5300. Robert Browning, Sr. to RB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 30, 318–319.
[Paris]
[?early December 1863] [1]
Dear Robert–
I feel sorry to trouble you with so trifling a remark—but, in consequence of your letter I have turned my attention once more to the pages of Junius [2] after having neglected them for several years.– It struck me forcibly on reading the letters to Sir W. Draper [3] —that Junius never could have been Ld G. Sackville. [4] How could a man, use such language to Sir Wm reproaching him with having been a disgrace to his professn &c &c when he himself had been tried, broke & dismissed the Service, by a Verdict of a Court Martial.– [5] And however severe he might have been towards tory party[,] Grafton, [6] Mansfield [7] &c he never would have engaged in a low scurrilous quarrel with Rigby, [8] Bradshaw, [9] Chamier [10] &c whom he must have considered (if Jaques’s [11] Character of him is correct) too much beneath his notice—especially in a public correspondence. And of all persons in the world he would have been the very last to have insulted Geo iii—who at his accession shewed him such particular marks of favour, as greatly offended Mr Pitt, [12] & who was during his whole reign a particular friend to him.
Yr affectionate father
R Browning
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Fitzwilliam Museum.
1. Approximate dating suggested by RB, Sr.’s remarks on the Junius question, which is further discussed in letter 5303.
3. William Draper (1721–1787), British army officer, who in 1769 entered into a public correspondence with Junius in the pages of The Public Advertiser after publication of the latter’s first letter, which contained an attack on the 1st Marquess of Granby (1721–1770), then Commander in Chief of the Forces, whom Draper referred to as an intimate friend. As the correspondence developed, Junius accused Draper of various unethical practices, most of which were easily refuted. RB, Sr. may have been reading the exchange in his copy of The Letters of Junius, ed. John Wade (2 vols., 1850), which sold in an unspecified lot in Browning Collections (see Reconstruction, A1343).
4. George Sackville Germain (né Sackville, 1716–85), 1st Viscount Sackville, British army officer and politician, was put forward as Junius by John Jaques in The History of Junius and His Works (1843), a copy of which, with RB, Sr.’s annotations, sold in an unspecified lot in Browning Collections (see Reconstruction, A1296).
5. Sackville was relieved of command and dismissed from the service for failing to charge his cavalry at a key moment during the Battle of Minden (1759). At his court martial, “Sackville was found guilty of disobedience” and “‘adjudged to be unfit to serve his Majesty in any military capacity whatever’” (ODNB). He was later rehabilitated and served as secretary of state for the colonies (that is, America) during the Revolutionary War.
6. Augustus Henry FitzRoy (1735–1811), 3rd Duke of Grafton, was the British prime minister from 1768 to 1770. “Between March and July [1769], Junius wrote five letters directly addressed to Grafton and several more attacking him in a very personal way” (ODNB). Grafton resigned his office on 30 January 1770.
7. William Murray (1705–93), 1st Earl of Mansfield (1776), served as Lord Chief Justice from 1756 to 1788. Following the trials of the publishers and distributors of the Junius letters in the summer of 1770, at which Mansfield presided, a letter from Junius in The Public Advertiser of 14 November 1770 “abused Mansfield as a Scot and a lapsed Jacobite who had corrupted English law by introducing ideas from Roman law and the civil law of other nations. It also accused him of exercising secret influence over the government while refusing to take the public position of minister” (ODNB).
8. Richard Rigby (1722–88), politician and government official, was Paymaster of the Forces (1768–82) and M.P. for Tavistock from 1754 until his death.
9. Thomas Bradshaw (1733–1774), “a clerk successively in the war office and the Treasury, whose ministerial connections had aided [Anthony] Chamier’s career” (ODNB).
10. Anthony Chamier (1725–80), financier and government official, who, at the time of the Junius letters, served as secretary to the Commander in Chief of the Forces (see note 3 above).
11. John Jaques; see note 4 above.
12. William Pitt (1708–78), 1st Earl of Chatham, British prime minister (1766–68).
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