Charles Philip Yorke, Fourth Earl of Hardwicke, Vice-Admiral R.N. A Memoir

torney at Dover, descended, it is claimed, from the Yorkes of Hannington in North Wiltshire, a family of some consequence in the fifteenth and sixteenth cent

of the incidents of his career and of those

e Attorney-General in 1723. In 1733 he was appointed Lord Chief Justice of England, and received the Great Seal a

h which he pointed out their excellences. He mentions only two failings of Lord Chancellor Hardwicke: one, that he was fond of acquiring wealth, the other, that he was of an overweening pride to those whom he considered beneath him. Neither of these is a very serious charge, and as both are insufficiently corrobor

f the Crown. He was punctual and conscientious in the discharge of his public duty, never neglecting i

to 1755) he transformed equity from a chaos of precedents into a scientific system.' Lord Campbell states that 'his decisions have been, and ever will continue to be, appealed to as fixing the limits and establishing the principle

f equity.' The Chancellor is said to have been one of the handsomest men of his day, and 'his personal advantages, which included a musical

lly the case when a man rises to great eminence, played its part in his career. He had friends who early recognised his ability and gave him the opportunities of which he was quick to avail himself. He took the tide at its flood and was led on to fortune; but, as Campbell justly observes, 'along with that good luck such results required lofty aspirations, great ability, consummate prudence, rigid self-denial, and unwearied industry.' His rise in his profession had undoubtedly been facilitated by his marriage to Margaret Cocks, a favourite niece of Lord Chancellor Somers, himself one of the greatest of England's lawyer-statesmen. There is a story that when asked by Lord Somers what settlement he could make on his wife, he answered proudly, 'Nothing but the foot of ground I stand on in Westminster Hall.' Never was the self-confidence of genius more signally justified than in his case. Not only was his own rise to fame and fortune unprecedently rapid, but he became the founder of a family many of whose members have since played a distinguished part in the public and social life of the coun

of character. He was educated at Cambridge, and before the age of twenty had given evidence of his precocity as the principal author (after his brother Philip) of the 'Athenian Letters,' a supposed correspondence between Cleander, an agent of the King of Persia resident in Athens, and his brother and friends in Persia. Destined to the law from his childhood, Charles Yorke was called to the bar in 1743, and rapidly advanced in his

wledge and enjoyments of friendship than is to be found in lucre or ambition, that I go back into the world with regret, where few things

e most far-seeing of those whose writings preceded and presaged the French Revolution, who wrote, 'Mes

eralship. The ministry fell in the following year, partly in consequence of Pitt's reappearance in the House of Commons and his disastrous refusal of Rockingham's invitation to join his Government, though they were agreed on most of the important questions of the day, including that of American taxation and the repeal of the Stamp Act; and Pitt, who then (August 1766) became Lord Chatham, was commissioned to form a new government in which, to Yorke's mortification, he offered the Lord Chancellorship to Camden. Yorke thereupon resigned the Attorney-Generalship, and during the devious course of the ill-starred combination under Chatham's nominal leadership-for during the next two years Chatham was absolutely incapacitated from all attention to business, his policy was reversed by his colleagues, and America taxed by Charles Townshend-he maintained an 'attitude of saturnine reserve,' amusing himself with landscape gardening at his villa at Highgate, doing its honours to Warburton, Hurd, Garrick and other friends, and corresponding among others with Stanislas Augustus, King of Poland, to whom he had been introduced by

772, by his widow Agneta Yorke; and the effect of them, to my mind, is not only to discredit the widely believed story of Charles Yorke's suicide, which is not

een ambition and political consistency which followed upon the offer of the Chancellorship by the Duke

the Great Seal, complaining heavily of Lord Camden's conduct, particularly his hostile speech in the House of Lords the first day of the Session. My brother desired a little time to consider of so momentous an affair and stated to the Duke the difficulties it laid him under, his grace gave him till Sunday in the forenoon. He, Mr. Y., called on me that morning, the 14th, and seemed in great perplexity and agitation. I asked him if he saw his way through the clamorous and difficult points upon which it would be immediately expected he shoul

fton, repeated his declining answer, and proposed a commission for the present, for which precedents of various times were not wanting. The Duke of Grafton expressed a more earnest desire that my brother should accept than he did at the first interview, and pressed his seeing the King before he too

ice of Attorney-General in 1765; his Majesty however ended the conversation very humanely and prettily, that "after what he had said to excuse himself, it would be cruelty to press his acceptance." I must here solemnly declare that my brother was all along in such agitation of mind that he never told me all the particulars which passed in the different conversations, and many material things may have been said to him which I am ignorant of. He le

alled upon Mrs. Yorke to urge it, saying among other things that 'the great office to which Mr. Yorke was invited was in the line of his profession, that though it was intimately connected with state affairs, yet it had not that absolute and servile dependance on the Court which the other ministerial offices had; that Mr. Yorke had already seen how vain it was to depend on the friendship of Lord Rockingham and his party; that the part he had act

strongly urging him to accept, and was afterwards blamed for having encouraged his fatal ambition. Lord Rockingham alone, who had been greatly dependent upon the advice and assistance of Mr. Yorke, 'to whom,' as Mrs. Yorke remarks, 'he could apply every moment,' and 'without whom he would have made no figure at all in his administration,' put the strongest pressu

he found whenever he was inclined to consent he could get no rest, and want of rest would kill him.' But after another day, Tuesday, spent in conference 'I believe with Lords Rockingham and Hardwicke,'

Great Seal with expressions like these: "My sleep has been disturbed by your declining; do you mean to declare yourself unfit for it?" and still stronger afterwards, "If you will not comp

, and I was vexed at his taking no notice of me or the rest of the family when he accepted. All these considerations working on my mind at this distracting moment induced me, Lord Rockingham joining in it, to press him to return forthwith to the King, and entreat his Majesty either to allow him time till next morning to recollect himself, or to put the Great Seal in

e he intended to take, that of Morden, which is part of the Wimple estate, asked my forgiveness if he had acted improperly. We kissed and parted friends. A warm word did not escape either of us. When he took

more highly coloured. Charles Yorke was evidently terribly discomposed by it, speaking of Lord Hardwicke's language as 'exceeding all bounds of temper, reason, and even common

ther exaggerated importance in the sensitive and affectionate, but self-centred, mind of poor Charles Yorke, shaken

imself with talking to him. He ordered him some medicine and was to see him again in the evening. In the meantime Mr. Yorke was obliged to rise to receive the different people who would crowd to him on this occasion, but before he left me, he assured me that when the Duke of Grafton came to him at night, he would resign the seals. When his company had left him, he came up to me, and even then, death was upon his face. He said he had settled all his affairs, that he should retire absolutely from business, and would go to Highgate the next day, and that he was resolved to meddle no more with public affairs. I was myself so ill with fatigue and anxiety that I was no

t the instant, but was soon called to him. He was almost speechless, but on my taking his hand in an agony of silent grief he looked tenderly on me, and said, "How can I repay your kindness, my dear love; God will reward you, I cannot; be comforted." These were the last words I

t he would do his best to support the part which his brother had taken,' and came to town with that reso

over the subject like friends and brothers.... In short, the usage he met with in 1766 when faith was broke with him, had greatly impaired his judgment, dejected his spirits, and made him act below his superior knowledge and abilities. He would seldom explain himself, or let his opinion be known in time to those who were ready to have acted with him in the utmost confidence. After the menacing language used in the closet to compel Mr. Yorke's acceptance and the loss which the King sustained by his death at that critical juncture, the most unprejudiced and dispassionate were surprised at the little, or rather no notice which

as taken by me to prepare him for the offer, and to persuade him to form some previous plan of conduct, but all in vain. He would never explain himself clearly, and left everything to chance, till we were all overborne, perplexed and confounded in that fatal interval which opened

unt for his death without the gratuitous assumption of suicide, which there is nothing in the family papers to support. There is no doubt that this idea was prevalent at the time, and allusions to it are to be found in many subsequent accounts, down to that in Sir George Trevelyan's 'Life of Fox.' Perhaps it is not too much to hope that this allegation may be at last disposed of in the light of the papers by his brother

nce between Lord Hardwicke and Mrs. Yorke, I do not see that I can reasonably admit any other hypothesis. I

t will be disputed, but I am glad to have this opportunity of asserting my own firm conviction that the version of

to the Parliamentary Reform Bill in 1831. He was created a Knight of the Garter in 1803, [Footnote: Lord Hardwicke married in 1782 Elizabeth, daughter of James, fifth Earl of Balcarres, the sister of Lady Anne Barnard, the authoress of Auld Robin Gray.] and had the misfortune to lose the only son who survived infancy in a storm at sea off Lübeck in 1808 at the age of twenty-four. The succession to the peerage was thus opened up to his half-brothers, the sons of Charles Yorke's second wife, Agneta, daughter of Henry Johnston of Great Berkhampsted: Charles Philip (1764-1834) who left no heir, and Joseph Sydney (1768-1831), father of the subject of this memoir. I have already alluded to the public career of their half-brother, the third Lord Hardwicke; and it is interesting to see how the tradition of political and public work was maintained by the two younger brothers, who both, and especially the younger of the two, added fresh laurel

rt of second founder of the family. Although Wimpole in Cambridgeshire, which the Chancellor purchased from the Harleys, Earls of Oxford, was for many generations the principal seat of the family, Sydney Lodge, on Southampton Water, [Footnote: Attached to Sydney Lodge on the shore of Southampton Water is

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e service in those stirring times. After serving on board one or two other vessels, Joseph Yorke joined the Duke commanded by Sir Charles Douglas, whom he followed to the Formidable. That vessel was one of Rodney's fleet in the West Indies, and the boy fought in her at the famous action of April 12, 1782 in which that admiral completely defeated the French under De Grasse. He remained in the Formidable un

corvette, close to Brest harbour and in sight of a very superior French squadron. In 1794 Captain Yorke was given command of the

close action, which continued with much spirit for about half an hour, when the enemy struck, and proved to be the Alliance, Batavian frigate of 36 guns and 240 men. Her consorts the Argo 36, and Nelly cutter, 16, ef

s installation as a Knight of the Garter; on July 31 he was promoted to the rank of Rear-Admiral; and in the following January, with his flag in the Vengeur, he was sent out with reinforcements for Wellington to Lisbon. These were landed on March 4, 1811, and on the news being received, Massena broke up his camp in front of the lines of Torres Vedras and began his retreat. This was Sir Joseph's last service afloat. In 1814, while still a member of the Board, he was

who survived him. During his later years he lived mostly at Sydney Lodge, occupied with family interests, and in the administration of various charities, naval and other. My grandfather was a fine type of English sailor, very handsome in his youth, as Romney's po