“. . . Tyrwhitt continues to see the King at all times, in his bed as well as out of it. . . . He says that Knighton is the greatest villain as well as the lowest blackguard that lives, as well as the most vindictive chap. He is eternally upon the watch, and more than ever during Tom’s [Tyrwhitt’s] tête-à-tête. He came in without knocking, and planted himself at the bottom of the bed, Prinney observing when he saw him:—‘Damme, I thought you had been at the other end of
* The 12th Duke of Norfolk. † The Duke of Norfolk was debarred as a Roman Catholic from silting in the House of Lords. |
| 1827.] | LIVERPOOL’S LAST ILLNESS. | 105 |
“It was not amiss to hear the different reasons assigned by Taylor and Tom [Tyrwhitt] for the fall of this truly great man Bloomfield. Taylor’s account is direct from Denison—alias Lady Conyngham, and he says that the year the King went to Ireland, Bloomfield went first to prepare everything, and being at the play at Dublin when ‘God save the King’ was called for and vehemently applauded, Bloomfield was kind enough to step to the front of the box he was in, and to express by his bows and gestures his deep sense of gratitude for this distinction, and that this being reported to the Sovereign, he never forgave it. . . . Bloomfield was ruined from that moment if you can call a man ruined who, in our recollection twenty years back, was little better than a common footman; and who, having made himself a fortune by palpable cheating and robbery in every department he had to do with, demands and obtains an Irish peerage, the Order of the Bath, and an embassy to a crowned head . . . this, in truth, being the price of keeping his master’s secrets.* And this is the apothecary Knighton’s hold too, he having all that other rogue McMahon’s papers and letters . . . Lady Beauchamp gave McMahon £10,000 for getting her husband advanced from a baron to an earl.”
