On the day of Chatham's death, his friend and disciple, colonel Barré, announced the melancholy event in the house of commons, and moved that his funeral should be conducted at the public charge, and his remains be deposited in Westminster Abbey. This was seconded by Thomas Townshend, afterwards secretary of state, and lord Sydney. All parties consented, with many praises, to this suggestion; but Rigby, probably to defeat the motion by traversing it with another, hinted that he thought a public monument would be a more lasting and suitable testimony of the public regard. If this was his purpose, he must have been greatly mortified to see Dunning rise, and declare that he highly approved of both, and moved, as an amendment, that both honours should be conferred on the departed statesman. Scarcely was this motion put from the chair, when lord North, who had gone home expecting nothing of this kind, came hurrying in, and declared his satisfaction in arriving in time to give his vote for it. He regretted, he said, that the haste with which he had retraced his steps had not left him breath to express the profound respect which he entertained for the memory of the earl of Chatham. The amendment, including both motions, was carried unanimously.
Two days afterwards, lord John Cavendish introduced the subject of a further testimony of public regard for the departed. It was well known that Chatham, notwithstanding the ten thousand pounds left him by the duchess of Marlborough, notwithstanding the emoluments of his places and pensions, and the noble estate bequeathed to him by Sir William Pynsent, was still in debt. Lord John Cavendish put on the score of disinterestedness what ought probably to have been placed to the account of free having and little care of money, and called on parliament to reward the descendants of the earl for the great addition which he had made to the empire as well as to its glory. Lord North cordially assented, Burke and Fox supported the proposal, and colonel Barré drew a comparison betwixt the honours and estates conferred on Marlborough and the poor pension of three thousand pounds a-year bestowed on Chatham, omitting, however, to mention the three thousand pounds a-year previously settled on lady Chatham.
An address, founded on this resolution, was carried to the king, who faithfully kept the word he had given nearly three years before. Chatham had then, through lord North, sought to get his own pension continued to his second son, William Pitt, afterwards the celebrated minister. On that occasion, George III. had declared that the conduct of Chatham of late had totally obliterated any sense of gratitude for his former merits; that, as to any gratitude to be expected from him or his family, the whole tenor of their lives had shown them destitute of that most honourable sentiment; but that, when decrepitude or death should put an end to him as a trumpet of sedition, he would not punish the children for the father's sins, but would place the second son's name where Chatham's had been. He now consented to that; an annuity bill settled four thousand pounds a-year on the heirs of Chatham, to whom the title should descend, which received the sanction of parliament; and the commons, moreover, voted twenty thousand pounds to pay the deceased earl's debts. Both these motions passed the house of commons unanimously; but, in the upper house, the duke of Chandos attacked the grants, and condemned severely the custom of loading the country with annuities in perpetuity. A few other lords joined him in bitter remarks on the political conduct of Chatham, and attributed to him nearly all the evils which, in truth, a set of far inferior men, in defiance of his remonstrances, had brought upon the nation. The bill was, however carried by forty-two votes to eleven, though four noble lords entered a protest against it, namely, lord chancellor Bathurst, the duke of Chandos, lord Paget, and Markham, archbishop of York. The archbishop's protest was well known to originate in resentment for some severe strictures of Chatham's on a sermon by him, "on the ideas of savage liberty in America," which Chatham designated as embodying the principles of Atterbury and Sacheverel.
In the upper house, too, lord Shelburne moved, on the 13th of April, that all the peers should attend the funeral; but this was overruled by a majority of one—a proxy. There was an attempt by the city to have the remains of the earl, who had always been highly popular in London, deposited in St. Paul's. Their petition was supported by Burke and Dunning, but was too late, the arrangements being already made for Westminster. The funeral was but poorly attended. Few members of either house were there, except those of the opposition. Gibbon says that "the government ingeniously contrived to secure the double odium of suffering the thing to be done, and of doing it with an ill grace." Burke and Saville, Thomas Townshend, and Dunning, were pall-bearers; colonel Barré carried the
MONUMENT TO THE EARL OF CHATHAM IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY.
