ion of Sir
William Draper Best, who was created Lord Wynford for
the purpose of assisting the Chancellor with the
judicial business of the House of Lords.]

June 11th, 1829 {p.210}

I have been at Epsom for a week; the Duke of Grafton, Lords
Wilton, Jersey, and Worcester, Russell, Anson, Irby, and myself
took Down Hall for the races and lived very well. Nothing
particular has occurred. Lord and Lady Ellenborough are
separated, and he is supposed to have behaved very handsomely to
her. They say he does not now know the whole story of her
intrigue with Felix Schwarzenberg; that hero is gone to the
Russian army. All the new appointments were declared when I was
out of town, and they excited some surprise and more disapprobation.
They have made Best a Peer, who is poor and has a family, by
which another poor peerage will be added to the list; and he
is totally unfit for the situation he is to fill--that of
Deputy-Speaker of the House of Lords, and to assist the
Chancellor in deciding Scotch causes, of which he knows nothing
whatever; and as the Chancellor knows nothing either, the Scotch
law is likely to be strangely administered in that great court of
appeal. They would have done better to have made Alexander[19] a
Peer, who is very old, understands Equity Law, and has no
children; but he knows very little of Common Law (which Best is
well versed in), and so they keep him on the bench and put Best
on the Woolsack. Lord Rosslyn is Privy Seal,[20] and Scarlett
Attorney-General, which looks like a leaning towards the Whigs;
but then Trench and Lord Edward Somerset are put into the
Ordnance; George Bankes goes back to the India Board, and
Government supports him in his contest at Cambridge against
William Cavendish. This conduct is considered very unhandsome,
and Tierney, who was well disposed towards the Government, told
me yesterday that if the Duke did not take care he thought he
would get swamped with such doings, that the way he went on was
neither fish nor flesh, and he would offend more people than he
would conciliate. At present there is no party, and if Government
have no opponents they have no great body of supporters on whom
they can depend; everything is in confusion--party, politics, and
all.

[19] [Sir William Alexander, then Lord Chief Baron of the
Exchequer. The Court of Exchequer still retained its
Equity jurisdiction.]

[20] [Lord Rosslyn