Charles Philip Yorke, Fourth Earl of Hardwicke, Vice-Admiral R.N., A Memoir | Page 3

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 country. By Margaret Cocks he had, with two
daughters, five sons, the eldest of whom enhanced the fortunes of the
family by his marriage with Jemima, daughter of the Earl of

Breadalbane, heiress of Wrest and the other possessions of the extinct
Dukedom of Kent, and afterwards Marchioness Grey and Baroness
Lucas of Grudwell in her own right. Of his next son Charles, the
second Chancellor, something will presently be said. Another son,
Joseph, was a soldier and diplomatist. He was aide-de-camp to the
Duke of Cumberland at Fontenoy; and afterwards, as Sir Joseph Yorke,
Ambassador at the Hague. He died Lord Dover. A fourth son, John,
married Miss Elizabeth Lygon, of Madresfield. The fifth son, James,
entered the Church, became Bishop of Ely, and was the ancestor of the
Yorkes of Forthampton. I had the luck many years ago to have a talk
with an old verger in Ely Cathedral who remembered Bishop Yorke,
and who told me that he used to draw such congregations by the power
of his oratory and the breadth of his teaching, that when he preached,
all the dissenting chapels in the neighbourhood were closed!
It was in 1770, only six years after Lord Hardwicke's death which
occurred in London on March 6, 1764, that his second son Charles
(born in 1722) was sworn in as Lord Chancellor. His brilliant career
ended in a tragedy which makes it one of the most pathetic in our
political history. Although unlike his father in person he was
intellectually his equal, and might have rivalled his renown had he
possessed his firmness and resolution 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
profession. Entering the House of Commons as member for Reigate in
1747, he later succeeded his brother as member for Cambridge, and one
of his best speeches in the House was made in defence of his father
against an onslaught by Henry Fox. But in spite of his brilliant
prospects and great reputation he always envied those who were able to
lead a quiet life, and he thus wrote to his friend Warburton, afterwards
Bishop of Gloucester:
'I endeavour to convince myself it is dangerous to converse with you,

for you show me so much more happiness in the quiet pursuits of
knowledge 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
are to be obtained without more agitation both of reason and the
passions, than either moderate parts or a benevolent mind can support.'
Charles Yorke was an intimate friend of Montesquieu, the famous
author of the 'Esprit des Lois' and the most far-seeing of those whose
writings preceded and presaged the French Revolution, who wrote,
'_Mes sentiments pour vous sont gravés dans mon cœur et dans mon
esprit d'une manière à ne s'effacer jamais_.'
On the formation of a government by the Duke of Devonshire in 1756,
Charles Yorke was sworn in, at the early age of thirty-three, as
Solicitor-General, and retained that office through the elder Pitt's
glorious administration. In 1762 he accepted from Lord Bute the
Attorney-Generalship, in which position he had to deal with the
difficult questions of constitutional law raised by the publication of
John Wilkes's North Briton. In November of that year, however, he
resigned office in consequence of the strong pressure put upon him by
Pitt, and took leave of the King in tears. Pitt failed in his object of
enlisting Yorke's services on behalf of Wilkes in the coming
parliamentary campaign, and the crisis ended in an estrangement
between the two, which drove Yorke into a loose alliance with the
Rockingham Whigs, a group of statesmen who were determined to free
English politics from the trammels of court influence and the baser
traditions of the party system. When, however, this party came into
power in 1765, Yorke was disappointed of the anticipated offer of the
Great Seal, and only reluctantly accepted the Attorney-Generalship.
The ministry fell in the following year, partly in consequence of Pitt's
reappearance in the House of Commons and his disastrous