AND THE DUKES OF BICEMOND. 29 



Norfolk and other influential persons, had joined 

 the Constitutional Society. 



He became a delegate for the county of Sussex 

 for the purpose of obtaining the object in view, 

 and when the Convention assembled at St. Alban's 

 tavern, his Grace was unanimously chosen President. 



When in 1782 Lord North retired and the Whigs 

 again came into office under Lord Buckingham, his 

 Grace was appointed Master-General of the Ordnance, 

 a post which later on he again accepted under Pitt, 

 and which he then held until nearly the end of 1795. 



During these many years his Grace directed his 

 unremitting attentions to the fortifications of this 

 country, and some of his plans to effect his object 

 were so extensive and costly that the House of Com- 

 mons took alarm, and his proposals were set aside 

 after a division in which the casting-vote of the 

 Speaker turned the scale. 



Still his Grace was unremitting in his endeavour 

 to protect our coast from invaders, and he therefore 

 was instrumental in the erection of the round or 

 Martello towers, deriving their names from similar 

 forts at Martilla Bay in Corsica, which had offered 

 a stubborn resistance to our attack, and were almost 

 impregnable to the artillery of those days. 



These Martello towers extended from Hythe in 

 Kent to Seaford in Sussex, and were originally 

 seventy-four in number. They were completed in 



