Lady Cowper's Diaries July 1716

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5th July 1716  

M. and Mme Robethon dine here, try to appease them. M. Robethon blames the Secretary for all has happened. The King will not stay above 6 months.  

Baron Bernstorff to take his leave. Go to take mine of the foreign ladys. Mme Ropton says the Princess told her she would never forgive the King in this world nor in that to come.  

I go into the Drawing room. The King in mighty good humour. When I wished him a good journey & a quick return, he look’d as if the last part of my speech was needless & that he did not think of it.  

6th July 1716  

At night Lord Lovat brings a man called Barnes to the Council, who deposed upon oath that two Sulivants, Cousins to Sulivant whose head is upon Temple Bar, told him that Sulivant’s brother, who is a partisan, was to kill the King in a wood between Utrecht and Loo, and that he was to command a Party Blew, which is a cant for fifty men. The men were seized.  

This Lord Lovat was prosecuted for the Rape of one of the Duke of Athol’s sisters, & durst not appear in the world till by his good service in Scotland he had merited his Pardon.  

7th July 1716  

The King went in the morning, & the Prince in the Coach with him. Almost all the great officers follow’d except the Chancellour who was oblig’d to sitt in the Cause room that morning. The Duke of Argyll & my Lord Islay went to kiss his [the King’s] hands, & assure him that their future behaviour should show, that they had been falsely represented to his Majesty.  

8th July 1716  

In the afternoon at Court, the Archbishop there…I meet the Archbishop in the outward room, & he told me that Lord Cowper and he had agreed to stand & fall by one another. Lord Cowper with the Prince, who is mighty gracious, he waited almost 2 hours upon him, promises to hear him in every thing. My Lord persuades him to live well with all those he thought had not done their duty, because it was for the good of the whole. He promises him to do so. He tells Lord Cowper he should not have known what to have done without me, who had been very necessary to him & had done purely.  

10th July 1716  

With the Princess soon after ten. She says Lord Townshend is the sneeringest, fawningest knave that ever was, & adds this reflection that knavery is of very little use when it puts one so out of Countenance. She said Lord Sunderland had been with her, & that altho’ he had own’d that he had been against the Prince, yet he was more natural than Lord Townshend, who ever strove to put on a mask, which is no better than an asses face, & that of the two she liked Lord Sunderland the best…  

In the morning at Court. The Princess gives me a book to read to her. ‘Twas Mme. Deshoulière’s Works. We happen’d upon a passage relating to Brutus, which as much a Whig as I am, I can not come up to, for I think Brutus should either have been faithfull to Caesar, or else he should have refus’d his favours. The baseness of his Ingratitude blackening in my Opinion all that could be said for his zeal for his country. This occasion’d a great dispute amongst us.  

11th July 1716  

Went to Turnham Green this Evening with my Children. My Nephew Cowper’s wedding goes on purely. He is upon his own feet, & so thinks he wants the advice of no body. My sister gave me a hint of the wedding in a letter, & said she hop’d others had done it before her. I have wrote her word today that I am a stranger to what she means, have never hear (sic) any thing from her own Family of it.