The feelings which then dictated his proceedings were those of
a young man, and at an agitating period. Since that time Sir Everard's
Jacobitism had been gradually decaying, like a fire which burns out for
want of fuel. His Tory and High-Church principles were kept up by some
occasional exercise at elections and quarter-sessions; but those
respecting hereditary right were fallen into a sort of abeyance. Yet it
jarred severely upon his feelings, that his nephew should go into the
army under the Brunswick dynasty; and the more so, as, independent of his
high and conscientious ideas of paternal authority, it was impossible, or
at least highly imprudent, to interfere authoritatively to prevent it.
This suppressed vexation gave rise to many poohs and pshaws which were
placed to the account of an incipient fit of gout, until, having sent for
the Army List, the worthy Baronet consoled himself with reckoning the
descendants of the houses of genuine loyalty, Mordaunts, Granvilles, and
Stanleys, whose names were to be found in that military record; and,
calling up all his feelings of family grandeur and warlike glory, he
concluded, with logic something like Falstaff's, that when war was at
hand, although it were shame to be on any side but one, it were worse
shame to be idle than to be on the worst side, though blacker than
usurpation could make it.
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