Odd this day
Admiral Augustus Keppel was acquitted at a court martial, so the Honourable Charles James Fox, Member of Parliament for Westminster, er… got shitfaced and smashed windows in the Admiralty.
Our story begins at the Battle of Ushant the previous year, when Keppel had ordered Sir Hugh Palliser to get his ship into line and help attack the French. Palliser (and others) couldn’t, because the French had immobilised a lot of the British ships by firing at their masts and rigging. As a result, the battle was inconclusive, which did not go down well with a public which invariably looked forward to news of French defeats.
The Tories were in power at the time, and Keppel was connected to the Whigs, so opposition newspapers blamed Palliser — who defended himself, also in print. According to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography:
The two men clashed in the House of Commons on 2 December, when Keppel implied Palliser had been negligent if not disobedient in failing to answer his signals. Impulsively Palliser demanded a court martial on Keppel for misconduct and neglect of duty.
“Impulsive” because the charge, if proved, could lead to a death sentence. Basically, Palliser had ‘reached’ a bit, and — though Keppel was the superior officer — Palliser sat on the Admiralty board. Also, to add to the stew of ill feeling, Keppel had been making trouble for a while because he didn’t think the navy had enough copper-bottomed ships (sheathed in copper sheets to protect them from shipworms and barnacles). In short… things had got a bit heated.
The court found that the charges were not only unfounded, they had been brought with malicious intent, so as Horace Walpole didn’t quite put it: shit kicked off. In his Journal of the Reign of King George the Third, From the Year 1771–1783, Walpole put it like this:
Palliser himself had escaped out of Portsmouth at five in the morning in a hired postchaise, to avoid insults and outrage from the mob, and sheltered himself in the Admiralty. The news spread rapidly through the town, and by eleven at night most houses were illuminated both in London and Westminster. Guns were discharged by the servants of some of the great Lords in the Opposition, and squibs and crackers thrown plentifully by the populace…
Late at night, as the people grew drunk, an empty house in Pall Mall, lately inhabited by Sir Hugh Palliser, and still supposed to belong to him, was attacked, the windows were broken, and … the mob forced their way into it, and demolished whatever remained. The windows of Lord Mulgrave and Captain Hood were likewise broken, and some few others accidentally that were not illuminated.
So, yes, it might not even have been his house any more, but it got trashed anyway. Palliser was also burnt in effigy. Ah, the Age of Enlightenment! Anyway, back to Walpole, who says it wasn’t just hoi polloi who rioted…
It happened at three in the morning that Charles Fox, Lord Derby and his brother Major Stanley, and two or three more young men of quality, having been drinking at Almack’s till that late hour, suddenly thought of making the tour of the streets, and were joined by the Duke of Ancaster, who was very drunk, and which showed it was no premeditated scheme the latter was a courtier, and had actually been breaking windows. Finding the mob before Palliser’s house, some of the young Lords said, “Why don’t you break Lord George Germaine’s windows?”
…The mischief pleasing the juvenile leaders, they marched to the Admiralty, forced the gates, and demolished Palliser’s and Lord Lilburne’s windows. Lord Sandwich, exceedingly terrified, escaped through the garden with his mistress, Miss Reay, to the Horse Guards, and there betrayed a most manifest panic.
Lord Hertford told me that, having engaged Lord Sandwich to dine with him on the 12th with the Spanish Ambassador, the Earl at dinner-time sent him word that he could come safely to dine with him by daylight, but as he might be insulted or ill-used in the evening he desired to be excused. The rioters then proceeded to Lord North’s [then Prime Minister], who got out on the top of his house.
Yes, indeed: it is good to live in more civilised times when people no longer resort to politically motivated violence when they don’t get whay they want.
As you might imagine, things did not look rosy for Sir Hugh. He resigned all his navy appointments, including his Admiralty seat, and stepped down from parliament. He even applied for a court martial on himself, so he could present his side of the story. Keppel, ODNB says “declined to prepare the charge for the trial” but it took place anyway, and lasted 21 days “and, though he was acquitted of any misconduct, his acquittal was neither unanimous nor with honour.” He was reduced to taking a job as governor of Greenwich Hospital.
Charles James Fox, although a renowned rebellious sort, went on to be Leader of the House of Commons — and Foreign Secretary. After all, it’s not like anyone disreputable ever held that job.
