1828 The Third Marquess of Hertford writes that Sir Henry Cooke MP is reported by the girls at Orford to be again fit for duty

 

Orford 1816. Click on Image to Enlarge

The Marquess of Hertford has only initialled this short letter and though he has claimed his Free Frank privilege at Woodbridge in Suffolk has not added the required information at the top and at bottom left of the wrapper which contains it. This may have something to do with the contents, though Hertford has included in the letter itself the name of his home, Sudbourne, and used a wax seal which would identify him. Perhaps he (or his servant) was just very well-known at the post office and laxness tolerated.

The short letter was written at a time when Parliament had been deadlocked over Catholic Relief and Parliamentary Reform occasioning a succession of short-lived governments until Wellington became Prime Minister on 22 January 1828, a few days before this letter was written. Wellington in the House of Lords and Robert Peel in the Commons then reversed previous Tory policy and pushed through the Catholic Relief Act with Whig support. The Marquess of Hertford did the required about-turn and instructed his client MPs to do likewise: Sir Henry Cooke in the rotten borough of Orford who appears in this letter and Quintin Dick (the addressee) at Maldon, both in East Anglia. George the Fourth held out on signing the Act into law until Wellington threatened to resign; reluctant Royal Assent was given in 1829.

The “Mr B.” of the letter is most likely Henry Brougham and a noted parliamentary orator; he was at the time MP for Winchelsea and like the Marquess a loyal friend of Harriette Wilson; Hertfors comes out very well from her Memoirs. 

Lord Palmerston had held office since 1809 as Secretary at War, a job in which he handled financial matters. He only achieved a place in Cabinet in 1827 and was out again in spring 1828; this letter written shortly before that suggests that he had not impressed.

The human interest of this letter rests in the opaque account of a practical joke played and the less opaque paragraph relating to Cooks and Cocks. The latter story may be complicated and not what one might assume, that someone had a venereal infection. The complication is that the History of Parliament Online tells me that around this time Sir Henry Cooke “had recently fallen victim at Sudbourne to his colleague Quintin Dick’s faulty gun and been wounded in the leg”. Perhaps it is being coy. Sir Henry though born in 1785 did not marry until 1834 so in 1828 was a bachelor. He had a brother George Cook, also unmarried, hence the plural “your Cooks”. Both had significant military careers which explains Hertford’s choice of “fit for duty”. He knows how to turn a phrase.

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Transcription

Addressed to: Q. Dick Esq   Curzon St    May Fair     London

No dateline but sent with a Free Frank datestamp of 28 January 1828.

Dear Mr Dick

Our good hearted but mischievous friend deserved a joke & I daresay you played him a very good one – we once did the same at Hull to Henry M…[?] – who returned after a chilling walk on the ramparts & gave so circumstantial an acct. of his bonne aventure nobody wd. durst tell him of his inventive faculties.

Mr B. [Brougham] always makes a fine speech & I shall like yourself be rather amused to see him struggling with Ld. Palm [Palmerston] who is not the first of Parliamentary gladiators tho’ how I never could find out why? in the Cabinet?

Is it true Peel has the Hooping Cough? It seems I have got my Box [Parliamentary Papers?] & so I must pay & get the best receipt I can of Mr Treherne I suppose.

You will have seen Your Cooks are in great force & the boys Cock is reported by the girls at Orford to be again fit for duty.

Yours very sincerely    H.

Sudbr [Sudbourne] Sunday

I can only thank you for your news, I can send none in return except of game & that is now gone to rest & to increase & multiply

 

References

Historyofparliamentonline.org: for Francis Seymour-Conway; Quintin Dick; Horace Seymour

Wikipedia: Francis Seymour-Conway, 3^rd Marquess of Hertford

Wikipedia: Quintin Dick (7 February 1777 – 26 March 1858) was an Irish Peelite, independent, Conservative, and Tory politician.

Orford 1816 engraved by T. Higham after a painting by G. Arnald