The Duke of Cumb[erlan]d attacked the Duke of Buccleugh last night for wearing his under his coat; son Altesse R. a une bovardise fort intiressante il faut lui rendre justice.

I should not have troubled you so soon if this alarm from Turin, and the courier, &c., had not filled my head.  My best compliments to Lord and Lady Holland and my love to Charles and Harry.(58) Charles is in my debt a letter; I shall be glad to hear from him.  Crawfurd desired me to make his (ex)cuses to you, that he has not answered your last; he gains no ground; I think he is immaigri, et d’une inquietude perpetuelle qui porte sur rien.

The Duke of N[ewcast]le(59) seems to have gained strength and life since that manly resolution which he took last week of being no longer a Minister of this country.  Let what would happen, he has given a conge to his friends to do what they will, and it shall not be looked upon as desertion.  That is undoubtedly the most capital simpleton that ever the caprice of fortune placed in the high offices which he filled, and for so long a time.

The last paragraph of this letter can scarcely belong to this date, for the Duke of Newcastle was not in Chatham’s Ministry, which was formed on the fall of the first Rockingham Administration in July, 1766.

(46) Lord Clive had recently returned from India in bad health.  He lived, however, till 1774.

(47) Sisters of Lord Carlisle.

(48) Henry Frederick, younger brother of George iii.; notorious for his dissipation.

(49) Jane Maxwell, Duchess of Gordon, wife of Alexander, fourth Duke.  She was a social leader of the Tory party, and a confidante of Pitt.  Horace Walpole called her “one of the empresses of fashion.”

(50) Lady Almeria Carpenter was famous for her beauty.  She was lady-in-waiting to the Duchess of Gloucester and mistress to the Duke.  “The Duchess remained indeed its nominal mistress, but Lady Almeria constituted its ornament and its pride.” (Wraxall, vol. v. p. 201).

(51) John Russell, fourth Duke of Bedford (1710-71), died 1756.  He was appointed Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland in 1762; he went as Ambassador to Paris, where he negotiated the unpopular Treaty of Paris.  He was at the head of the place-seeking politicians called the Bloomsbury Gang, from his town house in Bloomsbury Square; and when, in 1767, his faction came into power, the Duke of Bedford, who was worthy of better clients, made a feeble effort to arrive at an understanding with Lord Rockingham about a common policy; but he could not keep his followers for five minutes together off the subject that was next their hearts.  Rigby bade the two noblemen take the Court Calendar and give their friends one, two, and three thousand a year all round ("The Early History of Charles James Fox,” p. 132).  An overbearing manner and the character of his followers made him unpopular.  In 1731 he married Lady Diana Spencer, daughter of the third Earl of Sunderland, and sister of the third Duke of Marlborough.  He married for the second time, in 1737, Gertrude, eldest daughter of the first Earl Gower.  At the death of their only son, Lord Tavistock, in 1767, the Duke and Duchess of Bedford were harshly charged with want of respect for his memory.