The Lady In Red: An Eighteenth-Century Tale Of Sex, Scandal, And Divorce by Hallie Rubenhold Read Free Book Online Page B

been staunchly Tory, a favourable camp in the reign of George III. The Tory party were generally adherents to tradition, they supported the King’s authority and the right of the Hanoverians (as opposed to the ousted Stuart pretenders) to sit on the English throne.
    It was fortuitous that the baronet’s personal convictions, his need for order and hierarchy aligned so neatly with the political philosophy favoured by the reigning monarch. Sir Richard clearly understood his place and duties. He held no radical passion for liberty, no Whiggish interests in serving the
public good. His aspirations were to maintain the status quo, always to vote as the sovereign would have him (which the division lists demonstrate he did) and to use political position to increase his own wealth, as was the accepted practice.
    Worsley was also shrewd. He understood that the more closely he adjusted his values to that of his monarch, the more ardently he waved the government’s banner, the more obsequiously loyal he became, the more likely he was to achieve his ultimate design of obtaining a peerage. Movement upward from the lower end of the titled landed classes into the power-wielding realm of the aristocracy proper would have fulfilled centuries of hopefulness on the part of his ancestors. As George III appeared well disposed toward granting peerages, the current climate was an auspicious one. Sir Richard’s strategy was to increase his influence on the Isle of Wight until it spilled over into Hampshire. His recent acquisition of additional land on the island, facilitated by his marriage, was his first offensive move towards controlling a greater share of electoral power. The more of the region he cornered, the larger a political player he became. With such authority, such fortune and such devotion to the throne, Worsley would have believed that his route to royal favour was adequately paved.
    Indications that the award of a peerage might be imminent appeared as early as 1777 with his appointment as one of the Clerks Comptroller of the Board of Green Cloth. Two years later he rose to become Comptroller of the King’s Household. In this latter role, where he acted as chief accountant to the royal family, Sir Richard excelled himself. A more suitable post could not have been invented for Worsley’s organised and mathematical mind. He dispatched his responsibilities with such precision and alacrity that the press dubbed him ‘Sir Finical Whimsy’. This dedication to his office paid off handsomely. By the age of twenty-nine in 1780 he had been made a Privy Counsellor (a leading government adviser), and Governor of the Isle of Wight, positions which were rumoured to have brought him £10,000 annually in salary and bribes.
    When not balancing His Majesty’s books or attending the meetings of the many learned societies to which he belonged, Worsley was buried in another of his long-term projects, the compilation of his History of the Isle of Wight . Both his grandfather and his father had collected materials during their lifetimes and Sir Richard regarded it as ‘a discharge of a filial duty’ to see the book published. In June 1781 when the completed volume finally appeared
in the booksellers’ shops, he was engaged in fulfilling what he perceived to be yet another familial obligation: commanding the recently re-embodied South Hampshire Militia.
    Sir Richard’s responsibilities had him in a state of perpetual motion, travelling between London and Appuldurcombe, from Appuldurcombe to Newport, from Stratford Place to Westminster, and then to any encampment in south-west England where his militia regiment might have pitched their tents. Unfailing in his commitment to the King’s government, Worsley was never absent for an important parliamentary vote, when his party (and sovereign) might require him. His head was clouded with politics, refurbishments, and the production of the History of the Isle of Wight. He was constantly busy, muddled and