what he had to say before writing to Stanley. It was perhaps due to Pownall's advice that Mr. Pitt made a firm stand in making no concession to the French about the fisheries, he foresaw that to do so would cause trouble, and with the support of the City of London he was strong enough to prevent it for a time. When the matter was brought up again in the following year his successors granted those fishery rights which he had refused, and thereby left occasion for friction between England and France which has lasted till recently.

At the end of July 1761 Mr. Stanley presented the English ultimatum which demanded those fisheries almost exclusively. M. de Choiseul refused to accept it; he said to Stanley "I wonder that your great Pitt should be so attached to the acquisition of Canada . . .; in the hands of France it will always be of service to you to keep your colonies in that dependence which they will not fail to shake off the moment Canada shall be ceded."1

To the cession of Canada France was willing to agree, to exclusion from the fisheries she was not; the negotiation broke down on this point and the war had to continue. M. de Choiseul then turned to Spain, whose dynasty was akin to that of France and who was also interested in seeing these fisheries did not become exclusively English. With her he concluded what was called the Family Compact, and by another deed it was arranged that Spain should join France in the war by the beginning of May in the following year unless peace were made by them. Mr. Pitt became aware of this and wished to anticipate Spain by declaring war on her at once before she had made her preparations. As this was vetoed by the King and the Court party Mr. Pitt resigned at the beginning of October 1761.

While he was watching these proceedings Pownall had definitely renounced the Governorship of South Carolina, to which office Mr. Thomas Boone was appointed on April 14, 1761.2 That ended Pownall's colonial career, but the prolongation of the war gave him the opportunity of active employment on the Continent. We have seen that in America he had

1 History of the United States, George Bancroft, 1863, iv. p. 399. Gentleman's Magazine, 1761, p. 189. On February 27 Mr. W. H. Littleton had been gazetted Governor of Jamaica.

always liked being with troops in the field and now, shortly before Mr. Pitt left office, he returned to that manner of life being appointed First Commissary-General, with the rank of Colonel, to the English-Hanoverian army which was serving under Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick against the French on the Rhine. This meant a drop from the administrative to the departmental grade of official, but he was still in a position to correspond with and report to the Cabinet. When Mr. Pitt left office his colleague the Duke of Newcastle remained as Premier for some months. To the Duke we find Pownall writing from Hoxter in the south of Hanover on September 21, 1761, to say that he was inspecting the various magazines and was arranging to make his headquarters for the winter at Bremen.1 This city on the lower waters of the River Weser commanded the waterway of that river, which was utilised for the conveyance of supplies to the British army holding that part of Germany against the French, while our ally King Frederick of Prussia was operating to the south and south-east.

With that letter to the Duke of Newcastle are others which shew that the new Commissary was going about his duties in a business-like manner. There are circular instructions to local inspectors requiring them to report how each storekeeper takes in material, how he keeps check of weights and quantities. His receipts are to be seen, so are the condition in which he keep his stores. If any suspicion of fraud on the storekeepers' part exist the inspector is to closely investigate the matter.

use.

Mr. Dundas, a contractor, writes from Pyrmont, 20 miles south of Minden, to Pownall on September 10, in reply to his complaint that out of 1000 wagons only 161 were in Dundas says the 20 leagues of road from Hamlein to Geismar were in such bad order that he could do no better; he pleaded it would be hard measure to stop payment for the teams unemployed. This is evidently what the Chief Commissary had threatened, the Contractor declares that this kind of work really cannot be " performed as a jobb of a coach and six horses," he is evidently disgusted at the clean sweeping of this new official broom -says he is tired of the contract and would like to

1 British Museum, MSS. Dept., Newcastle Correspondence, 32,928, p. 274.

relinquish it. On September 20, Pownall writes to Colonel Pierson from Obervilliers that he wants to get at the facts about the supply of the granaries. He wants a clause in every forage contract fixing a time for delivery, and if that is not complied with there must be a penalty. If goods are delivered after the due date their acceptance should be optional. The Treasury clause that the Commissary should have access to the Contractor's books of delivery should be enforced. Anything not up to specification, but not bad enough to reject, might be taken over at a lower price on the valuation of some disinterested person, but if a contractor were found trying to pass off stores receipts he had obtained from some one else he should forfeit all he had in the stores. We may infer that there had been a good deal of roguery about these matters in this as in other campaigns, and that the new Commissary meant to put a stop to it. Action of this kind provokes hostility on the part of the persons affected. A Mr. Guest, Inspector of Magazines, in a memorial to the Treasury accused Pownall of allowing damaged oats to be accepted at Bremen. An inquiry was held which resulted in Guest's dismissal from the Service, his charge was declared unfounded,' and Pownall's accounts were passed with honour.

1762

Through 1762 Pownall continued in Germany, it was the last and the most featureless year of the war, but in January Spain threw in her lot with France.

The Duke of Newcastle was driven from office in May 2 and succeeded by Lord Bute, who in September sent the 1 Nichol's Literary Anecdotes of the XVIIIth Century, 1814, note to p. 61. 2 On the 21st of this month a distant cousin of the subject of this memoir, Captain Pownall, R.N., H.M.S. Favourite, when cruising off Cape St. Vincent with H.M.S. Active, Captain Sawyer, took the Spanish ship Hermione, one of the richest prizes of the war. The Hermione had on board an immense cargo of great value, to take which from Portsmouth to London 22 wagons were required, and besides this she had 2,600,000 dollars for the Court of Madrid (History of the Late War, 1779, Entick, v. p. 406). His son, Captain Philemon Pownall, R.N., was killed in action off the Downs on June 15, 1781.

While

Duke of Bedford to Paris to negotiate peace. that was being done the question of American boundaries and limits had again to be considered. We find Lord Egremont, Secretary of State, writing to Pownall on October 18, that he desired information as to the distance from the shore of the Gulf of the St. Lawrence within which French fishermen should not be permitted to come. Lord Egremont wrote, "I have taken the liberty to mention you as a likely person to have some acquaintance among those who are judges in this matter," and he said he would be much obliged for any assistance Pownall could give him.'

Hostilities between the English and French ceased on November 22, 1762, and the Treaty of Paris was ratified in the following February. The peace was very ill received, for it was believed that if Mr. Pitt had been allowed to reap his own harvest there would have been more of it.

1763

Lord Bute became so unpopular that he resigned_in April 1763.2 He is credited with having recommended Mr. George Grenville to the King as the new Premier and Chancellor of the Exchequer, in the hope that Mr. Grenville might be found an amenable person, but that proved a mistake. He was brother-in-law to Mr. Pitt, with whom he was not on good terms, he was a very stubborn man, narrow-minded, pedantic, and something of a prig, but behind that unattractive exterior he concealed a warm heart. He lived in the atmosphere of Party politics which was no cleaner then than now. If a man in Parliament wanted office in those days the simplest way to get it was to toady King George. To pander to King Mob is the modern equivalent, offer him anything or everything he fancies-never mind to whom it belongs -if he will give you his vote and interest, and you will get on and become a person of distinction. It is only the 1 R.O., Foreign Office Entry Book, No. 241.

2 On the 30th of this month Richard Pownall, a brother of Thomas, was gazetted Captain in the 1st Regiment of Guards, from which he retired as Colonel in 1769, died 1811, 8.p. Another brother, Edward, had been gazetted to that regiment on December 3, 1753, but he exchanged to the Line and became Captain in the 34th on February 26, 1764, died 1779, 8.p.

old jobbery in a new form, whether a man sells himself to his superior or to his inferiors in station he equally becomes a slave. But there are always some disinterested men who are not for sale and Mr. Grenville was one of them, he did not toady the King, on the contrary he stood up when others abased themselves. By no means a rich man he would touch no perquisites of office, nor would he shut his eyes to any tampering with the collection or the expenditure of the revenue. During his administration he made one fatal mistake in his dealings with the colonies, but he was a high-minded gentleman, and he went quite straight. Very many men, Pownall among them, looked on him with respect, though he did not often inspire affection.

Such was the state of affairs, and such was the man at the head of them, when Pownall returned from Germany, after spending a year and a half as Commissary-General. His appointment had ceased with the war, he was now again seeking for work and without much prospect of it. In his case, as in that of much more prominent people, all depended on the King, who had now got things into his own hands and was shaking the statesmen of the day into constantly varying groups and combinations, like the bits of glass in a kaleidoscope. Thus were they shaken into or out of office, or from one office to another, by the selfwilled lad on the throne who, at the age he then was, might have been a useful member of society as a subaltern, for he had plenty of courage. Later in life he would have been a very respectable country gentleman. As a Sovereign he so mismanaged affairs that within twenty years he had reduced England from the proud position in which she stood after the Seven Years' War-Pitt's War -to the half-ruined condition in which she found herself after the American War of Independence—the King's War.

His first purpose had been achieved, he had got rid of Mr. Pitt, who was now living in retirement, suffering in his body from gout and in his mind from mortification. He was disgusted with the world in general, and with the other Whig leaders in particular. Though the King was doing his utmost to divest them of the power they had long possessed, they were still so strong that his only course was to play them off against each other. To do