On one great subject, the dispute with America, he had been his follower and ally, advocating in the Irish House of Commons the same course which Chatham upheld in the English House of Peers.

But to Pitt he had been almost constantly opposed.

By Pitt he and his party, whether in the English, or, so long as it lasted, in the Irish Parliament, had been repeatedly defeated.

The Union, of which he had been the indefatigable opponent, and to which he was never entirely reconciled, had been carried in his despite; and it was hardly unnatural that the recollection of his long and unsuccessful warfare should in some degree bias his judgment, and prompt him to an undeserved disparagement of the minister by whose wisdom and firmness he had been so often overborne.] [Footnote 112: Massey's "History of England," iii., 447; _confer_ also Green's "History of the English People," vol.iv.] [Footnote 113: Hallam ("Middle Ages," ii., 386, 481), extolling the condition of "the free socage tenants, or English yeomanry, as the class whose independence has stamped with peculiar features both our constitution and our national character," gives two derivations for the name; one "the Saxon _soe_, which signifies a franchise, especially one of jurisdiction;" and the other, that adopted by Bracton, and which he himself prefers, "the French word _soc_, a ploughshare."] [Footnote 114: Lord Colchester's "Diary," i., 68, mentions that the officiating clergyman was Mr.Burt, of Twickenham, who received L500 for his services.

Lord John Russell ("Memorials and Correspondence of Fox," ii., 284-389) agrees in stating that the marriage was performed in the manner prescribed by the Common Prayer-book.