326 THE CONCILIATION PROPOSALS CHAP. 



Reed. 1 Even Lord Banington, the minister for war, 

 disapproved of coercion. 



Was there nothing more that could be done to stay 

 the oncoming of an unnatural war ? It was known that 

 Franklin would soon depart from England ; his liberty 

 indeed was hardly secure, and he might be arrested any 

 day. Yet he was the man who surely could help 

 to an agreement : a statesman of cool temper, no 

 extremist, a friend to England, and high in the confid- 

 ence of his compatriots. Some of the Whig leaders 

 sought his company ; the great Chatham welcomed 

 him to his mansion with " affectionate respect " ; and 

 he visited Lord Camden, whom he found of generous 

 and noble sentiments, and "" a clear close reasoner." 

 Mrs. Howe, sister of Admiral Howe, inveigled him to 

 her house to play chess, and introduced him to her 

 brother. 



It is not now possible to trace the precise influences 

 under which the attempt at conciliation in which Fother- 

 gill bore a part, took its initiative. David Barclay, who 

 was, as we have seen, a prominent Whig merchant in the 

 American trade, was on terms of friendship with Lord 

 Hyde. Hyde, afterwards Earl of Clarendon, and grand- 

 father of the distinguished statesman of the Victorian 

 era, was at this time chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. 

 He was a man of long diplomatic experience. One day 

 near the end of November 1774 Barclay was conversing 

 with Hyde, when the latter asked him and Fothergill to 

 attempt a compromise with Franklin before he left 

 England. There is reason to think that Hyde was not 

 acting without the cognisance of others in high station. 

 Barclay went at once to see Fothergill. The mind of the 

 latter was already working on a similar line. Writing 

 to Pemberton three months earlier, he had suggested 

 that commissioners should be sent over from America to 

 act with Franklin for the obtaining of conciliatory 

 measures, " with great moderation, yet with proper 



1 Ellen Chase, The Beginnings of the A merican Revolution, ii. 90 ; Dartmouth 

 MSS. p. 373- 



