"granted to the King £80,000 a year for encouraging sciences." She also believed that West the painter and her brother were the first who benefited by this grant. She is referring, of course, to the arrangements regarding the Civil List, which came into effect in 1782.[1]
It seems to me that the King had more serious difficulties in dealing with William Herschel than are generally supposed. Unquestionably he had deserted the army of Hanover after a severe defeat, and in presence of an advancing enemy. A quarter of a century had passed since then; but could the Elector of Hanover, as King of Great Britain, pass over an offence so grave, and knowingly honour the offender even after that lapse of time? So long as it was simply letting bygones be bygones, the matter was easy of solution; but it came to have another look when the offender was received under the shelter of the palace, admitted to intercourse with the Royal Family, and paid a pension out of the King's purse. That the offence was unknown to the King is altogether improbable. He knew Herschel's younger brother, Alexander, and inquired after him at a state concert in Buckingham House. He knew also the Griesbachs, Herschel's nephews, and employed five of them at these concerts. A family from the town of Hanover, and of such outstanding ability, would be so much in the mouth of Hanoverians that echoes at least of their gossip could not fail to reach the King's ears. The King's knowledge of every petty detail of gossip among the Hanoverians had passed into a proverb in England. "Modern poets differ from the Elizabethans in this,"
- ↑ Memoirs, p. 321.
