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Whereupon the duke demanded "that satisfaction which a gentleman has a right to require, and which a gentleman never refuses to give". A hostile meeting took place on March 21 in Battersea fields. The duke intentionally fired wide, and Winchilsea, after discharging his weapon in the air, tendered a written apology, in conformity with the so-called rules of honour.
This letter was addressed to the secretary of a committee formed for the establishment of King's College in London, and Lord Winchilsea had apparently assumed that the subject under consideration warranted him in expressing his views with regard to the conduct of the Prime Minister on the Catholic relief question.
House at five. Lord Winchilsea made a violent tirade against the Administration, without any motion before the House. The Duke made a few observations on the point of order very quietly, and we rose. November 5. St. James's at half-past one. The clergy of the Province of Canterbury were there, with their address on the accession. They were not expected, and there were no gentlemen pensioners.
Lord Winchilsea, it will be seen, did not intend to stand by his gross and preposterous charge against the Duke, but he did not think that the code of honor allowed him to say so like a man, and tender an apology like what we should now call a gentleman, without first subjecting himself to the fire of his wrongfully accused antagonist.
Lord Winchilsea endeavoured by an amendment to shut out Unitarians from the relief thus afforded to conscience, but, happily, such an intolerant proceeding, even in an unreformed Parliament, met with no success. Lord Eldon fiercely attacked the measure 'like a lion, as he said, 'but with his talons cut off' but met with little support.
p. 278 shatterhead. The Countess of Winchilsea, Miscellany Poems , 'Pri'thee shatter-headed Fop'. p. 278 Craffey. Craffy is the foolish son of the Podesta in Crowne's City Politicks . He is described as 'an impudent, amorous, pragmatical fop, that pretends to wit and poetry. He is engaged in writing Husbai an answer to Absalom and Achitophel. p. 278 whiffling. Fickle; unsteady; uncertain.
Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea, is not a commanding figure in history, but she is an isolated and a well-defined one. She is what one of the precursors of Shakespeare calls "a diminutive excelsitude." She was entirely out of sympathy with her age, and her talent was hampered and suppressed by her conditions.
Still, it is something to know that there were cool observers even at the time who thought the Duke of Wellington had done wrong. Charles Greville, in commenting on the duel, says that "everybody, of course, sees the matter in a different light; all blame Lord Winchilsea, but they are divided as to whether the Duke ought to have fought or not."
Lady Winchilsea had an eye, as Wordsworth found out; but the Duchess of Newcastle had more poetry in her the comparative praise proving the negative position than Lady Winchilsea. And when you say of the French, that they have only epistolary women and wits, while we have our Lady Mary, why what would Lady Mary be to us but for her letters and her wit?
The duke wrote 'immediate answers in his own hand, and took good-humouredly a remonstrance from Bentham upon the duel with Lord Winchilsea in 1829. Bentham was ready to the end to seek allies in any quarter. When Lord Sidmouth took office in 1812, Bentham had an interview with him, and had some hopes of being employed to prepare a penal code.
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