He now wanted the quiet life. When the London season was over, William and Fanny could remove to their country seat, Park House in Cholderton, Wiltshire.26 William took up angling again, one of his favorite pastimes ever since his youth. He had acquired a fishing “cottage” in Ringwood, Hampshire, on the banks of the Avon River. A cottage it was in name, but it was sufficiently spacious and modernized to accommodate his wife and the occasional guest.27
Richard’s future would unfold very differently from that of his brother William. On December 26, 1783, as another too-short period of peace dawned for the nation, Richard was appointed First Lord of the Admiralty by new Prime Minister William Pitt. Pitt the Younger, as he is best known to posterity, the second son of Lord Chatham, was only twenty-four when he became prime minister. Destined to become one of Britain’s most famous political figures, he would oversee war against revolutionary France, agitation over the slave trade and Ireland, the crisis of royal insanity, and more.
Although the younger Pitt and Richard Howe were somewhat alike in their social personas, they did not get along. Both had famously remote manners, preferred work to play, and were unsocial to a degree that fitted poorly with their positions as leaders.28 But there was one crucial difference between the two: Pitt was a political animal, Richard was not. For five years, Richard served at the Admiralty. He disliked the work and clashed with Pitt, who preferred to bypass Lord Howe and deal with the Controller of the Navy, Sir Charles Middleton, in carrying out his program of peacetime naval buildup.
Richard also locked horns with the Duke of Richmond over a fortifications bill, leading to what one historian has called “almost open warfare between the Admiralty and the Ordnance offices.”29 This may have been awkward for William, as he was directly answerable to the duke, who was master-general of the Ordnance, as well as a friend. But if it caused the younger and more genial of the Howe brothers any discomfort, he gave no sign. Like Caroline, he was skilled at getting along with people; while the duke developed a lasting antipathy for Richard Howe that was wholly reciprocated, his friendship with William endured.
Richard would resign in July 1788, only to climb still higher. By this time the good relationship between Richard and his sovereign had been fully reestablished, the ripple of royal displeasure surrounding the 1779 parliamentary inquiry wholly forgotten. Caroline wrote to Lady Spencer “to tell you a secret which will be known to all the Town next week,” that her brother was about to leave the Admiralty. He had informed the king of his intention several months earlier, she went on, but was asked by His Majesty to remain in the post until the end of the parliamentary session. George III was now honoring Richard by making him an earl, “as a token of his entire approbation, & yesterday he said that he hoped he would not change the title of Howe.” Richard became Earl Howe, and, in a striking mark of the king’s favor, he was also granted the title of Baron Howe of Langar, with the unusual condition that should he have no sons, the baronetcy could go to his eldest daughter.30
Richard’s daughter Sophia Charlotte, called Charlotte in the family, would thus become Baroness Howe upon the death of her father. In July 1787, Charlotte had married Penn Assheton Curzon, a member of Parliament with a seat at Gopsall Hall, Leicestershire. The old Nottingham connection came into play in this alliance, as Penn’s sister Esther had married Caroline’s cousin Sir George Bromley.31 There were two weddings at Porter’s Lodge that summer. Charlotte’s ceremony followed hard on the heels of that of her youngest sister, Louisa, who was barely twenty when she married John Denis Browne, 3rd Earl of Altamont, in late May 1787. Louisa, who counted the royal princesses among her friends, was known to possess “ethereal” beauty. “[P]rettier than ever,” the Princess Elizabeth, daughter of George III, said of her two months before her wedding.32
Marriage, a rite of passage that heralds the rise of a new generation, would have had special poignancy in the case of Louisa. Caroline’s sister Charlotte Fettiplace died very suddenly at the end of May. Taken ill with what seemed a minor complaint, she was gone within hours. “I had not the least warning nor even knew she was ill till ½ hour before the express arrived,” wrote Caroline unhappily to Lady Spencer. Caught unaware, the family proceeded with the wedding celebrations and put on the mourning immediately afterward.33
Portrait of Louisa Howe Brown, Lady Altamont, youngest daughter of Admiral Howe. Painted in 1788, the year after her marriage.
Two weddings were not enough to shake off the sense of the passage of time in the summer of 1787. Not since Thomas’s death in 1771 had one of Caroline’s siblings passed on. The previous autumn, on All Hallows’ Eve 1786, Princess Amelia had died in her London home.34 Amelia had been born in Hanover in 1711, a date almost equidistant between the birth years of Caroline and her mother. She had been a virtual sister to both Howe women.
The memories of long ago, when the cares and anxieties of the Howe dynasty had centered on the great house at Langar, were stirred for Caroline, who was now in her mid-sixties. In her correspondence, she almost never mentioned those who had gone before, but she made a rare reference to her father when she heard the news of the death of an old parliamentarian, Thomas Noel. “Old Tom Noel,” as she dubbed him when she told the news to Lady Spencer, had been “a great friend of my fathers, & I remember him ever since I had a memory,” a touch of nostalgia evident in her words.35
Shortly after Charlotte Howe’s marriage, Lady Spencer made a visit in the neighborhood of Battlesden and took a detour to see the old grounds. The house had passed on to a distant family member, and the property was not being maintained as it had been in Aunt Juliana Page’s day. “I went to visit Mrs. Pages Tomb,” wrote Lady Spencer. “I was vexed at seeing it so ill taken care of, being over grown entirely with weeds & nettles.” The woodland trails had become impassable; the roads were all “sadly neglected & in some places quite bad & the bridge that goes to the wood is broken down.” These were the paths Richard had so often traversed alone when on shore leave from the Seven Years’ War.
“Sad! The account you give of poor old Battlesden!” lamented Caroline. “Some of these things make me fancy myself seeing how matters go on after ones death & seems as if one had been dead, & returned again to give a peep.”36 The health of her friend Richard Rigby was failing; he would pass away in Bath less than eight months later.37
But the Howe dynasty was destined for a revival. Just a few months before he became an earl, Richard became a grandfather. His eldest daughter, Charlotte, gave birth to George Augustus William on May 14, 1788, at their London home. It was an easy delivery. Charlotte had been out paying visits in the afternoon, wrote her proud Aunt Caroline, and five hours later had given birth to a fine baby boy. “Mr Curzon is quite wild with joy, he says she was not more than 2 hours & ½ in strong Labor, wonderful for a first Child.” Lady Howe sat up all night with her daughter and grandson.
Just days later, more joyous news followed. Louisa, now Lady Altamont, was expecting any day, and she was so heavily pregnant that it was thought she was carrying twins. “Lady Altamont my dear Lady Spencer was brought to bed at 4 this morning of only one fine fat great boy & both mother & Child as well as possible.” The next day, Caroline had a glimpse of the new family member, “a trot up two pair of stairs to see the Babe,” who was so big he looked like a month-old infant.38 The “fat great boy” was named Howe Peter; Charlotte’s boy, George Augustus, was named in memory of the heroic uncle Charlotte had never met but had heard of all her life.
There was of course a great christening for George Augustus Curzon, destined to become the new dynastic head. Caroline described the occasion: “All was as handsome & I may say elegant as possible, a vast heap of relations of the Curzon family came after the [christen]ing was over.” There had been a struggle over who should stand godfather to little George Augustus. Mr. Curzon, the paternal grandfather, wanted to defer to Lord Howe; Lord Howe politely returned the compliment. After a “great battle,” it went to Mr. Curzon; Lady Howe was godmother.
When Caroline left at half past nine, the young guests were dancing to the music of a harp.39
“Fine doings indeed with all your boys my Dr. Howey,” wrote Lady Spencer, happy for her friend. Lady Spencer insisted on calling them Caroline’s grandchildren. “I was right,” she pronounced, “in calling little Curzon your Grand Child for nothing but looking upon him as such could have posted you up two pair of Stairs to see a new born infant.”40
By now, Lady Spencer was a grandmother herself. Her youngest, Harriet, had married in 1780 to Frederick Ponsonby Viscount Duncannon, the future 3rd Earl of Bessborough. The fertility problems of her sister the duchess had not been replicated in her. Her son John Ponsonby was born the following year, on August 31, 1781, and Harriet continued to give birth with regularity every other year; by 1787, she had four children.41
George Spencer’s marriage to Lavinia was equally fruitful. The couple produced the all-important son within a year of their wedding, and, by the time of the arrival of little George Augustus Curzon, they had a daughter as well. Even the Duchess of Devonshire finally gave birth in 1783, almost ten years after becoming a wife, although it would not be until 1790 that her only son, Hartington, was born.
Caroline had shown great interest in the children of Harriet, Lady Duncannon, her favorite of the Spencer brood. When Harriet arrived at 12 Grafton Street with her little boy, Caroline reported to her friend, “[H]e is quite charming, found out instantly I was a stranger & examined me in a wonderful manner with his great Eyes.” He soon stopped exploring and was hungry. “[Lady Duncannon] gave him a little dinner here behind my screen.”42 Both of Lady Spencer’s daughters were determined to breast-feed, a choice that was almost an “act of defiance” in an era when aristocratic women usually employed wet nurses.43
Soon after the arrival of the Howe grandchildren, momentous changes began to stir both at home and abroad. They were foreshadowed in a seemingly routine letter from Caroline to Lady Spencer that gave no inkling of what was to come. On October 23, 1788, Caroline passed on some court gossip: “The King has been exceedingly ill with Spasms in his stomach.” She understood that his physician, Sir George Baker, opined that His Majesty would be well enough to attend the royal levee scheduled for the following day. In the next sentence, Caroline moved on to the international scene. It was predicted that there would be “great bustles” in France with the impending summoning of the Estates-General. The ruling powers of France would be confronted with a violent struggle for liberty, she predicted, and perhaps changes in their constitution. Trouble had come home to roost, pronounced Caroline, and deservedly so: “[T]he [French] King & his advisers will find, the mischief they did us in the American disputes coming home pretty handsomely to themselves.”44
Now King George III was about to descend into the profound mental illness that would trouble him more or less for the rest of his life. He had suffered a bout of ill health in the summer of 1788, but, to all appearances, he had recovered by August. Very early on the morning after a royal drawing room, on October 17, he was seized with acute pains in his stomach, spasms in his limbs, and other symptoms. Three days later, he was hardly able to stand, and his mind kept wandering. After two more days, he appeared to be irrational, raging for three hours at Sir George Baker. This was the day when Sir George had claimed with dubious sincerity that the king was “much better” and would probably appear at court. The pronouncement was clearly meant for public consumption. The king was not better, and his appearance at the levee at St. James’s Palace on October 24, disordered in dress and speech, caused dismay. On November 3, George III wrote what would be his last letter to his prime minister for many months.45
Caroline was soon in the know. Six days after the levee, she wrote that His Majesty was deranged: “[T]he delirium at times has been so strong that four men were obliged to hold him after he had knocked down two.”46 The malady, she feared, was in his brain.
Thus began the Regency Crisis, a three-month period when George III was too mentally unsound to govern. The royal disability was quickly entangled with party politics. Pitt and his government hoped that the king would recover; the Prince of Wales and his opposition friends, including Charles James Fox and Edmund Burke, hoped that he would not. A fierce political battle ensued over the terms by which a regent might be appointed, for the fates of Pitt and Fox were tied to the fates of their royal patrons.
Caroline heard it all, as she had friends on both sides. She wrote to Lady Spencer of a dinner party with the Devonshires where Edmund Burke, spokesman for the opposition, was in great spirits on the subject of the royal illness: “He talked of a recovery as quite impossible; not so the other side, they look upon it as certain, at least most probably so.” Those who believed the king would recover cited for their authority Dr. Francis Willis, a Lincolnshire physician who had advanced ideas about the treatment of mental health.47 Dr. Willis had been called in a month after the onset of the king’s illness. Under his care, the king recovered early in 1789, at least for the time being.
Hard on the heels of George III’s return to sanity came the other disorder presaged in Caroline’s letter. In France, King Louis XVI had summoned his Estates-General in a desperate bid to save the nation from bankruptcy. Caroline had gloated at this development in October 1788. The famous events of 1789 ensued when the Estates-General met in May and the assembled delegates proved impossible to control. The Bastille fortress prison was stormed on July 14, and the National Assembly, now directing events, swept aside aristocratic privilege and determined to impose a constitutional monarchy.
Some in Britain, including opposition leader Charles James Fox, hailed these events as a step forward for humankind, as the French appeared to be embracing British notions of liberty.48 Thomas Paine, the propagandist for the American rebellion, responded enthusiastically to the upheavals in France with his radical work The Rights of Man. Others were not so sure; the extreme ideas and actions of its powerful neighbor could pose a threat to England’s peace and stability. By autumn 1789, Edmund Burke, once the champion of liberty in America, had become disgusted with developments in France, asserting that it was “a Country where the people, along with their political servitude, have thrown off the Yoke of Laws and morals.” Burke would break with his Whig friends, writing his famous Reflections on the Revolution in France, published in November 1790.49
Popular opinion in Britain became polarized over the developments across the English Channel, but the Howes, as usual, were pragmatic and moderate. Richard believed that threats to peace and order would persist until “some regulated Monarchical Government is established in France.”50 For him, as for many Britons, the American War of Independence had not shaken their belief in the perfections of a constitutional monarchy. Little attention was paid in Britain to the constitutional experiments taking place in the new United States, despite their roots in British political thought. The prevailing view was that republics were doomed to remain minor powers on the world stage. There was a commonly held belief that the new American union would fall apart in the not-too-distant future.51
Richard had already resumed command of the Channel Fleet in 1790 when a minor territorial conflict between Britain and Spain in the remote Pacific (now part of British Columbia) threatened to break into armed confrontation. The Nootka Sound Crisis in some ways was a foretaste of nineteenth-century controversies. It was an imperial clash between European powers in what was for Europe an almost-unknown part of the globe.52
Distant as Nootka Sound was, it worried Britain, since conflict with Spain raised the specter of conflict with France. France and Spain were united by an alliance known as the Family Compact, which was founded on family ties between their respective monarchs, and in 1790, Louis XVI still reigned in Paris, at least in name. The crisis petered out within the year, for the new French National Assembly was unenthusiastic about helping Spain and denounced the royalist Family Compact. British supporters of the French Revolution hailed this as evidence of the beginning of a mor
e enlightened French foreign policy.53 Nevertheless, Richard had been obliged to undertake “the thousand little preparations necessary,” as he put it, to ready the fleet for service that summer. His American butler Leveridge—probably a loyalist whose employment in the admiral’s household was a legacy of the War of Independence—was obliged to assist him extensively, as the admiral’s gout was becoming more severe with age.54 Declining health, however, would not excuse Richard from serving his country for years to come.
Things changed rapidly in France after Nootka Sound. When the French royal family tried unsuccessfully to escape from their virtual house arrest in their flight to Varennes in June 1791, Richard commented, “To my dull apprehension, [events] promise a quick progress to a state of greater disorder, before [the French] acquire any systematic regularity in their proposed Constitution.”55 He was right. By 1792, France was at war with Austria and Prussia. The extremist Jacobins had assumed control. A republic was declared and the king was deposed. Violence escalated. The royal family was attacked at the Tuileries Palace on August 10, 1792, followed by the infamous September massacres, during which thousands were slaughtered in Parisian jails.
Many of the Englishmen who had looked with some favor on the revolution in France now began to change their minds. Even Charles James Fox was horrified, writing, “There is not in my opinion a shadow of an excuse for this horrid massacre, not even a possibility of extenuating it in the smallest degree.” Ominously, the new regime in France appeared to be exporting insurrection and revolutionary ideas.56
GEORGE III HAD ENJOYED a surge of popularity after his recovery from illness in 1788, and it did not abate with the commotion in France and the worrying rise of seditious groups in Britain. “God save the King was sung 5 times when the King was at Covent Garden last time,” reported Caroline to Lady Spencer in November 1792. But there was a bustle at the Haymarket Theatre when the same patriotic song was called for, with someone in the audience shouting, “No, no, God save [Thomas] Paine.” “[I]t put the whole House in a roar,” wrote Caroline, and the man was turned out of his theater box.57
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