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Updated: June 25, 2025
At last a party of guards, from the Tower, and some lights erected, dispersed the tumult. At one in the morning a riot began before Lord Bute's house, in Audley Street, though illuminated. They flung two large flints into Lady Bute's chamber, who was in bed, and broke every window in the house. Next morning, Wilkes and Cooke were returned members.
It was the boast of John Philips, the poet of the English vintage, that the cider-land had ever been faithful to the throne, and that all the pruning-hooks of her thousand orchards had been beaten into swords for the service of the ill-fated Stuarts. The effect of Bute's fiscal scheme was to produce an union between the gentry and yeomanry of the cider-land and the Whigs of the capital.
Promotion in the civil service, preferment in the Church, rank in the army, were reserved for "the king's friends." Pensions and court places were used to influence debates. Bribery was employed on a scale never known before. Under Bute's ministry an office was opened at the Treasury for the purchase of members, and twenty-five thousand pounds are said to have been spent in a single day.
As soon as the militia business was agitated, many days were tediously consumed in meetings of deputy-lieutenants at Petersfield, Alton, and Winchester. Legge, Chancellor of the Exchequer: a well-known contest, in which Lord Bute's influence was first exerted and censured.
Rebecca, too, being now a relative, came in for the fullest share of Mrs. Bute's kind inquiries. The friend of the Lexicographer had plenty of information to give. Miss Jemima was made to fetch the drawing-master's receipts and letters.
Horace Walpole, in April 1778, wrote: 'It was very remarkable that on the militia being ordered out, two of Lord Bute's younger sons offered, as Bedfordshire gentlemen, to take any rank in the militia in that county. I warned Lord Ossory, the Lord Lieutenant, against so dangerous a precedent as admitting Scots in the militia.
Dismissal from office was the order of the day, and Whig after Whig was forced to leave his place or office open for some Tory who was ready to express an enthusiasm for the statesmanship of Bute. Bute's idea of a foreign policy was to reverse the policy of Pitt.
Somebody asked the latter how he could be so bad a courtier as to bet against the King? He replied, "Not at all a bad courtier; I betted Lord Bute's daughter against him."
Then came Joshua Bute of Chicago, and when wooed she accepted and married him. More than that, she went with him to Chicago, where stood the great establishment which turned out "Bute's Banner Brand Butterine" and "Bute's Banner Brand Leaf Lard" and "Bute's Banner Brand Back-Home Sausage" and "Bute's Banner Brand Better Baked Beans." Also there was a magnificent mansion on the Avenue.
Bute's conduct at Queen's Crawley, which, though unintelligible to her then, was clearly enough explained by the events now now that the attachment had sprung up which Mrs. Bute had encouraged by a thousand artifices now that two innocent people had fallen into the snares which she had laid for them, and loved and married and been ruined through her schemes. It was all very true.
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