroline’s personal maid, Mrs. Read, had a niece in Lady Ossory’s service for many years after the divorce, ensuring a very private conduit for news of her old friend.57
Thus, Richard Howe always had impeccable sources regarding the political intentions of the Duke of Grafton and others via the Howe social network. This means that during a period when William Pitt held himself aloof from his associates, Richard was able to follow closely the plans of this statesman whom he so admired.
In a single set of letters written over a four-month period in 1763, Caroline has left a vivid cameo of how she kept her finger on the pulse of political trends. Shortly after Richard entered the Board of Admiralty, Caroline reported to Lady Spencer that the Duke of Grafton was dining with Pitt and Lord Temple. A few weeks later, she informed her friend, “the Duke of Grafton & Ld. Villiers set out for Chatsworth & afterwards they go on to Ld. Rockingham’s, they meet the Duke of Cumberland at both places,” including in one sentence most of the leading old Whigs trying to regroup into an effective opposition. Her contacts in this instance were not only Grafton but also the Duke of Cumberland, the favorite brother of Caroline’s friend the Princess Amelia.
And what was the upshot of these political consultations? Caroline did not commit that to paper, for letters were frequently opened by the post office during that century, and political letters were sometimes stopped. To avert this, Caroline sometimes wrote in cipher, another precaution taken by those in the know. She patiently tried to explain the system to Lady Spencer, but her less technically minded friend found decoding a challenge. Using cipher was not foolproof in any case; Caroline was convinced that the post office stopped one of her letters when the clerks found they could not decipher her code. “I am satisfied the post people, angry they cannot make out our Cypher, are determined it shall be of no use to us; I am vastly vexed.”58
But there was no need to interpret the sight, quickly reported to Caroline in early September 1763, of William Pitt’s chair going into Buckingham House, the royal residence. Pitt’s meeting with the king was intended to be “a profound secret,” wrote Caroline, but it did not stay one for long. A colonel in the guard saw Pitt go in, hurried to his club, and reported to “Ld. Sandwich Mr. Thynne Mr. Calcraft & Mr Jenkinson.” Thus, the political grapevine that was part of Caroline’s life was set in motion, spreading the word that the king had sent for Pitt to discuss asking him to join the cabinet. Pitt spent three hours with the king, according to the willing spies watching outside, and five hours the next day with the Duke of Newcastle, whom Pitt left “in very high spirits.” On Monday, Pitt returned to Buckingham House to find that he was not to be offered a place after all.59 The young king showed his inexperience by this spontaneous and too-public consultation. The episode only increased the sense of instability of the Whigs in opposition.
This minor political drama illustrates the world Caroline knew. Watching events, collecting political information, disseminating it to her friends, was second nature to her, for she and her mother had done it all their lives. She was a close, careful observer, as her letters show, and whatever she knew, Richard knew. The two eldest Howe siblings were constantly in each other’s company—traveling together, visiting one another’s homes, eventually living almost next door to one another.
Richard occupied a succession of government posts after 1763 that trace his continued loyalty to William Pitt. In July 1765, he resigned from the Board of Admiralty in anticipation of a new administration; Grenville’s days as prime minister were known to be numbered. A week later, Richard was treasurer of the navy in the newly formed administration of Charles Watson-Wentworth, 2nd Marquess of Rockingham, which would preside over repeal of the Stamp Act. Joining the Rockingham government may have given Richard the appearance of abandoning Pitt, but this was not so. He would have known that Pitt would have been most welcome in the new administration, for he had been courted by the Duke of Cumberland but had steadfastly refused to join. Richard would also have been aware that his friend the Duke of Grafton had also been prevailed upon to take up office with the Rockinghams, on the condition that Pitt could still change his mind and come into the government whenever he chose.60
In 1766, at the height of the Stamp Act Crisis, Richard Howe showed that he shared William Pitt’s sympathetic attitude toward colonial protests when he favored admitting the petition of the American Stamp Act Congress to the House of Commons. His stance was a bold one, because the Congress was an extralegal organization widely seen as a threat in Britain, even by politicians with American sympathies.61
Shortly after the repeal that same year, the Rockingham administration collapsed and Richard resigned as treasurer of the navy, only to be reappointed in a new governme
nt, this time one headed by the Duke of Grafton himself, and William Pitt. Pitt accepted a peerage on the occasion, becoming the Earl of Chatham. But Chatham’s health was poor, and he never really directed the administration that was named for his title. Richard remained in office when Grafton became official head of the ministry in 1768 and resigned with him in early 1770. In that same year, Richard was promoted to the rank of rear admiral of the blue and was sent to command the Mediterranean squadron during a short-lived international crisis when war threatened with Spain.62
In a period when, as we have seen, no fewer than five prime ministers had been appointed in seven years, leading to a constant reshuffling of political alliances, Caroline’s letters show that Richard had been able to remain loyal to Chatham throughout. He had accepted offices under other prime ministers only when doing so did not go against the interests of his patron. Caroline’s excellent contacts, coupled with those of other senior members of the family—the Dowager Lady Howe, and Richard himself—meant that they were able to follow Chatham’s lead. It was characteristic of the Howes that they did not explain their motives to anyone outside their immediate circle. This inscrutability opened them up to accusations of self-interest by cynics such as Horace Walpole. But the period between the Seven Years’ War and the American War of Independence was a decade of unusual instability, which posed challenges to many in Britain’s political class.
William Pitt’s admiration of the brothers George and Richard Howe, born of their exploits in the Seven Years’ War, suffered no diminution. In 1770, writing of Richard, Chatham said that “no man living [has] more zeal for the service of his country.” A few years later, in 1773, he applauded Richard’s forthright parliamentary petition requesting a much-deserved increase in the half-pay of junior navy officers. Richard was going against government, for the proposal was opposed by Prime Minister Lord North, but he prevailed, and the petition was approved by a large majority of MPs. Caroline gave Lady Spencer the whole story:
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